December 18, 1871
Ma asked who I had been singing to after she put out the lamps.
I was standing at the washbasin with my hands in cold water. I kept them there while she waited for an answer. She had heard the song from the passage upstairs, she said, and thought I must have let somebody into the little room.
I had been downstairs when it began. I did not tell her so.
“The house carries a tune,” I said.
“Then carry it in daylight.”
She dropped Pa's shirt beside the basin. There was a tear at the shoulder and grease at the cuff. By the time I had rubbed the grease with soap, she had gone outside to count the wood. She counts everything she fears we may lose.
I thought of Rudy and the crooked little door. He would come if I sent for him. He would lift it on its hinges and be pleased that I had asked. I could picture his face when he found me waiting at the top of the stairs. That was reason enough to leave him out of it. If something behind the door wanted company, it would have to ask me first.
I mended Pa's shirt near the stove. The needle dragged at the coarse cloth. Every few stitches I stopped to listen, though there was no sound beyond Ma moving the woodpile and the iron tapping against my thimble.
At noon I carried clean linen upstairs. I had not opened the little room since I locked it. The handle still needed lifting, and the dark mark where the latch struck the frame was exactly where it had been yesterday. Nothing about the door admitted to making a sound.
I took black thread from my sewing box. I tied one end to the latch and the other to a bent nail in the jamb, drawing it tight enough that the iron could not move without breaking it. A child might have made a better snare. I wanted only to know whether the door had opened while my back was turned.
From below Ma called for her spectacles.
I put the clean pillowcase beneath my arm and went down. She found the spectacles on her own head before I reached the kitchen. I let her complain about my slowness.
All afternoon I passed the stair without looking up. I poured coffee for a man with mud on his boots and listened while he told me the road was turning hard. I smiled at the right places. Once he left, I could not recall his name, if he had given one.
The song had always been useful to me because I knew where to stop and make a listener wait. Last night something had kept the pause and filled it with my voice. I was ashamed to discover that for one breath I had been flattered. Then I thought of Ma opening the door for what she believed was her daughter.
After supper I went up with a candle. The black thread was whole. The latch had not moved. I stood there long enough for hot wax to reach my thumb.
Behind the door, someone cleared her throat.
Ma's little impatient sound, exactly as she makes it before she tells me I have forgotten a chore.
Below me, in the kitchen, Ma called for the lamp oil.