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Kirsten Steele
1178 Beaver Dam Rd
Creedmoor NC 27522
ksteele@live.unc.edu
There’s Your Trouble
I am the burst of a gunshot piercing through the whisper of autumn leaves on the
pavement. I am the quick wink of light in a firefly before he is caught in a mason jar for the
world to see. And you will never understand, Mom. You’ll never understand me or my poetry
or why I write the way that I do and the things that I do. I have to leave this place that you
grew up in; it’s too much to handle and I can’t do this anymore. I write letters to you but you
don’t care. You’ll never see these letters and you’ll never see me because I’m leaving. Even if
you look for me I will not be here. All of your sentiments you gave me when I was little mean
nothing now. All of the world’s apologies…
Magnolia cocked her head to the right, her skin crinkling around her eyes as she
squinted and concentrated. Her pen dipped in the inkbottle before coming back to the page.
Its scratch was incredibly satisfying, like the scratch of a cat’s claws on a porch as it
stretches in the morning. It made her feel like Thomas Paine or something, writing Common
Sense to try and change the world. The difference was she wasn’t changing anything with
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her writing; just slamming a door shut on her mother’s face with every word and it didn’t
even matter because her mother wasn’t paying attention. She was somewhere else, not
thinking about the two children she had left with their grandmother because she up and
decided she didn’t want her two mistakes around anymore to deal with.
“Why the blazes do you write in damn calligraphy? Don’t you ever think of writing
like a normal person with a pen from WalMart?”
Her younger brother’s obnoxious voice cut into her stream of thoughts and an extra
calligraphic tail was added to “apologies.” Rhett never seemed to come in at the right time,
but considering the right time was never, she supposed it was a hopeless case anyhow.
“Why do you think you’re above knocking on a door that was clearly closed?”
Rhett gave an eye roll that would have made the sorority president at the local
college proud. In her mind’s eye Magnolia saw again the girl’s haughty glare and the look on
her face when Magnolia asked about rush at a party in a moment of pure, white crystallized
weakness.
“Hey sis! You ever think about the fact that those zoned-out looks you get on your
face only reinforce people’s ideas that you’re a few wrenches short of a full toolbox?”
Magnolia simply looked back at him with her especially calm demeanor, the one
reminiscent of the lull before a tornado. Rhett smiled almost cruelly and left her room, the
oak door swinging shut with a slam. Magnolia threw a dart from the pile next to her
inkbottle at the board on the back of the door. Her fourteen-year-old brother so enjoyed
tormenting her.
The pen still lay where she had dropped it. Magnolia breathed deeply, twice. Rhett
had not looked over her shoulder. He hadn’t seen the words she had written, although with
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her calligraphy it would have been hard to decipher on one glance anyway, not to mention
he wouldn’t have cared. Probably he wouldn’t have cared. It was such a cliché, really. She
would probably curse herself on the Greyhound later that night for leaving a note at all. She
wasn’t a minor as of last Tuesday; she could leave from her grandmother’s house whenever
she wanted. Hypothetically.
An image of her grandmother appeared in her mind. The woman’s gray hair was not
the shade of iron but rather of the craters of the moon—those darker gray sections that are
only noticeable if one pauses to really look. That softness was always pinned back in a way
Magnolia found both classy and unattainable. It was the kind of hairdo that defined the
Southern debutante. There was a galaxy between a plantation house and a trailer park, and
the space between Grandmother and Magnolia was no different.
Magnolia gripped her pen tightly. She would never understand the ridiculous
Southern mentality her grandmother possessed. For God’s sake, there were other ways for
women to be strong. Just look at Michelle Obama. Now there was a strong woman. She sure
as hell wasn’t Southern.
Still, there was something…something indefinable about Grandmother. It was the
quality that a lily had in its robes of defiantly regal purple on a spring morning. The lilies
almost dared you to pick them, to end their living beauty and watch as their petals curled
up into themselves like children snuggling down for bed. Grandmother was definitely a lily.
Magnolia jotted down the five words, even though later she would go back and wonder
why she wasted good ink on something so trivial.
The chores that Saturday were more tedious than seemed absolutely necessary.
Magnolia looked across the pasture at her brother painting the fence under Grandmother’s
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watchful eye. Well, Grandmother thought they were watchful. In reality her eyes were
rheumy but she still thought they were sharp as the paring knife she used to cut up peaches
for canning. But no matter what Grandmother’s sight was like, it wasn’t fair that Rhett only
had to paint a fence and Magnolia had to dig a trench for rainwater runoff from the house
to the pond. It wasn’t a big trench, but it still involved digging.
