The Secret Hum of a Daisy (4 page)

“She said stubbornly,” Lacey said, smiling.

I stoked the fire, dumped out water from the bucket, and gave her a
humph.
“It's all part of Plan B.”

“Don't you get scared at night?” she said.

“Nope,” I lied.

Lacey picked at a thread on the sofa and, when she saw me watching, stopped. “I just don't understand why you can't work your plan from inside the house. You don't have to make yourself miserable too.”

“This is torture for Grandma,” I said. What I didn't tell her was that I could hear the river from the house sometimes. The hills and valleys made the sound carry in funny ways, though, so I couldn't hear it from the shed at all, even though I could see Grandma's house through the trees.

“I miss you,” Lacey said. “It takes me even longer to get dressed in the morning because you're not there to tell me I look okay. I had three tardies in first period just last week.”

“I'll be there soon. Your mom knows I'm the only one who can talk sense to you when you're in a snit. And it's going to get worse now that we're almost teenagers.” I smiled and poked her arm.

There was a knock on the door and Mrs. Greene came in, the door scraping against the concrete floor. She took in the dish towel curtains I'd hung in the window and the sleeping bag on the flower-garden sofa. “It seems your grandma is not the one forcing you to live in a broken-down shed. That it is you, in fact, who refuses to come in the house.”

“I might have exaggerated,” I said.

“You flat-out lied, Grace. And what is with your hair? Is that makeup under your eyes?”

She came at me with her thumbs and wiped away the eye shadow. Then she nudged herself right between me and Lacey. “We had a deal,” she said to me.

“I'm trying.”

“Trying to give your poor grandmother a stroke.”

“I just want to come back to your house.”

Mrs. Greene gave me a fierce hug. “We will always be here for you, but this is your home now.”

I mumbled into her shirt, “You aren't taking me with you.”

She took me by the shoulders. “I would never leave you in a bad place. Can you believe that?”

I looked into Mrs. Greene's face, trying hard not to believe her. Trying hard to ignore all the days of living in her house, where she never once lied or took advantage or did anything untrustworthy. I'd watched her put change into donation cans and wrap blankets around homeless people and take in more strays—dogs, cats, people—than she should have. Including me and Mama. She reminded me of a thousand-year-old tree. Her roots went down and her arms went out and there was no knocking her over with anything less than a bulldozer.

“But Mama didn't want this place to be home or we would have come back. There was a good reason Mama stayed away.”

“I'm sure she had reasons. But don't you think you need to decide for yourself if they were good ones?”

I pulled away and chewed my thumbnail.

“Your grandmother tells me you haven't been eating either,” Mrs. Greene said.

There it was, the moment I'd been waiting for. She wouldn't just leave me here to starve to death.

“No. I haven't been hungry.” I tried to look especially pathetic. “Grandma is a terrible cook.”

Lacey nodded. “Look at her, Mom. She's dropped five pounds at least. And she was skinny to begin with.”

Mrs. Greene heaved a big sigh. “I hate doing this. But you don't seem to be adjusting well, so we're all going to take a break.”

“What?” Lacey and I both said together.

“Your grandma and I decided you and Lacey could talk on Saturdays, but not during the school week. We aren't coming back to visit for a couple of months.”

“But . . . !” I said, words failing. Lacey just looked down at her hands.

“You have to give yourself a chance here. And hanging on to us isn't the way to do it,” Mrs. Greene said.

It felt like the last little thread connecting me to anything familiar and loved snapped and I was falling and falling down some bottomless hole. It was hard to catch my breath.

It must have showed in my face, because Mrs. Greene said, “If you need help, Grace, you have to ask for it. I know you don't want to talk about what happened, but—”

“It's fine. I'll be fine.”

Mrs. Greene didn't push and instead tried talking to me about my first day of school tomorrow and how she believed in me. How much fun Lacey and I would have writing letters to each other since Grandma didn't have a computer and wouldn't get me an e-mail account anyway. Mrs. Greene wanted me to send her poems, and I didn't tell her how I wasn't going to be writing, that somehow not writing was going to keep Mama close. It was the kind of thing I could have told her Before, but instead, I just kept my arms crossed tight and my mouth closed. Lacey still stared at her hands.

“Well, aren't you two a pair. Come on, then.” Mrs. Greene stood up.

She took my hands and helped me off the sofa. Then she kissed my forehead. I put my arms around her and held on tight, wondering how I'd ever let go. Lacey wedged herself in.

