Surprise Lily

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  “Fine. Everybody thought Lotus was beautiful and talented. And they thought it was cool that we have flower names because she saved the farm. And the teacher praised me for talking about important times like the hippie era, the Vietnam War, and the farm crisis. But she did think it was weird the family tree didn’t have any men on it.”

  Ama laughed, a deep head-thrown-back laugh. “We only had so much room on the paper,” she said.

  “I know.” Rose laughed too as if she got the joke, though she wasn’t sure she did.

  Ama had the windows lowered, and the wind blowing Rose’s hair felt nice. She slid down in the seat and shut her eyes. The report was behind her. She felt free to just be.

  She knew every hill, curve, and pothole on the way home. She figured she’d traveled the six miles between home and school approximately three thousand times. Although her eyes were closed, she knew when they passed the Youngs’ because she smelled their lilacs. She knew when they were about to turn onto Goldenrod Lane because of the bump-bump-bump right before Ama braked for the turn. She waited for the dip in the road in front of the bright blue house where the goats lived.

  “There’s the car,” Ama said, braking.

  Rose opened her eyes. The car was half in the ditch where Ama had left it.

  “I have jumpers in the back. If it will start, can you drive it home?”

  Rose sat up. “Me?”

  “You drove the harvest truck a little last fall,” Ama reminded her. “And you drove the tractor through the gate just last week.”

  Ama always made Rose feel as if she could do anything.

  “I need to get back to the hayfield. Now they’re saying rain on Friday. Besides, it’s only two miles. And we’ll probably be the only people on the road.”

  A lot could go wrong in two miles. What if she ran over the beagle that always charged into the road, barking and snarling and trying to bite the tires?

  Maybe the car wouldn’t start.

  But it did.

  Ama disconnected the jumper cables, slammed the hood, and tossed the cables in the back of the truck.

  “I’ll turn the car around for you and point it the right way, then all you need to do is follow.”

  When Rose was in the driver’s seat, boosted by her book bag so she could see out the windshield and reach the pedals, she gripped the steering wheel. Ama squeezed Rose’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll creep along. Keep about four car lengths between us.”

  What if somebody came up behind them and honked? Rose would feel stupid.

  Ama turned on the car’s emergency flashers. “If anybody gets behind us, which they probably won’t, they’ll know we have to drive slow. Now put your foot on the brake and put the car in drive.”

  Rose knew how because she had watched Ama do it hundreds of times. Rose squeezed the gearshift and steering wheel to stop her hands from trembling. When she moved the gearshift from P to D, the car felt like a charging rhino—something too big and wild and dangerous for her to control. She clenched her jaw.

  Rose and her cousin Maddy had a Brave Girls Club and made each other do crazy stunts, but nothing like this.

  Rose’s leg shook as she eased off the brake.

  They crawled along the narrow gravel road crowded by fencerows. When they passed the house with the beagle, he lay on the porch. He stood up and looked at them, then sank back down. They weren’t going fast enough to chase.

  On the first curve, Rose didn’t slow down quite enough and left wet, sweaty handprints on the steering wheel when she was finally going straight again.

  Before the next big curve, Ama’s arm came out the window, warning Rose to start slowing sooner. But Rose didn’t turn the wheel enough and the car dipped into the ditch. Her cheeks flamed as weeds scraped along the underside. When she steered the car out of the ditch, Ama flashed a thumbs-up.

  Only one turn left.

  And Rose did it fine. Ama tapped her horn in a little cheer.

  When they could see the house straight ahead, Ama speeded up, and so did Rose.

  Finally parked in the driveway, Ama got out of the truck and strode back to the car.

  Rose got out on shaking legs. Her heart was way up between her ears and trying to jump out.

  “Homeric!” Ama said, high-fiving Rose.

  Ama hardly ever said that.

  “Well done!” Ama squeezed Rose’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head when she got out of the car. “You were a brave kid.”

