Chapter 11 #4
Miss Frances is standing in the door of the office, with her hands on her stylish hips.… can’t just go assigning your own assignments, Birdie! I round the corner to see.
Birdie has started to paint the ugly sick walls of the office a very attractive baby-blue-egg color. Well, I just love it.
Meg shouldn’t have to sit in a room full of mold. I found a little extra money for the paint in the books. It was supposed to go toward the baby room.
There is a protocol you’re supposed to follow, Birdie. Couldn’t you at least have asked Garnett before you did it?
I could’ve.
I slip into my chair. Try and look like a innocent party. I see there is a can of slick white paint on the floor too.
Why wouldn’t Garnett be happy about it? It’ll be done just in time for the inspector. Birdie dabs her brush in the can of blue. Remember when we painted our room when we were girls this same color?
I remember, Miss Frances says flat. I knew you were up to something when you left the house so early. Now everybody’s gonna think my sister’s a house painter.
I still don’t understand why Garnett let it get so bad in here in the first place, Birdie says. When she gets back, I’m gonna ask her—
Please don’t, Birdie. Miss Frances looks at her serious now. Your assignment is to do the books, not to ask questions. Or paint walls.
When Miss Frances is back in the toddler room, Birdie shakes her head and keeps painting. Not my assignment to ask questions? She blinks her big brown eyes over at me. My entire life’s assignment is to ask questions. Why else are we even here?
That might be the most logical thing I have heard in years.
I myself am dying to get my hands in this project. I ask can I help, I promise to be careful. Since I am short, we decide my job is to paint the bottom trim the shiny white while she paints the walls the baby-bird blue. She calls it a complementary look.
Here is how you paint a room proper:
First you wrap yourself up good in a apron because painting is a messy and fairly permanent business.
Then you tuck the newspaper against the floor like so …
dip the brush in the paint, be sure and dab it to remove the excess, then run it smooth along the trim, back and forth, do not jerk or let it drip …
and wallah. You have learned a handy skill that is bound to be more fun than putting food in a can.
She says she will touch up my mistakes after, which is a relief. We better be quiet so we do not get in any more trouble than we are already in.
I find laying on the floor eye level is what works best for painting trim. We get us a rhythm. Birdie whistles soft to herself. The tune she calls “Danny Boy” that tends to make me sleepy.
Of course she slips in a question or two between refrains.
The man who brought you here, did you know him? she asks.
While I dip and dab and run it along smooth, I tell her no, I had never seen him before.
How did he know you were out there all by yourself?
I explain that he just showed up and gave me a apple. I have never tasted a apple so good.
Sounds like you were pretty hungry, huh? she asks.
Oh you better believe it. Hungry to where I felt like I had ate up my insides. And cold? I could see my own breathing right there in the house.
I remember that cold snap. It was unusual.
And when I finished gnawing the hambone and eating that old jar of slimy oysters, which I threw up, I tried to eat—
What?
I feel embarrassed to say it.
I tell her I tried to eat a book.
Birdie asks, Which one?
I tell her it was called You Liss Sees. But spelled—I do not recall the spelling.
How’d it taste? she asks.
Well, I got to laugh. Boring, I say. Boringest book I ever ate.
Sometime before lunch, Miss Pripp, the Fatass, waltzes in the front door.
She is wearing a big flapping yellow dress, hunting for somebody.
Yonder you are! Out in the hall, she says to Miss Frances and Miss Mildred that thank the Lord her own kids didn’t get it, but she can’t say when Garnett’s coming back, so here are the big keys, Mildred, she’s got a roast in the oven— She stops yapping. Looking at the office.
Well. What’s all this?
It was Birdie’s idea, Miss Frances blurts out. I stop painting. Wonder if the Fatass is going to tell me to get my rear in my chair.
But—I think it looks better, don’t you? Miss Frances asks.
You mean Garnett didn’t approve this? She just went on and did it?
In the hall I hear Miss Mildred chuckle, but all Miss Frances says is Ummm.
The Fatass moves into the office. Her eyes are lit up at Birdie. She looks like somebody has gave her a damn present. Excuse me, Birdie, but you can’t just go and do something like this. You got to get it approved by Garnett first.