“Magnolia!”
Oh the hope for respite.
“Yes, Grandmother?”
“That trench sure is a long ways off from the pond. What on earth have you been
doing, lollygagging?”
Magnolia did not throw a tantrum. Or the shovel. She threw neither. She just set
down the shovel and walked into the house.
After a nearly silent dinner in which her grandmother looked at her in much the
same way Magnolia had looked at Rhett earlier in the day, Magnolia went to her room. She
hated this little farm. To her it seemed like a place they send juvenile delinquents.
Technically she qualified, but this was family not a facility. Family not a facility. A facility
was where they would have sent her had she been older. Setting a kid’s hair on fire just to
watch it burn wasn’t really socially or academically acceptable—or legally acceptable, for
that matter.
Magnolia sat in the rocking chair next to her bed. She stared out the window. The
stars were better than Hollywood cameras could find, but she didn’t see them. She stood up
and sat at her desk. Reaching out for her journal, she flipped back to the entries around the
time of the Incident, as her grandmother called it.
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~
~
~
February 4, 2009
I’m sixteen today, not that it matters. I’m scarred for life, just because that bitch can’t
take a joke, or stay still for that matter. How could the principal not see how stupid she
was? It was supposed to be funny; I knew she didn’t like fire. I knew she kept following
me around like a puppy following its mother around. It doesn’t matter what I say to
her. I could say she’s the mud of the earth and she would still try to be my friend. So
weird. So big deal, I held a lighter up in front of her face and threatened to burn her if
she followed me again. I needed privacy. I needed to not have a stalker. I needed to be
able to write on my own. I wanted to be left alone and the anger rising up in me
seemed to fit to fire so naturally. Then some kid screamed when they walked out of a
classroom and saw the lighter, Ruby jumped and all of a sudden her hair was on fire.
The whole school spilled out of the classrooms and started screaming, saying I was
trying to set the school on fire as I stood there like an idiot still holding the lighter.
Two hours later we were in the principal’s office and her mom is giving me a look that
could peel paint if anger could do that. Anger could burn paint—or hair. That’s all I
could think and it helped because then I could stare back at her. Ruby was fine! Her
head wasn’t even burned. Some future firefighter or something got a bucket of water
and doused her with it. Some of her hair is burned off, but she’s fine. Her mom keeps
rubbing her knee like that’s supposed to help. My mother doesn’t touch me. She just sits
next to me while the principal paces back and forth fretting about what he should do
and oh no, it’s such a small town and the punishment must be adequate and I swear to
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you my mom told him to expel me. She said I was hopeless. She said I didn’t deserve to
be at the school anymore and Ruby’s mom nodded approvingly and the principal
hesitated but he agreed because he’s a pansy and probably didn’t want to deal with the
school board. I just wanted to be left alone, but I guess that’s not a problem now that
I’m not in school.
February 6, 2009
Mom is acting really odd. She keeps leaving the house without saying where she’s
going. Rhett just rolls his eyes and goes to his room to blast music. Neither one of us is
close to her, which is weird because she’s the only parent we’ve known; our dads left
before either one of us was born. Mom has told us we were both mistakes; she was
dating first my dad and then Rhett’s when I was a little over one and she got pregnant
when she was drunk or high both times. You would think we would be more messed up
if that’s really the case, but I think Rhett and I both believe she doesn’t really want us
around. She hasn’t cooked dinner for us since we were little; she says we’re old enough
to fend for ourselves. But she’s even more distant than I’m used to. I think I really made
her angry with this expulsion but she hasn’t said anything. When she walks in the
house, she tersely greets me before heading to the kitchen for a glass of wine and then
to her room where I can hear the television blasting reality shows on TLC. What if she
doesn’t actually love me? I’ve written so much poetry to her but I’ve never shown her a
verse. I wish she would just hug me, but she says she’s not very touchy feely.
February 18, 2009
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Mom’s gone. Two weeks to the day after the Incident. Two of her dresser drawers are
empty—the two that had tangled tank tops and socks and underwear. Half her closet
too. All of her flats are here but her heels and dresses are gone. The purple tank top she
wore on Mondays. The silver heels I begged to get a copy of and she wouldn’t let me.
Gone. I guess it’s easier to take things like that, comfortable things and then sexy
things since kids aren’t part of the plan anymore.
I guess she didn’t love us.
~
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~
Magnolia didn’t hear Grandmother enter and when the wrinkled hand was laid on
her shoulder she fell out of her chair in fright. Grandmother smiled down at her. Magnolia
did her best to make her face impassive.
