Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (44 page)

weeks in glorious autumn, the sunflowers would open. Hundreds of

thousands of sunflowers under the turquoise fall sky. They’d track the morning sun in the east, turning their heads in unison to follow the sun until it set late at night.

Those two weeks were my glory, every year. I’d watch the sun rise

from my upstairs window in our old farmhouse. The white clapboard

house dated back to the first settlers in this area, my mother had said. It still held memories of our family, long gone. They dotted the walls in dusty photographs: women in calico dresses, wide toothy

smiles, and shoes with no stockings. I saw my mother as a baby and my grandmother and aunts, women I’d never met in person. And

there were sunflowers in the pictures. Someone had even colored the

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sunflowers yellow with some sort of watercolor dye. But the women

were black and white and gone. And no men among them.

We had everything we needed, materially and more. My mother

was always conscious not to be boastful of the things we had. We

kept our old icebox and mended our socks, but there was a fine

industrial-size washing machine in the basement as well as a fancy refrigerator that had been imported on a truck from Missouri. My

mother kept a jewelry box of sparkling gems she never wore. We

used a set of fine china for our everyday dishes, but hid them in the cupboard when the neighbors came. Visitors were always served on

cheerful chipped yellow ceramic dishes.

“Why do we do that?” I asked, carefully drying the silver teapot

we used for our afternoon tea. We used it so often that it had no

chance to gather tarnish. I often felt I was playing at being a princess here, albeit a secret one.

“Why do we do what?”

“Why do the neighbors get the yellow dishes?”

My mother paused to think for some minutes, soaping the

delicate teacups in the sink. Water licked at her patched apron. I began to think she’d forgotten my question. But she answered me

finally: “Because it is always best to blend in, my dear. No good ever comes of rubbing good fortune in another’s face.”

“But shouldn’t we . . . ” I wasn’t sure what we
should
do. Share?

Be honest?

“Jealousy is a wicked emotion. A very human emotion. And such

emotions caused wealthy women to be burned in ages past.”

“Burned?” I tried to understand a human burning. I supposed it

was not so different than any other creature . . . we were meat, but . . .

My mother kissed the top of my head. “Be quiet, be humble, and

keep your treasures well-guarded.”

The sunflowers were our treasure. They always grew, through

drought and cold and rattling wind. When our neighbors’ fields of

wheat withered under the sun and died, our flowers were always

lush and green. We never told them that we didn’t water. My mother would murmur something about underground springs and offer

them another glass of iced tea.

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I would sometimes wander to my mother’s jewelry box and take

out the pieces to gaze at them. She would never stop me from playing dress-up with them as a girl. I would struggle to work the clasp of a pendant on a heavy chain, a yellow diamond as large as a bottle cap.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I was able to actually work the clasp and get it to hang properly over my heart.

My mother watched me, smoothing my hair back from my ears.

We looked very much alike: blond and sun-freckled, but with eyes so dark they were nearly black, like wet tea leaves. “It’s yours, my dear. It was your grandmother’s. From the old country, where women knew

the earth well.”

I touched the cool stone. I knew that I’d never be able to wear

it outside. The fear of losing it was enough to stop my heart. Never mind what the neighbors might say . . .

My mother lifted the chain and tucked the pendant down the top

of my dress. The stone felt cold against my skin, hidden.

I closed the jewelry box on my mother’s gold rings and pearl

necklaces. My mother’s wedding ring was there. She didn’t wear it

anymore. The ring she wore daily was a plain sterling silver band

that made her finger itch. She was never without a ring in public, not at the market nor in town. Though my father was long dead from

our house and my memory, she did not return the admiring glances

of the men. She always stared straight ahead or into her shopping

basket.

It was not as if the men didn’t try. The fellow we hired with the

cultivator to come every fall, Mr. Mauer, tried to linger a bit too much after a day of labor and polite iced tea. My mother would never call him by his first name and would gently shovel him out of the door

with an envelope of cash. Our nearest neighbors, three miles away, often tried to set my mother up with the husband’s brother, but she always refused.

