9. Winnie
WINNIE
With the other three out of the house, Billie and I declared war on the garden.
It wasn’t the original plan. The original plan had involved a quiet afternoon of laundry, lunch, perhaps a craft indoors when Billie became restless, and then something educational enough that I could report honestly to Conrad without saying, “Your youngest child spent three hours digging in the dirt.”
Unfortunately, Billie came out of her post-pancake sulk with renewed purpose and announced that if CJ and Bianca were having “big kid fun,” she should have “dirt fun.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The backyard had the damp richness of early spring.
The air smelled of wet leaves, and new green shoots had sprung up on the softened ground.
The sun had emerged in uncertain intervals, bright enough that I applied an extra layer of sunscreen before stepping outside, then added gloves, my widest-brimmed hat, and the black parasol with the reinforced lining.
For absolutely no reason at all, I suddenly felt nauseous. I gripped the side of the house, and the backyard swam in my vision. It was impossible for me to become ill with the stomach virus the family had. What was going on?
An overwhelming fear surged through me. I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t speak. My body began to shake. I knew I was safe.
I knew there was nothing to fear. Not anymore.
Yet my body had decided to have a complete fear response with a five-year-old as the witness.
Something wasn’t right. My body could sense it, was flooding my veins with a sense of danger, but for the life of me, I couldn’t pinpoint it.
There was simply an overwhelming sensation of not being safe, something I hadn’t felt so strongly since I’d moved stateside.
It was absolutely ridiculous. The backyard was gated, and the community was protected.
The last thing that had truly posed any kind of threat to me was deep beneath the sea, where I’d left it over a hundred years ago.
I breathed in slowly through my nose, out through my mouth. After about thirty seconds, the sensation vanished as if it’d never happened.
Thank God. I had a tiny gardening partner depending on me.
Billie stared at me from beside the garden bed, already holding a child-sized shovel. “You look ready for a fancy funeral.”
“I often am.”
“Is this a fancy funeral?” she asked.
“For the weeds, perhaps.”
She shrugged. “They had a good run.”
The garden had once been loved. The beds had been planned with care, though years of partial attention had left them uneven. Perennials pushed through the soil, stubbornly loyal, while the vegetable beds near the old stone path were overgrown with weeds.
“What are we growing?” Billie asked, dropping to her knees before I could suggest a less ruinous position for her dress.
“Useful things.”
She groaned. “Boring.”
“Useful things can be exciting.”
“Name one.”
“Mint.”
She looked unimpressed.
“Strawberries.”
That sparked her interest.
“Pumpkins.”
Now I had her.
“For Halloween?”
“For autumn, yes.”
“Can we grow bones?”
“No.”
“What about fake bones?”
“If you wish to plant decorations, I won’t stop you, but they won’t sprout.”
Billie sighed, then plunged her shovel into the dirt. Within ten minutes, she had found three worms, one beetle, two pebbles she deemed her new pets, and a rusted bottle cap from a soda brand that no longer existed.
Every discovery elicited a gasp. Every gasp contained the full wonder of a person meeting the world for the first time.
I understood that feeling better than I liked to admit.
For many decades after I was turned, I cataloged everything.
New cities. New customs. New machines. New languages in crowded streets.
New ways humans hurt each other. New ways they healed.
When life stretched unnaturally long, one either stopped caring or learned to keep discovering things with reverence.
Billie had the discovery instinct without the caution that was usually attached to it.
That was both beautiful and dangerous.
She leaned too far over the garden wall to inspect a centipede, and I caught the back of her dress before she tipped directly into the bed.
“Careful.”
“I was being careful.”
“You were practically airborne,” I corrected.
“Only a little.”
“All it takes is a little to warrant an ER visit.”
She twisted to look at me, her curls wild around her face, dirt streaking her face. “If I fall, I just get back up.”
“If you fall from the wrong height, you can’t always get back up immediately.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Daddy says I could break my arm,” she said.
“That’s true.”
“But it can be fixed.”
“Usually.”
“With a cast?”
“Usually.”
“And everyone writes their name on it?”
“Possibly.”
She brightened. “That sounds like so much fun.”
I extended the parasol arm and set the handle into the ground beside me, giving her my full attention. “Billie.”
She looked back at the centipede, but I waited until she returned to me.
