Authors: Lisa Howorth
“Okay.” Mary Byrd gathered up the little crescent clippings from the blue quilt. “Done. You need to go to sleep.” No more questions, she hoped.
The tiny plane took off again. “So you can’t make a
promise
that something bad won’t happen to me?”
She sighed. “No, darling, I can’t. There’s lots of stuff I can’t
promise
you, but I can tell you that I’m very, very
sure
something bad won’t happen to you because Dad and I are protecting you and Eliza and taking care of you every single day and every single night, and will be, even when you’re grown-ups. Even when you have your own children,” she added in a strong, upbeat voice. “How’s that?”
“Well, will
I
be bad?”
God, Mary Byrd thought. Now they worry not only about someone doing something awful to them, but that they might grow up and
be
that person, “No! That’s another thing I can’t promise but I’m absolutely, positively sure about. You and Eliza are going to be great people. Nothing’s going to happen to you or make you
bad
.” Not wanting to think of all the temptations they’d be dodging in life, and soon, she mentally crossed her fingers. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and then, “Who cares about Eliza.”
“William. She might be
contrary
now, but she’ll start to get nicer. You’ll see. She loves you even if she acts mean, just like you love her.” Mary Byrd thought, but did not say,
You would miss her horribly if she were gone.
“Hmph.” He landed the little plane and picked up his book again.
Mary Byrd leaned over and kissed him. “Three more pages and lights out.” She walked to the door and said, “Love you, Air Force Captain William Thornton,” keeping it breezy.
“Okay,” he said, covering his face with his book. “Love you, too, Cyclops Mother.” She left his door open a cat’s width, the way he liked it.
As Mary Byrd headed to the stairs, she felt, for a minute, a little of the old, pointless sadness that seemed to be part of her, like her bones or blood. The world was not a great or easy place and it was stupid and pathetic to think that it was. But she also felt oddly high, as if she’d had a Xanax; had she? No, she remembered that the last Xanax had gone with Ernest. Teever hadn’t fooled her. She was thinking that what goodness and happiness and rightness there was could be claimed, but you had to work hard at finding it and hanging onto it. She wanted her children to know reality, up to a point, but she didn’t want them living darkly or fearfully. For too long she’d let her own self get distracted by guilt and fear. Some measure of that seemed lifted from her. Oh, there would always be plenty of crap to feel guilty about. Making good sport, speaking lewdly, committing uncleanness. Drinking, smoking, pills. Leaving dishes in the sink for Evagreen. Lies. And plenty to be scared about: second-story fires. The New Madrid fault. Hurricanes and tornadoes. Mini-strokes and colon cancer. Cooties of all kinds. Her mother. But fuck all that. The old dumb earth could tilt and spin all around her but she was really going to try not to fly off her own personal axis. She just plain felt better, in spite of everything. She hoped it would continue.
On the landing she stopped to look outside at the night. The windows were smeary; for some reason William had to put his cruddy hands on any window he looked out of, as if he had eyes on his palms. She’d call the Window King tomorrow about doing all the windows; spring needed to be seen. Where was the screen? She hoped William hadn’t been on the roof again; maybe Eliza had been laying out on warm days already, soaking up ultraviolet rays that would activate Uncle Junior’s melanoma that lurked in her DNA. Mary Byrd cranked open the big casement window to get a fix of night air and see the moon more clearly. It was a silver crescent against a deep blue, nearly black, sky. It looked like one of William’s nail clippings that had fallen on his navy flannel comforter. William’s Braves jacket hung on the newel post and Mary Byrd put it on, wanting to step out onto the roof.
The night air was colder than she’d thought, or she’d gotten too warm in William’s stuffy little lair. She was glad for the jacket; it smelled of William, and, oddly, of her lavender. Charles had gotten it big for him to grow into. Shoving her hands into the pockets, she felt a familiar shape she couldn’t for a split second identify. Goddamn it—a lighter. That little asshole, she thought. But maybe it was Evagreen’s. She might be the one smoking on the roof. Or Eliza? Either smoking, or trying to frame William for fooling around with a lighter. Oh, whatever. Some things will never be known, all right. She let the aggravation fall away.
