Pollination

     �Goddammit��s what she said when the pot boiled over, cooking her fingers pink as sure as the chicken stewing for soup. Momma wouldn�t have said �Goddammit� if she�d known I was in the kitchen, too, but I was flat on the linoleum and I was nothing compared to her burning fingers. She cursed like it was a secret between her and God, like if anybody heard her damning for Him the world might come tumbling in on itself. I liked hearing her curse, even if it was dangerous.
     Momma righted the stove dial and put her finger to her mouth when she was done swearing. I do that, too, put my finger in my mouth when it hurts too bad to do anything else with. Lily and Myrtle and Olive don�t, they say it doesn�t do no good, only makes you look like a baby, but Momma didn�t look like a baby when she did it. She looked older because her face scrunched and cracked into sections like the riverbed when it�s all dried up in summer. Her watery window eyes and face stared back at me as she stared at it and the reflection of it all made me roll to the side to avoid a big headache. My elbow clinked on the corner cabinet. That�s how I was discovered.
     �Hickory,� Momma said, and that�s how I knew I was done for. �What�re you doing down there? You�re getting the floor filthy.� Her hand, all cooked up, still could grab tight around my arm, the whole way round it. I was thinking it was getting pretty big, but Momma squeezed the whole thing.
     �I was only spying, not dirtying anything-�
     �I told you to stay outside with your sisters!� That part was true, she�d put me on strict orders to guard my sisters. I could see them outside the screen door, sneezing and red-faced in the goldenrod groves along the side of the frontage. I was still keeping my good eye on them. That�s what I was going to tell Momma, but she started shouting at me again.
     �Stop staring up at me, shut your mouth, staring at me like a dead fish, that�s what you�re� oh.� Softening, she gathered me to her hip, squished half my face into her buoyant belly. I didn�t know what to do; by the way she�d let off in a hurry, I could tell she thought her shouting had gotten me worked up. But I don�t cry much, not like my sisters. But, see, if I shrugged it off, Momma was bound to let me have it again, so I sucked in a dry sniffle.
     �Baby?�
     My sniffle sounded like sanding our kitchen chairs or dust whipping the aluminum on the outside of our house. A dry sound. I tried sniffling again, praying for a little catch of wet in my nose. Dry again. Momma pushed me off her, rough as anything, and I hurried out after my sisters. Watching them real close seemed like a good idea now.
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     �Did you hear, Hick, I got a letter waiting for me!� Lily liked baiting me. Course I knew she had a letter, she�d told Myrtle to tell me and told Olive to tell me. �It�s from a man.�
     Beside me in the old sycamore tethered half under the porch so that its roots pushed some of the floorboards up like teeth just ready to fall out was Olive, swinging and giggling. She�s my stupid sister, or the one everybody in town knows as the stupid Heath girl. Probably because she fell out of that damn tree so many times. �Lily�s got herself a boyfriend!�
     Myrtle rapped Olive on the forehead with her chubby knuckles, passing under Olive�s curtain of yellow hair. �Hush up, you�re the one who wanted to play spelu- achoo-achoo! Spelunkers. Bats can�t talk.�
     �I�m a bat and I can talk! Talk, talk, talk, talk, tal- hey!�
     I jumped from the high bough past Olive and headed back towards the kitchen. Spying on Momma was better than this. Hell, getting lectured was better than this, too. Girl voices buzzed behind me. Girl voices always buzz.
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     �You tell Lily,� her voice came creaking over the porch floorboards, swelling the l�s with salt water, �You go and fetch Lily, Hickory.�
     Momma was spread across the far corner, the extra cloth from her blue dress falling through gaps in the white wood fence. She had her elbow up on the banister and a hand over her eyes. It shook. I could see the sappy tears dripping down her cheeks, building in the lines round her mouth. Momma cried so much, I was used to it. I didn�t say a thing, only picked at the bottoms of my rubbed down blue jeans. I never felt like moving from her when she got this way. I didn�t feel like listening to Lily anymore, neither.
     �Hickory, I know you�re- I can see you, Hick, go and get your sister!� When she didn�t hear me rustling to get up, Momma dropped her crinkly pink hand. �You deaf and dumb all of a sudden? I said get!�
     �Yes, Momma.� Now, don�t think I was rolling over for her just because she yelled a little. Never before had her eyes been blazing like that, all red on the inside and out. It wasn�t the goldenrod�s doing, it was something else. Something coming. So I thought I�d best go and get it, like she�d told me, or just go and get Lily for the meanwhile.