“This isn't forever, Grace. Just for a little while,” Mrs. Greene said.

Lacey hugged me tight, and then I watched them drive away.

Twin

Hearts

In my dream,
Mama sat on a wide, flat rock in the middle of the river. It was nightfall, and the deep green of the water moved in slow motion beneath her feet. There were two sandhill cranes, one on each side of her, like guardians. Mama stood and smiled, arms outstretched. I wasn't surprised to see she matched the cranes with her own set of wings spread wide. My heart swelled at seeing her again. I had so much to tell her.

I walked into the water, braving the cold and the pointy rocks.

The cranes startled and flew off, frightened by my clumsy splashing. Then, as though they knew the way and she didn't, Mama flapped her own great wings and flew off after them, giving one last sorrowful look over her shoulder, blond hair streaming behind in soft waves. I woke with the effort of trying to call her back.

I didn't have much time to gather myself before the
crunch, crunch, crunch
of gravel outside let me know Grandma was coming. I listened to see if her footsteps went toward the mailbox or the shed.

Darn it.

Grandma walked in wearing her usual oversized brown cardigan and overalls, plus knee pads covered in dirt from the garden. A bandana held back the hair from her forehead, all of it twisted into a tight bun at her neck. She stared me down with blue eyes, so much like mine and Mama's, as she set a big red bag on the sofa. From the bag, she took out a pretty purple sweater, jeans, and brand-new Converse.

“I picked up a few things the last time I was in Nevada City. I wasn't sure what you'd need,” she said, matter-of-fact. “We can shop for more if you'd like.”

“Do you think Mama didn't provide for me? Is that what you're saying?”

Grandma squinted like some part of me had gone out of focus. She ignored my question and stared around the room, like Mrs. Greene did the day before, taking in the old rag rug I'd shaken out and set on the floor, the stack of boxes I'd taken out of Mama's room. She lifted a box flap. The one with the pointe ballet shoes and the Girl Scout vest.

It wasn't a compulsion—to gather every bit of Mama that I could. Every broken necklace and pair of stockings. Mary Lou Jenkins from my second-grade class in Buttonwillow, who used to pull out one hair at a time and eat it like spaghetti? That was a compulsion. This was just a strong need. A water-sunshine-sleep kind of need.

Grandma took the ballet shoes out of the box. “These are mine.”

I blinked in surprise. I'd already created a space in my mind for Mama's dancing. I couldn't at all wrap my head around this new information. Grandma, with her gardening knee pads and lumberjack coat, had been a ballerina.

“There's a lot you don't know.” She set the slippers back in the box and closed the lid. She touched the cross at her neck. “We've got to start somewhere, Grace. I want you to come in the house.”

“I do come in the house. I have to use your bathroom, don't I?”

Grandma looked at the boxes again. Then she turned and walked outside. When she came back, she carried a banged-up metal toolbox. It looked just like one Mama had.

She sat on the couch and set the toolbox beside her. “Your mama used to make birds out of metal and found objects.”

“Don't you think I know that?”

“So she kept making them.” It wasn't a question.

“Of course she did.”

She patted the sofa as if I should sit. “Do you have any of her birds?”

“No,” I said, suddenly hopeful. “Do you?”

“Open the toolbox.”

I sat down beside it, carefully opening the rusted blue lid, and found a tray of what Mama called her delicates. Random letters from a Scrabble board, miniature brass numbers and letters, fortunes from fortune cookies, Monopoly game pieces.

Hands shaking, I took out the tray and set it on my lap. The space underneath was full of bird parts. At least that was what I saw in the bent-up pieces of metal, broken watches, and spoons.

Mixed in with all that was a small half-finished bird. Tears burned my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall in front of Grandma.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Take a look.”

I lifted the bird out. The rivets hadn't been closed around the bottom, and there weren't any wings or head. But I could tell from the long, graceful neck and legs that it was meant to be a crane.

Grandma fussed with Mama's quilt, folding it this way and that, and I thought about Mama's treasure hunts, how they always started with a crane. While Grandma was folding, I held my breath and tilted the unfinished bird the tiniest bit so I could see inside the dark opening of the body. The opening wasn't very wide, almost paper thin. But I could see the edge of something just inside, something I'd have to pry out. I couldn't help it and let out a small sound.

“What is it?” Grandma asked.

“Nothing.”

