Stark's Dell Read online

  Stark's Dell

  Robin Roseau

  2013

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Part One: Growing Up

  Childhood

  Grandma Stark

  Teens

  Loss

  Part Two: Adulthood

  Coming Out

  College

  Losing It

  Patterns

  Part Three: Coming Home

  Coming Home

  Dee Dee Returns

  Dee Dee's Story

  Understanding

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  For my grandmothers

  I will love you forever

  Part One

  Growing Up

  Childhood

  I was five the first time I saw Dee Dee.

  Mommy, Daddy and I had just moved back to live with Grandma Stark. She was never Grandma Edith or Grams or anything friendly at all. Grandma Stark was a sharp, bitter woman, or so it seemed at the time to my five-year-old eyes. I was scared to death of her and of her old, old house out in the western Iowa countryside. Looking back twenty years later, I realize she wasn't really like that. She simply didn't know what to make of a precocious five-year-old and was raised in a time when children were seen and not heard. I wasn't always seen, but I was frequently heard.

  Grandma Stark lived in a big, drafty, old house that had been in the family for a hundred years. My parents and I moved there, uprooting me from my friends and house in suburbia halfway through my year of kindergarten. Mom and Dad fought about it, although I didn't realize what the fight was about at the time. But uprooted we were, to go live with Grandma Stark.

  At first I hated my room. I hated the entire move, and it had been a long day of travel when we arrived at Stark’s Dell, as the house was known. My five-year-old self was tired, crabby, and quite, quite impertinent.

  It was a long time ago, of course, and I don't remember all the details. I remember arriving at the house. I remember we drove past the cemetery and then turned into the long drive leading to the house. I remember Grandma Stark looking at me sternly. And I remember my first view of my bedroom.

  The view from the window, looking past an overgrown field, was of the cemetery.

  I was old enough by then to know what a cemetery was. That's where the ghosts and goblins were, and I didn't want anything to do with that room!

  I think Mommy was sympathetic, but Grandma Stark had assigned me this room, and one did not argue with Grandma Stark.

  I vowed then and there I wouldn't sleep that night. I remember that. But, I presume, Mommy worked her Mommy magic, probably distracting me with teeth brushing and pajama putting on, then cuddled in bed with me and read me a story. I don't remember that. Hey, I was only five.

  I'm not sure how long we'd been living at Stark’s Dell before I first saw Dee Dee. It wasn't long; there was still snow on the ground. I don't remember that much. I remember I woke up and the house was quiet. I thought I'd heard something outside. I don't remember getting out of bed, but I remember looking out my window, wondering what I had heard. And then I saw the light from the cemetery.

  Ghosts! I remember thinking. Or goblins!

  But it was neither, of course. A woman was there. The cemetery wasn't that far from the house, just across a small field and a short ditch that ran between Stark’s Dell and the small country cemetery. I saw a girl. Or woman. I wasn't sure which. She was dressed in white, and I remember thinking she must be cold, standing in the snow. I remember she glowed. She must have had a light on the ground, but I couldn't see it. She was standing in front of one of the grave markers, and I remember thinking how sad she looked. It wasn't so close I could see her expression, but still I thought she looked sad.

  Then she turned and looked at me, straight at me!

  I was too startled to move.

  She smiled. I think. And waved.

  Scared, I ran back to my bed and burrowed under the covers. I remember hiding under the covers. I don't remember any more from that night.

  But that was Dee Dee.

  * * * *

  The next time I saw Dee Dee was sometime later the same year. The snow was gone, and the trees were starting to bud. Something woke me, and I crawled out of bed in my nightie and looked out the window.

  I saw Dee Dee right away, standing over the grave marker in the cemetery. She looked just like she had the first time, dressed in white and glowing from her lantern. She looked almost otherworldly, and again I thought at first she must be a ghost. But Mommy had told me that ghosts weren't real, and there she was, so of course she wasn't a ghost.

  I remember watching her for a minute, and then she turned and looked at me. I ducked under the sill of the window, then slowly poked my nose up. She was watching where I was, and again I could see the smile.

  I was so surprised when she blew me a kiss.

  She had looked so sad, but when she looked at me, she blew me a kiss and smiled at me.

  Shy, I ran back to my bed.

  * * * *

  Over the next two years, I saw Dee Dee every few months. She was always in the cemetery, always looking at the same gravestone. I didn't know why she only came at night, but my five-year-old brain decided she must work during the day, and coming at night was the only time she could.

  I wondered whose gravestone she looked at. Who had died that she came to visit?

  * * * *

  Even at six years old, I was given a lot more freedom at Stark’s Dell than one might expect, especially for someone who grew up in the city. I rode a bus to and from school. Daddy and Mommy both had jobs, and I would come home to Grandma Stark, who scared me badly. I realize now that I scared her, too.

  But dutifully she fed me a snack every day when I got home from school. And at first she would order me to "Go to your room and play". But the spring of first grade, I was six, and her orders changed to, "Go outside and play."

  Who lets a six-year-old play outside unattended?

  "Stay out of the barn," Grandma Stark ordered the first few times I was sent outside, but after that, she didn't keep reminding me.

