A Piece of Heaven Read online

  “Not me,” said Otis. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You’re not going to visit Ma?” I was dumbfounded. “Suppose she wants to see you?”

  “I don’t care,” Otis said, setting his jaw. “I don’t want to see my mother acting stupid like that, crying over a stupid squash.”

  “I don’t understand you, Otis,” I complained.

  “The best thing we can do for Ma is to clean this place up,” he said, pointing to the mess in the apartment. “And I have to work. Who knows how much money she has in the bank?”

  “She hid some of the bills,” I said in a worried voice.

  “See what I mean?” said Otis. “We got to let the doctor take care of Ma. We got to take care of us.”

  “You talk as if she’s going to be there forever,” I snapped.

  “How long did she say it would be?” he asked.

  “Maybe a few weeks,” I sighed. “She’s still crying like she was last night. But I’m going to visit her anyway.”

  “That’s your business,” said Otis, folding his arms across his chest. “She told us to leave her alone, remember?”

  “She didn’t mean that,” I said with a sigh.

  “You got to hold on to yourself, Haley,” he said, jutting out his chin. “Know what I mean?”

  I shrugged. “Not really, but that’s okay. Maybe I can get Nirvana to go with me.”

  “Good idea,” said Otis.

  I stared at the burned cake on the counter. “Where should we start around here?”

  “Toss that first,” said Otis. “Why do we need a burned cake when there’s enough food here to feed an army?”

  I dumped the cake into the trash can. Spying the butternut squash in the sink, I ruthlessly scooped it up.

  “This definitely goes out,” I said grimly.

  “Amen,” said Otis.

  We put all the vegetables that we could fit into the refrigerator and stacked up the rest in a corner. We lined the walls with the extra canned food.

  “Now, breakfast,” my brother ordered.

  I shook my head. “I’m totally unhungry after putting all this food away.”

  “The sight of it makes me want to puke,” he agreed. “Maybe Nirvana’s grandmother could make you some eggs or something.”

  “I’m not starting the day with hives,” I said, stalking across the room. I grabbed some fresh clothes out of the dresser.

  “See you later, then,” he said. “I’ve got to meet Reggie.”

  “Where’s he live?” I asked.

  “Across the street,” Otis muttered. “Dill knows him. His apartment is on the same floor.”

  I smiled. “He must be nice if Dill knows him.”

  “Reggie doesn’t hang with that loser Dill. Reggie has it together.” He gave me a wink. “Hang tough, Haley. If Ma sees you acting like a wimp, it’ll just make things worse for her.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised. My brother left. The eggplants were out of the tub, so I took a quick bath and then put on my clothes, overalls and a nice T-shirt. I thought of wearing my new blue pajama top beneath the overalls, but I knew that Ma wouldn’t like that. “Hang tough,” I repeated to myself, combing my hair in the mirror. I fastened it back with a big clip. I spied Ma’s Cinnamon Doll lipstick and put some on. Now that I was thirteen, I figured that I could wear makeup. I wanted to look halfway decent when I went to visit Ma at the hospital. But before I did that, I had time to go see the singing teacher. More than ever, I wanted that yard job. Otis and I had enough food, but what about the bills, the ones Ma hadn’t paid? I tucked my wallet into one of my pockets and stuck my thesaurus into the other one. After fishing my key out of the jeans I’d worn the day before, I walked out and locked the apartment behind me. An instant after I stepped into the hallway, the door to the Browns’ place flew open.

  “Where are you going?” Mrs. Brown asked, wedging forward slowly.

  “I have to see about a job,” I said, jamming the key into my pocket next to my wallet. “Then I have to see Ma.”

  “I thought that you and Otis would go to church with me this morning,” she said. She rested her weight on one leg and then on the other. “Nirvana is coming. She’s just in the bathtub.”

  “I can’t go today,” I said. “And Otis is working.”

