Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

  Dad carved a small ear of corn for Fraya and a small pod of beans for Flossie. I was given a squash nesting in its leaf. He painted each carving. Bright yellow for Fraya’s corn. Light green for Flossie’s beans. Dark green for my leaf nestling an orange squash. He attached each charm to our own individual necklace of Cherokee corn beads, which he harvested from the garden.

  Using more beads, Dad made him and Mom each a necklace. Their pendant was an apple he carved no bigger than the center of his palm. He painted the apple red, then cut it in half, splitting even the stem itself. Inside the apple halves he painted white flesh and black seeds.

  “It’s the apple you were eatin’ the first time we met,” Dad told Mom when he first showed her the necklaces. He was already wearing his, and was offering to put hers around her neck for her.

  Once she felt the carving against her skin, she held it in her hand and said, “First it was half a chocolate bar. Now it’s half an apple. How can a woman ever feel whole in this damn world?”

  “Half a chocolate bar?” Dad asked.

  Without answering, Mom stared at the apple as she quoted the Bible verse, “Comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.”

  She wore the necklace every day. If ever the apple half happened to fall beneath her collar, she would lift it back out to rest against her chest for all to see.

  My father was extraordinary with a piece of wood. I could spend hours watching him work. Ever since I’d broken the jars of plums, my father had picked up on his carving. I think it was a solace to him. To be able to hold wood and craft it so clearly it could not become something you did not will it to be. Maybe this is why I also found respite in watching him work. I knew he would never carve anything as awful as what Leland had done.

  I sat in the rocker beside Dad’s, watching him work on a turtle that was nearly the size of his lap. On the turtle’s back were crisscrossing lines that ran to and from hills, mountains, and trees. As he carved out a valley, I held my foot up against the post in front of me. My foot used to be the length of the post’s pedestal. But my toes had grown beyond the pedestal’s edge. I lowered my foot and even tried to hide it under the rocker.

  “See all of this?” Dad held up the turtle and pointed to the topography on the shell. “This is the map of heaven. It exists on the back of a turtle.”

  More than turtles and maps, I wished my father would whittle us enough money to buy ourselves a past, free from brutality. One where daughters do not have to fear their father in the bedroom. One where sisters do not have to fear the approach of their brothers. If only we could buy ourselves away from the Grandpappy Larks and Lelands of the world.

  “Can I have some money?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

  “First time you speak in weeks, and that’s what you say?”

  “Don’t you ever wish you were rich, Dad? Your name would never be on a list for tokens and you could buy anything in the world.”

  “Anything?” He slowed his carving. “Don’t know if I need that.”

  “Everybody needs that, Dad.”

  He blew wood dust off his knife before saying, “You know this here turtle sits like an island on a great and wondrous ocean.”

  “Dad, I’m tryin’ to talk to you about somethin’ important. Somethin’ real.”

  He carved what he told me was a river on the turtle’s back. Then he said, “It’s gonna rain tonight, Little Indian. It’ll rain hard and give the earth a good soakin’. When it does, I want you to meet me by the willa tree.”

  Knowing my father would say no more, I left him to his map of heaven and headed out to A Faraway Place to write.

  Once upon a time, the girl was rich and she could buy herself all the happiness in the world.

  I later woke to rain beating down on me. It was dark and my story had washed away. I left it in its puddle and jumped off the stage.

  It felt as though I were walking against a flood as I trudged to the willow tree, which stood by the Shady Lane sign. Parting the tree’s weeping branches, I stepped in under its canopy.

  Suddenly, a hand gripped my shoulder. My whole body locked up. My first thought was that Leland had come back, followed me, and was now going to bury me, side by side, with the rain.

  I slowly turned, shielding my eyes from a bright light.

  “Sorry,” Dad said.

  He was wearing his old miner’s hat. He turned the light so it would shine on the willow’s trunk.

  “What do you see, Little Indian, when you look at that ol’ willa tree?”

  “Bark and rain,” I said, staring at the illuminated trunk.

  “Don’t you see the diamonds?” he asked.

  “There are no diamonds, Dad.”

  “Look again. Don’t you see that sparkle? Don’t you see that shine?”

  I watched the rain fall into the grooves and against the ridges of the bark. I saw how it reflected the light from Dad’s hat.

  “The world was very wet once,” he said. “It rained day and night without end. Puddles turned into lakes. Lakes turned into rivers. Rivers became oceans. Oceans became a flood. The rain was the tears of a woman who would not stop cryin’ over her dead children. Her tears poured from her until all the land was swallowed up. The only way to get around was by boats, but at night it was hard to see. This was a time before flashlights and lanterns. When torches could only light so far ahead. Boats wrecked. People drowned.