“I have a confession for you, Magnolia.”
“Ok…”
“I came in here, about a week ago. You left your journal open on the desk.”
Magnolia’s eyes narrowed to slits, almost like a cat when it sees a dog. If she had
been a cat, it would have been appropriate to hiss.
“That’s my personal journal. You had no right.”
“Well. You might want to learn how to put it away, then.”
Grandmother smiled sweetly. Magnolia couldn’t think of a response that didn’t
belong in a five-year-old mouth.
“Anyway, I’m sorry you’re wanting to leave us, especially since your brother
volunteered to come here with you instead of staying with friends in your hometown.”
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Magnolia straightened her shoulders, squaring them up to her grandmother.
“He wouldn’t have wanted to stay there. That’s where we were raised. There was
talk.”
“Oh, I know.”
“No. You don’t know.”
“Hmm. Well, you might be right. Anyway, I came in here because I thought you might
want to read a letter rather than write one that will never be read by anyone but you.”
Magnolia opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Grandmother smiled again, a
little sadly it seemed to Magnolia, and placed a white envelope, blank, on the desk behind
Magnolia’s elbow.
“I would read it out on the porch. The fireflies are out.”
~
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~
Dear Magnolia,
Fire dances. You know this. It caresses the air even as it destroys substantiality, but
it is awfully beautiful.
The most beautiful part of a fire is like life: it lies in the beginning of the end. The
dying embers play a song, lighting up one by one in different patterns that fight to live, to
leap up again in wildness. It is like life, fighting to continue even as the lifesong slows until
the space between the notes eventually outlasts the music. I’m like that now, Magnolia. I’m
old. But I see in you some of the same qualities I saw in myself at your age, and while you
might roll your eyes, bear with me.
When I was a young girl, about thirteen, my mother and I moved to another town.
My father had skipped out on my mother while they were engaged when he found she was
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pregnant with me and my mother couldn’t stand to be in the same place for too long. We
were respectable, just trying to go to church that Sunday. But when we walked into the
sanctuary, it felt like people’s eyes were burning holes in us. Even the preacher gave us a
skeptical look.
At the time I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the looks but I could feel their
effects. My mother squeezed my hand real tight. To me it seemed like there was a wall
being built by the people in that sanctuary, built brick by brick with lightning speed and
precision. We had no hope of getting through that wall and that was a fact.
We ended up living in that town because Mother found a position at the local
library. She continued to bring me back every Sunday, determined that we would be
accepted into what she termed “the fold.” I hated it; it seemed like a cult I would never be a
part of.
Meanwhile I had started going to school because it was September and I was
mercilessly bullied. I was the new kid and I wasn’t very attractive. Go ahead and smirk,
Magnolia. You weren’t adorable at thirteen either.
Anyway, I was angry at the whole situation. I didn’t know what to do, but my anger
was like the very middle of hot fire, where it’s blue instead of yellow or orange.
That blue tinge was almost aquamarine at times, but sometimes when the fire was
really hot it was nearly indigo. Indigo was the color in my head when Billy called my
mother that word in school about a month after we got into town. I wasn’t even aware of
that word until he brought it up, and seeing the confusion on my face apparently
necessitated a full explanation. Lord but he was an awful little boy! His calling my mother a
whore was the excuse I needed for that brooding anger to get hot, and I mean blue hot. I
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fueled it even further by the punch I gave him, which landed me in the principal’s office. In
those days a principal was always a man, always stern and always ready with a switch.
Don’t give me that look. You have to know that the principals used to switch the kids. Your
mother got it too and a fat lot of good it did her. Made her meaner in my opinion.
Anyway, I received a good lashing for that one. Looking back now I think I got
switched pretty regularly, and not always for things that seemed to warrant it. They
probably thought they might as well try to beat the demon out of me that doubtless had
permanent residence in my soul as a daughter of an unmarried single woman. My mother
never beat me at home.
That day I came home with no tears in my eyes despite the fact that my hands and
arms were so raw from the switching and my behind too that I was afraid to touch any
surface. The principal had told me I was an ungrateful, spoiled, misbehaving little snot. I
thought it was funny he called me the same thing I called Billy. My mother was cooking
dinner—collard greens and some kind of casserole, maybe even chicken potpie—and she
looked at me for all of ten seconds before telling me to go wash up. It was one of those
knowing looks mothers have though. When I came downstairs for dinner it was to fresh
chicken potpie and a conversation about the Bible study I was supposed to be doing for
church. Mother rambled on, really about nothing, once she established that I was reading
the Bible daily for my due diligence.