  Mrs. Brown raised an eyebrow. “On Sunday?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I’ll do what I can for you kids,” said Mrs. Brown. She smiled. She had the kind of smile that any minute could turn into a frown. “But you have to remember that my legs are bad, so I can’t run around keeping up with you. The only time I go out is on Sunday to church, and then I take a cab. I raised my only child already, Haley,” she added. “I have all I can handle with Nirvana.”

  She paused. “Did you speak with your mother yet?”

  “This morning,” I told her. “I was hoping that Nirvana could go with me to the hospital later on.”

  “I need Nirvana myself,” said Mrs. Brown. “She has to stay with me after church at the lunch for the Women’s Auxiliary. Maybe you should give your mother a little time, anyway.”

  “I want to see her,” I insisted.

  “Well, your big brother can go with you. You and Otis know where the hospital is.”

  I nodded. “We can make it on our own,” I murmured. “No problem.”

  Two cats edged out on either side of her legs. Mrs. Brown bent down and carefully scooped them up.

  “You can come over anytime,” she offered.

  “Thank you,” I said, inching backward.

  She trundled into her apartment with a cat under each arm. “Reckon your brother can take care of things for a little while. He’s fifteen, after all. That is, if he can keep himself off the street. I see him hanging out there, you know. I see him from the window,” she muttered. “Hopefully, your mother won’t be gone that long. I’ll sure pray for her.…”

  I ran down the stairs and out to the street, heading toward the singing teacher’s. The sky was the same brilliant blue it had been on my birthday, but it didn’t make me cheerful when I looked up. I put my head down and took off. Up the block at the newsstand, people were buying the newspaper. Outside the bagel store, there was a long line. On the corner, the smell of fresh doughnuts wafted out of Rivera’s. As I was crossing the street, a man who had lost his legs scooted by me on a low platform with wheels. His arms looked strong. He glanced up and smiled at me. The lady who slept next to her cart was still there when I cut through the park. A cool breeze lifted, and my heart fluttered horribly. I was hanging tough, but still thinking of Ma.

  When I arrived at the fancy brick house, I heard piano music coming out of the windows, and this time someone was singing. The song was jaunty, with lots of words that reminded me of something on Broadway. The voice was a man’s, really deep. I sat down on the gray stone stairs and pulled out my thesaurus. I found a word for the sound: sonorous. Then I sat there, waiting for the singing lesson to be over. The day before, the teacher had said he had a slew of students; I hoped that this morning was different.

  As soon as the singing stopped, I jumped up to ring the bell. Before I could, the door opened. An extremely fine-looking young man with a mustache and beard slid past. His eyes were gleaming. The singing teacher stood at the door.

  “See you next week, Win,” he called.

  “See you, Jackson.”

  Jackson gave the young man a wave and then turned to me. “Glad you could come back, Mahalia.” His eyes twinkled. I couldn’t help smiling. He’d remembered my name.

  “Is the job still open?”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure it’s the job for you, though. How do you feel about a lot of lifting and lugging?”

  “I’m strong,” I said, looking him in the eye. “In wood shop, I carry around big planks.”

  “You’d be getting your hands a little dirty,” he added with a grin.

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” I assured him. “Where’s the yard? Does
it have any flowers?”

  He held up his thumb and chuckled. “Does this thumb look green or brown to you?”

  “Brown,” I allowed.

  “There’s your answer,” he said good-naturedly. “But you’re welcome to take a look at it. Go around the side of the house. I’ll walk through and meet you out there.”

  I edged my way along the side of the house. “Come on around,” I heard the singing teacher call out. I stepped around into the yard. My mouth dropped open.

  Every inch of the good-sized rectangular space was covered with things: old doors, busted shutters, rusted-out screens, burlap bags, broken flowerpots, stacks of rotting wood. On one side of the yard was a rickety-looking shed, stuffed to overflowing. On the other side, toward the back, was a huge pile of stones. The property along the fence was completely overgrown with weeds. And what was left of the lawn was burned out, as if a chemical had been dropped on it! There were certainly no flowers to speak of. The house was so fancy. It seemed a shame that the yard was such a wreck. The one nice thing that I could see was a leafy old tree growing right in the middle.

