Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel Read online

  “So long,” he said, and gave her a wave like John Wayne before he rode off into the sunset. “Appreciate your help.”

  Out on Jefferson Street, it was sunny and cold. He’d forgotten his jacket. Baylor was shivering, and a black wave of panic rose in his young body. He walked a few blocks, and he no longer felt like a Buckaroo. He was hungry and little and wanted to be back home at Pecan Grove, where the noise of his siblings insulated him from himself.

  He found a phone booth and fished out one of the dimes Vivi made all the Walker kids carry. “You never know when you’ll need mad money to phone home,” Vivi had said.

  The phone rang several times. What if they’re all gone? What if they no longer exist? He had always known that at any time he could walk straight into The Twilight Zone. There was not one episode of that TV show that he had not found completely believable.

  He lost count of how many times the phone rang. Finally Vivi answered.

  “Mama, this is Baylor. Your son. Would you please come and get me? I’m on the corner by Dr. Mott’s office.”

  “My Star!” Vivi squealed. “You were magnificent. I’ll be there in a jiffy.”

  Baylor did not move. He stood in the glassed-in phone booth and watched the cars go by. There were not many on Saturday morning in Thornton, Louisiana. His mind was empty. He could have been anywhere, in some big city where no one knew his name or his family.

  It was not until he saw the Thunderbird pull up to the curb that life felt real again. Vivi was blowing the horn, and Sidda, Little Shep, and Lulu were hanging out of the windows, blowing on orange wax Halloween whistles unearthed from the kitchen drawer where Vivi saved such items. His siblings blew the whistles, and Vivi sang at the top of her lungs: “Andrew Jackson was a man! Yes, a big man!”

  “Get in here with us where you belong, you little singing Buckaroo!” Vivi said. “We’re going to the movies! We already made popcorn to take with us. Imagine! I’m taking a television star with us to the movies!”

  Baylor climbed in the car, and he was smothered in the sloppy embraces and slaps on the back of his brother and sisters.

  “Hey, you were great!” Sidda said. “I tape-recorded it!”

  Lulu started tickling him, and he couldn’t help but laugh. Little Shep rubbed the top of Baylor’s white head. “Two hundred ducks, huh? Daddy said you better bail him out of jail after the game warden finds him.” Sidda hugged and hugged him, trying her best not to disturb her fake fingernails.

  The radio was turned up loud, blasting out “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To,” and Vivi Abbott Walker and her kids sped up Jefferson Street in the direction of The Bob Theater. “I’m taking my TV star to the movies!” Vivi said, and handed Baylor a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich out of a paper bag filled with goodies. Baylor realized he was starving. He bit down into the sandwich, then took a deep breath. The Thunderbird sped forward, carrying the five of them to lose themselves in front of the big screen. For eight blocks, Baylor Walker was a cotton-top singing Junior Buckaroo, a star in an uncontrollable galaxy.

  SNOW IN THE SOUTH

  Sidda, December 1961

  The first time it snowed in Thornton, my brother Little Shep was more excited than any of us. It was early December. I was in the kitchen with Baylor, and I was making us some hot chocolate. We had all heard of snow and seen pictures of snow, but it had never snowed in our lifetimes. Not in Thornton.

  Daddy had told us the story of when it snowed when he was growing up. He said the first day it didn’t stick at all. It just melted when it hit the ground. But the second day when he woke up, everything was all white. He ran outside and made snowballs and angel wings in the snow. He had learned how to do this from his cousin’s husband from Illinois. He described how you made angel wings. You stretched out on the ground and moved your arms up and down and your legs back and forth. When you got up, there was the imprint of an angel with wings left behind! The way Daddy told it made me want to make angel wings so bad. Daddy said that if we ever saw snow, we better get out and enjoy it, because it might not happen again until we were all grown up.

  Lulu was the first one to notice that it was snowing. She was sitting in the den next to the big picture window facing the bayou.

  “Hey yall!” she hollered. “Look outside! Snow!”

