The Secret Sense of Wildflower (5 page)

According to Preacher, God is real big on forgiveness, especially for us lowly sinners like Meg who has a fondness for romance novels. With that in mind, I decide to forgive Meg, too, though I’m not about to give Preacher credit for it.

I close my eyes and pray for Meg to find someone to love soon so she will quit reading romances and go to bed at a decent hour. She pretends to be happy that Jo and Amy got married last spring, but I know she’s jealous and wants someone of her own.

The house is quiet. While she’s reading, Meg always keeps one eye on the door in case Mama comes in so she can throw her book under the covers. But Mama has gone to bed early with a headache. A headache she probably blames on me.

I think about Daddy resting in peace on the hillside, the moonlight dancing with the breeze through the weeping willow tree.

“Goodnight, Daddy,” I whisper.

Sleep well, Wildflower,
he whispers back.

CHAPTER FOUR

On my thirteenth birthday I have cramps so bad I can barely stand. This is my fourth monthly and I am still getting used to the whole thing. Growing up with older sisters has its advantages. It wasn’t a mystery for me. When it happened, Mama gave me two cotton pads she had sewn together out of leftover quilt pieces. One I wear inside my underpants. The other I use as a spare when I wash the soiled one out in the evenings. Mama made each of us different colored pads so we could tell them apart. Mine are white, with pieces of light blue running through. With all these girls and Mama, there are times when the back clothesline will have a whole bunch of pads hanging on it, like flags from different countries.

“Come on, Wildflower, open your presents,” Daniel says. He motions for me to sit on the porch and everybody else gathers around.

We’re all full of Mama’s chicken and dumplings she made me for my birthday dinner and are moving kind of slow. Jo baked a cake that we will dig into after presents.

Meg hands me a small package wrapped in paper from the Sunday funnies and some twine. I open it and find a comb and mirror that all fit together in a little leather pouch from the Woolworth store. I thank her and give her a hug. I love the gifts she’s given me since she started working there.

Amy and Nathan’s package is much bigger and contains a new dress to wear to church. It is red with a small white daisy pattern. It also has two big pockets on the front because Amy knows I like collecting things.

“Thanks, Amy,” I say.

“I know you like red,” Amy says, “and daisies are also wildflowers, just like your name.”

I appreciate how thoughtful her gift is and tell her so. Amy sews better than anybody in Katy’s Ridge and a lot of women pay her to make them things they see in the Sears & Roebuck catalog. The extra money really helps out since Nathan’s crops depend on how good the weather is and it isn’t always good.

“Here’s a little something extra,” Nathan says, hitching up his pants for the hundredth time. He hands me a corncob pipe and everybody laughs. “You’re old enough now to start up smoking any day,” Nathan adds.

I laugh, too, though I’m not feeling that festive.

But then Mama chimes in, “She’d better not ever smoke,” and all the laughter stops.

Next to give presents are Daniel and Jo. Daniel hands me a carved wooden box he whittled that has a small wooden cat inside. Both are beautiful and I thank him and Jo for such a perfect gift.

“My turn,” Aunt Sadie says. She hands me a present wrapped in fabric with wildflowers stitched on front that is beautiful enough to be the gift itself. Inside is a little book with blank paper in it to write down my pondering thoughts. Only Aunt Sadie would think of something like that. She also brought me some herbs for my cramps, without me even asking; like she had the secret sense that I needed them.

Sadie gives me a big hug and whispers in my ear, “He’s looking down on you right now, sweetheart, and he’s very proud.

Her words bring tears to my eyes that I brush away as quick as they land on my cheeks.

Aunt Sadie is Daddy’s older sister by sixteen years. She took care of him back in Ireland when he was a baby, while their parents worked. She often tells me that I remind her of herself as a girl. She says I have gumption. I’m not sure what ‘gumption’ is but I take it as a compliment.

