Crazy Squirrel Corn Lady by Kristy Kiernan

So I was going to write about what a lousy December we had. Or, more accurately, I was going to write a beautiful ode to Niko, also known as The Troll, also known as Our Dog. Because she’s gone. And we are devastated. But I started the post and, frankly, it was just entirely too depressing. So, I’ll say this about Niko, and then we’ll move on to Crazy Squirrel Corn Lady:

She was the sweetest, most loving, and funniest dog I’ve ever known, and I will miss her for the rest of my life.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Crazy Squirrel Corn Lady.

Crazy people adore me. They seek me out in public places and attach themselves to my elbow. And once you have a crazy person attached, they peel off about as easily as duct tape. (Aside: Saying “duck tape” is not cute unless you are six with a lisp and missing front teeth.)

There are times that I welcome the crazy people. They are often much more interesting than your everyday sane person, and sometimes they even tell you their most astonishing and/or deeply personal and disturbing secrets within the first 30 seconds of the Crazy Person Encounter.

Other days I have little patience for the crazy people. Sometimes they make me nervous, but sometimes I simply don’t feel like having a conversation with a perfect stranger and want them to take the hint. Crazy People are renowned for being unable to take a hint.

And then there are those rare times when not only do I converse with the Crazy People, but I even encourage them in their particular brand of insanity. I am not proud of myself, no, but look, I don’t approach them, they approach me, and who says I’M not crazy? I mean, they should be careful who they go up to and spill their crazy all over, right?

So today was an Encourage the Crazy Person day for me.

We were in Lowe’s buying bird seed and various home improvement items when it happened. We feed maddeningly ungrateful birds (blue jays, cardinals, painted buntings, doves, and rotten grackles) and squirrels in our backyard, and since it’s getting cold (it does too get cold in South Florida. We’re in the THIRTIES tonight!) I wanted to make sure they were all well fed.

Now, the mama squirrel really steals a lot of seed, but she’s preggers and so I do want her to eat well, so I’m not taking any sort of squirrel repelling measures. But I thought maybe I’d give her her own feed, so I’m inspecting a big bag of corn cobs, CORN COBS FOR SQUIRRELS mind you, when it happens.

To give you a good idea about the sort of thing I’m talking about, go here.

I can see, out of the corner of my eye, a woman go darting past behind me, but I apparently sent out my Crazy Person tractor beam, because she stops with a great startling motion, as if she ran into an invisible brick wall, and comes right for me. She gets nice and close and duct tapes herself firmly to my elbow and gazes over my shoulder and says: “You could eat that.”

Sigh.

As you can see from the following transcript, I started out okay, but quickly went downhill.

Me: It’s for squirrels.

CSCL: But it’s still corn.

Me: It’s for SQUIRRELS.

CSCL: Maybe you could make corn meal from it.

Me: IT’S. FOR. SQUIRRELS.

CSCL: But you could, look, see? You could like, cut it off, and make corn meal.

Me: Lady, look at this stuff! (Here I helpfully shake the bag of desiccated old discolored broken corn cobs, which have clearly been treated rather cavalierly, and are clearly NOT for human consumption, and not just in a well-aren’t-you-a-spoiled-little-white-American-girl-who’s-obviously-well-fed kind of way, either.) And see? (Here I helpfully point out the label which clearly reads SQUIRREL.)

CSCL: If it’s safe for squirrels to eat it’s safe for humans.

And here’s where I turn the corner from vaguely irritated to Encouraging the Crazy Person.

Me: So, how would you actually go about doing this?

CSCL: You could cut them off the cob, and then you’d grind it up, make cornmeal.

Me: I think you should do that.

CSCL: It would work, right?

Me: Absolutely. Yes. You could make cornbread. That would be excellent.

Here she furrows her Crazy Person brow.

CSCL: They have mixes for that now.

And then she turns around and sprints away…

JUST AS IF SHE’S BEEN TALKING TO A CRAZY PERSON.

Kristy Kiernan is the author of Matters of Faith and Catching Genius. She lives in Florida, which, considering the winter the rest of you people are having, proves that she's quite sane.