  And I was only six.

  At first I remember playing in the back yard. I don't remember what I did, but somehow I managed to stay out of trouble and rarely did anything that earned me a scolding.

  I didn't have a single friend. I got along with the kids at school, I guess, but town was a long way away, and no one lived close enough to Stark’s Dell for me to play with him or her.

  I reached the ripe age of seven without ever going into the barn or otherwise doing anything worse than earning the occasional bump or scrape.

  I remember the first time I went into the barn. It had been a dreary day outside. Grandma Stark had given me my snack and ordered me outside. It was drizzling, and I didn't want to go. But one didn't argue with Grandma Stark. So I pulled on my jacket and went outside, where I promptly got wet and cold.

  The barn looked so inviting.

  It was an old bar, not having been used for much of anything for twenty years, I'm sure. I slipped in the front door, ready to explore.

  And things to explore!

  The first thing I saw was a mound formed by a large, beige tarpaulin. I looked around the barn from just inside the doorway. Light filtered in through high windows and cracks in the walls. The space smelled musty, but it was dry. The roof was still good.

  The front space was clear, and that's where the mound with the tarpaulin was. I looked underneath the tarpaulin and discovered wheels. Looking further I saw a red car. Even to my uneducated seven-year-old eyes, I knew the car was old, very old, perhaps almost as old as Grandma Stark herself.

  I explored the rest of the ba
rn. There was a dusty workbench along one wall with a variety of old, rusty tools hanging on hooks protruding from the wall. In back were two stables for horses, and there was a ladder to a hayloft. I didn't climb the ladder. Not on that trip.

  Over the next few weeks, the barn became my playground any time the weather was foul. I knew the barn was off limits, but I'd explored everywhere else, and I was sure I'd find new treasures if I continued to explore. I eventually climbed the ladder into the hayloft, where I invented wildly imaginative games to entertain myself.

  The hayloft only covered the back half of the barn, over the stables. There was a railing along the edge, and I could look down at the old car. I had taken to playing in the car, too, but I was always careful to cover it back up, just in case someone ever came out to the barn and looked.

  It didn't occur to me that my footprints in the dusty ground would be a dead giveaway at to how much time I spent out there.

  I remember one day playing in the hayloft. The game that day was pirates. This was a popular game for me. I had found a stick and was imagining myself as a pirate on the high seas, battling other pirates for booty.

  I had no idea what booty was, but I knew all lusty pirate wenches wanted it.

  I had no idea what a lusty wench was, either. I just knew I wanted to be one.

  What kind of world do we live in where children grow up thinking pirates are role models, and where little girls imagine themselves as lusty wenches in search of pirate booty?

  I was busy battling my imaginary pirate enemies, my trusty stick-rapier sharp and fast. I had just dispatched one of my last two opponents before jumping up on the railing to chase after the last one.

  That was the first time Dee Dee saved my life.

  The old, rotted railing cracked, throwing me off balance, and suddenly there were hands on me, pulling me down from the railing.

  "Get down from there!" she said firmly, pulling me firmly back to the hayloft.

  I tumbled to the rough wood, landing on my butt, then turned around to look at who had saved me. I had never seen anyone who looked more beautiful, and I was in love in an instant.

  The woman from the graveyard was standing over me, her hands on her hips. She looked very fierce, but then I recognized a look of concern. She was dressed all in white, just like I'd seen her in the graveyard, her long hair tied into a knot at the back of her head. Her clothes looked funny, but at seven years old, I couldn't have told you why.

  I stood up, staring at the woman. Then I adjusted my opinion. She wasn't a woman. She was just a big girl. I was still a little girl, but I was growing up. She looked like maybe she went to the high school.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "If my grandma sees you here, she's going to be mad."

  The girl smiled, the biggest smile I'd seen in a very long time. She stuck out her hand. "I'm Dee Dee."

  I shook her hand in the awkward way one does at that age. "Emily," I said. "Emily Stark. You're the girl from the cemetery."

  She nodded. "Well, Emily Stark," she said. "What were you doing up on that railing? You could have gotten hurt."

  I looked down at the ground, afraid I was in trouble.

  "Tell me, Emily Stark," the girl said.

  "You won't tell Grandma or Mommy, will you?" I asked her quietly.

  She smiled. "No, honey, I won't tell anyone," she said kindly, "but you must not do something that foolish again. What were you doing?"

  I was young enough not to be embarrassed by my game, and Dee Dee's eyes were so beautiful I would have told her anything.

  "I'm a lusty pirate wench!" I declared. "Searching for pirate booty!"

  Dee Dee smiled, but she didn't laugh at the childish game. I didn't realize it then, but now I know now how silly of a game I was playing. It says quite a bit about Dee Dee that she didn't laugh at me. In fact...

  "A lusty pirate wench?" she asked. "Oh, that sounds like fun. But why aren't you playing with your friends?"

  Now, that I was embarrassed about. I looked away.

  "Emily, you have to tell me," she said. "Where are your friends?"

  "I don't have any friends," I told her quietly, looking anywhere but at her.

