APRIL 28, 1957
B—
My belly is big. Absurdly so. With you, B! With you. A girl, I’m sure. B for Bonnie. B for the bonnie month of May.
Stephen comes and we walk. Late April’s sweet, warm woods—coltsfoot, trout lily, trillium. We are walking to see Adele, whom Stephen’s never met before, Otie on my shoulder. Then Otie on Stephen’s shoulder. “Really, me?” he says, laughing as Otie’s talons dig in. Otie finds the bones there, holds on tight. Stephen grimaces. Sets his jaw. Is brave.
I tell Stephen, as we walk, about my grandmother Marie. Two braids down her shoulders. Dark eyes. Warm laughter. Of the ways I would go to her when I was young and we would sit, shelling peas, while she told me stories. About moons and animals and monsters and how the earth was made.
“Though I was four when she died,” I say, winking. “So maybe my mind is telling lies.”
“Indian?” Stephen says, eyes lit up, grinning, a boy in love with books about them, and I shrug, grin back, say, “You never know!”
Who does know? Not me. Not Adele. Maybe my mother, Jessie, but she’s gone, too.
The woods are damp, the shadows cool and deep, the earth springing. Stephen hums as he walks, melodies learned from his father’s fiddle—“Saint Anne’s Reel” and “Bill Hopkin’s Colt.” Otie starts clucking, and I take him back from Stephen, who runs ahead. Circles back. His legs and limbs bounding. Like a dog. Like a colt! Like a mountain lion.
“Stephen! How dare you make me feel so old?” I grab him by the shoulders and squeeze him hard. He laughs. Frees himself. Skips ahead.
ADELE’S MOUTH PEELS WIDE AT THE SIGHT OF HIM. “A child, Lena. You brought me a child! God’s holy creatures.”
She brings us tea. Cracks open a package of cookies.
We help Adele light a fire in the pit outside—throw pieces of fresh venison on, salt the rest thoroughly and put it in plastic bags on the shady north side of the house. Adele tells us she’ll smoke it later, hands us steaming, smoky ribs from the fire that taste like earth and nuts and beech leaves and spring.
We devour the meat, this boy and I. Ravenous, we are! In love. We wipe our meat-greasy hands in the dirt and leaves.
On the way home Stephen is quiet, taken with moss, stones, swamp pools, the bark of trees.
“Lena,” he says, his voice soft.
“Yeah?”
“I like the woods.”
I take his tiny hand in mine. Tiny hand, tiny bones. “Me, too,” I say.
Stephen smiles and looks up at me. His green eyes that beautiful and bountiful—never-ending—color of moss and leaves. “Run?”