Chapter 1
I remember the first time
I got to help Mama with supper. She had me shuck the ears of corn into the
trash can in the kitchen and then hand them to her to put in the pot of boiling
water, one eye on me to make certain I didn’t come too close. She hummed a
simple tune as she cut up the tomatoes from our garden and kneaded the dough
for our bread. Supper was always an ordeal at our house. It usually took Mama
hours to prepare, and I bet she was sure glad when we all got old enough to
help. I was the oldest so I usually got to do the bigger stuff. Then as they
got older, my younger sisters were always scrambling to get to do the “more
important” chores, like peeling the potatoes and setting the table. I bet Mama
got a good kick out of that.
Ellie, who was only a year younger than
me, would every day jump up and down to get her chance to knead her busy little
fingers in the bread dough. The twins, Jackie and Carrie, were usually busy fetchin’
things from the gardens… well, at least Carrie was fetchin’. Jackie was usually
hiding in the apple orchard, having herself a little pre-dinner snack.
The littlest, Lottie, she always wanted to
help, but seein’s how she couldn’t reach the countertops and would always just
end up underfoot, would usually be sent to wipe the tables or dust, or even run
her toy vacuum cleaner. Mama wanted to make sure she felt just as useful as the
rest of us.
Sometimes it seemed we’d really be
cutting it close, but it always ended up ready by the time Papa came home from
work. (He was an architect, busy designing big houses like the one we lived
in.) We’d have the table neatly set, Mama’s lovely china steaming with good
things to eat, and he got home, washed up, and our whole big family would sit
down together to eat.
Papa would say the
blessing, and sometimes he’d come around and whisper a special blessing over
each of us. We all went by our nicknames, especially in these blessings, cause
Papa said he was sure the good Lord would know us as friends. Mama loved our
names, and she would always sing our names into her favorite songs, which was
easy, cause they all rhymed. Maddie,
Ellie, Jackie, Carrie, and Lottie, little Lottie, little Lottie… Maddie’s
me, by the way. We all had brown hair and freckles, and I often wondered how
Mama even could tell some of us apart –especially Carrie and Jackie, who looked
exactly alike.
So anyhow, after supper,
if it was a nice night, we’d all go out on our big front porch and Papa would
play his fiddle and Mama would sing all her old hymns, or sometimes something a
little more lively. We sisters would just sit there on the scratchy wooden
floor and watch our parents play and sing, and sometimes if we knew the words,
we’d sing along.
A
lot of times our neighbors just down the road would hop in their old red pickup
truck and come over and join us on the porch. Mr. Ames played the banjo and
Mrs. Ames was teaching herself guitar, so we’d just have ourselves a regular
old concert. And their daughter Libby might as well have been our sixth sister.
And her name even rhymed.
You
know how people always say something felt just like yesterday that….? That’s
what those times always feel like. Those were the days that everything seemed
to just stand still. The sun came up, the sun went down, but we didn’t change.
Maybe we grew a little taller, or our freckles stood out a little brighter in
the summer, but it seemed every day was the same. We had a beautiful house, a
huge backyard, two adoring parents, everything we’d ever wanted. The days
rolled on in childhood bliss.
But
before I go on, I’ve got to explain something, because it sure sounds like we
lived on an old country farm. We didn’t. We lived in the suburbs, the upscale,
densely populated suburbs just outside of Indianapolis. Sure, our house was an old colonial style with
a big front porch and a sprawling backyard, but we were definitely in the heart
of the suburbs. When we were little it seemed like we were in a farm a million
miles from nowhere, but when you start to grow up and look around, there was no
denying it. Not when you live in Lakeview Prairie and there’s neither a lake
nor a prairie in sight, just a bunch of houses in a row that look pretty
similar to your own.
