by Lisa Wingate
When the after party finished, our family stood in the church parking lot, trying to figure out who would go in what cars. All of the kids wanted to ride with Sadie, who seemed more than happy to soak up their adoration.
Patting their heads fondly as they gathered around her, she turned to Kate and me. “I’d like to go see Rose. I know she’s gone, but there are some things I’d like to say, where she’s laid to rest.”
“Why don’t we all go?” I suggested. “We were going to visit on Memorial Day. Let’s do it today instead. We can stop and pick some wildflowers on the way.”
Sadie slipped her hand over mine and gave a squeeze. “That would be perfect.”
We climbed into our cars and left the church parking lot in an odd caravan, with our car in the lead, Sadie and Ben next, and everyone else following behind. Dell elected to ride with Sadie so she could listen to more stories.
As we drove, I told James about the news from Dr. Schmidt. He let out a long breath, like he’d been holding it for a while. His eyes glistened with moisture, and he reached up to rub the emotions away.
“James,” I said softly, laying my hand on his arm, suddenly seeing how afraid he’d been. “Everything’s all right.”
“I know.” He smiled slightly, glancing at our intertwined fingers. “It’s just hard to believe everything’s finally all right. Seems like it’s been a long time since we were all right, you know?”
Squeezing his hand, I laid my head against the seat. “Long trip,” I said, using pilot’s terms. For eight years, we’d been orbiting our grief, staying far from it, far from each other, looking at life with the detachment of a holding pattern at ten thousand feet. Now, suddenly, here we were, on the ground, together, in a completely new place.
“Rough landing.”
Smiling, I watched the sweet pea, primrose, and yellowbonnets drift by. “True, but the pilot knew what he was doing.” I knew the pilot wasn’t James or me. Neither of us could have imagined the flight path or the destination for this trip. Yet God knew how to land the plane safely, even when James and I were panicking in the passenger seats.
In the golden evening light, the colors seemed brighter, as if I’d removed sunglasses and was seeing the world clearly for the first time. The primrose was deeper pink, the black-eyed Susan like yellow fire, the sweet pea a dash of vibrant magenta, and the trees an explosion of bold spring green. Rolling down my window, I let the breeze blow through the car, carrying the scent of growing things, of grass and water and sky.
The car slowed as we passed over the place on Mulberry Creek where the old wooden bridge had been replaced with a new steel structure, a sign of changing times. I jolted in my seat, almost reaching for the steering wheel. “Oh, stop. Turn in.”
James hit the brakes and slowed just in time to pull into our driveway. Behind us, the other cars did the same, brakes squealing and tires rattling on the gravel as we bounced up the drive to the cleared patch of ground where James’s tractor kept a lonely vigil.
He gave the machine a look of pure adoration. “I haven’t shown your dad my sweetheart yet.”
From somewhere behind us, I could heard my father getting out of his car, saying, “Is that a fifty-seven John Deere?”
James was out of his seat before I had a chance to say anything. Shaking my head, I got out and waited for the rest of the family to exit their vehicles.
Nearby, the tractor puffed to life, and Joshua scrambled across Aunt Jeane to exit Kate’s car, hollering, “Uncle James, can we take a twak-tow wide?”
Uncle James was only too happy to oblige. Jenilee’s brothers held the kids back while James, my father, and Uncle Robert hooked up the wagon. Ben handed baby Rose off to Dell, and she came back to where we were standing. “They’re gonna have a full load,” she observed. “I think Rose and I better stay here and help pick wildflowers to take to Grandma. It’s all guys in the wagon, anyway.”
“Why don’t we girls walk down to the waterfall?” I suggested.
“ ’K,” Dell said, handing baby Rose to Aunt Jeane. “I’ll lead. There’s an easier path where you don’t have to climb down the rocks.”
“That sounds good,” I agreed. “I’ll help Aunt Sadie.” Behind me, Jenilee had already slipped her arm into Sadie’s in preparation for our journey.
I backed up a few steps, and Sadie held out her other elbow, smiling mischievously. “You can help me, too. We’ll bring up the rear.”