I stared at that little bird and wondered if this was the start of a new treasure hunt, if it was an honest-to-goodness sign from Mama. The hope sat awkwardly in my chest, beating there like a twin heart.

“You can keep the box, but you'll have to give me something in return. Take meals in the house. Help with chores when I ask,” Grandma said.

I thought it over. It was fair, I supposed. “Fine.”

Grandma stood up and stretched, then headed for the door and pulled it open. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

“You mean, right now?”

“Breakfast is ready. Grab your clothes.” She nodded toward the toolbox. “It'll be here when you get back.”

“Will it?”

Grandma put her hands on her hips. “I guess a toolbox-stealing thief might find his way in here before you get home from school. But it's entirely unlikely.”

I wasn't taking any chances that a Grandma-sized thief might go back on her word, so I carefully packed the crane in a T-shirt and slipped it inside my backpack. I grabbed clothes and my latest notebook.

Even though I had no intention of writing, leaving it behind would have felt like leaving a piece of my own self behind. A necessary piece, like an elbow for leaning. I figured I needed all the elbows I could get today.

Grilled

Cheese

Grandma went out
to warm the truck, but it wouldn't start, so she came back inside and called Sheriff Bergum. Why you needed a sheriff to start your truck, I would never know.

I hoped I could stay out of school one more day, really check out the inside of the unfinished crane in the privacy of my own shed, but those hopes were crushed a few minutes later when the sheriff's car pulled into the driveway. He must have been close. But then again, everywhere in this town was close.

I tried to think straight about the unfinished bird. It was in an old toolbox that Mama left behind years ago. She couldn't have possibly meant for me to find what was inside. But what if she had? I could just see her setting up a treasure hunt for her baby to follow one day before she knew she'd be leaving, before her whole life turned into one big search for home.

As much as my rational mind tried to talk me into facts, it didn't have as much power as my imagination and the feeling that Mama was so close, I could almost smell the peeled-apple scent of her soap.

Whatever was going on, it would have to wait until after school. In the meantime, I finished getting ready in the downstairs bathroom, taking handfuls of water to sponge down my poky hair until the frizz was sort of under control. I took Grandma's new clothes, which she'd picked up on our way out of the shed, and tucked them behind the toilet.

The horn blared as I buttoned Mama's coat over my own jeans and sweatshirt. I double-checked my backpack for bird, binder and pencils, and my map of California. Every place we'd ever lived was pinpricked on that map, and it gave me a solid feeling on the inside to have it with me. My notebook was there, nestled in beside my binder. I might not have been able to write in it, but at least it was where it was supposed to be.

Like arms and legs and hair and nose, everything was all in its proper place. It was my insides that needed an inventory. I was certain if they ran my body through one of those X-ray machines, they'd find stuff missing. I didn't know what exactly. Not my heart, because I could feel it there, beating on as though nothing had happened. But maybe some deep-down place that knew how to love and smile and feel light as feathers on sunshiny days. That part was clean gone.

The horn blared again and I wanted to punch something. Instead, I looked in the mirror and repeated the words Mama would have me say each time I started a new school.

“You can do this. You are brave and wise. You are loved.”

I felt her hands running through my hair, taming it in all the ways I couldn't. There were so many things I should have paid attention to.

I slung my backpack over one shoulder and walked onto the porch. Sheriff Bergum was parked right next to the open hood of Grandma's truck. Grandma didn't have a name for her Chevy, so I'd taken to calling her Granny Smith in my own mind because she was the exact color of a Granny Smith apple. The sheriff himself stood over the open engine with a look of determination, as though he wasn't used to anything getting the best of him. As I approached the truck, he looked up and smiled at me, running a thick-fingered hand over his bald head.

I'd heard the term
barrel-chested
in books but always thought it was an impossible description of a person. Like
sharp-nosed
or
whip-thin.
Something fit for a cartoon character. But Sheriff Bergum actually looked like if he unpeeled his shirt, I might just see the ribs of a barrel in there. He was wide everywhere else, and tall, and I imagined criminals made sure to commit their crimes in other counties. All that bigness was almost scary like a storm coming, or a really big wave, but he was handsome, too, in a rugged, stubbled sort of way. The kind of handsome some of the ladies around here might stick their cats up a tree for, just so they could call for help.

“It still won't start,” Grandma said as I dropped my backpack on the seat next to a small bag of gardening tools. I didn't climb in and if she noticed my lack of purple sweater and new Converse, she didn't comment.