  Myrtle had leapt out of the truck and was kissing Rose’s fingers and wagging her tail. Giddy from driving on the road, Rose had a great idea. “May I move today?”

  Moving day was always the last day of school, and there were still two weeks left.

  Ama’s eyebrows rose, but she said, “I don’t see why not. Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Yes.” Rose grinned. There was really only one place left to go and Ama knew it.

  “But I can’t help you until later,” Ama said. “I have to finish cutting.”

  “I know. I’ll get started, and we can finish when you come in.”

  Ama gave her another hug. “Thanks for helping with the car.” She walked away, then turned back. “If I’m not in by dusk, would you check the chickens’ feed and water?”

  “Sure.”

  Rose gathered up her book bag and went inside. She’d already slept in three of the upstairs bedrooms. She thought she was ready for the last one.

  Until she started kindergarten, her bedroom had been downstairs, across the hall from Ama’s—so close Rose could hear Ama’s nice, cozy snore. That tiny bedroom had been like a baby’s room. Like it was for someone who might need her mommy or grandma in the night. And Rose didn’t after she started kindergarten. And what was the point of a big house if you didn’t live in all of it?

  Ama and her sisters had slept upstairs when they were girls. The backsides of the closet doors still showed the horizontal marks that measured their heights. So far, Rose had slept in Annie’s, Mona’s, and Phoebe’s rooms. It felt right, after all that had happened today, for Rose to move into the room that been first Harriet Jane’s, then Ama’s.

  She knew every alcove and hidey-hole of the upstairs. Every squeaky board and listening post. Ama almost never came up here. It was Rose’s world. When she was little and still played with dolls, she’d spread them out among the bedrooms and visited them as if going house to house.

  Some of the dolls had belonged to the Greats, or to Ama and her sisters, or to Rose’s mother, Iris. The ones from the Greats had glass heads and limbs, and they smelled musty. Some had hard, shiny plastic faces and hair. Ama’s dolls talked in annoying voices when you pulled strings on their backs. Iris’s dolls were weird.

  Rose had found them in a closet, in a box labeled IRIS. When Rose asked Ama if Iris had actually played with them, Ama had shrugged, looking like she didn’t know what to say. She explained that Iris and Grandma Clara had made the dolls when Iris was young. They weren’t cuddly like Rose’s own dolls, who liked to be wrapped in blankets and rocked and fed and changed when they were wet. But her mother’s dolls looked as if they had stories inside them. Rose had sensed that Ama wanted to say Why don’t you put those back where you found them, Rose? But Ama didn’t say that, so Rose had introduced them to her other dolls when Ama wasn’t around.

  Not long after, Rose had decided she was too old for dolls. Except for her mother’s, she stored them in the empty wardrobe at the end of the hall. That seemed more respectful than just cramming them in the attic. The wardrobe was very old and very beautiful and the drawers were painted a glossy red on the inside. Rose looked in on the dolls in their retirement home now and then.

  She kept her mother’s dolls in her glass-fronted bookcase. She wasn’t sure why. She remembered seeing Iris only once in her whole life. It was one of her first memories
and not very clear. But it didn’t matter because she didn’t care a thing about her mother. Life with Ama was perfect.

  In her old room, she threw open the windows. Although the hayfield was beyond the barn, the smell of freshly mown hay rode in on the breeze.

  She changed out of the hippie costume and into shorts and a T-shirt. After putting her head under the faucet to wash out the fake waves, she brushed her hair back into her usual ponytail, glad to look like herself again.

  Standing in the middle of her new room, she planned where things would go. This room was the biggest of the upstairs bedrooms. The south window gave her a view across the field to the cemetery, where she could see Great-great-grandma Belle’s angel. Beyond the cemetery was a woods. Through the west windows, she could see a long way across a field to another woods. She loved the old rose-patterned wallpaper and the wood floors aged almost to chocolate.

  One of the Greats had been a lawyer. His legal bookcase, with its glass-fronted shelves, was perfect for storing Rose’s art supplies and her mother’s dolls. She unloaded everything into a box. The bookcase came apart into five sections, and Rose could carry each one by herself. In her new room, she put the bookcase back together.