Playing with fire
seemed such an innocent transgression now, an old-school crime from her own childhood, although a dangerous one right up there with
crossing without looking both ways
. She couldn’t even remember saying those things to Eliza and William, who hardly walked anywhere and were way more interested in Game Boys than fires, but surely she had. She wondered what had happened to poor Eliot Nelson, just another boy, really. She could have asked Stith, but he wouldn’t have been right to tell her; it wasn’t her business.
A huge limb lay on the roof. Charles could deal with it whenever. Teever couldn’t because of his foot. She wondered where he was spending the night. He wouldn’t stay with them and had wanted her to drop him near the cemetery, for some reason. She had refused and had taken him to the JFC, where he could get a ride somewhere. He was going straight to the doctor in the morning, if she could find him. She sat down on the old tin with her legs up against her chest, not caring if she got roof crud on her tweed skirt. Off in the woods beyond their yard an owl hooted—
hoohoohoo hoo hoo—
and she was glad to hear it. Teever said the owls and foxes were all gone because of the new condos. She hoped she might hear a mourning dove, her favorite bird call, or actually the only one other than owls she recognized. In Richmond, their sad song was a summer sound, but they didn’t all migrate in Mississippi and sometimes she did hear one on a winter evening, like a lonely Indian flute off low in the trees. It was too early for the night birds—what were they? Whippoorwills? Her mom would know; she’d call her in the morning. They were so weird, singing in the dead of night. It was nice to hear them if you were up late, nursing a baby or something, but if you were having trouble sleeping you wanted to kill them.
A foot or two away lay the screen, and in the old, rusted gutter were some butts—Salems, and a couple Camel Lights. One of the Salems was only partly smoked, so she picked it up and lit it, surprised that the damp nub lit. She’d actually always like menthols. It tasted great. Gazing down at the backyard, Mary Byrd realized Charles must have hauled most of the big downed limbs out to the street; the yard looked pretty okay from what she could see. They’d lost a cedar; its torn flesh showed
edible
pink
in the porch light. There’d probably been ten million chain saws going all over town since the storm. Her perennial bed, a mess of dead stalks she should have cleaned out forever ago, lay almost directly below her and was palely illuminated, brown from the hard freeze. Mr. Yeti, the wild boy, was waiting in the bed, hoping someone would appear at the back door with one last late-night snack before he retreated to the woods. Or wherever he spent his nights. Around the raggedy yellow cat, in front of the dead leaves and stalks, Mary Byrd could just make out the strappy narcissus and the blue-green tips of the daffodils barely emerging. Cold and bleak as it was now, spring was only a few weeks off. It could be a hard season for her; its memories had always made her blue and anxious.
The big quince bushes at the back of the yard would soon be an almost imagined mist of palest salmon. Every year after she cleared away all the Christmas crap, she’d cut quince branches and bring them inside to force. The bright little flowers seemed to buck everyone up as a reminder that the gaudy excesses of December were past, and the dreariness of January and February would soon be, too. She used to force paperwhites, but Eliza, who had inherited a hot bird-dog nose like her mother’s and grandmother’s, complained that they smelled like cat shit. She was right, Mary Byrd had to admit.
Then before much longer she could have cut flowers in the house again, and the bittersweet, fragrant spring would unfold. She loved the way certain flowers bloomed in tandem. Mann said it was as if God were an old queen, the pairings all spring were so perfectly matched: the Scrambled Egg daffodils and spunky spiderwort, the leggy spirea and forsythia that looked so good in Evelyn’s old bronze urn, then iris and azalea. She loved the old flags—Lucy had given her some rhizomes from her grandmother’s Louisiana garden—and the George Taber azaleas with their sweet fragrance like cotton candy. Then came the assault of the spicy chinaberry—now she’d have her own—and cummy privet, their killer, sexy perfumes making up for their pale, uninteresting blossoms. The best duo of all, the one that for Mary Byrd signaled the best of spring and summer, was the gold-and-cream honeysuckle and the flat, deep pink Choctaw roses. If she could beat the damn deer to them, she’d cut armloads of roses and honeysuckle for the house, and the scent of the honeysuckle was sometimes so strong in the night that it would wake her up and fill her with a confusion of happiness, sadness, and longing. Who knew for what. The rest of the summer would be too hot for anything but zinnias, and even those had to be tended to make it. After August, she could always count on periwinkle ageratum and watermelon-colored spider lilies, a sassy antidote to the dry Septembers.
