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SNOW IN SUMMER
The town of Addison lies between two high mountains. Those mountains were cut through by the Elk River many hundreds of thousands of years ago, and all that was left was a little bit of bottomland. But it was a fertile place. Everything you could ever want to grow there grew heartily: beans, cabbage, turnips, potatoes, greens, corn, squash as big as pumpkins. Even if you didn’t have a green thumb, something could grow. But if you had garden magic at your fingertips, life in Addison was a pleasant place indeed.
My grandpap five times removed had that green magic. He’d come over from Scotland and said that Addison reminded him of the mountains there. Of course, Grandpap was gone a long time before I was ever born, and I only know the stories.
I’d been born on July 1, 1937, ten pounds of squalling baby, with a full head of black hair. It was a hard birth that nearly killed Mama. Though the next baby, being even bigger, actually did.
Cousin Nancy, who’d been there to help with my birthing, told me all about it later, after Mama died. “White caul, black hair, and all that blood,” she said.
I shuddered at the blood part, but Cousin Nancy explained it was good blood, not bad.
“Not like later,” I said, meaning when Mama died, and Cousin Nancy nodded because nothing more needed to be added.
It was my ninth birthday when she told me the story. We were sitting on the old divan in her front parlor, the parlor that also served as the town’s post office, in the only brick house on Main Street. I was scrunched up next to her, my feet tucked under my bottom. She was in her black rayon silk print with its smattering of pink flowers and green leaves. She’d had it for as long as I could remember. Her hair was done up in braids across the top of her head like a crown because it was such a hot summer day. One long tendril had escaped.
She was showing me the photo album she’d rescued when Papa wanted to bury it with Mama and the baby.
“I looked your papa square in the eye,” she said, her right pointy finger raised. “Told him straight out, ‘You got one living child, Lem, and she’ll want to know her mama someday.’ ” She shook that finger at me as if I was Papa. Cousin Nancy rarely snaps at anyone, though she always looks them square in the eye, so I guess Papa listened up because there was the photo album in her lap.
Cousin Nancy showed me that album twice a year, on my birthday, as she was the only one who remembered when that was, and on Christmas. “We got to keep that album neat and clean, ’cause it’s all you’ve got left of your mama,” she told me. So I always had to wash my hands to handle it, with the little pink soap she kept in her bathroom that smelled of roses.
That was also the day she told me that I’d been born with the white caul over my head, like a little helmet. I know now that a caul is the membrane, a see-through bit of skin that some babies are born with over their heads and faces, but I didn’t know it then.
“Caul?” I said it as if it was the word cold. “But it was July.” There was a fan wheezing overhead trying to keep us cool, and failing.
She pronounced it for me again. We both loved odd words. “You’re one of the veil born, child.” She made a sign with her hand, the one with the two outside fingers standing up, like horns to ward off any evil. “Destined for greatness. You’ll be able to see dead folk. Least, that’s what my auntie told me, and she was born with a caul herself.”
“I want to see Mama,” I whispered. Mama had been dead almost two years at that time, short enough for the ache to still run deep, long enough so I’d already begun to forget her. I understood about death, knew I wasn’t going to see her again. Not then at any rate. Not for a long time. Not till heaven.
But the sad fact was that there were some days I hardly remembered Mama. Sometimes I even believed Cousin Nancy was my mama. My other mama. Even though she didn’t live with Papa and me. After all, she was the one who fed me and bathed me. She was the one who brushed out and plaited my long dark hair each day before I went to school. And while Papa still occasionally told me stories when I went to bed, or looked over my homework, Cousin Nancy always came to our house before dawn so Papa could go out to work in the fields. She came just to make sure I was properly turned out for school and then went back to her own house to open up the post office.
I think that day I said I wanted to see Mama because Cousin Nancy wanted me to. She was my godmother and I tried to please her since I couldn’t seem to please Papa, who felt as far away as Mama, only not shut away in a box.
Cousin Nancy quickly told me the rest of the story about my birth, guessing how the story was gonna make me forget my troubles. And hers. She recalled that while Mama was birthing me, Papa was out in the garden throwing up.
“Throwing up!” I couldn’t quite believe it.
She put her arm around me, adding, “Poor man was so scared he might lose her. And when he came back inside, called by the midwife, he was so relieved that Mama hadn’t died, he let her name you.”
“Snow in Summer,” I said.
She nodded. “Snow in Summer. Like the white flowers that cover the front yard.” She patted the divan, with its floral poplin covering. “Like this.”
Then she gave me a hug. “Your daddy laughed and said, ‘We gonna call her all that? Snow in Summer? Don’t you think she’s too tiny for such a big name?’ ‘We gonna call her Summer,’ your mama told him. ‘It’s warm and pretty, just as warm and pretty as she is.’ ”
“I am,” I said. “Warm.”
“And pretty,” Cousin Nancy said, drawing me closer. “Just like your mama.”
That made me smile, of course. Everyone needs someone to tell them they look pretty. Especially at nine.
“You’re pretty, too,” I said to her, touching her cheek. Anyways, she was to me.
She smiled back. “And then your mama told your papa: ‘Don’t you worry, Lemuel . . .’” That was Papa’s full name and Mama always said it that way though everyone else called him Lem. “ ‘She’ll grow into the rest.’ ”
And so I was known as Summer, as long as Mama was alive. As long as Papa could remember I was alive after she died.