Where the Watermelons Grow

by Cindy Baldwin

  Daddy nodded, rubbing his forehead again, a whole galaxy of sadness inside his eyes. He leaned forward and set a kiss on Mama’s forehead, wiping a tear off her cheek with his big dirt-stained hand. “You get better fast and come back to us, Suzanne. It’s not home without you, sweetheart.”

  I hugged Mama, trying not to feel how trembly and frail she seemed, about to float away on the breeze any minute. Nothing at all like the mama who could make me laugh on bad days and keep all the storms in the world from reaching me. I blinked my eyes hard, wishing that it was Miss Amanda or Miss Lorena here with me now and not the mama who seemed less and less like a real mother by the day. She was talking fast again, big strings of words that didn’t have anything to do with each other and were impossible to understand.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Kelly,” the smiley nurse said, ushering me and Daddy out of the visiting room and back through the heavy double doors faster than I could so much as catch my breath.

  The doors locked behind us as we stepped into the elevator, the click like a crack of thunder that rang in my ears all the long way down.

  “Della,” said Daddy as I slid into the passenger seat of his truck, trying not to look back at the hospital. He turned the key in the ignition and the truck rumbled to life, but he just sat there with his hands on the steering wheel, not taking off the parking brake. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry for making you feel I’d let you down, with your mama and her pills.”

  He breathed—in, out—and I could have sworn I’d seen a glimmer of something bright in his eyes.

  “When you disappeared, I felt terrible, honey, most especially because I knew it was my fault. The last couple weeks have been hard on all of us, probably you more than anyone. I know I put too much on you, Della. More than any twelve-year-old girl should have to carry. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked down at my hands, curled around the honey jar and the books Thomas and Miss Lorena had given me. “Wasn’t there anything you could’ve done?” I asked, the words bitter and sharp on my tongue. Tears were brimming in my eyes again, spilling hot and wet onto my cheeks.

  “I don’t know, baby,” Daddy said, his fingers tight on the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”

  “I just—” I paused, scrubbing at my eyes. “Won’t she ever get better?”

  I thought I’d done all my crying earlier that afternoon with Miss Lorena, but I was wrong. The cab of the truck around me swam in swirls of color and light.

  “I don’t know, baby girl. She’ll get better than she is right now, sure, but I can’t promise it won’t ever happen again. This is her cross to bear, and all of ours, too, and it’s something none of us caused and none of us can change.”

  “Daddy—” I closed my eyes. “How come you and Mama decided to get pregnant with Mylie, when you knew it was me being born that made her get sick in the first place?”

  “It didn’t make her get sick, honey. The schizophrenia was always going to be a part of her. If it hadn’t been after you were born, it would’ve shown up some other time.”

  “Okay, but still. Why did you decide to have another baby when Mama got so sick after me? Wasn’t I enough?”

  “Oh, Della.” Daddy turned around and looked at me, his eyes full up with so much love I almost couldn’t breathe, and not from the crying this time. “Sweetheart, your mama and I love you so much—that’s exactly why we wanted Mylie. We just couldn’t abide the thought of going all through life without another little girl or boy to love, too. And we knew what we were doing, I promise. Dr. DuBose worked with us every step of your mama’s pregnancy—you know that. We knew it might be tough, but we also knew it would be worth it.”

  “I just want Mama to come back to us—to her real self.”

  Daddy turned to the wheel again, putting down the emergency brake and backing out of the parking space with a loud engine-revving noise.

  “Me too, Della. I do, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We slept that night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house a few minutes from the hospital, me and Daddy and Mylie all crowded into Grandma and Grandpa’s guest room. Daddy snored on and on, and Mylie kept waking up and crying for Mama.

  A little while after the numbers on the digital clock on the dresser had passed midnight and started back at one, I heard the rain start up again outside—soft and steady this time, a gentle patter-patter-drip on the roof.

