Diary of a Wildflower Read Online Free

stairsteps and climb over the footboard
back into bed with Nell and Jewel.  I have the shakes and can’t
quit.  I can hear Roxie and Trula breathing in the other bed.  I wipe
the tears that have gone cold on my face.  I feel the embroidered yellow
ducks that Trula stitched on my pillow case.  There is a big hollow place
in my chest, and I wonder if it will always be this empty.
    Tomorrow
Daddy will tell Luther to bury my Dixie girl way down deep in the cold cold
ground.  I can’t help wondering what it really means to die.  All I
know for sure is the thing that made Dixie move around and wag her tail, and
her eyes to look at me so full of love is gone from her, and I will wonder for
a long time where it went.
     
    May 25 th , 1919
    A
sweet wind moves across the mountaintop, and I can smell strawberries in
it.  They are ripe out there near the pasture.  Me and Roxie are
fixing to pick them before the birds steal them.  Mulberries will come
next, then raspberries and blackberries in the hot weather.  Me and Roxie
and Nell will help Mommie and Trula make jam and preserves and store the jars
in the stone wall cellar.
    It’s
a Sunday morning, and I sit in the new grass, feeling apart from my body. 
This is a funny way to feel.  I know every moment what will come
next.  Just for a split second before it happens, I know what's
coming.  I am watching me from the outside of myself.  Now Lorelei is
going to put her hand there on the grass.  It all took place this same way
before.  There is a cardinal going to light on that branch yonder, and he
does it.  Here I see Roxie leaning out the window of our sleeping loft,
with her golden hair hanging down like Rapunzel’s.  She calls to me in her
pretty little voice to go in the kitchen and fetch a bucket.  Yes, it was
like this one time before.  But when?  Now the moment is gone, and I
don’t know what it was or what it meant.  I will ask Samuel.  He
knows about the stars and planets and most everything.
    I
go in the kitchen for a bucket.  It’s hot in here.  Mommie is baking
bread.  It makes her sweat.  The windows are open, and the first
flies of the season are coming in.  By July the air indoors will be thick
with them.  Samuel wants to buy screen windows like Uncle Green’s, but
Daddy says screen windows are too modern.
    Mommie
has on her dark face.  I try to curl up into myself, be as little as can
be.  I move like a shadow by the wall.  I start into the pantry to
get a bucket.  She turns of a sudden, and I am right there under her
feet.  In a jiffy I am flying across the room.  She has back-handed
me good.  I am in the corner seeing stars on the ceiling.
    I
ask her why did she hit me?  What did I do?  And she growls that I am
in her way.  She says I am ALWAYS in her way.
    As
I creep by her to get out, I see that her belly is poking out big.  How
come I did not see this before?  Does it mean another baby will come out
of her?  Lordy, why is she doing that again?
    I
go out to the yard with a big knot coming up on my forehead.  Roxie wants
to know where is the bucket?  I say to her if she wants a bucket, she
should go get it herself, that Mommie knocked me across the room.
    Roxie
says sissy, poor sissy, and a tear rolls down her rosy cheek.  She pets my
head, but she cannot touch the place where it hurts the worst.

Three
    August, 1919
    It’s
so awfully hot.  Samuel has been gone for three days, looking for
work.  I miss him, but he told me to look for a bluebird.  When I see
one, it means he is on his way home.  It's always lonesome on the
mountain, but when he is gone, it's more lonesome than ever. 
    I
am on the porch where me and Mommie are going through three big charity bags
filled with clothes.  They come from the churches of Virginia.  There
are britches and shirts for the boys, and dresses for the girls.  There
are also shoes that somebody else usta wear.
    Whatever
clothes we can’t wear from the charity bags, Mommie