Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Knowing that Hazel and Wauneeta would feel lonely and useless—they’d spent the better part of their lives looking after their father—Bonnie approached them about converting the shed into a residence, and they agreed.

  Spacious and soundly constructed, the shed was where Hazel and Wauneeta’s father spent his postretirement years. Dr. Williams was the town’s only physician when Bonnie’s parents arrived in 1960. Dr. Williams graciously supported the new doctor, selling his medical office and its accoutrements at a price that wouldn’t saddle the young man with decades of debt. He smoothed the passing of the caduceus (as he liked to say) in other ways as well. It’s a sad truth that the patients of retiring small-town physicians sometimes behave like the children of divorced parents—punishing the departed parent by making life hell for the remaining one—and Dr. Williams knew that the fact Llewellyn Jones was a native son would give him only a slight advantage in this regard. So he stayed on as an employee long enough to personally introduce every one of his patients to their new doctor, reassuring the doubtful, scolding the curmudgeonly, calming the fearful.

  And long after his official retirement, Dr. Williams even continued to make himself available for consultations.

  Primarily, though, he spent the remaining years of his life as a carpenter, designing and building hundreds of colorful wooden whirligigs: two-dimensional figures of Welsh corgies, matrons in tall bonnets, bare-bottomed babies, native birds, hunters, fishermen. Most of these novelties he gave to friends; a few he sold during Fancy Egg Days.

  He also excelled at furniture making, and every year, borrowing from an ancient Welsh tradition—a poetry competition called the Eisteddfod—Doc Williams designed and built the special prize given to whoever won the title of Little Miss Emlyn Springs: an ornately carved and painted chair, bearing Doc’s unique brand of artistic whimsy and skill.

  Bonnie is certain that a fragment of red varnished plywood she found one day comes from the wing of a whirligig cardinal that Dr. Williams gave her when she was five. Bonnie remembers stretching out on her bed, day and night, and watching him. He was mounted outside her window on a wobbly ledge that was designed and constructed by her father—one of the two carpentry projects he ever attempted. Spirited, optimistic in all seasons, her cardinal’s wings rotated like twin Ferris wheels. When Bonnie thinks of him—dear, undaunted marwing—she imagines him still flying, paddling away furiously, tirelessly, against all odds, eternally airborne.

  The ridge of the shed roof is covered with Dr. Williams’s whirligigs. Usually they set up a steady clatter; the noise helps Bonnie sleep. This morning they are silent.

  Bonnie slices an avocado into eighths; she removes and peels one section and drops it into the glass carafe of her blender. She adds chunks of frozen mango, twelve almonds, three pitted dates, a half cup of soy milk, a tablespoon of flaxseed oil, a pinch of cinnamon. She hits the power button and waits.

  Bonnie is on a quest to find the perfect blender, one powerful enough to make frozen smoothies without manual intervention. This one—a Hamilton Beach—is good, but for some reason, as with every brand of blender Bonnie has tried, within a few seconds the ingredients stop circulating. The motor keeps whirring but the contents become inert; the frozen chunks stop making their way to where the blades are. It’s bothersome. Bonnie has to press one of her hands down hard against the lid, using the other to steady the base of the blender as she rocks it, vigorously—thunka thunka thunka! This shakes things up for a while and gets everything back down to the bottom. She rocks the blender. Success. She waits. Stasis. She rocks it again, and so on. She only has to rock the Hamilton Beach four or five times—it’s still not good enough—but eventually, finally, there is a continuously spinning vortex with an imploding hole in the center that looks exactly like an innie belly button.

  This is what Bonnie waits for: the moment at which the smoothie is thoroughly smoothed. As she contemplates this marvel of kitchen physics—pureed particles of food moving up the sides of the carafe and down through the hole in the center, up the sides, down the center—she sends a few breaths deep into her abdomen.

  The blender is Bonnie’s single kitchen appliance. She uses it every day.

