A Blue-Eyed Daisy

by Cynthia Rylant

  One day, however, Ellie was taken with the notion to walk on up the road instead of down it. She hadn’t any friends living that way, but the sun was warm and there was a chance of finding a full honeysuckle bush.

  She puffed up the hill, her feet sliding stupidly on the rocks sometimes, and looked out over the edge, where the Mills family threw their garbage. The creek ran below and for some reason the Mills family thought it all right to dump their trash outside as long as the creek was nearby.

  Ellie liked to look at the dirty, damp boxes and discover what sort of detergent Mrs. Mills used or what kind of cereal her children ate for breakfast. There were more tin cans than boxes, though, and they were boring.

  As Ellie came around the turn at the top of the hill, the tall, pointed roof of Old Lady Epperly’s house poked into sight. When she came closer, Ellie could see the wide front porch bearing a rocking chair and an old iron pot that held tall red geraniums.

  Ellie was just thinking about how much she liked the look of the house and how much she wished her own home had a decent porch when the door opened and out stepped the Old Lady herself.

  Ellie jumped when the woman called out to her: “Well, you’ve grown some!”

  Ellie walked a little slower and nodded. She sort of smiled. But kept walking.

  “How’s your daddy?” called the woman again.

  “Fine.” Ellie stopped at the gate beside the road. “He’s over to the Farmers’ Market in Beckley right now!” She really yelled that last part, since the woman always looked to her the sort of person who wouldn’t hear well.

  “Which girl are you?” the woman called back.

  Ellie knew it was coming. Nobody knew the names of Okey Farley’s girls. Just knew them by labels like The Oldest, The Tall One, The Brown-Headed One, The Skinny One, and, in Ellie’s case, The One With the Rotten Teeth.

  “I’m Ellie!” she yelled back.

  The woman nodded vigorously, as though Ellie were just the one of the five girls she’d been waiting for, and she motioned her to come through the gate and onto the porch.

  As Ellie was climbing the porch steps, the Old Lady said, “You ever get them teeth fixed?”

  Ellie clamped her mouth tight and shook her head.

  “Come on in for a strawberry biscuit. I can’t get over how you’ve grown. Gone be as big as your sister—that one, you know, The Tall One, what’s her name?”

  “Wanda,” Ellie answered through her half-open mouth.

  “Yes. Wanda.” The woman held open the screen door for Ellie. “Too many of you girls to keep up with. Okey should have had a couple of boys. No sane person wants five girls. Shame he didn’t have no boys.”

  Old Lady Epperly’s house was warm and dark and full of brown tables with lace doilies on them. The house smelled to Ellie like a quilt just pulled from a trunk.

  She followed the woman into the kitchen and sat down at the yellow-painted table. It was the first time she’d been in the Old Lady’s house alone. As a guest. The first time she wasn’t sitting stiff with her mother carrying on about the new preacher at church or Okey’s drinking.

  The woman set a jar of preserves and a saucer with two biscuits in front of Ellie. Then she pulled a spoon from a drawer.

  “Put up these preserves last summer and nobody to eat them. Here. You try ’em.”

  The woman slid the saucer and the jar and the spoon closer to Ellie.

  “Thank you.” Ellie wanted to eat the biscuits, but she was sorry she’d have to open her mouth to do it.

  Old Lady Epperly sat down across from her, clutching a dish towel she’d wiped her hands on.

  “Well, your daddy still drinking hisself to death?”

  Looked like the subject was going to be Teeth or Okey. Ellie was sorry she’d gone up the road instead of down it.

  “Some,” she answered.

  The woman shook her head and sighed.

  “Your poor old daddy. Why, Mr. Epperly would have put his life in Okey Farley’s hands any day when they was in the mines together.”

  “Your daddy worked with my daddy?”

  “No, child, my husband worked with your daddy. Yes, he’d have done anything for Okey Farley. Said Okey was the best man he knew.”

  Ellie’s mouth was full and she garbled, “He said that?”

  “Mm-hmmm. He used to be a good man, your daddy.”

  Ellie wiped some jam off the corner of her mouth with her finger. She decided she’d down the other biscuit as quick as she could and be gone.

  “You want to see a picture of Mr. Epperly?”

  Ellie nodded and stuffed the biscuit into her mouth as the woman waved her into the living room. It was heavy with velvet furniture and the smell of age.