     I did. I brought her to Momma without a word; Lily was still a-bloom over her letter she hadn�t been allowed to read, on account of which she�d decided it was some smutty love note. Smutty love note! The only bit of her body I could look at long enough to think anything about was her mouth and the teeth spread across it like a busted zipper. Oh, Lord, I loved looking at our Lily�s mouth, if only because I knocked four of her teeth out with one almighty kick, trying to swat down a lightning bug one night. Swatting down teeth, I discovered in the sick, green light, gave me more to be proud over.
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     �Ambrose, Ambrose, Ambrose, Ambrose, Ambrose!� I never knew before this somebody could hide shouting inside a whisper.
     It was a funny thing to wake up to, or stop pretending to sleep to. I rolled out of bed, sank on my belly and sidled into the kitchen like a gardener snake, except I would do no hissing. I used to hiss when I spied, but Momma caught on. The game wasn�t as fun when I knew I�d get my ears boxed for it. Besides, gardener snakes can�t have ears, so the hissing really spoiled everything.
     �Jesus, Ambrose, Christ!�
     Her red hair was clinging to her cheeks, tear-glued to them again. My eyes got bigger when she fished a lighter out of a high drawer � the discovery of the century � but faded, because all she did was burn up an envelope with it. I�d bet Myrtle a quarter Momma smoked when nobody was looking, just like she cursed. Gravel from the drive started churning, I heard over the crackling of charring paper, and she shuddered. No, Momma wasn�t the type of lady to shudder, but she jolted and stopped, jolted and stopped the closer that crunching got. Crunch-jolt. Silence-stop. I danced along to her routine, squirming on the floor. It turned out this was not such a good idea. It was actually a much worse idea than hissing.
     �Hickory Heath!� she shrieked. This was what made me realize my mistake, her awful shrieking. I scrunched up my face and rolled to the side. Her hand closed tight on my arm once she was up, then down again, crouching next to me. The shrieking stopped, thank God, I�d bet because it was still early and the car was still crunching and Momma didn�t want to wake the girls. We never got guests this early. �If you do not learn to stop spying on people, I don�t know what�s going to be become of you, but, boy, will you ever deser-�
     Momma stopped. The crunching stopped. The engine on the mystery car stopped. Just about everything I could imagine stopping stopped, except Momma�s hand squeezing my arm. There were soft sounds starting now: footsteps, I thought, before I could know. But I know for sure now. They were Ambrose�s footsteps.
     �Get back in your room and you stay there!� Her big, blazing eyes stared at me and I could just see the flecks of yellow dirt lodged in them. Momma shook me. �Hickory! You hear me?!�
     �Yes, Momma.� This here is me rolling over for her. The way she looked right then, it was roll over or die. I scampered off and I hid in my room. But I didn�t quite close the door� It was so I could keep an eye on Lily�s room and Myrtle and Olive�s across the hall. It was also so I could listen in on the kitchen�
     The screen door to the kitchen banged shut. The sound wobbled. The girls� were going to wake up for sure with all this racket. I listened close and hoped Momma knew well enough to quiet the meeting down.
     �Laurel?� It was a man�s voice, hollow and deep. Ambrose�s, but I didn�t know that yet. He took a few steps, then paused, then stepped another. He was scared. He was also the man who�d written Lily, but I didn�t know these other things yet, either.
     �Shhh! If you�re barging in, you�re- well, you�re-� Momma was getting flustered. I could hear it in the way she cut off the heads of her words, blew them off just like dandelions. Something tinny fell over. �Just shh!�
     �I�m not barging, I wrote, Laurel. I told you and� Lily.� He said her name, Lily�s, not Momma�s, which was Laurel, funny. Soft and loving and muttered, like when you forget the words of a prayer in church but you still got the gist of it. I thought then, but only a second�s worth of thought, that maybe the letter had been all kinds of smutty.
     �And I told you we wanted nothing to do with you! You got no right coming here. Coming into this house that hasn�t seen hide nor hair of you in ages.� Something else fell down. What were they doing, pushing around all those pots? Probably not cooking. Only Olive would think that.
