The Secret Sense of Wildflower (3 page)

Mama rests her chin in her hand while Meg shares the latest gossip. Tonight’s news consists of Marcy Trevor’s new dentures that don’t fit, even after paying a fancy dentist in Nashville, three hours away. Mama’s eyebrows arch, as if hearing about Marcy’s troubles gives her a break from her own.

While Mama soaks in the idle chatter, I sneak a third piece of cornbread, missing her speech on gluttony and how I won’t always be skinny if I keep eating anything I want. Riled up, Mama can sound just like Preacher.

“Don’t you have something to do?” Mama says to me. She doesn’t wait for an answer.

I clear the table, a job I inherited after Amy left home. It is a chore I don’t mind because I can let my mind wander while standing at the bucket in the kitchen sink. My thoughts travel old paths as well as new ones, depending on what we are studying in school or what I am reading. Pondering comes natural to me. I can sit and be entertained by my thoughts for enormous amounts of time. Mama calls this just being lazy.

I scrape the leftovers into a rusty pie tin to take out back to feed the stray cats that stay under our house. Daddy started this tradition, but Mama doesn’t like it. She looks over at me and sighs.

“Your daddy was just too soft hearted with those cats,” she says. “He would have attracted every stray cat in the state of Tennessee, if he’d had his way about it.”

“Yes, Mama,” I say. She says the same thing every night.

“You’re lucky I don’t drown them all,” she says.

This threat is new and she looks at me as if to register the level of my shock. But I don’t let my face tell her anything.

Not all the cats decide to stay, but the ones that do, run from Mama every time they see her. Even cats can sense when they’re not wanted.

A new one showed up two days before, who is small and orange and doesn’t mind being touched. On account of his color, I call him Pumpkin. I go outside and sit on the steps. Pumpkin finishes the little bits of food the other cats let him have and weaves between my ankles. As I rub his whiskers, he soaks up my attention with a raspy purr.

Even though I am full of Mama’s cornbread and beans, I have a deep ache in my stomach when I think about Daddy being in the graveyard instead of sitting on the back porch with me. Evenings are the worst. It’s the time of day when we all sat outside together. I lean against the porch post and close my eyes searching my memory for how his voice sounded.

A second later something rustles in the woods and I jump. The cats scatter, taking shelter under the house. Fixing my eyes on the woods, I wait for the next sound. Sometimes wild dogs roam the mountains, or raccoons come to eat what I’ve put out for the cats. I wrap my sweater closer and get that creepy feeling like when Johnny Monroe watches me.

“Who’s out there?” I yell. My voice sounds shaky, so I stand to make up for it.

A million crickets answer my question.

Daddy’s shotgun leans next to the back door, but Mama keeps the shells in her dresser drawer, so I’m not sure it would do much good to get it. By the time I got the gun loaded I could be dead and in a grave right next to his.

“Are you all right out here?” Mama says from behind the screen door. I’ve never been so glad to see her in all my life, but don’t tell her that.

Even though I am nearly a woman myself, I am still a little girl in some ways. In the last year, I get scared by things that never used to scare me. It’s as if my courage got buried along with Daddy.

“I heard something,” I say, looking out into the woods.

Mama stands there for a long time, looking where I point.

“Come on inside,” she says finally. The screen door needs grease and squeaks loudly as she opens it. After I pass, she latches it and the regular door, too, something I’ve never seen her do. Daniel put in the locks after Daddy died, but we’ve never once used them until now.

“What is it, Mama?” Meg asks. She yawns, as if realizing how long her day has already been.

“Louisa May heard something out back,” Mama says.

She closes the short drapes over the kitchen sink, then walks through the living room and latches the front door, too. I like that she is taking me seriously for a change, but it also spooks me.

“Isn’t it about time for you to get ready for bed?” Mama asks.

