If Only Everything Were Like Clothes
It came. School came. Having to get up early came. New pencils and shoes came. Every bit of it she knew, every bit of it she'd done before. Fourth grade was going to be good - she liked her teacher, learning the multiplication tables would be another thing she could have over her sister, and there were some new kids in her class from families who'd just moved into the city.
But it was fourth grade - and then there would be fifth grade, and sixth. She'd surprised her mother the other day when she said that she was saving up money for college. Her mother laughed and said that she didn't really have to worry about that yet, but there was this look on her face Katie didn't understand but sort of did - a little bit sad, a little bit worried. Sometimes she felt like that.
If only everything were like clothes, she thought, like the clothes Elizabeth let them wear. Take one set off and put another on and you could be another kind of person. And you could just go on changing clothes forever, being someone new, changing the way people looked at you.
Each day she got home from school she went up to Elizabeth's to visit. A few times she was there and they chatted about how the new teacher had two earrings in her left ear and how the deaf kids in class were pretty sharp people. But more and more she found that Elizabeth wasn't home. She didn't have a car, so Katie didn't know how she got around, but it was clear that no one was answering the door, though the morning paper got taken in, which proved that someone still lived there. Katie found herself hungry for chocolate chip cookies.
Things happened in a rush, it seemed. One day an alien thing appeared on Elizabeth's lawn, a sign saying "For Sale". Katie couldn't keep the disappointment and anger out of her voice as Elizabeth explained to her that with Johanna's death there was nothing to keep her around anymore.
"But there's us!" Katie argued. What she meant was, But there's me!
"Oh, Katie," Elizabeth replied, putting her hands on her shoulders and looking her straight in the eye, "you and all your friends are wonderful, and if I were younger I think I'd adopt you all. But -- "
"But what?" Katie demanded. She had gotten into her anger pose, bottom lip jutting out in a pout, arms crossed across her chest. Her voice had risen a notch or two.
"I have lived in this house too long, Katie. Forty years I took care of Johanna." Elizabeth sat down on the sofa. There were in the living room. Katie sat in the wing-back chair that had been Johanna's. "I lived so long in this house that I became a witch to the children around here. And I'm not so sure you all were wrong."
Katie just sat crumpled in the chair, trying to fight off the inevitable.
"There were times, Katie, when taking care of Johanna was a thing I hated. She depended on me completely. My life was hers. Do you understand what I am saying?" Katie nodded. "I loved my sister dearly, but forty years is a long time. It wasn't something I asked for, but it was something I had to do. Now I don't have to do it anymore."
"But I don't want you to go!"
Elizabeth's face wrinkled and Katie could see that she was trying very hard not to cry. And it wasn't working. Tears edged their way along her face. "Katie," she said, "come here." She hugged Katie fiercely and whispered, "Thank you for saying that." Elizabeth held her for an instant more, and then said, "How about some cookies?"
Things happened too quickly after that. The house sold easily and Elizabeth, not wanting to lug anything around, sold the house as is, with all the furniture and clothing and ruby-red glasses. Not, of course, before she let the children in to pick out a few things that they wanted. Katie took her hat. So did Mandy. Everyone had a bit of something to keep.
Then she was gone. Katie got letters from Arizona for a while, then New Mexico and California. Then Hawaii. Then Japan. For a while they came steadily from Japan - Elizabeth had decided to live there, learn a new language and culture. Sometimes Katie would walk by the house and see how the new owners had scraped and painted it, cut back the trees and bushes, planted gardens - she couldn't help but think that it looked beautiful, even though she felt a little like a traitor saying it. At night she and her mother and Kara would curl up on the couch to watch television and eat popcorn, and when Kara would fall asleep they'd sometimes talk about Elizabeth, about her latest letter saying that she was learning the tea ceremony or how cool everyone looked when they came walking down the stairs in their clothes.
The memory of Elizabeth became as neat and beautiful as the house she had lived in for forty years. It was as if the new owners, without knowing it, had made sure that no one would forget who had lived in that house. Elizabeth was gone, but she would surely never be forgotten.
And Katie went on to fifth grade, then sixth, and made new friends and lost some old ones. And kept all the letters in a box in her bottom drawer. She'd keep them forever.
