A Return Engagement
That night, sitting on the porch steps, Katie and Mandy told the story again. Of course, the story had taken on a bit of a glow, each girl adding a little mystery or adventure to spice up the action. But mainly they told the truth. The parents had also gathered to hear this version and they seemed just as interested as the kids in figuring out who the lady was. Of course, they also had to throw in that it wasn't very nice to go on people's property without permission, but they didn't push it that much.
The next morning Katie found herself up, for some reason, before the sun had stretched itself out of bed. The house was quiet. (Well, almost quiet - she could hear Kara's snoring and the whirr of the fans made the curtains rustle.) But birds had begun to peep outside her window and the sky seemed to blush.
She got out of bed and got dressed. The kitchen clock said 5:45. Quietly she opened the door and walked downstairs, then out to the street. The air smelled clean, like fresh laundry, and the small breeze prickled her skin. This felt good, she thought.
Most of the street was still in blue shadow. A car passed her, its tires humming. She walked the block up to the old lady's house, and even it, in its flaking mustard vine-covered coat, had a kind of beauty to it. As she looked at the front of the house from across the street, the paperboy came up and shoved a paper in the mail slot on the front door. The paperboy walked away. The birds chirped and swung through the air. The sky brightened. The front door opened.
Their eyes met across the space of the street, the short grey-haired stooped old woman and the young eight-year old black-haired child. It was the face she'd seen in the window. It looked capable of chocolate chip cookies. The woman raised her hand and, with one finger, motioned for Katie to cross the street. Looking both ways out of habit, Katie walked slowly, words about not going with strangers ringing through her brain. But it wasn't as if this woman was a stranger. They'd shared cookies.
The woman lost no time. "What were you doing on my porch yesterday?"
"I don't know," Katie said, the automatic response of any kid to a question like that. Suddenly, the sun on her back felt very hot.
"Did you like the cookies?" she asked.
Katie nodded yes.
"What's your name?"
"Katie."
"And the girl who was with you?"
"Mandy."
"And the rest of the kids?"
She named off everybody in the gang.
"My name is Elizabeth Gaines. You can call me Elizabeth."
The woman didn't say anything more. She took her paper and went back in the house, leaving Katie standing on the steps. Her mother was awake by the time she'd come back to the house and asked what was for breakfast.
Kara stumbled to the breakfast table, rubbing the crunchy granola out of her eyes. Katie was already finishing up a bowl of cereal. Kara only grunted when her mother asked her if she wanted toast or cereal, and Katie said to her, with a little bit of you're-such-a-stupid-younger-sister in her voice, "Don't be rude, Kara." She was scooping out the last grains of the sugar goop at the bottom of the bowl.
Kara grunted back at Katie, her eyes still almost closed with sleep. Her hair looked like someone had run through it with a rake. Katie kept digging at the bottom of the bowl.
"I spoke to her this morning," she said, looking at the bowl, knowing that Kara, even through her sleep fog, would perk up.
Kara refused to perk up for Katie. "Who?", she said in a voice that sounded like a crow.
"The lady," Katie answered.
Her mother put the toast with butter and peanut butter in front of Kara. "You mean the old lady up the street? How did that happen?"
"I got up early this morning and went outside." She more or less threw the bowl back on the table; the spoon clattered to the floor. She could feel her mother's look on the back of the her neck as she bent over to pick up the spoon and could have repeated her mother's words right along with her: "Don't throw it on the table, place it."
"She came out to get her newspaper and I was watching the house. She told me to come over. And then she asked me if I liked the cookies. Then she went back inside."
"That's all she said?" her mother asked, wiping her hands on the dishtowel. A heap of steaming dishes sat in the strainer.
"Yep," Katie answered.
"Strange lady, huh?"
"She's crazy," said Kara, the lines of her lips extended across her face by a combination of butter and peanut butter. She wouldn't eat the crusts.
Katie shot back at her "She's not crazy!" She expected her mother to say from the pantry where she was making lunches "Don't shout at your sister!" but instead her mother said, "You really seem to like her."
