The Secret Hum of a Daisy

by Tracy Holczer

  As Mrs. Turner answered another phone call, I watched through the glass of Mr. Flinch’s door and tried to read lips as best I could. Banana charger in the pig sink wind. That was the best I came up with. I smiled at my own weird thoughts.

  The toast popped and Mrs. Turner slathered on something chocolaty. Then she cut a banana in half lengthwise, careful with her long nails, and wrapped the bread around it like a burrito. She pointed to the little crane.

  “I bet this is from Mr. Flinch’s class project. But isn’t it fun to think maybe it’s from a secret admirer? Or that it floated in here, all by itself, to remind me to have a good day? So many possibilities.”

  She stuck her pencil behind her ear and stared off into the distance, looking dreamy.

  “I like your possibilities,” I said, and took a bite. “Yum.”

  “I don’t know much, but I do know that if people ate more toast, there might just be world peace.” She licked her fingers. “World peace, I tell you.”

  • • •

  As I opened my locker, I saw Max in the hall, head down, feet dragging.

  “What’s up, Max? Did you forget your lunch again?”

  He walked toward me and swung his suitcase around so he could lean his elbow on the handle. “No. I’m thinking too much about kittens.”

  “Kittens?”

  “Because I won’t choose anything but an entombment party for my birthday, Mom and Jo are threatening to make it a kitten party. Do you know what the guys will do to me if there are kittens at my party?”

  He seemed so serious for someone who was eight years old. I liked that about him. “I’m sorry, Max,” I offered.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  He walked me to class. When we stopped at the door, I looked at him, really saw him. The way he didn’t go anywhere without his red suitcase or bandages on his hands. How he was completely obsessed with mummies and entombment and no one was listening. He seemed so sad and desperate and it reminded me of me.

  “Maybe I could talk to Jo?”

  “Really?” Max looked hopeful.

  “Sure. But I’m not promising anything. Don’t give up,” I said, just as much for myself as for Max.

  He gave me a tight squeeze around my waist. The bandages on his hands were getting dirty around the edges.

  “Never,” he said.

  • • •

  Jo and Beth still weren’t speaking, and their pesky anger went with us from class to class. Beth and Ginger had taken to wearing matching T-shirts that said things like FORGIVENESS IS THE ANSWER or HOME IS WHERE THE SPLEEN IS. It seemed like a dig at Jo, them not including her in their T-shirt plans, and Jo was sulky all morning, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her until art.

  “Your grandma told me you got in a fight when I came by on Saturday,” Jo said as I sat down at our table. She was writing notes in her documentary binder. “Then she came over on Sunday for coffee and said you were at your old house for a couple of days.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call or anything.”

  She fidgeted in her seat and then looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening. Beth and Ginger’s table was fairly close. She whispered, “I know Sheriff Bergum put you in a jail cell.”

  I expected to be angry. It was my business. Not hers or anyone else’s. But I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I’ll never tell,” she went on. “I only heard bits and pieces anyway because they sent me out of the room and kept their voices low. I put a glass to the wall, but I guess that only works in movies.”

  Beth and Ginger were practically leaning sideways, they were listening so hard.

  I whispered as quietly as I could, “Does anyone else know?”

  “I don’t think so. But Ginger’s mom is the worst gossip in town.” She glared over my shoulder at Ginger but didn’t raise her voice. “I honestly think she’s a witch or something because she always knows things she shouldn’t.”

  Just then, Beth got up from her table and went over to her box frame on the wall. She took out the PEACE stone and set her label maker inside.

  As Beth came back toward us, Jo said, “How will you ever survive without it?”

  Instead of answering, Beth set the PEACE stone in front of Jo. Before Jo had a chance to react, Beth went back to her own stool and sat down.

  “For how can friends be torn asunder while peace is at their beck and call?” Ginger said, one arm reaching toward the ceiling as though asking the question of God himself.

  Archer and Stubbie clapped. Ginger stood up and took a bow, her peanut hair falling in a cascade to the floor. She swept it back in a flourish.

  Jo flicked Beth’s PEACE rock across the table, where it tumbled to a stop in front of me.

  “I think she’s trying to apologize,” I whispered.

  “Yeah. But it won’t change anything,” Jo said, looking even gloomier than before.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” I said to Jo, whispering again, thinking I could distract her from her misery.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think I could look over your research on the Bear River Park and my mom’s fountain?”

  She lit up. “I can bring it by today after school.”

  “How about we meet at the fountain?” I said.

  “How about we take the horses out? I’ve been wanting to take you riding. There are some horse trails in the park.”

  Just then, a spitball landed right between us. Jo and I both looked over at Stubbie and Archer’s table. Stubbie was busy pretending to be innocent while Archer took his artist’s mannequin—one of those weird little wooden doll things that you could bend into different positions—and waved its hand at us. I smiled and he turned pink.

  “Okay, class, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The other half of the self-portrait.”

  Mrs. Snickels plopped a brown grocery bag filled with goodies on our table, then she set down a couple of empty paper lunch sacks beside it. Once she was finished distributing bags at each table, she went to her desk and clipped her newly fashioned portrait to the whiteboard. Her fingers were covered with smears of blue and green paint.

