“Della Cordelia Kelly,” said Mama, voice sharp as knives, and my eyes popped open. Watermelon juice dripped down my chin, cool and sticky. “You put that down right now.”
Mama was standing up, her newspaper forgotten on the table, and she’d grabbed Mylie’s watermelon away from her.
Mylie screamed, squeezing her eyes hard until a tear popped out. “Mine! Mine!” she shouted, reaching up and trying to grab the watermelon back from Mama, but Mama held it up out of her reach.
“Suzanne, what’s the matter?” Daddy’s hand had frozen halfway to the watermelon plate.
“I don’t want the girls eating these,” said Mama, and she sounded like her throat was full of tears. Mylie’s screams ratcheted up a notch.
“Suzanne,” said Daddy, in that way that meant he was forcing himself to be calm when all he really wanted to do was yell, “give Mylie back the watermelon, please?”
“I don’t want them eating these,” said Mama again, waving Mylie’s slice. “Those seeds will get into their tummies and make them sick.”
Daddy breathed in and out, hard, through his nose.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, and I could tell he was about to lose it big-time. “There’s hardly even any black seeds in that slice. Swallowing one or two won’t hurt her.”
I thought about bringing up the time Grandpa Case had told me that if I ate a watermelon seed a plant would sprout in my stomach and grow out my ears, but now didn’t seem the time.
“Now,” said Daddy, “give Mylie back her melon and let’s sit down and finish breakfast. Have you taken your pill yet this morning?”
Mama shook her head, and Daddy took a tablet from her pill bottle and handed it to her. Mama sank back down into her chair, reaching for her glass of water and taking a big long drink, brushing something invisible off her shorts as she did so.
“Wait a minute,” said Daddy. “What did you just do?” Mama didn’t answer. “Suzanne, what did you just do with that pill?” Daddy’s voice was going up and up, like a firework right before the blast.
Mama just sat there in her chair, staring at the newspaper in front of her, not saying a single word.
Daddy’s whole body was quivering, and I swore I could feel the heat coming off him in waves, pulsing through the kitchen and sizzling everything it touched.
“Did you swallow that pill just now?” he asked. Even Mylie was silent, staring at Daddy with big scared eyes. I probably was, too. “Suzanne, answer me!”
Mama shook her head, a tight little movement that made her hair bounce. Daddy walked over to her, every step wound up like a clock, like it was taking everything he had to walk and not explode in a shower of sparks. When he got to Mama, he lifted up both her hands from her lap. The pocket of her shorts was smeared with white, where she’d rubbed her hand against it.
Ignoring Mama’s attempt to bat him away, he stuck his fingers into her pocket.
A minute later, they came back out, holding that little white pill.
The kitchen was silent, quieter than it had ever been in my whole memory, not even the whir of the ceiling fan or the hum of the refrigerator to break it up. Even Mylie, frozen in her high chair, didn’t make a peep.
From the Hawthorne farm, a rooster crowed.
Daddy let go of Mama’s hands. They dropped, limp and lifeless, into her lap.
“I don’t need those pills anymore, Miles,” Mama whispered, so quiet I could hardly hear it. “I don’t need them. They make me feel funny. They make me fat and foggy. I’m better without them. I haven’t been this clearheaded since Mylie was born.”
Daddy’s mouth worked up and down.
“Can’t you see?” Mama asked, not whispering anymore. Her regular voice in that dead-silent kitchen sounded loud as a bullhorn. “Haven’t you noticed? I’m myself again. I can see things, understand things, hear things I couldn’t before.”
Hear things like your dead daddy. See things like armies of germs crawling all over everything. Like evil watermelon seeds.
“All I’ve seen is you getting sicker and sicker,” said Daddy, finally, the words tearing out of him. “All I’ve seen is you ignoring your kids and worrying all of us half to death. And now I’m seeing that you did this yourself? How long you been skipping your pills, Suzanne?”
Daddy was close to yelling now, and Mylie was crying again, big scared sniffles that sent snot rolling down her face. I hunched down in my chair, wishing I was anywhere else in the world.
