The Search for Grandma Sparkle Read online

No, it was easier to boondock in a camper than live here but I can make this an adventure for Jessica. She mustn’t see that I’m afraid. I must be positive.

  Opal used the pan to void before she hobbled back to bed.

  Then she felt a light touch on her shoulder as Jessica rolled onto her side. Opal inhaled and exhaled a few deep breaths and forced herself to relax.

  Nights were the worse time. Her foot and ankle hurt so badly. She propped her foot up on the folded old blanket since it was too hot to use the blanket as a cover. She wondered who was missing her and Jessica. Of course, Susan was probably numb with grief over the disappearance of her little girl. Sarah would be busy with her classes in Ankeny. George and Nancy would miss her to some extent. Mary’s life would go on much the same. It would be Ruth that missed her the most.

  Ruth and she had been through so much together.

  She dreamed that she was living in a cabin by a coal mine with her parents. She saw herself getting into a buggy with her boyfriend, Mark. He called, “Getty-up.” The horse took off in a fast trot to a neighboring coal mining town. Was it Marysville or Lovilla or Everest? They went to a baseball game where Mark was playing. He looked so handsome wearing his sleeveless red t-shirt, black shorts and the red socks that were so long that they almost covered his knees. When he made a home run, he slid into home plate and turned to see if she was watching him.

  On the way home, Mark stopped under the covered bridge and kissed her. His lips were so soft. He was the only man that she had ever dated.

  Opal woke up and realized she was in the cabin. Mark, her boyfriend and later her husband, was born in 1940 and when they were dating, he drove a 56 Buick, not a horse and buggy.

  Suddenly she was angry that he had left her so soon.

  “God, I need him so much!” She cried aloud. “Fifty-six is too young to die.”

  Thoughts of that terrible time swirled around her. It had been a sunny day when they went to the lake with Ruth and her husband, Pastor Neil Vander Veer. They had taken a boat ride in a flat bottomed boat that had been loaned to them by someone from the church and stopped at a sand bar to get out of the boat and eat the picnic lunch that she and Ruth had made. The guys decided that they wanted to fish for large mouth bass. We didn’t want to get in the way of flying hooks so Ruth and I decided to stay on shore.

  About a half hour later, as we were walking along the sandy shore, we noticed that it was getting colder and colder and the sky was getting dark. We ran to the car just before the downpour.

  We waited and waited for the men to appear. When it was six o’clock by my watch, we decided that we couldn’t wait any longer. I drove the car to the police station where we told them that our husbands were missing.

  Some law enforcement officers searched with spot lights all night but didn’t find any sign of the two men.

  Ruth came home with me but neither of us got much sleep that night.

  The next morning, men from the church and neighborhood went out in their boats to search the lake. They found the boat caught in some weeds with the life jackets still in the boat. There was no sign of the men.

  During that terrible time Ruth and I lived together. Someone from the SPARKLE Club came over every day to visit and left cookies, casseroles and encouragement. Of course, after a few days, they stopped giving us encouragement.

  Three weeks later some fishermen found the partly eaten and decomposed bodies.

  We had a double funeral. I didn’t want to go to two funerals and Ruth couldn’t go to her husband’s funeral without my support. Rev. Vander Veer was as well liked as Mark so there was standing room only in the church.

  Everything changed after that. George, Nancy and the girls moved in and George farmed the land. Later he built the house for Nancy.

  Ruth was no longer the pastor’s wife. She had to find a new place to live since the church needed the parsonage for the new minister. Her daughter, Esther, from Des Moines, decided to have Ruth move in with her and her husband so Ruth could take classes to renew her teaching certificate. Then she could teach as a substitute or maybe go to full time. There weren’t many jobs for a forty-eight year old woman whose skills were being a preacher’s wife and a mother for twenty years. She didn’t get money from social security because Neil had never paid into it and they said that she hadn’t worked enough quarters to qualify under her name. Also she had no dependent children so she couldn’t get money under Aid to Dependent Children.

