The Secret Hum of a Daisy Read online

  But maybe it wasn’t the sorrows people were drawn to, but the idea of letting them go.

  “Grace!”

  I was about stunned right out of my shoes to see Grandma at the edge of the meadow. She bent over, out of breath, putting one hand on each knee. “Thank goodness,” she gasped. “Come on, it’s Beauty. She’s having her baby.”

  “Now?”

  “Go on, run ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I shoved the picture back into my pocket and took off at top speed down the trail, through Grandma’s garden and the Brannigans’ pasture.

  Jo was standing just outside the barn door filming me coming toward her. She clicked off as I skidded to a stop, and took my hand.

  “I’m so glad you made it in time!” Jo said quietly. She put a finger to her lips and led me to the doorway of the stall. “It’ll be any time now.”

  Beauty turned around a few times and then lay down in the hay, grunting and working to get her baby out while we all stood around the opening and sides of her stall, useless as stumps. Grandma came in the barn eventually and stood behind me. I could feel her there, just a wisp of air between us.

  “Push, Beauty, push,” Jo whispered.

  We all watched, breathless, as one leg worked its way out. Mr. Brannigan went into the stall and pulled on that leg until the next one came, the head down between the knees, all covered in a thick white film. Then he broke the film and cleared it away from the foal’s face and nose.

  With one last push, the baby was out. A girl. She was mostly white with a few gray splotches, like her mama, and she lay on her side, breathing heavy, as though she’d just run a long way.

  “Grace, come here,” Mr. Brannigan said.

  I walked slowly toward Beauty and the tiny horse that was all legs and knobby knees. Mr. Brannigan told me to kneel right beside the foal.

  “Rub her face.” He handed me a towel. “That’s right. Just like that. And rub your hands along her body and legs.”

  “She’s so warm,” I said.

  “She needs to know you,” he said.

  I looked at him, and then at Grandma. With a slight nod of her head, I suddenly realized this little baby thing, this tiny bit of a horse, was mine.

  Mine.

  I had to sit down for a second and take deep breaths to keep myself from falling all to pieces right there in front of everyone.

  A long time went by as the foal moved and was still by turns, eventually thumping around in the hay as she tried to get her legs underneath her. I figured it takes a while to stand on your own for the very first time.

  Then Beauty stood, talking in a soft nicker as she licked her new baby. Mr. Brannigan showed me how to take milk from Beauty on my fingers and put them in the foal’s mouth. She nursed easily after that and Mr. Brannigan said that’s all you can ask for in a new foal.

  “What will you name her?” Grandma said.

  “Daisy,” I said.

  “Daisy, hmmmm,” Mr. Brannigan said. “That has a good, solid ring to it.”

  “I like it,” Jo said. “Plus, she looks like a daisy.”

  Grandma nodded as though that made perfect sense.

  • • •

  Because it was Saturday, Jo and I were allowed to stay up as late as we wanted to watch Beauty and Daisy. As long as we didn’t interfere with nature taking its course and we did some homework.

  “You can count on us, Daddy.” Jo gave him a salute.

  We hunkered down in the hayloft, which looked in on Beauty’s stall. We had all the survival supplies we’d need: beach chairs, a bag of potato chips, two sodas, and my tripod flashlight. I even brought my pad from Mrs. Snickels so I could sketch Daisy.

  At dinnertime, Mrs. Brannigan brought out a feast of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, with apple pie for dessert, including ice cream.

  “Beth called. Again,” she said, brow furrowed.

  Jo didn’t say anything and Mrs. Brannigan shook her head as she left.

  “Why don’t you want to make up with your friends?” I said.

  She shrugged. “They see Max is okay now, with all his hair grown back, and they don’t get why I feel like the Other Side is just waiting for us to make one wrong move, change its mind, and take him. They say I’m morbid.”

  “Is that why you don’t want to give him his party?”

  “Mom says we’d be tempting fate. Sort of like walking alone at night. Chances are you’ll be okay. But there’s always a chance you could be murdered by a serial killer. So why risk it?”

  “So Max can’t have his party because you’re afraid of serial killers?” I said.

  “Something like that.”

  “I totally get it.”

  An hour or so later, Mrs. Brannigan brought out sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets and helped us make a cozy fort for ourselves. She gave us each a forehead kiss and then took our paper plates and trash before climbing down the ladder.

  “Max wants to say good night,” Mrs. Brannigan said from the stall floor before heading down the driveway toward the house.

  “He’s going to want to sleep out here with us,” Jo said to me. Her fears about the Other Side taking Max were written there all over her face.

  “I don’t mind if you don’t,” I said.

  “It’s just that sometimes he comes and gets me in the night instead of bothering Mom. She’s a little strange if she doesn’t get all her sleep. One time, when Max was sick, Daddy opened the coat closet to get a jacket and found her just standing there. She said she was taking a break.”

  We laughed, even though it really wasn’t funny.

  “I’ve got a million of them,” she said.