“I don’t know,” said Mama. “Few weeks. Maybe a month or two. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Daddy reached for the pill bottle and shook another pill out, holding it out to Mama. “Well, you start taking them again right now. You know what Dr. DuBose said! You know what a difference this medication has made for you, Suzie!”
He was begging now, the pill white and shiny on his hand, but Mama didn’t move.
“I feel better without it,” said Mama again, her chin set tight, her mouth a thin line. “I don’t need it, Miles. There isn’t anything wrong with me! Those pills make me sick.”
“Are you even hearing yourself right now? You haven’t been this sick in years!” Daddy was really yelling now, every word he said landing on my skin like acid, making my hands shake until my spoon was clattering against my bowl ting-ting-ting. I dropped it, but Mama and Daddy were too busy fighting to look at me.
“Damn it, Suzanne, this is not an okay time for you to lose it!” said Daddy, and my head shot up to look at him, my eyes big as melons. I’d heard Daddy swear a few times on the farm, when the bugs got into his squash or the tractor broke down, but I’d never heard him swear at Mama. Mama looked shocked, too, her mouth hanging open in a little round O.
Mylie’s crying was starting to get louder, sniffling turning into little sobs, but I couldn’t make myself move to stand up and get her from her high chair.
“Della, take Mylie outside,” said Daddy without looking at me. “Go ahead and get started picking for the stand today.”
My legs felt like noodles as I stood. Mylie stopped crying as soon as I’d gotten her up, and she buried her face into my neck, leaving a trail of snot across my skin. I didn’t bother to find her shoes, just slipped on my flip-flops and opened the back door. As it swung shut, I could hear Daddy’s voice rising again.
“I just can’t take this stress on top of already worrying that I’m going to lose my daddy’s farm,” he said, and then the door slammed shut behind me.
I could hear Daddy’s yelling in my ears all the way to the garden.
Chapter Fifteen
Mama and Daddy didn’t say a single word to each other all through the rest of that day. They walked around and past each other, their silences bubbling up into thick walls that kept them separate even when they were in the same room, never meeting each other’s eyes or softening the hard lines that were their mouths into something like a smile.
Daddy had disappeared onto the farm not long after breakfast, the tractor sending up clouds of dust behind him. By the time Mylie and I got back in from picking in the garden after breakfast, something that took me three or four times as long without Daddy’s help and with Mylie’s interference, Mama had gone into her room and shut the door halfway. When I peeked through the crack, I saw her in there, lying on the bed, holding a book but not turning any pages, like she’d given up on being a mother or a wife or anything else at all.
The power was back on, though, making the ceiling fan above Mama’s bed lift her hair up in little wisps. At least that was something.
I got Mylie dressed and kept her with me all day, thinking dully that at least I’d gotten my way and Mama was resting. Not that it would do anyone much good if she kept throwing those pills away every morning, slipping them into her pocket like they weren’t the biggest blessing that had ever come into any of our lives.
We were kept busy at the farm stand that morning, a steady stream of tourists and locals coming by. Between that and trying to keep Mylie out o
f the produce, Arden and I hardly had a moment to ourselves to really talk, which was a good thing. I didn’t know how I could explain to her about Mama’s pills—but I didn’t know how not to.
We were halfway through our shift when the Bradleys’ blue car pulled off to the side of the road and Miss Lorena and Thomas got out. Miss Lorena waved as they walked over to us.
“I’ve got to tell you, Della, that your daddy sent Thomas home last week with some Kelly farm butter beans, and they were the best I’ve ever eaten.” She closed her eyes and smiled, like she was remembering the taste. “I decided this morning that it was high time Thomas and I came by to see what other offerings y’all have got.”
I grabbed the back of Mylie’s shirt before she could tear out into the road. “All this stuff’s from our farm or the Hawthornes’. That side over there’s certified organic, too. Actually, all of it’s pretty much organic right now, ’cause Daddy’s been changing things over on our farm this year, but only the Hawthornes have got that thing from the government.”