Being There

-- Lynn York
A slow-healing sprained ankle kept me inside yesterday, out of the first snowfall in North Carolina in a few years, and alas, away from the center of the world, the National Mall in Washington, DC. I spent the day in front of the television, soaking in the images and the words from the inauguration of President Barak Obama.

I had really wanted to be there, and of course, so did at least 2 million other people. Throughout the day, when the cameras would pan across the bundled, shivering crowds, my beloved would try to console me. “See,” he’d say. “Aren’t you glad we didn’t go? You’d be out there in the cold, looking at the backs of peoples’ heads.”

He was right. I would have hated the cold, the waiting, the walking for hours. And it was lovely to sit in my den and be able to watch the gathering dignitaries, to see Obama’s face as he delivered his address. It was great to have a bird’s eye view of the enormous crowd on the mall. However, as always, I was not satisfied by the wide shot, by the homogeny of network coverage, by an event viewed only through the filter of others.

For me, unfiltered, individual experience is the only way to go. As a writer, I really have nothing else. I must always rely on the odd detail, the telling scrap of conversation, the boring and beautiful events that unfold in my presence. It is this data that allows me to write. I do not exactly transcribe my life; my work also involves imagining, putting myself in other places and times. However, television images and expert commentary rarely aid in this process. I find most of my material when I am actually “on the ground,” reporting or reinventing my own experience.

For this reason, I advise my writing students to be cautious about source material for their work. Other fiction, historians’ accounts, and certainly, television shows and movies, are not good sources for fiction. I urge my students to go to firsthand accounts, original documents, and oral histories for their research. And I tell them, that even if they are working on a story set during World War II, they need to find something of themselves and their own experience for the story.

I am convinced that if I had been standing on the mall yesterday with the rest of the 2 million, that I would have hundreds of small stories to tell this morning. Instead, I saw mostly what everyone else saw.

Late last night, trolling the internet, I found some consolation, an archive of firsthand images. CNN, through some wild technical application, created a collage of photographs taken at the moment that Barak Obama took the oath of office (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/ ). Through some wizardry, they collected photos taken by individuals from many vantage points on the site, to create one large photo that can be explored dynamically. One amazing event from thousands of points of view. Thousands of stories in the making.

Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Carrboro, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com.

I don't do politics, but Obama won points with me a few weeks back when he announced that his friend, Elizabeth Alexander, would be reading a poem at his inauguration. I was unfamiliar with Alexander, so I did some research and tracked down a bit of her work. A Yale professor, Alexander is hardly a household name, but one of her five books of poetry was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and she has earned both NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. More significantly, she is a personal friend of our commander-in-chief-to-be. My reaction to news of her commission was, "How neat for Obama to have a poet friend who can share in his celebration," along with my general delight that he chose to make poetry a part of this always (and, especially, this one) auspicious occasion.

Pickier powers than I, however, were not impressed. Staff writer George Packer voiced his disdain for Obama's choice in the January 18th online issue of the New Yorker. His dismissal of Alexander's work as "general," "self-consciously academic," and unlikely to "read well before an audience of millions" invoked the ire of Minneapolis poet and writer Terri Ford, who is the daughter of a good friend of my sister's. Had Terri's indignant response not been published, I would never have seen Packer's original comments; with my limited discretionary time, I choose to read poetry rather than the New Yorker. But because Terri's mother shared her daughter's fifteen minutes of fame with my sister, and because my sister sends all poetry-related things she encounters my way (bless her), I'm now annoyed with the guy myself.

According to Mr. Packer (who is not a poet, by the way), American poetry is "written by few people...read by few people...and lacking the language, rhythm, emotion, and thought that could move large numbers of people in large public settings." Wow, tell us how you really feel. It's true enough that the audience for poetry is small; it is, however, significantly larger than it has been in many years. There is renewed, growing interest in poetry and, on any given day in major cities, one can very probably find at least one poetry event. The assertion that poetry is written by few people is blatantly false. Half the planet writes poetry--most of it bad. One is often, in fact, reluctant to admit to being a published poet because of the likelihood of being assaulted by unpublished (and justifiably so) poets in search of validation and encouragement.