  The Old Lady picked up a photograph sitting on top of the television. In it, a man in a uniform held a baby in one arm while the other was wrapped around the waist of a young woman.

  “This is Mr. Epperly, here. Ain’t he a handsome one in his uniform. He was always a skinny old thing but that uniform fattened him up.”

  Ellie looked at the woman in the picture.

  “Is this you, Miss Epperly?”

  “Uh-huh. And that’s our first boy—Thomas.”

  Ellie held the frame in both her hands and stared. The woman in the picture had on a flowered dress with soft, wispy sleeves and a scoop neck that revealed a pearl necklace around her throat.

  “Is this really you, Miss Epperly?”

  “Well, I swan. Sure it’s me. Now look there at Thomas’s hair. It was pure white like that for years. Thought he’d get stuck being called Whitey the rest of his life. Give him that fine name Thomas and they stick him with Whitey. But his hair turned pitch-black and that put a stop to it.”

  Ellie looked at the woman in the picture. And she wished, more than anything, she could look like that woman. Those big shiny teeth. That flowered dress. The smart little hat on her head.

  “Miss Epperly, how long did you look like that?”

  “You mean young, honey?” The old woman held out her hand to take the frame from Ellie and return it to the television.

  “No, I mean …” and as Ellie looked over to explain, she noticed Old Lady Epperly was wearing a flowered cotton dress under her dark sweater and her apron. And when the woman smiled, she noticed her teeth were still big, but getting rotten like hers.

  Then she said, “My daddy always said he liked Mr. Epperly, too.”

  “I know he did, honey.” The old woman smiled and shook her head. “Your daddy was always fond of Mr. Epperly. Okey used to be a good man.”

  Later Ellie walked back down the road toward home. What she had meant to ask the woman was, “How long were you pretty, Miss Epperly?”

  How long were you pretty?

  When she got back home, she looked at herself in the mirror. Thought about being young. And being pretty. Thought about Okey.

  Decided she’d never in her thoughts call the woman Old Lady Epperly again.

  And decided when she was old enough, she would get herself a set of big, shiny false teeth and a soft flowered dress.

  Some Year

  BY THE END OF THE SUMMER, MANY THINGS HAD HAPPENED. Eunice had become engaged to be married and would be leaving home before Christmas. Bullet had become the best rabbit dog in the county, so Okey had started loaning him out to hunters—which meant Okey had more man-talk and was happier, and sober, more often. He was even thinking about buying a female beagle and raising some pups. Carolyn had met a boy named Bryan at the lake and was going with him. And Ellie was waiting for a birthday.

  This birthday worried her more than any ever had. Birthdays had always worried her. In fact, there were two things she never liked: sitting up on New Year’s Eve waiting for midnight, and waiting for a birthday. Ellie figured she must be the weirdest girl she knew.

  Her mother said she could have a party if she wanted. But she decided not to. Carolyn’s party had been the best time she had ever had, and she just didn’t want to chance
it. She knew in her heart her own would never compare.

  So she said no. And asked for a chocolate cake with white icing and for Carolyn to come for dinner with them.

  On August 26 then, the pressure cooker was rattling away with a roast inside it, Martha and Wanda were decorating the cake and Okey was going to pick up Carolyn. Ellie couldn’t believe it when he offered to, but he did, and Ellie said thank you and meant it.

  Maybe it was Okey’s brush with death that made this occasion seem important. Maybe it was Eunice’s news. Or the summer days that had been so full of time together.

  But Ellie sensed that the whole family seemed really, truly happy about this birthday, her twelfth, whether because they loved her or because they had just been looking for an excuse to decorate a cake and eat it. Ellie’s mother started the cooking with no complaint, her sisters didn’t bicker, Okey cheerfully went off in the truck for Carolyn and Ellie sat outside with Bullet and wondered at it all.

  “Me and you,” she whispered in his ear, “had some kind of year, huh, Bullet?”

  She thought about poor Lester Wood and Harold’s kiss and Harvey’s fit.

  “Some year,” she said, scratching the inside of Bullet’s ear.

  It was scary to her to turn twelve. Not a teenager yet, but so close she trembled a little to think of it. To think of looking like her sisters in another year.

  She kissed Bullet’s warm nose and went in to get her gun. She brought it out, set up some cans and started shooting. Okey would be back with Carolyn soon. Not much time left before she’d have to put down the rifle and go on inside. The family would all be waiting.