Some Wildflower In My Heart

by Jamie Langston Turner

  Neither of us spoke for a brief interval, and then Birdie said, “Nothing would please me more—and I mean this—than for you and Thomas to visit our church some Sunday. And while I’m on the subject, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I pray for it every day, and I mean to keep on. I’d give anything, Margaret, for you to turn your heart to God, and I’m not ever going to give up hoping you will. From the little bit you’ve told me about your background, I know you’ve got some things festering in your heart, and I pray about that, too. But I want you to know something—I’m going to love you till I die, no matter what, even if you never step foot inside my church.” She turned to her right and directed her gaze out the passenger window. In her lap her small hands were clasped tightly, her knuckles peaked like tiny whitecaps.

  The next week I told Birdie that I would like to start the organ lessons as soon as it could be arranged, and on February 25 I found myself seated for the first time at the organ console in the sanctuary of the Church of the Open Door in Derby. I had not been inside a church for over thirty-three years. By a stroke of ill fate, the elementary organ books that Birdie had ordered had not yet arrived, so the only printed music available at my first lesson was the hymnbook, from which Birdie selected four hymns for our use.

  It struck me as grossly ironic that my first hearing of these hymns in over three decades was by my own hands, fumbling at the keys of an unfamiliar instrument in the very place that I had vowed never to enter. The experience of my first organ lesson was bittersweet. I was powerfully drawn to the instrument itself, though sorely vexed by the environment and the music. As would be expected, Birdie heaped upon me enthusiastic acclamation for my first halting performance, declaring me once again “a natural,” and in subsequent lessons I began to exercise with greater artistic sensitivity the touch essential for proficiency on the organ. Following our lessons I would generally remain at the church for an hour, sometimes longer, to practice.

  The following Tuesday, February 28, was Birdie’s birthday. Merle Cameron, the secretary at Emma Weldy, had circulated the news to the classrooms, and all day the children showered Birdie with cards and handmade trifles. Many of the teachers also favored her with small gifts—candles, decorative tins, note paper, and the like. Algeria gave her a shiny billfold of candy apple red, and Francine gave her a box of Russell Stover chocolates.

  It is my belief that a gift, while it may please the recipient mightily, nevertheless reveals the preferences of the giver as much as, or perhaps more than, those of the receiver. I have no doubt that Algeria imagined herself the proud possessor of a red billfold and that Francine coveted the chocolates for her own enjoyment.

  I gave much thought to a gift for Birdie’s birthday, and in so doing was guided in my selection by my aforementioned theory of gift giving. Remembering the Christmas gift that she had given to me, it came to me that her motive for buying the set of dishes, though unquestionably reflective of her good heart, perhaps also testified of a desire on her part. For this reason, my gift to Birdie on February 28 was a set of Morning Glory dinnerware, which she opened that afternoon when I accompanied her to her home for my Tuesday piano lesson. Mickey had left a house key under the mat at the back door, and Thomas had taken the gift over during the day and set it on the kitchen table. From her response upon seeing the dishes, one might have thought that I had deeded to her a diamond mine.

  When her gasping and exclaiming had begun to subside, I said to her, “You bought them yourself, you know,” at which she chortled briefly, almost mindlessly, before breaking off to look at me questioningly. She tilted her head to the side and contorted her face as if having ingested a bitter herb.

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re throwing my words back in my face?” she said, shaking a finger at me. “Now, Margaret, if you mean what I think you mean, I’m going to just—”

  Pitching my voice higher, I said, “Oh, yes, you did. I just put aside the money I would have left on your piano after every lesson and saved it all up until I found something that I thought you would like. You do like them, do you not?” Together we laughed as she threw her arms about me. Since Christmas I had left off payment for my piano lessons, an act which Birdie took, I believe, as a sign that our friendship had been sealed.