  After we stopped laughing, we just sat there for a while, quiet. Beauty lay down and Daisy tucked in the hay beside her.

  “Why did you pick the name Daisy?” Jo asked.

  Maybe it was the peacefulness of the barn or the fact that I finally had something that truly belonged to me, or maybe it was Jo sharing her worries about Max and her friends, but my usual need to keep things to myself was gone for a second.

  “Mama used to tell me this story. Well, it’s not really a story, I guess, as much as an idea.”

  Jo leaned forward, elbows on knees, and gave me her full attention.

  “It’s silly. Never mind. My mom just really loved daisies.”

  “No way, Grace. You don’t get off that easy.” She ticked off her fingers. “I told you that my brother does an almost constant impersonation of King Tut before you found out on your own, that we have the psychic ability to talk to God through our Answer Jars, and that my mother sometimes stands in the closet when she needs a break. You can tell me one silly thing.”

  I put up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! She used to tell me that daisies spoke in a sort of song. A secret hum that birds could feel deep in their bones and it drew them close. There, I told you it was silly.”

  Jo nodded her head, looking impressed. “That’s good. Really good.”

  And then for some reason we cracked up again. When we were done, we watched Daisy nurse for a while.

  “So, I have something to ask you,” Jo said. “Is there any way you might get your grandma to give me an interview for the documentary?”

  “I can try.”

  Max appeared in the doorway carrying a sleeping bag and a pillow.

  Jo sighed with exasperation. “Come on, Tut. Get on up here,” she said.

  I think there’s a moment in a long stream of moments when you first know someone, and you are finding your way around their quirks, kinks, and general person-ness, that they go from being a new person to a friend. When Jo snuggled her brother into the heavy down of his sleeping bag, then tucked a cowlick of hair into his mummy bandages, all while telling him he was a pain in the butt, I figured that was the moment.r />
  Just like that.

  28

  A New Sort

  of Map

  Mama stood on the same slab of rock, waving me toward her, the sandhill cranes by her side. The colorful origami fluttered around her head and she held up the number 4. Her mouth was moving like she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her over the roar of water. This time, there was no clumsy splashing. I dove straight in. It was icy and stole my breath. The current was strong, and I felt myself going under, sucked down by the swirling water. Soon enough, I didn’t know up from down, and I flailed around in a panic, arms and legs banging into rocks and then the sandy bottom. My chest hurt from the pressure of holding my breath, and then my head bumped against something soft. In a panic, I turned to see an arm, white in the murky water, floating beside me.

  I woke with a scream caught in my throat, Mama’s starfish hand glowing there in the dark.

  Trembling, I didn’t know where I was until I heard a soft nicker come from the darkness below. Beauty and Daisy. The Brannigan barn. I couldn’t turn on the flashlight without waking Jo and Max, so I reached into my duffel and scratched around until my fingers touched the cool metal of the number 4. I wanted to be sure Mama had sent this for me and me alone. I wanted to believe she had parted the heavens and come down to walk the earth, or guided someone else’s hand to set this in her secret hiding place for me. That it meant something important because if she didn’t leave the clues, if she wasn’t behind the origami cranes, then that meant she was gone. Really and truly gone.

  I stared straight up into the rafters of the barn and rested it on my forehead, slowing my breaths, hoping meaning might drop into my head and chase everything else away.

  • • •

  I was dog-tired as I sat down to eat breakfast with Grandma the next morning. The table was set just as it always was, latex gloves and everything. Only instead of oatmeal, she’d made pancakes that were warming in the oven.

  “How’s Beauty doing?” Grandma said.

  “She’s a good mama.”

  “And Daisy?”

  “Mr. Brannigan told me that every time I’m with her, I’m teaching her. She’ll look to me for guidance and I have to be real careful not to give her treats any old time I want or she’ll get confused.”

  When we were done, I cleared the table, and Grandma scrubbed the dishes. She didn’t have a dishwasher in her antique house, so she washed them by hand and set them in a little wooden drainer.

  She handed me a soft towel and the dampness brought out the smell of fresh laundry, making me think of my terrible Plan B and how I was glad she was smarter than to fall for any of it.

  Grandma showed me where each piece belonged once it was dry, and I felt the maps in my head shift to make room for a new one.

  “You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you,” Grandma said. “A horse isn’t easy.”

  “I’m not afraid of work.”

  “I’ll bet you aren’t.”

  When we were done, I hung up the towel. “Thank you. For Daisy.”

  “You’re welcome. Come on. I set something up for you in the living room.”

  The hardwood floors creaked as Grandma walked me over to the bay window in the front room, where she’d set an old wooden folding table. She’d taken Mama’s toolbox from where I’d had it beside the couch and carefully laid out different pieces in a straight line. Brass letters, a glass knob, old metal piping. She set the unfinished crane in the middle of the table. There was epoxy and a small riveting gun.

  “The tools used to be your grandpa’s,” she told me.

  I went and fetched the spoons I’d gotten from Margery and then squinted down at the table, running my hands over the tops of all those pieces, waiting for the humming.