Stubbing out the butt, Mary Byrd opened
Mississippi Trees.
There was enough light from the landing for her to read. She looked up “Chinaberry,
Melia azedarach L.
” Under “Habitat,” she read that the trees came originally from the Himalayas. That was cool. As for “Timber Value,” the wood had been used for auto bodies, musical instruments, matches, tool handles, and cabinetry, and the seeds had been used for rosaries. Rosaries? She remembered the little seed-pearl rosary that Nonna had given her when she was a little girl; she wished she still had it. Chinaberry extract had been used long ago to cure roundworms and had anti-viral and anticancer properties. She was sure that William Byrd hadn’t mentioned chinaberries in his diaries, but maybe they hadn’t yet been brought to the colonies in the early eighteenth century. Wondering if Evagreen knew all these things about her little gift, Mary Byrd read on to “Propagation.” Chinaberries could be grown by seed or cuttings, were tolerant of drought but not shade, and grew rapidly. Perfect. Mary Byrd read down to where in bold-faced red letters it said:
WARNING
:
Classified by the Exotic Pest Plant Council as a Category 1 species that invades and disrupts natural plant communities in all states. Considered as an invasive pest. All parts of the Chinaberry are poisonous. Eating as few as 6 berries can result in death. Songbirds that eat too many seeds have been known to become paralyzed.
She stared at the warning for a minute, thinking. Then, she said out loud, “ Evagreen!
Really?
” Mary Byrd grinned like the Cheshire Cat in the cold, clear night. She’d give the Chinaberry prime real estate, and would plant them where the cedar had stood.
She sat a few minutes more, looking out over the town and toward the university on its hill. Closer, she could see the rude, overkill light of the Chevron and the colored neons of the Sonic. All the electricity seemed to be back on again, but many of the silhouetted trees looked ragged and torn, with large limbs dangling like badly broken arms. It was late, and a Wednesday, so there weren’t a lot of headlights, or houses lit up. Students and working people had gone to bed, resting up for the morning’s eight-o’clock classes and bank openings and sidewalk sweepings and all the regular weekday business of the little—not so little anymore—town. Mary Byrd liked to think about everyone sleeping, stacked up in beds in every house on every street, in every town in Mississippi, in every state across the country. Everyone checking out horizontally for a few hours’ respite from the exhausting, battering, busy business of living.
Something small but desperate suddenly screamed and abruptly went silent. Goddamn it—probably the owl, or Irene or Iggy with a rabbit. Old Mr. Yeti looked toward the sound but was unmoved; he’d given up the hunting life for his regularly delivered meals at the back door. The darling homeboy kitties killed for sport, the Tonton Macoutes of the backyard.
Out there, she knew, at this moment, maybe even in this town, things were happening to children; they were crying, alone, scared, in pain or enduring silently, rendered not-children by one thing or another. She knew that a husband was probably beating a wife, or a wife was thinking of killing a husband, and if it didn’t happen tonight, it would some other night. Everyone had reasons, secret or unconscious, or plotted and deliberate. The world
was
a crazy, round place. There weren’t any neat, even lines to make things clear, or corners to hide in. It was precious and horrible, swollen and wobbly with craziness, whirling along in spite of death, and everybody just had to hang on
for dear life
, hoping the ride wouldn’t be too centrifugal, or too bumpy, or more than one could stand. It was exactly like Mr. Natural used to say in
Zap
: “The whole universe is insane.” It had been a week of dreadful revelation, as if she had been
in
Revelation. Mary Byrd was tired and wanted to check out horizontally herself. Stepping back through the window, she hung the Braves jacket back on the post, but did not replace the lighter.