But it is Packer's declaration that, on the rare occasion when poetry has been included in an inaugural celebration, it is because "the incoming President seemed to be claiming more for his arrival than he deserved, and to be doing it by pretending that poetry means more in American life than, alas, it does," that really peeved my participles. Perhaps those presidents who choose to use an inaugural poem have more culture than the rest--or greater grasp of decorum, or a better feel for posterity, or perhaps they simply had a fabulous English teacher who taught them to enjoy and appreciate poetry! The suggestion that an inaugural poem represents pomposity and is insignificant is both fatuous and insulting. Surely after the hours upon HOURS of campaign rhetoric we have endured, even a marginally entertaining poem is a welcome change and a fair reward for those of us who revere the power and beauty of the English language.

Packer has apologized for his remarks about Ms. Alexander, but his labeling of multiple generations of American poets as unskilled and uninspiring still stands. Gee, Packer, maybe you should broaden your reading material, because there's actually quite a bit of superb and stirring poetry out there. Could be that most poets have stopped wasting their time submitting to the New Yorker; onslaught, anyone?


www.jaynejaudonferrer.com http://commagoddess.blogspot.com

I COME TO THE GARDEN; OR, MISSING MY GRANDMOTHER

by Pamela Duncan

Stories came so easily to her. I want more and more and more and she is not here to tell them and I am lost without her. Where are the stories now she is gone? There are some in my head, some in Mama or Pawpaw or uncles and aunts, but I can't account for them all. She must’ve taken them with her. No fair. Come back. Come back and tell me, tell me “I want my toebone” or killing the panther with a skillet, or sing me Three Babes in the Woods. Tell about the one-room schoolhouse, walking up the mountain in a path of moonlight singing with your brothers and sisters and neighbors. Remember for me what it was like then. See for me the cabins, your Papa's store, the railroad, the French Broad River, the wild strawberries you picked from tangled places with Orphie and Opal, the log bridge across the creek where your mama saw the ghost of death coming for your papa when he took so sick after stepping on that big rusty nail, and how it did not come for Hezekiah after all since he lived to 93. And then tell Stella and Annie Mae and oh, they died of the diphtheria, Stella first, and two weeks later little darling Annie Mae says I am going to dig up my sister and play with her forever. And your mama carried on so then when Annie Mae went too, and could not sleep nights, walking the floor, wailing, wanting her babies. And the night Annie Mae came into the yard dressed all in white, sweet and silent, and then your mama could go to sleep again. Tell me again. I think I hear your old voice in my heart and you tell me the stories over and over like a testament, like it's a calling you have, as a preacher man might be called to spread the gospel. You scatter your stories over me, the seeds take root, but they are not all grown yet. Some sit beneath my soil and wait for a certain light, or a full moon, or the special season when I will remember the most important parts that escape me now. Then I will make my own stories, but they will be you, and you will be me forever and ever and some day I’ll have my own seeds to sow, and now all I need is my garden.

(Novelist Pamela Duncan is the author of Moon Women, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award Finalist, and Plant Life, which won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. She teaches creative writing at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Visit her website at http://www.pameladuncan.com/.)

An Interview With Michael Lee West, author of the newly-released trade paper reprint of Mermaids in the Basement

Twenty pounds overweight—and sporting a bad haircut—Renata DeChavannes’ luck has run out. Her screenwriting career is on the skids, she’s reeling from her mother’s sudden death, and her producer-boyfriend is on the cover of tabloid magazines (accompanied by a big-breasted starlet).

For decades, Renata has been estranged from her father, but she retreats to her beloved paternal grandmother’s home in Point Clear, Alabama, where an old steamer trunk holds clues to her troubled childhood—and to her parents’ failed marriage. She hopes to reconcile with her womanizing, heart-surgeon father, until his latest fiancée turns up bloodied and comatose at her engagement party—and pearls from Renata’s broken necklace are rolling around the crime scene. While the police snoop and her father dodges her phone calls, Renata continues to excavate the old trunk; and she discovers that everything she thought she knew about her parents—and herself—is a lie. And all of it uncannily resembles a tabloid story.

“An engaging tale that skips from glitzy romantic Hollywood to Deep South without missing a beat.”
—Booklist

What's the inspiration behind Mermaids in the Basement?

