Four-O'clocks

About a month after Gran died, I noticed the bright green leaves sprout in the depression of my lawn where I am sure the city’s sewer line has eaten away at the Yazoo clay lying beneath. Decay brings forth life every time, doesn’t it? I had just gotten off work, and it was April when the weather is either furious or loving. The days had begun to get longer because we had already sprung forward with daylight savings time and it had not yet gotten so humid that you could feel the air lay on your skin. This evening, the air was perfectly benign.

I passed by the plant when I skirted the depression so I wouldn’t break my leg again and clicked my heels on the sidewalk so that any grass or mud that they had gathered would knock off. I bent down to pet Sammy’s black coat. He was my dearest friend. He blinked his golden eyes at me and purred a meow like he was saying he was as glad to see me as I was to see him. It is nice to be greeted by someone happy to see you, even if they really just want you to feed and pet them.

Something was stuck in my mind, tugging at a memory. I turned and looked at the new growth from where I squatted on the sidewalk. “Four-o’clocks,” I said to no one because I often talk out loud. It makes me feel less lonely. The leaves looked like four-o’clocks.

The smell hit me hard, but it was not a real smell. It was a remembered smell, sweet and delicate, but close to being bruised and overripe. I could feel Gran’s cool hands on my shoulder that was still hot from the sun that I had been under all day at the Leflore County Country Club pool. Sweet mixed with dried chlorine and my grandmother’s Coty powder that she put on her face even though she did not need it. I was nine again and clutching a tiny bouquet of the pink flowers that were bright and dark pink at the same time, growing more fluorescent as dusk settled.

“Here, Gran!” I triumphantly barked. “I picked you some pretty flowers.” They were as delicate as her skin was just before she died, paper thin skin.

Sammy meowed again and rubbed against my shin. “I guess I’ll just have to wait,” I thought. I imagined myself telling the sweet high school kid who cut my yard to be sure not to cut down my special plant. It would be just like her to send me a flower to remind me of her.

Over the next month the plant grew steadily. It wilted when we did not have enough rain and it bent under our spring thunderstorms. Still, it grew steadily.

By mid-June, it offered up its first flower bud. I would hop out of the car onto the curb and walk like a tight-rope walker until I got to the sidewalk to stay out of the sand that washed down the street with each storm and pooled and puddled at the curb in front of my house.

Gran had been so proud when I bought this house, standing in the front yard and in the middle of the street taking photos with her ever-present disposable film camera. She would take the cameras into the drug store downtown Greenwood and put them into a little envelope that she carefully wrote her name and phone number on. A few days later, she would have double prints of everything she had taken a photo of, including the view of my new house from the street. She loved that it was white with green shutters. She would have only loved it more if it had had green shutters that actually worked as storm shutters to protect us all inside and not props pretending to be something useful.

The evening that I got out of the car and heard the Katydids begin to sing, I knew that my gift from Gran must be ready to bloom. It was only five o’clock, so the two buds were just getting ready to open. I hustled inside, making perfunctory attempts to pet the cats on my way into the house, and opened my refrigerator. I pulled out a bottle of Vihno Verde white wine. The hint of effervescence was going to be perfect with the scent. I poured the golden wine into a fine crystal wine glass that was almost as delicate as these flowers would be. I hefted the strap of the folding chair over my shoulder and opened the front door. Sammy guarded my wine while I positioned the chair so that I would not have my back to the street, but would have a good view of the opening. I retrieved my wine and sat down to wait.

Neighbors passed by walking their dogs or their children in strollers. Both dogs and children ride in strollers in my neighborhood. I got up to talk to the mother of one of the strolled dogs. He peered out from under the canopy at me, his black eyes unblinking through the dense eyebrows of white fur. He used to be a fierce terrier but has been cut down by arthritis and degenerating hips so that he now resembles a lap dog or baby doll.

The cicadas sang out their song, “Katy-diiid, katy-diiid,” over and over again in a chorus of high and higher notes that moved up and down rhythmically. I watched the dog mother walk down the street away from me. I turned to go to my chair and smelled the first hint of sweetness. I had missed the flowers opening, but they were beautiful in the darkening light. The petals furled out and captured the dying light, funneling it down the tube to where they seed lay waiting to be fertilized. One night is all the flower has to replicate, fornicate with tiny beetles crawling down into the depths of the flower to drink the sweetness there.

I picked up my wine and stood as close to the plant as I dared without stepping into what I was sure a hole that went all the way to the core of Belhaven’s volcano. I took a deep breath through my nose, filling it with the most delicate perfume from a flower that lasts for only a night before dying. Nothing is permanent. I took a sip of the wine that was now tepid and swirled it in my mouth. The scent of the flower and the bouquet of the wine mingled in my nose. They were the perfect pairing.

I sat down in my chair and closed my eyes, listening to the fade and slow amplification of the Katydid song. The humidity laid the four-o’clock perfume on my skin. This was a perfect gift from a woman who always said, “You know you’re my heart.” She said that to each and every one of us, but it did not matter to me. She was always in my heart. Now she was in my yard, too.