“Mmm,” said Miss Lorena, running her copper-colored hands over a row of watermelons. There weren’t as many as we normally had this time of year, with Daddy’s melons fighting the anthracnose so that we barely had enough to eat ourselves and only the Hawthornes’ melons ready to sell, but the ones we did have were shining and green and sweet as ever. “It even looks beautiful. They don’t have this kind of deliciousness in the middle of the city, let me tell you! Thomas, want to carry one of these to the car for me? How do I pick out the nicest one, Della?”
“Best way is to lift a couple of them and see which one feels heaviest. That means it’s got the most juice. You can thunk them, too, but that’s harder if you haven’t got practice listening to them.”
Thomas picked up three different watermelons in a row, looking so nervous I wanted to laugh, but he finally settled on one and carried it back to his mama’s car.
“There is absolutely nothing better than cold watermelon on a hot summer’s day. Watermelon is my very favorite fruit, I think.” Miss Lorena gave a little half-sad sort of laugh. “When I was pregnant with Thomas—back when dinosaurs roamed, of course—it was in midsummer, and all I ever wanted to eat was watermelon. I was so hot and queasy all the time, it was the only thing that ever sounded good. Mr. Bradley used to joke that he wasn’t sure if I was getting round because of a baby, or because of a baby watermelon.”
“He sounds nice,” I said. “And funny.”
“Oh, Della, he certainly was.”
“Watermelon’s my favorite, too,” I said, even though all my good watermelon memories seemed to be shot through right now with the bitter taste of Mama’s watermelon-seed obsession. “They’re like the taste of summer.”
“The taste of summer, indeed. And you said you weren’t good with words!” Miss Lorena cocked her head to one side. “I think you might have a poet’s heart, Miss Della Kelly.”
Mylie toddled over to the watermelons, wrapping her arms around the closest one and going red in the face with the effort of trying to lift it off its table. “Yum, yum!” she crowed. I jumped up.
“Put that back, baby, before you smash it to pieces!” I sank back into my camp chair and tried to hold her between my legs, but she squirmed and wriggled until she managed to break free.
“Seems like you got your hands full,” said Miss Lorena as Mylie shot across the canopy and filched a green bean from its basket.
“Tell me about it,” I said, but I let Mylie keep the green bean. She liked to chew on them and then spit the chewed-up mess all over the ground, but even that was better than her dumping out the basket or pushing her fingers into the peaches or any of the million other things I’d had to stop her doing so far this morning.
“Hey, Mylie baby,” said Arden in a singsong voice, “Come play a game with me?” She held out her hands to Mylie.
“Little stinker,” I said as Mylie shot past me and into Arden’s arms. Just about everyone alive loved Arden, Mylie included.
As if they had appeared in response to my thoughts, five ladybugs flitted down from the canopy overhead and landed—one on each of Arden’s hands where they wrapped around Mylie, three on the arm of my camp chair. Arden looked up at me and smiled, a secret smile that made me smile back.
Lucky ladybugs. For the first time since that morning, life didn’t feel like it was pressing so hard against my forehead that it was giving me a headache.
Miss Lorena set a row of paper bags on the card table next to the till. “All right, ladies. I’ve got some butter beans, some green beans, a couple of bell peppers, and some blueberries.” She looked at Arden and me in mock seriousness. “I confess I was tempted by the zucchini, too, but Anton’s garden seems to be nothing but squash right now.”
“Him and everyone else in town,” said Arden. “Tourists are the only ones who ever stop for the zucchini. Trust me. People around here always say if you aren’t careful you’ll find zucchini stuffed into your mailbox, gardeners are so desperate to get rid of it.”
“How much do I owe, with all these things and the watermelon?”
I closed my eyes, running through the numbers, then gave her the total.
“I’m thoroughly impressed,” Miss Lorena said as she handed me her credit card and I swiped it through the card reader on Mr. Ben’s cell phone. “I can’t do mental math to save my life. Thomas doesn’t fall far from the tree in that regard.”
“It’s the truth,” said Thomas as he scooped up his mama’s bags. “You started doing quadratic equations yet, Della? Every time I get to that part in SAT prep, it gives me a headache, I swear.”