  “The tree’s pretty,” I murmured politely.

  He rubbed his chin. “I suppose you want to know what happened to the rest of it.”

  “What did happen?”

  “Ever had a messy room?” he asked.

  I thought of our apartment that morning, before Otis and I had cleaned. “Yeah.”

  “Well, the inside of my house is pretty neat, because I kept all of my mess out here,” he explained. “I used the yard for a kind of storage place when the inside of the house was being fixed up. I’d always meant to fix up the outside, too, but then I got sidetracked.”

  “But now you want to make a garden?” I ventured.

  “That’s more than I can hope for in the time that I’ve got,” he said. “I’ve got students coming here for lessons nearly every day. That’s why I was hoping to hire someone.”

  “I can take a crack at it,” I offered.

  He shook his head. “Look at these doors,” he said. “Look at these big stones. I’m not sure you could manage it.”

  “I told you, I’m strong.” I walked over to the stone pile and lifted a big stone off the top. I picked it up over my head and held it there.

  “You didn’t tell me that you were a weight lifter, Mahalia,” he teased.

  I grinned and put the stone down. “Call me Haley the Strong.”

  “Call me Jackson the Slob.” He chuckled. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  He looked surprised.

  “I’m small for my age,” I explained. “Most people think that I’m younger.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I thought that you were older.”

  “Really?”

  “Your face is very mature, and you’re quite poised. I teach in a middle school during the school year. I know my teenagers.”

  “Thanks,” I said, blushing. It was the first time that I’d been called a teenager! “So, do I have the job?”

  “I’d like to hire you,” Jackson said hesitantly, “but my daughter, Brielle, is coming home in about three weeks. I promised her that we’d have a barbecue. So I need the yard fixed up by then.”

  “Three weeks, huh?” I rubbed my hands together. “The first thing I’d do would be to get rid of the junk.”

  “I’d have to get it out front somehow,” said Jackson, “so that I could arrange for a pickup from a rubbish company. I might have time to help drag out some of the heavier stuff.” He looked around at the mess. “There might be some things worth saving or storing in the shed.”

  “The shed is full,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe the person I hire can make room,” he muttered.

  I looked down at the ground. “What about grass?”

  “Too late for that,” said Jackson.

  “What about flowers?” I piped up. “My favorites are tulips.”

  “Definitely too late for flowers,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “If there’s no grass or flowers, all you’ll have left is dirt.”

  He stuck his hands into his pockets. “That’s okay. My grandmother had a dirt yard.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “A dirt yard?”

  “A dirt yard can be great,” he countered. “You’d have to pull up all this dead grass, of course, and then do a lot of raking. A dirt yard is a great workplace.”

  “What kind of work?” I asked curiously.

  “Peeling potatoes,” he replied. “Sawing wood, stuff like that. If you have a dirt yard, you throw things on the ground and then sweep up.”

  “Sweep the ground?” I asked in amazement.

  Jackson laughed. “My grandmother swept her yard every evening—honest! She said it was her way of putting her mind at rest. The universe could be exploding, but if Grandma’s yard was swept, she felt just fine.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “If you say so.”

  “What happens to these?” I asked, pointing to the pile of stones. The stones were a pale gray color, of varying shapes and sizes. No two seemed exactly alike.

  Jackson shrugged. “Maybe I can get somebody with a truck to take them.”

  I picked up one of the smaller stones and ran my finger across it. The surface was bumpy and had tiny white sparkling specks in it. “This one looks like it has diamonds in it,” I mused. “Where did you get these stones?”

  “Oh, I didn’t carry them in,” Jackson said with a chuckle. He pointed to the ground. “They came from right here. Once upon a time, they were buried beneath the earth.”

  “Did you dig them up?”

  “Not me,” he said. “Some farmer, more than likely. They’re fieldstones. People had to dig up a lot of stones before they could plow their fields and grow things.”