The idea for Mermaids in the Basement came in December 1989, when my parents spent the winter in Perdido Key, Florida. While I was visiting, the temperature plummeted and the bay froze. As I listened to the news, a character wandered into my mind, Shelby DeChavannes. She quickly introduced me to her heart surgeon husband, Louie, and their daughter, Renata. I drove down to Al's dime store, bought several notebooks, then came back to the condo and started writing.

Initially, the story unfolded in chronological order---the DeChavannes family (and friends) took turns narrating. It was a novel-in-stories, which was in vogue during the late 80s and early 90s; however my manuscript was too episodic, and it lacked narrative arc. Not knowing how to repair it, I stuffed the thick pages into an old Cain Sloan shopping bag and shoved it into the attic, thinking I might someday write a book that could use a bear-killing man or a pill popping actress or a young wife and mother who visits the Gulf Coast during a freeze and falls into a frozen bay.

Many years later, when I was working on my fifth book, Mad Girls in Love, I remembered the DeChavannes family and thought it would be fun to introduce them to Bitsy Wentworth, a feisty character in Crazy Ladies and Mad Girls in Love. I pulled the heavy, ink-stained manuscript from its resting place.

When I finished Mad Girls, I started working on the old stories in Mermaids, playing with the chronology. But something was still wrong. Almost two decades had passed since that long ago frozen winter—and novels-in-stories had fallen out of fashion. My editor suggested that I outline the manuscript—and to give it a bit of a plot, for heaven's sake. Because all of the characters were willful and competed with each other, my editor suggested that I decide which lady would 'own' the novel.

It seemed like an impossible task. To distract myself, I decided to make a big pot of gumbo. While standing in line at the grocery, I browsed through the tabloids. Then it hit me--I needed to open and close Mermaids with a faux tabloid story. In fact, I could use tabloids as a metaphor for the book. I could tell it in tabloid style, with titles and short chapters. Sure, I'd have to kill off Shelby, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Her daughter, Renata, was already taking over, telling me that she was a writer, too, and she completely understood the shopping bags.

Your main character suffers from writers' block. Has that ever happened to you and if so, what did you do about it?

Oh, yes. Blocks are like viruses--there are all kinds. Big ones, little ones, and the kind that sends you to bed with a rag over your eyes. I'm not sure anything works. But I try to eliminate distractions--turn off the phone, email, television. This is a delicate moment. Normally noise (well, a certain level of noise) doesn't bother me, but in the beginning, I need silence. Then I sit down and write. What ends up on the page is terrible--like rust coming out of an old water faucet. But that's another thing about blocks--you have to give yourself permission to write rusty things, and you have to mean it. At some point I will "fall through the page," as Stephen King calls it. I don't have an office--my laptop sits in one corner of the family room; and I listen to my IPod. When I'm wearing earphones, that is a signal to my husband to not ask if I've washed underwear. I was just talking to my son about blocks (he's writing a novel), and he just rolled his eyes. So I guess it's different for everyone.

Do you write most days? What is your routine like?

I try to write every single day. If I don't, I lose my place (which is almost like a block). After my morning coffee, I start working. I take little breaks--a girl needs chocolate, and lots of coffee. Sometimes I walk the dogs. And I just write until it's time to start supper. After everyone goes to bed, I return to the book for a few hours. The house is still, and the dogs are piled up on my feet--heaven.

Have you always wanted to a writer?
Yes. But my mother said that I "needed something to fall back on in case my husband died." So I ended up going to nursing school. I belonged to a writing group at East Tennessee State University--and I just continued writing.

What kind of books do you read for pleasure?
I love Alison Weir's books about English history.

What is the significance of your title? Did you choose it?

The title came from an Emily Dickinson poem. I've read that this poem was about depression--and Renata (the main character) was quite depressed after her mother and stepfather died. But the title is also about things that are just beneath the surface, pivotal moments in life that slip away and are lost.

What is your favorite part of writing a novel?
I love the revision process--the first draft is finished, your characters are breathing, and now it's time to find the real book.