  It wasn’t so difficult, making the shed habitable. It was already wired for electricity—Dr. Williams used power tools—and to get it supplied with running water, Bonnie worked out a trade with Pete Earnhart, the town plumber: She maintained his yard for a summer; he dug in underground lines and installed a toilet, shower, and sink. Everything else—insulation, Sheetrock, painting—Bonnie did herself. She’s bartered for other improvements to her house over the years: new windows, roof, woodstove, floor. It’s a good house, not only because of its soundness, but because it stands for something; Bonnie’s house is an accurate reflection of certain values that she holds dear.

  As she drinks her breakfast, Bonnie contemplates her first task of the day, one she’s been planning eagerly: potting a trio of sprouted avocado pits. She has tended them for months after piercing them, tenderly, apologetically, with miniature skewers—the kind that have yellow plastic ears of corn on the ends.

  For two full seasons these pits have sat on the east-facing window-sill, suspended in glass jars filled with water that Bonnie checks daily. There are dozens of other avocado pits in varying stages of germination lining the windows. Bonnie considers the germination of avocado pits evidence of miracles, and yet they are short-lived. If only one of her avocados would survive the transition to being embedded in soil. But all of them, every single one—no matter how well developed their root systems, how sturdy their stems, or how lush their foliage—languish, wither, and die soon after she plants them. Is the shed too cold and dim in the winter? Doesn’t she provide them with enough nutrients and affection? She regularly monitors the pH balance of their soil, she programs the CD player to serenade them with music when she is gone, a special anthology she put together herself that includes selected recordings of Welsh male choirs, sound tracks from movie musicals, Rachmaninoff piano concertos, and the best hits of Doris Day.

  She has not given up, no, not yet, but she might be starting to despair.

  Bonnie begins. She plucks the first avocado pit from its glass jar, gently extracts the skewers, and nestles it into one of three terra cotta pots she prepared last night; each contains a new mixture of nutrient-rich soil, a recipe she has concocted herself. She sings quietly as she works: There was a seed, in the middle of the ground, the prettiest seed that you ever did see, oh …

  Long ago, Bonnie’s father traded goods for services. She vividly remembers a late summer morning when she was no more than two and newly walking: in the kitchen, pushing on the magic wall (the one Mommy and Daddy and Lark and Gaelan pass through and then disappear), she does not fall down this time, no one stops her as the wall flies open with a squeak and a bang and admits her outside, by herself, to the back porch where it is sunny, where the air smells different. She feels the dry wood planks warming beneath her bare feet as she toddles farther, toward the swing set and sandbox, toward the clothesline and shirts and sheets like flags in the wind where they play peekaboo, toward the field beyond where she has never been. She means to go on and on, but there on the steps, blocking her way, is something new: a treat! It has never been there before, a bushel basket full of shining fat red tomatoes, yellow sweet corn, cucumbers, purple beans, green beans, beans with freckles, bunches of dill.

  Each morning after that she looked for evidence of visitations. The back porch did not always yield a surprise, but that didn’t mean they’d been forgotten.

  You never know, Hope said each night when she tucked Bonnie into bed and Bonnie asked, Will there be something tomorrow?

  Other times of year brought other kinds of offerings: apple pies, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins in the fall; brown paper–wrapped parcels of venison meat, pheasant, and quail in November; Mason jars of fruit preserves and tomato sauce in the winter; bunches of daffodils, baby lettuce, leeks, and honeycomb
s in spring; and once, something with bumpy, dark green leathery skin, tucked into sheaves of tissue—shaped like an egg, Bonnie thought. And until her mother later gave it a name (Ah-kuh-VAH-do, a word like an incantation) and explained that it was a rare fruit from a faraway place called Callie-FOR-na. Bonnie thought it was an egg, one that would hatch into a magnificent dragon, powerful and kind. He would give them rides, guard them forever.

  Clearly, her family was blessed. They had been adopted by fairies—the Farmer Elves, Bonnie called them—who ran a home delivery business, traveling from Callieforna on the backs of benevolent dragons with the sole intent of bringing them food. What had they done to deserve such bounty? Bonnie wondered. She asked her friends about it as she got older. But no one else woke up in the morning to find groceries on their porch.

  It’s a mystery, Bon-bon, Hope said. Sometimes things happen that can’t be explained. Let’s just be grateful.

