Homefires (25 page)

Heather’s concerns encompassed peers who teetered between doing right and diving into the seventies’‘anything goes’ abyss. We grew closer during those hours before an open crackling fire, sharing not only scripture and wisdom but exposing hearts and souls to one another.

“I did what you said,” Krissie tucked her leg up under her on the sofa several nights later, her face surreal in firelight’s golden glow. “I’ve been playing with Joanne. She’s really a nice girl – a real friend.”

I was so proud I could have bawled. “That’s wonderful, honey.”

“I wish I could see Deborah,” Toby said wistfully of his eternally young friend left behind in Hopewell. “I miss her.”

“We’ll invite Deborah and her mother to visit soon,” I suggested.

“Yeah!” Toby bounced up and down on his side of the sofa, stirring dust until Heather, seated next to him, sneezed. But she didn’t yell at him as she once would have.

Little things. But they made a profound difference in our lives.

School demands soon had me peddling uphill as fast as I could. The perfectionist me wanted to be a straight-A student while the mother-me balanced my act. Yet, when I found myself embroiled in term papers and reading assignments, I felt
mired in timeless quicksand. The minutes zipped away before I reached my daily goals.

“Mama,” Krissie cleared her throat, standing in my bedroom doorway one evening, “listen to my story – ”

“I’m sorry,” I fairly shouted at her from my bed, where I sat propped amid littered notes and books. “Do I look free to listen to
anything
right now, Krissie? I’ve got to finish this reading and I’m so tired I already can’t see straight.”

“But this is tomorrow’s – ”

“No!” I gazed helplessly at her as emotional teeth ripped and jerked me back and forth. “Honey, I –
can’t.
I’m sorry. I just don’t have any time left. You’ll do fine.”

She quietly backed out the door and closed it. I felt rotten but knew I had little choice if I wanted to finish my assignment. Krissie’s composition
would
be fine, I assured myself. My not listening this one time wouldn’t make or break her.

The next afternoon, Heather entertained us on the piano with a new song,
The Entertainer
. Toby goofed around with silly dance steps, cracking me up. “Yeah, Heather!” I clapped at the number’s finish “that’s
wonderful,
honey. I’ve got such
talented
chirrun.”

I stretched back in the easy chair. “Mama?” I felt a tug on my sleeve. “I need to talk to you, Mama,” Krissie said, very softly.

She looked a mite pale. “Okay, honey.” I followed her to her room where she purposefully shut her door then joined me to sit pretzel-legged on her bed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked gently after she hesitated and began picking at her yellow chenille bedspread, her gaze riveted to its texture.

I watched her lips begin to tremble and her small chin cave in. “I don’t feel like anybody loves me,” she murmured in a choked voice.

My breath caught in my throat and refused to progress for long moments. “Oh,
honey
,” I exhaled forcefully. “I love you with all my heart. Why do you feel that way?”
I knew. Oh, God,
suddenly,
I knew.

I watched, horrified, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Cause nobody pays me any attention.” She shrugged but still gazed at her small fingers, picking, picking at the chenille tufts.
“A-and I’m not smart and talented like Heather and not funny like Toby a-and – I’m
stupid
and – ”

In one movement, I gathered her into my arms and across my lap where I cuddled her as though she were one instead of eleven. “Ahh, sweetie, if you only
knew
how precious you are to me. And Daddy. And Toby and Heather.”

“Not Heather...she doesn’t like me, sometimes.” The words floated out as guileless as an angel’s song.

“But she does, Krissie. She’s just – ”

“She’s just Heather,” wise little Krissie finished. “And I s’pose she does like me at times.” She gazed up at me with red swollen eyes just beginning to hope again. “She just needs to grow up a little more, huh, Mom?”

I nodded and smiled, thankful for her openness and forgiving spirit. Oh, how I regretted having pushed her needs aside. But this was today.

“I don’t know if I want to be a missionary anymore, Mama,” she said softly. “I want to have lots and lots of kids and I don’t think kids would like growing up in Africa.”

“Mmm. Probably not.”

She sat up to face me again and I sensed the conversation was not over. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Mom, how does it feel to be in love?” Her lips began to wobble again as her eyes, pooling, gazed into mine, trusting me for wisdom.

“Why do you ask, honey?

Her hands flailed the air helplessly. “All I can think about is Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny.”
The tears this time flowed copiously.

Aha.
“Tell me about him.” I reached to gently brush away the tears, knowing Johnny’s family attended Solomon Methodist Church and owned the skating rink where all the kids, including mine, congregated on Saturday nights. Krissie shared with me her crush on the cute Williams boy and how he’d sorta left her dangling. A new thing for my pretty little blonde whose romantic notions were just being stirred. Her
hormones,
as well, I suspected.

“C’mon,” I stood and held out my hand.

“Where we going?” Krissie asked, already lacing fingers with me.

