Nova smiled. It was hard to stay mad at Caden. Not his fault Mama was acting so cross.
Not Caden’s fault that Nova was feeling bad, either. He was a sweet baby, a funny little guy. Nova loved babies. She hoped the Lord would understand that, when she stood before him on Judgment Day. God would know it wasn’t all her fault. God saw everything, so he knew what got done to her.
Nova tugged on the wagon. She wasn’t going to think about that. Going to push that memory clean out of her head.
She talked to Caden over her shoulder. “You want me to show you something pretty? Pretty trees and flowers?”
He let out a happy squeal. “Pretty!”
Her spirits lifted. She took a right at the intersection, taking the long way. So there’d be more to see.
An old run-down house up the block had the biggest lilac bush in town. The bush sat in full sun on the corner of the property, crowding the sidewalk. No telling how old it was. When they reached it, Nova stopped the wagon. Picked her brother up and propped him on her hip.
“See those purple flowers? That’s old-fashion lilac. Old Missy Mabel, who used to live here, she told me so. And it smell sweeter than anything.”
She pulled a branch toward them, tickled the boy’s nose with a lilac bloom. “Smell it,” she whispered.
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose and rubbed it. Nova clicked her tongue, dropped him back in the wagon.
“Boys don’t know nothing about perfume. Lilac is the sweetest thing there is.”
As she pulled the wagon away, the boy made a grab for the bush.
“Mine!” he cried, indignant.
“No, Caden. That lilac ain’t ours. We got to leave it alone. These flowers belong to somebody else. We just get to look.”
She felt a sharp twinge of discomfort in her belly. It made her pause. Felt like the cramping that had started up yesterday, when she was at the big breakfast at Missy Mary’s farm. Nova wondered whether something was bad wrong with her, maybe she should turn the wagon around and go home.
Then an image of her mother’s face appeared in her head. She pulled the wagon onward.
Nova stepped onto the strip of green around a telephone pole. Plucked three plants and showed them to her brother.
“This is the plain old dandelion. Just a weed, folks say. But it’s pretty, right?”
“Yellow.”
“Yes! And it has a nice smell. You try it.”
She let him hold the yellow head while she showed him another plant. “This is white clover. Grows all over, animals eat it. And I think it smells sweet, too. I’ll make you a necklace sometime. Tie the stems together. And look at this.”
She held up a three-leafed clover. Popped it into her mouth, chewed and swallowed.
“You can eat it! An old auntie at church told me. Clover is good for you. She said it cleans the blood.”
Nova took the white clover and yellow dandelion back from the baby—because she knew that Caden would chew down on them, if he took the notion. “You can have all the dandelions and clover you want. They’re wild, see?”
She picked up the handle, started pulling the wagon again. Noted the pink and white dogwoods, still in full bloom.Cornus florida.
Nova learned the fancy name for dogwoods when she looked it up on the computer at school. They’d always been her very favorite trees, as long as she could remember. Judge Mary had lots of dogwoods. It made Nova happy, knowing that they grew wild at Missy Mary’s farm. If Nova could find a wild dogwood, she’d break off a blooming branch, put it in a jar of water by her bed. Her very own sprig of flowers and green leaves.
As she pulled the wagon along, the pain in her belly got worse. Like yesterday, but stronger this time. Felt like menstrual cramps. Bad ones.
She stopped, bent over, grabbed her knees for support. Caden started to fuss. Making loud noises that threatened to turn into full-out wailing.
Nova straightened up, walked over to a patch of clover. She picked a handful of white clover, tossed it in the wagon. “You can have all that. It’s yours. When the weather gets hot and school is out, I’ll take you to the railroad tracks. We’ll pick pink coneflowers. They grow wild, all summer long. And black-eyed Susans, as many as we want. We’ll fill this wagon with wildflowers. They don’t belong to nobody, so they’re for everybody.”
The baby was distracted. He clapped his hands, picked up a clover and waved it.