  Bonnie offered prayers of thanks each night to God and the Farmer Elves. She still believed in them when Hope went up, and for some time after.

  Maybe they don’t know we’ve moved, Bonnie said to her sister.

  Four and a half seasons had gone by without gifts. Bonnie was almost nine.

  Maybe I should write them a letter with our new address and leave it out there where the porch used to be. She’d learned that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were fabrications, but no one had yet disabused her of her belief in the Farmer Elves.

  Larken finally told her that there were never any elves. There were only people—townsfolk, people they knew—who paid their doctor bills with food instead of money.

  Why did they do that?

  Because they were poor, but they still wanted to give Daddy something to thank him for being their doctor.

  Daddy knew?

  Of course Daddy knew.

  But how did he figure out who the food was from? They never left notes or anything.

  He had other ways of knowing, I guess, Larken said. She was holding her yellow pencil like it was an ear of sweet corn, turning it, nibbling at it.

  Mom didn’t know, though, Bonnie stated, firmly. She would have told me if she knew.

  Larken studied her math homework. Yeah, she said, erasing one equation, penciling in another. Of course.

  But why did they stop coming?

  Bonnie wasn’t that upset about learning that the Farmer Elves were just plain farmers, but something else was bothering her, something she couldn’t articulate.

  Larken frowned. They probably feel sorry for us. They figure we need money more than we need food.

  Why would they think that? Bonnie persisted. Everybody needs food.

  I don’t know, Bonnie, Larken answered angrily.

  Can they pay with money now? Aren’t they poor anymore?

  I don’t know! Larken repeated, and Bonnie wondered why her sister was so mad. Leave me alone now. I’m trying to do my homework.

  Bonnie aligns the beginning of her town’s decline with two things: her mother’s ascent and the disappearance of the Farmer Elves.

  Conversely, the resurrection of Emlyn Springs depends upon the discovery of her mother’s remains and a return to the barter system.

  Bonnie accepts cash at the juice bar—her customers prefer to compensate her this way—and she pays with cash when required. But the fact is Bonnie doesn’t really like carrying money. Having pockets full of currency and coin makes her feel sunk, like a fish that’s swallowed a lead lure and has to spend the rest of its life pretending that it likes being pinned down to the river bottom. No more drifting or splashing. No more being carried by the current, or even fighting it.

  The juice bar money sees to her immediate needs. The small stipend she gets for being a reading tutor at the K–12 Emlyn Springs School is immediately recycled into the school’s library and arts programs. She trades whenever possible.

  Some of the less kind-minded folks in Bonnie’s town believe she’s traded on more than landscape services; Joe Pappas, for example, that nice young widower who moved down from Omaha and works construction up and down the highway, spent an awful lot of time over there putting in those new double-paned windows, and nobody ever saw Bonnie pushing a lawn mower at his place.

  But they’re wrong. The youngest surviving child of Hope and Llewellyn Jones is more of an anomaly than anyone knows.

  After finishing her work with the avocados, Bonnie showers, dresses, and prepares to head out on her bike for the first reconnaissance of the day.

  It’s a slow, steady ascent to the cemetery—southeastern Nebraska is hillier than many people realize—but Bonnie is never winded. She has been riding this road for years, day in, day out, rain or shine. Tall, lean, and lithe as a mullein stalk, Bonnie is the child who most resembles her mother. The dead have come to expect her daily visits, nevertheless; they still can’t get over the resemblance, and worry that the young woman has been doomed by physiognomy. More than once the dead have found themselves expecting Bonnie Jones to turn down the blanket of sod overlying her mother’s cenotaph and tuck herself in.

  She arrives, having seen nothing of note on the way. Propping her bike against the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the grounds, she extracts a Mason jar filled with soapy water and toothbrush from one of the panniers. With the solemn gait of a layperson in a church processional, Bonnie approaches a small headstone at the center of the cemetery; it marks the remains of Gwendolyn Margaret Elfyn (1781–1854). Beloved Sister and Aunt it reads, and below that: The Soul selects her own Society. Miss Elfyn is a distant relative of Viney’s and the first Emlyn Springs citizen interred on these grounds.

