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BYBANKS
WE'RE BACK IN BYBANKS NOW. My FATHER AND I are living on our farm again, and
Gramps is living with us. Gram is buried in the aspen grove where she and Gramps were
married. We miss our gooseberry every single day. .
Lately, I've been wondering if there might be something hidden behind the fireplace,
because just as the fireplace was behind the plaster wall and my mother's story was behind
Phoebe's, I think there was a third story behind Phoebe's and my mother's, and that was about
Gram and Gramps.
On the day after Gram was buried, her friend Gloria - the one Gram thought was so
much like Phoebe, and the one who had a hankering for Gramps - came to visit Gramps.
They sat on our porch while Gramps talked about Gram for four hours straight. Gloria asked
if we had any aspirin. She had a grand headache. We haven't seen her since.
I wrote to Tom Fleet, the boy who helped Gram when the snake took a snack out of
her leg. I told him that Gram made it back to Bybanks, but unfortunately she came in a
coffin. I described the aspen grove where she was buried and told him about the river nearby.
He wrote back, saying that he was sorry about Gram and maybe he would come and visit that
aspen grove someday. Then he asked, "Is your riverbank private property?"
Gramps is giving me more driving lessons in the pickup truck. We practice over on
Gramps's old farm, where the new owner lets us clonk around on the dirt roads. With us rides
Gramps's new beagle puppy, which he named Huzza Huzza. Gramps pets the puppy and
smokes his pipe as I drive, and we both play the moccasin game. It's a game we made up onour way back from Idaho. We take turns pretending we are walking in someone else's
moccasins.
"If I were walking in Peeby's moccasins, I would be jealous of a new brother
dropping out of the sky."
"If I were in Gram's moccasins right this minute, I would want to cool my feet in that
river over there."
"If I were walking in Ben's moccasins, I would miss Salamanca Hiddle."
On and on we go. We walk in everybody's moccasins, and we have discovered some
interesting things that way. One day I realized that our whole trip out to Lewiston had been a
gift from Gram and Gramps to me. They were giving me a chance to walk in my mother's
moccasins - to see what she had seen and feel what she might have felt on her last trip.
I also realized that there were lots of reasons why my father didn't take me to Idaho
when he got the news of her death. He was too grief-stricken, and he was trying to spare me.
Only later did he understand that I had to go and see for myself. He was right about one
thing, though: we didn't need to bring her body back because she is in the trees, the barn, the
fields. Gramps is different. He needs Gram right here. He needs to walk out to that aspen
grove to see his gooseberry.
One afternoon, after we had been talking about Prometheus stealing fire from the sun
to give to man, and about Pandora opening up the FORBIDDEN box with all the evils of the
world in it, Gramps said that those myths EVOLVED because people needed a way to
explain where fire came from and why there was evil in the world. That made me think of
Phoebe and the lunatic, and I said, "If I were walking in Phoebe's moccasins, I would have to
believe in a lunatic and an axe-wielding Mrs. Cadaver to explain my mother's
disappearance."
Phoebe and her family helped me, I think. They helped me to think about and
understand my own mother. Phoebe's tales were like my fishing in the air: for a while I
needed to believe that my mother. was not dead and that she would come back.
I still fish in the air sometimes.
It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war
and murder and brain tumors, and we can't fix these things, so we look at the frightening
things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something
that we can manage, something that isn't as awful as it had at first seemed. It is a relief to
discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most
people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and
sometimes kind.
I decided that bravery is looking Pandora's box full in the eye as best you can, and
then turning to the other box, the one with the smoothbeautiful folds inside: Momma kissing
trees, my Gram saying, "Huzza, huzza," Gramps and his marriage bed.
My mother's postcards and her hair are still beneath the floorboards in my room. I
reread all the postcards when I came home. Gram and Gramps and I had been to every place
my mother had. There are the Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands - the only card that is
still hard for me to read is the one from Coeur d'Alene, the one that I received two days after
she died.
When I drive Gramps around in his truck, I also tell him all the stories my mother told
me. His favorite is a Navaho one about Estsanatlehi. She's a woman who never dies. She
grows from baby to mother to old woman and then turns into a baby again, and on and on she
goes, living a thousand, thousand lives. Gramps likes this, and so do I.
I still climb the sugar maple tree, and I have heard the singing tree sing. The sugar
maple tree is my thinking place. Yesterday in the sugar maple, I realized that I was jealous of
three things.
The first jealousy is a foolish. one. I am jealous of whoever Ben wrote about in his
journal, because it was not me.
The second jealousy is this: I am jealous that my mother had wanted more children.
Wasn't I enough? When I walk in her moccasins, though, I say, "If I were my mother, I might
want more children - not because I don't love my Salamanca, but because I love her so much.
I want more of these." Maybe that is a fish in the air and maybe it isn't, but it is what I want
to believe.
The last jealousy is not foolish, nor is it one that will go away just yet. I am still
jealous that Phoebe's mother came back and mine did not.
I miss my mother.
Ben and Phoebe write to me all the time. Ben sent me a valentine in the middle of
October that said,
Roses are red,
Dirt is brown,
Please be my valentine,
Or else I'll frown.
There was a P.S. added: I've never written poetry before.
I sent a valentine back that said:
Dry is the desert,
Wet is the rain,
Your love for me
Is not in vain.
I added a P.S. that said, I've never written any poetry either. .
Ben and Phoebe and Mrs. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge are all coming to visit next
month. There is a chance that Mr. Birkway might come as well, but Phoebe hopes not, as she
does not think she could stand to be in a car for that long with a teacher. My father and I have
been scrubbing the house for their visit. I can't wait to show Phoebe and Ben the swimming
hole and the fields, the hayloft and the trees, and the cows and the chickens. Blackberry, the
chicken that Ben gave me, is queen of the coop, and I'll show Ben her, too. I am hoping, also,
for some blackberry kisses.
But for now, Gramps has his beagle, and I have a chicken and a singing tree, and
that's the way it is.
Huzza, huzza.