Chapter 24 #4
I didn’t think that was what she wanted, though. She had seemed to genuinely approve of Jed. Still, I couldn’t think of any other reason. Dying does strange things to people.
She was awake and sitting up in bed watching a cooking show on the TV when I walked into the room. She smiled at me broadly when she noticed me.
“Oh, Brooke. Thank you so much for being willing to come out and spend some time with me this morning. I hope it isn’t an inconvenience.” She pushed a button attached to one of the cords coming from underneath her bed, and the TV turned off.
“Don’t be silly, Sister Heinz. You could never be an inconvenience.”
“Oh, the flattery that is poured upon the dying!” She chuckled.
“Sister Heinz, don’t talk like that!” My voice sounded shocked.
“I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean anything by it.
Not toward you anyway. I don’t mind. I feel more at peace with it than I did yesterday, and a little more excited too, to be honest, which is strange.
I know what’s in front of me the next few days here, though.
Everybody and their dog will come through those doors.
Some will be praying that I will be healed in front of their eyes.
Others will tell me how I’m going to go to a better place and I should be happy.
Even if it is true, I don’t need someone telling me what to think and feel.
Now of all times!” She smiled at me again.
“It will be wonderful to have Maudra here. She’ll tell them all where to get off.
I hope she’s not gone to get something to eat or anything when Twyla gets here, and you know Twyla will make her appearance.
What a wonderful last gift that would be, watching Maudra telling Twyla to stuff it!
” She laughed in pure joy at the thought.
I marveled at the strength of the women in my life.
Sister Heinz, laughing in the face of death and acting as if nothing bigger was happening than a thunderstorm.
Maudra, well, everything about Maudra radiated strength.
Even Sue, in her quiet ultra-mannered way, was a tower of might when she needed to be.
“So, Brooke, do you know why I needed you to come talk to me today?” She motioned for me to sit in the chair closest to the head of the bed.
I sat and looked at her nervously. “Not really. The only thing I can think of is that you wanna talk to me about getting right with God.”
“Getting right with God? What in the world, boy? You aren’t right with God?”
I hesitated. “Well, I think I am. I just wondered if you were thinking because I’m gay… because of Jed… because….”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” She let out a perturbed breath and looked so funny that I nearly laughed. “Of all things! How insulting! I had nothing of the sort in mind, young man. I would think you would know that I am fully confident of God loving you and that handsome husband of yours.”
I smiled at her sheepishly. “Sorry. That’s all I could think of.”
She patted my hand. “I forget you’re so young. You’ll quit caring what people think one of these days. Hopefully before you get too old for it to do you any good.”
I continued to smile at her.
“I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”
That, I wasn’t expecting. “My mother?”
“Yes, dear. Your mother. Are you okay talking about her? I know she isn’t the most pleasant woman in the world.”
I nodded. “Uh, sure. I just didn’t even consider that possibility. Why do you want to talk about my mom?”
“Well, I’m not expecting what I have to say will fix your relationship with her. I know that your relationship with her has been hard, to put it lightly.”
She paused. If she was expecting me to disagree, she would be waiting awhile.
“As I said,” she continued, “I don’t know if this will change anything or even if it should, but it might at least give you some more understanding of who your mother is and why she is the way she is.”
I sat a little straighter. “Okay. I don’t really know what to expect here.”
“It’s okay. How about this? I tell it to you like a story. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If you don’t wanna say anything after, that’s okay. Will that work?”
“Sure, Sister Heinz. Whatever you would like.”
“You’re a good boy, Brooke.” She took a breath and jumped in.
“You may not have known, but I was a teacher when I was younger. I stopped after Kenneth died. I started working at the shirt factory with Maudra after that; that’s when we started to become such close friends.
I was thirty-two when he died, so I had been a teacher for about ten or eleven years.
Back then, we had a one-room schoolhouse.
I know it sounds like something that should have been a hundred years ago, but lots of smaller towns had one-room schoolhouses late into the sixties.
“I taught in Black Jack. I had your momma and her brothers in my class. When I taught, your mom was still really young. As you know, her brothers were several years older.”
I nodded. I had seen a couple of old photographs of Mom when she was younger, with her two older brothers and her dad. I had never seen a picture of her mom. I never met any of them. She never spoke about them.
“Your grandma died when Rose was just a little girl, probably too young to even remember her. I don’t remember how she died.
It was just your mom, the two boys, and your granddad.
” She paused for a second, looking like she was searching for words.
“None of this is easy, and I am trying to figure out a way to tell it to you as quick as possible. No need to drag it out.”
I had no idea what was coming. “It’s okay, Sister Heinz. You can say whatever you need to say.”