  Our beloved SPARKLE CLUB was dissolved. The new pastor’s wife decided that we didn’t need a fellowship club. We needed more Bible Study. Then she decided that we didn’t need to spend so much time helping others, we needed more time for our families. So there were no prayer shawls made, no more layettes, no more teas, and we didn’t need to buy or make cards for birthday greetings to each other. We needed to just pray, read the Bible and care for our husband and children.

  I remember the day when I was attending the Bible study when the pastor’s wife said that I Timothy Chapter 2 says that women should not be allowed to speak in church and the woman who was the liturgist should allow a man to read the Psalms. Or we should just omit the Psalms since her husband preached on the New Testament anyway. She added that women should dress modestly and she thought that we needed to wear dresses to church.

  I didn’t speak up like I should have. How many young woman would we lose if we enforced the dress code? . . .

  There was a knock on the door just after our meeting ended. We were eating cookies, drinking coffee and tea, chatting about whether Susie was expecting and if it would rain. . . .

  Some one answered the door to a young pregnant woman. In a quiet voice, she explained that she was visiting her Aunt Mary Harris but no one picked her up from the bus station in Oskaloosa. She had started to walk thinking that she would meet Mary on the way. But she couldn’t go any further. Could someone give her a ride?

  The pastor’s wife looked at the exhausted young woman who was dressed in jeans with holes in the knees and thighs. The huge t-shirt barely covered her bulging belly. She stuck her nose in the air and said, “No. It’s not safe. You never know what kind of riff raff you will be letting in your car.”

  The young woman’s face fell when she heard the negative reply. I asked her to sit down and handed her a cookie and cup of tea.

  She swallowed the tea and kept the cookie as she exited out the door. I told Margaret, who had ridden with me, that we had to go. We followed her to the door. I was thinking that I could give her a lift but she had already disappeared. One minute she was there and the next she was nowhere in sight. I wondered if she had been an angel and we had failed the test of kindness. We still talked about love and kindness but didn’t act upon it. What if we could have entertained an angel unawares?”

  I thought back to the time when Ruth moved back to the Marysville area after she retired. She and I decided to resurrect the SPARKLE CLUB. We started it with four ladies who met in the church basement every Monday. We made layettes to ship to the Holt Adoption Program. We made prayer shawls for anyone who was hospitalized. We gained members after we made sandwiches and desserts as well as coffee and iced tea for relatives after funeral services that met in the Fellowship hall. We gathered clothes and gave them to the Salvation Army and to a group home for abused mothers and children. We were there for each other whether it was a happy time like birthdays and weddings or a calamity such as a fire or funeral. Yes, the SPARKLE CLUB would now be helping George and Nancy and Susan and maybe even Ruth.

  Ruth would be the one who missed me the most.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Opal woke up feeling more alert. She gingerly touched the knot on her head and felt that its size had lessened during the night. The swelling was reduced in her ankle too but it was very sore. She felt a warm wet spot beside her. Jessica was crying. “I couldn’t help it granny. I peed.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll find something for you to wear. Opal hobbled over to the wooden chest of drawers
and looked for something to dress Jessica in. The fierce pain began again when she put weight on her foot. So she hopped on one foot.

  There wasn’t any clothing in the chest but there were linens in the top drawer and scissors, thread, a tablet with an Indian head on the cover, pencils, nails and chalk in the second drawer. The bottom drawer was empty. Maybe it had held the woman’s clothing. At least the linens of dishcloths, dish towels and tablecloths were cleaner than anything that was outside the dresser. She took the tablecloth and two dish towels along with the thread and needle and sat down by the table again. She told Jessica to take off her blue shorts, grey shirt and underpants. Then she held both feed sacks that were now dish towels in front of the child. With a few stitches for Jessica’s shoulders, she could slip the make shift dress over her head. More stitches under the arms and a cord around her waist, would work to hold the dress to her little body. Both dish towels were embroidered. One had a butterfly while the other had a teacup. In the meantime, Jessica didn’t seem to mind being undressed.

