Promise, page 7
“There’s no point talking about this no more,” Ruby said to me. “If you’re too chicken to go with us, it shows you don’t really care about the woman. You acting like you cared the most about her. If that’s true, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to find out something more about her life before they toss her in the ground tomorrow.”
“That’s enough,” said Ezra. “Cinthy cares about people. She’s just respectful. That’s how we’ve been raised.”
“And how have I been raised?”
Shrugging, Ezra pushed herself forward, allowing the downward slope of the street to quicken her pace. I could tell she was being careful with Ruby. Maybe she still felt guilty about what she’d said yesterday about Ruby’s papa. Ezra had said nothing to me about what we’d done up on the rocks with Ruby either. I kept expecting her to explain it to me, why it had been important for her and Ruby to test each other that way. It was like she was relieved we could focus on our teacher instead of fighting one another. If she had any misgivings about Ruby’s suggestion that we check out Miss Burden’s apartment, she kept them fastened inside her set jaw. Since we were little girls, I’d seen my sister catapult herself into a kind of stoicism that bordered foolishness. She didn’t like to turn back from her decisions.
In the village square, the statue of the Virgin was coated in molten sunlight that made my eyes burn. A strong, salt-swept wind dried the sweat on my face. It was so beautiful, standing there near St. Mary Star of the Sea and letting my eyes glide to where the land fell away into the rolling murmur of thick water. The shadows of gulls traced the ground where we stood. I felt my mind unbuckle itself from its knot. When I looked out at the water anything was possible.
“This is perfect,” said Ruby. “It’s so hot, everyone’s inside. Nobody’ll have any energy to give a damn about us. We can just have ourselves a look around and be on our way.”
When I realized that Ezra was not going to protest Ruby’s easy logic, I said, “I’m only coming along to make sure you don’t ruin anything. I don’t want my sister getting into trouble on account of you.”
“You can’t ruin the dead,” said Ruby, frowning.
* * *
•••
Miss Burden’s door had been left standing open. I’d never been in any of the apartments above the storefronts. The room was so plain it was awful. But the view was marvelous. There was a glimpse of a thin ridge of black rock and then green waves, which lapped and surged, lifting rainbow sprays, as water rushed and withdrew, slapping the old pilings.
“You’d think they would’ve put up a sign to keep people out,” said Ezra. “It looks perfectly normal.”
“She didn’t drown here, dummy,” said Ruby, before turning away. But I noticed her tread was light, as though she might snag a trip wire. “Besides, it isn’t against the law to take your own life.”
“Shut up, Ruby,” I said, rolling my eyes because I was both irritated and slightly nauseous. “We don’t know what happened.”
“Does it matter if we did? Dead is dead.”
A watery breeze began to twist the pale, gauzy curtains that framed the windows.
Standing at the window, I looked down at Miss Burden’s desk. There was a diary with leather trim and Miss Burden’s monogrammed initials. Unsure whether I was tampering with evidence, I opened it anyway. On the inner cover, my teacher had written her name, Lilac Marie Burden, and included her birth date with a dash that opened into blank space.
The sea air increased in violence, shoving the sheer panels to the ceiling.
Lilac was a soft name, a word that conjured romance, comfort, and care. I hadn’t known that my teacher was also named for a flower. Like Mama, Miss Burden’s mother must have cared about her when she was born, cared enough to name her daughter after something natural and distinct. Our teacher had been named for something in the world that had its own perfect smell. Like cinnamon, basil, or oranges, it could not be mistaken for anything but what it was.
“Look at this,” said Ezra. She was sitting on the neatly made double bed, holding a picture frame.
“Who is that?” said Ruby, coming out of Miss Burden’s bathroom and joining Ezra on the bed.
“What were you doing in there?” I said.
“Pissing,” spat Ruby. “That all right with you?”
“Isn’t that a curse?” said Ezra. “Peeing in a dead person’s bathroom?”
“Oh, Ez, shut up.”
