Shadows Gray

Chapter Six



I leave Dad where he sits, perched uncomfortably on the tree root. I leave quietly, but I feel like stomping off like a small child. I feel like screaming, running, beating my fists against a wall. Why is it so hard to get through to him? He must care. I know he does. Then the realization dawns on me, like sunlight breaking through thunder clouds; he cares more than I know. And that is precisely why it frustrates me.

What exactly don’t I know?

Prue is packing up her cart when I return, hot and sweaty from my little river walk. It’s a humid day and my feet are hot and sticky in my shoes. I plop down dramatically on the stone wall behind the food cart and sigh loudly. It gets no response. This childishness of mine needs to stop; I am eighteen years old. I think.

Prue gives me no reaction other than to demand I move and count her tips - a large mason jar with a few meager handfuls of change. As cranky and ornery as I am feeling, I am certainly not in the mood to take my life in my hands, so I obey.

“Nearly eight dollars,” I tell her, handing her the money. “Not bad for a couple hours work.” It isn’t good either – I make more than that in a busy morning shift at the coffee shop in less than half an hour - but I certainly won’t tell Prue that.

Prue shoves it in her apron pocket and scowls. “Lazy rich people,” she snorts. “Can’t leave more than a measly quarter each. Ought a smack some sense into ‘em, since the good Lord knows their mamas never did. Where you been, girly? Where’s Noah?”

Noah Gray. My father. My dear, sweet, unbearable father who I was cruel enough to leave sitting beneath a tree, half inebriated and full of sorrow. I feel like such a heel. It’s as though I have two emotions when it comes to him: impatience or guilt. Neither is something to be proud of.

“He’s back on the river path. I’ll see he gets home. Prue, can I ask you something?” I begin to pick at my nails in my effort to look casual and to give my hands something to do besides shake. Prying into Prunella o Broin Boulander’s business is like feeding sharks: best left to professionals and those with excellent life insurance policies.

“If you ask it while you’re pushing my cart, go ahead,” she agrees.

Obediently I begin to push, my hands clenched tight on the handle of the worn food cart while I form the words that will leave my dysfunctional brain and travel out of my mouth where I will, most likely, instantly regret them. I can still see the original owner’s slogan ‘Vic’s Organic Hotdogs!’ printed but faded on the cart’s handle.

“I was wondering how many times exactly you’ve traveled? And have you ever heard of a Lost who traveled only occasionally? Like, say a couple times their whole life? And what do you remember of when we left behind Rose? Do you think my mother could have had an affair? And if we meet up with other Lost at least once in a while, do you think there is a reason for it? I mean, what if we are all thrown together for some purpose and we’re missing it? We’re missing the whole point, Prue! Because there has just got to be some reason for why we exist! Some reason why we are chosen. Special. Some reason for the places we go, the times we visit-,” I stop, realize I am babbling, and simultaneously realize I have left Prue behind as I have kept walking and she is several paces behind me, frowning mightily. Hastily I retreat, with the cart.

She stares at me as though I have three heads. Her arms are crossed against her substantial chest and her feet are planted firmly and widely in the pavement of the sidewalk. Her dark brown eyes are narrowed, almost in suspicion.

“What you about, girly? Where’s all these fool questions comin’ from? Your daddy been putting ideas in your purty head?”

Since I’ve never heard Prue call me pretty – or purty – I almost get distracted in a petty way from my diatribe. “No, Dad’s been doing the opposite of talking to me. I just… I don’t know. I want to know why we are the way we are. Don’t you ever wonder?”

“No, not particularly,” Prue snorts again, but the way she says it, it sounds like ‘purticoolerly.’ Her accent is completely untraceable: unique, bizarre and a melting pot of languages and dialects. All of the Lost speak like that to a certain extent, but the difference is that Prue doesn’t mask hers. “What’s the point of wonderin’, child? We ain’t ever gonna know why we are the way we are. Just accept it. Our kind’s been travelin’ ‘cross time for centuries, we always will. Might as well enjoy the ride, my da’ said. Enjoy it or let it kill you.”

“How do we even know it’s centuries?” I argue. “No one bothers to keep records, no one passes down their stories to the next generation beyond the good old ‘when I was a boy…blah blah blah,’ no one finds out anything, no one questions anything, Prue! Doesn’t that make you crazy?”