“For a walk.” Usually, I walked alone, seeking my blasted solitude. Today, I wanted my daughter with me. The stroll
along the sun-washed white path was silent as, arms around each other, Krissie and I shared a sweet time of simply being together. Words weren’t needed.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” I broke the silence as warm breezes kissed our cheeks.

“What?” The sweet face turned up to me.

“There are more fish in the sea besides Johnny Williams.”

Something flickered in the blue depths that warmed me. Then she grinned. “Yup.”

The next evening, the two of us prepared dinner together. “Let me peel potatoes,” Krissie pleaded.

“Your hands are too small to handle this knife, honey,” I insisted. “But I’ll cut them into strips and you can dice them. Okay?”

That worked. “Thanks, sug, for folding the laundry.”
And sweeping the pine needles scattered across the back lawn into neat, tidy piles and all the other little things you do without being told.

Her face glowed. “I knew you’d be tired when you got in from school.”

I chuckled. “
That
I was.”

A moment of silence except for the
swump
,
swump
of knife dicing potato, then, “I think Johnny likes Sherry Snow.”

“Hmmm.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “He doesn’t
know
what he’s missing.”

She grinned, then pressed her shoulder to mine conspirationally. “There are more than one fish in the sea, huh, Mom?”

“I’m concerned about Heather.” I sat facing Kirk in the den during a rare one-on-one with him. “She’s spending too much time with Jaclyn Beauregard, who’s already eighteen. I smell cigarette smoke on her occasionally and I know how girls are at Heather’s age. They want to try things.”

Kirk’s antennae rose. That his daughter-vigilance never relaxed was the thorn in our oldest child’s side. Their shared genetic assertiveness created some unpleasant confrontations, but when things slid past my range of effectiveness, I passed them on to Kirk. Most of the time, that checked Heather before she backed me into a corner.

“Have you seen anything – ”

“No. No – Heather’s too smart to get caught. Jaclyn is, too. She’s polite and all that but, there’s something about Heather’s hero-worship of her that alarms me. Heather’s so vulnerable right now.”

“Well,” Kirk stood and reached for his suit coat, “we’ll just have to keep our eyes open.”

Dale Evans sat at the piano centering the outdoor stage of downtown Charleston’s Marion Square, taking part in the Sunday afternoon Spiritual Celebration. The concert, featuring Dale, Andre Crouche and Children of the Day, drew scores of low-country people, now thickly planted on blankets spread from corner to corner of the grassy music arena.

We’d piled into the VW after a quick lunch to drive to the festivities, allowing Heather, after much pleading, to ride with Dixie Tessner and other Solomon Methodist teens.

“Only,” Kirk stipulated, “if you follow me. Stay within range in case you have car trouble.”

Heather rolled her eyes after Kirk turned away but was pleased not to be ‘scrunched up’ between Krissie and Toby en route there. I knew she, along with everybody else, anticipated hearing and seeing Andre perform.

Yet, two hours into the celebration, the star performer’s plane still had not arrived. Dale, gracious as ever, returned to the podium to continue her ministry. Seven-year-old Toby people-watched as parents, on adjoining blankets, bottle-fed babies and shushed active toddlers. Heather lounged with her peers. Krissie sat huddled against my side, beginning to shiver in the late afternoon breeze.

“Cold, honey?” I asked, putting my arm around her. She nodded her shag-cropped head.

Kirk volunteered to take her to the car for a sweater, happy, I was certain, for an excuse to stir around a bit. Stillness has always made my husband antsy. I watched them track their way, hand-in-hand, through pallet mazes, dodging elbows and feet until they disappeared into the parking area. I smiled, pondering Krissie’s mother-hen ways...and her aspirations to cook and clean alongside me.

She was my shadow. Heather avoided me like strep. Go figure.

Dale Evans’ voice pulled me from my reverie. “You’ll just have to put up with me for a bit longer,” she informed the crowd in her folksy way. With one eye on her and one on the reappearance of Kirk and Krissie, I heard Dale’s account of her thirteen-year-old daughter’s death in an accident. “The church bus carrying her and other teens home from a gift-bearing mission to an orphanage crashed, killing her on impact.”

Kirk and Krissie quietly resettled themselves beside me as a hushed silence fell over the audience. Krissie snuggled close and I slid my arm around her thin, jacket-clad shoulders.

Dale paused to compose herself and in that moment, even the babies rested and toddlers grew still, their gazes glued to the platform silhouetted against gray-blue, primrose-veined sky. A coastal breeze, bearing earth’s fecund, winter fragrance stirred softly.

“Until then, I’d had an acute aversion to death. But at the funeral home, God took my hand and led me every breath, every step of the way.” She went on to share Debbie-vignettes, spiced with the girl’s vitality and sweetness. Dale’s parting comments moistened all eyes. “It is not given to us to understand everything that happens on this earthly vale of tears, but someday, if we trust the Lord explicitly, He will make all things plain. Christ did not promise one easy way for the Christian, but He promised
peace in the hard way.
”