Michael Lee West is the author of five novels including Crazy Ladies, Mad Girls in Love, American Pie, She Flew the Coop as well as a food memoir Consuming Passions. She lives with her husband on a rural farm in Lebanon, Tennessee with three bratty Yorkshire Terriers, a Chinese Crested, assorted donkeys, chickens, sheep, and African Pygmy goats. Her faithful dog Zap was the inspiration of a character in Mermaids in the Basement.

BLOWN AWAY

by Jackie Lee Miles


I spent the month of December in Florida. Most mornings I was up at daybreak watching the sun climb over the horizon. Not one sunrise was ever the same. How can this be—three-hundred and sixty-five mornings a year with never a repeat? Year after year of sunrises, thousands and thousands of days bursting forth, not one ever the same as the one birthed before it?

During morning strolls on the beach I watched as the waves pummelled the packed ground. Some waves gathered strength quickly and pounded the shoreline. Others rolled in slowly and barely kissed the sand. As the waves rolled in I saw its many personalities. Sometimes it was angry and attacked the shore with a vengeance. Other times it was timid and licked at the sand like a kitten lapping up milk.

No matter how many waves rolled in, they were unique in their formation—another amazing spectacle of nature. How many millions of waves have rolled onto the shoreline, not one a repeat of the one passing before it?

That got me thinking that no matter what the sunrise looked like, or the sunset for that matter, or what the wave formations were for any particular day, I didn’t want them to end. They all took my breath away.

Some books are like that. You want them to go on and on. The authors are gifted word-painters whose prose grabs hold of your heart and squeezes firmly, and you have to gasp to get another breath of air in place. It’s that way for me whenever I read Elizabeth Berg. I just finished True to Form, such a simple little book with a sweet message of how important it is to be true to ourselves. Berg’s words positively dance on the page. It debuted in 2002, but don’t let that stop you. I knew I was in for a treat when I read the opening pages. The protagonist, Katie is describing her aunt’s kitchen and how people exclaimed they could eat off of the floor. And she says, “Why would you want to do that? And I picture my uncle Harry, sitting there crossed-legged with his napkin tucked into his shirt, leaning over awkwardly to lift his scrambled eggs from the linoleum.”

There are so many parts in this book to savor. In one particular chapter, Katie is feeling rather distant from her father who has recently remarried. (Katie’s mother died of cancer.) Katie likes her new step-mother who’s name is Ginger. Katie says two miracles have happened. First, Ginger has just won second place in a jingle contest. Katie considers the second miracle to be the fact she may be getting a scholarship to the prestigious Bartlett School for Girls. Katie and Ginger are sitting out on the back porch. Katie leans back on her elbows and eyes the night sky. She says, “Sometimes I get this feeling of a wink coming down from the heavens to me. After a while the screen door bangs shut, and here comes my dad. He’s heard our voices. They’ve called him out. Seems like summer nights just do that to a person, make you kind of sociable. There you are, watching “Rawhide”, and the voice of your wife and your daughter curl around you like pie smells in a cartoon. All he does is sit down and light up a cigarette. But it is a lot.”

Katie has a summer babysitting job taking care of the three Wexler boys, Henry, Mark, and David. Only on this particular night Mr. Wexler forgets she is coming and Mrs. Wexler isn’t even there and the boys are at his sister’s house. Mr. Wexler answers the door in his pajamas and invites her in. Here’s the rest of the scene:

“Now I know we hired you for the summer,” Mr. Wexler says, “and I’m going to pay you what you would have earned if you’d worked for me.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay.”

Mr. Wexler holds up his hand and says, “I would feel much better if you’d let me.”

“Well, I don’t really. . .maybe I could help you clean up a little. That way I could earn it.”

He looks around like he is seeing the place for the very first time. And then he says, with a kind of dignity, “It’s all right. I’ll get to it.”

“I could just do the dishes for you.”

“Katie,” he says. “Mrs. Wexler has left me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss, here.”

“Well, if you. . .I’d be glad to help you. I mean, clean up. I can help you do that. And also, I. . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, I just want to say I think you’re a very nice man.”

“Ah.” He leans his head back and I get the terrible thought that it’s because he’s crying.

“Mr. Wexler?”

He clears his throat and quick wipes away the tears. “Yes?”

“Do you want me to wash or dry?”

He looks at me with such gratitude it’s as if I have knocked on his door and said I am from The Millionaire.