Dell started down the path and we followed behind her, first Kate with baby Rose, then Aunt Jeane, Mrs. Jaans, and Darla. Beside her, little Amber stopped to look indecisively at the tractor, which had sputtered to a halt. James, Ben, my father, and Mr. Jaans were under the hood, while Uncle Robert held Joshua and Alex in the wagon.
“C’mon, Amber,” Jenilee said. “Let’s go before the guys catch us. This is an adventure for just us girls.”
“Where we goin’?” Amber asked.
“To a waterfall,” I answered. “To a special place where the mermaids used to live.”
Amber’s five-year-old mind considered the idea behind wide, dark eyes. “Not really?” she said finally.
“No, but we used to play mermaids there,” I admitted. “But there really is a waterfall and a beautiful pool and the most fantastic wildflowers growing out of the rocks.”
Amber gave an excited squeal and trotted ahead to catch up with Dell. Beside me, Sadie tipped her head back, listening as a breeze stirred the sycamores. “I remember this place.” The words were little more than a breath exhaled, a whisper of memory. “Oh, I remember this place.”
“Grandma Rose used to bring us here,” I told her as we walked. Ahead, Dell descended the slight slope to the riverbank, and Amber slipped past her, dashing toward the water. “When we were done swimming, she’d always walk back to the sycamore grove to pick wildflowers alone. I never understood why until we read Augustine’s letters about the sister trees. Grandma Rose never stopped thinking about her sisters. She never stopped missing you, even if she was too proud to say so.”
“Nor I her,” Sadie said softly, turning her ear toward the sound of the waterfall as we descended the riverbank and walked along a deer trail near the water’s edge. “I remember that sound. I remember it like it was yesterday.” Her blue eyes grew misty, lost in memories. A tear slipped from the corner and ran into the lines on her cheek. “Oh, in my mind I’m a girl again. I could let go of your hands and run along this path, dive into the water, and swim to the bottom.” She slipped on a patch of wet, mossy stone, and Jenilee and I paused to steady her. Sadie turned her attention to the trail, choosing her footing more carefully. “How did I come to be in this old body?” she asked wistfully. “And so many years gone by. I should have returned home sooner. Pride is a terrible thing. It’s a death of sorts.”
“Yes,” I agreed, looking ahead at Kate. If not for these past two weeks, we might have traveled the same path as my grandmother and her sisters.
Memories assaulted Sadie as we drew close to the pool below the waterfall. She stopped just before we rounded the last bend. Letting her head fall into her hands, she began to weep in earnest. Jenilee and I stood beside her, not knowing what to do.
“Your initials are still carved in the rocks,” I said, hoping to lift her grief. “Yours and Grandma Rose’s. Jenilee, your grandma Augustine’s initials are there, too.”
Sadie’s head jerked up and she blinked at Jenilee. “Are you Augustine’s granddaughter?”
Jenilee frowned in confusion. “Yes. Augustine’s daughter was my mom.”
I realized that in our introductions, we must have left that out. Sadie was just now making the connection. She brought a hand to her mouth in amazement, then lowered it again. Then she touched Jenilee’s face, whispering, “Oh . . . I just assumed . . . I thought . . . When Kate said you were cousins, I assumed you and your brothers were Eudora’s children.”
Jenilee’s lips formed a silent O, and she shook her head. “No, I’m Augustine’s granddaugh
ter.”
Tears sprung fresh from Sadie’s eyes, and she lifted aged hands to cup Jenilee’s face, featherlight, as if she were afraid to really touch her. “Then you’re mine, too,” she breathed. “Oh, I should have realized it when I looked at you. You have your mother’s eyes. Where is your mother, child?”
Jenilee blinked, surprised, her brows drawing together. “She passed away several years ago.”
Sadie’s head fell back as if the words were a physical blow, and she deflated like a balloon losing air. Jenilee and I rushed to catch her.
“It’s all right,” I soothed. “Let’s go on to the waterfall so you can sit down.”
“Yes.” Sadie’s voice was faint and she was heavy in our arms. “I’d like to sit down.”