  Her art supplies were pages she ripped out of catalogues and magazines, used wrapping paper, decorative paper sacks. Antique beads and buttons saved by the Greats. Feathers, rocks, and leaves she picked up. But she also had paints, brushes, markers, and origami folding tools. Glue, scissors, rulers, and books. She put those things on the top two shelves.

  On the bottom shelf, she arranged Iris’s dolls, studying them as she handled them. Her mother might have been about Rose’s own age when she and Grandma Clara made them. Maybe her mother and Grandma Clara had loved each other a lot, just like Rose and Ama loved each other.

  The antique wooden wheels of the camelback trunk squeaked and squealed as Rose rolled it across the hall. A girl named Dora Hoffmann had brought the trunk from Germany, and it came into this house when Great-grandpa Hoffmann married Great-grandma Clara. Inside, along with Rose’s things, were a framed picture of the family Dora had left behind in Düsseldorf and a long-handled silver spoon, tarnished but fancy.

  Then, tilting and turning it to get it through the doors, Rose slid her comfy chair across the hall and into her new room to sit in front of the south window. By turning her desk on its side, she was able to scoot it through the doors too. Then came her desk chair, bulletin board, and lamp—which was all of the furniture except her bed. Ama would have to help with that. Rose decided not to move the big chest of drawers because the closet in her new room had shelves for her clothes.

  But before she did anything else, she should take care of Peanutbutter and the chickens.

  * * *

  She wasn’t surprised to see the Wyandottes outside the pen because they were escape artists. Noisy, always-clucking little escape artists. Last February, when the farm had been frozen and brown and quiet and there wasn’t a lot to do except feed the cattle and keep their water open, she and Ama had gone chicken shopping. Chickens for a few eggs, Ama said. Chickens for fun.

  They’d bought two rainbow pullets, which laid pretty pastel eggs; two Barred Rocks, which made Rose think of salt and pepper shakers; two Sienna Stars, which made her think of the sunset; two Golden Laced Wyandottes, which were so beautiful they didn’t even look real; and two California Whites, which Ama said were sensible white chickens for an otherwise crazy flock. And they bought a fancy little chicken house, which her Cousin Maddy called the Palace.

  Rose scooped up the Wyandottes and put them in the pen. Then she checked the feeder and filled the water tank.

  When she got to the barn, she heard the tractor in the distance. She couldn’t see it because it was over the rise. But the hayfield lay flat on the ground except for the little patch close to the barn. The smell of new-mown hay hung in the air.

  Rose mixed the formula at the sink in the shop and took it to the pen. Peanutbutter frisked around, bumping the bottle before she began to suck with a blissful look in her eyes.

  “You’re such a good girl,” Rose said, rubbing under her chin. “Such a pretty girl.”

  When the bottle was empty, Rose tied up Peanutbutter. Although she’d been doing it morning and night for a while, it made her stomach feel funny every time. Ama said it didn’t hurt Peanutbutter one bit, although Peanutbutter always fought the rope at first. When she settled down, Rose brushed her and talked to her.

  She left the calf tied while she cleaned out the straw and replaced it with fresh. She weighed calf starter into the food bucket, washed the water pail, and refilled it. Then she squeezed an oral gel into Peanutbutter’s mouth because she was drinking city water while she was in the pen. The vet said the chemicals in the water killed bacteria cows need in their digestive system, and the gel had probiotics in it.

  Leaving Peanutbutter tied, Rose did her record-keeping, writing in the binder that hung outside the stall door. At the fair, her records about her calf would be the most important part of the judging. The records would show Peanutbutter’s weight gain, what Rose had fed her the first ninety days, what Rose had fed her the next ninety days, how much it had cost to feed and care for her, what equipment Rose had used, how many times the vet had visited and what he’d done. Last week, he’d come to treat the best bull for pinkeye, and while he was there, he’d taken a look at Peanutbutter and said she was a fine little heifer. Rose had written that in the binder. A fine little heifer. The words made her feel proud.