I nodded. “I’m in the advanced math class, so we started algebra last year.”
“I’d be jealous if advanced math didn’t sound like the worst thing I’d ever heard of.” But I could tell from the way Thomas was holding his mouth extra-serious that he was laughing on the inside. “See you soon, Della.”
I ducked my chin down so he couldn’t see me smiling.
Chapter Sixteen
I was exhausted by the time Mr. Ben came to spell us off at the stand a little while before lunch, his white skin streaked with sweat and dirt. Keeping Mylie safe and out of trouble underneath that ten-foot-by-ten-foot canopy was a full-time job.
“Let’s go to the playhouse,” I said to Arden as I showed Mr. Ben the tally of our sales from that morning. I couldn’t face Mama or Daddy yet.
I didn’t want to see if Mama was still there, lying on her bed, pretending nothing was wrong.
“Sure.” Arden took Mylie’s other hand.
“Swing!” Mylie shouted, so we swung her up between us over and over again, until my arm felt like it was ready to fall off by the time we got to the playhouse. It was just the two of us and Mylie today, since Eli and Rena were playing inside the house—they had air-conditioning that actually worked—and Miss Amanda had taken the two littlest ones to the grocery store half an hour away.
I dropped Mylie’s hand as soon as we got to the playhouse and flopped down on the ground, leaning up against one of the green plywood walls. “Ugh. I am so tired.” Mylie danced off behind the playhouse, singing a baby-talk song to herself.
Arden sat down next to me, her shoulder rubbing up against mine. A pair of ladybugs buzzed through the air, red wings blurring in the sunshine.
“Me too,” she said, stretching her legs out on the dusty dirt in front of us. “It’s so hot. It makes everything feel twice as hard.”
“Dell!” Mylie ran back to us, giggling, her hands stretched out. Green paint was smeared across them and dripping down her palms. She had green handprints on her dress, and her face, and her hair.
I shot up so fast I banged my elbow on the playhouse wall. “Mylie Alexandra Kelly!” I shouted, and Mylie took off running toward the bay, still laughing like a baby hyena. “Where did you even find that? You get back here!”
“No-no-no!” Mylie yelled, her fat little legs pumping. She was way faster than any sixteen-mont
h-old baby ought to be. She ran right up to the edge of the water, keeping just an inch out of my reach the whole time, and then kept on toddling all the way until she ducked right under the surface.
“You little monster baby!” I hauled her out of the water by her arms. She was crying now, water streaming off her hair and her dress and making the green paint on her hands runny and wet. She wasn’t coughing or choking, though, which I figured was a good sign.
Arden was cleaning up a puddle of paint from behind the playhouse when Mylie and I made it back there, Mylie already squirming in my arms and laughing again, like she’d forgotten all about being scared and sad.
“I don’t even know how she got that paint bottle open,” said Arden, taking the paint and stretching up on her tiptoes to set it on top of the playhouse roof this time, just in case. “I swear, Della, I’d rather have every one of my sisters and my brother all rolled up together than Mylie. Even Eli,” she added. Eli was a pest and spent most of his time trying to spy on us and figure out all our secrets.
“Tell me about it,” I said grumpily, putting Mylie in the playhouse and sitting in the doorway so that she couldn’t get out. Mylie clapped her hands and then started rubbing them on the walls, leaving big smudgy streaks of green.
Arden sat back down next to me, giving me a sideways look. “What’s up with your mama, Della?”
She’d asked me the same thing every day all week, and each time I’d changed the subject. I’d wanted so badly to be able to tell Arden that Mama was healed, fixed forever, that nobody had to worry anymore. Even though Arden had seen Mama at her worst, even though I’d told Arden myself that I thought Mama was getting bad again, there was something about speaking the truth aloud—like if I opened my mouth and said how things really were, I’d be giving up all hope of them getting better.
I think Arden guessed some of that, because every time I’d ignored her question, she’d let me do it. But there was something in her brown eyes now that reminded me of the way the O’Connells’ milk cow looked when she didn’t want to be milked, stubborn and prepared to stay that way as long as she needed to.
Where the Watermelons Grow Page 9