  “You can wear this after we wash up,” she told the little girl.

  “I like the pretty butterfly,” the child answered.

  “Okay, that will be the front and the teacup will be in the back,” Opal said. “Please get the t-shirt off the wooden peg by the door.”

  By pushing the chair to the wall, the little girl was able to get the t-shirt down. Opal pulled it over her head and then took off her soiled shirt trying to be modest about it. Jessica didn’t make any body language that showed that she was bothered by the sight of Opal’s breasts. Holding on to the table, Opal stood and gathered the tablecloth in little pleats. Then she wrapped the tablecloth around herself to make a skirt which she sewed shut around her waist. Lacking a zipper, Velcro, or buttons, it would do until she cut it off.

  Holding on to the table, Opal hopped on her good foot to the window. The rain had stopped. She looked for her car or the car or truck that had brought them here but there wasn’t a vehicle in sight. At least the weather had turned cooler.

  Since she was standing, she took another few steps outside to the pump and lifted the pump arm. The water was dirty but cleared up when she let it run into the pan. She took the torn paisley curtain down and washed it in the dry sink along with Jessica’s clothes. Then she got fresh water for her own clothes. The soap, lying on the old sink, was either a bar that smelled like lye or a bar of Lava. She laid both their clothing on the edge of the dry sink. It was the cleanest spot in the house.

  Even though it was hot and humid, she decided to boil water for baths and to drink. She checked the seal on the vent, gave the ash box a shake to make sure that there weren’t a lot of ashes and raised the metal circular lid.

  “What’s in that thing? What are you doing, Granny?” Jessica asked.

  “I’m taking the coal from the coal bucket and making a fire in the cook stove using the coal for fuel.”

  She removed the dry paper and sticks that were on top of the ashes. They would be used as kindling since it was hard to start a fire using just coal. She let Jessica hand her a piece of coal.

  “Eww,” Jessica squealed. “My hands are all dirty.”

  “We will wash them,” her great-grandmother replied.

  “Is this coal what Santa uses to put in stockings at Christmas?” Jessica inquired.

  “Yes, this is coal. The story says that coal like this is used for bad boys and bad girls but I have never known anyone who received it at Christmas.”

  Jessica sat on the chair by the table with her hands under her chin. “Maybe all the boys and girls you knew were good kids.” Jessica thoughtfully stated.

  Opal placed more coal in the stove. When she went to add the paper and sticks to the top, she spied a piece of the tablet with writing on it. She moved it with her left hand before adding the kindling to the stove. Maybe it would give her a clue as to who owned this shack.

  Using matches from the tin can on the shelf, she started the fire.

  Opal sat down with a sigh. The pain was excruciating when she stood and put her body weight on her foot.

  Soon she saw steam coming from the pan of water. She stood and poured some of it in a bowl for washing, refilling the pan so this water could be boiled and used for drinking. She thought that the water from the pump was probably safe for drinking but she needed to be sure. It would be disastrous to get diarrhea now.

  She let Jessica use the dish cloth on her face and to wash her hands. Then she washed the little girl. A dish towel was used for drying her. Opal put the homemade dress on Jessica and then proceeded to wash herself.

  Opal left the t-shirt on when she washed under her arms and her breasts. This washing herself while wearing clothing was a new experience. Maybe she could wash better when Jessica was sleeping but this would have to do for now. She decided not to wash her hair since she lacked shampoo and conditioner.

  She retrieved the tin can from the shelf that held the crackers. She found that putting peanut butter on the stale crackers made them more tolerable and gave them some protein. This became their evening meal.

  She looked at her black and blue swollen feet and ankles and realized that she couldn’t walk out of here. In fact, she had to sit down again.

  With the boiled water, canned food, and peanut butter and crackers, they wouldn’t starve if their captivity lasted a few days, she thought.

