Child of a Rainless Year Read online

  I accepted the envelope and tucked it into my schoolbag. When I looked up, I saw my former tutor was biting her lower lip.

  “I hope I have done the right thing,” she said, the butterfly wings beating faster. “Forgive me, child, if I have not.”

  She left my room before I could subdue my astonishment enough to ask questions. Later, I saw that note, written in a hand as neat as my own, though the letters were thinner, and the ink so faint that it seemed like the silent woman’s own whispery voice.

  Dear Mrs. Little,

  Greetings. You have written to Mrs. Colette Bogatyr, requesting her reply regarding whether Mira is to remain enrolled at Our Lady’s Seminary for Young Ladies. I believe this is what her mother would wish; however, Mira’s mother left a month ago and has not returned. We do not know if or when she will return, and although I am empowered to draw money for Mira’s welfare, I thought you should know the truth.

  The signature was written in a scrawly sort of handwriting that I couldn’t read, but I didn’t even try—not then. The fact of my mother’s disappearance was too much for me to handle.

  I was told later that I fainted.

  What I remember best about the weeks that followed is the veneer of normalcy that overlaid the transformation of everything I had known.

  I continued going to school, and if the girls whispered a bit more when they thought I wouldn’t notice, they also made up for their curiosity by treating me with the peculiar delicacy with which they handled the fine china teacups we used at our twice weekly afternoon socials. Mrs. Little was particularly kind, and I don’t think it was my imagination that art periods went on just a bit longer than was usual or that they occurred more frequently.

  The authorities were now investigating my mother’s disappearance. Although they asked me many questions, they didn’t expect much in the way of answers from a girl of nine. The silent women did not have it nearly so easy. They were questioned, in groups and apart, and it seemed to me that they looked more fragile every time I encountered them. This fragility was probably their best defense, for no one could believe that these pathetic creatures could have had anything to do with the disappearance of someone as dynamic as my mother.

  Eventually, the frequency of the visits by the investigating officers dropped to nil. A short time thereafter the school year ended. That was when I learned that although the investigating officers had failed to find out very much at all regarding my mother’s disappearance, they had made some discoveries.

  The most important of these—both from my point of view and from the point of view of those who felt that if they couldn’t find my mother at least they must make sure I was not left at loose ends—was that Mother had taken action to assure my care if something were to happen to her. A guardian had been appointed—a group of guardians actually. These trustees had found me foster parents, a married couple with no children of their own.

  These foster parents were to have complete custody of me, and were to minister to my well-being throughout my minority. I was told a great deal having to do with what would happen to me after I was a legal adult. I understood nothing of it. All I understood was that after having lived my entire life in this one town, practically all of it within the walls of this one house, I was being taken away to a distant place called Idaho.

  I didn’t protest. One thing life with my mother had taught me was that protest was futile. Therefore, on a day in early June, my belongings and I were packed into a big taxi and driven to the train station. None of the silent women came to see me off, but Mrs. Little did, and Hannah and the Rakes family, and several other people from the school. In fact, there was a fair crowd. My mother’s disappearance had been the centerpiece of the town’s news for weeks by this point, and my leaving was the last chapter of a dramatic mystery.

  I have vague memories of flashbulbs going off, but what I remember most of all was Mrs. Little pressing the strap of a small canvas bag into my hand.

  “A going-away gift,” she said, and kissed me on the forehead. Then the train was making noises and a deep-voiced man was shouting “All aboard!” with theatrical self-importance, and I was being bundled along narrow corridors and into a window seat.

  Then the train shook like some gigantic animal waking out of a drowse, and began to move. I stared out the soot-smudged window and waved at the people waving at me. Sooner than I could have imagined, my birthplace and all I had ever known had vanished from sight.

  My foster parents could not come and collect me themselves, but the trustees had made certain I had first-class accommodations all the way to Idaho, and the conductors were friendly and kind.

  I still have the sketches I made that trip, clumsy drawings that yet manage to capture the personalities of this changing array of watchful adults. Mrs. Little’s gift, of course, had been a bag stuffed with art supplies. There were pencils—and a short knife for sharpening them. There were two pads of paper, fat erasers, and a new box of crayons. Other kind people had given me books and magazines. There was a new doll, a present from the girls in my class. I sat her beside me whenever there was a vacant seat.

  Having been solitary most of my life, I wasn’t in the least bit lonely, but even if I had been I think the wonder of that train trip would have chased the loneliness away. There, just on the other side of the window, was a world I had only dreamed existed. I couldn’t get enough of looking out, feeling confident and safe because everything was framed like in a picture book, interesting, but at arm’s length.

  Sometimes I tried to capture what I was seeing in my sketchbook, but mostly I stared and stared. The conductors learned I was happy this way, and so rarely bothered me, pleased, I think, to find their charge so easily contented.

