The Secret Sense of Wildflower (6 page)

“Well, whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here,” Daniel says.

I smile, remembering how much Daniel reminds me of Daddy sometimes.

“I can’t believe I’m thirteen,” I say finally. “It’s the oldest I’ve ever been.”

Daniel chuckles, but stops himself when he sees I am being serious.

I spit on my fingers to wipe a streak of mud from my shoes. Truth is I’m not so sure I want to share what I’ve been thinking. But when I look over at Daniel I know I can trust him to understand.

“Daddy had all these plans for my thirteenth birthday, on account of me becoming a teenager,” I say. “He promised to take me on the train to Nashville and visit the state capital.”

Daniel pauses. “You still miss him don’t you,” he says.

“More than anything,” I say softly.

“He was a good man,” Daniel says, his voice low, matching mine. “I miss him, too.”

I tell myself not to cry, that I’m being ridiculous, and the voice in my head sounds a lot like Mama. I choke back the tears that want to pour out over the front of my dress, over Pumpkin, then all the way past the graveyard, and out to the river to the sea.

Daniel puts his arm around me. The scent of sweat and sawdust reminds me even more of what I’m missing. Tears stream from my eyes. I bury my head in the skirt of the dress that Meg handed down to me after it was Amy’s before it was Jo’s. We McAllisters usually don’t let anybody see us cry, even family, unless something really bad happens.

“It’s okay,” Daniel says. “There’s nobody here to see but God and some crickets.”

For the next few minutes I make a friend of my misery imagining how my life could have been different: Daddy here celebrating my 13th birthday with me, playing his banjo on the front porch with everybody dancing and laughing; Daddy looking over at me, smiling, like he’s the luckiest man alive to have me as a daughter. Then afterwards we would catch a ride to Rocky Bluff and take the train to Nashville.

These thoughts serve no purpose but to torture me. Meanwhile, Daniel has his arm around me, waiting for the unexpected cloudburst of tears to stop. It feels good to have a man’s arm around me, even if he isn’t the man I really want.

“Hey you two,” Jo says, coming around the corner of the house. She hesitates when she sees me crying, but then keeps coming. Every time I see Jo she gets more beautiful, like those girls in magazines advertising Ivory soap.

“Am I interrupting?” she asks Daniel, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ve just been reminiscing,” he says.

“Do you need more time?” Jo says, stroking my hair.

“No,” I say.

I wipe my face on the underside of my dress, and tell myself to snap out of it, that I am not a little girl any more. Again, the voice sounds more like mama’s than mine, but it serves its purpose.

“Let’s get back to the party,” I say, standing up to leave. When I move, Pumpkin runs behind the old washing machine.

Jo hugs me gently, like I am a flower whose blossom might collapse if touched. Jo is my favorite sister, even though I love them all.

“We’ve got another surprise for you,” she says, smiling at Daniel.

“What is it?” I ask. I prefer good news to bad any day.

“We want to tell everybody all at once,” Daniel says. He takes Jo’s hand and the three of us follow the path back around the house lined with the rock Daddy and I carried from the river.

Mama is still in her rocking chair with pieces of quilt stretched between her and Aunt Sadie. Nathan balances on the porch rail picking his teeth with a twig he’s whittled down, while Amy pours more tea for everybody. Max is asleep at Aunt Sadie’s feet. He is the dog version of an old man and doesn’t trouble himself with much except watching out for Aunt Sadie.

“It’s about time you showed up,” Mama says to me. She looks up briefly from her stitching. “What kind of girl disappears from her own party?”

“A beautiful girl,” Aunt Sadie says, as if trying to make up for the softness Mama lacks since Daddy died.

I sit on the porch steps and refuse to let Mama ruin my birthday. Torches are lit now that it’s getting dark.

“Jo and I have an announcement to make,” Daniel says, standing in the middle of the dirt yard.

