The Secret Hum of a Daisy (18 page)

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.

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 trying 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?”

“You can do your homework first. Then you can check on Daisy. Spend the evening there if you like.”

I climbed out of the truck and slammed the door. When I reached Jo, she took my arm and we walked into school together. I felt tightness climb the back of my throat, but swallowed over it, afraid if I said anything about Grandma, I'd start to cry.

“I need to see Mrs. Turner for a second,” I said to Jo. “Go ahead, I'll catch up.”

I had to visit the pink crane in Mrs. Turner's office.

“You look like you could use another piece of toast,” Mrs. Turner said when she saw me. Her nails were bright red today, each tipped with a white flower.

I picked up the small pink crane that still sat next to her pencil holder on the counter.

“No one came back for it,” she said.

My fingers itched to take it, to claim it for myself. The wanting was a physical pain, like a tummy ache, but all over.

“My vote is for secret admirer,” I said, wanting to believe it. But I couldn't. Mrs. Turner was right. There was nothing magic about a crane blowing into the office when everyone in the seventh grade had been folding them.

Mrs. Turner touched the place on her chest above her heart. “Do you really think so?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

She plucked the crane out of my hand and replaced it with the chocolate-smeared banana toast.

“Thank you, Grace,” Mrs. Turner said, every magical hair in place. “You made my day. Made my day, I tell you.”

I rushed out of Mrs. Turner's office and into the bathroom, where I locked myself in a stall and pulled my legs up, crying into my knees. Mr. Flinch was the reason there were cranes floating all over the place. Mama might have left that number 4 in her fountain years ago, or some stranger might have found the secret hiding place and left it for someone else. Either way, it was coincidence, and I started to feel like I was leaning over a cliff, trying to keep Mama from falling, our hands slipping. I closed my eyes and kept hold of her as hard as I could, but she was barely there, hanging on by her fingertips.

• • •

Later, in art, Mrs. Snickels laid out our self-portraits on a table at the back of the room with a piece of paper covering the pencil-sketch part, leaving the abstract showing. Each of them was numbered. Mrs. Snickels passed out clipboards and an alphabetical list of names. Whoever could match the most names to their correct abstract would get the Observation of the Month prize.

Beth came to our table snugged in a bright red coat and purple scarf. She said to Jo in a huff, “I hear Beauty foaled over the weekend. You didn't even call me back.”

“Why would I call you?” Jo said.

“Because you knew how much I wanted to be there.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you stopped talking to me.”

“I tried to apologize. Besides, you're the one who stopped talking to me first.”

Beth took off her jacket. Her T-shirt declared
HUGS NOT DRUGS
.

Jo took off her jacket. Her T-shirt declared, in black Sharpie,
I WENT TO BETH CRINKLE'S HOUSE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT
.

Beth stood there, stunned.

Then she laughed.

Then Jo laughed.

And it was over, just like that.

Beth pulled up an extra stool and they giggled quietly as the other kids in class filed by the table of self-portraits one by one. They gushed and talked about all the little things they'd missed over the last couple of weeks. I watched Beth and Jo finish each other's sentences and how they each fluttered their hands the same way as they talked and was filled with anger and frustration. They'd been friends for life. I was brand-new. Jo had probably just been nice because I was momless and she was on the outs with her own friends. As soon as they kissed and made up, I'd get booted to the curb. It had happened before.

Mrs. Snickels called us for our turn at the self-portrait table.

“I always win these,” Jo informed me as she inspected, her nose two inches from each portrait. I moved away from her as Beth and Ginger nudged in between us.

“It's because you used to watch so much
Scooby-Doo,
” Beth said. “You're a natural at solving mysteries. Remember that time . . .”

I tuned them out, surprised at how many portraits I seemed to recognize. Jo had a strip of photo negative on hers. Archer had a drawing of a ladle. Beth Crinkle's was the easiest of all; the entire abstract side was filled with tiny slogans.

Someone came up behind me and whispered, “That one's yours. The one with the figure eight.”

Archer stood beside me, a bit red in the face. He met my eyes, though, and didn't look away.

“How did you know?” I whispered back.

He traced a figure eight onto the top of my hand and shrugged with a smile.

It wasn't possible for him to turn redder without bursting something. He moved past me down the line of portraits and then took a seat. Stubbie nudged him in the shoulder and made smoochy noises. Mrs. Snickels walked over and feather-dusted Stubbie until he stopped.

• • •

I didn't leave Mr. Flinch's classroom when everyone else filed out for lunch. I wasn't entirely sure why, aside from the fact that I didn't much feel like sitting in the cafeteria while Jo and Beth and Ginger became a team again.

“Do you have a question, Grace?” Mr. Flinch said as he went about adjusting the blinds against the sun. I wondered what he'd wear once the weather turned too warm for elbow-patch sweaters. He wore a plain tan one today.

“Can you show me how to fold an origami crane?” I asked.

“Of course!”

Mr. Flinch went into his desk and brought out two fancy sheets of gold paper. He handed me one and kept the other. His fingers were long and graceful as he began. I followed him fold for fold.

“I have a question about Sadako,” I said.

“Yes?”

“It's just that, what difference did any of it make? She worked so hard, and she just died anyway. She never got her wish.”

He thought about that for a minute.

“I think folding cranes was a way to hold on to herself, and to life. We all have to find a way to cope.”

Death is a hard nut to crack,
Mrs. Greene had said, and it scared me to think I'd made the whole thing up, the signs, that Mama was trying to tell me something. It was just some crazy idea to help me get through the grief of losing Mama. I thought of Max's entombment party, Mrs. Brannigan and her Answer Jars, my friend Timmy and his imaginary friend Wrinkle, and a thousand paper cranes. How sometimes it took crazy to get to normal.

Then I thought about how this whole thing started: with an unfinished crane in a toolbox that Grandma gave me.

Grandma.

We folded in silence until our cranes were done. He set his down on my desk and I set mine next to his.

“How do you know when you're ready to stop?” I said.

“You just know.”