“Louisa May, you fell asleep again.”
The voice hovers over me and I wonder if maybe one of God’s angels has come to take me to be with Daddy. Even though I am not a little girl anymore, I like thinking there are angels. When my eyes focus on what I hope will be my first celestial visitor, I see instead my sister, Jo. She is the most beautiful of all us McAllisters. She has golden blond hair the color of the inside of a honey comb, unlike my tangled dirty mop of curls, as Mama likes to call them. Like honey, Jo is also very sweet, but she isn’t the angel I hoped for.
“My name is Wildflower,” I say half asleep, rolling over on Daddy’s grave.
When I was little, Daddy and I used to take naps together on Saturday afternoons like this one. He’d be folded up on one end of the sofa and I’d be on the other, our toes touching, until Mama made us get up to do our chores.
“Mama has dinner ready,” Jo says. She taps the bottom of my shoes with hers.
“How’s Daniel?” I ask, opening one eye. Her husband is almost as sweet as she is.
“He’s fine, and he’s waiting on his dinner, too.” She reaches down to pull me up.
I brush away the pieces of leaves and dirt that leave spider web patterns on my legs. Jo and I are the same height now, but I haven’t filled out like her yet.
“Mama worries about you coming up here all the time,” Jo says. “I don’t see why you bother. It takes forever to get here.”
I don’t tell Jo about my secret shortcut. If she knew about the old footbridge she’d probably make me promise not to come that way again.
“Jo, do you ever think about Daddy?”
She pauses, as if my question has surprised her. “All the time,” she says softly. She looks down at Daddy’s grave like he isn’t there at all, but instead lives in her memory. Nobody talks much about him, probably because none of us is fond of crying. I envy Jo sometimes, mainly because she had more time with him. She was eighteen when he died. I had just turned twelve.
“Let’s go home,” Jo says, sliding her hand into mine. We lock fingers like best girlfriends.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” I say, as we walk away.
Goodbye, Wildflower, I imagine him saying.
It takes nearly thirty minutes to get home. My secret way through the woods would have cut that time in half, but I’m not willing to tell anybody about it, not even Jo. Johnny is gone when we reach the crossroads, and my step lightens. I smile at the sky, imagining a world without Johnny Monroe.
Nearer to home the smell of honeysuckle and wild roses walks with us. As the sun dips below the ridge, the crickets warm up their night songs. Jo and I say our goodbyes at the three mailboxes at the bottom of our property. She and Daniel live across the road; Amy and Nathan next door to them. But there are several acres in between. I take the steep dirt path toward home, glad the rainstorm from the day before dampened down the dust from the dirt road.
To announce my arrival, I let the screen door slam. Mama and Meg are in the kitchen.
“Wash up,” Mama says, and I do as I’m told.
Then I sit next to Meg who is still in her Woolworth’s work clothes. Meg catches a ride to and from work with Cecil Appleby who drives his almost-new 1940 Ford truck into Rocky Bluff to work at the sock factory, an hour away. Not that many people have cars in Katy’s Ridge.
“How’s Daddy?” Meg asks.
“He’s fine,” I say. “He asked after you and I told him about your new job.”
Meg smiles, but her smile has sadness in it, and I don’t know if it’s because she misses Daddy or if she’s just sad she had to get a job.
Catching rides into Rocky Bluff makes a long day for Meg, because Cecil goes in at seven in the morning and she doesn’t start work until nine. For two hours every morning she sits in the diner across from Woolworth’s and reads cheap romance novels passed along by one of her customers.
Mama has no idea how much time Meg spends reading trashy novels and she would burn them in the woodstove if she ever found them. I have been sworn to secrecy until the day I die. However, not being one to pass up a business opportunity, I also collect ten cents a month for keeping my mouth shut. While Mama isn’t looking, Meg slides me a dime across the table and I put it in my pocket.