  As she walked me to my car after my lesson that afternoon, thanking me repeatedly for the set of dishes, a thought came to me, and when she paused during her redundant expressions of gratitude, I said to her, “I have not heard you say how old you are today. Are you sensitive about your age?”

  “Oh, my lands, no!” she replied, laughing. “I’m fifty-two. Although now that I think about it, I don’t remember you ever telling your age, either.” This was an example of something that I had noted with great frequency; that is, Birdie’s penchant for turning the topic of a conversation from herself to another.

  “I am fifty,” I said.

  “Oh, your year of jubilee!” she cried.

  “Yes, well, when it is past,” I said, “I shall try to recover from the immense thrill of it all.”

  Birdie laughed and shook her head. “There you go making fun of me again.” We were standing beside my Ford by now.

  I knew of the ancient Levitical law of the land regarding the fiftieth year to which she was referring, of course: the proclaiming of liberty to bondmen, the restoring of property, the ceasing from planting and harvesting. My grandfather had been curiously fond of the book of Leviticus and had drilled me at length concerning the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, and so forth. Even today I can recite the instructions for the cleansing of a leprous house, the baking of shewbread, and the stoning of a blasphemer.

  “Now that I think about it, however,” I said, “if I understand the law correctly, the year of jubilee actually commenced at the close of the forty-ninth year and extended through the end of the fiftieth year. Because we number our birthdays following each year of life, therefore, my fiftieth year concluded on the day before my fiftieth birthday. My year of jubilee, you see, is past, and my next will not begin until the day after my ninety-ninth birthday. I shall have to be more watchful when that one arrives so that I may celebrate appropriately.”

  Birdie lifted her face and laughed gaily as if sharing a joke with the gray February sky. “I can’t keep up with you!” she said when her laughter died. “You can be a real tease sometimes, you know it?” Her smile fading, she grew reflective. “I don’t care what you say, Margaret. You’re a different person from when I first met you back in August, and I think you know it even if you won’t admit it.” I did not reply but opened my car door. “Don’t you think it’s interesting,” Birdie continued, “that God wanted his people to be happy and even wrote laws requiring them to take rests and have special feasts?”

  I could not stop the words which sprang from my mouth. “It appears to me that God put a great deal more thought into providing for the suffering of his creatures than he did for their rejoicing.”

  Seated behind the steering wheel, I inserted my key into the ignition and turned it. The door was still open, however, and Birdie, no trace of playfulness upon her face now, put her hands on her knees and leaned toward me, raising the volume of her words above the engine and speaking distinctly. “We can’t do anything about suffering, Margaret,” she said. “It’s been around forever, and we’re all going to have our share. Just because somebody’s had a hard life doesn’t mean they’ve got a right to take it out on other people—or on God, either. Especially on God. He knows all about it. It’s part of his big plan somehow—and don’t ask me how.”

  Her words seemed to be pouring forth with increased velocity, and I was aware that I was staring at her in unveiled surprise. “We’re all responsible for how we act, Margaret,” she went on, “and there are a million ways to be mean. We can be mean in big ways by killing people or stealing or cheating, or we can be mean in little ways by being rude and snapping at everybody. A murderer is guilty in a big way, but all of us are guilty when we wrap
ourselves up in our own little world and don’t think about how we treat others.”

  No immediate reply came to my mind in response to this amazing and disjointed retort, and I suddenly felt mentally enfeebled. I could not begin to construct an argument to attack her logic. I suppose her boldness struck me with greater force than did her actual words. I had never before experienced difficulty in tearing apart mere words and divesting them of their sting, of separating the veneer of style from the underlying content, of exposing fallacious reasoning. Yet for the moment I was speechless. I, the great upholder of judgment for all miscreants, could find no words for my own defense. For all of my adult life I had granted myself clemency, but here stood Birdie Freeman pointing the finger of blame at me. For there could be no mistake that she was referring to me, that she judged me “mean in little ways.”