“It really could be,” said Ezra.
“Then everybody’s cursed!”
“Shut up, Ruby. You’re a heathen,” I said. “Don’t tell my sister to shut up when she’s trying to help you.”
“That her mama?” asked Ruby, ignoring me, as she peered at the photo in Ezra’s hands.
“I don’t think so,” my sister said. “Look how close their faces are. Almost touching.”
I came over to offer my opinion. “She’s young in this.”
“Burden wasn’t that old,” said Ruby. “About my ma’s age, maybe younger than that.”
“Miss Burden looks happy here,” I said. “I never saw her smile like this at school.”
“She’s smiling like the woman’s her boyfriend.”
“Maybe she is,” said Ruby.
We were all silent and looked more closely at how the woman’s arms were wrapped around our teacher, whose head was thrown back in the middle of a laugh.
“There’s a suitcase,” said Ezra. She used her foot to tap it, underneath the bed.
I bent down so that I could see it—a sky-blue cardboard suitcase with brass latching. It was plastered with travel stickers. The handle was hard plastic, the color of ivory.
“Let’s take it,” said Ruby.
“That’s stealing,” I said.
“From who?”
“It’s evidence.”
“Of what?”
“It isn’t yours, Ruby. It doesn’t belong to you.”
She sighed, glaring at me. “It don’t belong to nobody. You see her family lining up outside the door for her personal effects?”
“You didn’t like her,” said Ezra.
“She treated me like trash.”
“Shut up, Ruby!”
“It’s the truth so help me God, Ez, she treated me like the bottom of her foot.”
“Will you both be quiet!” I said. “Somebody’s on the stairs!”
“Shit!” Ezra said, leaping up to take me by the wrist.
We rushed to the closet together. Three of Miss Burden’s dresses hung there on wire hangers. I saw a pair of her shoes. I wanted to cry.
“Shit shit shit shit!” said Ruby, hissing, as we heard voices on the other side of the door.
“There’s no explaining it,” said a woman’s voice. “But she paid her rent for this month and next. Paid it on time. She wasn’t never late with it.”
“You get Judy in here to scrub the place down,” replied a man’s voice. “Henry says he’s willing to paint it for a few dollars. Someone will want it. What, with the view.”
“It’s a very good view,” said the woman.
“Wasn’t good enough.”
“Charlie said they been trying to find relatives.”
“Where was she from? Lila, was it?”
“Yes, Lila,” said the woman, sighing. “She never spoke of any people to me. Never had a friend come by and visit. No boyfriend. Nothing indecent about her. That’s why I told Charlie she must have done it to herself. Wasn’t never no hot flame burning her candles.”
“She’ll burn in hell just the same.”
“Aw, I don’t know if she deserves that,” said the woman. “Look, here’s a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of scotch. So she had some fun.”
“Don’t look like she got that from around here,” said the man, in a thoughtful voice. “That’s the expensive stuff. Hell, it shouldn’t go to waste. You keep it if you want ’less you’re superstitious about that kind of thing. There’s a bowl on the floor in the kitchen. Cat lady?”
“Dog, I believe.”
“You charge her extra for it?”
“No. It was a stray that took a liking to her.”
“Hm.”
“It was a quiet dog. I only seen it a couple of times, but she might’ve had it for a few years.”
“I never seen her walking no dog. Reckon I never seen her at all except at St. Mary’s sometimes. Seems like if she had religion, she’d have had to know that taking your own life will land you in hell.”
“I had an uncle who took his.”
“How?”
“Shotgun.”
“You get Judy to box all this up. Ain’t much.”
“Sure,” said the woman. “Fred said he’d put an ad in the Saturday paper.”
“Howie says they’ll have the grave dug by morning.”
From the gap under the closet door, we could make out the shapes of their feet as they moved around the apartment. I wanted to get out. I didn’t like the hems of Miss Burden’s dresses touching my head.
