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.
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