The Porch
While Mrs. Grome washes dishes, Florence, Chance, and Mr. Redmond go to the porch. I hear Florence settle her weight in a rocking chair. The sulfur smell of a struck match drifts through the screen door, followed by the scent of Mr. Redmond’s pipe tobacco. I give thought to joining them, but I’m not kin, so I reckon I ought to mind my manners.
I grope my way up the dark stairs. Dusk closes in around the house, and dim remainders of sunlight don’t find my little alcove. I smell coal oil in the lamp, but can’t find a match.
I paw through my suitcase and grasp my letter book, but it’s too dark to write. I find the flute Daddy made. What would Daddy say if he saw me now?
“Virginia,” Florence says from the doorway. I don’t know how a woman her size sneaks up so quietly. “You should join us on the porch. You can’t sit here in this oven. Wait until the room cools down.” She refuses to leave until I agree to go with her.
On the porch, the others include me when they talk, but mostly I listen. Mr. Redmond puffs on his pipe, punctuates his sentences with coughs, and talks about his commanding officer from the war. “General Chamberlain will be at the Reunion.”
Chance tells about starting college in the fall, and Florence talks about their home in Marietta, Ohio. She begins one story and lapses into another without taking a breath.
At bedtime, Florence hands me a small brass candlestick. “You can take first turn in the bathroom.”
Just off the kitchen, the tiny bathroom looks to have been a pantry once. Candlelight flickers on a tub under the stairs, a place I’ll have to be mindful not to bump my head. How does Florence manage? Tonight I settle for a quick wash.
Talking on the porch made me a mite homesick. Not that Florence is like Mama. Or Mr. Redmond like Grandpa. But they talk the way a family does, the way Grandpa used to talk to me.
Why didn’t he show up for supper? Or just to tell me Goodnight? Or make sure I’m minding my manners? Did he fall asleep in the Veterans’ Camp with no thought of me at all? Have his haints truly come between us?
Virginia Lee Kent
Sleeping isn’t easy. Any air that steals through the high window doesn’t find me. Unlike my featherbed at home, the mattress has springs inside, and one has worked its way through the ticking and pokes me through my nightgown. After sleeping on the ground for a week, one irksome spring shouldn’t keep me awake, but I flop around like a fish on a creek bank.
I vow to turn the mattress in the morning and feel for wayward springs.
I am accustomed to the creaks and groans of our house, but the boarding house has different sounds. Whispered voices and Mr. Redmond’s cough seep through the walls. Florence’s steady snore is close by, but I pine for Grandpa’s snorts and wheezes.