After dinner and clearing the table, I headed upstairs, ostensibly to do homework.
Mother called after me.
“Ida May, don’t forget to read the Bible and pray for the town!”
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I gripped the fragile stair rail with what seemed to be at the time enough force to
break it in half and maybe more pieces. How dare she ask me to pray for the town? They
hated me. But I said yes ma’am like always.
When I got upstairs I finally let myself go. I went under my bed for a box of matches
that I kept secret and I lit them one by one, touching them to small wads of paper until I
could feel the heat before I dropped them in the washbasin. The heat didn’t match my
anger but it sure helped it ebb away. But this time the matches did not work. I had used
seven by the time I realized that the matches could serve another purpose.
In my mind, everything had originated from us walking through those white wood
doors of the church. That church was where the judgment started, where the hatred
germinated, where the condemnation spelled social destruction for one thirteen-year-old
girl. That church was the source, the fuel, the reason that I was beaten at school. The church
was the reason I was obsessed with fire, with lighting something and watching it burn with
a kind of deep-seated gratitude for the show and the dance the flame provided. Of course, I
was conveniently forgetting that my obsession with fire began long before we got to town.
There was only one solution, really. If I did something to the church, I thought, then
I wouldn’t have to deal with any more problems. The town would accept us, school would
accept me and God would accept us both. You see, Magnolia, I was sorely mistaken in the
belief that the people didn’t really hate us. It was those four white, wooden walls that held
more black judgment in a single nail than the devil did in his whole self. It held some sort of
sway over the town, kind of like the existence of lightning and thunder held sway over
whether we could swim in the catfish pond in the summertime. By the way, if you’ve never
swum in a catfish pond you should; they nibble your toes and it’s like a pedicure.
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I figured that if the church was gone, then everything would get better. In my head I
saw it all happening and it seemed to me to be heaven-sent redemption placed on my little
shoulders to carry out. I felt honored, I really did. I felt like I could be on top of the world
when all this was done and that Momma could join me if she wanted to. Even if she wasn’t
strong enough to get on top of the world with me I could sure pull her up next to me
despite my skinny arms that were striped from the school switch. She would be so proud of
me. The little girl that saved the broken family—that’s what I would be.
I heard our Ford rev up in the background. Momma was going somewhere and I
didn’t really know or care where she was headed. All I knew was that a window of
opportunity had been opened up. Providence, I guessed.
Having no need to sneak out, I marched out the front door with a purpose and the
rest of my box of matches. I wasn’t worried, not once, about getting caught, marching along
the road because I was on a holy mission. Maybe I should have been, but even when I
realized that the car sitting outside the parsonage a hundred yards away was my mother’s
Ford I wasn’t worried. I knew she had been visiting him lately and that her visits to him
were causing some talk in town. They later married and no, I didn’t attend the wedding.
I didn’t care. I went inside the church with my matches, planning to burn something
but then I had a better idea. I grabbed one of the pew Bibles and flipped to Revelation. Then
I went to the supply closet and found some black tar that the church was about to use to
repair the roof. Before the altar I painted in big letters, “You are the bringers of the
breaking of the fourth seal, bringers of death, bringers of suffering.” Laughing to myself, I
returned the supplies and went back home. Needless to say, I was caught. The preacher was
appalled and so was my mother; they sent me away to a church school in the Piedmont.
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You know what happened after that, dear. I found a home there. I eventually settled
down near the outskirts of Raleigh to be apprenticed to your grandfather as a glassblower.
We married, opened a shop and gave birth to your mother who has made her own
mistakes.
My point in telling you all this, Magnolia, is that you’re not the only one with
problems. You certainly won’t be the last. So don’t give in to what your mind is telling you.
Chin up; you’re a special, talented woman and the Incident and your mother leaving
certainly doesn’t change that. Strength and courage are not determined by the easy things
in life. Take it from an old lady.
Grandmother
~
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Magnolia stared at the fireflies winking away. The letter was strange.
She looked up as Grandmother came out on the porch through the screen door. She
sat down on the swing next to Magnolia. They swung quietly for several seconds before
Magnolia spoke.
“I had no idea.”
“Few people do, honey. Life’s troubles don’t just exist for you to complain about
them.”
Magnolia nodded. She understood. Slowly, she put her hand out and her
grandmother held it, smiling slightly. They both watched the fireflies dance—like fiery
music notes lighting up in a chorus. The tiny bugs shone bright, strong and defiant.