  When Little Shep heard her call out, “It’s really snowing!” he took off running down the hall, yelling with delight. He flew through the big kitchen, past the armchair by the window, past the long oak table with the picnic table seats.

  He ran straight into the sliding glass door leading into the den. He hit the door running at full speed. There was a loud THUNK! and we stood there openmouthed as he bounced off the heavy plate glass like a kickball. He hung in the air for a minute with his feet above his head, then crashed onto the den floor. He didn’t move or make a sound. He’d knocked himself out cold. He had gotten carried away with something he’d never seen before.

  We all wanted to see the snow, to hold its magic whiteness in our hands, but we couldn’t. Not with Shep there on the quarry tile floor with his head tilted over to one side. Baylor got on his knees next to Little Shep’s face, Lulu ran on her short fat legs to tell Mama. And I stood there wondering if he was going to die.

  I had wanted Little Shep to die about two weeks before because he stole my tape recorder, the one I got for my birthday. He stole it and then broke the rewind button playing with it.

  I loved that tape recorder. It was my favorite thing in the world. I spent whole weekends sitting outside with our German shepherd, Lamar, recording songs I made up for him. At night, I used to lie in bed and play back the sound of my own voice to myself. I tried out a hundred different voices and names for myself on that tape recorder. Every time I listened to them, I felt better about things.

  Then Shep took it away. And he broke it. I was so mad about that tape recorder, but I didn’t really mean for Shep to die. As I stood there watching him stretched out so still on the floor, I wondered if I could be arrested for this.

  Next thing we knew, Mama was leaning over him. She turned to me. “Warm up the car right now, Siddalee, the keys are under the seat.”

  I went out to the car, got in, and reached up under the driver’s seat. I could not see over the steering wheel, but Mama had taught me to start the car and let it warm up. She just hated getting into an icy-cold car. I loved doing this. It made me feel grown-up. While the car warmed up, I just sat there and watched the snowflakes coming down on the windshield.

  It was more magical than I had ever dreamed. The whole world outside seemed quiet and still. I tried watching just one snowflake fall all the way to the windshield, but I kept losing it in the thousands of whirling flakes. To stare up like that into the falling snow made you feel just a little bit like flying. Then a little gust of wind would move the snow differently and break the spell. The snowflakes would land on the windshield, and for just a little moment you could see their snowflake design. But before you could really study it, the snowflake melted. I could have sat there all day watching the snow. But I didn’t. As soon as the heater was going good, I opened the car door and ran back to the house.

  Baylor and Lulu were sitting by the door, putting on their shoes and socks and coats. I took their little hands and led them out to the car. Mama picked Little Shep up real gently and came more slowly behind us, holding Little Shep, walking like he would break apart if she bounced him too hard. I closed the kitchen door behind Mama without even being asked and then ran around her and Little Shep to open the car door. Baylor and Lulu and me climbed into the back seat, and Mama carefully put Shep in the front seat, covering him with her coat. Then we were on the way to St. Cecilia’s Hospital, where Mama volunteered. Where Little Shep was born. Where we were all born.

  It was snowing harder now, and the flakes were bigger. The road was getting a little slushy, and the fields looked like somebody up in heaven had sprinkled confectioner’s sugar down on them. Nobody knew how to dr
ive in that stuff. We are warm-weather people down here, Daddy always says.

  For once, nobody was talking. I forced myself to look away from the snow and lean over the seat and look at Little Shep. He was huddled up on the front seat with Mama’s coat over him, looking like a little puppy who couldn’t keep his eyes open. His eyes just kept wanting to close shut.

  “Mama,” I said, “why can’t Little Shep keep his eyes open?”

  Mama said, “You have to keep him awake, Sidda. Whatever you do, you keep him awake. If he goes to sleep now, he might die.”

  Well, it is scary to have to keep your brother awake when you are only eight years old. I carefully climbed over the seat of the Chevy and slid next to him, kneeling on the floorboard. I stuck my face right up to his and started talking to him. I am the oldest daughter. I had to do this.

