The Painted Table(5)
She catches her breath. “Hazardous? Like what?”
He cautions her not to “go gettin’ upset.” He tells her, then wishes he hadn’t, that he might be assigned to a ship that carries ammunition. One, he supposes, “that’s a prime target fer Japs.”
“No!” The room swims. She feels faint.
“Ah, gee, Joann, now don’tcha go worryin’. Oh, an’ everythin’s secret, a course, so don’t go tellin’ nothin’ I said. It’s time to catch the train. I’ll write ya every day, Joann. Promise. I love you.”
Joann pleads with Nels’s mother. Will she keep Saffee at the farm? It won’t be for long, just until she finds a job in San Francisco. She can’t possibly care for a child and job hunt at the same time. Why is she going? She must be near the ocean so she can see Nels when he gets shore leave—he’s on an ammunition ship and she hasn’t seen him for months. She can hardly stand the worry. She’ll come back on the train for her, maybe by Christmas. Saffee’s well behaved for just turning three years old. She’ll love the country, the chickens, the kittens in the barn. There’s one thing, though—can she have her own cup to drink from instead of sharing the dipper on the water crock? Oh, and, of course, the outhouse, no place for a child—can she have a chamber pot inside? Good. It’s settled then.
Good-bye, little one, be a good girl, do what your grandmother tells you. I’m going to the edge of the war to see your daddy. I’ll be back for you.
CHAPTER THREE
SAN FRANCISCO
Joann had tried to make Saffee look acceptable, choosing her best dress, a blue-and-white stripe. But now it is travel-rumpled and barely reaches the top of the little girl’s stocky legs. She’s grown taller during their separation.
On the three-day train ride, Joann had coached her. “Now remember,” she said, “you can’t make any noise at Pearlmans’. They aren’t used to noise. And don’t make any mess—I have enough to do. I wonder if anyone’s cleaned while I’ve been gone. I can’t imagine anyone washed the floors.”
They step through the service entrance into the huge kitchen of the stately house. Saffee surveys the black-and-white tile floor and whispers loudly, “Yer right, Mommy. Dis floor’s dur-rty.”
Maude, Joann’s seventyish, aristocratic employer, is brewing tea. Hearing the comment, she looks up, startled, appraises the child, then chuckles. “Well! Joann! I daresay it’s good you’re back.”
For three months, Joann was Maude’s housekeeper and caregiver for her one-hundred-year-old mother, Grandma Pearlman, before she revealed she had a three-year-old back in Minnesota. Hoping to have proved herself an able employee, she finally dared ask to retrieve her daughter by train, promising that Sapphire would present no trouble in the home. She would be seen and not heard. Well, if they wish, her daughter would not be seen either.
Seen and not heard. Like the child Joann, under a table.
Maude and her husband, Henry, object to her leaving for even a few days. How could they get on without her? Grandma Pearlman needs constant care. And there’s the cleaning and the laundry—especially the laundry—Grandma’s bed needs constant attention. Well, perhaps Dora, the night aide, can stay around the clock a few days. Can Joann be back in a week?
True to the agreement, Saffee is usually hidden away in the Pearlman house. By day, she stays alone in the small bedroom where mother and daughter share a narrow bed. She gazes wistfully out the window, seeing little more than the side of the next house. She peeps out the door and listens to distant conversation and the clatter of household routine that echoes, retreats, then returns. She traces the knobby rows on the chenille bedspread with her finger, counting. But five is as far as her knowledge of numbers goes.
In other regions of the house, Joann attends to Grandma Pearlman’s every need and every whim. At night, she is too exhausted to play or even talk much with a lonesome daughter.
It isn’t long before Dora quits the night shift and Joann is on call around the clock. When the buzzer sounds, as it does numerous times in the night, she leaves the bedroom to attend to duty. Saffee also awakens, since she is often not tired enough to sleep deeply at the end of an inactive day.
Occasionally, as Grandma Pearlman sits staring out at the winter rain, she remembers that somewhere in the house is a child and asks Joann to bring her. When Saffee arrives, the old woman has usually nodded off, her head bent alarmingly to the side. If she is awake, she puts a dry, blue-veined hand on Saffee’s arm and speaks to her briefly in a querulous voice. The conversation is always the same. Grandma Pearlman admonishes Saffee to always “be good” and obey her mother. Saffee shyly dips her head and doesn’t speak.