Amy grins and looks over at Jo like she already knows what it is, and Meg wears that moony look she gets whenever she reads romance stories. Everybody seems to know what Daniel is going to say except me.

“What is it?” I ask, the suspense nudging me from all directions.

“I’m going to have a baby,” Jo smiles.

I should have guessed this is what she was going to say. She is more radiant than I’ve ever seen her.

Everybody converges on Jo and Daniel, laughing and hugging Jo and patting Daniel on the back. Meanwhile, I sit frozen, like somebody has nailed my backside to the porch steps. Unexpected things throw me these days, even if they are good things.

“If it’s a boy we’re going to name him Joseph, after Daddy,” Jo says. “And if it’s a girl, we’ll call her Penelope.”

Mama rises from her rocker, puts the quilt aside and embraces Jo and Daniel. Penelope is Mama’s given name, even though Daddy always called her Nell. Only Sadie calls her Nell now, along with a few people at church. I keep forgetting she has a name besides “Mama.”

Aunt Sadie tip-toes into the yard, her arms raised high in the air and starts to dance. Max barks excitedly. Aunt Sadie has been known to dance whenever the spirit moves her. Preacher hates it when the spirit comes over Aunt Sadie in church. Sadie’s dancing always sparks a sermon from Preacher about how the “heathens” are taking over the world. To me, it looks like God would want people to dance and celebrate life like that.

The celebration continues around me. I try my best to get excited about Daniel and Jo’s news but all I can think about is Daddy missing this moment, and how proud he’d be about having his first grandchild.

“You’re going to be an aunt,” Daniel says to me, a big grin on his face.

“Congratulations,” I say, smiling back. I like the idea of being an aunt, like Aunt Sadie. If Daniel and Jo have a boy, I’ll teach him how to use a slingshot and maybe play the banjo. If it is a girl, I’ll do my best to teach her how to stay clear of Johnny Monroe.

Jo walks over and gives me another hug. “We thought this would make your thirteenth birthday even more special,” she says.

I manage a smile, not wanting to get any of my sadness on the baby. What bothers me most is the thought that life just keeps on going, even when somebody you love dies. Another McAllister is going to be born into the world, one Daddy will never know.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Well, if it isn’t my best friend in the whole wide world, Wildflower McAllister,” Mary Jane says when she first sees me again. I can tell she’s trying to sound more grown up than she was two months ago when I last saw her.

I always forget how red Mary Jane’s hair is until she comes home. She is the only person in Katy’s Ridge with this distinction. Neither of her parents have red hair, which raises the eyebrows of the old ladies at church when they don’t have anything better to gossip about. Not everybody remembers that Mary Jane’s grandmother’s hair used to be red, before it turned solid gray.

“It’s about time you got home,” I say. “Katy’s Ridge is the most boring place on earth without you.”

Mary Jane and I are always trying to outdo each other by talking grand.

“I thought I’d keel over and die without you!” Mary Jane says.

I roll my eyes, calling a halt to the contest.

Mary Jane also has more freckles on her face than all the people in Katy’s Ridge combined. One day last year we started counting them during recess and got up to 84 before we had to go back inside. People expect her to have a fiery temper, too, but in all the years I’ve known her I’ve never seen even a hint of one. If anything, I should have red hair instead of her.

We spend the whole morning in Mary Jane’s room and she shows me her new school clothes. Preacher says coveting is a sin. Coveting has to do with wanting what other people have, like their land, their wives or mules. I figure this goes for new dresses, too, even though I’d much prefer a new pair of overalls.

Amy makes everything we McAllister’s wear and she makes them sturdy—dresses and pants alike. But when it comes to the day-to-day living of life, dresses just aren’t practical. Bare legs attract all sorts of annoying things like cuts, scrapes and bug bites. Not to mention that every time I take a notion to swing in grade school, boys try to sneak a peek at my underpants.

Meg says high school boy’s eyes wander more to the top part of a girl than the bottom and since I don’t have much to show in that department, I should be fine. At least I’ve had practice with Johnny Monroe.

