A Place Called Here

CHAPTER ONE

Grace, 1988

            This isn’t the way it happened. But this is the way I tell it.

            With a name like Eve, one would think she came from a religious family. But that wasn’t the case. Her father, a practical but mirthful man, too busy to think about such things, had called her Eve—short for Evening—simply because she was born in the evening. Although Eve never liked her name, she fared far better than her sister, Mornie. You can guess what time of day she was brought into the world.

            Nonetheless, Eve preferred to be called Grace, for no reason in particular. As this is a story, and we can change whatever we please, we’ll call her Grace.

            One day, Grace did what she wasn’t supposed to do. This was more likely than not a bad thing, for which she would be punished later. But then again, if no one ever did what they weren’t supposed to do, we would have no stories to tell, would we? Or, at the least, we’d have very few. In any case, the thing that Grace was not supposed to do, and which was probably a bad thing for which she would get in trouble later, was going into the woods, alone, at night.

            Grace and Mornie and their Mother and Father lived in a small house with a big garage in the farmland of Michigan, in the Southeast corner of the state, just north of the Ohio line. It was several miles from the nearest highway—several miles from anywhere, really—and fairly secluded. Mr. Carlo Day (that was Grace’s father’s name) was the town librarian,[1] and he puttered off every morning at seven in his cobalt blue Buick, thoughts racing through his head. Ms. Tala Day (obviously, Grace’s mother) spent her days looking after Grace and Mornie and working on cars and farm equipment in the big garage—she was the town’s best (and only) mechanic.[2]

Grace and Mornie, being children, Grace ten and Mornie barely five, spent their summer days doing absolutely nothing. Well, by adult standards they did nothing. They ate chocolate cookies, drank chocolate milk, danced when dancing was called for, ran when running was called for, imagined themselves as princesses and warriors, pilots and nurses, and dirtied clothes they shouldn’t have dirtied. Above all, they were in the woods—the unending and mischievous woods—where they played in leaves, touched strange bugs, and climbed trees as if they had steps.

            In the trees, four feet in the air but on top of the world, Grace and Mornie felt the limitlessness of the world around them. They would climb these trees and sing, with no particular song or tune in mind, but they would join in together and sing. Just sing.

            It was then, when they sang, that Ms. Day would call to them as she tinkered on a rusting Ford or a John Deere tractor.

“Come home,” she’d yell, “Dinner!”

Invariably, Grace would call back: “What is it?”

“It’s good! Come home!” Ms. Day would yell back.

“What’s good?” Grace would yell, unswayed.

“Yeah, what is it?” Mornie would shout too loud, trying too hard to match her sister’s volume.

“Shut up, you’re hurting my ears,” Grace would yell, “C’mon.”

And they would climb down the tree and argue all the way home, invariably missing Ms. Day’s detailed yet loudly voiced recitation of the evening’s menu.

One night, after a day exactly like the one described, they gathered around the dinner table to eat but something was noticeably different—Ms. Day had her coat on.

“Where are you going, Mom?” Grace asked.

“I have to go to town.” Ms. Day replied.

“What for?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

As Mornie often did, she repeated this phrase through an irrepressible giggle.

“Shut up, Mornie! Why are you going to town?” Grace asked again, crossly.

“Eve! How many times do I have to tell you, do not say shut—” Ms. Day started to say, but Grace cut her off.

“Okay, I’m sorry—Mornie, don’t shut up. Mom, where are you going?”

“Nowhere in particular, I just have to run and get a few things.” Just then, the door swung shut. “Oh, there’s your Dad. Okay now, I gotta go. Be good for Daddy.”

“Okay.” Grace said.

            “Okay.” Mornie said in the exact same voice, albeit through a laugh.

“Yello, Mellow!” This is what Mr. Day always said to Ms. Day when he walked in the house and gave her a slight peck on the cheek.[3] “Yello, Kittens!” This is what Mr. Day would say to Grace and Mornie when he walked in the house and gave them slight pecks on their cheeks. “How are my girls today?”

            “Mom’s leaving.” Grace informed Mr. Day bluntly.

            “Really?” Mr. Day asked, feigning surprise.

            “Yeah. Mom’s leaving.” Mornie chimed in, still struck with the giggles.

            “Where to? Only Mommy knows…” Then Mr. Day did the evil bad-guy laugh he always did. With that, he sat at the table, opened his newspaper, and Ms. Day set down a long tray of Salisbury steak.

