Now for the first time ever I was visiting her for a week, all by myself, and I tried at first to help. But even when I followed her out to the garden she didn’t tell me what to do, and it felt like she was disgusted with me for not knowing it anyway. So I gave up and started spending my time reading some of the boys’ old paperbacks I found in the bookcase and she left me pretty much alone. Those books were real nasty but they were sure a good education that week. She obviously didn’t know what was in them. I did try to carry on a conversation at mealtimes but it wasn’t much use. I decided she figured there was nothing to talk about with an eleven year old.

But this particular evening it had been different. After supper we were passing through the hall as I was headed to the porch swing to read and she was getting her sunbonnet from the hook on the hall tree, going to the garden again I guess. Out of curiosity, I just happened to ask, “Grandmother, what do you keep in that storage bench?” That started it.

“Well, I’ll show you,” she said, and I think she was just looking for an excuse to look in there herself so she was glad I asked. She started showing me some crocheted pieces she had made but I’d seen some of those before. Then she pulled out the quilt tops that were in there, and for a change her voice got a little softer as she explained how she was making one for each of her six granddaughters and would give them to us when she finished quilting all of them. They were beautiful, and I wasn’t just making up to her when I told her I was excited about getting one and could hardly wait. By now she was talking to me like we might have been two other people entirely, friends even. That’s when she picked up those old cardboard leaves that Livy made, and I wasn’t about to mess up the first good conversation we’d ever had even if I thought they were tacky.

Next was a hooked rug that was nice enough, and then a couple of pleated corduroy throw pillows with buttons in the middle that I wasn’t crazy about but again I kept mum. And then I saw the little clothes.

“Oh, Gram!” I was really taken by the embroidery, the smocking, the dropped-waist sashes and puffed sleeves. There were tiny high-topped shoes with buttons up the sides, and little snow white stockings. Big satin hairbows, little bitty gloves, frilly bloomers. There were actually bloomers! I picked up a pink sweater with rosebuds knitted right in. “How beautiful! Where’d you get these clothes? What are they for?”

She didn’t exactly snatch the sweater away but she did reach over and take it. Her face kind of folded in on itself. I thought of paper lanterns, the ones you take the light out of and squash flat for storage after the party is over. “I made those for Frances, my little girl.”

Something was wrong because her little girl’s name was Clara, not Frances. I knew because she was my aunt, of course, all grown up now and living in Tennessee. Then it dawned on me. “Oh. You have another little girl, besides Clara. Where does she live?”

Grandmother didn’t say anything for a while, and then her voice came hollow and far away, like she wasn’t even in the same room as me. “Frances died when she was four. Dipferia.”

I forgot to be careful with my tongue then and the questions bubbled out, even though no answers were coming back. “How come I never knew about her? Where is she buried? What did she look like? Why don’t Clara and Daddy and the other boys ever talk about her? She must’ve been the baby or Clara would’ve worn those clothes when she came along.”

At that Grandmother came back. Her eyes were glittery when she said, loud again now, “Frances was my first child. Warn’t nobody else never going to wear them clothes.”

I thought I had messed everything up then, about Grandmother talking to me I mean, but to my surprise she kept on. I don’t think anybody much ever talked about Frances, and it was like she wanted to. I mean, she knew I’d see those clothes if she went through that bench, didn’t she? Else why did she pull out everything? I don’t know if she even realized I was still there, anyway.

“Frances was the most beautiful child that ever lived, and the sweetest. She was only four, but she could read as well as I could. I bet she would of gone to college. She could draw anything, and she could sing every song in the Broadman hymnal, by heart.”

Grandmother sat still then, practically the first time I could remember her actually not moving, unless she was asleep. Her hand rested on a chalk picture of some cows, pretty good I guess for a four year old, but the thing that interested me most was the Kodak picture peeking out from under it.

“Who’s that?” She didn’t answer me but it came to me anyway. That was a picture of her, when she was young. It’s a wonder that I recognized it at all because in every picture I’d ever seen of her, she sat stiff and not smiling alongside Grandaddy, sometimes with the boys and Clara and sometimes not. But there was something a little bit familiar about the young woman in the picture and I realized it was her. I reached over and pulled it out, and she didn’t stop me.

You didn’t usually see old pictures that looked like that. It wasn’t like an Olan Mills but more like one with people moving around. Except for the clothes you would have thought it was a modern one like the ones they have in Life and Look and sometimes the newspaper. It had a pretty, slender woman with thick dark hair down her back, tied away from her face with a narrow ribbon. She was bending down holding hands with a little girl with blond curly hair, and they were playing ring-around-the-rosy, or something. They were both laughing, and they were both really beautiful. It made you want to keep on looking at them.

I don’t know who took the picture, or why, but you could see the hills way away in the background, and the two ruts of the road going over them, and part of the sky.

We sat there like that, both quiet, until it was too dark to read or go out to the garden any more. I got up and pulled the light on but I had finally got tired of studying the picture and Grandmother didn’t take anything else out of the bench. I didn’t dare touch the little clothes again to get something out of it myself, but I could tell there wasn’t much else in there anyway. I wished Grandmother would say something.

Finally to break the quiet I said, “Did you ever go down that road?”

Grandmother finally stirred and looked at me. “What road?”

“The one you can see in the picture.”

“Oh.” And after a while, “No, I guess I never did. I meant to. I figured I’d find out what was on the other side over yonder when Frances got bigger. But after she was gone there wasn’t much point in it and then they built the new road below it. It would of been hard to climb that  hill. Besides, I been too busy. Law, I got to get busy again now. I done let it get dark on us.” She started putting the things back in the storage bench, with the sweater first on top of the clothes that were still on the bottom. She might have been in a hurry, like she said, but she sure took her time with putting stuff back.

As she folded things up she kept on talking. “I still got a lot to do tonight. If you cain’t see some useful results you ain’t done nothin’, I always say. You cain’t do nothin’ if you sit around jawin’ and wastin’ time. I wasted a lot of time on Frances but I learned not to with my others. If you keep busy you don’t have time to think about foolishness like what it would be like to go where the road goes. Keepin’ busy, gettin’ something done, makin’ things, that’s what counts.” She stood up and brushed off her knees.

Feeling the old guilt of idleness, I tried to hide the paperback behind my back. Her eyes fell on its frayed cover. “Aw now, don’t you worry about taking time to read,” she said. “I didn’t mean people like you shouldn’t have a chanct. Who knows, you might go to college too. You don’t want to end up like Livy.”

She put on her bonnet and headed out to the garden, even though the moon hadn’t come up yet and it was pitch black out there now.

Return to the Contest Winners