The Secret Hum of a Daisy (2 page)

Just Like

That

The sheriff's car
led the funeral procession—patrol lights flashing against the world—turned left, and climbed a winding road to a small, unfenced cemetery. The cars parked around us, closing us in. People walked in small groups under giant black umbrellas.

Grandma informed me there wouldn't be a gathering afterward. One by one, the people who had attended stopped and gave a kind word but moved along quickly, as though they didn't know her any better than I did. There was one exception: an older lady in a worn straw cowboy hat, a faded leather jacket with fringe, and a black muumuu. She gave Grandma a long, fierce hug. Grandma surprised me by returning it. Margery was her name.

“You come visit me in town,” she said to me. “I've got the hosiery shop. It's called Threads.”

Before I could say a word, she'd walked away, dabbing her eyes with a red bandana.

Mrs. Greene and Lacey hung back and waited until everyone else had left. The four of us all faced one another.

“We'll come visit in a couple of weeks, before you go back to school,” Mrs. Greene said. The black dress looked all wrong. Her usual choice of colors tended to compete with fire hydrants or October leaves.

Lacey squeezed my hand again and gave me a quick hug, her damp cheek pressing against mine.

After they left, I watched the coffin lower, forever it lowered, the crown of daisies balanced on top. Something in me needed to see it through even though the rest of me pulsed
run, run, run.
I looked up into the sky and wondered about heaven. If it was a big empty space or if there were all kinds of comfy chairs placed in small groups so new people wouldn't be overwhelmed. I pictured Mama sipping Earl Grey, stirring honey with one of her beloved spoons, her pale hair glowing in heaven's light, planning her next bird. I wondered if her back ached where her wings were coming in the way my legs ached when I'd had that growth spurt in fifth grade. If she might feel my thoughts and send some back.

“I'm sorry, Mama,” I whispered.

I reached under the tarp covering all that dug-up earth around the hole, took a handful, and put it in the pocket of the peacoat of Mama's I'd taken to wearing. Then I took another handful for good measure. It started to slush again, and my outsides turned as numb as my insides. Grandma stood beside me, our black umbrellas tapping each other.

“Why did you want a crane on her headstone?” Grandma asked.

Mama used to leave me treasure hunts. She'd always start with a junk-art crane, where she'd tuck something safely inside, maybe a paper clip, which would lead me to the desk, where I'd find a key ring to the laundry room, and so on. Along the way I'd meet the people in her new job, the librarian, someone at the nearest market or video store. She'd have me going for a good three hours every time we moved. Her way of showing me around the new town and introducing the people in it. My very own treasure hunt where the final clue would always lead back to our new front porch, where Mama would wrap me in her arms and say we were each other's treasure.

I wasn't going to tell Grandma about the birds Mama used to make, or how the crane was her happiest bird, the one she always used for treasure-hunt clues. She could just stand there and wonder.

Eventually I figured there was no use dragging things out, so without a word to Grandma or the men standing by with their shovels, I turned and headed for the truck. Grandma followed close behind.

Most everything I had left in the world sat under a tarp in the back of the pickup. Until we got to Mrs. Greene's, Mama had treated our moves like we were climbing into a hot air balloon, and we had to leave most everything behind in order to be light enough to float away.

The nylon rope was wet and splintery as I made sure the tarp was still tight over the bed of the truck. A broken plastic thread from the rope stabbed the palm of my hand. It bled.

Grandma unlocked the rusted handle on the passenger side, and then dug two handkerchiefs out of her giant black purse, giving one to me. The other she used to blow her nose. I waited for her to move before climbing in, holding the handkerchief tight in my fist.

When she got into the truck, she fished around in her purse again and came up with a Safeway plastic grocery bag. She nodded toward my pockets and set the bag on the seat between us.

“For the dirt,” she said.