  “Shep,” I said, “if you can just stay awake, we’ll get one of those big feed bags and tear that thing open, and we’ll slide down the hill in the snow right into the bayou. We’re going to go flying across the bayou, and that bayou is going to hold us up like it never did before, because that sucker is going to be frozen solid, you hear me? You’ll think you are flying, Shep! I’m not kidding, you are going to think you are a bird.”

  I just kept on talking, saying whatever came into my head, things that might make him want to stay awake. Tears started to leak from my eyes, and I had to bite them back. It was my job to keep Shep awake, not to sit there and cry like someone on TV.

  “Shep, you can have my tape recorder in your hands and record all of it! Record the sound of the snow falling on your head, record the sound of the feed bag whooshing across the frozen bayou. Record it all, Shep, so when it is hot again in the summer and the blacktop road is melting from the heat, you can play that tape and be right there with the snow! Only, Shep, you have to stay awake now, because we are just little kids and you can’t die. Okay?”

  His eyes started to close in spite of all my talking. I reached out and started shaking him gently to keep him awake. Mama kept her eyes on the road because she was driving. She had to watch the road even more than usual. I could tell she was nervous behind the wheel. My mother was nervous driving in the best of weather. I looked out the back window, and I could see that we were leaving dark tracks in the slush. There were hardly any other cars out driving on the road. Lulu was holding Baylor’s hand, and they were all quiet, just staring out the window at the magic of it. It was awful and confusing, the magic of the snow and the danger that Little Shep was in. No matter how much we fought, we loved our brother. He couldn’t really die, could he? Would I think of him dying every time it snowed? If so, I would never live in cold-weather places.

  “What are you doing, Siddalee?” Mama asked me while I was shaking Shep.

  “Mama, I’m just trying to wake him up. His eyes are closing!”

  “Well, you keep him awake, you keep talking. And you go on and shake him extremely gently. Don’t shake him hard. Don’t hurt him.”

  I would never hurt my brother. I stopped shaking him and started sort of rocking him. For a minute, I imagined I could remember when he was a baby, even though that couldn’t be, since I was only a year older than him. I looked at his reddish blond crew cut, at his freckles that stayed all year. I looked at how long his eyelashes were and thought how I had never noticed them before. I thought of all the times we lay in bed next to each other and tickled each other’s backs and told stories about flying. Little Shep always dreamed about flying. He dreamed about flying, and he dreamed about animals. Animals were his love. He was the one who took care of all our dogs. He was only seven years old, but he knew every inch of Daddy’s land, and he talked about how he was going to farm it when he grew up.

  So all the way down Pierce Street and after the right turn onto Sixth Avenue, I kept shaking Shep. I found if I shook him with a steady careful rocking motion, I could get him to stay awake. I never wanted to do anything so right as to keep Little Shep awake in that car. I was doing something very important.

  We pulled into the emergency room entrance. Mama carried Little Shep in, with the three of us following right behind her. Some nurses put him on a stretcher and took him away to a room where we couldn’t see. We had to sit around in the waiting room for a long time. Mama bought Baylor and Lulu some Cokes and peanut butter crackers from the machine. I didn’t want anything. I sat in the chair by the hallway and stared at the door where Little Shep had been rolled in.

  I tried to think back and remember how hard I had wished for Shep to die. I tried to feel just what my body was feeling then. And I felt it. I felt it in my stomach and in my head, and when I had the whole feeling back—I wished exactly that hard for him to live. I closed my eyes, and I tried to see Little Shep as a grown-up man. It wasn’t easy, but I tried to see him and me as teenagers driving around in cars. And then him farming like Daddy. Driving the tractor like Daddy, wearing a straw cowboy hat like Daddy, checking the cotton, checking the weather, taking care of the soil. Then I pictured him being a daddy himself. I tried to picture his head full of grown-up kind of hair, his head safe from the sliding glass door, his head full of interesting thoughts that he didn’t even know yet. I tried to picture him big, alive, and happy.