A box under our bed is stacked full of books with bare-chested men standing next to women in long, sexy nightgowns. Meg says I can read them if I want to, but I can’t get past the first chapter without feeling like heaving my breakfast oatmeal. If what’s in those books is romance, I don’t want any part of it.
In all my years of schooling, I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve had plenty of friends who were boys, but beyond that they hold no interest for me. In the country, some girls my age are already thinking about marriage. In the back, back woods, some girls are already having children of their own. But that’s the last thing on my mind right now.
The secret sense tells me that Mama wants to say something to me about being at the graveyard again, but she swallows her words. If she wasn’t so busy doing chores she might be up on that hill, too, lying next to Daddy’s grave like they used to lie in bed together. I’ve never seen Mama cry, not even the day he died. But sometimes I hear her through the wall, tossing and turning all over the bed that doesn’t have Daddy in it anymore.
“We waited supper on you,” Mama says, as if this was a great inconvenience.
“Thank you, Mama,” I say. Daddy would want me to be nice to her, even though she hasn’t been that nice to me lately.
A large bowl of pinto beans sits on the kitchen table. We eat beans a lot since Daddy died. Mixed in with the beans are pieces of ham, sweet onion, and turnip greens—little surprises that your taste buds stumble upon. Mama places an iron skillet of cornbread just out of the oven on folded dishrags so it won’t burn the wood. Next to the cornbread is a big plate of sliced tomatoes that Mama grows in the side yard. I spear three slices with my fork and put them on my plate. Then I remember how Mama always says my eyes are bigger than my stomach and put one back.
“Who came into the store today?” Mama asks Meg.
Meg starts naming names, most of which I recognize. You’d think Woolworth’s was the center of our universe as much as they talk about it. The population of Rocky Bluff is roughly six hundred people. Katy’s Ridge has all of eighty, five of which are my immediate family, and another dozen or so that are related in one way or another. Some of the markers in the graveyard date back to the 1840s, and there are at least a dozen confederate soldiers there, and two Union soldiers on the far side, a whole graveyard separating them. The 1860s saw a lot of funerals in Katy’s Ridge. I can recite nearly every name and date on the tombstones, except the ones that are faded beyond recognition. Meg and Mama like to study the here and now. I like to study the past.
Mama rests her chin in her hand while Meg shares the latest gossip. Tonight’s news consists of Marcy Trevor’s new dentures that don’t fit, even after paying a fancy dentist in Nashville, three hours away. Mama’s eyebrows arch, as if hearing about Marcy’s troubles gives her a break from her own.
While Mama soaks in the idle chatter, I sneak a third piece of cornbread, missing her speech on gluttony and how I won’t always be skinny if I keep eating anything I want. Riled up, Mama can sound just like Preacher.
“Don’t you have something to do?” Mama says to me. She doesn’t wait for an answer.
I clear the table, a job I inherited after Amy left home. It is a chore I don’t mind because I can let my mind wander while standing at the bucket in the kitchen sink. My thoughts travel old paths as well as new ones, depending on what we are studying in school or what I am reading. Pondering comes natural to me. I can sit and be entertained by my thoughts for enormous amounts of time. Mama calls this just being lazy.
I scrape the leftovers into a rusty pie tin to take out back to feed the stray cats that stay under our house. Daddy started this tradition, but Mama doesn’t like it. She looks over at me and sighs.
“Your da
ddy was just too soft hearted with those cats,” she says. “He would have attracted every stray cat in the state of Tennessee, if he’d had his way about it.”
“Yes, Mama,” I say. She says the same thing every night.
“You’re lucky I don’t drown them all,” she says.
This threat is new and she looks at me as if to register the level of my shock. But I don’t let my face tell her anything.
Not all the cats decide to stay, but the ones that do, run from Mama every time they see her. Even cats can sense when they’re not wanted.
A new one showed up two days before, who is small and orange and doesn’t mind being touched. On account of his color, I call him Pumpkin. I go outside and sit on the steps. Pumpkin finishes the little bits of food the other cats let him have and weaves between my ankles. As I rub his whiskers, he soaks up my attention with a raspy purr.