  “It’s called a split-faced self-portrait. For obvious reasons, I hope,” Mrs. Snickels said.

  I recognized her portrait from my first day of school. Only now, the other half was filled with collage. She’d painted a tree with a swing, drawn in different shapes and colors, and glued down words from magazines and newspapers, scattering them around like confetti. It made me think about how my own brain must look, with words floating around all the time. How my father’s and grandfather’s brains must have looked the same way. It made me smile to think of it.

  “These will be due next week, so over the next couple of days, I want you to consider what you might put on the abstract side. Really consider it. And then start to compile. Phrases that your dad always says. A snatch of fabric. Hopes for the future. When you’re done compiling, compose your abstract, and . . . ?”

  “Don’t glue it down!” everyone said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we aren’t perfect!”

  “Right. So don’t glue down the mistakes. Give yourself room to change your mind. To reevaluate. Inside the bag you’ll find items that might give you inspiration. But I want you to work on these at home, and don’t show anyone. That’s what the smaller bags are for. Load them up with whatever you like. I have a contest in mind for the finished product.”

  Jo blurted, “Is this the Observation of the Month?”

  “Yes!”

  The class broke out in a case of murmurs, and Jo told me that every month, Mrs. Snickels put together some kind of contest to see if they’d been paying attention to the world. There were prizes.

  When the bell rang, she came by our table. “Grace. Before yo
u go, can I have a word? I’ll give you a pass.”

  As the kids filed out, Mrs. Snickels sat on Jo’s stool and I looked at her across the pockmarked and paint-stained table, her black hair pulled up into a short, messy ponytail. She had a file folder and a brown paper package.

  “So how are you doing on the year-end project? Any ideas?”

  “I’m a little lost, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

  She nodded and pushed the package toward me.

  “It’s a sketchpad. I noticed you didn’t have one. For your sketching. And your poetry.”

  I shook my head. There was no way she could know about my words. I’d never showed anyone but Mama, Mrs. Greene, and Lacey. Plus they’d only been living in my head for the last few weeks.

  “Th-thank you,” I finally stuttered. “How did you know?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she took a paper-sized piece of poster board out of the file and set it in front of me, my bumpy ten-year-old’s signature scrawled on the bottom left corner. My breath caught. The last time I’d seen the collage was in fifth grade for an art contest, two moves before Mrs. Greene. There was a blue ribbon taped to the back. First place.

  “How did you get this?”

  “It was tucked into a big envelope with some other stuff when you transferred here, so it must have gotten overlooked before now.”

  I picked it up, my fourth-grade friend Pippy flashing to mind. How she’d collect everyone’s plastic bags at lunch and then cut them up with these tiny blunt-ended scissors she brought each day. Said she was afraid some bird would find their way into the plastic and not find their way out again. She was working for a good cause, so I joined her with my own pair of scissors. We’d see who could make the most interesting shape out of the cut-up plastic. One day she made a profile of Abraham Lincoln and ended up giving it to the assistant principal because everyone knew about Mr. Hobbs and how he liked to reenact the Civil War. He hung it in his office, where it was probably still hanging today.

  When Mama and I moved on from Stockton to Lodi, I sat alone at lunch, again, saving my plastic bags, missing Pippy. After I had a pile, I cut them into strips, braided them into ropes and hot-glued them into the shape of a fanciful house. Then I glued all manner of things to the house: sequins, buttons, Easter basket grass, bottle caps, peacock feathers sprouting from the roof. The finishing touch was a poem I’d written inside the front door.

  I am like the little avocado seed

  Mama likes to settle

  into a shallow bowl of water

  on the windowsill

  in the sunlight.

  The roots grow and grow,

  down and around

  and up along the underside of the pit,

  safe from the world.

  You’d think after moving fourteen times, I’d have it down by then. But once in a while, my roots would sneak into the ground without my noticing. It wasn’t until we left that I’d feel the ripping sadness as they pulled free.

  Mrs. Snickels pointed to the poem on the collage. “There you are. Tucked right inside this poem.”

  I didn’t even realize until right then that I’d been lost. Not just since Mama died, but before then too. If I was honest, I left a little piece of myself behind in every place we’d ever lived, felt so much pressure that I had to worry about things when Mama didn’t. I should have said something a long time before I did instead of keeping myself wrapped up in my little glass bowl. Maybe things would have turned out different if I had.

  “It must have been hard going to all those different schools.”

  I picked at my thumbnail. “It was.”

  “Listen, I’d like to set the collage in your box. This way, I don’t have to look at an empty frame anymore. It’s murder on my need for orderliness.”

  I took in her cluttered desk and matching shelves behind it. There was a smudge of red paint on her cheekbone and all over her blue striped button-down shirt. She had a tiny white feather in her hair.

  “I’d like to keep it,” I said.

  “When you’re good and ready, then.”

  I stared at all the box frames on the wall. My eyes went right to Archer’s. He had a sketch of Ladle Boy doing yoga. Stubbie’s held a magazine called Old Fishing Lures and Tackle. Ginger had taken out her Wicked Playbill and put in a flyer for Shakespeare in the Park at Bear River Park. Jo’s still had the tiny director’s chair.

