Lady in the Lake(55)

“Are you saying—” Maddie stopped, stunned by the pain of a metal truck that had been hurled at her shins by the oldest boy, shredding her stockings and drawing blood.

“Don’t you make my granny cry! Don’t you talk about my mother! You get out. Get out get out get out get out get OUT.”

The other little boy didn’t even pick up his head, just kept pushing his red truck across the carpet as if nothing had happened.

“Little Man! You stop that right now, Little Man. What has gotten into you?” The grandmother was appalled, but Mr. Sherwood, while his expression was stern—his face seemed set that way, it was impossible to imagine him smiling—nodded, as if the boy had done his bidding.

Maddie limped out the front door and down the steps, not stopping until she was several blocks away. She caught her breath while sitting on a bus bench, examining the ruins of her stockings. And shins took forever to heal, she knew that. The wounds would keep opening, sticking to her hose, which would then stain as she peeled them off. Her legs were tanned from the sunbaths she took in city parks on these soft summer days, but she could never go bare legged into the office.

Still, the injury, the torn hose, were worth it, she decided. Her hunch was correct. Cleo had had a lover, someone who could afford such gifts—but couldn’t afford to be known in the world at large. If the man who picked her up for a date on New Year’s Eve was someone no one had ever seen before or again, then who had given Cleo these clothes?

If her date had given her the stole, wouldn’t she have worn it that night, warm as it was?





Little Man





Little Man



The woman made my mama cry. I mean, Granny. I call her by both names because she is both to me now. When we first came to live here, I had a mama and a grandmama. Then Mama moved out, but she came back all the time, almost every week. She told me she had a job where she had to sleep on the premises, she was working so that one day we would have a new house here in Baltimore, a house with a daddy—not my daddy, but a new daddy—and maybe enough room so that I wouldn’t have to share a bedroom with Theodore anymore. At Granny’s, we sleep in a room with Aunt Alice, Theodore and me in a single bed, and he moves a lot in his sleep and sometimes he falls out. Okay, maybe sometimes I push him out, but it’s only because he’s kicking and throwing his arms around in his sleep and I need some space. My mama used to say that when she lived here. I NEED SOME SPACE! Then she would grab a book and her coat and run out and I was scared that she would never come back.

Then, one day, that happened. At first, Granny said she was in another city. “Is it Detroit?” I asked. Because Detroit is where my father went to live. My father’s in Detroit and Theodore’s father was killed in a war, although I don’t know where the war is, I don’t think there are wars anymore. But my father is alive, he could send for me, although he doesn’t. It’s probably because of Theodore. “No man wants another man’s babies.” Granddaddy told Mama that before she went to wherever she went, I think it was Saint Louis, it could be Saint Louis, sometimes she talked about Saint Louis.

Before she went away, she was here in Baltimore and she came to see us every week. She brought us presents. Granny told her that the money she spent on presents could be saved up, put away so we could be together again sooner. Mama laughed and said, “It’s not your money, is it?” Her clothes got prettier and prettier. We had the prettiest mother of anyone, always, but after she moved out she began wearing fancy clothes with lots of fur. Fur on her sleeves, fur on her hat, and then, one day, an entire cape of fur. She said she worked for a clothing store and she was allowed to borrow the clothes if she didn’t spill anything. I don’t know why she had to sleep there, maybe she was the security guard. Anyway, that’s why she got upset when Theodore tried to touch the cape, which she called a stole and I asked: “Stole from who?” Granddaddy laughed at that, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “Watch out for Little Man,” he said. “Little Man’s the smart one.” “What am I?” Teddy asked. “The pretty one,” our mama said. Who wants to be pretty? Pretty is for girls.

Then a few days after Christmas, Mama came by, she brought us the best gifts ever, Tonka trucks—a yellow tow truck for me, a red pickup truck for Teddy—even though we had just had Christmas. She gave Granny an envelope and her jacket with the fur on the wrists. “Why are you giving me this?” Granny asked. “I saw how you looked at it,” she said. Granny said: “I got no place to wear it, you know that.” Mama said: “Well, there are always funerals,” and Granny told her not to talk like that, it was bad luck.

That was the last time we ever saw her. “When’s Mama coming back?” I asked. At first, Granny and Granddaddy said “soon” but I could tell they didn’t know. Granny began to cry a lot, when she thought we couldn’t hear her. Aunt Alice cried, too, late at night. Then a couple of weeks ago, a man came to the door and everyone in the family cried, but it was a kind of crying I had never seen, more like shouting. It was almost like watching a scary movie, the kind I sometimes sneak with Aunt Alice, there’s this one about a man who steals ladies and makes them into statues and when the bad thing happens, when you jump, it feels good in a strange way? It seemed to me that it was like that, that the bad thing had happened and now things might get better.