Grace, without being told because she was (occasionally) a good girl, set the place

settings. Mornie struggled with the weight of the gallon of 2% milk, but finally got it to the table.

Ms. Day pecked Mr. Day on the cheek, waived bye-bye to the girls and walked out the door.

Mr. Day folded up his newspaper, grimaced slightly at the sight of Salisbury steak, poured the milk, and as he always did, said: “Let us pray.”

The three remaining Days then recited in unison: “Beans, beans, the magical fruit: the more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel, so eat your beans with every meal!”[4]

Mr. Day, Grace, and Mornie then ate silently but for a few snippets of giggling by Mornie, an occasional whistle from Mr. Day, and Grace’s happenstance hum. Come to think of it, the dinner was not silent at all, but there was nothing in the way of typical conversation. But that was the way of the Days, especially the girls and their Daddy.

After dinner, Mr. Day generously heaped scoops of ice cream into bowls for Grace and Mornie—an extravagance Mrs. Day rarely allowed—and the girls downed them eagerly. They played a game of Go-Fish and a game of Old Maid and talked about nothing with silly grins on their faces.

At 8:30, Mr. Day noted the time aloud and the girls scampered up to bed. Mr. Day oversaw their nightly routine, ensuring that teeth were brushed and clothes placed in the hamper. He kissed them goodnight, assured them that their mother would be back soon, and not to worry, and improvised a very amusing story about a dragon and tennis player (of all things) that whisked the girls off to sleep.

***

Grace stayed whisked (to sleep, that is) until she heard an unusual noise outside. A most unusual sound. Not exactly a howl or bark or a cry—but something like that. An animal or human sound, not a mechanical one. Grace crawled out of the warm comfort of her Pippi Longstocking sheets, scampered gently down the ladder of their bunk-bed, so as not to wake the snoring Mornie, and pressed her face to the window.

The night was cold and her breath sprayed a little cloud of fog in front of her eyes. Wiping the window softly with her right hand, she felt cold beads of sweat develop in her left. She realized she was nervous, but her excitement outweighed it.

Looking out, she saw a coyote—though she had never seen any but Wile E., she was sure of it. But just as she was about to say so, it stood up and stretched out its arms—not legs, arms—to waive. And it was no longer just a coyote, but a tan-skinned woman with a coyote’s head. Then, just as a quickly, her head was human, with a long black braid of hair falling down the back of the brown leather tunic that only a few moments ago appeared to be fur.

For a moment, Grace thought of her mother, oddly. But this wasn’t her mother, but an Indian—no, she corrected herself, a Native American.[5] Without moving her lips, the native woman said sweetly in her sing song voice: “Grace Day, it’s time for you to come Here.”

And that’s the moment when Grace and Mornie Day, after changing into somethings more sensible of course, disappeared for thirty years.

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[1]               It may seem strange to you that Mr. Day, the librarian, is referred to as a “busy” man in the second paragraph. But you don’t know the half of it. The town library was quite small when he took it over in 1978: it totaled barely 352 titles. At the time this portion of the story occurs, in the fall of 1988, Grace’s eighth year, the library carried a total of 4,768 titles. That’s nearly fourteen times as many books in eleven years. And that number excludes the VHS and cassette sections Mr. Day had only recently begun. So, yes, he was indeed a busy man, thank you very much.

 

[2]               Years later, Grace was surprised to learn that it was from her Grandmother Windsor, whom she vaguely remembered as a drooling invalid, that her mother learned the fine art of mechanic-ry. Grandmother had worked the assembly lines in World War II, while Grandfather fought the Nazis.

[3]               The origin and meaning of this inside joke between the Days is still unknown. Exhaustive research by this author has failed to turn up any significant information. Imaginative readers should feel free to create the backstory behind this quirky Day family ritual.

 

[4]               The girls always were amused by this second quirky family ritual, even when beans were not served. It wasn’t until much later that they learned that this was not the conventional meaning of the word “pray”—Mr. and Ms. Day having determined several years previous that the girls would have to discover such information on their own and make up their own minds about it.

[5]               Mr. Day had recently explained there was an actual country called India and that the people who came from there were called “Indians.” Grace thought it was pretty silly and confusing to call Cherokees and Chippewas “Indians” after hearing that and resolved never to do so again.