Aunt Sadie likes telling the story of how she came to America on her own when she turned twenty-two. Daddy came two years later after Grandpa McAllister died. I asked her once why she decided to settle in Katy’s Ridge because it seems to me there would have been much more exciting places to live. She said the Tennessee mountains reminded her of home.

None of my grandparents are still alive, but Aunt Sadie comes closest to being a grandmother to me. She has solid white hair and sometimes uses a walking stick with a tree carved on the side. Not that she is the least bit feeble. It just helps to steady her when she climbs the mountain looking for the plants she needs for her remedies, especially the ginseng, hiding out on damp, shady hillsides. Her dog, Max, always goes with her and carries a leather pouch on his back for collecting the plants and roots Sadie finds. Max and I are friends, too, and whenever I go over to Sadie’s house he lets me pick cockleburs out of his fur and brush him.

Today, Max is lying on the end of the porch sleeping. Every now and again he opens his eyes to make sure Sadie is where he left her.

Everybody makes a big deal of my birthday, probably because they know how hard it is to not have Daddy here. Next month marks the one-year-anniversary of his death. Earlier that day at the cemetery, I told God that I’d settle for no presents for the rest of my life if Daddy could just come home one more time. As a result, I keep glancing down the hill, half-expecting to see him coming home from work, whistling and walking with his familiar gait.

Jo goes inside and in a few seconds brings out the cake she made. We will eat it on the front porch so the crumbs won’t get everywhere in the house. Everybody knows how Mama fusses over the house and nobody wants to make her mad.

“Make a wish,” Jo says. She lights a single candle in the center of the cake, the same candle we all use for birthdays, kept in the kitchen drawer with the twine and matches.

While everyone watches, I exaggerate a big breath and blow out the candle. Then everybody claps and I glance down the hill to see if my wish has come true. My shoulders drop with the knowledge that I probably won’t get my wish of seeing Daddy again until the day I don’t have birthdays anymore.

In the meantime, Daniel and Nathan eat big slices of cake with their hands. They make noises like it’s the best they’ve ever tasted. The rest of us have forks and plates, but make the same sounds. It is vanilla cake with vanilla frosting and coconut resting on top like the first snow of winter. The taste is heavenly, which makes me wonder if there is food in heaven. The next time I sit with Daddy in the graveyard I’ll have to ask.

After we finish our cake, Mama asks, “So when is Mary Jane coming home, Louisa May?”

I’ve told her twice already, but it isn’t like her to make conversation with me, so I figure, along with the chicken and dumplings, this must be part of my birthday present.

“She won’t be home till the first of September,” I say.

Mary Jane and I have been inseparable since we were babies and our mother’s laid us on a blanket together in Pritchard’s Meadow on the 4th of July.

“Oh, that’s right,” she says. “I think you told me that before.”

With a glance, I suggest she ask me something else, since she had already asked the previous question, but our conversation stops there. If Daddy were here he would joke her out of her grumpiness and have her smiling and hanging on his arm in no time. Wishing for a miracle, I glance down the hill again.

Mary Jane always misses my August birthday because every summer she goes to Little Rock, Arkansas, on a Greyhound bus. If not for Mary Jane I’d be friendless. A year ago, I used to have more friends, but then after Daddy died they acted like they didn’t know what to say to me. Mountain people are superstitious, especially about accidents. I think they stay away so they won’t get any bad luck on them.

Sometimes Mary Jane goes with me to the graveyard to visit Daddy. She has a couple of uncles there and a grandfather. Whenever we visit she says hello to them, but mostly she just goes to keep me company. Most other girls I know get squeamish about graveyards and tombstones, but not Mary Jane. Dead people don’t bother her.

While my family sits on the front porch looking full and content, Amy gets Nathan a second slice of cake. Before the night is over he’ll probably get thirds and fourths. Jo and Daniel hold hands in the porch swing that Daddy made. Mama and Aunt Sadie pull out the quilt they’ve been working on since last Christmas, made out of the scraps of our old clothes. They are good at making something beautiful out of scraps.

