Whisper Me This(105)

Elle glares at her. “It won’t hurt you to stand here for a few minutes.” Her gaze shifts to me. “Or you, either.”

Marley rolls her eyes at me. I grin back. All at once it feels like we’re the ones who are thirteen, being lectured by an adult.

But then the tears fill my daughter’s eyes and spill over and my heart twists in my chest.

“Aw, shit,” Marley says. “Shoot, I mean. What’s the matter, baby?”

Elle doesn’t answer, her face all screwed up tight with the effort to hold back tears.

I don’t need her to tell us. I am smart enough to figure it out.

“I’m sorry, Elle Belle,” I tell her, reaching for her hand. “Aunt Marley and I aren’t so good with emotions and symbolic gestures. We’ll behave. Only you need to tell us what we’re doing.”

Elle sniffles. “It’s just—I thought Grandma should know. That we found Aunt Marley. And that you’re with Tony. And that Dad didn’t win the court case.”

All at once it dawns on me what Elle is trying to get to.

Marley’s face mirrors my thoughts, and I know she sees it, too.

My mother—our mother—somehow found the strength to break free of the chains of her own family. Her mother, her grandmother, her mother-in-law, all were suppressed and beaten down by life and their husbands. Love for her daughters gave Mom the strength to break free from indoctrination and violence, to create a reality in which her daughters and her granddaughter stand free and independent today at her graveside.

Marley has cut all ties with Boots. And I am finally done with Greg.

The judge in our custody hearing chose not to change the parenting plan, which means I keep Elle. Greg can have her on weekends, but since she lives with me, he’d have to get her back to Kansas somehow. The judge says that’s his problem. She also says that if she ever hears a case presented to her again with evidence that Greg has hit Elle even once, she’ll deny him visitation.

He says she can’t do that, but she said, literally, word for word, “Watch me, Mr. Loftis. Go ahead, make my day.”

Elle will be going to see him this summer for a couple of weeks, but she says that’s okay. She wants to see Linda and her baby brother. She wants to see Greg.

And she wants her grandma to know all these things, only it’s weird standing over a grave talking to a dead person, especially when your mom and your aunt are acting like stupid teenagers. I’m trying to think how to fix it, prepared to go so far as to start talking out loud to my mother, even though I know she’d be more likely to hear me in her kitchen, when Marley solves the problem.

Right there in the middle of the empty graveyard on a Tuesday morning in June, she starts to sing.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me . . .

Her voice floats up, up into the blue sky, strong and true. I join in with harmony on the next lines.

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now I see.

And then Elle, who has seldom been to a church but has managed to learn this song somewhere, somehow, despite all that, joins in. We link hands, standing in a circle, like maybe we’re performing a sacred rite.

And maybe we are, because it feels like we’ve summoned Mom to stand in the space between us.

With my eyes closed, I can see her, wearing the same sort of triumphant smile she wore every time I actually brought home an A on a school report card, the day I graduated from high school, from college, when my very first article was published in a newspaper.

All three of our voices rise triumphantly on the next verse, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear my mother’s voice is with us, adding a faint counterpoint.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far

And grace will lead me home.

The sound of our singing drifts off into the breeze, but we still stand there in the silence, linked by our hands and our hearts: three strong women with our lives ahead of us, one strong woman in the ground. I feel weirdly like we are trees, rooted in the soil my mother composted with her life.

“Are we good now?” Marley asks. Her voice sounds abrasive, so I know she’s just as moved by what happened as I am.

“Perfect,” Elle replies, letting go of my hand. “Anybody want ice cream?”

“Is ice cream your recipe for fixing everything? Like the Brits are with tea?”

“Pretty much. Don’t try and tell me you don’t eat ice cream when you’re mad or whatever. I saw you.”

I hear their feet swishing through grass as they move away from me, their voices already fading into background noise.

“You coming, Mom?” Elle calls.

“Give me a sec!” I holler back.

There is something I need to say to my mother, something for her ears alone. Maybe I was wrong about this place, because in this moment, anyway, I feel like she can hear me fine.

“Whisper me truth, whisper me lies,” I murmur, Tony’s melody drifting through my mind. “All the things you did wrong, you did exactly right.”

She doesn’t answer me, of course. Even if she hears me, she’d have no idea what I mean.

Sunlight shines warm on my face. A cool breeze touches my hair. Elle’s laughter floats back to me. I hear forgiveness in all these things, and love, and I’m able to let go of this moment and take a step toward the rest of my life.