Otherwise Known as Possum

by Maria D. Laso

  The stranger made her lips tiny. “Is LizBetty a diminutive?”

  Daddy shrugged.

  “My name is Miss Cordelia Jane Arthington,” she said. “Is LizBetty short for a longer name, Elizabeth, perhaps?” She sounded like she very much hoped my name was short for Elizabeth Perhaps. Which it is not.

  Daddy shook his head. I speculated maybe he was struck mute after this enormous act of betrayal so close to the church.

  Yet she pronounced slowly, like she was thick or thought we were, “Well, Possum is certainly no kind of name for a young lady.”

  Momma’s very words! Yet how they stung coming from this stranger in brown.

  “If you don’t mind”—she leaned down again to look into my face—“I will call you LizBetty.”

  I hacked up as big a chunk of ammunition as I could muster considering how dry and tight my throat was.

  Daddy squeezed my hand hard, more a warning than reassurance.

  I tried to pull away my hand, but Daddy held on tight. My head rang like when you’re too close to a shotgun going off.

  I allowed a jumble of fast and quiet words—none mine—to continue another minute, and the next I knew, the bicycle rode away. From behind, she looked like a skinny brown circus bear.

  At last, Daddy let go, but his look tugged me off toward home. His mouth was set straight as a pin as he looked for words on the horizon. He’d start to speak and then sputter. It was like he weren’t sure of the thoughts jangling around in his very own head. I’d never seen him in such a state.

  What had that Yankee devil done to my daddy?

  Finally, I could stand no more. “Daddy, you ain’t swayed by those Crow-pies and that teacher lady into thinkin’ I need to go to that school?”

  He near stumbled even though he was staring hard at his own feet.

  “I reckon I need to do some thinking,” he said.

  I lagged behind, dragging my feet and kicking up dust just like bulls when they’re fixing to charge, but Daddy took no notice, his jaw clamped tight.

  Soon as we got home, Daddy had but one word for me. “Beans.” And then he shut himself up in his shop.

  I stomped up the steps and dropped next to the bushel basket of green beans, pulling an empty basket of like size between my knees. Hornet-mad as I was, I snapped the ends off those pods in the blink of an eye.

  Years past, Momma and I could make such a job last a full summer’s evening. It was the only good thing about shucky beans. But now I’d be the one with the long needle, threading the pods onto twine to hang in the root cellar to dry. Come winter, I’d be the one soaking them overnight, and I’d be the one cooking them. And there’d be no Momma to tease me into eating one more dry, chewy mouthful. And no Momma to save me from the bad learning of school. Was there no end to the misery before me?

  I clomped into the kitchen, letting the screen slam behind me. Except instead of making me feel better, the silence that followed cut. It should instead have been Momma reminding, “LizBetty Porter, you are not a tornado,” making me go outside and come in “like a lady.”

  But if there was no Momma, what difference did it make?

  Making as much noise as I could because I could, I added flour and water to a bit of leftover squirrel stew and set it on the warming stove. I chopped up a whole onion, glad to let my eyes burn and water. I stirred the spit-colored pearly bits into the stew and then smacked the ladle on the edge of the pan. Daddy doesn’t care for onion. But. That. Was. Too. Bad.

  Trav whimpered and crawled under the table.

  I was still stirring and smacking when I heard Daddy washing up at the pump. While I’d snapped and stirred and steamed, I’d also been preparing. I stiffened my spine and my chin and willed them to stay strong for me when I needed them most. I practiced what I needed to say: “Daddy, I want nothing more to change.”

  Daddy’d caught me unawares before, but I felt as ready as I could be. If Lee and Jackson could take Chancellorsville with one Gray for every two Blues, I reckoned I could face Daddy armed as I was with hot dinner and cool reason.

  The lumpy mess of greenish-brown stew smelled even worse than it looked, but when Daddy came through the door, he didn’t seem to notice. Before I could even open my mouth, he put his damp hands on my waist and lifted me easy as those ants lifted a leaf at church that morning. Lordy, was that today?