Jenilee gave me a worried frown and I shrugged, uncertain of what to do but go on.
By the time we rounded the bend, Sadie seemed to have composed herself. “I think I’d like to sit on the ledge and dangle my feet in the water, like old times.” She smiled, watching Dell, Amber, and baby Rose splash around in the shallows with Aunt Jeane and Mrs. Jaans, who had rolled up their pants and waded in. On the far shore by the waterfall, Amber’s mother was sitting on the mermaid stone, watching the clouds go by.
Kate stopped picking flowers and came over to us. “Everything all right? I was starting to wonder about you three.”
“Everything’s fine,” Sadie answered, struggling to pry off her tall cowboy boots using a forked stick as a makeshift boot jack. Clutching an overhanging branch, she lowered herself to the rock shelf with enthusiasm, her melancholy seemingly forgotten. Kate, Jenilee, and I exchanged surprised glances as Sadie swung her legs around, her feet and the hem of her blue skirt falling into the cool, clear water.
Bracing her hands behind herself, she let her head fall back and gazed up into the sycamores for a long time. “Sit down here,” she said finally. “Sit down here, and I’ll tell you the story of what really happened.”
Kate, Jenilee, and I surrounded her on the rock ledge—Kate and I on one side and Jenilee on the other.
Jenilee kicked off her sandals and dipped her feet in the water beside Sadie’s, watching the ripples spread into the pool, then turning her attention to Sadie.
Sadie began her story as she gazed into the water, into the past. “Once, there were three little girls who played here. They didn’t have a very good life in some ways, but they had each other, and that was enough. When their work was done, they came here to hide away from the world. The oldest girl was flighty and frail, given to illnesses and fainting spells the doctors couldn’t explain. The doctors thought she wouldn’t live a long life, and because of that, she was fanciful, with a head full of music and dreams. Sometimes she invented stories about fairies and mermaids, and tried to convince the others those things were true. The middle girl was practical and stern, because she had to be. She was the strong one who carried much of the family burden. She was often cross and tired from her work, from caring for her sisters and the little brothers, who came one right after another, some surviving infancy and some not.”
Sadie paused and smiled at Jenilee, stroking Jenilee’s shoulder-length blond hair. “The third girl was younger, a tiny child born too early, quiet and sweet, filled with love. But by the time she came, their mother was angry and bitter, sad from the stillbirths of several babies and the struggle to feed and clothe a family. Their father had grown weary as well, given over to drink and depression.”
Sadie sighed, shaking her head, the pleated line of her lips trembling. I thought of my grandma Rose, stern, practical Grandma Rose, the middle girl of the three, the one who protected the other two even though she was a child herself. In all the years I knew her, she kept that part of herself hidden from us, yet it explained so many things about her.
Kate didn’t seem surprised by what Sadie was saying, only saddened. Grandma Rose must have told her, I thought, and I was envious again of their time together before Grandma died. I wished it had been me. As soon as I had the chance to go back to Boston, I would read the little book of life lessons that Grandma had written for Kate. . . .
Beside me, Sadie went on. “When the oldest girl grew into a young woman, and she began to have her monthly time, her fainting spells ended, but she kept that secret to herself. She knew that if she told, she’d be sent away to work, to help support the family, and that would be the end of her singing and dancing. In her dreams, she became wealthy on the stage and she took her brothers and sisters far away from that little white house. In her dreams, she saved them all.” She shook her head with a wan, trembling smile. “What a silly, foolish girl. She didn’t tell, even when her middle sister was sent away, only fourteen years old, to be a mother’s helper for a wealthy woman in the city. This oldest girl kept silent, even though she knew it should have been her who went away, so that her sister, who was very bright, could finish school.”
Sadie’s cloudy blue gaze settled on Kate and me, apologetic, sad, filled with regret. “As often happens, her wrongs came back to haunt her. It wasn’t long before her father, whose drinking had run the family into impossible debt, made plans for her to marry an older man who had survived one wife and wanted another. There was no choice about it—the paperwork was already signed, her suitcase packed by her mother. Her father took her that day after school to the man’s house in town. That night this stranger, this old man, took her as his wife, and she felt herself disappearing.”
