Free The Stopped Heart by Julie Myerson Page A

their birdcage outside so the parrot could bask and preen in the warmth of the sun, except that this year old Mrs. Narket, who had died at Christmas, wasn’t around to see it.
    But it doesn’t matter, Lottie said, waving her fingers around as if she was enjoying a merry tune that no one else could hear. Because she’s coming back and she’s on her way right now!
    I was darning Frank’s socks. I pulled the thread from my mouth and held it up, stiff and wet in the air. I looked over at our mother, who was sweeping the floor.
    Coming back? What do you mean, Lottie, who’s coming back?
    Lottie blinked at me.
    The old lady. The one that was dead. She’s coming back. She says we don’t need to worry about anything, ’cause it won’t be long now.
    Lottie always did have special ideas about the dead. Once, when she was two or three, she pointed, laughing and smiling, to the darkest corner of the room and shouted, Man, man! in her loudest voice. When we asked her what man she was talking about, she said it was her friend who’d come looking for his old family.
    What old family? we said.
    His old family from when he used to be alive, of course!
    Another time she insisted that a dark-faced hawker that came to the door selling tin toys was a little boy she used to know.
    How ever could you possibly know him, Lottie? You’re only three.
    I knowed him when I was his age, she said.
    His age? But he’s even older than Father.
    Lottie smiled, but something about her face didn’t look quite right.
    Just like I used to be, she said.
    Sometimes weeks or months went by and Lottie seemed to forget her queer ideas. Now and then she’d just be a plain old ordinary little child for a while, larking around with Honey or the dog or the twins and playing Susie Go Around the Moon and fighting and shouting and stopping all the nonsense about dead people. But something about James Dix’s arrival in our lives seemed to have stirred it up again: as if the simple sight and sound of him had rattled some sour old memory in her and got her going.
    You mean old Mrs. Narket? I said now as I tried again to thread the needle. Poor Mrs. Narket’s in heaven, Lottie. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t come back here.
    Lottie shot me a look. Her face said I didn’t know a single thing.
    She’s comin’. She says that nothing’s going to stop her because—because—because she misses her parrot too much. She don’t much care for it there anyway.
    I smiled, twisting the thread and pulling it through the needle’s sharp slit.
    Doesn’t care for it where?
    Lottie narrowed her eyes.
    In heaven! She don’t like the color of it and she don’t likeGod one little bit and, anyway, she says the poor parrot is very sad without her.
    Our mother stopped sweeping. Leaning on her broom for a moment, shaking her head.
    What a lot of nonsense, Lottikins. Since when were you talking to old Mrs. Narket anyway?
    Lottie frowned and tapped her finger on her forehead.
    Um, let me see—I think it was when she was crawling on the floor under my bed.
    Now I couldn’t help laughing. It was hard to think of old Mrs. Narket, who had never been the sprightliest of persons at the best of times, crawling around on her hands and knees on the floor under Lottie’s bed.
    Our mother picked up the broom again.
    Now you just stop telling boomers, she said. And you too, Eliza, you ought to know better than to laugh about the dead. Poor Mrs. Narket was put in the ground on Christmas Eve and everyone knows she’s with her maker now and God bless her.
    Lottie frowned.
    What’s her maker?
    It means the same as heaven, I said.
    Now Lottie stamped her foot and shook her head, blowing air out of her mouth.
    Not in heaven, she ain’t, not anymore—I told you! She only went there for a little bit of time and that was only because she wanted to see her boy.
    What boy? I