  I was only one year old when Little Shep was born, but I remember everything about when we were little. I remember wanting to hold him, and then more than once, wanting to kill him when he was lying there so beautiful. I remember these things, and no one can tell me I don’t. He was a fast crawler, Shep was, darting all over that house so fast. No one could catch him. Then he’d get himself so tired, he would just fall asleep in the middle of a crawl, under the coffee table, or over by the big chair by the fireplace. And his forehead was a big one that made him look goofy sometimes, but mainly it made him look smart for a kid so young, with brown eyes like the cows staring out at you from Daddy’s fields.

  It seemed like we sat in that waiting room all day long. Mama tried and tried to reach Daddy. Lulu and Baylor drank their Cokes. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t dare move. We sat close together, like refugees from communism on a train or something, like people you saw on the TV but never imagined that you could be. We sat close to each other. If we could have climbed inside each other, we would have done it, just to not be so alone.

  The nuns were always talking to us about prayer, but it never meant anything to me until then. Right then I understood: the right way to pray is not to beg, but to picture good things, to banish all bad things from your mind. To put up a huge wall of prayer so no bad thoughts can get in. To see what you want, and to feel the love that has been hiding there for your little brother, only you were too bossy to feel it before.

  This was the first time I knew that someone around me could really die, and it made me different than I’d been before.

  When the doctor came out, it wasn’t our usual one, but a young one. He walked over in our direction, and Mama jumped up and went to meet him.

  “Your son has a mild concussion,” the doctor said, smiling with his big beautiful teeth. “He must have lost consciousness a few times, not rare in a child his age. But he’s going to be fine. We’d like to keep him here for observation for a day or two. Just to keep an eye on him.”

  Mama smiled back and said, “Oh, thank you so much, Doctor! I was just worried to death! Yall are just mahvelous.” She said this like he was particularly mahvelous.

  “Well, Mrs. Walker, snow in the South can do weird things to people,” he said. Then he bent down and touched Lulu’s cheek. He didn’t touch my cheek, he touched Lulu’s.

  “We’re moving him up to a room right now,” the handsome young doctor said.

  We followed a nurse through a bunch of hallways back into the hospital. I would have been totally lost forever, the way one hallway led into another and then branched off into a couple more. But Mama knew her way around. She wasn’t lost at all. When we got up to the hospital room, Little Shep was lying in this bed that looked too high and wa
y too big for him. His eyes still looked sleepy. He shouldn’t be here. He should be playing in the snow. This is my fault for thinking the bad thoughts after he broke my tape recorder.

  Daddy finally made it in from the camp by then. Caro went out there and got him. Everybody else was saying little things, but me, I didn’t say a word. I looked at Little Shep’s temples there at the side of his face. I saw how they moved up and down with his breathing. I had never noticed how those temples moved before, or how they seemed so thin that they could be punctured with the barest of touches. My tough little brother, the one I fought with all the time, wasn’t tough at all. He was fragile, and I could see that he was fragile. I said a prayer that I would never forget it.

  I went over and whispered into Little Shep’s ear: Your big sister loves you. She is not going to let anything bad happen to you.

  Later that night, Daddy came back again. He brought Shep a wooden train like the one in The Little Engine That Could. And the next day I brought my tape recorder and showed Little Shep how to record with it. He interviewed nurses and the cute teenage Candy Stripers and everybody who came into his hospital room.

  He started out each interview by saying, “This is Shep Walker Jr. here reporting from St. Cecilia’s Hospital in Thornton, Louisiana, where it snowed yesterday. I am here because I ran so fast and a glass door got in my way.”

  He came home after two days. All that snow had melted. I was so relieved and thanked God and all the angels that he was home and he was going to be okay. I never told him about wishing he would die. You don’t need to flap your arms in the snow to make angel wings. Not when your guardian angels are flying around you and your little brother like all the love in the world.

  My tape recorder could record so very many things. I tried more than once to hold the microphone to where my heart was and record its thumping. But all you could hear was the rustling of the shirt I was wearing. It could not record my heart. My heart was a heavy thing. Not as heavy as before my brother came home. But still heavy. I tried to picture the lightness of snow, what little I’d seen. It is hard to picture lightness. It seems to happen only when you stop trying.