Katie’s other summer job is helping an elderly man, Mr. Randolph care for his ailing wife. On this particular morning Katie is helping this sweet lady with her morning sponge bath:

I take off her glasses and hand her the washcloth. This part she can do—she washes her face and I wash her glasses. It makes you feel so tender to see someone wash their face with such trembling hands and then hand you back the washrag, looking up at you like they’re waiting for you to grade them.

You can see what I mean when I say her words just dance on the page. She is such a talented and gifted storyteller. And of course there are sooooooo many others out there as well. I marvel at the uniqueness of each of their voices. Though some may sound familiar, they’re never, ever exactly the same. And, of course, the stories themselves bare witness to the creative powers of each of their wondrous minds. Good, golly, Molly, it keeps me ever humble.

J. L. Miles is the author of Roseflower Creek, Cold Rock River, Divorcing Dwayne, and Dear Dwayne, releasing in April of 2009. Dating Dwayne will follow. Visit the website at http://www.jlmiles.com/. Write the author at jackie@jlmiles.com.

FIVE-HUNDRED TAMALES

FIVE-HUNDRED TAMALES

by Kerry Madden

For Catherine Garcia

And for my husband, Kiffen,
who has been a teacher for LA Unified School District for twenty years.

Do the stories offer comfort to a child who is dying? What stories will offer the most solace? Will the child dream in the land of the stories? Maybe you should just whisper dolphin stories into Catherine’s ear the way your husband, her fifth grade teacher, whispered Anansi stories to her one night? Catherine loved dolphins…Find the best stories for Catherine, the girl who loved dolphins.

* * *

In the spring of 2003, Catherine Garcia was a week from graduating with her fifth grade class at Betty Plasencia School in Echo Park in Los Angeles. She began to feel sick at the school picnic on a Friday. They thought she had the flu, but by the following Monday, she was in Children’s Hospital on life support, diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Visitors poured in to comfort the family as the doctors predicted she wouldn’t wake up, but after surgeons relieved some of the pressure in her brain, Catherine woke up talking. When she was strong enough, the doctors performed surgery and managed to get some of the tumor, but not all of it. Still, Catherine began to recover and started rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, physical and occupational therapy. That’s when we began spending more time with her at Children’s Hospital on Sunset Boulevard.

I remember the first time we drove along Sunset Boulevard in 1988. We were twenty-six, and we had moved to Los Angeles sight unseen from Georgia pregnant with our son, Flannery. It was a rainy Saturday, our first real day in Hollywood, and we walked the streets around our Valentino Place apartment off of Melrose and soon found ourselves at the corner of Sunset and Vine. It was a shock to see that the streets I’d only heard about in movies truly existed. Our plans were simple then. We had no money, no health insurance, but Kiffen would become an actor, and I would write for film or television - wherever I could get a job because, after all, I had an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Tennessee.

Of course, none of it happened the way we planned…

But this essay is about Catherine, one of my husband’s students – the one none of us will ever forget. After she got sick, we’d sometimes visit Catherine together at Children’s Hospital, but mostly we went in shifts. I usually went during the day with any or all of our three children. They each got to know Catherine in their own way. Flannery, then 15, read her HARRY POTTER, and he read it the right way. When I read HARRY POTTER, I caught him rolling his eyes at my mispronunciations, so I switched to WIND IN THE WILLOWS and picture books like SWAMP ANGEL, FALLING UP, THE ADVENTURES OF FROG & TOAD, THE LITTLE PRINCE, and STONE GIRL, BONE GIRL.

Norah, five at the time, always climbed onto the bed with Catherine, who would smile at her and say, “Hi Princess,” and, Norah loved that Catherine knew she was a princess. Catherine also loved dolphins. During her recovery, her hospital room was filled with posters of dolphins swimming in cobalt blue oceans. Norah drew her pictures of roses, fairies, and hearts. Our daughter, Lucy, who was 13 that year, described middle school to Catherine, and how she planned to take her around King Middle School when she felt well enough to go.