I glance at the clock and it’s at least an hour before bed, so I figure she just wants me out of her hair. I leave Mama and Meg in the kitchen and sit in the rocker in the living room near the wood stove Daddy bought from the Sears & Roebuck catalog when I was seven. Daddy’s banjo—missing one string he never got to replace—leans against the wall nearby. He used to sing country songs that told stories about people. His voice was deep and rich and it wrapped around you like one of Mama’s softest quilts.

In the shadows, I pick up Daddy’s old banjo and return to the rocker where he used to sit and play. I wrap his memory around me to try to feel safe. I am quiet, so Meg and Mama won’t hear, and pretend to pick at some of the strings while I hum the words of
Down in the valley, valley so low
. At that moment the ache I felt earlier in my stomach moves to my chest.
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

After I finish the song I get up from the rocking chair, being careful not to let it creak on the wooden floor. So Mama won’t know I’ve touched it, I place Daddy’s banjo back in its spot where the dust keeps the shape of it. It would be just like her to put it away if she knew I wanted to keep it out.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” Mama asks.

Speak of the devil,
I start to say, but then think better of it.

Most of the things Mama says to me are either orders or questions, neither of which ever require an answer. I shrug and shuffle to the bedroom I share with Meg, who has already sunk into a loud snore. I get undressed and put on my nightgown and try not to think about the noise I heard earlier in the woods behind the house. When I walk down the hall toward Mama’s room, I find her sitting on the edge of the bed brushing her hair, which reaches almost to her waist. Her hair is much prettier down, instead of up in the tight bun she wears during the day.

“Can I sleep with you?” I ask her. She looks at me surprised, like when I told her I was changing my name to Wildflower.

For a split second her face softens, but then she says, “Don’t be silly, Louisa May. You’re grown up now.”

Her words sting like a bee stepped on barefooted in a patch of clover, and I want to kick myself for even asking. In my weakness, I imagined Mama opening the covers wide on Daddy’s side of the bed while I get in.

Instead, she says, “Let me get at some of those tangles, Louisa May.” She motions me over so she can brush my hair.

She starts and I say, “Ouch! Mama, stop!”

“Be still,” she tells me, “you’re just making my job harder.”

While she attacks the tangles in my hair, I refuse to give her the pleasure of knowing how bad she’s hurting me. Mama knows I’m tender-headed and I know she knows it. But it’s as though I need her to touch me more than I need my pride, so I let her do it. In the meantime, I silently curse the tears that squeeze out of my eyes and promise myself that I’ll be tougher once I turn thirteen.

After a while, Mama gives up and declares my tangles a battle she cannot win. Our eyes meet briefly before she turns away, as if the tangled emotions between us are also a losing battle.

I return to the bed I share with Meg. Lying there in the dark, I count backwards from a hundred by threes and try not to think about what’s lurking in the woods or the fact that my father will never be coming home. Or my deepest, darkest, secret wish: that Mama had died instead of him.

CHAPTER TWO

The news of Ruby Monroe’s death crackles through Katy’s Ridge like an unexpected thunderstorm. The next morning, I overhear my sister Amy telling Mama about it in the kitchen. She must have come by early because she is already there when I wake up. Even though I am only days away from my thirteenth birthday, they never include me in their grownup conversations and sometimes I wonder if they ever will.

Squeezed behind the wood box full of kindling in the parlor, I slap at a cobweb that escaped Mama’s dust rag. This was one of my many hiding places as a girl that can now barely accommodate me.

It is hot, as August always is, even early in the morning. A slender crack runs the length of the wall between the kitchen and the parlor, and I press my ear close to the wall in order to hear. It takes a few seconds to make out the words, but I tune them in like Daddy used to tune in stations on our old radio.

“Ruby hung herself,” Amy says, her voice not much louder than a whisper.

I cover my mouth and swallow a gasp. I’ve heard of criminals getting hung, but I’ve never known anybody to do it to themselves. Especially somebody I just saw at Sweeny’s store two days before. Ruby stood in front of the counter barefooted, her feet muddy, counting out pennies to Mr. Sweeny to buy a sack of flour. For all I knew she didn’t even own shoes. Her stomach stuck out, like poor people’s do, when they don’t get enough to eat. I said hello and she nodded before quickly looking away.

