“Every time you see the bird, know your daddy’s thinking about you, that he loves you so much.”
He snuggles me under his arm and I count the minutes until I get to ring the church bell, until my toes lift up off the ground from the weight of it and I feel like I’m flying, until my daddy walks me around and shows me off and I am delighted in by friends, strangers, and everyone in between.
Our little farm is only twenty minutes away from Grace Episcopal Church. We don’t have much money or any neighbors I can play with, but I have space here to be whoever I want to be, a Rockette, a fairy godmother, LL Cool J. I am loved ferociously in whatever costume I put on. We have hundreds of acres of land that my grandfather passed down to us, thick forests where the long blacksnakes move and wide-open fields where the deer tiptoe stealthily in the morning. My tap shoes sound like gunfire in the quiet of the country as I dance across our big, wide porch in my bathing suit. I dance everywhere I go, shimmying my shoulders for strangers in the grocery store and kids on the playground, for anyone who will watch me. I like the way music moves me. I keep dancing until little pearls of wetness drip down the hollow of my back, until I’m sick and dizzy from cartwheels, until fatigue wraps me up in its arms and brings me in for dinner.
My daddy is the principal at Wilkinson County Christian Academy across the border in Woodville, Mississippi. I go to school there. He is beloved and respected and cherished by everyone, from the lunch ladies to the teenagers he busts for cutting class. They delight in him and he likes being delighted in just as much as I do. He wears a bow tie and a sport coat and glasses with perfectly circular frames. I think he looks dignified, like Colonel Sanders disguised as Sherlock Holmes, and I get the biggest rush of pride when I see him. The second the bell rings at 3 p.m., he transforms back into Daddy: he rolls up his sleeves and undoes his tie, and he giggles and bops with me the whole way up Highway 61. When we get home, he leaves me to go play in the earth like a little boy, plowing the garden with his mule, running his dogs, and feeding the horses sweet-smelling scoops of grain. Our farm is his favorite place in the whole world.
The dogs follow him everywhere, to Texas for quail season, to the porch to read a book, to the back field to be relieved from their suffering when they’re old and sick. Vietnam follows him everywhere, too, but he tries never to look back at it; he never talks about it. Instead of remembering, he rebels against it with goodness. He shares vegetables from our garden and fish from our pond with his poor friends, and he does it with a graciousness that makes it seem as though they are rescuing us from our okra and watermelon. He tells us every day at breakfast, “I love you, remember your manners, always look out for the little guy.” I want to be just like him. Every time my Timex flashes something special like 11:11 or 12:34, I make a wish, and it’s always the same: Make me be good, make me love Jesus, make me like Daddy.
My middle brother, Tim, doesn’t have to wish for my daddy’s heart like I do—he has a heart like God’s, sure and unspoiled. He’s always sweeping porches, helping neighbors, and listening to the long, tiresome stories of people who have no one else to tell them to. He moves through his day quietly and thoughtfully, like a little granddad, and expects nothing in return for his goodness but for more people to experience God’s unconditional love. It’s infuriating. The grown-ups adore him. The first Sunday in December, my mom gives us dozens of pumpkin bread wrapped in tinfoil and ribbon to deliver to her friends in town. She gives me fifteen loaves to pass out but trusts Tim with just two, knowing he will spend hours sipping unsweet tea with the elderly, staring at their old photos, and holding on to each gnarled hand that greets him. He doesn’t even like unsweet tea but he’d never trouble a person by asking for sugar.
My older brother, Lile, gets a mountain of pumpkin bread—it seems to grow every year—and we deliver it all together. He’s different from Tim, his voice rings out loud and deep from his chest and he is almost always chased by the laughter of the sparkly-eyed high school girls who shadow him. He listens to Guns N’ Roses and cusses and makes my daddy so angry he screams, but he can also be a teddy bear and I get to see his very softest side. He says that from the moment I came home from the hospital, I’ve been his. He would sit with me in his lap for an hour and just stroke my fat baby cheek while his friends ran amok outside in the yard. He’s my protector, my safest place, and he lets me sleep in his room until he leaves to go to school at LSU in Baton Rouge.
I am the darling of our family, I know that. I am loved wholeheartedly and that’s the way I learn to love people back. I’m a doter, a gusher, and every time I leave my parents, even if I’m just going out to play, I tell them, “Bye! I love you! You’re my favorite, I’ll never forget you!”
* * *
I don’t know what hurt is until I’m six years old and in second grade. School is the first hurt, the one that makes shame creep up my throat and numb my lips. Nobody knows why I can’t spell animal or table, why my brain can’t seem to sit still even when my body does. The hot red rungs of the playground stare at me through the window every afternoon and warm my back when poor Miss Ashley is trying to teach me all the different types of clouds. An empty swing swinging or a Twinkie wrapper tumbling across the dirt are invitations to adventures that my imagination can’t pass up. I get itchy, I squirm, I chatter. “Ruthie! Miss Lindsey!” they call, but nobody can reach me in the little white room.
Even though my daddy is my school’s principal, he doesn’t care that my brain is different. He speaks a different language of learning than most people do. He knows how to reach me wherever I am.
I’m eight years old when he teaches me about Magnolia fuscata. I’m sitting near the leaf of our dining table sticking pencil shavings into the crevice and trying to memorize the names of Louisiana’s common trees and bushes. I study them hard in my science book, but they all look the same to me, shiny green images plopped down onto giant blocks of text. I read it over and over again, the information gets lost over and over again, everything in my brain gets scrambled. I cry and I wait for him.
“Come with me,” he whispers, gliding up beside me from nowhere and cupping his hand near my ear.
I look up at him, eyes halfway drowned, and he smiles at me. He takes my hand and we step out barefoot onto the thick green of the yard. The last strokes of pink stretch across the tree line. It’s dusk; there’s just enough light for our faces to glow.
“Take a deep breath, baby,” he says.
I count aloud, “One, two, three,” and have a big glug of the evening. He does it too. Then, he tells me the reasons the air smells like honey; he teaches me about all the good things that grow here.
“That’s a silver bell,” he says. The tree is gangly, with branches that shoot out from its middle and have more white flowers on them than leaves.
“This one’s a coral honeysuckle.”
He lifts a red, bugle-shaped cone to my face and I stick my nose into it. I expect sweetness but get pollen instead.
“It doesn’t smell like much, does it?” He shrugs. “The hummingbirds sure love it though!”
He leads me through the yard, pointing at his favorites as I squeal with delight. We run our fingers through a carpet of blue phlox in the garden, we lean against the smooth cypress bark at the edge of the forest, and I stand up to my waist in irises. Then he shows me his favorite one of all.