During our visits, I would watch Catherine’s mother, Deysi, and think about her beautiful name and wonder why she spelled it that way. Deysi spoke more English than I spoke Spanish, but mostly we could understand each other. Sometimes, Catherine translated our questions or we would laugh at my mix of Spanglish. Dasysi’s husband was Romeo, and I learned how he taught Catherine to speak on the CB radio to truckers in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

At the age of five, Catherine gave herself the CB handle: “Estrellita” which means “Little Star,” and I imagined a tiny girl swinging her legs at the kitchen table while conversing in Spanish to truckers in three or four different countries.

By the end of the summer, Catherine was pronounced well enough to go home. Fall passed quickly, and Kiffen would take the kids to visit Catherine at home on Saturdays. I was busy teaching writing workshops out of my house, so I didn’t go with them. She seemed to be doing so well, studying with a home tutor. She even went to the Long Beach Aquarium to see the dolphins and attended a dance recital. She stopped using her crutches, and it was clear she was going to get better. Her other 5th grade teacher, Dave Dobson, dropped by at Christmas, and Catherine was joking with him and said, “Hey, remember how my eye used to this?” and she twirled her finger around her eye to show him how it used roll around after her first surgery. They both laughed at her silly eye. I liked hearing the stories. It meant Catherine was getting better, and we all needed and longed for her to get well.

But sometime in the new year, things changed. We heard that Catherine was back in the hospital to have more surgeries, one to remove a tumor from her back, and there was a talk of radical chemotherapy. The doctors gave her oral chemotherapy, but it didn’t work either. From January to April, she was in and out of the hospital until they finally decided to stop all therapy and send her home.

During her stays in the hospital, we brought her Mozart CDs, which played softly in the room. I gave her jasmine lotion and massaged her arms and legs and told her she smelled like the most beautiful flowers in the world. Once after I finished a story, she sighed the sweetest sigh in her throat and said, “Sorry I’m such a sleepy head!” Then she laughed.

If I had to choose a word to describe Catherine’s mother, Deysi, during this time, I would pick “serene,” which seems impossible, but she fed, washed, and kissed Catherine with such tenderness – as if each day with her child was a gift. If Catherine called out, “Mommy,” Deysi was there, smiling down on her as if she was most beautiful girl in the world. And Deysi was always happy to see us, or, if she wasn’t, she pretended to be, because there was not a time when she didn’t smile and wave us over to the bed. “Wake up, Catherine! Look who’s here! You want a story, Catherine?”

But as more time passed, the tumor began to steal Catherine’s facial expressions, and it was also difficult to know what she could see anymore. The last time I saw her, Deysi fed her strawberries and yogurt, and Catherine chewed and swallowed but could no longer smile. Then on a Friday afternoon, I was trying to write a story for her about a jacaranda trees on the secret staircases of Silver Lake with fairies and hummingbirds when my husband called to say he had some sad news, but he couldn’t finish the sentence. Then he said that Catherine’s family had gathered around her bed at home, singing one of her favorite hymns, and then Catherine closed her eyes and was gone.

Deysi called the school and asked him to come over, and he sat with her and Romeo next to Catherine. He described the little white scarf they put around Catherine’s head and her peaceful expression. A few days later, we visited the family, and Deysi explained that the funeral would be on the following Friday and everyone would spend the night at the church, singing to Catherine and eating tamales. That’s when I learned that Deysi and Romeo met when they were three-year-olds living in El Salvador, thirty years earlier. They moved to Los Angeles in 1991, and Catherine was born two weeks before the Los Angeles riots on April 10, 1992.

As we sat in the Garcia family’s living room, Norah and Michelle, Catherine’s little sister in Norah's class, played with the doll house and made up stories the way five-year-olds do. Renel, Catherine’s brother said, “Yesterday, my Dad took us outside, cause we were feeling sad, and he squirted us with the hose to make us laugh.” Kiffen was now Renel’s teacher, and the two of them discussed how they would tell the class about Catherine together.

The church served 500 tamales at Catherine’s funeral which was held at the church called “Iglesia Luz De Vida Maranada – Fundamento De Apostles Y Profetas” down in the heart of South Central near San Pedro and 21st Street. The church was clearly once a house, but refurbished into a place of worship, and it was packed with everyone who loved Catherine, and it was overflowing with people.