After I inhale the dust of weathered oak from the wood box, a sneeze escapes. The muffled voices in the kitchen stop, as if wondering if a
bless you
is called for.

“Where’s Louisa May?” Mama asks.

“She’s still sleeping,” Amy says.

Mama makes a comment about my laziness. At that moment I’m so riled up from being crammed in this hot, tight corner I fantasize about knocking some of Mama’s spitefulness out of her.

“They found Ruby swinging in an oak tree,” my sister, Amy, continues.

My eyes widen and I lean in closer, not wanting to miss a single detail.

“That poor child,” Mama sighs.

“Her daddy came back from one of his hunting trips and found her,” Amy says. “That’s when he came to get Nathan. Nathan said Mr. Monroe was drunk, too, which didn’t help matters. Melody was asleep in the house and Johnny was nowhere around.”

Nathan is Amy’s husband and one of the calmest human beings alive. He would be a good person to have around in an emergency.

“God rest her soul,” Mama says.

“God rest her soul,” Amy echoes.

“God rest her soul,” I whisper.

Silence overtakes them. Wood dust works its way up my nose and I hold my breath and pinch my nostrils until the urge to sneeze again passes. If Mama catches me ease-dropping, I’ll be cleaning the outhouse all afternoon.

“Nathan said it took two of them to cut her down,” Amy says finally, her voice breaking.

When I close my eyes I can picture Ruby with her sad eyes and muddy feet, swinging by the neck from a tree she probably played in as a little girl. I feel sick at my stomach and have to remind myself to breathe.

“But I haven’t told you the worst of it,” Amy says, her words trailing off.

I press my ear into the narrow crack, certain I’ll be rubbing out a crease later.

“What could be worse?” Mama asks.

I wonder the same.

“She was . . . in a family way,” Amy whispers.

My breathing fills the silence as I imagine the looks they give each other. Mama can say more with her eyes than a whole dictionary full of words.

‘In a family way’ means Ruby’s stomach wasn’t just big from being hungry. As I lower my head, sweat drips onto my arm. Tears fill my eyes for Ruby Monroe and for her baby who will never see the light of day. The walls close in. I crawl from behind the wood box and tiptoe out the door, avoiding the floor boards I know will creak and step onto the porch. Fresh, warm air fills my lungs. Air, I am suddenly aware, Ruby will never get to breathe again.

Questions crowd my mind, as if sent to push the feelings away. Why would Ruby do such a thing? How could she possibly be so desperate and scared? And who is the father of her baby? I’ve never seen any boys around her. If this happened to me I wouldn’t have to kill myself; Mama would do it for me.

Two days later, everybody in Katy’s Ridge shows up for Ruby’s funeral. The whispers are like a fire that refuses to die down and the packed church vibrates with judgment. The people of Katy’s Ridge aren’t all that forgiving when it comes to sinning. Meanwhile, Preacher’s long face reveals what they already believe: the pearly gates of heaven won’t be opening for the likes of Ruby Monroe.

Surely God won’t send Ruby to hell just for having a hard life,
I think. She didn’t even own a pair of shoes and had to tend to a father and a brother who could have cared less about her. Preacher is fond of saying that the first will be last and the last first in God’s kingdom. If this is true, then it makes more sense for God to send Ruby and her baby to the head of heaven’s line.

Mama and I join Aunt Sadie, Daddy’s older sister, and the rest of the family three rows from the front, the pew our family always sits in. The story told to me is that Ruby had an accident. But for the life of me I can’t figure out how a rope could, by accident, slide around a person’s neck.

I can’t seem to take my eyes off of the wooden box that has Ruby in it. It smells of new lumber and hardly seems big enough for a thirteen year old girl and a baby and all the sadness she carried with her. I worry that she still doesn’t have on any shoes and close my eyes to ask Daddy to put in a good word to God for Ruby and her baby.