“Then why are you blaring your horn at me?”

“So we can leave as soon as this truck starts,” Grandma said like I was a ninny.

“Try it again,” Sheriff Bergum called in a voice deep as roots.

Grandma twisted the key, the truck sending unnatural sounds out into the morning.

“I can give you a ride in,” Sheriff Bergum said, wiping his hands on a greasy towel. He bent over to rest his arms on Grandma's open window.

I narrowed my eyes. No one on this earth did things for free, and that was a proven fact. Just take our old landlord, Johnny B. He gave us room and board in his cheap motel for half the price, Mama thinking she would clean rooms and cook meals to make up the difference. But Johnny B. had more in mind than Mr. Clean and a pot roast dinner, which prompted move number six. I'd learned that with some people the truth was a hard thing to pin down, as it was usually hidden in the deep valleys between their words.

Besides, no way was I riding in the back of a police car on my first day of school. No way was I letting anyone drive Daisy either.

“You need to give her a name,” I said.

“Give who a name?” Grandma said.

“The truck. We had a name for our car and Mama talked real nice to her, like with plants. That car always started right up.”

“You want me to talk to the truck?” Grandma said real quiet, like it was occurring to her I might have slipped clear off my nut.

Sheriff Bergum looked amused. “Come on, Miranda. Give it a try.”

“I most certainly will not.”

Just to poke at her, I ran my hand along the crisp green metal. “There you go, Granny Smith. You take your time. I know you can do it.”

When I walked to the tailgate, Grandma stared at me through the rearview mirror; her eyes were almost kind.

“You can try it again,” I said.

In a shuddering cough of smelly gray smoke, the truck started right up. Even I was surprised.

“Well, now. That is impressive. We should send you out on service calls with Old Mac. He could use you instead of a battery charger,” Sheriff Bergum said.

“I'll make an appointment with Mac today. Thank you for coming, Pete.”

“How could I resist your charms?” he said with a wink. “You're still late, though. It appears I'll have to give you an escort.” He said it with a wink to me, as though I were a seven-year-old boy who had waited my entire seven-year-old-boy life for something like that.

Sheriff Bergum set his lights to whirling, but Grandma wouldn't go past twenty-five miles per hour. We were the slowest-moving police escort in the history of police escorts. I almost asked her why in the heck she drove so slow, but then it occurred to me she'd lost her husband in a car accident, so I kept my mouth shut.

I slid down as far as I could, eyeballs looking over the bottom edge of the window. As we came out on Ridge Road, the stormy-sky horse from next door was standing at the wooden fence. She nodded her head as we passed.

“It would be easier to talk to Lacey if I had an e-mail account,” I said for the hundredth time.

“When I was your age, we wrote letters. It's a lost art.”

“So I guess a cell phone is out?” Mama and I had never had cell phones as they were too expensive. I'd been hopeful, though, that I might be able to guilt Grandma into one. Then maybe Lacey and I could sneak in conversations whenever we wanted.

“There's no reception in the mountains.”

As though it wasn't bad enough I had to live with Grandma, I had to live with Grandma stuck back in time.

“You know,” Grandma said, “I was wondering if you've seen my spatula or the can opener. I went to use both this morning and they aren't in their usual place. Maybe you put them in the wrong drawer.”

“Maybe.”

I had to turn all the way to the window to hide my smile. And then I felt bad. I was committed to Plan B, but she had just given me the toolbox, after all.

I counted trees out the window. When I hit thirty-seven Grandma said, “So what did you and your mom name your car?”

I contemplated not telling her, but a tiny break from Plan B wouldn't hurt anything.

“Daisy,” I said.

She nodded as though that made perfect sense.

• • •

The church and the school shared a parking lot, and Grandma pulled into the same space she used for the funeral, waving the sheriff off. There were a million empty spaces between the school and us.

“No one dings the doors this way,” Grandma declared.

As Sheriff Bergum drove by, he put two fingers to his eyes and then pointed at me. He'd be watching. Then he winked again and drove off.

Grandma clutched her black purse and got out.

I stared forward for a few seconds and took a deep breath, asking Mama for help to get through my day, even though I was pretty much an old pro at first days. As I said my last few words, I noticed something shiny caught in the bushes.

Grandma opened my door. “Good heavens, do I need a crowbar to get you out?”

“I need a minute. To myself.”