Tears glittered in Sadie’s eyes and dripped unheeded down her cheeks as she remembered her painful past. “In the morning, the girl woke and cleaned herself and packed her bag. She didn’t leave a note, just slipped from the house with what she could carry. There was a traveling cabaret show in town—it had been the talk of all the decent folk, so she knew about it. She went to them and she begged them to take her in, and there among the forgotten and the unloved, she found a family. That night, she danced onstage for the very first time, awkward and ashamed but alive again. She danced the dance of Salome, with seven veils.”
Sadie tipped her head back, drinking in air, moving her hands gracefully in front of herself like a Salome laying down the veils. “She went on and made a good life after that. Oh, she was never very famous or wealthy, but she lived and she laughed and she grabbed at her dreams. She tried to send money home, but it came back with her sister’s angry letter telling her she was dead to her family. So she stayed away. She went on with life, and some years later, she fell in love with a man while working on a film production in California. Oh, he was handsome, and successful, and she fell for him so blindly.” Sadie’s face glowed with the memory. “They shared such a passion together in their little cottage by the sea. They talked of the moon and the stars, of marrying and setting sail on a boat to the far corners of the world.”
Drawing in a long breath, she shrugged helplessly, her eyes becoming clear again. “Then she became pregnant, and he left. She went away where no one would know, and she had a beautiful amber-haired baby girl.” She laid her hand on Jenilee’s knee, smiling sadly. Jenilee’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Sadie wiped them away with trembling fingers. “She knew she couldn’t keep her baby, and that broke her heart, as the doctors told her she must never have another. This one beautiful little angel was all there would ever be. She wanted her baby to have a home, a mother and a father, so when the baby was just four weeks old, she searched out her sister Augustine. She knew that Augustine had married a good man, and that they would take the baby in and raise her with care and never tell anyone she was a love child.”
Sadie held out her arms as if she were cradling a baby. “The swaddling blanket was wet with tears when she knocked on the door. She found Augustine crying on the other side, grieving the loss of a newborn child. And then she knew. She knew there was a reason for all of this. Her sadness fell away, and she felt a peace that helped her place the baby in Augustine’s barren cradle. She gave the baby one last kiss, and she promised never to come back, never to bring sh
ame to her daughter.
“And she never did. She kept that baby only in her heart all those many years . . . and in here.” Reaching into her blouse, she pulled out a heart-shaped locket, dented at the tip and worn smooth by years close to her skin. Her fingers trembled as she opened it. “This one picture was taken the week her daughter was born. That was all there was, until today.” Letting the locket fall, she slipped her hands over ours. “Who knew that she would one day sit in this place with her sister’s children, and with her very own granddaughter? Who could have imagined such a wonderful circle of life?”
The question went unanswered, though we each knew the answer. Some things are so far beyond human explanation that they can only belong to God.
God, who took the child of one woman and gave her to another, and now brought her back. Who saw sisters parted for a lifetime and finally reunited through a new generation. Who sent the years that asked and the years that answered.
It was His fingertip that charted the winding course of the river, His hand that hollowed out the pool where the mermaids once again swam, His brushstrokes that painted the twilight hues in the blue Missouri sky.
His breath that now whispered overhead among the sycamores.
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CONVERSATION GUIDE
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LISA WINGATE
The Language of Sycamores
This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.
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A CONVERSATION WITH LISA WINGATE
Q. What is your “typical” day? How do you fit writing in with being a wife and mother?
A. My typical day begins with getting the boys off to school, which is a change for me in the last few years. My typical day used to be entertaining a toddler while hurrying to write during naptimes. Now that everyone is in school, I usually sit down to write while drinking my tea first thing in the morning. I hear the cadence of the words like music, and when I’m really into a story everything else fades away. It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that the people and events in the stories aren’t real—which, actually, may mean I need some kind of therapy. It has occurred to me that I spend a great deal of time listening to the voices in my head and talking to imaginary people!