“I’m happy with our life,” she would say as she hung our wash out

on the clothesline. “There’s no reason to change it.”

I half-believed her.

I believed her most in those last two weeks of October, when

the sunflowers were at the height of their glory. The sun was warm

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against my face, but dimmed from summer. I could feel it as I slipped into the fields, the sticky stems of the sunflowers prickling against my clothes. The leaves at the bases of the stalks were growing yellow, a harbinger of winter. The backs would grow brown and the seeds

would blacken before harvest at Halloween. And the sun set earlier now than in summer, filling me with a pang of sadness. I could

imagine the howling winds of winter rattling our door . . .

. . . but not today. I was awash in a sea of blue and yellow as I

waded through the fields. I was certain that I could avoid any human being who I might encounter.

Though I was never alone this time of year.

The crows were always with us.

They’d arise early in the morning, cawing to each other. The crows would descend into the fields in pairs and then in great numbers.

They’d balance on the bobbing sunflower stems and peck at the faces of the flowers, devouring the seeds in greedy gulps. Their black wings would flash among the yellow of the sunflowers and blue of the sky.

Our fields would seethe with wind and sun and feathers, like a vast living thing.

I was a part of that. I’d stand in the middle of the field, with the sun on my face and the breeze rippling through the stalks, filtering down to my fingers and nipping at the edge of my dress. If I closed my eyes, it seemed as if my feet were not touching the earth, as if I could fly. My hair worked free of its braid and tendrils would stick to my mouth, tasting bitterly of green sunflower-sticky-stalk. The cawing of the birds formed a deafening cacophony around me, a

swirl of motion, sun, and shadows. At my feet, black feathers and

empty sunflower hulls would litter the ground. Feathers would stick to my hair, and I’d save them, tucking them away in the wooden

frame of my bedroom mirror. When I looked at my reflection in the

mirror, it was surrounded by those feathers.

My mother respected the crows . . . no, she did more than that.

She honored them. There were never any scarecrows on our property.

Each year, she’d instruct Mr. Mauer not to run the combine close to the house. With red ribbon and stakes, she’d mark off a strip about three hundred feet wide of sunflowers on the western edge of the

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house. Those were to be left standing. She’d stand there with her

arms crossed, daring Mr. Mauer to run them over.

And he wanted to. “It’s a perfect waste to let sunflowers go to

seed there, Carol.”

“I don’t want dust kicked up that close to the house, Mr. Mauer.”

She stroked the wheat-blonde hair on the top of my head when I was small. “And Jeanie loves the flowers. Leave them be, for her.”

I knew my mother cared nothing for dust. And she would have

left the flowers if I asked.

When Mr. Mauer had shaken his head and climbed back into the

combine, I looked uncertainly up at her. “Thank you.”

She bent to kiss my cheek. “They’re not for you, sweet one. They

are for the crows. They are a sacrifice, for a good harvest and a good life. Always leave them their portion.”

I glanced back at the house, brow furrowed. My mother had

bought us a pair of pumpkins to carve for Halloween, and they sat

against the step, full and waiting. “Are these for the birds?”

She chuckled. “They’re for us, too. We use the shells, and they

take the seeds. Like the sunflowers.”

And the crows were always pleased. They would descend upon

that little garden that remained and pluck the seed heads clean

within a week. As the rest of the fields were stripped forlornly away by the machine, the brittle stalks would stand, like sentries, until we cut them down in the spring to plant anew.

Every year was the same as the last. Until the autumn I turned

sixteen.

The sunflowers opened as they always did, brighter than the sun.

