I suppose it matters little, Father, as I heard Sister Agnes whisper yesterday when we filed out of choral practice, “It’s time we must replace Iola Anne. She’s developing.” There was an emphasis on the final word. I felt her frowning at me, her wrinkled mouth like the navel of a Christmas orange. At first, I did not understand. I have learned so very much in the choral group. I have even begun to master the organ, not so different from Monsieur’s piano. I strained to hear the whisper, as Sister Agnes went on with her thought. “The audiences prefer children who are young, too young to be out working for themselves. It pleases them to feel as though they’re donating to the helpless. Keeping urchins off the streets, you know.”
“Certainly,” said Sister Mary Constantine. “It is a shame, though. Iola Anne has such a beautiful voice. . . .” Sister Mary Constantine is pleased that she chose me for the choral group, and I have done very well. Just yesterday, she promised a new hymn for me to sing, a difficult one.
I will not be learning the new hymn now, Father. I know it. I wonder, what will they do with me instead? Were I an orphan, they would be looking to place me in a cotton mill or tobacco house, but of course I am still here because Monsieur has paid my keep. I wonder, will I be here forever?
I pray that soon you will bring me home to Mama Tee and Maman and Isabelle, Father. I pray that you will ever remind me to answer only to the name you have given me, not to the words men may offer.
I am your child. My Father has named me. I am Beloved.
Your daughter,
Iola Anne
A sound broke the silence. Something ringing . . . an alarm clock, maybe. It faded, then came again.
A hot, sharp lightning of panic rushed through me. The doorbell. I scrambled off the bed, bouncing the mattress and causing the cat to jump to the ground and run for cover.
“Oh no! Oh, shoot-shoot-shoot.” I froze with my hands in the air over the quilt. If that was Brother Guilbeau or someone from the church, I was dead. I had stuff strung everywhere, and I wasn’t even supposed to be up here. Anyone seeing the kitchen would think I was either lazy or a complete liar. I’d said I could handle the job, no problem. Instead, I’d allowed myself to be sidetracked over and over.
Or what if it was the sheriff’s deputies, back to . . . investigate something? If I opened the door, they would bulldoze their way past me like they owned the place. They’d paw through everything and find the letters. . . .
Think, think, think. Think, Tandi. Think of something. The contents of three boxes lay scattered in unkempt piles on the bed. I hadn’t even been trying to fold the letters or prepare to fit them back in the boxes. I hadn’t put one box away before getting out another. I’d just grabbed one letter and then the next, one box after another, reading hurriedly, hungrily, anxious to discover Iola’s story, to learn how life had brought her from an orphanage in New Orleans to here.
“Okay, be calm. Be calm.” I could finesse my way out of this. Somehow.
Moving to the window, I took a peek at the driveway, but if a car was out there, it had been pulled through and parked near the old garage building. Between the thick growth of trees and the porch roof, I couldn’t see a thing. A passing glance in the dresser mirror confirmed that, on top of everything else, I was a wreck. My hair hung in a frizz-ball ponytail, my eyes were red and puffy, and my cheeks were streaked with dried tear trails. I’d been through a meat grinder of emotions this morning, and it showed. I’d promised myself I would only stay here with the boxes a few more minutes, but instead I’d been here for hours.
My heart pounded as I smoothed back my hair, slapped and pinched my cheeks, then hurried to the stairs. The old rotary bell clanged again, the visitor thumbing the trigger, then letting it free. Once, twice, a third time. Whoever it was had no intention of going away.
“Hang on,” I called from the midlanding, then winced as the treads popped and creaked underfoot, the noise ridiculously loud. What if the visitor heard it and knew I’d been upstairs?
A story began spinning, part fact, part invention.
The cat. I heard the cat up there and then the water running . . .
It’s all taken care of now, though. Nothing to worry about. No, no reason to go up there. The faucets are old and they must have slipped on a little. I tied the handles closed so it wouldn’t happen again.
The tapestry wove itself, threads intertwining with impressive speed.
Behind the veiled glass sidelights in the entryway, a human outline shifted back, then forward, disappearing as the visitor reached for the bell, then reappearing.
Someone tall . . . a man . . . dark clothes. Too thin to be Brother Guilbeau.