“Leave the windows open so I can air it all out when I get back from my lunch. I’ll tell Judy to bring a fan up here while she’s getting it ready.”
“Sure.”
“You see any signs that she did it on purpose? I told Charlie I’d look again.”
“Not a single sign in sight. You tell him.”
The muscles in my legs and arms were cramped. I hugged my knees tightly against my chest. We couldn’t leave the closet yet because there was still a pair of feet walking back and forth on the other side of the door. A woman’s dry cough punctuated the slow pace of each step.
My skin absorbed heat from Ezra and Ruby. I thought of Lindy, who never sweated in the heat of the sun. She always kept talc in her purse, just in case. I was sorry I hadn’t followed Lindy over to the Junketts’, or waited for Daddy’s faculty meeting to end, or even walked home alone through the woods to Mama. But because I’d chosen to follow my sister, I was now trapped in the airless closet of our dead teacher, who could not teach anyone anything ever again. I licked the sweat that dripped from the tip of my nose to my lips.
The person who was walking around Miss Burden’s apartment opened and closed cabinets loudly. We heard water running in the bathroom and then watched the shadowy steps move across the floor into the kitchen. There was the sound again of water rushing from the tap and down a drain.
The woman, likely the wife of Miss Burden’s landlord, didn’t make any sound. There was only her presence—a woman silent in her thoughts, unaware that three silly girls were stranded inside a closet. A closet that could, at any moment, be thrown open for her to inspect. For once, Ruby and Ezra did not whisper a single word.
I kept returning to what we’d done yesterday. I saw the ugly star that our three pairs of legs had made together. Perhaps we’d cast some kind of spell on the village by trying to look at one another in a way we weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was our fault that Miss Burden had done what she did.
My face burned in the dark. I pressed my heels into the floorboards of the closet. I could feel my underwear and the skin on my thighs sticking and pulling against the splintered wood. There was a loose nail pushing into my skin. My tailbone was singing. Hiding hurt.
Then a small sound filled the air, growing slightly louder in its volume. The woman on the other side of the door was sobbing. Her cries, thick and guttural, reminded me of a honking goose. Maybe she’d used her hands to cover her face. Had she known Miss Burden personally, or was she simply disturbed by Miss Burden’s unsettling story, her incomplete fate?
We heard her cough and sigh. “Enough,” she said in a muffled voice, as if she was speaking with her hands covering her mouth. The wooden floor creaked as the thud of her footfalls crossed back towards the front door of the apartment. The sound of her locking up the apartment gave me a chill.
“She’s gone,” hissed Ruby. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
Ezra kicked the door open so hard it flew back then slammed shut before creaking open again. I crawled out of the closet on my cramped knees while Ezra cursed. The wind had flattened and the temperature of the room had soared. It was like opening an oven door and being engulfed, immediately, by full heat.
Ruby was already at the foot of Miss Burden’s empty bed, struggling with the sky-blue suitcase that was lodged underneath it. It was either very heavy or had gotten stuck on the bed frame’s broken springs.
Despite her fears of curses, Ezra went into the bathroom. The sound of her piss hitting the toilet was loud.
I had to go too, but I refused to use Miss Burden’s toilet. I listened to Ezra soaping and rinsing her hands. She emerged with glittering eyes.
“Look,” said Ez, holding out a tube of red lipstick and a pack of Viceroys. The grooved cylinder of lipstick was gold-plated and the brilliant, waxy red had melted at a dull, rounded angle. I’d never seen Miss Burden wear lipstick. I’d never seen her smoke.
“They’re just going to throw this stuff away,” said Ruby, grinning as she examined the orderly arrangement of lotions and earrings on the mirrored tray of Miss Burden’s vanity. Ruby lifted a crystal bottle of perfume and squeezed the small sequined balloon all over her face and neck.
“They should,” said Ez.
