Authors: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
and she’ll unearth almost anything
from its secret compartments.
Her long hair
stays fastened in a bun
with chopsticks
until bedtime,
when it waterfalls
down near to her waist.
She grew up
in this very house,
the only daughter after four sons
and the single one
to survive
and inherit the farm—
though now
there’s only five acres
left of it
to call her own.
Ten minutes after Edna leaves
Mom flies through the front door
from her job waiting tables
at the Lunchbox Café
next to the Ford plant.
She pecks Gran on the cheek,
me on the head,
but never stops moving
or talking the whole time.
Grabs her lunch bag
(and two pieces of fudge),
changes out of her yellow polyester uniform,
and heads straight out the back door
in a run—
and that’s all I’ll see her today.
She’s got finals this week,
and then one semester left
at the community college
with a double major
in business administration
and landscape design.
So she’s just a blip
on the screen
of my life
these days.
I don’t know much
about my father except
he was a freshman in college
just like Mom
when I was conceived—
though he didn’t drop out on
his
dreams.
I wonder
if he ditched me and Mom
when he found out about my disability,
or if it gave him the excuse he needed—
typed letter left behind in the mailbox,
no stamp.
I wonder
if I got my straight
blond hair, blue eyes,
and cowardice from him,
and whether he’s real smart,
rich, and now got himself
a picture-perfect family.
I wonder whether
he likes pepper on his
corn on the cob like me,
or poetry
before slipping off to sleep.
When I asked Mom
she always answered:
“I don’t know,”
between her teeth
until I stopped asking.
Gran said she knew
next to nothing about him
and thought of him even less.
If we met one day
accidentally,
say, in an airport,
I wonder
if he’d be carrying
my baby picture
behind his license.
I wonder
if I could forgive him—
let myself be folded
into his warm embrace,
or if
I’d spit on that picture
and scratch out my
face so he couldn’t pretend
to care about me anymore.
Gran stretches to store
her rose-covered shoe box
back up in the hall closet.
You’d think she taught
first grade,
not just Sunday school,
the way she loves
cutting and pasting her way
through winter.
She snips out pictures of
fences, flowers, plants, and pots
from seed catalogs and
gardening magazines—
a puzzle of her dream spring garden
with no perfect fit.
Just as she tips the box into place,
it falls.
Out flutter
petals of color
and Granny lands
on her wide bottom.
I rush to her side,
help her find her balance.
It takes half an hour
to carefully pick up these
fingertip pieces of dreams
and click the heavy closet door
on them again.
My mom’s best friend,
Aunt Laura
(though she’s not really my aunt),
visits each December
with her son, Nathan,
who’s also in seventh grade.
Mom and Aunt Laura
shop for days on end
while Nathan and I
watch movies
or play checkers—
silently.
Mom and Aunt Laura
stay up almost until dawn
never running out of words.
Nathan and I
ice cookies
while Granny sings off-key
to her vinyl
holiday albums.
After spending days
leading to Christmas
together each year,
you’d think
Nathan and I
would be friends—
but we’re
not.
It’s a tradition
that we only get three gifts
each year—
“Was enough for Jesus,” Gran says—
and two of them must be homemade.
Gran taught me to crochet
with my good hand,
and we figured out a way
to make the yarn
loop around the frozen
fingers on my left.
It’s taken three months
to make them each
a wooly scarf
and mittens
in their favorite colors—
purple for mom
and fuchsia for Gran.
Next year it might take me
six months,
but I’m going to learn how to knit!
On Christmas Eve
we buy up the gala apples
with thumbprint bruises,
oranges, scaly and puckered,
even bananas spotted like
Granny’s hands.
Cutting the fruit into wedges,
and then piercing them with large paper clips.
Stringing popcorn,
raisins, and cereal
until the tips of our fingers ache.
Huge pinecones
get smeared with peanut butter
sent from Aunt Laura’s
down in North Carolina,
then sprinkled with sunflower seeds
and bird feed until they’re coated.
We dress our white pine tree
just outside
the family room window
with these offerings.
Then kill the lights
and watch
the holiday feast.
At midnight
we bundle into the
darkened church.
Kids from school
who usually pretend I’m invisible
wish me Merry Christmas
and say hello
in front of their parents.
But the hymns
I can’t even sing
warm and light me
like the small white candle
flickering
in my good hand.
