Stolen

by ERIN CONWAY

I never knew my father completely, but I am searching for his story. His garden is my escape. With dirt like scraps of paper, I read its scars through buried seeds. 

When the peddler came with boxes, my mother and I could never agree between our four eyes whether he was hunched over and aged or wore an elegant suit. He carried a box that looked as though its strength matched no more than paper. Everything should have fallen out of its layered trays. In fact, everything did, because for my mother, buying was too easy. The twinkle and tinkle of falling seeds reminded me of rain, but such droplets are more often imagined than real, now. I wait for them, their curved and cut edges. When we were finished buying, my pockets felt neither light nor heavy, but my mother’s ears and fingers always gleamed. 

One afternoon my mother offered the peddler a porch swing to rest upon and a dinner of rice and tomatoes. Full of grains and juices, he rose to leave. Upon turning the key to the engine, his boxes vibrated like the bees who’d left us for faraway alfalfa fields. Electric bulbs flickered sharp yellow and gas breath billowed into my nostrils. My mother and I turned our backs to him. I paused behind her arm that bent to catch the screen door. And then I heard the squeal, the thump, and the silence of death. Stealing a match from the sparse cupboard, I tiptoed to the bodies. They were two ringed robbers with slim fingers in gloved paws. Outside my window I had heard more than once their nails scrape on tree bark as it crumbled. Now I wondered, would I hear the abandoned babies cry? This was the mother raccoon I supposed, and one small soul in her care that followed too close. Where were the others? In the tree? Ahead of their mother? Or behind? The match was spent, but I did not stumble as I returned to the dark porch. 

That night I dreamed that the universe had come to see me. But it was my father’s face that beamed from beneath the salesman’s hat.

“The plants grew in an inconvenient place. Remember how we used to bet which plant would win the sky?” he asked gently. 

I did. I could see them inch up and widen as we walked the land together until the moons turned their seeds to flavor in my mouth. The seeds we didn’t eat my father had dried across woven planks. The glass jars he named as promises to me. “If the seed is tainted, what will feed you?” he asked before his image faded. I breathed the waning harvest moon. I tucked the clinging scraps of my skirt into ridges across my knees as I watched the orb billow on the horizon and realized that this was what the peddler traded. When I awoke, I was comforted that the too-cool cotton I felt was the sheets.

The cracks in my feet absorb the earth’s heat, smoked dirt and crumbled blades of grass too near to ash. I round the corner of the house to find the tree I treasure, the one that guards my window. Last night I heard no cries, but the tiny gray-brown babies may still be nestled in tight. 

Smelling rot deep in the bark, I whisper with my head upturned toward what should have been leaves. “Let's run away together.”  I beg, “Let me follow you.” I had heard tales that down the bramble path, I might taste the promise of a forgotten ditch that had avoided both the mower’s blade and farmer’s spray. I pull a black-and-white picture from my front pocket. It had been folded by my father’s hand, the day he yelled into the telephone, “They are not weeds!”

Which they? I had squinted. His back folded, creased inward to itself. He was the photograph.

“You condemn our green space to the mercy of a switch flipped miles away?!” His voice splintered. The telephone cord had snapped like a man hung with his own rope. Condemn?

I strained my eyes to see green as a color not painted but grown. I had sat at the small table, envisioning a summer day when I ran through the irrigator’s spray. Though I knew my father would scold me, I had allowed its refreshment to spread across my cheeks the color of roses my mother threw away. I worried so much about the soft, animal figures too often caught in the road that I had seldom considered the plants that bordered both asphalt and cultivated rows. Distracted by the tickle of summer sweetness on my toes, I had been startled by the scrape of my father’s chair. 

“They abuse the land to make it reflect their inner scape. When did they change the land? When did the land change them?” 

I had nodded because I loved his voice, though I didn’t understand his words until the present day, when I find no water to erase the chemical sting from my skin. 

I reach into my pocket. In my hand I hold many plants, now slick fibers pressed flat by the camera into history. Today, unlike that day, I can read their one name in the letters scrawled across the photo’s back. Prairie. Stolen. The many plants in my hand have become only one. Corn was many plants if numbers could be names. The peddler dealt in numbers. Each time the peddler arrived, the space around the house shrunk. I am allowed to see the neighbors’ lives and where the road meets the horizon only when the fields are cut.  

The corn leaves sweat; they bake me in their oven. My thumb marks the photo’s edge. I fan myself to dry the print. The walls of corn, stretched like bars, keep the others out. The chemicals burn the water, and the insects open mandibles to consume my socks. Barefoot, I dig into and across earth. The details of its varied lives encircle me like colored vines. To travel seems a sacred serendipity. Still, so much do I fear flight that I cannot breathe. What I think I can read as air holes cut as stars oppress me at night.  

A bright flutter stretches away from me. I repeat their names as my father told them, “Bee. Butterfly,” until the crumpled, plastic wrapper catches at my feet. “Raccoons,” I call with my eyes clenched tight. Mother calls them thieves. If they left, I could follow them through the ditch, far from the road, and safely through the corn.