I slipped away from my chores to go walk among them. I had much

to think about. The neighbor’s boy, Sam, occupied a great many of

my thoughts, and I wanted to be alone with them. Not necessarily

him—I was too shy and unsure of what I felt. But I knew that it

seemed like sunshine on my face. I idly braided my hair as I swam

in the flowers. I reached up to bend down one of the faces to mine, plucking the seeds to eat. They were almost ripe, dry and warm with daylight on my tongue. I spat out the seeds onto the ground.

A crow fluttered down to the bent sunflower stalk. It stared at me,

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fluffed up its ruff, and cawed. I stepped back. The crows never looked at us humans with any particular interest, but this one continued to caw, raising its wings in a hooded fashion. Wind ruffled its tail and it bobbed up and down at me, shrieking with all its might.

It was as if it was trying to tell me something. Something that

came from the very marrow of its light bones.

Something cold and fearful rose in my throat. I turned and ran

back to the house. The leaves and stems of the sunflowers slashed at me as I fled, raising welts on my arms. I put my head down and ran.

I fled until I burst out of the shadow of the field and into the bright sun of the yard. I surged across the grass and up the steps, across the worn boards of the porch, shivering the wind chimes. The screen door slammed behind me and I stood in the parlor. My hands fluttered to my chest, as if I could keep my heart from leaping out of my ribcage.

I knew at once something was wrong. I knew it deep in the

darkness inside my chest. I knew it when the silence of the house

greeted me, and not my mother’s voice. I knew it when I saw the

puddle of tea spreading on my mother’s immaculate linoleum floor.

I lurched into the kitchen. My mother was sprawled on the floor

in front of the sink, surrounded in shattered glass. The water was still running.

I fell to my knees in the glass, reaching for my mother’s shoulder.

I shook her. “Mom?”

She was still breathing. I turned her over. Her mouth was slack

and her eyes were closed. I cupped my hands around her throat. I

could feel her pulse beating there. But she didn’t answer me.

I skidded backward on the floor. The glass had made my knees

red and sticky.

A crow perched in the kitchen window, peering down at me, the

sunlight edging its silhouette. The bird made no sound, but I could hear the crows outside—scores of them—cawing in a raucous cry of

alarm.

I ran. I ran, as hard as I could, to the neighbors’ house, three miles distant. I was down the dirt road before the screen door slammed

behind me.

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A black cloud followed me.

My hair sucked into my mouth, sticking to my lips and ragged

breath as I turned. A squawking, churning mass of crows followed

me. My fists pumped hard against my sides. I ducked my head and

forced my feet into the dust, my skirt tearing at my legs. My vision was blurry as I spotted the neighbors’ house behind shriveled wheat.

It bobbed and jagged with my breath.

Sam saw me staggering up to the yard. He ran to me, the straw

hat flying off his tow head. He grasped me by the shoulders, looking at me with eyes the color of cornflowers.

“What’s wrong?”

It took me three tries before I could pant the words out: “My

mother.”

Sam shouted to the house. His father charged down the steps,

tugging on his shoes.

“My mother,” I rasped. “She needs a doctor. Fast.”

Sam’s father paled. He scuttled to the green pickup truck, motioned for us to get in the back. His wife piled into the cab with him. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled up, and tomato spatters dotted her apron. Her hands were red. I dimly assumed she’d been canning.

“Come on,” Sam said. He jumped into the open tailgate and

pulled me up behind him.

I clung to him in the back of the truck as it kicked up plumes

of dust. That seemed to keep the crows at bay. I couldn’t see their shadows through the thick yellow miasma. My fingers dug deep into

Sam’s arm, but he didn’t wince. He just smoothed my sweaty hair

from my face. If he said anything, I couldn’t hear it over the roar of the engine and the sound of gravel kicking up on the oil pan. The

metal bed of the truck scorched the pale flesh of my legs, but I didn’t care. I just kept visualizing my mother on the kitchen floor.

Sam and I scrambled out of the truck at my house. Sam’s mother

climbed out and slammed the door. It echoed loudly. The sound of