The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

  Before I became ill, colors were vibrant. I saw pink and blue and yellow housed in a white rose petal. After all, white is a compilation of every color.

  Things are faded now. I only see white. Or butter yellow in this case.

  “They mean ‘beloved daughter,’ ” Lily says.

  I startle. I was so intent on carrying Antoinette without dropping her that I didn’t see Lily beside the table.

  My heart shudders. I take several deep breaths, calming only when Antoinette wraps her hand around my little finger. “What are you doing here?” I ask Lily.

  “Can I hold her?” When Lily takes Antoinette, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from me instead of a tiny baby.

  She removes Antoinette’s cap and tosses it on top of her bag, then presses her nose against Antoinette’s scalp.

  “Why aren’t you at school?” I ask. There is a week left in the semester. Lily missed several classes while I was in the hospital, so I know she has to be behind.

  “Couldn’t miss my niece’s homecoming. Besides, I took my exams early.”

  Of course she did. Jealousy swallows me. I should be graduating next Saturday. Instead, I dropped out in the middle of my last semester.

  “Do you think she remembers me?” Lily rocks gently as she talks. Antoinette looks comfortable with her.

  “I’m sure she does,” I say, though I don’t know. The nurses at the NICU know my daughter better than I do.

  Lily starts singing. Not a real song. She strings numbers together to the tune of the alphabet song.

  “You’re home for the summer?” I ask. In spite of the envy I feel as I watch how easily she interacts with my daughter, Lily is my touchstone. I am strong when she is here.

  She curls around Antoinette. Her long dark hair swings forward, screening her face. “I’m taking summer courses this year. I’ll be home for the garden show, but then I’m going back to school.” There’s a slight tremor to her voice, and when she looks up, her eyes are red.

  I am about to ask her what’s wrong, when Mom and Dad rush into the kitchen. Lily hands me Antoinette and slips away.

  “I thought I heard you,” Mom says. “Did you have any problems? Are you okay?” She holds me by the shoulders, examining me as if I might have a heart attack right here in the kitchen. She’s aged in the past two months. Frown lines stretch across her brow.

  I want to reach for Lily, but the worry in Mom’s eyes holds me here. “I’m fine,” I say, though my heart tumbles through my chest, and I see black spots before my eyes.

  “You’re sure?” Dad hides his concern better than Mom, but I see anxiety in the way he holds his hands perfectly still.

  I look around them, trying to see Lily, but she has disappeared. I force a smile and turn back to my parents. “Positive.” I am lying.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, I sit on the edge of my bed, peering into Antoinette’s crib. Is she breathing? I place my hand under her nose. I don’t feel anything. Panic stings my throat. Then I feel a warm puff against my hand, and I relax.

  Lily sleeps in the twin bed closest to the door. I have always slept under the window. Her soft snores fill the room. The familiar sound helps me breathe easier.

  Our room is still a large square box. The walls are still painted faded rose; the floor is still scarred where Lily and I carved our initials into the soft wood beneath our beds. But Antoinette’s crib changes everything.

  I tiptoe across the room and sit on the side of Lily’s bed. I never got to ask her what was bothering her earlier in the day. After Mom and Dad came in, she slipped out to the garden and stayed there until after dinner.

  “Lily?” I nudge her shoulder.

  She groans. “What’s wrong?” she asks, without opening her eyes.

  “Can I get in?” I crawl beneath her covers before she answers. As a child, Lily would slip into my bed at night when she didn’t want to go to school the next day.

  Funny how our roles have reversed.

  She makes room for me, and I roll onto my side so that I can see her face. Lily is tall and dark. The exact opposite of me.

  “Why were you upset earlier?” I ask. Her eyes are still puffy, and I know it’s not from sleep.

  She is fully awake now. “It’s nothing,” she says. “Is Antoinette sleeping?”

  I don’t want to talk about Antoinette. I want to pretend we’re teenagers again, sharing secrets. “I know you. You don’t cry easily.”