But Garnett wasn’t here, Birdie says and keeps on painting.
Well then, I think you’re about to find yourself in some trouble, the Fatass says, smiling.
Would that make you happy? Birdie asks, looking at her like she is actual curious to hear.
Miss Pripp frowns like she does not know what and goes back out where she came from.
Birdie! Miss Frances says.
Don’t worry, Franny. I’ll take the … blame.
I go back to painting. I have been telling and telling her this place makes no sense.
A project always makes a day go faster. Good job, Meg, Birdie says about ten times a hour. I do not get tired of hearing it.
Even better is when Dorella leans her dirty neck in and sees me doing something funner than drooling.
Lady, don’t you know Nutmeg here is crazy? She talks to people who ain’t even there. I would rather Birdie not know about that Nutmeg business. I do have some pride.
We all do, Dorella, Birdie says. But just so happens, I think Meg here’s pretty smart. And then like icing on a treat: Which is why I’ve made her my number one lieutenant in charge of trim painting.
I am so excited to be the number one in charge of something I can hardly stand it.
When the smell of paint gets very strong, Birdie goes and pries the third-to-bottom board off the window without even checking the hall for traffic.
Then she pries off the second. She examines the top board like it is something strange and wiggles that one off too.
All the panes are fine but one little triangle of glass in a corner is missing.
When she steps back, light rushes in past the green fluffy-leafed tree, and I smile at Birdie—ah, I see now! How it looks in your world.
Well what do you know, just that one little piece of glass is gone, not even a full pane, she says. I’ll stuff it with some steel wool, that ought to work for a while. Up the thing goes and here comes the breeze. It don’t even smell yellow in here anymore.
By afternoon, we have painted it all, even the ceiling. All that is left is the touching up. I say, This is what a baby bird feels like inside a blue egg.
She nods, she understands that. We are both wore out.
Do you think we could paint the upstairs too? I ask. I don’t want the fun to be over, I want her to stay longer than a week and a half. I am already dreading the days where I will be sitting alone again. Six months might just as well be a thousand years.
So I follow her up to the big girls’ room and we stare up at those scary water stains on the ceiling. It is too big of a job for today. Just looking at them makes me a little sad.
Unfortunately, paint can’t fix what’s rotten down deep, Meg.
There is bound to be a life lesson in there somewhere.
We go back downstairs. A word to the wise: It is messy to work right up under somebody painting a wall. Lord, I am shiny white and baby-bird egg all over. Birdie says she will turpentine me in a minute.
I lay my head on the desk as she opens the top drawers to the file cabinet with the big silver key ring. Miss Mildred leans in the doorway and those two talk low. It reminds me of somebody.
I heard a lot of things’ve changed around here, Birdie says.
Oh yeah, there been some changes, that is for sure, Miss Mildred says.
When was that? Would you say? Birdie asks, taking out a file.
When Garnett come on as chairlady. A little over a year and a half ago.
What kind of changes did she make? Birdie asks, peering down through her reading glasses. Birdie knows how to get somebody talking.
Welp. For starters, she separated the big girls from the toddlers. Moved the big girls to sleeping upstairs.
I got my eyes closed but hear a file drawer shut, keys jingle, another drawer open. I think back to my first weeks here. My head was like Swiss cheese, people and time slipping through holes …
Oh, did they used to be all together?
Oh yeah, play together, eat together. Ast me, I think it helped ’em adjust quicker to being gone from their families.
Where did all those memories go? I wonder. Are they sitting in a bucket somewhere? Will I stumble across it one day?
I bet it did, Birdie says.
And don’t say I said so but—Garnett’s the one started covering the big girls head to toe in them hot dresses and quit letting the girls get mail …
Preaching that nonsense how big girls are past helping …
Gets on her soapbox about legislating, protecting the good Christian line.
We’re all Christians here, Miss Mildred says. Ain’t one kind better’n the next.
It is quiet and I hear Birdie turning pages in a file.
Says here her father is unknown … mama was deemed … But I cannot make out what all Birdie says next.
Just ’cause you’re poor and down on your luck don’t mean you’ve lost your wits. That is the last thing I hear Miss Mildred say before I am fast asleep.