  I looked at my box frame with my name underneath. I hadn’t given much thought to the emptiness of it until just now. But when I searched my mind for what might belong there, I came up blank.

  Mrs. Snickels caught me looking at my frame. She walked over to her desk and scrounged around, coming up with a pinecone. She handed it to me.

  “Sometimes we just need to fill the hollow spaces with what’s handy until we’re ready for what’s true.”

  I took the pinecone and set it in the frame, feeling a small rush of warmth. What was empty just seconds ago wasn’t empty anymore, and I wished everything could be that easy.

  24

  The Other

  Side

  At lunch I called Grandma from Mr. Flinch’s office to make sure it was okay to go to the Brannigans for horseback riding after school, and Jo called her mom. I could hear Mrs. Brannigan’s happy exclamations through the phone even though Jo was standing a good two feet away. Jo smiled at me and gave a thumbs-up. It was nice to be wanted.

  After school the Brannigan and Son truck pulled up with Mrs. Brannigan waving like a crazy person. Her hair was the color of eggshells, almost white it was so blond, and it blew in the breeze of her open window. I hadn’t noticed before how young she looked, and so much like Jo, down to the turned-up nose and small ears except rounder.

  “I’m so glad you’re coming over today!” Mrs. Brannigan gushed. “Mr. Brannigan is so glad too!”

  “Thanks for having me,” I said.

  I climbed into the back of the cab with Max. He looked at me meaningfully, as though we shared a secret. Which, I supposed, we did. I understood his strange need for an entombment party in a way his family didn’t, and somehow, that felt like a secret. Weird as it was.

  After we pulled away from the curb, Mrs. Brannigan looked at Max through the rearview mirror and asked a series of questions. How was your day? How did you do on your report? Did you make up with Spencer? When he didn’t answer, her forehead crinkled with frustration. Max sat with his bandaged arms tightly wrapped around his suitcase and stared out the window.

  “Still ignoring me, huh?” Mrs. Brannigan said.

  Silence.

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to keep talking until you talk back.” Then she went on about how some people can just make their own yellow food and wash their own yellow sheets.

  Jo said, “Mom! Please. Can’t you wait until after Grace leaves to be . . . crazy?”

  “I have a good mind not to let you go fishing today,” Mrs. Brannigan said to Max, ignoring Jo altogether.

  Max perked right up. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I would. The least you can do is give one-word answers. Yes. No. Fine. I’ll even throw some in a hat and you can pick one out.”

  Jo turned around in her seat. “Stubbie takes Max fishing every other week if the weather’s good.” Then she said to her mom, “You can’t take fishing away!”

  “Stubbie Wilkins?” I said.

  “The one and only.”

  Jo, Max, and Mrs. Brannigan continued to bicker. I took a deep breath and let everything wash over me. The way you can ask for help and people will actually give it. The surprising feeling of belonging as I sat in the middle of a squabbling family when I’d just left Mrs. Greene’s feeling the opposite. The idea of riding a horse for the very first time.

  • • •

  Mrs. Brannigan turned into her driveway just as Stubbie got
out of an old blue Ford Bronco. Before I could get out of the car, Max pressed something into my hand. A mummy in a tiny sarcophagus. “Thanks for listening to me before,” he said and then climbed out.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brannigan,” Stubbie said as he walked up to us.

  “Hello, Warren. Be back in an hour or so, would you? No later than an hour and a half. Max has some extra reading to do tonight.”

  “Mom!” Max said, pleading.

  All she had to do was put both hands on her hips and glare. Without a word, Max turned around and headed toward the back of the house, head hanging, kicking at rocks.

  Stubbie gave Jo a quick sideways glance. “Hi, Jo. Grace.”

  “Hey, Stubbie,” Jo said.

  He ran both hands through his spikey red hair and then shoved them in his back pockets. “Well, um . . . it’s a good day for fishing.”

  “It sure is. Shouldn’t you go after my brother? He’s getting away.”

  “Right!” He said, and hurried off after Max, turning to wave just before disappearing behind the house.

  I looked at Jo and smiled. “He totally likes you.”

  “No. He’s just a goofball.”

  “Well, yeah. But he totally likes you.”

  Jo puffed up a little. “Do you think so?”

  “I think so.”

  “Ugh. All I see when I look at him is his preschool self putting a worm down my pants.”

  “Admit it. He makes you laugh.”

  “I’ll never admit anything.”

  Mrs. Brannigan had already gone inside and as we came through the door, she was standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf lined with containers of every shape and size. There were beautiful pottery jars and a small metal box with a dragonfly lid. There were Kerr jam jars, too, like the one that held my origami cranes, only these were filled with slips of paper.

  She reached into one of the Kerrs and pulled one out. After reading it, she held it close to her heart and then shoved it into the pocket of her orange sweater.

  “Come on, girls, let me pack you some snacks.”

  “Already done,” Mr. Brannigan said as he came around the corner with a portable cooler.