  One jovial fellow, fat, with a wart on his nose, did ask me “Haven’t you ever seen a cow before?” and my quiet “Not this one” made him frown and back away. He recovered quickly enough and made a joke of it that lasted until I switched trains and left him behind. I didn’t mind his teasing because it was genuinely good-natured, but the exchange stayed with me for another reason. I think that was the first time I realized I saw things a little differently than did almost everyone else. Where most people saw things as versions of the similar, I saw each thing as unique—belonging to a class, certainly, but still its own thing.

  Little enough, you say, but capable of making worlds.

  My life with my new foster parents brought home to me, even more than my two years at Our Lady’s Seminary had done, how different from normal my life had been.

  Before I get into that, though, I should probably say a little about these two people who were effectively my parents from the day I was handed down from the train by the last in a string of pleasant, attentive conductors.

  For most of the time I knew them, they went by the names Stanley and Maybelle Fenn, and since that’s how I think of them those are the names I’m going to use here. They were in their early thirties when I met them. If I try, I can still see them as they were at the moment I first saw them, standing with their hands clasped, their gazes vague in the way of people who are looking for someone they’re not sure they’ll recognize.

  Stanley Fenn was of about average height and build, wore glasses, and had slightly prominent front teeth. These might have made him look like a rabbit or a beaver if it hadn’t been for an aura of steady strength that made the very idea of laughter at his expense impossible. His hair was brown, parted on the side, but slightly combed back. The calmly appraising eyes behind his glasses were dark grey. He wore a muted plaid jacket in earth tones, a white shirt, and dark trousers. His solid tie was a shade of brown that matched a thread in his jacket.

  Maybelle was almost as tall as her husband, but plumper. She was just pretty enough to escape being plain, but clearly she’d never been a beauty. Her dark brown eyes were warm, her bosom full and (as I was to learn when she sat me on her lap) very soft. Her medium-length brown hair had golden highlights, and its slight wave was, I would lea
rn later, natural, though she’d shape it on curlers for special occasions. She’d dressed for this trip to the station in a red outfit with navy blue trim, the top double-breasted, the skirt with wide pleats. Her shoes had low heels that my mother would have sniffed at and called “sensible.”

  I liked both the Fenns right away, so much so that I suddenly felt very, very shy, absolutely certain that they couldn’t possibly see me as anything but a burden. I dropped a curtsey as I’d been taught at the seminary, but Maybelle was too warm for that. With a spontaneity that I had never before seen in an adult, she bent and gave me a hug.

  “Welcome, Mira! Welcome to Idaho.”

  Stanley Fenn had gone off and collected my luggage. Now with a grin and a toss of his head he led the way to the family car. It was one of those big, cavernous cars that were so common then. Judging from the shine of its royal blue paint, it was its owner’s pride and joy. My bags were put in the trunk, but I was offered a seat up front between the Fenns.

  As soon as we were out of the station parking area, Stanley said, “We could take you back to the house right away, but we thought you might like a chance to visit first. Are you interested in having some ice cream?”

  The funny thing was, before this trip I probably would have said “No, thank you,” very quietly, but I’d learned a little about adults during that long train ride. I’d especially learned to hear when an adult very much needed to give a treat. So I said, “Yes, thank you,” and we went off, not just to a lunch counter that served ice cream, but to a full-fledged ice cream parlor, a place that looked like a sweet itself, with pink-and-white-striped wallpaper and Tiffany shades on all the hanging lamps.

  Once we were seated, and careful consideration had been addressed to the incredible assortment of flavors and combinations on the menu, Maybelle Fenn gave me a serious look.

  “Now, first things first, Mira. We need to settle what you are to call us. We’re not your parents, and we don’t expect you to call us Dad and Mom—or even Mother and Father. That just wouldn’t be right.”

  I felt immensely relieved to hear this. I had never before met two people who deserved more to be called “Mom and Dad” but with my mother only missing … I sat up straight as a thought hit me. I’d always assumed my father was either dead or had walked out on my mother of his own free will. Could it be that he was missing, too? Could Mother be out there somewhere, looking for him?

  That last idea seemed ridiculous. Mother had certainly never seemed to miss him, but for a moment my father seemed a little bit more real.

  “We were thinking,” Stanley said, taking over from Maybelle, “that maybe you could call us Aunt and Uncle.”

  “Uncle Stanley,” I said, testing the words, “and Aunt Maybelle?”

  “That would do it,” he replied, satisfied.

  And it did, but before the year was over he was Uncle Stan and she was Aunt May. The names fit better, and we were all quite pleased: them because it showed them I was getting comfortable with them, me because these new names made them a little more my own.

  In all the time I knew them, the Fenns only did one strange thing. Soon after I came to live with them, they sold their house, packed up everything, and moved us to Ohio. This is when they changed their name to “Fenn.” Before it had been Flinwick. At this time, my surname was also changed to “Fenn,” and whenever anyone asked about my origins, they were told that I was the child of cousins of Uncle Stan. He had a way of saying this that made further questions unlikely, and before long no one asked.