“Honey child, you have done lost your mind. What do you want us to do, keep diaries? Save the world? Learn how to navigate or somethin’?” She chortles and begins walking again, her short legs making short work of the sidewalk as only Prue can, leaving me behind now. “Hey! Maybe we could go back and invent microwaves the next time we move! Or plastic wrap! That’s stuff’d make us a fortune!” She slaps her knee in mirth in mid-stride.

“Well, why not?” I ask reasonably. “Why haven’t we done that? Why haven’t we bet on the World Series or killed Hitler as a kid or warned everyone on the Titanic?”

“Don’t be a fool, Sonnet Gray,” she is stern now, the laughing is over and she is irritated with me. Irritated and hot by the looks of it; she uses her apron to mop her forehead. “No one can change their fate. If those people were meant to drown on the Titanic I guess they went to their holy reward, sure ‘nough. And I don’t reckon I ever heard of a Lost meetin’ Hitler, otherwise I ‘spect they woulda stabbed him through his dark heart. You can be sure I will if we meet sometime. Right through the heart with my best bread knife. That’ll teach the little bugger. Or maybe the apple corin’ one…it’s duller.” She sniffs and picking up stride, fairly sails by me, her head held high and visions of murder on her mind. Once again, I hurry to catch up.

“Okay then. We can’t change history; you’ve been through a lot more of it than me so I’ll let you be the judge of that one. Fine. But tell me what you remember from all the places you’ve been? Is there a pattern?”

“What you mean, like knowing where we’re endin’ up next? Don’t you think if I’da figured that out by now I’da warned ya?” She has gone from irritated to incredulous.

“But what do you remember from all the places, Prue?” I press.

Sighing, she stops walking once again and looks me right in the eye. “If you’re gonna do this to an old lady, Sonnet, at least buy her a Coca Cola and get her outta the sun.” She nods her head towards a diner on our right. It’s the “Up All Night Diner” and the only place that stays open the same hours – and longer – than the coffee shop. They are in direct competition with us; they even have a sign advertising the City’s Best Coffee – the cheekiness! But I will buy Prue ten Coca Colas if she will only sit down and talk to me.

Prue insists on parking the food cart right in front of the picture window so we can keep an eye on it in case a mad, serial cart thief is on the loose and in the neighborhood, and then of course, we have to make sure we bully the waitress to get the table that is directly in front of the same window. I order her the largest Coca Cola with a slice of lemon, just the way Prue likes it, and we settle into the red, vinyl booth.

“Now why you wantin’ to know all this history that don’t concern you?” Prue begins the conversation, once she drunk half her soda through the straw and burped. “You got sumpin’ you need to be telling me?”

My mind races frantically. I don’t know whether to tell her of Rose and I don’t know if I’m hesitating because I don’t want her to know or I just don’t want one more person disbelieving me. Finally, after I have torn a napkin to shreds with my fingers, I take the plunge. “I think Rose is here. I saw her. And I don’t know whether it’s by accident or design. I’m afraid this is our only chance to meet up with her if she’s really Lost, and if it is, I’m afraid to travel on until we find her.” There. I’ve said it.

Prue looks as though she has swallowed her lemon slice whole. Her eyes are narrowed and her forehead has more creases than a pleated skirt. I am even more surprised to see her large, brown hands trembling.

“You saw Rose? She’s here?” I have never heard Prue whisper in my whole life, yet she is whispering now.

I nod. “I’m positive it was her, Prue. Do you believe me?”

Prue doesn’t speak for a minute. She twirls the straw around in her glass absentmindedly. When she speaks again, it is no longer in a hushed whisper, but in the regular voice I know: firm and not to be trifled with.

“I don’t see how it could be, Sonnet. That doesn’t make a lick of sense. If she had the same powers we do, she woulda never been left behind in the first place. Lots of girls have blonde hair and blue eyes. It’s just wishful thinkin.’ That’s all.” She stands and motions for me to do the same. “Come along home, girly. I gotta go shopping today and I gotta get my cart home first.”

Not as vague as my father’s, but a dismissal just the same. I pay for her drink, since she marches right past the waitress with the cash register without even pausing, and goes back outside.

“Do you want me to go back and get Dad?” I ask.

“Nah. He’ll make his way eventually. Now if you do the pushin’, I’ll tell you ‘bout some of those other things you was asking about, alright?”

Obviously throwing me a bone, I think. It’s not what I want to find out most, but it’s better than nothing. “Alright. Tell me about your first travel, and when you get to here and now, stop.”