  And how are you today, Miss Elfyn? Bonnie begins. She must speak loudly to raise Miss Elfyn. Having never been a mother, Miss Elfyn is always in residence, but she frequently naps.

  Bonnie! Miss Elfyn begins, in a voice suggesting that this is not an everyday occurrence. How nice of you to come.

  From the time of her mother’s flight, Bonnie reasoned that if anyone knew anything, it would be the oldest dead person in the Emlyn Springs graveyard. In spite of the fact that she has never yet been rewarded with the knowledge of Hope’s whereabouts, she persists in that opinion.

  I am well, Miss Elfyn. How are you today? Bonnie settles in; today she is cleaning the section of the cemetery occupied by the Mutter family.

  Well, thank you, dear. How are the avocados?

  I potted three new ones only today, Bonnie answers.

  Your hopes are high, then? It is hard to read Miss Elfyn sometimes. Bonnie reminds herself that the word hope is not always loaded with the meaning it has for her family. Probably Miss Elfyn means exactly what she says.

  Yes, ma’am, Bonnie replies. She is a polite girl, so solicitous of her elders. Quiet, too, forgoing theatrics for simple duty. No wonder the dead are more fond of her than of their other living visitors.

  The extremes of Nebraska weather are hard on tombstones. The oldest ones, like those of Miss Elfyn and the Mutter family, are white granite, veined with gray, and in a sorry state. The earth has spun and shifted under them so many times, the prairie wind has assaulted them, and they have become so saturated with rain and snow that many seem to be dissolving, like giant blocks of sugar. Some of them have even fallen over. For the residents under these headstones, Bonnie grieves.

  Have you seen Hope? she asks after an appropriate interval. She does not wish to appear pushy.

  Miss Elfyn clucks her tongue inside her toothy mouth. Miss Elfyn had impeccable dental hygiene habits. She was ahead of her time in this way. Her longevity was due to her adherence to a strictly vegetarian diet—an unusual choice in the land of beef production, but the Welsh often emulate their patron saint, David, who was known to have abstained from the consumption of meat. He subsisted mostly upon water, it is said, and whenever and wherever he performed a miracle, springs are said to have formed.

  Bonnie waits, occupying herself in the interval by scrubbing chartreuse moss from the tomb
stone of an unnamed Mutter child who died at the age of three days: Here Lies Our Darling. There are numerous tombstones like this in the cemetery, too numerous: The Infant Children of Morgan and Braunwyn Ellis. William and Robert, Our Darling Babes. Their Lives Brief, Our Love Eternal. Much Beloved, Forever Cherished …

  There are so many reasons to reject parenthood, to seek out and even embrace childlessness—even now, in these modern, medically advanced times. Children who survive infancy still die before their parents, felled by accidents, illnesses, murderers, wars. The world is overpopulated. Global warming is a fact. Sadness and pain come to us all. There are so many ways a woman could assuage the grief of suspecting that motherhood, for her, is not in the cards.

  But Bonnie finds no comfort in these realities. More than anything in the world, Bonnie Jones wants a child.

  And yet her desire to procreate has not yet manifested as a desire to have sex. Any biological urgings she might feel are quickly checked by her fears—fear and desire being siblings, with fear the more imposing and fierce, ever guarding and protecting its twin. In Bonnie’s case, fear will continue to blockade her from any real, that is, concupiscent, strivings until she is gifted with a very special kind of proof, a warranty of success.

  Only Bonnie knows what constitutes this proof.

  At least, she’ll know it when she sees it.

  Have you seen my mother, Hope? she repeats, more insistently.

  Miss Elfyn has a tendency to daydream once awakened. Or perhaps her slowness of speech is due to something else; without the benefit of a countenance, it is difficult to say. Perhaps she isn’t daydreaming at all but rather considering, even teasing. Sometimes, especially lately, Bonnie feels it is this latter.

  Hope? Miss Elfyn echoes, in a beautifully inflected voice. Miss Elfyn was a fine singer; she has told Bonnie on more than one occasion. Hope. Have I seen Hope?