  “The men blamed the trees. Said they were witches, purposely chokin’ the glow from the moon with their net of branches. So the men, in their rage, began to heavy their hands with axes and saws, and the water splashed as the great mahoganies and hickories, pines and sycamores all fell. Anything with bark or branches was sent to the grave. The men said they were doin’ it to make the waterways safer at night, but it was carnage. Old trees, young trees, they were cut down and left to rot in the water as if their lives didn’t matter. The trees understood when man cut them down to use their timber to build homes out of or to turn their heartwood into paper for storytellers and poets to lay their pens upon. In doing so, the trees had given their life for a purpose. There was no purpose now, except to get them out of the way. So in order to protect themselves, the trees decided to wake their guardians. Every tree has one. A spirit inside it, hidden away, until it’s needed.”

  Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a small carving of a girl with wings. I knew he must have carved it that afternoon waiting for the rain. The girl’s face was my own. I smiled up at my father for carving me with wings as he told about how the tree guardians flew to the men with the saws and the axes.

  “The guardians begged the men to stop killin’ the trees,” he said. “But the men claimed the trees must be gotten rid of. Then the guardians saw the diamonds shinin’ from barrels on the men’s boats. The guardians said to the men, ‘If you give us your diamonds, we can do somethin’ about your boats crashin’ into the trees.’

  “ ‘But our diamonds are what make us rich,’ the men replied. ‘We will be poor without them.’

  “The guardians told the men they were foolish.

  “ ‘Your life is what makes you rich,’ they insisted. ‘The people you love and the people who love you back.’

  “The men, knowin’ the wisdom of the guardians, gave their diamonds to them. The guardians flew to each tree and placed the diamonds into the bark. The stones sparkled and shined like bright lights the people could use to find their way in the dark.”

  I watched the rain collect into a large puddle at the base of the willow.

  “What happened to the flood?” I asked.

  “After givin’ the light,” Dad said, “the guardians flew to the weepin’ woman. They asked her to stop.

  “ ‘I will cry forever,’ the woman said, ‘so the world will always remember who I weep for.’

  “The guardians told he
r they could make it so the world would never forget.

  “ ‘We will turn you into a tree,’ they offered her. ‘Your branches will hang low and drag on the ground. You’ll grow seeds of white. These seeds will blow over all the lands to seed more of you and your weepin’. You will forever mourn your children.

  “This being what she wanted, the woman allowed them to change her into the tree we all know today as the weepin’ willa.”

  I stepped close to the tree and saw each of our names carved into the bark.

  “I cut ’em in there when we first moved here.” Dad ran his fingers into the grooves of my name. “Anytime I start thinkin’ I’m a man with no treasures, I come out here in the rain and I see my diamonds. You asked me if I wished I were rich, Betty, but I ain’t a poor man. With all these diamonds, how can I be? You ain’t poor either, Little Indian. It’s the same thing the men on those boats came to learn. No matter if we can’t find a single penny in our pockets, we got the wealth of the world between us.”

  He handed me the carved guardian.

  “May she protect you against those who threaten to cut you down,” he said.

  “Can she protect anyone?” I looked up into his face.

  “Anyone in the world who needs protection.”

  Not stopping to answer Dad’s question of where I was off to in such a hurry, I ran home.

  With the rain dripping off me and onto the floor, I walked into the house and up the stairs. I saw a light shining from Fraya’s bedroom. As the youngest of the three sisters, I was squash. The one who was supposed to spread her leaves and guard her sisters. I now had something that could help me do that.

  I quietly stood in Fraya’s open doorway. She was leaning on a windowsill, staring up at the night sky.

  “Fraya?”

  “It’s cold, Betty.” She rubbed her arms. “Summer soon to be over, autumn here, winter there. The seasons come and go so quickly. Like a chainsaw in a field of sunflowers.”

  She turned and pointed to the bed, where a record lay.

  “I made one of them recordin’s in the coin-operated booth outside Moogie’s Toy Store,” she said, looking at the record. “I don’t know why I did. We ain’t even got a record player. It’s a silly song anyways.”

  I stepped into the room.

  “I have somethin’ for ya, Fraya,” I said, opening my hand and revealing the guardian lying there.

  “She’ll protect you.”

  I didn’t know I was crying until Fraya asked me why I was.

  “Because I love you, Fraya.” I wiped my tears.

  “Well, gosh, I know that. Nothin’ to cry over.”

  She took the angel from my hand. She stared at it a moment before sitting it on the table beside her. When she wrapped her soft arms around me, I nuzzled my face into her blouse and smelled her soft powder scent.

  “Do you love me, Fraya?” I asked.

  “Forever.” She hugged me tighter. “Why is it you’re always wet when I see you, Betty? From the river. From the rain—”

  “Do you love Leland?”

  She paused at the unexpectedness of my question.

  “Sometimes he’s like fallin’ to the bottom of the stairs,” she said. “But he’s still my brother.”

  “Even though he hurts you?”

  “He don’t hurt me.”

  “I was in the barn the day he…I saw how he—”

  “What do you know?” She jerked me to face her.

  “I know he—”

  Her slap stung and was something I felt from each of her fingers.