  Daddy set me—a bit too firmly I thought—on my own blue kitchen chair. “Possum,” he began, and his face took the shout from me. “I love you as much as any man can love a daughter. More. That’s how I know those old biddies had one thing right.”

  I knew what was coming as sure as GrandNam knew it would rain without seeing sky. But it was not beyond me to use whatever skills I had at my disposal, considering everything at stake. I put out my bottom lip far as it could go and let Daddy see it tremble.

  I tried the words I’d rehearsed. “Daddy, I want nothin’ more to change.”

  “Me neither, baby girl.”

  He turned away. Hallelujah! I felt like the worm let go on his way to the hook, wriggling with relief, but he turned back a moment later with a cup of water. “Drink this.”

  “But—”

  “But buttons,” said Daddy quietly.

  I drank.

  We each considered the other.

  “Life is change,” Daddy continued. “Nothing stays still a moment longer than it takes to realize the moment’s gone.”

  No question. Life was changing. I felt like a freight train was heading for me, and I was helpless to get off the train track.

  “I know, Daddy.” Nobody knew better’n me the way summer became fall, and then winter, then spring no matter how much you might wish for even a bit of change.

  He scraped a chair across the floor and sat knees to knees with me. “Honey, I know you don’t want to go to school, but, well, you’re going, and that’s the end of it.”

  The choke in my throat seemed to meet an ache in my chest and blocked everything from going in or out. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. Then the air rushed in, and the words rushed out.

  “Daddy, I can’t go to school, even if I wanted to,” I reasoned. “For one, who’ll make supper?”

  “I reckon I can cook well enough,” he said, taking from me the ladle that was still in my hand and setting it on the table.

  “For two, who’ll scratch your back when you’re done working?”

  That was Momma’s job, and she had taught me, like she taught me everything.

  He had no words for that, for clearly he knew it was true.

  “For third, what will happen to the perfectly good learning from Momma that’s safe between my ears like the black eye on a pea?”

  Nobody was going to unteach me only to fill my head with foolishness.

  “For four,” I said, lowering my voice, “I heard stories about that teacher. I heard some kids went to see her and were never seen again! I heard when she looks at little kids, she licks her lips and cackles! I heard—”

  “I believe,” said Daddy with a small smile, “that your hearin’ is too sharp for your own good. I’m sure that teacher’s no witch, and if she was, I doubt she’d be the type to eat children.” He stood and reached for the ladle on the table. “Those witches are generally green.”

  Who knew Daddy knew so much about witches? I couldn’t wait to tell Tully.

  “ ’Sides,” Daddy went on, “you so bony, I don’t guess you got anything to worry ’bout. You’d be slim pickings, indeed.”

  Daddy chuckled, the little lines by his eyes rippling like water. It was as much of my own Daddy as I thought I might ever see again, but in a tail flick, he got serious again, looking into my eyes. He didn’t seem to notice he still held the ladle.

  “Listen here, Possum. A young lady, which you’re gettin’ to be daily, needs to be ’round women, to learn womanly things.”

  I smelled a bluff and jumped in.

  “Well, for five, then. Who’s to say this Miss Arthington c
ould teach me these mysterious things girls supposedly ought to know? If, like you say, I’m getting to be a young woman day by day?”

  Daddy sighed.

  “Which anyways I am not prepared to say is factual, ’cause how come Momma never mentioned it? It feels more like a trick from those old Crows.”

  He set the ladle back on the table and took my earthy hands in his work-dark, whistle-clean ones.

  “You need to be around a lady, honey pie. You don’t want me to marry any of them old Crows, do you?”

  This terrible thought that had never entered the Eden of my mind now hung about like the serpent in the apple tree. Yet somehow still Daddy talked and the world hadn’t spun off its axle.

  “So I reckon you ought to go with that new schoolteacher and learn what you can.”

  A heavy breath went out of me, and all I could think was to pull away my hands. I turned so as to not look at him watching me and didn’t mention Traveler pulling the ladle off the table.

  More good reasons to stay home came into my head, but my jaw stuck.