  “I cried a lot when you were in the hospital,” she says. She rolls over on her back. Her lips move, and I know she’s counting.

  I cried then too, but I don’t say so. I used to be the one who comforted her. Now that I need her comfort, I don’t know how to act.

  “Seth broke up with me,” she finally says. “That’s why I’m taking summer courses. I can’t be on the farm, knowing he’s next door.”

  Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. Seth and Lily have been together for so long that I think of them as one person. SethandLily. “Why?” She must have misunderstood him.

  “He’s decided to go to seminary. Apparently, I’m a distraction.” She puts a hand over her eyes.

  That doesn’t sound like Seth. I’m about to say so, when a soft bleat comes from Antoinette’s crib. I don’t want to leave Lily, but she shoos me away. “Go check on her.”

  I hesitate. “I’m fine,” Lily says. “Go get her.”

  This time I listen. I lean over Antoinette’s crib. Her eyes are open. I freeze, hoping she’ll go back to sleep. When she doesn’t I say the first thing that pops into my mind. “I’m your mom,” I whisper. “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course she remembers you,” Lily says. She flings back her sheet and sits on the side of her bed. She sleeps in one of Seth’s old white T-shirts. It’s only May, but her legs are already brown.

  Antoinette kicks her feet and waves her hands in front of her face.

  “Have you called him?” I ask as I pick up Antoinette. Her hand wraps around my finger. She has a tight grip for a little girl. As usual, her touch calms me.

  “He won’t answer my calls.” Lily traces the lines between the wood planks with her toe.

  I carry Antoinette to the rocker in the corner of the room and sit down. “I could talk to him.”

  Lily shakes her head. “You have enough on your plate.”

  Antoinette closes her pale blue eyes and nuzzles against me, causing a few drops of milk to leak from my breast.

  Quickly, I lift my shirt. I haven’t been able to breast-feed her yet. My first job as a mother was to carry her for nine months. My second is to feed her. Antoinette is only six weeks old, and already I’ve failed at everything a good mother should do.

  “Your body experienced too much trauma,” the nurse said at my last checkup. “If your milk hasn’t come in yet, it’s not going to.”

  I whisper a prayer. Please, let me get this one thing right.

  Antoinette latches on and begins to suck, but within seconds she curls her fists into tight balls and screams. I want to cry. I squeeze my eyes shut and push my toes against the cold wood floor to get the rocker going. The motion soothes Antoinette, and she settles into a hiccupy sob. “Is there a flower for disappointment?”

  I hadn’t meant to ask the question, so I’m surprised when Lily answers: “Yellow carnations.”

  “But they look so happy.”

  Lily stands and stretches. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  Antoinette opens her mouth wide, but no sound comes out. She’s hungry. I need to go downstairs and warm up a bottle. I push myself up, but when I stand the room swirls.

  I fall back into the rocker. Antoinette wails. “Lily,” I say over Antoinette’s cries. “Can you go downstairs and warm up a bottle?”

  She is out the door and down the hall before I stop speaking. How am I going to get through the summer without her?

  Antoinette still screams. I start rocking again, but this time, the motion doesn’t soothe her.

  �
��Hush. Hush.” I place my lips next to her ear and whisper, but she doesn’t stop.

  “Let me take her.” Mom leans against the doorway, eyes red from lack of sleep.

  I shake my head. I can do this. I can take care of my daughter.

  “Rose,” Mom says in a voice so soft I almost miss it, “let me take her.”

  “But I’m her mother.” I don’t want to let go. I want to get one thing right.

  “Part of being a good mother is learning when to ask for help.” Mom smiles to soften her words. “Not your best quality.”

  She leads me to my bed and eases me onto it. She cradles Antoinette in one arm and me in the other. As Antoinette settles into her grandmother’s arms, blessedly silent, I realize I will never be the kind of mother I want to be.

  Chapter Five

  Lily left Covington before sunrise. After 111 minutes on the road, she reached the outskirts of Redbud, Kentucky. The town was named for the trees that grow wild over the hills, making the air in early spring smell sharp and sweet.