Wrong kind of hat for a sheriff’s deputy. This guy had on a ball cap.
I reached for the knob, flipped the ornate-looking brass slider that secured the lock from the inside, pulled the door open.
A UPS man. The man in brown. Middle-aged, friendly looking, clean-cut, with a gray-dusted mustache. He had a box under one arm and a plastic grocery bag dangling from the other. We stood staring at each other for a moment while I caught my breath, thinking, Seriously? All that panic for a UPS delivery? Whew, thank God . . .
He blinked. “Where’s Miss Iola Anne?” He lifted the grocery bag in an unconscious way that told me it was for her. The outline of a flour sack, two cans, and several bananas showed through the thin layer of plastic. “I brought her something.”
It dawned on me that I was about to be the bearer of bad news. “She passed away a little over a week ago. I’m sorry. I guess you didn’t know.” I stepped out and peeked around the corner of the house. He’d pulled his truck in by the old garage. He probably knew from experience just where to stop so that he could back up and turn around without hitting trees or the weathered concrete hitching posts with the iron mermaid finials.
“Old Mrs. Poole.” He let his head fall forward, looking crestfallen. The dry river of a sweat stain drew a faint, uneven line around the rim of his hat. I focused on it a moment, thinking that it probably wasn’t easy schlepping packages in the thick summer humidity here. “I’m gonna miss her. She was one of my favorite stops.”
I felt a surprising backwash of grief. It seemed strangely sad that I was trying to understand Iola now, after my chance to meet her was gone. “Did you know her well?”
I shouldn’t have asked, I guess. The question made it obvious that I was a stranger here.
“She was one of my Gutennannies.”
“Your what?”
Lifting the grocery sack again, he gave me a sheepish look. “Guten nannies. That’s German for ‘sweet little ladies who can really cook.’ I’d bring a few supplies by here if the grocery store was clearing out overripe fruit, and when I’d come back this way for a delivery in a day or two, she’d have beignets or cookies in the freezer waiting for me. Put Iola’s banana beignets on the dashboard, let ’em warm up in the sun a couple hours, and mmm-mmm-mmmh.” His eyes closed, and he shook his head back and forth, as if he could taste them now.
“That’s nice.” So Iola hadn’t been the hermit that everyone thought. She was friends with the UPS man. “I guess she got deliveries quite a bit, then?” What could she possibly have been receiving, and where did she put it? The downstairs was cluttered with boxes and belongings, but most of it seemed to be old stuff.
“Yeah, fairly often.” The wrinkles deepened around his eyes, and I had the sense that there was something he wasn’t telling me. “Especially since she quit driving a couple years ago. The first year I was on this route, she had a little red Dodge Dart she ran around town in. It was vintage, but slick as a whistle. She must’ve been in her late eighties by then. Then one week I came and the Dart was gone. She’d backed into a post by Burrus Market down in Hatteras Village, and she got rid of the car the next day. Said she was afraid she’d have an accident and hurt somebody.”
I nodded along, indicating neither that I knew the story nor that I didn’t, but it sounded like the Iola I’d begun to know from the letters upstairs.
“Felt sorry for her after that.” Setting the box down for a minute, he whisked the cap off his head and wiped his brow with a tan hankie, then stuffed it back into his pocket. I hadn’t seen a man carry a hankie in years. “She was lonely. Kept my number right there on her refrigerator. I’d pick things up in town for her if she needed them. I’ll miss that high, squeaky voice coming over my cell phone. ‘Mr. Mullins? I do so hate to trouble you at home, but if it isn’t too much bother, when you’re out in your truck . . .’ She never could quite grasp the fact that the phone was traveling with me in the truck. She always thought she was calling me at home. I guess when you’ve been around since the days of steam trains and milk wagons, some things just don’t seem possible.”
“Guess not.” I couldn’t help thinking about all the evolutions Iola had seen in her life —the changes in the world, the events, the cultural shifts. Dictators, wars, men on the moon. She’d been born in a different universe than this one. Her grandmother was a slave. My mind couldn’t quite grasp that. . . .
Were all those things recorded in the boxes upstairs, her thoughts about the world carefully chronicled in prayer?
I wanted to know her, to understand her. To solve the mystery of her.