  And at last I knew it was too late when he said, “It’s what Noralee would want. Learning’s learning, and seeing as she ain’t here to see to it … I don’t see as there’s any other choice.”

  Then he stood and walked away. He was moving so slow, like an old lady buying yard goods.

  Part of me wanted to run after him. The rest wanted to throw the stew at his head.

  Traveler, ladle in his mouth, scratched the floor in front of the screen, so I followed him out to the pecan trees.

  Bird-songing and bug-buzzing must have been about, yet I couldn’t hear but a howling wind. Judging by the still of things, it was in my head only, same as I heard when Daddy told me Momma had gone to Heaven. That time I stopped hearing anything else—or talking—for two whole days.

  I wondered, as I’m sure Daddy did, why it had to be Momma. She never hurt anybody. She fed any trainmen that came by—she didn’t like for us to call them “hobos.” She let them eat on our back steps after splitting wood or fetching water. Momma said men keep pride in their throats, and if they don’t work for it, their food won’t go down right.

  If I accidentally hit a songbird with my flip, which I’d never do on purpose on account of how Momma loved their music, she’d fix his wing, or help me bury him.

  I paced around Momma’s tree, fussing and fuming. Finally, I sat like clabbered milk gone from angry to sad, thinking on Teacher and those old Crows circling around me and Daddy.

  If anyone cared to ask, I could show we were doing just fine, thank you, and had no need of nosy noses and meddling meddlers.

  Trav came back, mud-pawed but without the ladle, and laid his head in my lap. I ran my hand down along his black-and-tan back, back up, ruffling the fur, then down one more time to smooth it. This was my special hello. Then I scratched that place between his ears, and he snorted “thank you.”

  “Momma, please ask God to change Daddy’s mind.”

  I figured Momma was in good with God on account of her regular going to watch the night come. Still, I didn’t want to seem pushy in case God was listening, so I added:

  “If He can’t do that, well, maybe knocking down the schoolhouse would work. Just till we can talk Daddy out of this foolishness.”

  Another thought came to me. If I needed to learn so-called women things, maybe instead God could turn me into a boy? I wouldn’t have to go to school but could work with Daddy all day.

  But—as usual when there’s more questions in your head than teeth, as I had regular—there were no solid answers. But I just knew somehow, I had to make Daddy see: School would just wash Momma’s teaching from my mind and heart like a washboard worries at a stain. And no matter what, that was the one thing I had to stop from happening.

  At the ripe age of eleven-goin’-on-crazy—all questions and no answers. I couldn’t see no way out of going to school, but I was already fixin’ to figure out how not to stay there. Sure as shirttails, I’d be back home before Teacher or those flappy Crows could do anything else to pull me and Daddy apart.

  I went back to doing the things that needed doing, like shooing crows out of Momma’s pecan tree and, when he’d let me in, helping Daddy in his woodshop out back, among my other chores and daily travels. Felt like I had a good hold on things, so long as I didn’t let my mind wander too much to what was or what could have been.

  Laid out flat on my back, my head on Trav’s side rising and falling with his breath, I watched fat white clouds move as slow as I felt. I recalled when Momma taught me about the circus parade in the sky, how the clouds formed dancing animals and flying acrobats just for her.

  “Oh, Trav. When Momma was alive, I was a cloud, floating like nothing weighed me down. Now I feel so full of wishes I could sink in a rain puddle.”

  Trav yawned in agreement. Then he stood, knocking me to one side. He looked into the woods, meaning something was coming, but since his tail wagged, I knew it wasn’t a bear or an Indian or a swamp monster.

  He looked from me to the woods and back until I said, “Okay, boy, go on.” Trav ran into the brush and barked once. A moment later, he jumped back out, and at his side was June May Justice, carrying a big old parcel.

  “Hey, gal,” I said. “Trav heard you comin’ a mile away.”

  “I wasn’t even trying for quiet.” She dropped the package, and Trav stood, front paws on her shoulders. She grabbed his ears and whispered into one.

  Anyone else, I’d be mad at them telling my dog secrets, but June May and animals is a different thing. She talks to them like they’re her favorite people, and what dog, donkey, or duckling wouldn’t appreciate that?

