The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“Not until you add it up again,” Maxine retorted, but she began counting her pieces of colored cardboard.

Mrs. Sedalius got up. “You girls can sit here and argue all you want. I am going to make my nightcap and go to my room, where I don’t have to worry about that ghost.” She went off to the kitchen to heat up a pan of milk on the gas range and make herself a cup of Ovaltine. It helped her sleep, she claimed, although everybody knew it was really the bootleg rum that she kept under her bed that put her to sleep.

The business about the ghost was nonsense of course, although Bessie didn’t contradict her. Roseanne, however, was deathly afraid of ghosts, so she went quickly to her room and shut the door and put a chair against it—a practice Bessie discouraged (in case of fire) but could not stop.

By the time Mrs. Sedalius carried her nightly cup of Ovaltine out of the kitchen, Leticia and Maxine were headed in that direction to make the toasted cheese sandwiches and cocoa that they enjoyed before bedtime. Bessie and Roseanne were partial to popcorn, and they always made sure that there were enough of these little treats on hand so that everyone could have what she wanted. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, as Bessie’s father liked to put it—in fact, judging from the stories she read in the Dispatch about people losing their jobs and their houses, that was exactly what was happening. But if they could afford just a few little treats, Bessie told herself, maybe they could fool themselves into feeling that they were rich. Or at least, not poor. You couldn’t be poor if you had a toasted cheese sandwich and cocoa every night.

Bessie herself always put up her gray hair in spit curls before she went to sleep, sitting at her dressing table and twisting the hair neatly around her finger and pinning the curls to her scalp with bobby pins. She used a setting lotion made of boiled flaxseed and always set two rows in the front, three over each ear, two in the back. Then she covered the curls carefully with a ruffled pink net cap, put on a pair of pink cotton summer pajamas, cold-creamed her face with Pond’s in a ritual battle against wrinkles, and opened the window, enjoying the wafting fragrance of the moonflowers and nicotiana blooming in the garden. The window open, she crawled into bed and went to sleep.

But not for long.

It was not quite midnight, according to the clock on her bedside table, when she heard it. The clank-clank-clank of a spade against stone—muffled, as if whoever was digging was trying to be quiet. She lay there for a moment, pretending that she wasn’t hearing it. But then there was a hesitant rap on her door.

“Bessie?” asked a voice. “Are you awake? It’s Leticia.”

“And Maxine,” said another voice.

Bessie got out of bed and opened the door. Leticia was wearing a red plaid flannel dressing gown, belted around her thick middle. Maxine’s dressing gown was the same style, but flowered blue and purple. Maxine’s hair was twisted up in rags. Leticia’s long gray hair was braided into a single braid, over her shoulder.

“Somebody’s digging,” Leticia said in a low voice. “In our garden.”

“We heard him from our window,” Maxine added. The two of them shared the largest room at the far end of the hall.

“Not in our garden,” amended Miss Rogers, coming out of her room. “In the Dahlias’ garden, next door.” She was wearing a silky gray gown and her hair was down around her shoulders. Bessie thought she looked ten years younger.

Another door opened and Mrs. Sedalius joined them, her roly-poly self engulfed in a voluminous gold wrapper. “It’s not a him; it’s a her!” Mrs. Sedalius squeaked excitedly. “It’s the ghost! I saw her. Just now! Out my window!”

“We thought you went to bed and covered up your head,” Maxine said. She flicked on the hallway ceiling light, and Bessie reached over quickly and flicked it off.

“No lights,” she warned. “Whoever that is out there, we don’t want him to know we’re awake. Or her,” she added.

“What ghost?” Leticia asked with interest. “The Cartwright ghost again?”

“The one looking for her buried baby,” Mrs. Sedalius said mournfully. “Buried in a little wood box.”

“Or the Cartwright family treasure,” Bessie replied, remembering the story Dahlia had told her once. “It was buried.”

“Or her shoes,” Maxine said. “I heard that the ghost lost her shoes. That’s what she’s looking for.”

“With a shovel?” Leticia asked. “Why does she need a shovel to look for her shoes?”

There was the sound of a chair scraping, and Roseanne, her brown face almost gray with fright, came into the hall, clutching her flannel nightgown to her. “I heard y‘all talkin’ ‘bout that ghost,” she said tearfully. “Is that po’ Miz Cornelia out there agin, diggin’ for that sweet lit’le chile?” She shivered.

“It’s all right, Roseanne,” Maxine said in a comforting tone, and put an arm around her. “Whatever it is, it’s out there, not in here. You’re safe.”