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“What’s that? What’s that?” Mr. Randolph squeaked.
“It’s poor little Gilly.” Trotter grunted and with a supreme ahhhhhhh rolled off onto the floor.
“Miss Gilly?” he was asking anxiously.
“I’m OK, Mr. Randolph.” Gilly got up, dusted herself off, then took him by the hand. “Let’s get you back into bed.”
By the time she returned from the dining room, Trotter had somehow hoisted herself into a sitting position on the couch, and dizzily clutching the cushions with both hands, had found herself face to face with a white-faced stranger.
“You said wasn’t no one here,” she accused Gilly.
The visitor, for her part, was teetering on the absolute brink of the brown chair in what Gilly took to be a state of total shock. But the small lady proved capable of speech. “I think I’d better go,” she said, standing up. “I don’t seem to have come at a very good time.”
Gilly followed her to the door, eager to get her out of the looney bin the house had suddenly become.
“I’m glad to have met you,” she said as politely as she could. She had no wish for the woman to think poorly of her. After all, she was—or, at least, she claimed to be—Courtney’s mother.
The woman paused, resisting Gilly’s efforts to hurry her out the door. She reached over abruptly and pecked Gilly on the cheek. “I’ll get you out of here soon,” she whispered fiercely. “I promise you, I will.”
Fatigue had made Gilly stupid. She simply nodded and closed the door quickly behind the little form. It wasn’t until she’d gotten Trotter back in bed and was putting the turkey in the oven that the woman’s meaning came clear.
Oh, my god.
Well, it didn’t matter what the woman thought. Miss Ellis could explain about today. No one could make her leave here, not when everyone needed her so. Besides—Trotter wouldn’t let them take her. “Never,” she had said. “Never, never, never.”
NEVER AND OTHER CANCELED PROMISES
Dread lay on Gilly’s stomach like a dead fish on the beach. Even when you don’t look at it, the stink pervades everything. She finally made herself admit the fact that it was her own letter that had driven Courtney to get in touch with her mother after a silence of thirteen years. What had it said? She couldn’t even remember what the letter had said. And Courtney’s letter had, in turn, brought the little lady up from Virginia to spy her out.
And now what? It was not at all the way she’d imagined the ending. In Gilly’s story Courtney herself came sweeping in like a goddess queen, reclaiming the long-lost princess. There was no place in this dream for dumpy old-fashioned ladies with Southern speech, or barefoot fat women in striped pajamas, or blind old black men who recited poetry by heart and snored with their mouths open—or crazy, heart-ripping little guys who went “pow” and still wet their stupid beds.
But she had done it. Like Bluebeard’s wife, she’d opened the forbidden door and someday she would have to look inside.
By Saturday night, when the turkey was finally upon the kitchen table with the four of them gathered gratefully around it, there was still no word from either Miss Ellis or the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Trotter and W.E. looked deathly white, and Mr. Randolph was the shade of ashes, but they had thrown off the crankiness of their illness and were eating the cold dry meat with chirpy expressions of delight.
“I declare, Miss Gilly, you are the only person I know who can rival Mrs. Trotter’s culinary skill.” A statement Gilly knew for a bald-faced if kindly intended lie.
“The potatoes are lumpy,” she responded, doing some tardy mashing with the tines of her fork.
“Mine ain’t lumpy,” W.E. whispered loyally.
“They’re just fine, Gilly, honey. I think you gave yourself the only lump in the pot. Mine’s smooth as ice cream. I don’t know how long it’s been”—Trotter paused, head tilted as though reaching far back into her memory—“I don’t think food’s tasted this good to me since…since before Melvin took sick the last time.” She beamed, having delivered the ultimate compliment.
Gilly blushed despite herself. They were all liars, but how could you mind?
“Gilly, honey”—Trotter stopped a forkful in midair—“who was that woman come here the other day? What she want?”
Now it was Gilly’s turn to lie. “Well, I think she was about to ask us to join her church, but before I could tell her about being faithful Baptists, all of you came roaring in looking like three-day-old death. Scared her straight out the door.”
“Me, too?” asked W.E.
“You were the worst one, William Ernest. She saw you standing there, all tall and white and skinny, calling my name, ‘Gi—lyeeeeeee. Gi—lyeeeeeee.’ She nearly swallowed her dentures.”
“Really?”
“Would I lie?”
