SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Grandma Naomi made a motion to put the box down, so Rachel volunteered to find a place for it, and to organize its contents and find homes for the various toys. She absentmindedly stuck the key in her pocket as she moved the box over to the other side of the attic.

“You girls up here?” Uncle Allen called up from the base of the stairs.

“Come on up,” Naomi answered.

“Nah. I don’t need to see any of that old stuff. Don’t want to get stuck doing your job anyway. Just wanted to swing by and check on you two.”

“We’re doing okay,” Rachel answered. She toyed with the key in her pocket, but for some reason resisted the urge to show it to Allen.

“All right, then. I gotta get back to it. I’ll come by later for dinner,” Allen said, his voice trailing off as he headed back down the stairs and out of the house.

“I do hope that boy is careful. I’d hate for him to run into our visitors from yesterday. They said they’d be back, you know,” Grandma Naomi said. Rachel peered over the boxes to find Grandma going through a basket full of Good Housekeeping magazines from the mid-eighties.

Rachel worked by herself for the next few minutes before peeking back to check on her grandmother’s progress. Grandma’s head was down, a magazine drooping on her lap. Asleep. At least, Rachel hoped she was asleep. She crept over and double-checked that Grandma was still breathing, then headed back to her work—pitching junk and saving memories.

Another box of books: trash.

A box of greeting cards: mostly trash. Rachel salvaged a few she knew Grandma Naomi would want and tossed the rest into the wastebasket.

Digging out a box labeled “Dates,” Rachel found a complete set of wall calendars from the 1970’s. She just shook her head and moved on to a box she’d found virtually hidden, stuffed in the back corner. This box wasn’t cardboard like the others, but was instead a wooden crate made up of small slats. Hardly watertight, so Rachel was tempted to chuck the entire mess before she even perused it, but something caught her eye.

Inside the box was a stack of small lined pieces of notebook paper that appeared to have been ripped out of a journal or diary. The top page was labeled Oct. 19, 1959.

Rachel probably wouldn’t have given it another thought except for one thing: it was the day Uncle Allen was born.

Bending down and folding herself into a seated position, Rachel carefully extracted the loose sheets of paper, noting that some had been damaged by the moisture. The pages were brittle where they weren’t damp. Peeling them apart, Rachel set them down on the wooden floorboards.

The pages ran to the end of the year—definitely pages from a diary—but unfortunately, they were all blank except for the first one. And even that page was a mess of seemingly random words interrupted by water stains. Rachel took her cell phone out of her pocket, and selected the flashlight app. Immediately, the attic lit up, casting shadows all around. Rachel pointed the light at the page below.

Dec. 19, 1959

The baby (unintelligible) 8 lbs., 5 oz. (unintelligible) healthy. (unintelligible) concerned.

Visitors (unintelligible) hospital. Never (unintelligible). I refused (unintelligible). Naomi wasn’t so (unintelligible). Just concerned about (unintelligible). They will be (unintelligible) threats, but (unintelligible) ready.

Rachel was confused. It definitely wasn’t Grandma Naomi’s handwriting; it had a more masculine tilt to it, and Rachel had seen her grandmother’s handwriting dozens of times on birthday and Christmas cards over the years. It must be her grandfather’s journal.

She looked at the rest of the pages, confirming they were all blank. And apart from the occasional smudge, they were. There was only that one page that had been used. Given the date and the baby’s measurements, it was clearly about her uncle’s birth. But what was this about threats?

Should she go to Uncle Allen and ask him? Would Grandma Naomi remember the events of fifty years ago?

Rachel rifled through the rest of the box but found no other papers or important documents. So she snuck down the attic stairs and put the diary pages in the dresser drawer in her bedroom. She’d think about it more later, perhaps that night as she went to bed.

As Rachel re-entered the attic, Grandma Naomi was waking back up.

“Oh, hello,” Naomi said, looking around her, confused by her surroundings. “Are you here to take me to the hospital?”

“No, Grandma,” Rachel said. “Let’s head back downstairs. I imagine you could use a trip to the powder room.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right,” Naomi said. “I feel like I’ve been up here for hours, but that’s impossible. I was just watching M*A*S*H with Henry. Speaking of…I wonder where Henry is.”

Rachel didn’t want to fight that battle right now, so she just went along with it. “I think he may have gone out with Allen to work in the fields.”

“Oh, yes. What a good boy, that Allen. Always staying home to help take care of me. I do hope we get him back one of these days.”

After a nap, Grandma Naomi was in a better state of mind. A late-afternoon rain shower forced Allen to call it a day early, and so the three relatives found themselves eating pork chops around the table just before the prime time TV schedule got going.

“How was your day?” Naomi asked Allen.

“Fine. Had a little trouble with the sprayer out in the field past Wither’s Corner, but I got it sorted out,” Allen said between bites.

Rachel sat at the table, finding herself staring at her food because she couldn’t bring herself to look Uncle Allen in the eye. Finally, she worked up the courage to ask an apparently innocuous question.

“Uncle Allen, what was life like when you were young? I mean…I don’t have my mom to ask about her childhood anymore, so I guess you’re the next best thing.”

Her mind was stuck on the pages of the diary she’d found from earlier in the afternoon. What was so special about Uncle Allen’s birth? Why did Grandpa Henry—or whoever—write about it and then tear those pages out of his diary? Where was the rest of the diary, from before that day? She’d scoured the attic the rest of the afternoon after helping Grandma Naomi into bed, but to no avail.

“Life? Like here on the farm?” Allen asked. “Boy, I don’t know. Pretty standard, I imagine. Dad always had work for us to do. Your mom always tried to get out of working outside, though. She was usually working with Mom here in the kitchen.”

“Oh, yes,” Grandma Naomi piped up. “Your mother was the best cook to ever work in this kitchen. I’d like to say I taught her everything she knew, but that just wouldn’t be true. She came up with some wonderful recipes I’d never dreamt of.”

It was great to hear her grandma talk about her mother—and better still to hear her talk in a coherent manner—but Rachel’s mind was racing about her Uncle Allen. She tried to shift the focus back to him.

“What did you do for births back when you had children, Grandma?” Rachel asked. “You don’t hear much about women having babies at home these days, but you had all of your kids at home, right?”

“I did. Even my last, my boy Allen right here,” she said, reaching over to pat Allen on the arm. “It wasn’t easy, but there’s nothing like it. I couldn’t imagine going to a strange hospital room when you have everything you know and love at your own home. Wouldn’t you rather have a baby in a familiar place than some cold, sterile room?”

Rachel knew exactly where she would like to have kids one day, and it wasn’t at home, but she wasn’t about to tell Grandma Naomi that. She simply nodded, shoving a forkful of pork into her mouth.