  When I finally fell asleep, lying on the floor next to Mylie in her Pack ’n Play, I dreamed I was back at the hospital, holding on to that rainbow for dear life while Mama talked in riddles and my honey jar fell to the ground, smashed into glittering pieces.

  The next morning I woke up feeling washed-out and tired, like all those tears I’d cried yesterday and the day before had taken the snap out of me somehow.

  When nobody was looking, I pulled out my honey jar and drizzled golden honey over my plate of cheese grits at breakfast, and swirled some into my cup of sweet tea just to be thorough. Everyone was too busy telling Mylie to stop throwing all her food onto the ground to pay attention to me.

  “Sweetheart, I think it would be best if I visited Mama alone this afternoon,” said Daddy to me after we’d gotten the breakfast dishes all cleared away. “I know she’s gonna want you to come plenty while she’s there, but for the next few days she’s going to need a lot of rest and quiet, while Dr. DuBose tries to get her medications sorted out and working for her.”

  I stared straight ahead, putting my breakfast plate into the dishwasher. I didn’t know whether I was more upset or more relieved. Seeing Mama yesterday hadn’t been anything like I’d expected it to be, and it had spooked me more than I cared to admit.

  Daddy sighed. “It’s going to be tough for all of us while Mama’s in the hospital, but we’ll find a way to make it work. We’re going to need to head home here in a few more minutes so I can get the farm chores done before visiting hours start, especially since I stayed up here and didn’t get to them yesterday.”

  Grandma and Grandpa came to the door with us when we were ready to leave. Grandma hugged Daddy and Grandpa slapped him on the back, like men do when they don’t feel like hugging.

  “Next time, fill us in before Suzie ends up in the hospital,” Grandpa said gruffly.

  Daddy paused with his hand on the doorknob, guilt all over his face. “I know I should have told y’all sooner. I just—it’s just been a tough summer, with Suzie’s health and the drought and the farm, and I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Too late, son. I been worrying since we moved out. It’s a lot of work for one man to handle all by himself.”

  Daddy shrugged. “It is what it is. I know you would’ve stayed till you were in your grave if you’d had your choice. But I’ve got a boy to help a few days a week now. We’ll get by.”

  He bent and picked Mylie up and ran with her out into the rain.

  “You take care of yourself, Della,” Grandma said, pulling me in for a big hug. Her wrinkled white skin was soft and warm and smelled like the bread she’d made that morning. “And listen, watermelon girl, you call me if you need anything, you hear me? Your grandpa and I aren’t living on the moon. Even if you just need to talk, sweetheart, you give me a call. I love you a bushel and a peck.”

  I nodded and followed Daddy out into the truck. Grandma and Grandpa stood at the door and waved until we’d lost sight of the house. I unscrewed the top of my honey jar and dipped my finger in—more out of habit, now, than because I actually thought it would do anything. I held the honey in my mouth and closed my eyes, wishing that Mama would be there at the end of the road to welcome us back home and recite poems to Mylie and scold me for not doing my chores quick enough.

  I’d started out hoping I could fix everything wrong with Mama and help her remember how to mother us properly . . . and now here I was, with less of a mama than ever.

  Except, I realized as the honey spread over my tongue, that wasn’t the whole truth. I thought of Grandma’s arms around
me a few minutes ago, the way her eyes had brightened up when Daddy and I had walked through her front door yesterday afternoon.

  And I thought of Miss Lorena hugging me yesterday, telling me twice that if things got too hard to handle at my home, I could come right on over to hers.

  And Miss Amanda Sunday morning, wrapping her arms around me like I was her very own little girl. Miss Amanda, who’d been there for my whole life—all my birthday parties, all my growth spurts, the time I’d fallen off the front steps and knocked out my two front teeth when I was seven.

  The brightness of the honey was moving on down through me now, filling up every bit of me with lightness and gold, so that when I looked down, the tips of my fingers glowed like candles with warm honey-colored light.

  It’s going to be okay, that glow was whispering all through me, waking up the little hope-bird in my chest again.