Diversity is dead. I know this to be my father’s truth, no matter how often my mother selected a multicolored jewel. When the smoke blackened blue and rivers bled rust, my senses rebelled against the curtains the universe drew to blind us. A spell or a die, intention or chance, only the jealous universe knew what was long ago cast. On other days, nicer days, and tranquil evenings I can still hope for those with faith in seeds, that they still believe in the farmer even if he is the plow by which the universe subjugates nature. 

“Get the wash! The sheets on the line are dry!” my mother calls. 

I rub dust from my eyes.

“Be sure to fold them tight.” Fibers too-stretched so that their thinness was sure to rip, I falter, but I do what I am told. I stand. I walk away from the tree. The horizon reminds me of my grandmother’s watercolor, beauty from a distance. I almost stopped imagining the liquid blackness of nocturnal eyes, when the sound of splashing cautions my steps.

Two silhouettes are playing. The water tub that barely holds enough to tease dirt and soap from our sheets cups a thin layer in the bottom. It rests at a tilt, turning what was less than half an inch into a bubbly pool. Their nails flick the liquid between their snouts. Each attempts a sip. Then one kisses the other as a second drink. The fur around their mouths darkens as the droplets gather. A sudden flap and smack from a twist of wind jerks their heads to attention. I silence every muscle except my beating heart, but they catch the glint from the metal basket and break away from me into a run. I pray for them to circle and not cut too close to nearby farmers’ barns, where all manner of trap or gun would end the tremulous joy barely balanced in the sky between us. 

I feel now the warning of my father’s words. First we took advantage of the plants, next the animals, and then we set ourselves to dominating each one and then the other. 

Unconsciousness scattered our dreams like seed, crossbred with no ancestry to trace. It was not unlike my parents’ failed love affair. I had cried for the simplicity of their quarrel and petty jealousy, the hurt and scrape and bite of love, when one felt not enough or maybe was just clinging to the teeniest bit of less. They both wove stories that were shredded by the whip they held and cast upon each other’s backs. I am reminded of the stings by my mother’s slap when I return at dark instead of dusk with loose and hastily bundled cloth to make her bed.  

We lived and we waited among these dead-end seeds sown of false belief. They grew and died. Some bent. Some broke. There were prints scarred across the ground, broken in some places and burned in others. We wore faded cloth but it made no difference; acceptance and indifference required a lesser light. Today we were not beautiful but we were as I remember it always was. In my father’s story, my world had soldiers with sharpened steel tongues. My world had stewards, but they spoke through kind eyes long misunderstood as weakness. The world had believers, but they worshiped words sealed in official letters too easily ripped, burned, or misdirected. I unclip clothespins and fold edges. I tuck in shoulders and arms, waists and ankles.  The edges of the sheets are too far. I roll the vast cloth around itself hastily. For now, I watch the raccoons go beyond my reach.

One moon later, the neighbors come to bury my mother who’d disappeared from hunger.  One moon more and the peddler drives up to collect his things. In the time between I named the raccoons as orphaned company in this withering house. In better years, there were colors between the shattered jewels. Most ignored them. Fewer named them. My mother had once. 

I had only one memory I wished to save. In a separate time, with each rocky step down to wash the sheets, she had repeated, “I always wanted to sleep in a rainbow.” With each thump of soap and waves, she had breathed, “I always wanted to walk in the clouds.” When she and the peddler took long walks, I saved this memory, in pieces.

I have been conscious so much longer than the others remember. Three of us so close, yet the words from our shared language slip through the ever-growing number of cracks. For weeks the raccoons have shown me how to eat the tanned eggs raw. One was the Fighter who posted his warnings with jagged scratches. The other, the Steward, breathed his silence across the curvature of a noble nose. I was the Believer. It seemed as if, unlike the creator, everything we made came with something missing. It couldn’t stand on its own, so we had to patch it and then patch around the patches. That was my family: missing, patched, stolen. 

I want to be the mother they lost and a mother for the five seeds that rattle in one of my father’s jars. Each meal, I stare across the small table grinding egg in my teeth, longing for the peddler to return. I want to ask him, “What does the glow in the distance mean?” since the neighbors have long since stopped asking anything of each other. 

On the raccoons’ fifth moon, I wake up tired from my dreams and the grit that I no longer wash from the sheets. It is still dark, just a small light creeping under the door. The rooster’s crow is the light at the end of a long tunnel, and the grumble I wish meant rain reminds me I am starving. I had locked up the chickens I could catch before night. Their roost felt so far away.  My orphans are too tempted by their feathers and the skin that ripples underneath. The chickens’ bones are so light that tomorrow the wind might blow them away. How long would the raccoons stay? My father taught me that when the earth had fallen cold and quiet in winter their practice was to stay together until their first year ended. That was before snow and sun were as one whim, before the scent of dried leaves, and not winter’s memory, reminded me of the fire I should have made. 