She chortles. “Land sakes, Sonnet, I can’t remember my first travel! My da’ said I was just a babe. I was born in Quebec in 1920, but I don’t remember nothin’ about that. I was only a year old when we traveled from there, I think it was to some God forsakin’ part of Russia. We were there for ‘bout three years. I don’t think the time frame was too much different from 1920 though…my da used to say something ‘bout being stuck at the turn of the century. Next we went to Ireland, 1845. I remember that all right; I was about five or so and we stayed for four years. Never did get outta that dang potato famine.” She scowls. “Wonder I cook Irish food a’tall nowadays. Anyway, where was I?”

“After Ireland, 1849. You would have been nine years old your next travel.”

“Right. Yup, I remember being nine and bein’ right here. First time in America, it was, least for me. Da said he’d been before. Anyways, we came here in 1755, over in New York. Couldn’t make up our minds which was worse, the Indians or the colonials or the British. They was all bossy if you ask me. But I came back later when I was twenty and that’s where I met my first husband, he was a Heron. His mama was the one who taught me to cook that puddin’ you like.”

I nod. “But what happened between your first two visits to America? Where were you?”

“Oh criminy, child, I can’t remember everything! We was in London for a while, that was in that Victorian time frame. Whole time and place was annoying. I hated it there!”

I can’t picture Prue, her ample waist and bosom tucked into a corset. And a bustle! The thought almost makes me laugh out loud. I’m surprised she lasted in that era for any length of time at all.

“Had to work as a maid for this uppity, whiney British gal who claimed to be a lady. It was enough to make me want to sleep all day, tryin’ to travel on again. Hmm, from there, thank God, we ended up in Chile, I think. I don’t know.”

“Well, after your husband here in America, where did you go? Were you sad to leave him?”

“Well, honey, bein’ married ain’t never sat too right with me. ‘Course that didn’t stop me from trying again three more times!” she guffawed. “But by the time I’d been with him a couple years, I wasn’t too sad to move on. Bet he was as mad as a hornet when he woke up and I was gone though! I was always tellin’ him I was gonna run off with a proper English gentleman so I imagine he was runnin’ through the countryside looking for some dandy with his wife! Ha!” she slaps her knee in mirth.

“Then what?” I press. Is anything going to give me a clue to our crazy mixed-up existence?

“Well, where was I?” We have reached our little brown house now and Prue sits down heavily on the front stoop. She motions for me to sit as well. “If you want to hear all this we’ll sit here. If I go in, I’ll just start get myself pulled into one of them game shows that the boys will have on.” The boys, of course, are Matthias and Harry, who are in their seventies if they’re a day, but to someone nearly twenty years their senior, they’ll always just be boys. “So’s anyway, after that I spent some time in Central America. Stayed there a right long time, too. My longest stop. Probably the closest to feeling like home now I think about it. Stayed so long and got so comfortable, I got fat!” She chuckles, slapping her thighs.

“Was it hard to leave if it felt like home?” I’ve never had that feeling before, no place has felt like home yet. I hope no place ever does. Leaving is hard enough when you don’t particularly like where you are anyway.

“Oh shore, I guess so,” Prue shrugs. “The next stop was Belgium and that’s where I met up with your daddy’s parents. Been with Noah ever since. Closest thing to family I ever had, and that’s probably counting my Da. Never saw him again after I married my Heron boy. Didn’t approve.”

I have trouble imagining Prue as a beautiful rebellious daughter who chose love with a Native American warrior over her stern father, but I like the imagery. Separating yourself from family though when you’re Lost is for forever; they’ll be no reaching out after a few years to your estranged parent, asking forgiveness or showing up on their doorstep with a suitcase, ready to apologize. She must have been very angry, or very in love. Knowing Prue, I’d put money on angry with a side of vindictive.

“Well,” I say, in what I hope is a reasonable tone of voice; steady and casual, “If Rose was Lost, and I’m only saying if, what would pull her towards this same century, this same town? Would a bond do that? Have you ever heard of that, the Lost following each other? Remember when Uncle Zed met up with us that time? Kind of like that?”

“Well, I ain’t never met up with anyone from my past. I reckon I’d remember that, even if my memory is a little foggy sometimes. I never did meet my Da again, and we had a bond.”

“A strong one?”

Prue wrinkles her nose. “Well, not that strong…he always drove me a little batty. And I think he was secretly happy to marry me off even if he put up a fight. I ‘spect we was ready to say goodbye,” she sighed. “It was just me and him, you know, but we’d had enough time together for one lifetime. Then I ended up in Belgium. After that I ‘spect you know the rest, girly.”