On Christmas
we stay in pajamas—
all day—
nibble the ham
Gran baked
between homemade biscuits
Mom can create from scratch
in fourteen minutes flat.
We watch
old movies
(though all our hands fiddle on projects
the whole time)
or work on a new five-thousand-piece puzzle
that won’t get swept off the dining room table
until we finish it
just before Thanksgiving.
These few days:
the best ones
of the year.
Mom’s so surprised
over her scarf and gloves—
didn’t even know
I could crochet
since she hasn’t been home
most of the fall.
Gran’s scarf is a little uneven,
but she doesn’t seem
to mind.
Mom painted each pot
for Gran’s ever-increasing collection of violets—
and gave her a gift certificate for seeds
from an heirloom vegetable catalog.
Gran created a quilted book bag for Mom
and a robe soft as a puppy.
I love
the blue jeans jacket Mom bought
and beaded.
Gran embroidered
a journal with my initials
and unveiled a new quilt for my bed
in the colors of summer—
watermelon, tomato, blue skies,
and lemonade.
Christmas afternoon we pull boots
over our pajamas, bundle up,
and hike the snowless landscape
to the back acre,
where most of the family is buried
inside the wrought-iron fence
under an ancient hemlock tree.
Four generations of Wyatts
owned this land
before Gran—
near to a thousand acres.
When Papaw died,
Gran ran it for several years
best she knew how
renting out acres to farmers,
canning any vegetable she could.
But when Mom wanted college
more than a farm,
and my medical bills
stacked up on the dining room table,
Gran resigned herself to sell it to her friend.
At first the farmer
who bought it didn’t change a thing,
but when Mr. Killick got sick too,
his kids put him in Lazy Acres and sold
all of it to the developer that built
the mansions up behind us.
Gran places silk poinsettias on top
of each Wyatt stone.
“My momma would understand what I had to do,”
Gran says,
“but I’ll have to answer
to Daddy one day.”
Then she turns her face
into the wind
and walks away.
There’s more new clothes
on the first day back
from Christmas break
than the first day of school;
no one wanting to look
eager in September.
I may stick out
in every other way
in the hallways of middle school,
but my outfits
can compete
even with the rich kids
from the neighborhood behind us.
Mom might pester me
about homework
and my exercises and therapies,
but on fashion
we always agree.
I hate
the mosaic-topped kitchen table
Mom created,
not because it wobbles,
or the food that’s served on it
(the best part, by far),
but because it’s her favorite
place to pounce.
Mom plops across from me
at breakfast,
and even though it’s Saturday
and school just got started again,
she forces me to review
a giant stack of flash cards
for the end-of-year tests.
Then a list
of exercises she’s gotten
from the speech therapist,
occupational therapist,
and physical therapist.
I think tomorrow
I’ll skip breakfast.
The only good thing
about January?
Halfway to June.
Even the pine trees
Appear new
In spring.
—Izumi Shikibu
An oily stink
blows in again from the bulldozers—
those metal monster dinosaurs
that scar the landscape
behind our old farm.
The tornadoes of dust they kick up
as they move closer each season
leave the porch cushions
and our teeth
dusted with a grimy film.
The echoes
of early-morning hammering
wake me
even on Saturday mornings.
And though I hate
what they’ve done
to my kingdom of imaginary worlds—
fairy towns and factories
closed,
the summer camp for ogres
shut down,
a homeless shelter for gnomes
flattened—
with chin on knees
I can’t help but study the men,
busy as bugs,
not satisfied until they
block another tree
from me.
When poppies first
push themselves
out of the ground
they look like a weed—
hairy, grayish, saw-toothed foliage—
easily a member
of the ugly family.
When I push
sounds from my mouth
it’s not elegant either.
I wrestle to wrap
my lips
around syllables,
struggle with my tongue
to press the right points.
When poppies bloom
the same red
as a Chinese wedding dress—
satiny cups with ruffled edges,
purplish black eyes—
they’re a prize for patience,
and if I take all that trouble
to say something,
I promise
to try
to make it worth
the wait too.
Mom and I lug
house plants
back outside
from Granny’s rusting metal plant stand
that’s blocking our one picture window
so you can never tell
who’s pulling in the drive
through the tangle of green.
Just like the plants,
I dream of being
back outside for long summer days,
not stuck
in occupational therapy
twice a week,
speech therapy three times a week,
or tortured at the kitchen table
with flash cards
the little time Mom spends at home.