I never knowed a woman like Miss Kate. She’s book smart but mountain dumb. If it won’t for me and Birdie and Jerome Biddle looking after her, she’d be in a pile of trouble, not knowing seasoned wood from green, a black snake from a copperhead, or buckeyes from chestnuts. She’s got her a puny tree she watches over that won’t worth the time, and a pile of books that’ll take a hundred years to cipher. Found her a wild dog she tamed with a look and a need. She liked me from the first. We gotta good start her teaching me to read.
I go to Miss Kate’s place last week when Roy beat me extra and I lose my baby. It was on Saturday, October 10, this happened. I put a little heart on the wall calendar so I never forget. After that day I lose my baby, I find strength enough to save Jerome Biddle from Roy’s meanness, then go to the trailer and grieve on my own.
Preacher Eli brung me a Hershey bar from the Rusty Nickel. Miss Kate comes and reads till she stops, then marks the page with a turkey feather. Aunt Marris and Birdie brung soup and tea. They don’t talk but brush my hair, wash my face, and change my dress. They wrap me in a blanket like I’m the baby that got lost. Words and doing don’t matter to me yet. I’m in a empty place, and bit by bit the days and nights spin, and I start to knit back together.
Roy stays away.
From the first, Miss Kate said, “I see potential when I look in your face, Sadie Blue.” I think my baby was my potential, but I don’t carry it no more. Now I try to wrap my thinking round something big with only me in it. Miss Kate can help cause she lived for a long spell in the valley, then come up here to live different. I need to know how to live different.
So Sunday morning, when Roy Tupkin is still off somewhere, I get up from my bed, throw on a thick shawl Birdie give me, and walk over to Miss Kate’s to talk. Some weeks back she ask a question that buffaloed me. She said, “What do you plan to do with your one special life, Sadie Blue?”
I think it’s a trick question. I might plan to go to church, or plan to go to Granny’s, or plan to put up jelly. I’m working on a plan so Roy don’t beat me, but that’s a lotta planning things that don’t make my life special.
When I get to her cabin, I see through the window Miss Kate sitting at the table, writing in that leather book of hers. She must hear the leaves crunch under my shoes cause she looks up, sees me, and runs to open the door to give me a hug, careful not to squeeze me tight.
I take off my shawl and say kinda quick, “If I got a special life to plan, then I’m in a pickle cause nobody told me and I don’t know the first thing bout how.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. She laughs and says, “Hello to you, too, Sadie Blue,” and goes to fixing tea.
“Hey,” I say back, remembering my manners.
She says, “You look stronger today, and that’s wonderful. You’ve even got a little color in your cheeks. Now take a deep breath and we’ll sort this out.” Miss Kate’s face is tender as she takes mugs off the shelf, sets them on the table, then slides her writing book and pen to the side before she sits down.
“So…you want to know how to plan your special life?”
I nod, kinda ashamed to blurt out like that.
“Okay.” She shifts her bottom in the chair and holds up a finger. “First truth. Everyone is born with talents, with gifts and the ability to dream.”
“Everybody?”
“Yes. Without exception. A person may choose not to use them, or may ignore them, or never even look for them, but they’re there. Some talents are obvious. People are born craftsmen and build wonderful furniture and homes. Some women make quilts with exceptional patterns and fine stitches. Someone else may have a beautiful singing voice—”
“Like Miss Loretta.”
“Yes, like your Miss Loretta. Or somebody can take squirrel or possum and turn it into a delicious stew. Birdie’s talents are unraveling the healing gift of plants. Preacher Eli guides and comforts weary souls. I teach.”
“And me?” I say what brings me to my real worry cause I fear I got left out.
“My friend, my friend,” Miss Kate says and shakes her head.
When she calls me friend, my heart flips.
“You have talents you haven’t begun to understand. Once you do, the rest will come easily.”
Miss Kate’s cowlick in front sticks straight up like she’s surprised. There’s a deep crease on her cheek. She musta slept on her face funny.
“Name some?” I ask, not to be pushy but cause I can’t think of nary a one.
The tea has steeped, and she fills two mugs, drops two sugar cubes in hers and two in mine, and takes a sip. Steam fogs her eyeglasses, then clears when she puts her mug down. She takes her time, puts an elbow on the table, chin on her knuckles, and looks me in the eye like I’m somebody. Nobody ever looks me in the eye this way cept Aunt Marris.
Miss Kate says, “That first day I went to the schoolhouse. You came to see me, an outsider, and you offered to help a stranger from the valley. You do realize no one else came to welcome me except you and Preacher Eli. That was my first hint about your gifts and strong character.”
I don’t say that I come to ask a favor. I won’t just being polite.
Miss Kate looks at her mug and turns it round and round on the table. I wait, and she goes on to say, “You are welcoming. Generous. Unafraid when faced with a goal. You want to learn to read, and the desire to better yourself is a marvelous gift. That talent alone will make you a good student of life. Sad is the person who stops being a student. She misses out on the best parts.”
She points to the windowsill. “And you knew how to sort out the mystery of the treasures Birdie left me. I saw things, and you saw the messages.”
She sits back in her chair, easy, and sips more tea, looking pleased with herself. “That’s a healthy start, don’t you think?”
She don’t talk bout my baby. I don’t neither. If we do someday, I’ll tell her these first days after don’t fit right, like skin too tight and colors gone gray. But nights are worse. Too much time in the dark. Nobody to hear me cry.
I picked names for my baby. Otis after Daddy if it was a boy cause I love Daddy and he loves me. Carly if it was a girl cause I don’t know my mama any other way. Nobody knew my baby names and nobody asked. Not Granny. Not Aunt Marris. Not Miss Kate. It don’t matter now cause my baby don’t need a name, and I’m getting used to not seeing my baby bump. It’s my hands though; they keep reaching to hold that precious bump, hoping to feel a kick that won’t never come again.