When we arrived, Michelle greeted us in a sky blue dress and brought us up to see Catherine who lay in a tiny lavender coffin. Next to the coffin was her fifth grade picture - radiant smile, long brown hair thick and curly, eyes shining – inside a collage of Catherine at every stage of her life. Later, when we sat down, I realized the men were on one side, women on the other, but nobody made us move from the men’s side.

Renel talked on walkie-talkies with his friends at the funeral and hugged everyone. Earlier that week, he told his class how Catherine taught him to swim in the river in Bakersfield. I saw Catherine’s best friend, Sugey, who grew up with Catherine in the same Echo Park apartment building. I thought of Catherine’s cousin, Miladas, and her Tia Sandra, who together walked from El Salvador to Los Angeles in February, and how it took them five weeks of walking and camping and taking boats and hitching rides to finally complete their journey to be with Catherine.

I watched Catherine’s grandfather, a tiny man in a white cowboy hat and reddish hair, wiping his eyes outside the church. Teacher Dave was there in his dark blue suit and sunglasses, and I recalled how he bought her hiking boots for the 5th grade science field trip to Big Bear and brought her Fluffy, the three-headed dog from HARRY POTTER, in the hospital.

The women in the church wore white scarves and sang, and the men in their blue shirts sang, and the preacher preached a sermon of Catherine’s beauty and holiness, and after four hours of prayers and singing, Norah whispered, “Does God understand Spanish?”

We didn’t spend the whole night at the church, but we did meet there again in the morning to go to the cemetery in Inglewood. At the graveside, the jacaranda trees bloomed their lavender blossoms, and people sang and prayed some more under the cloudy sky, but when Deysi, Romeo, Renel, and Michelle placed roses on Catherine’s casket, I heard the saddest sound I’ve ever heard in my life.

A few weeks later, the school put on an arts festival, and her teachers dedicated an art sculpture called “Arbol de Vida” (Tree of Life) to Catherine's memory that will remain on permanent display at Betty Plasencia School in Echo Park. Renel made a sculpture of a deep sea diver exploring the ocean, and Michelle painted a picture of the ocean for the festival in the student gallery. There was talk of a scholarship in Catherine’s name for fifth graders who want to study dolphins or oceanography.

But I kept thinking of those 500 tamales, because I learned that it was Deysi who made them, her quick and careful hands shaping them the way she so lovingly cared for her daughter. I thought of my own mother-in-law making grits and cornbread for her own thirteen children. How did Deysi find the will and strength to make 500 tamales? She smiled when she told me and said, “I made the tamales. Did you like them? 500!” And those tamales nourished us at Catherine’s funeral, and in a way, Deysi was continuing to take care of Catherine by feeding us.

Several years have gone by, and last summer, the Garcia family made a decision to move to Kansas, but later I learned it wasn’t Kansas at all but Arkansas. Was it the way Deysi pronounced to Kiffen that he heard “Kansas” instead of “Arkansas?” Michelle and Renel have called us a few times to tell us how much they love their new home. They want to stay in touch, and I wonder what their lives are like in Arkansas. I know Renel is playing football, and I wonder how Michelle is doing in her new home. How are Deysi and Romeo?

The first "Day of the Dead" after Catherine died, Norah made an altar to celebrate her, but she mispronounced the word “altar” or heard it wrong and called it not "an altar" but "a walter," and she'd say, "I made a walter for Catherine to remember her." And we still keep Catherine’s picture on the table that was “the walter.”

Sometimes, I think of all the plans we made to live one sort of life in Los Angeles but how we wound up living a completely different one. When the jacarandas bloom each spring, I see the CB radio and a tiny girl who called herself “Estrellita,” swinging her legs at the kitchen table as she chatted to truckers driving through the night in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. She was the star guiding them home.

A JACARANDA TREE


Kerry with her daughter, Norah...

Kerry Madden is the author of JESSIE'S MOUNTAIN, LOUISIANA'S SONG, and GENTLE'S HOLLER, the books of the MAGGIE VALLEY TRILOGY for children. Her new book for teens, HARPER LEE UP CLOSE, (Viking, The Penguin Group) will be published in the spring of 2009.
www.kerrymadden.com