28

My fingers scratch themselves raw on a Brillo pad as I bear down harder on the kitchen table. Agatha forgot to wash her molasses spoon, to the delight of the flies. She is so irritating I could spit on her. I push harder and turn the table into a field of steel-blue suds.

Bertha chugs up the driveway and as Agatha slams the door of the truck, she screeches, “Cornelia! Look!”

She rushes into the kitchen and grabs my wet arm, pulling me out the door and into the yard. White fluff swirls all around me.

“I bet you never saw anything like this!” she says. “I’ll give you three guesses what it is, and it’s not snow!” She holds up her fingers and catches the cotton wisps that drift past. I walk out into the middle of the lawn and look straight into the white softness. The fluff looks like large airy snowflakes. I reach for one and hold it in the palm of my hand. “M-m-milkweed?” We raised monarch butterflies in science once.

“No,” she says, laughing and spinning around and around. Her braid unropes itself from its pins and flies behind her. “They’re dandelions. They’re sending off their seed, becomin’ something new. This is a lucky day, Cornelia.”

She leaps into the air, reaching high for the fluff sailing past, catches some, and tosses it out again. The flour white softens everything and begins to smudge the wrinkles on her face. She springs higher and higher as the wind picks up and sends the wisps heavenward. Even I can’t help but smile.

I walk deeper into the gentle flurry. Very slowly, I begin to twirl around, first one way and then the other. I raise my arms, reaching up and pulling pieces of fluff into my hands. I breathe deeply and twirl faster, faster, and as I’m twirling, I’m laughing.

For just a moment, I want to rush into the house and fling on my black Salvation Army dress and dance back through the white softness. And I wouldn’t give a hoot about the meanness of anything.