  I glanced around at the houses surrounding us. “But there aren’t any fields around here.”

  “This whole area used to be farms a few hundred years ago,” Jackson informed me.

  It was hard to imagine. I shook my head. “Wow, these stones have been in this spot for hundreds of years?”

  “Some farmer probably used them to build a stone wall. Of course, the wall collapsed long before I got here.”

  “Maybe you can build another stone wall,” I suggested.

  “You have to be an expert to build a stone wall,” Jackson said. “Besides, my daughter will be here before I know it. I have to do something quickly.”

  “I don’t want to be nosy,” I ventured, “but hasn’t she seen the stones before?”

  “Oh, she’s seen them,” said Jackson, “but not for a while. When she’s not in college in California, she lives with her mother. Her mother lives out that way, too.”

  “I thought maybe she lived here with you,” I said in surprise. “I figured that she was just away at summer camp.”

  He chuckled. “Brielle is too old for summer camp,” he said. “Are you going to camp this summer?”

  “I wish I could,” I admitted. “My friend from school is going. But this year my family can’t afford it.”

  “Have you ever been?” asked Jackson.

  I shook my head.

  “Too bad,” he said kindly.

  “That’s okay.” I gave him a cheerful smile. “I’m hoping to get a summer job instead.”

  “I hope you do get a chance to go to camp one year,” he added. “When she was younger, Brielle used to love it. Now she works most of her summers. I can’t believe it,” he added wistfully. “She’s almost twenty.”

  Jackson ran a hand over his thinning dark curls. “When we first moved into this house, I was so excited by the space out here. I wanted to make it a little piece of heaven.…” His voice trailed off as he circled the yard.

  “So, what do you think?” he piped up again. “Can we make something out of it?”

  My heart beat with excitement. He had said we. “We can try. I really need a job.”

  “You’re hired, then. I’ll pay you five dollar
s an hour.”

  “Great! When do I get started?”

  “Whenever you’d like,” said Jackson. “Give me your telephone number. I’ll call your parents.”

  “My mother will call you,” I said hastily. “And my dad doesn’t live with us.”

  “I see,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, really.” I lowered my eyes. “I hardly ever think about him.”

  For an instant, I thought Jackson looked sad. “I’ll go inside and write down my telephone number for your mom, then,” he said, hurrying away. The back entrance was a pair of glass doors. “Grab that old lawn chair next to the shed,” he called before going inside. “Sit down, if you like.”

  He ducked into the house. I peered through the glass after him. He walked into a large room with a huge piano right in the middle and tall bookcases lining the walls; then he disappeared around a corner. Imagine having your own huge piano! I thought. Imagine owning all of those books on the shelves! Imagine living all by yourself in a house three stories high! I stepped back. Working for Jackson would be like working for a king, I thought dreamily. A king who was awaiting the return of his long-lost princess. The princess’s name was Brielle. And I was the royal gardener, Mistress Haley. I chuckled out loud and strolled toward the shed. I found the old lawn chair and set it under the tree. The tree had tiny white buds on it that gave off a nice fragrance. I sniffed and took a seat. The fluttering in my heart had calmed down. I could hardly wait to tell Ma that I had a real job.

  Jackson came back outside carrying two glasses of iced tea.

  “Thought you’d like a drink on a hot day like this,” he said, offering me one of them.

  “Thanks,” I said, licking my lips. My mouth was parched. I gulped the tea down. It had just the right amount of sugar in it.

  He glanced around at the yard. “I really did let things get out of hand back here,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, draining the last of my tea. “I’ll have this place fixed up in no time. You’ll see!”

  He smiled broadly. “I don’t doubt it for a minute, Haley.”

  At three o’clock on the dot, I stood in the lobby of the hospital. I’d been there before when I’d dropped in on Ma at her job. When Grandma Dora had been in the hospital, I’d been too young to visit her. I walked up to the big circular desk in the middle of the first floor. When I’d visited Ma on the job, I’d always told them I was going up to the second floor to Admitting. Now, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I cleared my throat.