But
ours kind of stood out. To look at it from the street you’d see big trellises
lining the sidewalk up to our door, completely covered with hollyhock and
honeysuckle, and extensive beds of marigold and verbena. The driveway was lined
with berry bushes – raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and currants. Even
around the mailbox was a small rock garden with thyme creeping across it. Most
of our neighbors just planted bushes, kept perfectly trimmed, and dotted them
with impatiens. It didn’t take more than a couple school bus rides through the
neighborhood to realize we were a bit different.
Our backyard was
even prettier, but nobody could see it. A six foot privacy fence saw to that.
We girls always loved to go play out there on our swing set, and help Mama in
her garden. We had a screened porch just off the big deck with a swing and a
grill, just like most other houses. But when you went down the steps it was a
whole different world. Mama had her little box herb gardens right next to the
porch, full of rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, lemon balm, mint, pennyroyal, and
tansy. Walk through the herb boxes and you’d head straight for her main garden,
or her “salad garden” as she called it - full of lettuce, snap peas, cucumbers,
peppers, turnips, onions and tomatoes. Just off to the left was what she called
her “three sisters garden” – corn, beans, and squash, just like the Indians
used to plant it, she told us. Keep walking that way and you’d run into her
little pumpkin patch, complete with gourds, but those were always planted a
little later than everything else. Keep going and you’d run into the tall
wooden fence (wouldn’t recommend it), but if you then turned left you’d get to
our swing set. On the other side of that was our little apple orchard – from
which you could always find at least one of us stealing when Mama and Papa were
looking the other way. We even had a couple little walnut trees, from which
we’d collect nuts in the fall, if the squirrels didn’t get to them first. It
was the best backyard for playing hide-and-go-seek, and most of the time we
could be found out there playing some sort of game, which of course always
included our two dogs… and they usually found us before we could find each
other.
We
never had too many people over, but when we did most folks gushed at the
extensive gardens we kept, calling it a wonderland, exclaiming they’d never
seen anything like it before in their life. Others called Mama old-fashioned,
but she just brushed that off, and went about her business. The Ameses lived in
a pretty similar way to us and up until I started kindergarten, I pretty much
lived either at their house or ours. So based only on everyone else’s reactions
to our home, I knew we were a little different from most, but it was something
I never really gave much thought. But that was before I’d ever been to somebody
else’s house.
Chapter
2
That was the first
time I really began to realize just how
different we were from everybody else around us. When I went over to my friend
Rachel’s house, that is. First thing I noticed was they had a TV in their
house. We didn’t. I didn’t even know you could
have one at home. I didn’t have much time to think about that though because
her mother then took us to a huge place she called a “supermarket” to shop for
supper. I’d never heard of a supermarket. Our food came from farms, the farmer’s
market, or our backyard. I wondered where the supermarket food came from?
But then I got to
thinking about something else much more interesting. Rachel had a grandma that
lived with her. Her grandma was the mother of her mother. So then I started
thinking about where people come from. (Don’t laugh – every child asks that
question some time if they haven’t already heard it on the school bus.) But
see, I’d never had a grandma or a grandpa. I didn’t know any family other than
my mama, my papa, and my sisters. So even the word “grandma” was new to me when
I learned it at Rachel’s house. (When they found that out, they changed the
subject fast.) So I went straight to Papa, the answerer of all questions.
I picked a time
when Mama was really busy knitting on a Saturday morning to go track down Papa.
I found him outside weeding his flower beds. My sisters were inside so I had
him all to myself. I approached with caution.
“Hi, Papa.”
He yanked a weed
out of the dirt and sat back on his knees. “Well, hello there, Maddie. Come to
help out your old father?”
I shrugged. “Yeah,
sure.” I plopped down on my knees and started pulling up a weed.
“Whoa, there. You
need some gloves. Wait here.” I sat back on my hands and watch him walk over to
the garage and come back with one of Mama’s old pairs of gloves. “Here y’are.”
“Thanks,
Papa.” I pulled them over my hands and realized just how much bigger Mama’s
hands were than mine. But they worked to keep them safe from the prickly weeds.