  It was going to be okay, because even if I didn’t have my own mama right now, I had a life—and a town—full of other mamas who were looking out for me. Some who were my own relations, like Grandma. Some who I’d known long enough they might as well be, like Miss Amanda. And some, like Miss Lorena, who I’d barely known for any time at all, but who still knew how to talk straight when I needed it and sing a song to that little fluttering thing in my soul.

  And all those mamas, and probably some I hadn’t even noticed yet—they’d be watching over me, right there whenever I needed them, waiting for the time when my own mama was ready to step back into being the mother I needed her to be.

  And my daddy, too. My daddy, who loved me and Mylie and Mama so much we were his whole world. My daddy, who took care of us all, who may not have been perfect but was sure trying hard. For the first time in weeks, I felt my heart softening up a bit, the anger and frustration at Daddy that I’d been holding to with tight fists unclenching a little. Just like me, Daddy had been doing the best he knew how.

  And soon, Mama would be back home. And she would have her ups and her downs, but she would get through them. We would get through them, together. Because I knew, with all the lightness of that glow that radiated through me, that Mama loved me more than life itself. Even in her sickness, even when the edges of reality had started to tangle up around her, it had been me and Mylie she was worried for, me and Mylie she’d been trying to protect.

  No sickness in the world could make my mama’s love for us less real.

  And none of us had to get through any of it on our own. Maybe, I thought suddenly, the Bee Lady’s honey had known all along I didn’t have enough strength inside of me to get through this all on my own.

  Maybe what it was doing, right this very minute, was showing me that that was okay—that there was strength all around me, lifting me up when I needed it, stepping in when Mama and I both needed a little extra help.

  And all those worries about the future that I’d confessed to Miss Lorena, about whether or not I’d end up like Mama—they’d still be there. They might not ever really go away. But I knew, deep down where the honey was sliding into my stomach like warm sunshine, that I’d be able to get through it either way.

  In the car seat next to me, Mylie started squirming and whimpering that her seat belt was too tight and she wanted Mama. I reached my hand over and wrapped her chubby fingers around my thumb, shhh-ing until she calmed back down again.

  “It’s all right, little monster,” I whispered, so soft I couldn’t tell if she’d even heard me over the drum of the rain on the truck roof. “It’s all right. Everything is gonna be just fine.”

  And right at that very moment, a little shaft of sunlight peeked through one of the gray rain clouds that was hiding it, and the whole sky turned as gold as the honey glow running through my veins.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It rained all that week and into the beginning of the next one, rain that sighed and cried until all the grass in Maryville started to turn green again, and on Sunday the preacher got up at the pulpit and gave thanks in a voice that trembled and dipped like the rain itself.

  Every day Daddy drove his tractor through the mud puddles, and every day Mylie and I went out in the rain and picked as much as we could from the garden for Arden and Eli to sell at the farm stand. At first I’d taken Mylie with me and met Arden at the stand like normal, but it was near impossible to stop Mylie biting every single peach out there, and nobody wants peaches with great big old tooth marks in them. Plus, without Mama there, Daddy needed me more on the farm, helping him and Thomas pull weeds and pick squash beetles and harvest the first of the summer sweet corn.

  The first time I’d seen Arden, the day after I’d gone to visit Mama in the hospital, neither of us had quite known what to say. We’d both hung back for a few minutes, like we hadn’t known each other our whole lives, like maybe the things we’d whispered to each other in Arden’s dark bedroom two nights ago had been too big to get past.

  But then Arden had rushed up and closed the distance between us, and before I could even blink, her arms were around my neck. She’d smelled like peaches and nail polish and like the special, shiny kind of magic that the two of us made when we were together. When a pair of lucky ladybugs landed right there on the place where her arm met mine, I didn’t even bother to brush them off.

  And just like that, I’d known that there wasn’t anything we could have said that could have broken up our friendship. It was strong and bright, like the boards Daddy and Mr. Ben went out to buy later that afternoon.

