I nodded uncertainly. I looked at Jilly who was trying to tie a little bonnet over her doll’s molded blond hair.
“You can tell a lot about a person by the way a child takes to them,” Adora said. “You don’t hold yourself above nobody, not even a little bit of a thing like Jilly. Miss Violet, though—” She shook her head. “She hold herself above everybody. Above Jesus.” She chuckled. “I hated when it looked like Mr. Hank was gonna marry her. ’Course I had no say. Miss Ruth was thrilled. Two big families comin’ together. That kind of thing be important to Miss Ruth. Not so important to Hank though. He got a better head on his shoulders, thank the Lord.”
She wasn’t going to mention that I’d given Henry little choice but to marry me when I showed up carrying his child. I was sure she knew. Everyone else did.
“Henry told me you saved his life when he cut off his fingers,” I said.
She leaned back in the rocker and set it moving with her feet on the porch floor.
“Just lucky I was there or I don’t know what would of happened to that boy,” she said, looking past me into the distance. “I’ll never forget it, long as I live. Nineteen twenty-three, it was. I was coming from the cottage to the house when Hank come running out of the shed screamin’ his fool head off, blood flyin’ everywhere. So much blood it took me a minute to realize three of his fingers was gone.”
I bit my lip at the picture taking shape in my head.
“I quick tore the rag off my head—I was younger, skinnier, and faster movin’ in those days.” She winked at me from behind her glasses. “And I made one of them tourniquets and yelled for Miss Ruth to call for help. They was one of the only families with a phone back then and old Dr. Poole—the new Dr. Poole’s daddy?—had a phone too and he come right over. Meanstime, the blood done gone everywhere. All over Hank. All over me. All over the ground.”
I tried to imagine what Adora had looked like all those years ago when she came to work for Ruth and her husband. Behind her round face and thick glasses, I could see a pretty young girl. She’d probably been slender then too, like Honor.
“I don’t know if I could have done what you did,” I said, “and I’m a nurse.”
Her eyes lit up. “You a nurse, honey?”
“Yes, though obviously I’m not working as one. Henry doesn’t want me to work.”
“That’s a fine job for a girl, but you being a Kraft, you got no cause to work now, do you?”
I sighed. “I have no cause, but I’d still like to,” I said.
She didn’t seem to hear me. She was staring into the distance. “My children was Mr. Hank’s only playmates after he hurt his hand,” she said. “Other children called him a monster and such.”
“Really?” I supposed this was why Henry didn’t like talking about the loss of his fingers.
“Oh yes. Nobody would play with him after that. He would of died from bein’ lonely if Zeke and Honor didn’t play with him. They loved him like a brother till they was old enough to know better.”
Jilly had walked over to me and dumped her doll unceremoniously on my lap. “I can’t make this hat go on,” she said in frustration, handing me the bonnet.
“Would you like me to do it?” I asked.
Her head bobbed up and down and I began to tie the bonnet beneath the doll’s chin. “I’m glad he had Zeke and Honor,” I said to Adora.
“He needed them, for sure,” Adora said. “That little Violet was the worst about Hank’s hand. One of the ringleaders really. She didn’t care nothin’ for him until her mama and daddy put the idea of all Hank’s money in her head. Then suddenly, she mad in love with him.”
I thought of that picture in Lucy’s room, the one of her and Violet standing with Henry. He hadn’t looked all that miserable at finding himself with his arm around the pretty blond. I handed the doll back to Jilly.
“What you say?” Adora asked her.
“Thank you,” Jilly muttered. Then with her eyes on my face, she added, “You’re pretty.”
I laughed. “So are you, sweetheart.” I watched as she flopped down on the floor again with the nameless doll. I hoped Gina could find the colored doll for her. I wondered if she’d give that one a name.
“She’s a pip, ain’t she.” Adora nodded in her granddaughter’s direction.
“She’s darling,” I said.
“Hank give Zeke that job at the furniture company when he got sent home from the Marines,” Adora said, continuing our earlier conversation. “Nobody wanted to hire a colored man with a gimp leg, but Mr. Hank never forgot who his true and honest friends was.”
I thought of Zeke’s surprisingly lovely room at the factory. Lovely, but lonely, perhaps, living in that huge factory day and night. “Does Zeke have a family?” I asked.
“No, that boy ain’t never met a girl he liked well enough.” Adora sounded a bit annoyed by that fact. “He a good man, but tough to please.”
“How about you, Adora?” I asked. “You lived in that little cottage for twenty years, right? What about your husband?”
“When I started working for Mr. and Mrs. Kraft, I was twenty-four with two little ones and my husband worked for a farmer over to Newton,” she said. “We lived with his parents not far from here.” She pointed south of where we sat. “He got pneumonia one winter and…” She shook her head. “He went right quick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I did the math in my head and was shocked to realize Adora was not even fifty. Arthritis and hard work had really taken their toll.
“That’s when Hank’s daddy built that little house for me and the children. They was good to us, the Kraft family.”
“I think they were lucky to have you.” I motioned toward her current house. “This little house is darling,” I said. “Prettiest house on the street.”
She smiled. “Zeke and Hank keep it up for us,” she said. “They paint it. Fix the roof. Hank got us these rocking chairs.”
“I’m glad they look after you,” I said. For a moment, I loved my husband. “Well, I’d better get going.” With a sigh, I got slowly to my feet, smoothing my skirt.
Adora suddenly looked worried. “How you gonna get home?” she asked. “We ain’t got no phone to call the cab.”
“Oh, I’ll take the bus,” I said. “It’s not a problem.” I hoped she didn’t watch me as I left, since I’d be walking in the wrong direction for the bus as I headed toward Reverend Sam’s house. “Thank you for the shade and conversation,” I added. “I enjoyed it.”
She winced as she stood up, then shuffled with me across the porch.
“Everybody always ’spected Hank’d marry Violet and that would of been a terrible thing,” she said. “Maybe you saved him from something terrible, Miss Tess. You think of it that way, all right?”
55
I was clammy with perspiration by the time I climbed the steps to Reverend Sam’s big sky-blue house and knocked on his door. On my second knock, he pulled the door open and his face lit up in surprise.
“Tess!” he said, his smile warm. “I’ve missed seeing you. How have you been?”