“I’d like to have her diary,” I said, surprised to hear the steadiness of my own voice. I thought of the essays I’d written, and how Miss Burden had taken such care to write out her thoughts and questions to me. I’d saved those papers in a special folder and liked to reread them sometimes, as if my teacher and I were having a conversation that we could never have in the classroom. I couldn’t bear to think that she would never write to me ever again. Then I thought of my own diaries at home. They were hidden around my bedroom, so that if anyone tried to find them, they’d have to look hard and lift heavy things. Maybe Miss Burden would approve of me protecting her innermost language from nosy villagers.
“Mosquitoes are going to tear you up,” I said, “pouring that stuff all over yourself that way. You smell like a lady.”
“She ain’t one,” said Ez, chuckling. “No matter how much she wants to be.”
“Why don’t you two get home?” said Ruby, standing up, distracted. “Cinthy, I can put her diary in the suitcase and then I’ll bring it over to your place.”
“Don’t bring that mess to our house,” said Ezra. “We’d be in trouble for sure if you turn up with a dead white lady’s stuff.”
“Nobody even seen this stuff, Ez.”
“But we’d be asked about it,” I said. “Mama and Daddy would ask about it.”
“I bet they would,” said Ruby in a dry voice. “But you want that diary, don’t you? Think you’ll find out what happened? You think she’d leave her little pet a key to her entire life?”
Ruby threw her head back with laughter. I wondered how quickly I could punch her throat. Unlike Ruby, I wasn’t a thief. I wanted the diary because it felt like all the adults wanted to throw Miss Burden’s life away instead of trying to find out who she was.
“Well, we can always stash everything in that haunted house across the road,” said Ruby, talking like she lived with us. As much as she tried, she wasn’t our family. She didn’t live with us and she certainly didn’t live across our road.
“You can hide it at your place, Ruby,” I said. “In that outhouse you call a home. You don’t even know what’s in that old suitcase.”
“I wish your head was in it,” said Ruby. “I’d throw your stupid, brainless skull right off the dock out there.”
“Shut up,” said Ezra, handing the lipstick and pack of cigarettes to Ruby. “We’re leaving before somebody else comes. We don’t want anything.”
“I want the diary,” I said.
“Put it in your bag then, dummy,” said Ruby. “You sure quick to let me take the blame for damn near everything. You want something, you better speak up.”
Shyly, I went to the desk, where I slid the journal inside the opening between my new school notebooks. Taking it felt as if I’d cut a lock of Miss Burden’s hair from her head without her permission. The minute I’d fastened my bag and pushed it around my shoulder, a wind swept through the room, scattering envelopes and receipts. It was as though Miss Burden herself had shoved the papers off her desk.
“Cinthy, we’re going right now,” said Ezra.
Following my sister, I glanced back quickly to see that Ruby had dropped again to the floor next to the bed. Her freckled face puckered beneath the spiky arrows of her bangs. She’d nearly pulled most of the case out from under the bed now.
The blue box was so brilliant I wondered where Miss Burden had found such a suitcase. At some point, my homely teacher must have been a different woman, one who’d once walked into a department store and pointed at the brazen blue color like she could buy the sea.
7
Relieved that she’d evaded Deputy Charlie’s nightly patrol of the square, Ruby slowed as she approached the trail that led to her home up in the bluffs. The man treated her with the same contempt with which he treated her father. In spite of her being a young girl, Deputy Charlie spoke to Ruby as if he expected her to become her father—a sad yet violent drunk. Lately, he’d begun to follow her around the village, “tailing” her. There was no one to protect her from his lewd comments and gestures. No one was looking at her as innocent. Ruby knew that if she tried to defend her reputation, it would be worse for her and for her father and mother. Deputy Charlie reminded her of the man at the air show who had taken her money and dared her with his eyes to fight back. The deputy was like the village men who tried to touch her when she had to fetch her papa from the bar at closing. She feared what Deputy Charlie would do, as he had done her entire life, if he dragged her father to Salt Point’s pathetic little prison cell. More than once, the man had threatened to put her there too.