  Later, when I thought about it, I realized that the Fenns had been planning this change since before my arrival. They had introduced themselves to me as Maybelle and Stanley, but the few people we had contact with before the move called them “Martha” and “Steven.”

  Once we moved, however, the Fenns did nothing at all strange. Uncle Stan went to work for an architect for whom he drew blueprints. He also kept—or so I gathered from dinnertime conversations—the architect’s more fanciful designs from falling down or coming to pieces.

  Aunt May’s job was the house and taking care of me. Mine was going to school. I went to a perfectly ordinary school here, rather than the exclusive seminary. This wasn’t because the Fenns didn’t want to spend the tuition. The public schools in our middle-class neighborhood were where just about everyone went. They offered a good, solid grounding in the basic subjects, with extracurricular offerings in art or music or sports for those who showed the inclination or interest.

  Needless to say, I was interested in whatever art classes I could get, but I was getting another education, especially during the first few years following my move to Ohio, an education that almost drowned out my perennial fascination with color. I was learning how the society outside of my mother’s house lived, and I was completely fascinated.

  For one thing, there was the entire electronic media. When making one of my rare visits to friends’ houses, I had listened to radio and seen television, but this exposure had been in passing. Mostly my schoolmate’s mothers were eager to chase us outside to play.

  Now I lived in a house with several radios. The Fenns encouraged me to tune the one in the family room to programs I liked. There was also a television, but my interest in that was limited. I enjoyed the variety shows, and have many happy memories of evenings spent with the Fenns watching some singing or dancing troupe on the small screen. However, the dramas and adventure stories that fueled the imaginations of so many of my classmates didn’t grab my attention. I simply couldn’t believe that the black-and-white pictures, everything defined in shades of grey, were real.

  Movies were another matter. Those that were in color fascinated me to the point that Uncle Stan laughed and said that I acted like I was drunk after seeing one. Black-and-white films, even those my schoolmates assured me were wonderful, bored me, sometimes even put me to sleep.

  But there was so much more … Cheap toys from the drugstore. Comic books—I loved those! Ice cream sundaes. Coloring books. I was a kid growing up in a town where the post—World War II security of the fifties hadn’t yet been touched by the unrest of the later sixties. My new family was neither rich nor poor, but comfortably middle class. Even when I was denied something, even when I whined and fussed, I knew deep down inside that the Fenns were making the right decisions.

  Sometimes, though, especially in the matter of clothing, I longed for something other than the practical playsuits and jumpers Aunt May bought for me. I positively hated stretch pants, and actually preferred skirts to the trouser sets my playmates delighted in.

  Back at home in New Mexico, other than my school uniform, my clothing in my mother’s house had been styled after the fashions of another time. My skirts had been nearly floor-length, the cuts modified versions of what a grown woman would wear. Everything—even my underwear—had been handmade, tailored to every shift of my growing body by one of the silent women. The fabrics had been expensive and soft. In comparison, the clothing Aunt May and I selected from the Sears catalog or bought at one of the local shops seemed stiff and unforgiving.

  I longed for a bit of lace at my collars or for frocks made of velvet, and Aunt May gave in—for special occasions.

  “You can’t wear party dresses everyday,” she said, “especially not the way you’re always messing about with paints and crayons—not to mention pastels!”

  I didn’t push, especially since I knew Aunt May was right. When I got absorbed in whatever I was drawing or painting, I did make a mess. Even so, a little rebellious voice inside of me would think, “Mother wore dresses like that everyday—and nicer, too. Her lace never itched. Her velvet didn’t go all flat and squashy where she sat. I bet her shoes didn’t pinch either.”

  When things like this made me think about it, I knew my earlier life—so increasingly dreamlike now—had not been at all usual. Life within the walls of my mother’s house had been more like growing up in a foreign land—even more than growing up in a small New Mexico town would have been
for a girl now solidly ensconced in a small town in Ohio.

  As I grew older and learned more, I began to think my mother’s clothing had possessed an early Victorian feel: full skirts, scooped necklines, capes and cloaks rather than coats, elaborate hats or even more elaborate hairdressing. Yet, Mother hadn’t been wearing old gowns dug out from some musty trunk. Her clothing had been new, the seamstress dummies in the sewing rooms always occupied with some new creation or some older one being refreshed.

  It was a puzzle, but as time passed and I became more and more comfortable with my life with the Fenns, my inadvertent comparisons of my life now to what had been and what was faded away until my life before was nothing but a colorful dream. Moreover, I was growing up. Like most girls of that date and time, I had no desire to be thought different by my peers. The strangeness of my early life was something to be put aside in favor of finding my way in the present.

  The Fenns were good to me, but they were hardly the unreal, perfect parents presented by television. Uncle Stan could have one too many drinks of an evening, especially when his architect boss had been particularly trying. Then he would become sullen, like a brooding thunderstorm. I learned to go off to my room when he was in one of those moods—not because I was afraid of him, but because I could tell the last thing he needed then was a noisy girl.