As I lean against the porch, I break a stick into knuckle-sized pieces and corral an ant carrying a piece of coconut across the porch rail. The ant keeps hitting against the wall I’ve created and I feel bad for making its life harder. But in a way it feels like what God has done to me by letting my father die.

Forgetting all about my promise to be tough when I turn thirteen, I start to tear up again. It occurs to me that all this emotion might be from having my monthly, given Jo cries at the sight of a hummingbird when she has hers.

After excusing myself, I meander around back to give Pumpkin some of my cake crumbs. I have to shoo off the other cats. From the ice box, I steal her a tiny bit of cream, hoping mama won’t miss it.
Cream is not to be wasted on cats,
she has said more than once.

Pumpkin and I sit on the back porch and watch the last rays of sunlight stream through the trees. It will be dark soon. Lightning bugs blink in the forest like tiny stars come to earth.

My thoughts keep me company as Pumpkin finishes off the last of the cream and begins an extensive cleaning ritual. Thirteen feels old to me. I’ll graduate from grade school this year. Not everybody who goes to our grade school goes to high school, too. But Daddy wanted all of us McAllisters to get our high school diplomas so I’ll be going to Rocky Bluff High School next year. Meg was the smartest in her class and even gave the commencement speech last June, so it is doubly hard to understand her fascination for tawdry novels.

The grade school in Katy’s Ridge had a total of twelve students of various ages. We meet in one big room with a coal stove in the center. A big pile of coal sits out back and we kids take turns going to get a piece to throw in the stove in the winter. Beyond the coal pile we have a field where we play kickball every day after lunch. In contrast, Rocky Bluff High School has nearly a hundred students and more classrooms than I’ve taken the time to count.

To get to the high school from Katy’s Ridge, I will have to walk a mile down the river road to catch an old Rocky Bluff city bus that comes only a little ways into Katy’s Ridge. After the weather gets cold, Meg says the buses are freezing and you can see your breath out in front of you. Then you hardly warm up before you have to get back on the cold bus again and head home. On the coldest winter days I plan to wear my overalls under my dress and take them off once I get to school.

From my pocket, I take out Mary Jane’s letter that came yesterday. She will be home next week. I can’t wait to show her the things I got for my birthday, and tell her about Ruby Monroe, and about hearing something in the woods behind our house. In her letter she said her grandmother bought her some dresses at the J.C. Penney store in downtown Little Rock. Mary Jane sent me pictures she tore out of the J.C. Penney catalog and I look at them again, thinking they must look like something Shirley Temple wears. I have never owned a store bought dress in my life.

“There you are,” Daniel says. He walks around the side of the house and sits next to me on the back porch. “Why’d you leave the party?”

I shrug and Daniel nods like I’ve given a perfectly good reason. For several seconds the two of us share a duet of silence. Then I notice my pad from yesterday hanging on the clothesline and think,
God in Heaven!
I flush hot from something so private being all exposed. But Daniel doesn’t even notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t let on.

Pumpkin weaves between our legs. Daniel is the only other human, besides me, he will get close to.

“Thanks for the carving,” I say. I pull the wooden cat out of my pocket and admire it for his benefit. I left the wooden box on the porch with my other things.

“I thought you’d like it,” he says. “The wood came from the mill. It’s oak. It’ll last forever.” He smiles and looks proud that he’s made me happy. Two years before, Daddy got Daniel a job at the sawmill. They used to walk there together every morning.

We sit quietly, watching Pumpkin spear the last piece of coconut on the plate with one claw. He nibbles it down.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Daniel finally says.

Maybe my thoughts aren’t even worth a penny, I don’t know. But I feel like asking for at least a quarter. Grief, I decide, comes at great expense. I shrug again and ponder how the sadness of losing somebody you love never goes away. It just fades over the years like the pattern on a dress that’s been passed down.