  “What’s that for?” I asked when they got back from the hardware store, Daddy’s pickup full of two-by-fours.

  “You’ll see,” Daddy said with the kind of smile I hadn’t seen on his face in months and months. “You and Arden hop in the truck bed and come on out back with us. There’s something we need your help with, down at the bay.”

  When we got down to the water, Daddy stepped out of the truck and started laying a tarp on the muddy ground.

  “We’re going to help you out and do some supervising,” said Mr. Ben, jumping out the passenger side of the cab, “and you’re going to need to use some real plans this time. But we figured you girls oughta have another playhouse.”

  “We’re going to build it in the rain?” Arden asked.

  Mr. Ben laughed. “No. We’ll wait. We’ll wrap the wood up good in the tarp and leave it out here for a nice day to hit. But we needed to go into town today anyway and figured we might as well get the lumber while we were at it, and let you girls in on the secret.”

  “Thanks, Dad!” Arden said, running to Mr. Ben and throwing her arms around his waist.

  I couldn’t say anything, standing there in the rain with my sandals sinking into the mud and my throat burning with something that felt an awful lot like tears.

  But Daddy looked up and saw my face, and by the way he smiled, I knew he could tell what I was thinking, anyway.

  Daddy took a whole day after we got back from Grandma and Grandpa’s to pull up the watermelon plants he hadn’t been able to save, and sprayed the rest with the stuff Mr. Ben had given him to keep them all safe from the fungus.

  “Probably won’t be many to sell this summer,” he said, “but we’ll still have enough for us.”

  When he brought a melon in that night, I closed my eyes and bit into one of the ruby-red slices, letting the crisp cold flavor explode onto my tongue, and even though I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of Mama and the way watermelon seeds had been the first clue that something wasn’t right with her, it was okay. I was learning how to tuck those thoughts away in my heart and remind myself that she was getting better, and that we were all gonna get through it one way or another.

  Because she was getting better—slowly, but truly. Every afternoon, Daddy drove up to Alberta and stayed with her for as long as he could before visiting hours ended or Mama got too upset.

  All that first week she wasn’t ready to see me again, though, and Daddy explained that it was because no matter how hard Mama tried, she couldn’t shake the things her
sickness whispered to her, the belief that me and Mylie were in danger, that she had to protect us from the whole world.

  But Daddy said that every day he went up to the hospital, Mama had been calmer, had been able to stay longer in her own right mind.

  And then, one week and two days after that thunderstorm day when Daddy had come to tell me that Mama’d been taken in an ambulance up to Alberta, he found me where I was working in the garden and told me that Mama wanted me to come up and visit that afternoon.

  “It might not be for very long,” he said, and I could tell he was nervous by the way his smile looked like somebody was jabbing him in the leg with a pin. “Your mama still has a ways to go before she’s back to her usual self, but she’s feeling lots better, and Dr. DuBose thinks they might have hit on the right med combination.” The doctors had figured out pretty quickly that Mama’s old pill wasn’t working anymore, hadn’t been working well enough since Mylie was born. So they’d decided to try some new ones, and maybe two together to get her sickness under her control as much as possible.

  I picked some more bush beans, thinking I probably looked like I’d been poked with a pin, too.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Daddy said quickly. “I know last week was hard.”

  “No,” I said, putting a last handful of long green beans into my bucket. “I think . . . I do want to go.”

  We left Mylie at the Hawthornes’ that afternoon. Miss Amanda gave me an extra-long hug before we left and pushed a bag with two fresh blackberry scones into my hand. I think that was her way of saying I love you.

  “Everything is going to be just fine, Della,” she whispered before she let go. “I know it is.”

  Daddy and I were silent all the way to the hospital, both of us busy listening to the rain drumming on the car and our own thoughts. My stomach was twisting worse than the roots of the weeds I’d spent the morning pulling out of the garden.