The Secret Sense of Wildflower Read Free Page A

not willing to tell anybody about it, not even Jo. Johnny is gone when we reach the crossroads, and my step lightens. I smile at the sky, imagining a world without Johnny Monroe.
    Nearer to home the smell of honeysuckle and wild roses walks with us. As the sun dips below the ridge, the crickets warm up their night songs. Jo and I say our goodbyes at the three mailboxes at the bottom of our property. She and Daniel live across the road; Amy and Nathan next door to them. But there are several acres in between. I take the steep dirt path toward home, glad the rainstorm from the day before dampened down the dust from the dirt road.
    To announce my arrival, I let the screen door slam. Mama and Meg are in the kitchen.
    “Wash up,” Mama says, and I do as I’m told.
    Then I sit next to Meg who is still in her Woolworth’s work clothes. Meg catches a ride to and from work with Cecil Appleby who drives his almost-new 1940 Ford truck into Rocky Bluff to work at the sock factory, an hour away. Not that many people have cars in Katy’s Ridge.
    “How’s Daddy?” Meg asks.
    “He’s fine,” I say. “He asked after you and I told him about your new job.”
    Meg smiles, but her smile has sadness in it, and I don’t know if it’s because she misses Daddy or if she’s just sad she had to get a job.
    Catching rides into Rocky Bluff makes a long day for Meg, because Cecil goes in at seven in the morning and she doesn’t start work until nine. For two hours every morning she sits in the diner across from Woolworth’s and reads cheap romance novels passed along by one of her customers.
    Mama has no idea how much time Meg spends reading trashy novels and she would burn them in the woodstove if she ever found them. I have been sworn to secrecy until the day I die. However, not being one to pass up a business opportunity, I also collect ten cents a month for keeping my mouth shut. While Mama isn’t looking, Meg slides me a dime across the table and I put it in my pocket.
    A box under our bed is stacked full of books with bare-chested men standing next to women in long, sexy nightgowns. Meg says I can read them if I want to, but I can’t get past the first chapter without feeling like heaving my breakfast oatmeal. If what’s in those books is romance, I don’t want any part of it.
    In all my years of schooling, I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve had plenty of friends who were boys, but beyond that they hold no interest for me. In the country, some girls my age are already thinking about marriage. In the back, back woods, some girls are already having children of their own. But that’s the last thing on my mind right now.
    The secret sense tells me that Mama wants to say something to me about being at the graveyard again, but she swallows her words. If she wasn’t so busy doing chores she might be up on that hill, too, lying next to Daddy’s grave like they used to lie in bed together. I’ve never seen Mama cry, not even the day he died. But sometimes I hear her through the wall, tossing and turning all over the bed that doesn’t have Daddy in it anymore.
    “We waited supper on you,” Mama says, as if this was a great inconvenience.
    “Thank you, Mama,” I say. Daddy would want me to be nice to her, even though she hasn’t been that nice to me lately.
    A large bowl of pinto beans sits on the kitchen table. We eat beans a lot since Daddy died. Mixed in with the beans are pieces of ham, sweet onion, and turnip greens—little surprises that your taste buds stumble upon. Mama places an iron skillet of cornbread just out of the oven on folded dishrags so it won’t burn the wood. Next to the cornbread is a big plate of sliced tomatoes that Mama grows in the side yard. I spear three slices with my fork and put them on my plate. Then I remember how Mama always says my eyes are bigger than my stomach and put one back.
    “Who came into the store today?” Mama asks Meg.
    Meg starts naming names, most of which I recognize.