Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

When he spread the quilt on the ground, he did so slowly in case she wanted to change her mind.

Her father—the man I would come to call Grandpappy Lark—noticed her growing belly and struck her several times in the face until her nose bled and she saw small stars in front of her eyes. She cried out for her mother, who stood by but did nothing more than watch.

“How long the devil been livin’ in your daddy’s heart?” “All my life,” she said. “Well, a man who beats a woman leaves me with little more than anger. The type of anger I can taste in the back of my throat. And boy is it a bad taste.” He spit on the ground. “Pardon my action, but I can’t keep that sort of thing to myself.

Dad said he had met the actress at

In her most wholesome form, Breathed was a wife and mother who made sure to hang her flag banners on her porch rails every Fourth of July. At her darkest, she was the place you could bleed to death in without a single open wound.

like someone careful of where he steps.

spacious room would be Mom and Dad’s. Across

She was a woman so lovely, mirrors grieved in absence of her. She was much more than her beauty. But no matter how many miles of fantastic wonders I saw inside my mother, she was already gone to me in a million different ways, even when I thought she was right in front of me.

To be so cruel to us must have given him great pleasure after the way our father had beat him in his own front yard.

The cherry tree was Grandpappy Lark’s way of beating Landon Carpenter back through his children, sending us home with bruises on the inside instead of on the out.

Mom had to tell someone and she thought I was strong enough. Truth was, I had done with it what she had. Tried to bury it. Only I had buried the story in A Faraway Place, believing it was far enough away, I’d never think of it again. But thinking about it was all I was doing. Get out of my head. I soon realized there was enough space on the front porch to make a maze and trap myself there with my own thoughts.

“Oh, there’s a g-g-good one,” he said of the rock he’d just spotted. “Look how it shines in the sun. God must really l-l-love us. Look at all the r-r-rocks He gave. You don’t give a world like this to someone you h-h-hate.”

“Dad?” I dusted cookie crumbs off my hands. “Do you ever wanna leave the storm?” “Don’t worry, Little Indian. This weather can’t last forever.”

I became frightened by the overwhelming possibility that Leland would not be the one punished, even though Fraya had done nothing wrong. This fear silenced me.

She was the type of woman to wear high heels on linoleum floor, but go barefoot for a walk across gravel.

Did I not have this greatness in me? The power of a woman so ancient, but still young in her time. I imagined her as she was then. Her spirit fierce. Her bravery undeniable. How could I not be as powerful? Why could I not consider myself beautiful when I thought of her as the most beautiful one of all?

“Don’t you dare cry over them,” she said, “when I had no one to cry over me.”

Late summer in southern Ohio was a beautiful challenge passed from the sun to the child, Can you survive my heat and still love me?

When I think of Flossie now I always remember her as sitting in the sun on the green grass, squeezing lemons out on the top of her head, the juice dripping through her hair. She’d do it nearly every day in summer. By the time August ended, her light brown hair would be gilded in highlights. Sometimes this is the only way I want to remember her. The sun. Green grass. Yellow lemons. My sister with her head tilted toward the light.

The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.”

I wanted his name on all these things and more. I was so afraid no one would know he had even existed.

Trustin hadn’t screamed that first time he fell. And he hadn’t screamed this second time either. The only sound had been of the three of us playing in the water. I suppose that’s why my sisters looked down, feeling we had let something slip so easily through our fingers.

Trustin, “Thanks for paintin’ eyes on my

“Dad says men who mount dead animals on their walls are men who think they’re more important than they really are.

little bell rang. The diners turned to look at me. I tugged

“I once saw God caught on a barbed-wire fence,” I said.

I think between the two of them they could have been pretty good at love. Too bad grief made myths of everything.

I knew what my father did not know when he was alive. That he was more than a filler. He was a lifetime of wildflower fields. I feel like the grasses will always tell stories of him. Of his mushroom hunting and of his philosophy that no one really knows just how sweet honey is. Maybe that is his eternity.

“Of course she’ll remember us,” said the ghost of my younger self. “Won’t you, Betty?” “I’ll remember everything.” I promised them.