• • •

Mama died six days ago, and Grandma had tried to pick me up twice before, but I'd hidden from her. The threat of missing Mama's funeral was what finally made me get into her truck. At least twenty times per day, I'd begged Mrs. Greene to let me stay. But Mrs. Greene had said the same thing each time. “She's your grandma, Grace. You have to give it time. Everyone deserves a bit of time.”

“What about what I deserve?”

“You deserve to be loved. But sometimes, you can't see what that looks like for yourself. You've got too much mad mixed up in there. Too much sorrow. After a few months, things will be different.” Mrs. Greene had put her hand on my leg and squeezed, holding tight longer than was necessary.

Mama and I had lived with Mrs. Greene and Lacey for nine months, the longest we'd lived anywhere, and by the time we got there, I was tired. Tired of this adventure Mama said we were on, trying to find the perfect place to call home. For Mama, there was always a better job or a better place to live, better schools or less crime. A place with trees or, when she was sick of trees, a place with open fields or water or whatever it was that Mama needed to keep her spirits up. Mama told me that when we finally found home, it would hum. Like the daisies.

I thought we'd finally found that place when we found Mrs. Greene. The wide and slow movement of the Sacramento River was a quick walk from Mrs. Greene's back steps. The mountains were an hour's drive, and the beach was just a little farther in the other direction. Mrs. Greene had taken us under her wing, both me and Mama, into a safe place that felt like home. But things always seemed to happen at some point or another to make Mama want to leave, and Mrs. Greene's ended up being no different.

Grandma drove down Main Street, past the small church we'd just left and the public school next to it. As we drove past the snow-globe storefronts, I saw a giant spoon hanging from a pole in front of a restaurant called the Spoons Souperie. I spun around in my seat and watched the spoon swing in the wind.

“What is it?” Grandma said.

“Nothing.”

Mama had used spoons in all of her birds, claiming that a spoon was the utensil of comfort. She said it brought you soup on a cold day and stirred honey in your tea. Without spoons we couldn't eat pudding or ice cream, and you could never hang a fork from your nose or ears.

It confused me to think she might have been using them because they reminded her of home. Home being a place she never talked about.

Thinking that was a question I couldn't answer, I let it go as we came to a four-way stop where the land opened to rolling fields and cedars. There was a sign welcoming us to Gold Country, California. One of the only other pieces of information Grandma had shared with me was that Auburn Valley was on the National Register of Historic Places because of how much gold had been discovered here. She explained it was an even smaller town now than it was then because of some fires that had burned the place down a long time ago.

After a short distance, she made a left on Ridge Road. She drove so slow, I almost could have walked faster.

Try as I might to picture the house where Mama had lived, the only picture I came up with was the witch's cottage from “Hansel and Gretel.” As much as I'd like to see Grandma as the witch in that cottage, she was actually pretty ordinary looking. No tinge of green or warts. Instead, she had silver hair with streaks the same blond as Mama's pulled back into a loose knot, and she wore long gray skirts and tall black boots with flat heels, which didn't do anything to hide the length of her legs. She had a tiny silver cross at her neck, the only delicate part of her, it seemed, and a habit of touching it, like it was a raft floating in the middle of our wide and deep silences.

I'd written letters to Grandma when I was eight. Forbidden letters. The only thing in my life I kept secret from Mama. The letters started from a school assignment where we had to write to our grandparents. I asked questions you might ask a grandmother. How to make pie, for instance. Or knit. I was forever seeing grandmas out there making pie and knitting, and figured I had a right to know. There were plenty of angry letters too. I asked how she could turn her back on her own child, pregnant at seventeen.

I'd written a total of twenty-seven letters and bundled them with string like a miniature stack of newspapers. I still carried them from place to place in my army duffel.

“There'll be some house rules, of course,” Grandma said as we drove. Her voice was low and husky like Mama's.

I continued to look out the foggy window.

“Certain rooms are off-limits. Your Grandpa's office right off the kitchen, my room. The kitchen is free to use as long as you clean up after yourself.”

