Page 38 of Scout Takes the Lead
During the next week, we finished the dollhouse. Grace suggested that we take it to the shelter for abused women and children where she’d spent some time after her mother left her father, and late one afternoon we put Scout in the back seat of her car, and I carefully placed the dollhouse into the trunk.
I slid in beside her and locked in my seat belt. “Have you been back to this shelter since you and your mom and your sister moved out?”
“I haven’t. But I talked to Mercy last night about it. We were both so frightened when we were there that it was hard to see the positives. They locked the doors at night, you know, and had a security guard with a gun at the front door during the day. At the time, we felt like it was a prison, but now I know the guard and the locks were there to protect us from angry men.”
“That must have been tough.”
“It was. And my mother was so frail, recovering from her broken arms, so she couldn’t even hold us when we were frightened. I had Buddy, but Mercy was so lost. I think that’s why she left so soon afterward.”
“You’re talking to her more regularly, aren’t you?”
Grace nodded. “It’s good to have my sister back. For a long time, I felt all alone. Like you must have felt after your mother died.”
She turned onto the highway, and I tensed, but I remembered that Scout was in the back seat and Grace was a good driver, and we’d be fine. “I was lucky I was in the military then,” I said. “I had a whole band of brothers around me. For an only child, that was meaningful, and helped me get over her death, at least until I was discharged and found out my aunt and uncle had sold everything off. That was tough. I probably shouldn’t have left everything behind and moved to Florida, but I needed to make a clean break with the past.”
I looked over at her. “Talking to Dr. Altman has helped me see that you can never really leave your past behind.”
“That’s true. As evidenced by the fact that we’re heading to the halfway house where I spent some of the worst months of my life. But the people there did what they could for us, and I appreciate it.”
A few minutes later we were off the highway, driving through a poor neighborhood. Grace signaled, then turned into the driveway of a long, low building that resembled an Army barracks. I carried the dollhouse, and we walked up to the front door.
Grace had called ahead and given our names, so the guard let us in. The reception area was warm and welcoming, painted in yellow tones, with comfortable sofas and chairs. The administrator had identified a little girl to receive our gift, a six-year-old named Marvelene, and she and her mother came out to meet us.
Her eyes opened wide when she saw the dollhouse. I put it on the floor and sat with her, and showed her the rooms. She was already carrying a tiny doll that fit perfectly inside the house, and she walked it around from room to room. “I never lived in a house,” she said. “But Dolly can.”
Grace and I sat with Marvelene for a while and eventually they had to leave so they could eat dinner. Marvelene’s mother thanked us again and carried the dollhouse through another locked door, the little girl behind her. Grace took my hand as we walked back to the car.
“How did you feel being back there?” I asked.
“It wasn’t traumatic,” she said. “I was worried that it would be. But now I recognize that living there made me stronger. I hope Marvelene will feel the same way.”
“We make each other stronger,” I said.
We walked back outside, and I felt really happy that I’d been able to channel my post-war energy into something that made someone else happy.
We let Scout out of the car and he hurried over to a bush to leave his pee-mail. I looked at Grace and smiled, then took her hand and squeezed.
