Part 3 (2/2)
But the convoy didn't head north. It was heading south. Toward Mexico.
A few days later, Robert drove out again to see Mrs. Drummond and invited me to join him. She must have sent word to him that she wanted me to come, because I doubted he would have thought of it on his own.
This time, I played hymns for her. She especially loved Bach's Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. I wished that I could play more than German composers given that her country was at war with mine, but those were the only composers we were permitted to study at University. Still, I felt renewed and refreshed after playing for her. Music could do that. It wasn't limited by language, culture, or a world at war.
Mrs. Drummond died in her sleep the next week. At her funeral, a wave of grief washed over me, surprising me with its intensity. I had only known her a few weeks, but I had been blessed by her. I had lost my first friend in America.
In her will, she left the church one thousand three hundred and twenty-five dollars to be used for whatever the Reverend felt was most necessary. Her life savings. The choir members felt they needed robes but the elders insisted the church and the parsonage needed a new roof and a paint job. Herr Mueller, head of the finance committee, proclaimed the money belonged in the bank, drawing interest. It became quite a heated controversy in the First Presbyterian Church of Copper Springs.
Being a choir member with considerable influence, Miss Gordon used every moment at home to stress to Robert the need for new robes. I found it somewhat entertaining to see her campaign so diligently. It was the most conversation I'd heard between them, but I could tell Robert was wearying of the constant badgering. She was unrelenting.
”I might have a solution,” I offered at dinner one evening.
They both stopped eating and looked at me.
”I used to work for a seamstress during my summer holidays. I could make the robes. Then you would have enough money for the repairs.”
Robert looked delighted. ”Louisa! That's a fine idea! That would solve both problems. How about it, Aunt Martha?”
She glared at me. ”We want Christian choir robes, not something made from a...” She stopped herself from finis.h.i.+ng the sentence.
It slowly dawned on me what she intended to say. ”A what? Please finish your sentence. Do you mean you don't want something made from a German? Or a Jew?”
”Both,” she answered, radiating waves of disapproval.
The sharp words hung suspended in the air, waiting for someone to act.
I pushed back my chair from the table, went up the stairs and firmly closed the door to my room. Fighting back hot tears, I flopped down on the bed and buried my face in a pillow. How dare she treat me like that! What had I done to deserve that? Hearing that bitter tone in her voice brought up a stinging set of feelings.
My silent diatribe was interrupted by the buzz of a fierce discussion going on downstairs. Curious, I got up and went to the radiator. My room was directly above the kitchen. I unscrewed the cap and found that if I held my head right above the radiator pipe, I could hear their conversation as if I was in the same room as them.
”I insist that you apologize to her,” I heard Robert say. ”I won't tolerate rude remarks like that. I won't tolerate prejudice in my home, either.”
”But Robert, she's a...Jew!” Miss Gordon p.r.o.nounced the word as if it were dirty. ”You never even told me. I only found out because she told me so herself.”
”Why should that matter? She's a guest in my home.”
”You also never mentioned this houseguest was going to be a young woman.”
”I didn't know myself until she stepped off the train. The papers I received said 'Louis Schmetterling,' not 'Louisa.' The typist must have left the 'a' off.”
Aha! That explained the baffled look on Robert's face when he met me at the train station.
”Just how long will she be here? I thought this was going to be short-term.”
”As long as she needs a home. Probably until the war is over.”
”It just isn't fitting for a minister to have a young woman as a houseguest. People will talk. Lord knows they already have plenty to talk about.”
Irritation rising in his voice, Robert snapped, ”I don't make my decisions based on town gossip.”
”Well,” sniffed Miss Gordon, ”if you ask my opinion, I think you are getting a little too friendly with her.”
”I don't remember asking for your opinion,” Robert said curtly.
Then there was silence. I heard the dishes clink as Miss Gordon returned to her dishwas.h.i.+ng.
After a moment, I heard Robert's voice softly imploring, ”Aunt Martha, you haven't even given her a chance. She helps you with William. He seems to like her. Haven't you noticed that he seems happier lately? Please. Just give her a chance.”
Carefully, I screwed the top back on the radiator with a greater appreciation for Robert. And an even lesser one for his aunt.
Chapter Three.
The day following the incident in the kitchen, I took William to the library. Partly for his sake, partly for mine. It gave me needed distance from Miss Gordon.
I loved everything about a library, any library. I had to admit that this old rickety building in Copper Springs was a dire disappointment. Nonetheless, as I walked through the doors, I inhaled deeply. The dusty smell of books held such promise, like a pink bakery box tied with a string.
William enjoyed our ritual, too. As soon as we entered, he ran to our special corner of the library, next to a cracked and dirty window that let in some natural lighting, which gave us the added bonus of watching people walk down the street.
There wasn't much to do in Copper Springs.
Today, as I watched William's blond head peering out the window, I wondered again about his mother. I had yet to discover a single clue about what happened to her. Not one. Even the townspeople seemed to have taken an oath of silence on the subject of the Reverend's wife. No one uttered her name. There was no sign of her in the house-not a picture, not a trinket, not even a recipe card with her handwriting on it. I knew; with the air of a burglar, I had checked.
I had even searched for her grave in the cemetery by the church one afternoon. There I found Robert's parents, side by side, but no sign of Robert's wife, though I didn't even know a name to look for, other than ”Mrs. Gordon.”
My curiosity was one of my worst faults. I knew it wasn't any of my business and, clearly, no one was going to fill me in, but I couldn't help but wonder what had become of this woman. My latest musing was that she had died in a tragic and horrible accident, so heartrending that no one could speak of it. And surely the Reverend was still so bereaved he couldn't bear to have any memory of her. Well, so I imagined, anyway.
”Louisa!” Rosita had burst through the library doors, spotted me, and hurried over to say h.e.l.lo. Her eyes swept over my hair, and a frown flickered over her face. ”This is my daughter, Esmeralda.” A spitting image of her mother, the girl looked to be about nine or ten years old. ”My husband, Ramon, he is in the Army. He is fighting the j.a.panese now.”
I enjoyed Rosita, even if she was intent on improving me. She had a way of making one feel as if everything would come out the way it was intended, all for good.
”I don't go to that church of Father Gordon's because I am very Catholic,” she offered, without being asked. ”But that priest of yours, he is a good man.”
”Actually, he's not a priest,” I explained. ”He's a reverend, Rosita. In the Presbyterian Church, the minister is called a reverend.”
She wasn't listening. She gathered up Esmeralda like a hen gathering her chick, and left to check out her books. ”You come to dinner to my house soon, okay?” she added as she hustled toward the door.
I looked for the local history section to read up on Copper Springs. It was a young town, at least in the eyes of modern Europeans. The Apache Indians had managed to live for centuries in the nearby mountains. I read that they poetically called the mountain ranges ”islands in the sky.”
Legend had it that their chief, Cochise, was buried in the mountains nearby with his favorite horse and dog. I recognized the name Cochise as the county in which Copper Springs resided. I learned that copper was discovered in the 1870s, which brought countless fortune hunters, escalating the territory disputes between the settlers and the Indians.
As William and I checked out books, Miss Bentley handed me an old, weathered book on sign language she had received from the traveling library. ”And here is that address you wanted, Louisa,” she said as she handed me a slip of paper. She looked victorious, like a hunter returning with game.
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