We passed a large wooden sign with letters branded into it that read
BRANNIGAN
. In the distance beyond the fence were two horses, one dark brown and the other whitish gray with darker gray splotches, like a stormy sky. They grazed, tails flapping. The gray one lifted her head and looked at us. She was beautiful, with a big round belly. Endless amounts of grass will do that to a horse, I figured.

Just past the horses, Grandma slowed and turned into a curved gravel driveway. Along the left edge, sun-bleached fence posts strung with rusted wire kept tall weeds from escaping a pasture, and the house sat at the top of a slight hill up ahead. There was a broken-down barn in the pasture, and a sturdy shed sitting off to the right. A thin metal smokestack poked out the top. Mama's and my car, Daisy, was parked beside it.

“Your sofa is in there,” Grandma said.

“Is that your garage?”

“Used to be your grandfather's workshop.”

I'd found a picture of Grandpa once, in one of Mama's dresser drawers. He had silver and black hair, a big smile, and clearly loved the little girl who sat on his lap. Mama came into the room as I was looking at it, and took it carefully out of my hands. She told me three things before she put it away.

1. She loved Grandpa almost as much as she loved me.
   
2. He could build anything from a birdhouse to a skyscraper.
   
3. He was a birder and took her everywhere he went in search of rare birds.
   

She said that putting her junk-art birds together was her way of remembering.

Mama never told me anything about Grandma except the fact that she'd sent her away when Mama had needed her most. I supposed she figured that was enough.

Grandma drove up the gentle climb of the driveway and stopped in front of the house. There were two stories with attic windows on top, peeling sky-blue paint with white trim, also peeling, and a wood porch with two chairs covered in yellowed plastic and pine needles. Brass numbers hung on the front porch post, the middle number missing. I could tell from the tarnished outline that it had been the number 4. Piles of Tupperware and glass dishes covered in foil were set neatly beside the front door, a stack of firewood next to that.

Grandma sighed. I climbed out of the truck, thinking about the impossibility of eating, when I heard it. It was coming from behind the house. Distant and soft.

I couldn't help but follow the sound, through the backyard garden, which looked like something from a magazine with its rock walls and graceful trees. I walked fast, then ran toward the thick forest at the back. The gray horse I'd seen in the front pasture was running along the fence line beside me and stopped as I went into the trees.

“Where in heaven's name . . . ,” Grandma called from somewhere behind me.

Her words faded as the sound of water got louder. I moved through the thick trees, ankle deep in pine needles, their sharp points biting through my tights. There was a clearing. Then the river.

It moved fast, sticks and torn branches rushing by. As I edged closer to the slippery rocks, I saw blond hair floating. Mermaid hair. Then gone. I sat down in a heap on the sand, trying to force the pictures out of my mind, but they played like a movie.

A policeman putting a wool blanket around my shoulders, trying to take Mama's hand from mine. How it took two of them to get me away from her. My hair dripping onto the scratchy wool of the blanket as I finally slumped against the policeman, resting my head on his shoulder. The edge of his badge in my ribs. How they asked me so many questions about what happened, and I couldn't answer. Then I wouldn't. I would never talk about that day.

Grandma crouched beside me. Words tumbled around my mind, and I itched for my notebook and pencil, but they were in the duffel in the bed of Grandma's truck.

“It must have been . . . awful.”

“Is this the Sacramento River?” I said.

“It's called the Bear up here.”

There was nothing else to do but stand up on wobbly legs and get away from the river, wet branches slapping me in the face and neck as I ran back through the woods.

Eventually, Grandma came around the house behind me, white mist puffing from her nose and mouth. She reached out a leather-gloved hand, but settled it on the rusted edge of the truck bed for support. She touched the cross at her neck.

Mama had spent my lifetime staying away from this person. She'd gotten herself off a bus in a place she didn't know and trusted a world of strangers could take better care of her than her own mother. I wasn't about to do anything different.

I paced beside the truck. “Mama said you sent her away, that you turned your back on us a long time ago.”

Silence.

“I know it's true. I want to hear you say it.”