     �It�s not for lack of trying!� The man shouted. Maybe Momma was throwing dishes, pots, pans, knives, anything she could get her hands on at the stranger. I hoped she was.
     �Shhh!�
     �Every letter I send, every present-� he broke off. He broke off like Momma. I still don�t understand why some adults can�t hold a sentence together to save their life.
     They should try saying less in a breath. �I never hear anything back. Do you have any idea what that�s-�
     There he goes again, breaking another. I got a little closer to the door so as to catch the end of it, if it ever made it out of his mouth.
     �No, of course you don�t. You couldn�t understand.�
     �I understand, Ambrose,� she hissed (clatter, clang), �I understand what it�s like to have four different men dump four different children on me!�
     �Jes- For f**k�s sake, Laurel, you invite them! You do more than that, you force them! You lure them in, you do, don�t you-� I bristled against the door when something made Momma gasp. My fingernails tried to sink into my palms, all slippery and soft, but it didn�t hurt me any. �Don�t you act like that! Laurel, you convinced me to leave Lily to you and when I realized I want to know what color my daughter�s eyes are, you shut me out!�
     �Brown, they�re brown!�
     �Laurel, I don�t care, I- I want to see my daughter!�
     All these exclamations you see here were in their voices, believe it, but they were speaking in those strange, shattering whispers that hurt more than yelling ever could. That was the only reason my sisters hadn�t come barging in. The only reason I didn�t go barging in� I don�t know, I guess I was scared. A little scared, that was all. And this wasn�t none of my business; I knew Lily�s papa wasn�t my papa already. And this, this voice and crunching on the drive and sputtering car engine, this was Lily�s papa. My papa would�ve had a face.
     There were some rumpling sounds in the kitchen, clothes twisting in on themselves, wrapped around fists, I imagined. A few dull slaps I was told later were Momma�s fists on Ambrose�s chest. No man hit her, Momma told me, and I should never forget that. Momma hit all the men. She said it like it would ease something stinging inside of me but it didn�t. All I knew was that there were beating sounds and a strange man who might�ve been Lily�s father or might�ve been some peeping tom or, hell, might�ve been both in the kitchen.
     I caught a slice of color out of the corner of my eye. Lily, in the doorway across the hall. My mouth fell open an inch, or maybe my chin drilled clear through the floor. I felt like it did. She stood perfectly still, perfect altogether in a yellow dress with her black hair pulled right back tight against her skull. Lily wasn�t crying, just watching me listen to them.
     �Come on.� I grabbed her by the arm like Momma grabbed me and wheeled her out the back door, feet moving quick as a rocket, silent as Sunday school. Lily didn�t say one word until her white-socked feet hit hot ground. Then she said, �Watch the mud!�
     Sure enough, there was mud built up on the sides of the house. It was still early and the sprinklers had finished going off. I didn�t really think about what I was going to do, or why. Like the time I kicked her teeth out by accident on purpose, I did what I wanted to do and made up a good story later. I wanted to kick the lightning bugs, Lily, your face just got in the way. I wanted to save you from that pervert sending you filth, Lily, I didn�t know he was your daddy. I wanted to keep you out of the kitchen, Lily, so I shoved you in the mud and ruined your best dress.
     She sneezed when I did it, open-mouthed like she always used to. Lily learned to cover her mouth right at that second because when she fell, mud flooded her mouth and got stuck in all the gummy sockets lining her lips.
     �Hickory!� she wailed after a second of confusion, then a few of silent fury where she punched my shins. It didn�t hurt so I let her.
     �Shut up,� I muttered and hauled her out of the mud, half-dragging her towards the orchard. Over my shoulder I sent a couple looks. It was risky, looking back. If they caught me looking back I�d be doubly in trouble when I kept running. �You show Momma what I did and I�ll kill you.�
Lily was crying by now. I had a handful of her hair mixed in with the skin I was dragging but I didn�t notice until later. Her crying, it made sense for better reasons than me pulling her hair.
     I dragged Lily into the orchard and tossed her at the base of a cherry tree. I wanted to keep dragging her forever, but her damn crying started to get on my nerves. All that crying and she was bound to dry up just like a prune, I wanted to tell her, but my voice wouldn�t come out. I was crying, too.