  It had rained last night, and the grass was still wet. The road was narrower than Lily remembered, and as she rounded a bend her tires slipped onto the gravel shoulder. An unwanted thought pushed through her mind: traffic fatalities were the leading cause of death for people ages eight to thirty-four.

  She eased off of the gas pedal and positioned her hands at nine and three o’clock on the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white, but she didn’t loosen her grip. She hunched her shoulders to loosen the knots between them.

  Around her, white-plank fences stood in front of houses tucked into the hills. Puffy white-flowered Bradford pear trees dotted the landscape. The trees were invasive, able to grow anywhere, including the thick Kentucky soil. They spread like the honeysuckle in the woods behind Eden Farms, but Lily liked them. There was something to admire about a species that planted itself anywhere, even if it wasn’t wanted.

  The road widened slightly as it turned into Main Street and ran past Cora’s Italian Restaurant, past the Bakery Barn, and Teelia Todd’s shop, Knitwits. Lily passed the library with its Georgian columns making it look as if it belonged in a grander town. The farmers’ market sat across from the library, taking up an entire block.

  Redbud was known for Eden Farms’ flowers, and in two hours the market would be full of daffodils and hyacinths, the air thick with their scent. Moms in baseball caps would meander through the aisles, towing toddlers behind them.

  On impulse, Lily turned into the lot and parked in front of the Eden Farms’ booth. It still anchored the market the way it had when she was young.

  Teelia Todd’s booth stood across from theirs. She sold hand-spun alpaca yarn. Her husband had died when Lily was in kindergarten, leaving Teelia to raise their son, Deacon, alone. On cool days, Teelia would bring one of her alpacas, Frank, to the market with her. She’d loop his lead line around a beam where he’d nuzzle everyone who passed.

  Lily smiled at the memory as she walked to the Eden Farms’ booth. She ran her fingers over the rough wood planks. The years fell away, and she was sixteen again, sitting on a metal stool, surrounded by cut sunflowers and hydrangeas, fanning herself with a folded price list.

  Rose was supposed to help, but she usually snuck off before the day got too hot. “I’m out of here as soon as I finish school,” she’d say. “Who wants to spend their life pulling weeds and spreading manure?”

  Lily tried to explain the peace she felt sitting in the booth, answering questions about which flowers tolerated the heavy Kentucky soil, or why a blast with the garden hose was the safest way to get rid of Japanese beetles, but Rose never understood.

  Flowers were predictable, like numbers. Black spots on rose leaves indicated a fungus. Prune the damaged leaves, apply a fungicide, and the plant should survive. Brown hosta leaves meant the plant needed more shade or water. Move it to a shady spot or increase the waterings and it would be fine. Plants spoke a language she understood. To those who paid attention, they revealed whether they needed more phosphorous or nitrogen, less water, or a good soaking with the hose.

  A large pickup truck rumbled past. In only minutes, the lot had started to fill with the farmers and artists who had booths at the market. Looking out across the market, she pictured it full. Handmade soaps. Chocolate-dipped strawberries. Hand-harvested honeycomb. Teelia’s booth stuffed with yarn.

  Lily wanted to settle onto the metal stool behind the Eden Farms cash register, but Rose was waiting at home, and although Lily’s heart hammered nervously against her ribs she longed to see her sister.

  A white truck, its bed filled with yellow snapdragons and pansies in rainbow colors, slid into the parking space next to hers. Lily dipped her head, letting her dark hair fall like a screen across her face.

  “You’re early. The market doesn’t open for another two hours,” a man said.

  Even with her back turned, she knew that voice. Her heart raced and her cheeks flushed. She looked up as Seth Hastings stepped out of the truck, his unruly brown hair already streaked with summer gold.

  Seth wasn’t handsome. His cheekbones were too sharp, and his forehead too broad. His dark eyes were framed by thick brows, and he was almost too tall. As a child it had made him look awkward. But now, as Lily studied him, she saw that he had grown into his body.