Even though I am full of Mama’s cornbread and beans, I have a deep ache in my stomach when I think about Daddy being in the graveyard instead of sitting on the back porch with me. Evenings are the worst. It’s the time of day when we all sat outside together. I lean against the porch post and close my eyes searching my memory for how his voice sounded.
A second later something rustles in the woods and I jump. The cats scatter, taking shelter under the house. Fixing my eyes on the woods, I wait for the next sound. Sometimes wild dogs roam the mountains, or raccoons come to eat what I’ve put out for the cats. I wrap my sweater closer and get that creepy feeling like when Johnny Monroe watches me.
“Who’s out there?” I yell. My voice sounds shaky, so I stand to make up for it.
A million crickets answer my question.
Daddy’s shotgun leans next to the back door, but Mama keeps the shells in her dresser drawer, so I’m not sure it would do much good to get it. By the time I got the gun loaded I could be dead and in a grave right next to his.
“Are you all right out here?” Mama says from behind the screen door. I’ve never been so glad to see her in all my life, but don’t tell her that.
Even though I am nearly a woman myself, I am still a little girl in some ways. In the last year, I get scared by things that never used to scare me. It’s as if my courage got buried along with Daddy.
“I heard something,” I say, looking out into the woods.
Mama stands there for a long time, looking where I point.
“Come on inside,” she says finally. The screen door needs grease and squeaks loudly as she opens it. After I pass, she latches it and the regular door, too, something I’ve never seen her do. Daniel put in the locks after Daddy died, but we’ve never once used them until now.
“What is it, Mama?” Meg asks. She yawns, as if realizing how long her day has already been.
“Louisa May heard something out back,” Mama says.
She closes the short drapes over the kitchen sink, then walks through the living room and latches the front door, too. I like that she is taking me seriously for a change, but it also spooks me.
“Isn’t it about time for you to get ready for bed?” Mama asks.
I glance at the clock and it’s at least an hour before bed, so I figure she just wants me out of her hair. I leave Mama and Meg in the kitchen and sit in the rocker in the living room near the wood stove Daddy bought from the Sears & Roebuck catalog when I was seven. Daddy’s banjo—missing one string he never got to replace—leans against the wall nearby. He used to sing country songs that told stories about people. His voice was deep and rich and it wrapped around you like one of Mama’s softest quilts.
In the shadows, I pick up Daddy’s old banjo and return to the rocker where he used to sit and play. I wrap his memory around me to try to feel safe. I am quiet, so Meg and Mama won’t hear, and pretend to pick at some of the strings while I hum the words of Down in the valley, valley so low. At that moment the ache I felt earlier in my stomach moves to my chest. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
After I finish the song I get up from the rocking chair, being careful not to let it creak on the wooden floor. So Mama won’t know I’ve touched it, I place Daddy’s banjo back in its spot where the dust keeps the shape of it. It would be just like her to put it away if she knew I wanted to keep it out.
“What are you doing here in the dark?” Mama asks.
Speak of the devil, I start to say, but then think better of it.
Most of the things Mama says to me are either orders or questions, neither of which ever require an answer. I shrug and shuffle to the bedroom I share with Meg, who has already sunk into a loud snore. I get undressed and put on my nightgown and try not to think about the noise I heard earlier in the woods behind the house. When I walk down the hall toward Mama’s room, I find her sitting on the edge of the bed brushing her hair, which reaches almost to her waist. Her hair is much prettier down, instead of up in the tight bun she wears during the day.
“Can I sleep with you?” I ask her. She looks at me surprised, like when I told her I was changing my name to Wildflower.
For a split second her face softens, but then she says, “Don’t be silly, Louisa May. You’re grown up now.”
Her words sting like a bee stepped on barefooted in a patch of clover, and I want to kick myself for even asking. In my weakness, I imagined Mama opening the covers wide on Daddy’s side of the bed while I get in.
Instead, she says, “Let me get at some of those tangles, Louisa May.” She motions me over so she can brush my hair.