  But maybe that just wasn’t how it was going to work for me.

  “I want something from you,” I said. Grandma looked at me like she wasn’t used to taking demands, but I went ahead anyway. “I want you to do Jo’s interview.”

  She sat down in her sleepless-night chair. There was a fluffed green blanket folded over the back and she took it into her lap, reaching for her knitting. “I suppose I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Why?”

  “That park belongs to everyone, not just me. We all have something to say.”

  “Exactly. But you’re the only one not saying anything.”

  Grandma stopped her knitting. “I suppose the honest answer is I just haven’t wanted to think about the past. But maybe it’s time.”

  I worked for part of the afternoon on the crane, went to see Daisy, and then worked on my split-face self-portrait in the evening. I knew Mrs. Snickels had wanted us to spend time thinking about it, but I figured I’d been doing enough thinking for twenty people. And besides, thinking could steal the magic right out of a thing.

  I took a swatch from Mrs. Greene’s Fabric Wonderland and a price tag from one of Margery’s bras. I wrote out the names of all the cities I’d ever lived on little slips of notebook paper and tried to think of what I might have taken from each of those places. A love of garlic from Gilroy; a penny from Pippy in Stockton. I cut out the signature line from one of Lacey’s letters (see that? LOVE), and pasted everything—the fabric and slips of paper—all around, like destinations on a map. Next to Auburn Valley, I glued down a sketch I’d done of Daisy. There was a small piece of copper wire that I bent into a figure eight and hot-glued, using it as a North, South, East, and West marker. Then I used colored pencils to draw lines of daisies like highways linking everything together.

  I left the portrait to dry right out in the open, not even caring when Grandma came down to say good night, her nosy nose leading her to the table to see what I’d been working on.

  “You have your mother’s flair,” she said, and there was no higher compliment.

  Grandma must have been sleeping better, because she actually went to bed. I stoked the fire real good, put in my earplugs, and then climbed between the sheets with Daddy’s book of Robert Frost. I lay flat on my back and rested the number 4 on my forehead again, hoping for meaning, hoping for the best.

  29

  Unfolding

  I slept without dreams. Without waking up in the night. I felt rested and ready to face the day for the first time in the five weeks I’d been here.

  Since it was a school day, I got up when it was still dark and went to the Brannigan barn to check on Daisy. She was up and nursing, and I watched her for a good ten minutes before turning around and heading back to breakfast and Grandma. My heart hurt from love and excitement and grief and it all swirled together in a way that wasn’t entirely awful.

  When I let myself in the back door, Grandma was fixing tea in her robe and slippers. Her hair wasn’t wound into a tight bun yet, and it lay long and wavy down her back.

  “You look younger with your hair down like that,” I said.

  Grandma touched her hair and smiled. “You think so?” I nodded, and she went on, “Lacey just called. Seems you two didn’t talk on Saturday.”

  “Oh my gosh! I forgot!”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Five minutes.”

  Feeling like a traitor, I went into Grandpa’s office and called. She answered on half a ring.

  “Where have you been?” she said instead of hello.

  As I told her all about Daisy and that I’d seen her born and that she was mine, Lacey got more and more quiet.

  “You aren’t coming home, are you?” she finally said.

  I twisted the phone cord around my finger and thought of a million different things to say so she might not get more upset, but I figured the truth was better. “I don’t know.”

  Or maybe I did, but I just didn’t want to tell her.

  After a long silence, Lacey said, “Your grandma probably got you the horse so you’ll want to stay there. She’s try
ing to trick you. Can’t you see that?”

  “Trick me how?”

  “You’re so blind.”

  “Lacey! Stop talking like that.”

  “Plus she gets money for taking care of you. Mom said.”

  I knew Lacey could be selfish, but I’d only seen her mean when someone else poked her first. I was plain flabbergasted.

  “Just think about it, Grace. You belong here. With us.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, and hung up.

  • • •

  I couldn’t even look at Grandma as she drove me to school, wondering if Lacey might be right. Did she just want me here because she was getting money? I couldn’t even stir up the courage to ask her, I was so afraid of the answer.

  But Grandma was in a questioning mood. She pelted them at me like she was trying to win something. About Daisy, about needing to sit down with the Brannigans and come up with a plan for Daisy’s care and eventually move her into our own barn.

  “She shouldn’t be without her mother” was all I could say.

  Grandma twisted her hands around the steering wheel. “They’ll always share a pasture fence, but eventually Daisy will be okay on her own. We’ll get her a companion.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, clenching my teeth together. I needed to get out of the truck.

  “Is something wrong?” she said.

  “Just tired.”

  We pulled up to the curb in front of the school, brakes squeaking. Kids sat on the grass and stood around in groups, laughing and chasing each other as they waited for the bell to ring. Jo waved from her spot next to the front door, waiting for me. Another cloudy day. I was starting to feel like I might suffocate, like I might just shrivel up without sunshine.

  “Can I go to the Brannigans’ after school?”