  I depressed the accelerator and raced the engine of my car, then reached out to close the door, thus constraining Birdie to take a step backward. I did not lower my window but merely nodded good-bye to her as I put my car into gear.

  “Thank you again for my wonderful present!” she called as I backed away. “I love you, Margaret!” And I heard her say again, “Oh, I do love you, Margaret!”

  Once I had turned my car around and begun to move down the long driveway, I looked into my rearview mirror and saw her childlike figure still standing at the end of the sidewalk. What a nondescript person God had chosen for his emissary, I thought. What a small, light vessel for the vanguard of his heavenly fleet, what an obscure tinderbox for his fires of revival, what a frail repairer of the breach.

  Strangely, I recalled at that moment a line from a book that I had read three times as a young child: Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. The words were those of the Cowardly Lion, who exclaimed over the fact that “such small animals as mice have saved my life.”

  And even as these thoughts crowded in upon my mind, I heard, as if spoken in my ear, the words of Gideon from the Bible: “Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” And I remembered that God had delivered the hosts of the Midianites into Gideon’s hands.

  29

  A Cloud of Witnesses

  In mid-March Birdie took leave of her senses and patronized a beauty shop, the very one of which she had spoken to me scarcely four weeks earlier. It was operated by Dottie Puckett, a fellow church member, who lived in a blue house on Highway 11.

  When Birdie arrived at school one Monday morning with her hair cut and curled tightly about her face, I wanted to weep. It was not so much that the new style was unbecoming, for, in truth, I doubt that any hairstyle could have offset the limitations of Birdie’s homely face. It was simply the advent of change that I opposed. I had come to love her, and my regard for her included to some extent her plainness: her unfashionable homemade or secondhand clothing, her unpretentious ways, her unadorned face, her simple plaits of hair wound atop her head. Had she appeared one day wearing elaborate makeup or a stylish and expensive garment, I would have objected as strenuously as I did to the martyrdom of her hair. I was unwilling to let go any part of her.

  Upon Birdie’s arrival that morning, Algeria appeared to pause only momentarily, eyeing her rather casually, in fact, with merely the slightest lifting of her eyebrows. Francine, on the other hand, responded with a great flappable show of emotion, nearly swooning with what she called “the shock of it all.” She employed her favorite phrase, “something else,” six times during her hypercharged display—I counted them. It was difficult to ascertain whether Francine approved of the new hairstyle or deemed it a failure, for her remarks possessed no coherence; indeed, few of them made little sense whatsoever, formed as they were of random bits of meaningless verbiage strung together. “Well, I never!” “What in the world…?” “You just up and did it!” “Why, you little…!” “If that doesn’t beat all!” “How did you ever…?” “You’re just something else, you know it?” and on and on.

  When Birdie at last approached me, it was with an air of shyness. I had turned away from the spectacle of Francine’s babbling and was opening two large boxes of paper goods that had been delivered the previous Friday and left beside my office door.

  “Well, good morning, Margaret,” I heard her say behind me.

  “Hello,” I answered without turning to face her.

  “I guess you heard Francine carrying on about my new hairdo,” she said, stooping beside me to gather several packages of paper napkins from the box. “You want these in the pantry with the others I guess?”

  “Yes,” I said, answering both questions at once.

  She helped me empty the box and store the goods, neither of us speaking for several minutes. When we were finished, she carried the cardboard boxes to the delivery entrance and set them down, where Ed Silvester would pick them up later and dispose of them.

  As if it were an ordinary day, Birdie then turned to me and said, “Did we decide to cut those apples into wedges for lunch or just give each child a whole apple like we did last time? I know we were talking about it yesterday before I left. They do waste a lot when they get a whole apple.”

  I gave her a long look, beginning with her white Keds and moving up past her white socks, her white skirt with its gathered waist, her white collarless blouse, and the silver locket around her neck.