  Besides, me and her are near family. She has never lied to me, stood me up, or let me down on purpose, and I’d stare down a grizzly for her, not that I’d need to since no grizzly would be rude to June May.

  June May floated over, smelling like mowed hay and sweat, and plopped down next to me. Everything about June May seems to drift on invisible breezes. She’s light as air, like a summer breeze, and as welcome. Seems there’s always room for June May. She has wrinkly yellow-white hair that doesn’t so much grow out of her head as float. Add in her eyebrows and lashes—the same shade of pale as Trav’s—and she looks more than anything like a dandelion going to seed.

  June May tilted her head at me and then set still except for her jaw. As usual, she was chawing on the braided strop she wears around her neck. I didn’t have to see it to know it ended in a fine little moleskin pouch she’d made to hold the Lincoln-head penny what her daddy give her ’fore he left.

  My daddy and June May’s been friends since they were boys. Her ma, Miz Landy Justice, was Momma’s best friend, excepting for me and Daddy of course. The Justices have six boys that lived, starting with Jump, maybe the only one among ’em with the sense God gave a muskrat. Plus, June May has a coon’s compass for a brain.

  She wiggled her skinny butt into the dirt and grinned at me.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Miss Eulah’s.” She rubbed her sweaty bangs first on one bony knee, then the other. “Wanna come?”

  “Guess you might not make it if I don’t.”

  June May was nine, near two years younger than me and stick-scrawny.

  June May fiddled with the string on the package that flattened the grass between us. Miz Justice takes in what sewing and washing she can on account of Mister Justice being away looking for work, like so many other daddies and husbands “all across the blessed whole Hooverized United States of America, God help us and bring on Mister Roosevelt,” as Preacher often said.

  GrandNam said Miz Justice spins like a spider, fourteen stitches to an inch, so tiny and perfect they look made by nature. June May collects and delivers the bundles. Sometimes I help.

  Jumping to my feet, I picked up one side of the parcel and, over my shoulder, whistled to Trav. When I turned, he was already in front of me. Darn smart dog.

  A squirrel darted a
cross the path. Trav didn’t fuss at it but instead looked at June May as if to say, “See what a good dog I am? I would never hurt a poor, defenseless squirrel.” Something about that girl brings out the best in all creatures.

  We had the heavy load between us, holding the parcel by the string. It was cutting into my hand, but if June May wasn’t complainin’, I wasn’t about to.

  Instead, she was smiling, had been since we started off. A little secret smile to herself, because that’s where June May lives most times, inside herself.

  Trav bounded ahead, clearing our way of ferocious beasts but always doubling back to make sure we knew how hard he was working. He never goes more than a whistle’s worth away.

  “What’choo thinkin’ ’bout, June May?”

  Some folks, not me, think she’s backward as her name. Though I have with my own eyes seen her play for an hour or more with a paddle ’n’ wheel, and that’s just a tin circle nailed to a stick. If she lost the wheel, she’d probably be just as pleased to play stick horse and ride to the moon. At times, she disappears for hours, and if you ask where she’s been, she gets that moony look and says not a word. Not even I know what she’s up to half the time.

  “What,” I tried again, “are you thinkin’ and grinnin’ over there like a milked cow?”

  June May turned like she was waking from a dream. “School.”

  I snorted on that sore subject. “What about it?”

  “I’m glad you’re comin’ for the learnin’ too.”

  Things were surely not right in the world if June May had gone to that wrong side of thinking.

  “What you talkin’ about? You know, sure as peaches in summer, Momma didn’t want my learnin’ boxed into that schoolhouse.”

  June May can be a bit simple, but I never worried too much about her on account of she can learn all the truly important stuff a body ought to know from all those many brothers of hers, including Jump, who is fourteen and about the best rabbit trapper I ever seen. But maybe I was wrong.

  “I’m fixin’ to learn to read.”

  The boys weren’t ones for reading, that was true, though I’d learned plenty else from watching Jump and I’d tried to teach June May her letters, but her eyes don’t see the same things mine do.