“That’s one possible outcome,” I said. “Another possible outcome is that the injury hurts a great deal. You may need to go to the hospital. Your father may be frightened. Your brother and sister may be frightened. You may not be able to run or climb or dig for some time.”
Her expression shifted slightly.
“I don’t want them to be frightened,” she said.
“I know.”
“I just want to know things.”
As simple as that explanation was, it was spot-on. Billie lived inside a body that was too small for all her questions, and a world full of edges she kept testing because somewhere inside her she understood something life-changing had happened before she was old enough to remember it.
Her siblings grieved a mother. Billie grieved not knowing who to grieve.
That was a loneliness adults often overlooked.
“I understand wanting to know things,” I said. “But there are ways to learn that don’t require terrifying everyone who loves you.”
She tilted her head. “Like experiments?”
“Yes. Controlled experiments.”
“What’s controlled?” she asked.
“It means we decide what danger is acceptable before beginning.”
The seriousness on Billie’s face made her look older, then in the next instant, she was five again as she wiped her nose with the back of her muddy hand. “So I can still do danger?”
“Small danger. Chosen danger. Not surprise danger.”
She picked up a worm and studied it as it dangled in front of her face. “I like surprise danger.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed.”
She grinned, tossed the worm aside, then scooped dirt into an empty flowerpot. “I’m making a mud potion.”
“Excellent. What does it do?”
“It makes people understand worms.”
“A worthy goal.”
She added leaves, a twig, three pebbles, and a worm, which she removed after I informed her that potions required consent from all living participants.
The mud potion grew progressively wetter and messier until Billie had dirt up both arms, across her forehead, on one knee, and somehow inside one ear.
I truly had no explanation for the ear.
By the time she attempted to stir with her elbow, I intervened. “I believe the potion is complete.”
“It needs a name.”
“Hmm.” I stared at the mess. “How about Mud Potion?”
“That’s too obvious.”
“Filth Elixir?”
She clapped her hands. “Yes. That’s perfect.”
Filth Elixir, naturally, ended with Billie holding the pot aloft and chanting nonsense syllables while stomping in place. Some children played at being princesses. Billie performed swamp rites.
I found her delightful. Deeply concerning, but delightful, nonetheless.
“I better head inside and take a break from this sunshine. It’s awfully bright out here today.”
Billie scowled. “If you’re going in, I’ll go in, too.”
She placed her little hand in mine and looked up at me with such admiration that I stopped in my tracks. Billie’s small hand remained in mine as she waited expectantly for me to lead her into the house.
I suddenly felt like I might cry from the innocence of it.
I shouldn’t want this as much as I did.
Children deserved mothers who grew old beside them. Mothers who tucked them into bed after eating a normal dinner with them. Mothers who didn’t drink blood to survive and spend every sunny day hiding from the sky.
I was many things, but a suitable mother wasn’t one of them. So, I pushed the idea out of my mind and focused on the task at hand—being a great nanny.
When we finally approached the back door, I stopped her at the patio. “No farther.”
She looked down at herself. “Am I too dirty?”
“You are no longer a child. You are an ecosystem.”
She beamed.
I found the garden hose coiled near the spigot and turned it on low. “Arms out.”
Billie squealed the moment cold water touched her hands, then laughed so hard she nearly fell backward. “Again!”
I rinsed mud from her arms, legs, and cheeks while she spun in circles. I managed to clean most of her before her teeth began chattering, at which point I wrapped her in one of Conrad’s old towels from the mudroom and ushered her inside.
“Cold,” she announced, though she was grinning.
“That happens when one becomes an ecosystem.”
“Worth it,” she chattered.
I helped her change into warm leggings and an oversized sweatshirt with a faded school logo. Her curls were damp and unruly, and she looked thoroughly pleased with herself. It only made me admire her more.
Once she was settled at the kitchen island with socks on and a blanket over her shoulders, I gave her a conspiratorial look. “Would you like to learn how to cook a real potion?”
Her eyes widened. “A real one?”
“Yes. A delicious one.”
“Does Daddy know?” she asked.
“Your father need not be troubled by every culinary development.”
Billie whispered, “That means no.”
“It means wash your hands.”
She scrambled to obey.
I went outside to the not-quite-hearse and opened the rear compartment. The casket rested beneath its velvet cover, entirely ordinary in its own morbid way. Around it, however, I kept an assortment of items intended to create narrative confusion should anyone manage to see past the tinted glass.