  The sound of the tractor came closer. Rose hoped Ama had finished all she wanted to get done.

  Inside the stall, Peanutbutter was standing quietly. Rose cuddled her and unhooked the rope, setting her free to gallop around the pen.

  “See you tomorrow,” Rose said. “Bright and early.”

  She and Ama and Myrtle walked to the house together. The shadows were long and the dropping sun stretched pink fingers across the sky.

  “Did you finish?” Rose said.

  “Yes. It’s a great first cutting.” Ama sounded tired and happy.

  * * *

  After dinner, when it was fully dark and the chickens had gone to roost, Ama and Myrtle went out to shut the henhouse door and Rose went upstairs.

  Ama came up before long, Myrtle at her heels. When she saw what Rose had done, she said, “Wow! Looks like you don’t need much help.”

  “Just the bed.”

  They moved the mattress and springs, then took the bed apart and carried the frame, headboard, and footboard into Rose’s new room.

  Rose held the pieces of the bed frame in place while Ama tightened the bolts. Ama’s hands were always banged up from farmwork, but they felt as soft as Myrtle’s ears when Ama trimmed Rose’s bangs and evened up the ragged ends of her ponytail.

  “So why are you moving early?” Ama asked.

  Ama said bragging made a person as boring as a fencepost. But still. “I did drive the car home.” Rose broke out in a huge smile. “And I think that means I might be mature enough to move into your old room.” And despite nearly dying of stage fright, she’d given a good oral report. Her hands had shaken so much she’d had to put the note cards down, but the memorized words had poured back into her head.

  When the springs and mattress were seated on the bed frame, Ama said, “There. That’s done.” She looked around. “When we hung this wallpaper, I was fifteen, and these roses were bright red.” She laughed. “See me now. And see these faded roses. They’re barely even pink.”

  “But they’re still pretty,” Rose said. Ama was pretty too. She had been an official beauty queen.

  “I’ll leave you to finish,” Ama said.

  Ama went downstairs, Myrtle following at her heels. Myrtle loved Rose, but Myrtle was a work dog, and Ama was the person who understood what work needed to be done.

  Rose made her bed and rehung her shadow boxe
s in the new room. Night bugs tapped against the screens as she worked. There were three shadow boxes. Her favorite was the Bottle Calf. She always capitalized him in her head because he was meant to capture the spirit of all the calves whose mamas couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them, so Ama and Rose had to. Over the years, bottle calves had come in all colors—black, cream, reddish, brownish. One had looked pink in the right light. One was patterned like a jigsaw puzzle. The Bottle Calf in the shadow box was folded out of brown paper and she hoped he looked both needy and feisty, which bottle calves almost always were. And bottle calves had sweet faces and eyes that made you love them even though they were a ton of trouble. She hoped she’d captured that.

  Another was of her and Ama and Myrtle walking toward the barn on a summer day. And one was of the night sky showing the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and the bright polestar at the tip of the Little Dipper’s handle. A tiny shadowy figure, who Rose intended to be herself, looked up, trying to find the polestar.

  When the shadow boxes were hung in a row, she stowed her shorts, jeans, shirts, socks, pajamas, and panties on the shelves in the closet. She didn’t have bras yet, though her cousin Maddy did.

  Rose unpacked her schoolwork, putting the visuals from her report in a folder and labeling it ORAL REPORT, 4TH GRADE, and placed it in the trunk along with other important papers. The only things she kept out were the photo of Lotus and the family tree.

  Rose pinned them to her bulletin board. Then, in the lamplight, she turned slowly, taking in her new space. On the north wall were her desk, bookcase, and bulletin board. On the west wall were two big windows with the camelback trunk between them. On the south was another large window with Rose’s comfy chair in front of it. On the east were two doors, one to the closet and one to the hall. In the empty space of the east wall were the shadow boxes. And in the center of the room was Rose’s bed.