This whole conversation was interesting, but hardly enlightening. I don’t know what I expected, a pattern, I suppose. Something to go on, some way of reaching out to Rose or to know it’s possible for her to be reaching out to me. Something. Resigned, I reach out and help Prue to her feet.

“Tell me about your marriages, then?” I ask, not letting go of her hand.

Her eyes light up at the thought. “Ahhh, marriage! That was sumpin’ I never could get right, although they were entertaining enough. Well, there was Roger – I met him while I was a maid for that hateful woman. I cain’t recall her name now. Anyhow, he was a real nice bloke. Those were his words: ‘Prue, I’m a real nice bloke, you oughtta marry me!’ And it wasn’t a half bad marriage either. He was my one of my husbands who was Lost, so we got a few years together in Chile before he died of the cholera. Bad luck to travel anywhere that bloody disease was,” (Was it my imagination, or did Prue actually look a little teary?) “But no matter; that was a long time ago. Also married your grandpa’s brother, Jonah, in Belgium. ‘Course he turned out to be shiftless and we parted ways purty early on. He was Lost too, but no matter, cuz we’d said all we needed to say to each other, including goodbye. So when I traveled on with your daddy and Zed and some others in their family, I didn’t mind too much he didn’t tag along. And after that, well, it was just Abe. You remember Abe?”

I do remember Abe because he’s the closest thing to a grandfather I ever had. He had a handlebar mustache and always had candy in his pockets. I was between ten and twelve when he was around. He knew we were Lost and he even believed us but he said he married Prue for whatever he could get out of her, and if what he could get was a couple years of good cooking, he’d take it.

“Abe was a rock star,” I say.

“If that means he could eat like a horse and never pick up after himself, than I reckon he was. Come on, girl, I’m tuckered and I’m missing Jeopardy!”

That may be the longest conversation I’ve ever had with Prue, and I enter our home feeling a little better about the whole world in general.

********************

I am staring at her bony white knuckles, mesmerized. Her fingers are so long and pale and knobby, I can’t look away. I must know I am being rude because I will myself to stop staring, but I cannot. My mother raps my knees under the table as a warning and when I pry my eyes off the knuckles to obediently look at her, she glares at me.

“Sonnet, eat your stew and stop that daydreaming,” she says, firmly. She sets down another plate of stew in front of Old Babba and her white, white knuckles. Old Babba will suck it down like she did the first plate: noisily, lips smacking, making more noise than Dolly, her pet goat, when she eats. Old Babba is skinny, rail thin, with milky white skin, and sunken black eyes. She doesn’t have much hair and what she does have is baby fine, thin, thinner than my little sister Rose, whose own hair is very fine and so light in color it is practically clear. Old Babba finishes her stew and the moment she swallows the last bite, she turns her small black eyes on me with such ferocity and with such speed, that I yelp and fall out of my chair.

“For goodness sake, Sonnet,” my exasperated mother says, righting my chair. “Go lie down and rest your eyes. This fidgety nature of yours is impossible to enjoy a meal with. Go on!” She shoos me towards the big fireplace and clears away my plate. I am sorry to see my half eaten stew being carted away when I am still hungry, but I am not sorry to leave Old Babba and her scary eyes and bony knuckles that grasp her spoon so greedily.

“She’s not the one to watch, Carolina,” Old Babba says to my mother. “She’s nothing. But the little one…the little one is different.”

“Rose is no different than the rest of us,” snaps my mother, and I am surprised to see her treat the old woman so. She is always reprimanding me on my lack of respect and manners with our elderly neighbor and yet she is barking at her now. “I don’t want to talk about this. You’ve said your peace and I’ll thank you to say no more.”

Old Babba cackles. She is just like the witch in my Hansel and Gretel story, I think. She will cage me in a giant bird cage and feed me chickens and plump me up and then eat me and then her knuckles and fingers won’t be so bony anymore. She will fatten up and smooth out, her back will straighten and become strong, all her wrinkles will turn to smoothness, her hair will fill in and turn glossy and spill over her shoulders like a younger lady’s, and all because she will make me into stew. A stew that she will smack her lips over and ask for seconds with.

I awake in a panic in my own bed, eighteen years old, and terrified of a witch in a gingerbread cottage. I am afraid it is more memory than dream.