  That's when she crouched down on one knee, our eyes now level. "I don't have any friends, either," she said.

  I turned back to face her. She carried a serious expression. I didn't understand how someone as beautiful as her didn't have any friends.

  "You don't?" I asked doubtfully.

  She shook her head. "Not a single one," she said. "If I don't have any friends, and you don't have any friends, maybe you and I could be friends."

  I understood that big kids didn't necessarily like to play with little kids. But she was smiling and looking at me hopefully, so I nodded. "Did you want to be a lusty pirate wench, too?"

  She laughed happily. "Oh, I am most certainly a lusty pirate wench," she said. "And I haven't had any booty in a very long time."

  We played the rest of the afternoon together. I was the pirate captain and she was my trusty first mate. We sunk many pirate ships and dispatched many pirate foes with our trusty rapiers, although we didn't find any pirate booty.

  Then, suddenly, Dee Dee held her hand up. "Emily," she said. "I think I hear your mother calling you."

  "Oh no!" I said. "I'm not supposed to be in the barn!"

  She dropped to one knee in front of me again. "You don't want to get into trouble?"

  I shook my head.

  "Honey, I'm not supposed to play over here. If you tell anyone about me, I'll get in trouble and won't be able to play with you anymore. So you won't tell anyone I was here, right?"

  I shook my head again, then made a motion of zipping my lips shut, then locking them that way and throwing away the key. Dee Dee smiled.

  "All right," she said. "Let's see if we can get you out of the barn without your mother knowing you were here."

  She went down the stairs from the hayloft first, then turned around and waited for me. I realized years later that she had been ready to catch me if I started to fall. But at the time, I didn't notice.

  She went to the door of the barn and peeked out, gesturing me to hide behind her. She waited for a moment, then said, "Now! Go now! I'll see you tomorrow, Emily."

  * * * *

  Before I go on, I want to assure you. As an adult, when I thought back to my time with Dee Dee, I had no idea what a lusty wench was. I also didn't know that there were different meanings of the word booty. I know that now, and I also know that Dee Dee meant those words in a much more adult way than I did when I was seven.

  But never, ever did anything bad happen like what some people might think. This isn't that kind of story. Oh yes, bad things happened, but never anything like that. Let me put that out of your mind right now.

  * * * *

  The next day, Dee Dee was waiting for me in the barn when I got home from school. "You came!" I said. I didn't think she really would. What teenager wants to hang out with a little kid like me?

  "Of course I came, Emily," she said. She hugged me. "We're friends now, and friends play together."

  I grinned at her.

  "So what are we playing today?" she asked me.

  It was a nice day, and I asked Dee Dee if she wanted to go exploring with me.

  "I love to go exploring," she said. And so we did.

  * * * *

  After that, Dee Dee and I played together every day. Some days we were lusty pirate wenches. Every time I said that, Dee Dee laughed, but she never told me why. Some days we went exploring in the fields and woods immediately near Stark’s Dell. Some days Dee Dee just told me stories from the olden days, back before there were cars and people rode around in buggies or on the backs of horses.

  She told the best stories.

  Dee Dee was happy to play whatever games I made up, and we were inseparable from the moment I came home until the moment I had to go inside for dinner. At first I thought it was odd that a girl so much older than I was would want to play
with me, but I quickly became used to it. On the rainy days when Grandma Stark wouldn't let me play outside, I missed Dee Dee terribly.

  Some days we played hide and seek. Dee Dee set the boundaries for us. "You have to stay on this side of the house," she said. "Or the barn. And you can't cross the ditch," she added. "It's not safe." Dee Dee was really good at hide and seek. I could look and look for her, and just when I was getting frustrated that I couldn't find her, there she would be. Every time.

  It was late that hot summer, when Dee Dee and I had been exploring. "We've explored over here, Dee Dee," I said. "I want to explore over there."

  "Here" were the fields and woods closest to the cemetery. "Over there" was the other side of the house, the side away from the cemetery. I realized then that we never played on that side of the house.

  Dee Dee frowned. "I like this side better," she said. "I wonder if we can spot that fox again."

  I stomped my foot. "I want to explore there!" I said, pointing.

  Dee Dee looked away, frowning. "I don't like that side, Emily," she said. "Something bad happened to me over on that side."

  "What?" I asked her.

  She knelt down and looked me in the eye. "Something bad. Maybe someday I'll tell you."

  I wasn't satisfied with that answer, but the look she gave me told me it was all I was going to get.

  "We can explore over there," she said. "But I'm going to be scared. You'll have to hold my hand the whole time. I won't be able to stay if you don't hold my hand."

  I couldn't believe a big girl like Dee Dee could be afraid, but I nodded sagely and took her hand. And we went exploring the woods on the other side of the house. Dee Dee held my hand firmly the entire time. Finally I realized she was quivering, and I looked over at her. She looked terrified, and the further we got from the house, the more she shook, and the harder it was to pull her after me.

  Seven year olds don't come with a lot of empathy built in, but Dee Dee was my only friend. Eventually I realized how badly she didn't want to be here. She looked white as a ghost, and finally I said, "Maybe we should go find that fox."