She nodded and then forged ahead, speaking faster.
“Your granddaddy was not a good man, and that wasn’t a secret.
Everyone knew he beat his wife and the older boys.
There were times they would come to school covered in bruises.
There was always some story, some excuse.
I tried to talk to your grandma before she died, but she got angry and told me to mind my own business.
I never saw any signs of Rose getting hit when she was old enough to come to school.
“The younger boy was the one that was trouble. It’s funny. I’ve tried to remember their names since yesterday, and for the life of me, I can’t tell you what they were called. Do you know?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve never met any of them, not even Mom’s dad.”
“Well, that was a wise decision on Rose’s part.
The younger boy was the worst one, but the older one wasn’t a saint either, not that they had any reason to be any other way.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Probably one of the most upsetting things I have ever seen.
It was during recess. The kids and I would eat our lunches outside on the nice days, and then they would run and play for a while.
“On this afternoon, I went to the bathroom, which was an old outhouse a couple hundred feet away from the school. Your momma must have been about six or seven, and the boys were probably somewhere between ten and thirteen. I opened the door of the outhouse and there they were, all three of them. Little Rose didn’t have any of her clothes on, and both of the boys had their pants down.
When I walked in, they weren’t doing anything to Rose, only to each other. ”
She shook her head as if trying to erase what she was seeing.
“I didn’t know what to do. I think I panicked.
I just grabbed Rose and pulled her outside behind the outhouse.
I didn’t want the other kids to see anything.
The two boys got their pants on and came around back to find me.
They were both crying and in a panic. They were begging me not to say anything.
Looking back, I don’t really think they meant to be doing anything bad or were trying to hurt Rose. I don’t think they knew any better.
“For the rest of that afternoon, I got the rest of the kids busy on stuff they could do by themselves and gave them extra recess while I kept Rose’s brothers with me.
I let Rose go play with the other kids. The only thing that had scared her was me opening the door and going into a tizzy.
After a while, I think I finally got the truth out of the boys, or at least most of it.
“They told me they weren’t trying to hurt her, that they were just playing.
From what they said, and I had to read a little between the lines, I have no doubt of what was happening.
Their daddy, your granddaddy, was molesting both the boys.
From what I could gather, it seemed like that had been happening for years, even before their mom died.
She was a weak, weak woman. I’m willing to bet she knew but was too afraid to say anything.
They told me he didn’t do anything with Rose, that he never really even spoke to Rose.
Both of them pretty much raised that poor pretty girl.
I don’t know what happened or what didn’t happen to Rose, but from what I saw in that outhouse, I figure that the boys would do things with her too.
Why wouldn’t they? They didn’t know any different.
“I told Kenneth about it that night, and we went out to their house to talk to your granddaddy. We tried not to outright accuse him of anything. We did tell him about what happened in the outhouse. We couldn’t even get to asking any questions about what might be happening at home.
He blew up. That temper of his was well known.
He got out his rifle and was waving it around, screaming at us.
I thought we were gonna die for sure. We ran.
I hated leaving like that. I could hear Rose crying.
I’m sure all the screaming scared her to death.
“We went right to the police. You’ve got to understand that times were different back then, night and day.
Such things weren’t unheard of, but they for sure weren’t talked about.
You were supposed to just ignore it. The policeman wasn’t much more receptive than your granddaddy had been.
He told us we needed to mind our own business, stick to teaching, and leave the poor widower alone.
Kenneth started yelling and arguing back.
It’s a wonder he didn’t get thrown in jail.
“Rose and the boys didn’t come back to school the next day. I heard later that they had to ride the bus to go to the school in Ft. Scott. I felt horrible. Not only did they have to deal with the same stuff at home, but now they had over an hour-long bus ride every morning and evening.”
She stopped speaking abruptly and looked at me expectantly. I stared at her dumbly. I think my brain shut off. It was too much information at once.
“Brooke, I’m sorry to dump this all on you.
I didn’t want to make things worse or hurt you, but I thought maybe it would help you understand why your mom is the way she is.
I know it doesn’t excuse the choices she’s made, or the fact that she was a bad mother, but…
but, well, I don’t know. I thought you should know. ”
I nodded numbly.
She reached out and squeezed my hand. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. After a few seconds, my own joined in. She took me in her old, fragile arms, and we cried together. For Rose, her brothers, for me, for her, for the whole fucking mess.
Maudra was true to her word and never left the hospital while Sister Heinz was there. They even let her stay on a rollaway bed every night. She came home to Jed and me a little less than a week later, when Sister Heinz passed.
I hoped Kenneth had been waiting for her with open arms.