Bits of nothing fall on the roof and now I can’t smell the leaves. I am resigned to miss both food and fire. “The wolves are loosed, but there is still a chance to plant a seed. That is what love asks of us.” My father’s words are zippered in the yellow crust that stings my eyes. I hold my breath and rub the dust away. To how the light fills and excites the day, I pay no attention. 

That evening I curl for a womb forgotten, while my eyes scan for silhouettes. The fireworks pop. Pop and pause. And then, a long string of cracks. There is a celebration somewhere. The peddler must have come but not to me. Where did they find the powder? It must have been easier to find than stars. It seemed all the same. I didn’t think there was new and old, only sun and rain. I smell the rain. I draw clouds in the dark. The white puffs always block the sun but they don’t keep it from coming. Tomorrow the smoke will lift. I think I hear voices arguing in the dark.

My orphans’ nails grab and twist, and then sink deep. “Go to sleep,” I tell them. “Go to sleep,” I whisper to myself. A crash. Thunder? No. I just want to sleep. I have no one’s arms to wrap around me. I slip into the kitchen and chase the orphans into the night. Then, I taste blood oozing between my toes. I don’t need to know the edges to recognize my father’s jar of seeds under my foot. Broken.  

“Stolen?” I still hear his defiant voice.

Stolen. There wasn’t enough reality here to go around, and for nature there was even less. It was just a field. Some grass. A few survivor trees. Dirt and rocks. Humans could be one with nature; beings could be one with the other. The cardinal directions swirl around me, and I choke on pollen-coated dust. I crawl back into the bed. The sky is one clear breath. In the gaps I hear the rattle-clatter like dishes as the orphans race into their den. It holds still. Nothing. Waiting. Nothing. And, then in one blink, a thousand stars. I like the noise. I hate the nothing. I hate the waiting. I curve my body around the jar’s shape, no longer glass cool to my touch. In that embrace I sleep.

I go days without seeing my children, after the fireworks split the sky. I think they must be stealing corn. I rouse the strength to search for my remaining chicken. I decide to cook an egg the way my father cooked them for me as a child. My toenails scuff the ground. The chicken left no tracks in the dust. 

There is a raspberry bush my father had loved. I had hoped to find her there. The patch is brambles and spines more than waving leaves. I close my eyes to see the burgundy of berries. But then red catches my interest. Was the flavor more alive than my memory? I stumble into a run, but arrive no faster than a walk. The red is tangy without sugar. It is juice, but more animal than fruit. It is blood.

I don’t follow the marked series of leaves. I relinquish my search for the chicken. I drag my feet back to our tree. The only other sign of life as company is the thread, less elegant than the spider’s, dangling from the hem of my skirt. My fingertips are ripped from thorns where I tested the smear on the leaves. Pieces of my skin bleed like petals cut on glass and so I know hearts too can break. 

That night, inexplicably, it pours. Remembering the raccoons, I think this must be their playful kiss. The lightning is an entire pack of matches each time it sparks. “The universe forgave us,” I state more in desire than fact. Between the powder explosions, I catch scraping nails and clattering bark. With evidence of the raccoons’ return, I mourn the chicken. What else could nature steal from the universe’s cupboard like the crime I hid from my mother? I laugh at the memory of my father stealing seeds from the peddler’s packets. My belly bellows like thunder when before it had merely cackled from spite. The night is filled with the spattering of gunshots. I would worry for the orphans, but I remind myself of their smoky, protected den. I remind myself the storm disrupts the silence, not my neighbors. I tell myself that the universe owes me at least one family to replace the one it stole. 

After my father died, I told my mother I would be careful to not spill water or skin the bark from our tree. I would listen to the Fighter so that he did not have to shout so loud. In acceptance his voice might find a softness. I would follow the guidance of the Steward without wondering why it seemed silly or twisted. She responded only in the clattering chatter of crystal. Somewhere outside, I hear fragile smoothness, CRACK.

In the morning, I snap awake to the realization that sometime in the night all chatter had stopped. Window panes and oak planks survived until the morning. Out the screen door, across the earth, I see no cracks. I round the corner to see an aged branch. My breath smolders. Its life burns. The coal-black eyes that at last meet my reflection are already cooled and crumbled into ash.

“We are defined by the end we choose,” my father had said. “There is always a chance to make best that which happens last.” 

Nature or the universe, I do not choose which to blame. Instead, I choose to not disrupt their bodies. I want their future memory cut into bone. I step quickly to the porch. I do not look back. I climb the stairs with the empty laundry basket, move aside the cloth spread over my mother’s bed. Its frame sustained my father, his thick folds of thinness, in which only I saw more than less. I peel open the crack in the floor. I press my palm upon the first jar. The back of my hand senses the second. My fingers trip to the right, then the left, counting jars filled with seeds that count. A rainbow. The jars clink but do not cry out. Rain is not winter, but my family had not waited. I sow flower seeds over my mother’s damp grave. The raccoons had not reached a year, but they had not waited. I tuck the photograph into the char of the snapped tree stump. I shift the weight of my bags. Five jars, not five seeds, stolen. I step out onto the road. I could leave. I turn into the corn. Or, I could do something else. I am not done searching for my father’s story, but I am done waiting.