She starts and I say, “Ouch! Mama, stop!”
“Be still,” she tells me, “you’re just making my job harder.”
While she attacks the tangles in my hair, I refuse to give her the pleasure of knowing how bad she’s hurting me. Mama knows I’m tender-headed and I know she knows it. But it’s as though I need her to touch me more than I need my pride, so I let her do it. In the meantime, I silently curse the tears that squeeze out of my eyes and promise myself that I’ll be tougher once I turn thirteen.
After a while, Mama gives up and declares my tangles a battle she cannot win. Our eyes meet briefly before she turns away, as if the tangled emotions between us are also a losing battle.
I return to the bed I share with Meg. Lying there in the dark, I count backwards from a hundred by threes and try not to think about what’s lurking in the woods or the fact that my father will never be coming home. Or my deepest, darkest, secret wish: that Mama had died instead of him.
CHAPTER TWO
The news of Ruby Monroe’s death crackles through Katy’s Ridge like an unexpected thunderstorm. The next morning, I overhear my sister Amy telling Mama about it in the kitchen. She must have come by early because she is already there when I wake up. Even though I am only days away from my thirteenth birthday, they never include me in their grownup conversations and sometimes I wonder if they ever will.
Squeezed behind the wood box full of kindling in the parlor, I slap at a cobweb that escaped Mama’s dust rag. This was one of my many hiding places as a girl that can now barely accommodate me.
It is hot, as August always is, even early in the morning. A slender crack runs the length of the wall between the kitchen and the parlor, and I press my ear close to the wall in order to hear. It takes a few seconds to make out the words, but I tune them in like Daddy used to tune in stations on our old radio.
“Ruby hung herself,” Amy says, her voice not much louder than a whisper.
I cover my mouth and swallow a gasp. I’ve heard of criminals getting hung, but I’ve never known anybody to do it to themselves. Especially somebody I just saw at Sweeny’s store two days before. Ruby stood in front of the counter barefooted, her feet muddy, counting out pennies to Mr. Sweeny to buy a sack of flour. For all I knew she didn’t even own shoes. Her stomach stuck out, like poor people’s do, when they don’t get enough to eat. I said hello and she nodded before quickly looking away.
After I inhale the dust of weathered oak from the wood box, a sneeze escapes. The muffled voices in the
kitchen stop, as if wondering if a bless you is called for.
“Where’s Louisa May?” Mama asks.
“She’s still sleeping,” Amy says.
Mama makes a comment about my laziness. At that moment I’m so riled up from being crammed in this hot, tight corner I fantasize about knocking some of Mama’s spitefulness out of her.
“They found Ruby swinging in an oak tree,” my sister, Amy, continues.
My eyes widen and I lean in closer, not wanting to miss a single detail.
“That poor child,” Mama sighs.
“Her daddy came back from one of his hunting trips and found her,” Amy says. “That’s when he came to get Nathan. Nathan said Mr. Monroe was drunk, too, which didn’t help matters. Melody was asleep in the house and Johnny was nowhere around.”
Nathan is Amy’s husband and one of the calmest human beings alive. He would be a good person to have around in an emergency.
“God rest her soul,” Mama says.
“God rest her soul,” Amy echoes.
“God rest her soul,” I whisper.
Silence overtakes them. Wood dust works its way up my nose and I hold my breath and pinch my nostrils until the urge to sneeze again passes. If Mama catches me ease-dropping, I’ll be cleaning the outhouse all afternoon.
“Nathan said it took two of them to cut her down,” Amy says finally, her voice breaking.
When I close my eyes I can picture Ruby with her sad eyes and muddy feet, swinging by the neck from a tree she probably played in as a little girl. I feel sick at my stomach and have to remind myself to breathe.
“But I haven’t told you the worst of it,” Amy says, her words trailing off.
I press my ear into the narrow crack, certain I’ll be rubbing out a crease later.
The Secret Sense of Wildflower Page 2