“Look at this one,” Mary Jane says. She takes a dress out of a J.C. Penney box and drapes it across her arm like it is a mink stole.

“That must have cost a fortune,” I say.

“How about two fortunes,” Mary Jane says.

I lie across Mary Jane’s bed, finding it impossible not to covet the J.C. Penney dress before me. It is green plaid and looks like something Katherine Hepburn might wear. I promise myself that the next time I visit the graveyard I will send God, by way of Daddy, my apologies for this latest weakness of mine.

“Grandma also bought me these,” Mary Jane says.

I gasp when Mary Jane brings out a brand new box of colored pencils and a pad of drawing paper. I have never in my life owned a box of colored pencils. At best, I’ve inherited broken crayon stubs, previously used by Jo, Amy, and Meg, kept in an old cigar box. Temptation grows stronger and I feel a sin coming on. Not coveting Mary Jane’s new art supplies is much harder than not coveting her dresses and seems an unfair challenge for God to throw at me.

Thou shalt not covet thy friend’s art supplies,
may very well be the hardest commandment of all.

Think of all the pictures those colored pencils could make, with their perfectly sharpened tips. This temptation, as Preacher would be happy to point out, puts me right in my very own Garden of Eden talking to the snake. A snake that has every intention of getting me to bite into that apple. Truth be told, I would not hesitate to take a hefty bite out of that wicked fruit if promised art supplies. A fact, of which, I am not particularly proud.

“So what have you been doing all summer?” Mary Jane asks.

“Staying clear of Johnny Monroe, mainly,” I say.

“He’s disgusting,” she says. She uses her hands to smooth some of the creases in the dress.

“Disgusting just about sums it up,” I say.

“None of the boys in Katy’s Ridge are even worth looking at,” she says for about the hundredth time. “However, Little Rock is full of cute boys.”

I listen for the next thirty minutes to Mary Jane describe different boys in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her report is so titillating, I start to doze off.

“So have you been to the graveyard lately?” she asks, at the end of her litany.

Her question startles me awake.

“Nearly every day,” I say.

Mary Jane is the only person in the world who knows why visiting Daddy is important to me: I’m afraid I’ll forget him. The longer he’s dead, the more I play moving pictures of him in my mind, anchoring his memory in place.

Just this morning I remembered how when I was a little girl I’d pretend to shave with him. I played that memory over and over in my mind like I was memorizing a poem for school, except this poem wasn’t words but images. I’d use a stick as a razor, imitating him while he stood on the front porch. During the warmer months he always shaved squinting into a tiny mirror tacked up on the house. A basin of soapy water collected the tiny whiskers until he threw it out into the ivy underneath the pine tree beside the porch. He told me that whiskers would grow like pole beans under that pine, and for years I believed him, but they never did.

“I think I’ll wear this one the first day back to school,” Mary Jane says. She holds up a yellow dress with a green belt. She admires it, her hands on her hips. Unlike me, Mary Jane has filled out instead of up.

“I got a new dress for my birthday,” I say. “Amy sewed it.”

“Amy’s the best seamstress in Katy’s Ridge,” she says. “Anything she makes is much nicer than these store bought things.”

Mary Jane probably knows that if she ever rubs it in about how much more she has than me, we wouldn’t be friends. Her grandmother in Little Rock is rich and both my grandmothers are dead. My grandmother on my mother’s side died before I was born and the one from my father’s side died when I was five. Not to mention that with Daddy gone we barely have any money at all. The government sends Mama a little, but the rest she makes up by selling things in Rocky Bluff like quilts and canned jams and jellies.

Most of the time, I can be happy about Mary Jane’s good fortune. But lately, since my birthday, at least, I’ve felt sorry for myself and thought more about what I don’t have instead of what I do.

“Well, hello Louisa May. Did you have a nice summer?” Mary Jane’s mother doesn’t look at me but admires the dresses spread out across the room.