  She picked up the crumpled note which had been on the table and read

  “Dear John,

  “I will soon be leaving here to visit my aunt in Boston. Good bye. It’s been good to be your friend.

  Charlie”

  How strange. I thought that young people texted their friends, rather than sending notes. Boys didn’t usually write notes of friendship either. At least her son George would never write a note like this when he was young. Who was John and who was Charlie? The only Johns she knew were old man John Andrews who was dead now and Susan’s former husband. Could he be mixed up in their abduction?

  Would whoever brought them to this place return and harm them?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It must have been the noise she made as Opal struggled to the door that awakened Jessica. She looked at a foggy sky, with prairie grasses and rolling green hills in the foreground and shadowy trees against and ditches further out. They were at the edge of what George called a timber.

  Her farm, now George’s farm, consisted of 600 acres, about one hundred and fifty were timber in areas around South Cedar Creek. Further north of the highway, the South and North Cedar Creeks met on Bailey property. Maybe she wasn’t far from home. It would take a large group of people walking the corn fields and timber to find them. Then again, they might not be in Marion County or even in Iowa.

  After Jessica voided, she again ran around the shack looking under chairs, the bed and into the dresser drawer. “What are you doing?” her great-grandmother asked.”

  “I’m trying to find the phone so you can call Mommy,” Jessica answered.

  The little girl pulled a large piece of broken chalk board from under the bed.

  “What’s this?” She asked.

  “It’s a piece of chalk board. Bring me the box from the drawer and I’ll show you how to write on it.” Opal wrote JESSICA. “Do you know what that says?”

  “It sort of looks like my name but the Sunday school teacher puts a dot in it.”

  Remembering that Ruth told her that children now learn to write their name using capitol letters, Opal decided to use capitol letters.

  “May I write my name?”

  “Sure, we will start with the J.” Opal made a large J on the chalkboard. Then she put her hand over Jessica’s hand and they made more J’s. Then Opal made dotted lines in the form of a J. Jessica connected the dots. Soon she was making J’s all over the chalkboard.

  Jessica quickly got tired of this and started to run around. Opal went to the door. The sun was shinning. Because Jessica had cabin fever, Opal decided it was time to go outdoors and
explore the area. In case Jessica found mud, Opal decided it would be better to go now and wash later. Then they would wear the clothes they had worn here instead of the tablecloth skirt and dishtowel dress.

  Her foot was very painful but she needed the branches to make crutches and sticks for kindling. It was also time to empty the commode pan. It smelled badly even though they kept the lid on the pan. She picked up the piece of chalk board that Jessica had found under the bed. There was a screw on the back with a piece of twine attached. It probably was what held it to the wall.

  Opal looked at the warped linoleum floor with floor boards showing through the large gray squares that made a pattern and wondered how to get the pan outdoors that they had used as a commode. She decided that if she made a travois from the chalk board, she could pull the commode pan. She looped the twine through the circle of the screw hanger and again around the top of the chalk board.

  “What are you making?” Jessica asked.

  “This is a sort of sled that the Indians made to haul their blankets and things.”

  “Did they have chalk boards too?” the little girl asked.

  “No, they used branches and rope.” Her granny explained.

  Opal grabbed a chair and slowly pushed the wooden chair over the uneven floor to the doorway. “I really need a crutch or cane since putting weight on my foot is so painful.”

  Outside, she saw the outhouse so she pulled her sled as near as possible to the pit and tipped over the pan used as a commode.

  The pain in her foot nearly took her breath away so she stumbled to a nearby stump and sat down on it. Jessica spied a rabbit hopping along the path leading to the cabin. She chased it until it ran under a bush.

  “Please help me by bringing the big branch and some little sticks to me. I need the big stick to help me walk and we will use the small ones in the stove when we make a fire.” Jessica struggled to get the branch to her great-grandmother. Then she ran around picking up the sticks. Some were wet but most of them were dry from being under the tree.