“This
is the first time you’ve ever helped your dear old dad out in the flower bed,”
Papa mused. “You help Mama in the garden all the time,” he said, jabbing me in
the side with his elbow.
“That’s
cause I get to eat what’s in the garden,” I giggled.
“We
eat these, too,” said Papa, pulling out a dandelion. “Think I may have Mama
make a dandelion salad for supper tonight. We’ve got enough here for a
feast!”
All
this time I was mulling over in my head how to best ask Papa about grandpas and
grandmas. Then I had it.
“Papa,
did you ever help your papa with the yard work?”
Papa
was in the middle of pulling up a rather stubborn weed, and he just stopped
mid-pull. I watched a worried look surface. It made me nervous.
“Didn’t
you have a papa?”
He
yanked the stubborn weed out with a very forceful pull, tossed it aside, then
sat back on the sidewalk. Then he looked straight at me.
“What
makes you ask that question, Maddie?”
I
shrunk back. He didn’t ask it in a mean way, but that worried face made me not
want to go on. But I asked, stumbling over my words as I went.
“Well,
um, the other night I went over to Rachel’s house for supper. Her grandma lives
with her family. They said she was Rachel’s mother’s mother. And, well, I guess
I never even thought about how you and Mama must have parents, too. Then I
thought about how I’d never seen them, or even heard you talk about them. I,
um, I just wondered.”
Papa
wiped the sweat off of his brow and peered at me from underneath his straw hat.
I could tell he was trying to figure out what to tell me.
“Yes,
sweetheart, I of course had a father, too. I don’t really remember him – he
died when I was very young. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.” He stood up then
and extended his hand towards me. I took it and he pulled me up.
“Why
don’t you take all of these dandelions in to your mama. You can wash them off
for supper tonight. I’m going to mow the lawn.”
I
glanced at the flower bed. There were still a lot of weeds left. But I knew
enough not to press the issue. Papa obviously didn’t want to talk about his
father. So I took the dandelions inside and washed them off, just like he’d
asked me.
My
sister Ellie was a year younger than me, and we were always together, in fact
we were often mistaken for another set of twins. The real twins, Jackie and
Carrie, were only four, so a lot of times Ellie and I would sneak away so we
could play on our own.
After
I washed off the dandelions and set them in a bowl in the refrigerator, I
grabbed Ellie’s hand and dragged her out to the swing set, our big old Collie
right on our heels. Mama was still at her knitting and the twins were playing
at her feet with the baby. They barely noticed us.
“Something
funny is going on,” was the first thing out of my mouth. Ellie hopped on one of
the swings and gave me a funny look. (I was getting used to these funny looks
by now.)
“You
mean, like a mystery?” she asked. My eyes grew wide at this realization, and I
nodded. Papa was always telling us mystery stories, and Mama always read us the
Boxcar Children books. All of a sudden I got this big idea about turning into
the kids from the books. We’d be detectives.
I
got so caught up in this little idea that for a few moments I completely forgot
to fill in Ellie. Before long she was waving her hand in my face. “What’s so
funny that’s going on?”
“Aah!”
I snapped back to reality, and hopped on a swing myself. “Well, it all began
with….” And I related my story about grandmas and grandpas and Papa and his
papa and ended with, “so we gotta figure out what they’re hiding.”
“But
Papa said his papa died when he was really little. Maybe he just doesn’t want
to talk about it.”
I
stared at my shoes sailing over our big house as I swung up and up. Maybe Ellie
was right. I didn’t know. I decided I’d give it a while and ask Mama about her
parents later if Papa didn’t want to tell me about his.
Up
until then, I looked at my parents as people who could do no wrong, and as
people who knew absolutely everything. They’d always been good at telling us
stories and reading us books and helping us with homework, but after that I
felt like I couldn’t ask them any questions without them getting worried or
upset. So after a while, I just stopped.
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