  By now I had learned of the contents of the locket: a curl of silver-white hair, which at Birdie’s request the undertaker had clipped from the head of Mickey’s deceased mother at a funeral home in Tuscaloosa fifteen years earlier. Of Mickey’s mother Birdie had said simply, “I always thought of her as my real mother.” The locket had been a wedding gift to Birdie from her mother-in-law. It had been in the Freeman family for five generations. Mickey had spoken of his mother on a number of occasions, identifying her as the one from whom he had inherited his inclination for high jinks. “She used to crouch down by the window and do a great imitation of jungle birds whenever somebody walked by on the sidewalk in front of our house,” he had said. “She got the biggest kick out of seeing people look up in the big sycamore tree in the front yard.” In addition, she could yodel, crack her knuckles, whistle like a man, juggle dinner knives, and balance a broom on her nose.

  At last I brought myself to draw my eyes upward past the locket to Birdie’s face, and making a great effort at objectivity, I concluded after a few moments of silent study that the new hairstyle had the contradictory effect of making her appear both younger and older. I had seen toddlers with the same profusion of curls. To be truthful, the permanent itself had been artfully administered, without the seared and frizzed results one so often associates with such a procedure. The gray in her hair was more noticeable, however, resulting in an incongruous union of youthful curls and fading color. With her short hair, she put me in mind of a picture I had seen of Eudora Welty, whose hair at the time had been cropped and curled and whose horselike teeth precluded her being spoken of as a southern beauty, though the legacy of Miss Welty’s writing certainly puts to rest any doubts concerning her interior loveliness.

  “Wedges,” I said at length.

  Birdie smiled and replied pleasantly. “Well, now, I was about to ask you if the cat had your tongue. All right, then,” she said, making ready to leave. “I think I’ll wait a little while on that since we don’t want them all turning brown before we serve them.”

  “Why did you tamper with your hair?” I asked, and she wheeled around with a mingled expression of amusement and condolence.

  “Oh, Margaret, honey, is that what’s the matter?” she said tenderly, advancing toward me and laying her hand upon mine. She smiled up at me with motherly caution as if choosing and weighing her words to soothe a child. “It’s just hair,” she said at last. “It doesn’t change anything about me, except maybe my looks a little bit, and I can’t go very far up or down in that department.”

  She smiled and placed my hand between both of hers. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now,” she said, “
and Mickey told me to just go ahead and try it instead of talking about it. So I did. I went to my friend who has a shop in her house and told her what I wanted. To tell you the truth, ever since I met you I’ve wished I could wear my hair like yours. Of course, it turned out shorter and a whole lot curlier than yours, and I couldn’t hold a candle to you anyway, but I guess I was just ready for a change. Who knows? I might get tired of it after a spell and let it get long again.” She patted my hand and then stepped back once again. “Now, then, I’ve got to go get my hairnet on and get busy!” I watched her cross the kitchen, calling out to Algeria, “Do I need to get more syrup packets for the waffles?”

  As March progressed, Birdie and I, in the company of Mickey and Thomas, spent many hours together in a variety of activities Birdie referred to as “our little excursions.” To three of these, all of which occurred on successive Saturdays, I shall devote the remainder of the chapter.

  The first was on March 18. Birdie and Mickey had joined Thomas and me for supper at our duplex. Since his success with the turkey at Thanksgiving, Thomas had begun to revive his forsaken talent at the grill, and on this particular night he had grilled to perfection four porterhouse steaks. Following the early meal, which we had finished by half past five, Thomas suggested taking a walk before eating dessert. We wore our jackets, for the temperature was in the low fifties.

  Four blocks from our duplex is a poorly kept neighborhood park with a dirt baseball field. As we neared the park, Birdie and I walking together behind Mickey and Thomas, we saw a group of boys fanned out over the field under the supervision of a burly man who was barking orders from home plate. He was wielding a bat in his right hand, using it to point to various players as he flung out corrections. The boys looked to be between the ages of eight and ten.