Lenora dried off her hands and went back to rolling Pearl’s hair. I
never
let Lenora shampoo me. Anything she could see in my hair, I wasn’t wanting to know. It was better not to know. People liked to think it would help, but it wouldn’t. I already knew the past, and there was no preparing for the future. For sure it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference to me if I’d known back during that summer what was waiting ahead for Mama.
All that first month after Mama came back to us, I was edgy. I’d wake up at two or three in the morning, the heat of summer mixing in with the heft of waiting and soaking me through. Some nights I’d go out on the porch, hoping to catch a breeze. I’d open my shirt and let the air bathe me. Like Mama’d noticed, I had grown out. In the past few months I’d developed distinct breasts, and I was starting to have feelings about my body. I’d wrap the night around me and stare into the darkness while some unknown thing hung in the air like a promise, as real as the fireflies that danced and sparked above the grass. I’d never seen a firefly in daylight, but I pictured them like miniature dragonflies. Delicate and nearly transparent.
One morning when she’d been back about three weeks, Mama and I sat on the porch, drinking iced tea and playing gin rummy. A pair of beetles settled on the railing, rear ends hitched. “They’re mating,” Mama said.
“For real?” I said. I must have seen them hitched up like that a hundred times, but I’d never known what they were up to. “What are they?”
“Fireflies.”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told me they were buffalo. It didn’t seem possible that those ordinary brown bugs were what produced the flickering light or that something so common, so utilitarian was capable of producing magic. Mama said we see what we want to see and that most beauty was an illusion anyway. She’d been staring at the beetles when she told me this. “Change,” she said suddenly. “Fireflies signify change.”
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “They do?”
“Absolutely. Beetles signify change.” Mama knew all kinds of things like that. Way back, there was Indian blood in Goody’s side of the family and whenever Mama wanted to get Goody’s goat, she’d bring that up. I was hoping this time she’d mistaken the sign. I’d had about as much change as I could handle. But even when I was given a clear indication of what lay ahead, I turned my gaze and looked the other way. Back then I believed it was possible to erase something if you pretended hard enough that it wasn’t happening. In that way, Mama and I were alike.
Some days, Martha Lee came with Mama and me to the creek. While I swam, they’d spread out a blanket and play two-handed canasta and drink gin tonics from a Thermos. The mix of their laughter and cigarette smoke and Coppertone would float out to me.
When I finished swimming, I’d flop on a towel near them and pretend to be asleep, hoping they would forget I was there. I liked to eavesdrop, especially when they talked about men and sex. They’d argue about who was good-looking. Although Martha Lee thought he was overrated, Mama plain adored Elvis. She said that she’d let him put his boots under her bed anytime. Martha Lee said when she found a man whose boots were bigger than hers, then she’d let him stow them under her bed. Goody would have had a heart attack if she could have heard them carrying on. Between them they knew the secrets of womanhood, everything a girl could want to know. Mama knew how to dance, dress pretty, and flirt without looking foolish, and how to stuff a chicken and make biscuits, how to put on makeup and make everyone fall in love with her. Martha Lee knew practical stuff, like how to raise vegetables, drive a stick shift, and care for sick people. I wanted to learn it all.
One afternoon, after I’d practiced the crawl until my legs
never
let Lenora shampoo me. Anything she could see in my hair, I wasn’t wanting to know. It was better not to know. People liked to think it would help, but it wouldn’t. I already knew the past, and there was no preparing for the future. For sure it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference to me if I’d known back during that summer what was waiting ahead for Mama.
All that first month after Mama came back to us, I was edgy. I’d wake up at two or three in the morning, the heat of summer mixing in with the heft of waiting and soaking me through. Some nights I’d go out on the porch, hoping to catch a breeze. I’d open my shirt and let the air bathe me. Like Mama’d noticed, I had grown out. In the past few months I’d developed distinct breasts, and I was starting to have feelings about my body. I’d wrap the night around me and stare into the darkness while some unknown thing hung in the air like a promise, as real as the fireflies that danced and sparked above the grass. I’d never seen a firefly in daylight, but I pictured them like miniature dragonflies. Delicate and nearly transparent.
One morning when she’d been back about three weeks, Mama and I sat on the porch, drinking iced tea and playing gin rummy. A pair of beetles settled on the railing, rear ends hitched. “They’re mating,” Mama said.
“For real?” I said. I must have seen them hitched up like that a hundred times, but I’d never known what they were up to. “What are they?”
“Fireflies.”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told me they were buffalo. It didn’t seem possible that those ordinary brown bugs were what produced the flickering light or that something so common, so utilitarian was capable of producing magic. Mama said we see what we want to see and that most beauty was an illusion anyway. She’d been staring at the beetles when she told me this. “Change,” she said suddenly. “Fireflies signify change.”
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “They do?”
“Absolutely. Beetles signify change.” Mama knew all kinds of things like that. Way back, there was Indian blood in Goody’s side of the family and whenever Mama wanted to get Goody’s goat, she’d bring that up. I was hoping this time she’d mistaken the sign. I’d had about as much change as I could handle. But even when I was given a clear indication of what lay ahead, I turned my gaze and looked the other way. Back then I believed it was possible to erase something if you pretended hard enough that it wasn’t happening. In that way, Mama and I were alike.
Some days, Martha Lee came with Mama and me to the creek. While I swam, they’d spread out a blanket and play two-handed canasta and drink gin tonics from a Thermos. The mix of their laughter and cigarette smoke and Coppertone would float out to me.
When I finished swimming, I’d flop on a towel near them and pretend to be asleep, hoping they would forget I was there. I liked to eavesdrop, especially when they talked about men and sex. They’d argue about who was good-looking. Although Martha Lee thought he was overrated, Mama plain adored Elvis. She said that she’d let him put his boots under her bed anytime. Martha Lee said when she found a man whose boots were bigger than hers, then she’d let him stow them under her bed. Goody would have had a heart attack if she could have heard them carrying on. Between them they knew the secrets of womanhood, everything a girl could want to know. Mama knew how to dance, dress pretty, and flirt without looking foolish, and how to stuff a chicken and make biscuits, how to put on makeup and make everyone fall in love with her. Martha Lee knew practical stuff, like how to raise vegetables, drive a stick shift, and care for sick people. I wanted to learn it all.
One afternoon, after I’d practiced the crawl until my legs
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