Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [1]
“Can I help you?” Mom asked. Her voice was strained, the way it sounded when she was trying not to yell at one of us kids. She waited a few seconds. Then, a little more exasperated, she repeated, “Can I help you with something?”
The stranger folded the paper and settled it in her lap. “No, dear, I don’t think so.” The corner of her mouth turned up in a small smile. “But thank you just the same.”
Mom stiffened at that, and all her features seemed to move toward the center of her face. “Well,” she said, “may I ask what you’re doing on my porch?”
“Just sitting awhile,” the old woman said, as though she’d been found passing the time of day on a public bench. “Anyway,” she went on, “it’s not your porch. It’s mine.”
“Uh-oh,” Wally whispered in my direction. “She’s one of those crazies. You’d better go keep an eye on Valerie.”
But I didn’t want to go keep an eye on Valerie. I wanted to stay right where I was and watch Mom talk with the crazy lady.
Mom looked off toward the street like she was hoping someone would walk by and help her, but it was early Sunday morning and the streets were quiet, save for one lone soot-colored cat slinking along the sidewalk in the misty rain.
Finally Mom turned back to the stranger and said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, and if you don’t, I will call the police.”
The old lady pulled her feet off the railing, and I thought maybe she was going to stand up and leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she said quietly, “Well now, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t give me any choice. You’re trespassing on private property.”
“I might say the same for you.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?”
“The law might say you own this house, but it’ll always be mine.”
“Mom,” Wally hollered though the screen, “you want me to call the cops?”
Mom latched her hands together at her waist and squeezed her fingers together. “Not yet, Wally. Just hold on.” To the woman, she said, “I want to give you the chance to leave peacefully.”
The old woman wasn’t looking at Mom anymore. Now she was looking out at the street, but I had the feeling she wasn’t seeing the street but something else altogether.
When she spoke, her voice was low and even. “My husband built this house for me in 1917. Built it with his own hands. And you see these two hands here?”
The woman held up her hands, large as any man’s. Mom nodded reluctantly.
“These hands helped him. I laid flooring, plastered tile, painted the rooms, hung wallpaper. We built this place together, Ross and I.”
A small muscle worked in Mom’s jaw. “I see.”
“I came here as a bride, twenty years old. Had my babies here. Lived here all my married life. Watched my husband die in our bedroom upstairs.”
“Oh, great,” Wally said, glancing at me. “Some old guy croaked upstairs.”
Though he said it loud enough for the woman to hear, she ignored him and kept on talking. “My heart is in every piece of wood and every nail. For that matter, so is my sweat. I believe they call that sweat equity. There’s so much of me in this house, you’ll never get it out. You might live here now, but this house – it’ll always belong to me.”
Mom was chewing her lower lip by now, and her eyes were small. Her knuckles had turned white because she was squeezing her hands together so hard. I knew exactly what she was thinking. I knew she was thinking about our old life in Minneapolis and how this place in Mills River, Illinois, was our new life, and she may have even been thinking of those words she said to me that first night after we moved in: “We’re safe now, Roz. We don’t have to be afraid anymore.” She had worked and planned for a long time, until finally, with the help of her father, Grandpa Lehman, she’d got us out of Minnesota and away from Daddy. And now, only days into our new life, some crazy woman showed up making trouble.
“I lived here fifty years,” she went on. “Fifty years this place was mine until I slipped on some ice last January and broke my hip. I landed in the hospital, and while I was down and out, the boys saw their chance. Maybe