Grandpa’s Gift
I run my fingers over the red-cloth cover of the book from Mama, as she looks over her shoulder at me, waiting.
“Thank you for the book, Mama.”
“Don’t you want to write in it?”
Daddy never allows me to be contrary with Mama, so I take a pencil from the jar beside my history book and jot today’s date atop the first page. Wednesday, April 23, 1913.
Mama smiles, and I excuse myself to fetch flowers from the Sunday garden before she can expect more.
Just as Sunday is a day of rest, Grandpa reckons the soil needs a season of rest. He’s smart about such things, Grandpa is, almost like he and the ground are kin. Every year he chooses a patch for the Sunday garden, and we don’t plant there.
In early spring, the Sunday garden is sloshy with mud, but before I have time to clean the mud from my feet, it gets speckled with green. By April, it’s full of weeds, ferns, and maple trees the size of darning needles. And wildflowers that distract my nose from the grazing patch. That’s where our mule, Stonewall, and the goats graze, eating weeds and grass, and leaving behind what all animals leave behind.
Today I pick yellow sorrel, a handful of sunshine to take inside. I pump the handle at the kitchen sink to fill a jar with water for the flowers, and put it on the table I’m fixing to set.
But Mama stops me. “I’ll set the table, Ginnie Lee. This is your day. If I have to brew tea for the angels to make it special, I’ll start brewing.”
Mama always offers to brew tea for the angels. A body who concerns herself with the thirst of heavenly beings ought not have Mama’s troubles.
Aunt Freddie said Mama and Daddy built our house to fill with young’uns. But all they got was me—and six gravestones in the cemetery on the hill.
Jackson’s was the first of those teensy lives that rounded Mama’s tummy and filled her eyes with hope. And he lived longest. Now Mama’s in the family way again. I don’t know how she can keep hopeful, but she does.
The book, no lessons, and a special supper make for a right fine birthday, but as mealtime commences, there’s a wonderment of other gifts.
Daddy gives me a flute he carved from a smooth piece of yellow birch. “I’ll learn ya to play it,” he tells me.
Aunt Freddie gives me a shawl, crocheted with her delicate, even stitches, soft and yellow like the sorrel on the table.
I hug her. “I’ll save it for church. It’ll be the prettiest one in the whole congregation.”
Grandpa stands up and clears his throat. “I have a special gift fer ya, Darlin’, not fer today, but right soon.” He winks at me, his brown eyes twinkling like they have candles inside them.
“I’m a-takin’ a trip,” he announces to the family, “fer a reunion. In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle. And I want ta take Ginnie Lee with me.”
I can’t believe it! I’ve never been farther than Skitter Falls, never set one foot outside West Virginia. And Grandpa wants to take me to Pennsylvania. Think of all the history there. And folks. Lots of folks. How I hanker to meet folks and see something different.
“Will we see automobiles?” I ask.
“Might even ride on a train.”
Mama doesn’t say a word about the trip until Grandpa and Aunt Freddie leave. Then she pats the bulge under her dress.
“We can’t let them go, can we, Tom?” she says to Daddy.
Daddy doesn’t answer, just tells her not to worry.
My excitement skitters away like a chipmunk, and I finally know what to write in my book.
If you had survived, my life would be less perplexing. If you were here, might be Mama wouldn’t cling so tight. I could pack my new yellow shawl in a satchel, and cross off days on the calendar. If Mama had you to fret over, might be she’d treat me like the woman I’m becoming, and I wouldn’t have to cat-step around her while she keeps me closer than a mama possum’s babies. If you were here, might be I could travel far enough to meet folks from those other hills. Or those hollows and flatlands. But I’m all Mama has, and I don’t reckon I’ll see anyplace new until I see heaven. Just like you.
Virginia Lee Kent
