After a month everyone was sick of pancakes and spaghetti – my brother’s never get sick of chocolate chip cookies - and Louise said her head would explode if she “ever had to do that again,” so I started asking women from church if I could come over and watch them make dinner. I did this every time I needed a new recipe. The women were always kind and patient, taking me through the process, describing the ingredients and where to find them in the store or in the garden. I even drew myself pictures of the cans and the cartons so I wouldn’t forget what everything was. I made myself a vegetable chart with colorful depictions of what the TOP of the vegetable looked like (ie.carrots, radishes, potatoes) so I would know what to pull out of the ground. We didn’t have our own garden the first couple years after Mom died, but Nettie Yates let me raid her garden whenever I wanted. Eventually, she helped me plant my own little vegetable patch that expanded every year. By the time I was in high school, I had a good sized garden that I planted, tended, and harvested by myself.
I learned how to do the wash, separating out the whites from the darks, the grease stained work pants from the regularly soiled clothing. I kept the house cleaned, imagining I was Snow White mothering the seven messy dwarfs. I even pedaled down to the old post office and picked up the mail every day. We didn’t have mailboxes in front of our houses in Levan. Instead, everything was delivered to the post office, and each person in the town had a box and a key. Dad would lay out the things that needed to be sent, and I would make sure they had stamps and were taken to the post office. By the time I was twelve, I knew how to balance a checkbook, and my dad opened a household account for me. From that point on I handled the utilities and the groceries from my account. Dad took care of the farm, and I took care of the house.
The only thing I did not want to do was look after the chickens. My mother had always taken care of the chickens - feeding them, gathering their eggs, and cleaning up after them. I had always been deathly afraid of the chickens. My mom had told me once, when I was just a toddler, the boys had gotten distracted when they were supposed to be looking after me. I wandered out to the barnyard and a particularly ornery red hen cornered me and I was frozen in terror by the time Mom found me. Mom said I wasn’t crying, but when she picked me up I was as stiff as a board, and I had nightmares for weeks afterwards.
Chickens are hard to form attachments to. They are aggressive and ill-tempered and quick to peck and squabble. The first time I gathered eggs after Mom died, I almost hyperventilated I was so terrified. Little by little, the conquering of my fear made me feel powerful, and I began to take pride in caring for the unlovable birds. I named each one and talked to them as if they were my naughty children. With every task I mastered, the more in control I felt, and I became very adept at trudging along in my mother’s footprints.
2. Maestro
I liked having a purpose, I liked being needed, and I found that serving my dad and my brothers made me love them more. Loving them more made it easier to live without my mom. I had been a serious child before, more content to be alone than with playmates, but my mother’s death made my solitary nature more solitary still. The more independent I got, the harder it became to act my age; I didn’t climb up in my dad’s lap or demand to be hugged and kissed. I didn’t throw fits when I’d been ignored too long. I suppose I acted like a very small grown-up; loneliness wasn’t something I minded all that much. It was better than other people’s sympathy pressing at me all the time.
There were times, especially the year after my mom’s death, when the grief in our house felt like putting a heavy quilt over your head and trying to breathe. The weight of our combined sadness was claustrophobic, and I found myself grieving away from home as much as I could. When I wasn’t busy with chores, I would get on my blue bike and pump my legs as hard as I could until I reached the little cemetery at the bottom of Tuckaway Hill, about a mile from my house. I would sit by my mom’s grave and let the silence loose the blanket of unshed tears until breathing became easier. I would bring my books and read with my back pressed up against the stone that bore her name. My books were my friends, and I devoured everything I could get my hands on. All my favorite characters became my heroes. Anne of Green Gables became my bosom friend, A Little Princess, and Heidi, sources of strength and example. I relished happy endings where kids like me triumphed in spite of hardship. There was always hardship in the stories, and this realization comforted me. I was inspired by sacrifice in The Summer of the Monkeys, and planted a red fern at my mother’s grave for Dan and Ann after reading Where the Red Fern Grows.
It was on one of these days, reading alone in the cemetery, a little more than a year after Mom died, when a long, white Cadillac slowly slid its way down the dirt road that ran along the west side of the cemetery. There were no white Cadillacs in Levan; actually, there were no Cadillacs at all in Levan, white or otherwise. I watched as it made its way towards me, kicking up dust and drawing my attention from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I had read twice before. It purred by and climbed the lane that led to the Brockbank summer homes on Tuckaway Hill. Maybe a new family had moved in. I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, curious to see where that car was going. I figured I could be sneaky, using the sagebrush as cover if I felt exposed when I got close. The lane was steep, and my skin was itchy with sweat and dust as I leveled out on the top of the hill.
Three beautiful homes had been built on Tuckaway Hill, all owned by a wealthy family named Brockbank. Apparently, the Brockbank sons, who dabbled in contracting and development, had had the idea that the hill would make an ideal summer retreat for the wealthy family and had built an impressive little compound. The Brockbanks and their grown children had visited the different homes at various times, but the houses had been empty now for several years. They’d named the hill Tuckaway, but apparently it was too tucked away, because none of them ever came for very long.