  “You know what, Betty?” Her voice frightened me.

  “I know he—”

  Her hand struck my cheek with so much force, I didn’t know she could ever be so very hard.

  “You know what?” she asked again, her teeth clenched, her hand waiting to knock my head clean off.

  “Nothin’.” I rubbed the pain in my cheek. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You don’t know anything because nothin’ has happened,” she said, walking toward the far corner of the room. There, she buried her face. “Nothin’ like that would ever happen to me. You disgust me, Betty. How could you think I would be part of somethin’ like that? He’s my brother.” She turned to me. “You haven’t told anyone, have you? Of course you have. You tell everything. Told on me about the bark.”

  “I had to. You were dyin’.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t want you to.”

  “It wasn’t your choice, Betty.” She wrung her hands. “Have you told anyone about what you think you saw in the barn?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well,” she said, “if you ever do say anything about what you’ve made up in your head about Leland and me, I swear to God, Betty, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “But, Fraya—”

  “I’ll kill myself, and it’ll be all your fault, Betty. It’ll be the same as if you killed me yourself. Would you be able to live with that?”

  She reached into her dresser drawer, removing the piece of bark still wrapped in the handkerchief.

  “Trust your big sister, Betty,” she said, looking at the bark. “I know how all the ghosts have been made.”

  THE BREATHANIAN

  Chickens Go Missing

  Last night the sheriff’s office was inundated with reports of gunfire. This morning, chickens were reported missing from a poultry farm. Upon arrival, the sheriff reported finding feathers loose on the ground. Some of the feathers looked as though they were from different species, such as from eagles or hawks.

  “What was strange is that the feathers were arranged on the ground,” the poultry farmer commented. When asked in what arrangement the feathers were constructed, the farmer said, “Hell, it looked like they were arranged to look like one of them headdresses. You know the kind you see Injuns wear on the westerns.”

  It is not yet known whether the missing chickens are related to the gunfire.

  So far there has been no other property damage reported, though Mrs. Wilma Sweetface, 67, has made it known that her flowers have been trampled in front of her house. She believes the shooter is responsible, despite there being flower petals on the soles of her own shoes.

  Part Three

  Light of the World

  1964–1966

  23

  Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

  —DEUTERONOMY 28:19

  I would always remember 1964 as the year Fraya left. She waited until March, when daffodils were blooming by the well. As she packed to leave, I stood up against her doorframe.

  “If you leave, Fraya, what will me and Flossie do? We won’t be able to say goodnight to you.”

  She picked up the jar I had given her after she had come home from Doc Lad’s. The goodnight slips were still inside it.

  “Fill it with new goodnights,” she said, handing me the jar. “I’ll save my goodnights for you and Flossie. Then, when we see each other, we’ll share the slips of paper and know each of us had remembered the other.”

  I smiled up at her.

  “I’ll m-m-miss you, Fraya,” Lint said as he came running in.

  “I won’t be goin’ far,” she told him. “I’ll visit you every day. When you come to the diner, I’ll give you milkshakes.”

  He started to pull on his nose.

  “As long as you stop pullin’ on your nose and your ears and your hair.” She gently took his hands in hers. “You’re pullin’ on all the good things. Don’t you know that?”

  She looked down at his feet.

  “And as long as you keep your shoes on,” she said. “You still got your soft baby feet. You need to protect ’em. Even Betty will wear shoes every now and then, but you never wanna wear ’em.
”

  “I don’t w-w-wanna lock my feet up like they did somethin’ bad,” he said.

  “All right, c’mon, Lint.” Mom was in the doorway. She had a rock in her hand. He ran up to her and gladly took it as they walked down the hall together. I could hear Mom telling him there were some pears in the kitchen.

  I turned back to Fraya and watched her pack the rest of her stuff. The apartment she was moving into was over top of Dandelion Dimes, where she had gotten a job. Dandelion Dimes was a diner in town. Everything there was yellow, including Fraya’s uniform, hat, and shoes. All of the waitresses had to wear diner-issued yellow socks, folded over with sheer ruffles, which bounced when they walked. Their womanly legs were made childlike in the way the ruffles seemed to make them appear no older than six-year-old girls.

  Back when the diner had first been built, the founder had accepted dandelions as equal to one dime. It was a policy generations of the founder’s family had continued after her death. You’d see dandelions in purses and wallets, being passed from the customers to the waitresses, and left as tips on the tables. There were even dandelions in the cash register as if they were as valuable as the dollar bills beside them.

  Many of the dandelions, Fraya would carry up to her apartment to be turned into dandelion lotion. I missed being able to watch her make this lotion at home, the dandelion heads laid out on our kitchen counter to dry, some of them going to seed. These Fraya and I would secretly blow into the crevices of the kitchen before gathering all our wide-mouthed jars to infuse the remaining blossoms in oil. We’d set the jars in the windowsills to warm in the sun. The light would shine into the oil, as if every single summer ever had on this earth was right there between us.