“Don't be long,” Grandma said, and hurried toward the office. She hadn't even bothered to take off her knee pads.

I got out of the truck and watched Grandma until she was out of sight, then turned back to the bushes. They were hedge-like, thick with leaves and white buds, gardenias thinking about blooming. I reached toward the silvery paper, trying hard not to catch the sharp twig-thin branches with my arm. It didn't work. I drew blood on the back of my hand before I got to whatever it was stuck deep in the bush. I pulled it out as carefully as I could and got two more scratches for my trouble.

It was an origami crane, dirty and weathered.

I stared at that little bird, blinked, and stared again. I almost wished Grandma was here so I could make sure she was seeing what I was seeing. The breeze picked up and the bird shuddered in my hand like it was pondering the best way to take off.

Mama thought birds were signposts sent to let us know we were headed in the right direction. We'd look for birds on road signs, in murals or billboards, anywhere they might show up. So I took that bird as a sign of encouragement.

Whatever doubts I'd had that Mama might be trying to tell me something were gone.

• • •

There was a steady drizzle as I set off across the asphalt toward Lincoln School. I pocketed the crane into Mama's peacoat and tried not to let the hope run away with me. But it made perfect sense. Mama had always said she'd never leave me, that not even death could separate us. Late into the night, when she couldn't sleep and she'd climb into bed with me to read Robert Frost, she'd whisper that she'd always be there, falling with the raindrops, turning herself to birdsong, warming the top of my head on a hot summer day. Then she'd laugh and say my poems were rubbing off on her.

Because Mama didn't leave a last will and testament or any other sort of directions as to what she wanted, she must be trying to let me know—in our own secret way—that she wanted me to follow the treasure-hunt clues. That they would tell me where I belonged. Which I already knew was with Mrs. Greene.

A chill ran along my shoulders at the idea that Mama was still there, really and truly there. A little voice whispered that I was crazy. But then I heard Mama's voice, strong and true.
Don't think so much, Grace.

“Let go of my hand!”

A smallish girl with pixie-cut brown hair dragged an even smaller boy right toward me on the sidewalk, fast, and scattered my Mama thoughts. At the last second, she saw me frozen there and jerked to the left. Two books, a rolling red suitcase, and the boy went tripping onto the grass.

“I'm sorry!” she called over her shoulder as she ran past. “I'll be right back!”

I turned to watch her head into the school parking lot, waving her arms like a lunatic.

“She's trying to catch my mom before she leaves,” a voice said from the grass. The boy reached his hand out to me, both hands wrapped in bandages.

“I'm Maximilian Patrick Brannigan. That was Johanna. I'm sorry she almost fell on you.”

He was seven, eight tops, with hair so wispy, it looked more like a halo than something you could tug on with a brush. He picked his Yankees baseball cap off the grass and shoved it on his head.

“You have the horses next door,” I said.

“Yep.”

A few papers blew across the lawn out of an open textbook. Max stomped on them rather than let them get away, and I helped as best I could. Science notes. Math scribbles. He had a hard time picking up paper with his thumb and bandaged fingers.

“Jo's going to be mad her notes got dirty,” he said.

“
She's
going to be mad?”

“She won't be mad at us. She'll be mad at herself.”

As I chased after one last sheet of paper, Jo ran back into view holding a brown paper lunch sack. She wore an oversized orange sweater, black leggings that hugged her skinny legs, and combat boots. I noticed her hair was exactly the same as Max's, squirrel brown and wispy. She had a toothy smile. They were like two of those little Russian dolls that fit one inside the other.

A new white truck drove by slowly, holding up a line of cars,
BRANNIGAN & SON CONSTRUCTION
printed on the front door panel. The window cranked down and a woman with Jo's turned-up nose called out, “Eat every last bit of that lunch, Max Brannigan!” and then with a wave she was gone.

I was embarrassed for Max, but none of the kids walking up the path seemed to notice.

“Try and remember next time,” Jo said, handing Max the lunch sack. Then she turned to me. “I'm so sorry, Grace. Are you all right? Of course you're all right. Look at you. You're good. You're fine. Well, maybe not fine, but not hurt. And that's good.”

Jo grabbed a handful of papers and shoved them into her backpack. “Look at my notes! There are grass stains and smudgy footprint stains, and now maybe I'll read a word in my notes as
exothermic
when it's really
endothermic
and I'll flunk my science quiz.”