  She flashed to an image of him at seventeen, lanky in a teenage boy way, supporting his weight on his arms as he rose above her. Despite the crisp breeze, her whole body flushed. She had no idea he was in town.

  “Lily?” He frowned, looking surprised to see her.

  Years ago, talking to Seth had been as natural as breathing. Now, seeing him made her mute, and she started counting. She was on six when he leaned in and hugged her. His arms were stiff, and the hug seemed more out of obligation than anything else, but without thinking she gripped him tightly. His hair still smelled like strawberries and summer.

  “Sorry,” he said. He pulled away and ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to—”

  She wanted to look away but couldn’t. His hair was longer now. It brushed his shoulders, curling up around the edges. The look softened him, lessening the air of seriousness he had as a boy.

  “It’s like time stopped,” he whispered, “and you’re still seventeen.”

  His comment caught her off guard, and she laughed. “You know how to flatter someone, don’t you?” She was thirty years old. Her hair might still be long and brown, her eyes might still be moss green, but when she looked in the mirror, there were tiny lines around her mouth and a melancholy look in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she was younger.

  Seth tilted his head. “No,” he said. “You’re the same. But why are you at the market instead of the house?” He seemed to have recovered from the initial surprise of seeing her, and he took a step back, putting some distance between them.

  That’s when Lily noticed the Eden Farms’ logo—a nodding lily—on his truck door. The same thing was on his green T-shirt. “You’re wearing an Eden Farms’ shirt,” she said, shock coloring her voice.

  “Rose didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t even know you were in town.” She had been so startled at seeing him again that until now she hadn’t wondered why he was here. “Shouldn’t you be heading up a church or off saving the world?”

  “Yeah. That didn’t work out so well.” He shrugged and pulled his hand through his hair again. She recognized the gesture. He was nervous. “Round peg in a square hole and all. They didn’t take my questioning the tenets of the faith as well as you did. I should have been sure of God’s existence before entering seminary instead of hoping seminary would prove his existence to me.” One corner of his mouth quirked up.

  “Did it?” Lily asked.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t figure that out until after I came home and bought into Eden Farms. Spending time with Antoinette helped me realize that he exists, even when I can’t feel his presence.

  “It’s f
unny, I used to think my messed-up life was proof that God didn’t exist. But when I finally found him, it was because of a little girl whose life was more broken than mine had ever been.” He shrugged and smiled.

  A familiar anxiety prickled along Lily’s spine as he spoke of Antoinette. “She sounds special,” she said, resisting the urge to count.

  “She is,” he said. “Between Antoinette and working on the farm, I feel . . . settled. Like I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

  Lily had signed over her share of Eden Farms to Rose years ago and no longer had a say in what happened there. So why did it feel like a betrayal to know someone outside of the family owned part of it?

  An even worse feeling arose. Why hadn’t Seth called her when he left seminary? Going to school had been his reason for ending their relationship. Why didn’t he try to resume it once he was no longer in school?

  She drew the inevitable conclusion: his feelings for her were not as strong as her feelings for him. At the thought, her knees wobbled.

  Stop it, she told herself. Focus on Rose. Coming home is complicated enough without dwelling on the past.

  The pansies in the truck bed caught her eye. Getting her hands dirty always helped her calm down. “Need some help?” She pointed at the flowers.

  Seth raised his eyebrows as if he had expected her to say something else. “Sure,” he said. “We can set these out, and then I’ll ride back to the farm with you.” He paused as if he had misspoke. “That is, if you want me to.”

  Lily took a deep breath and counted to eight. You can handle running into an old boyfriend, she told herself. Seth was just someone she used to know. Nothing more. Besides, seeing Rose again would be easier if she wasn’t alone.

  At her nod, he dropped the tailgate and took a pair of gloves from his back pocket. She shook her head when he offered them to her. “You know what to do?” he asked.

  “I haven’t been gone that long.” She grabbed a flat of yellow pansies. Dirt spilled over the edge, coating her hands. She slid the flat onto a metal rack behind the counter and wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving behind a smear of mud.