This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [106]
One scene in the documentary took place during Helen’s music night, with Sandy and Larry and other apprentices gathered in the Nearings’ living room. It was only a week or two after Heidi’s death, and a collective mourning was palpable. Helen explained that she had selected “music of protest” by a young Vietnamese girl for that evening’s score in response to Scott’s opposition to the “dribbly” music of the previous weeks, played in memoriam for Heidi.
“Can’t we listen to something of social significance?” Scott had requested.
I hover here in shock at Scott’s words, but also with empathy. We were all prone to that self-serious and emotionally distant tone set by the Nearings, the intellectual realm being so much safer than the emotional. Those tidy little stages of grieving—from denial to anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—were unavailable to hearts clutched in the grip of the intellect. There were no gardeners of grief in our community.
Fall air holds the smell of wood smoke more than any other time of the year. For me it will always be the scent of lost things. As I walked the path to the bus, the ashy disintegration of maple and pine mingled with a wistfulness for the barefoot freedoms of summer and life as it had been before.
Everyone in second grade knew about Heidi. They stopped whispering when I came near and looked at me with blank eyes. It made me different, so I didn’t want to talk about it. My friend Jennifer and I were playing hula-hoops in the playground when I fell on the tarmac and cut my hip. Everyone ran away, screaming at the sight of blood. The third- and fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Clifford, came and took me to the nurse’s room to swab and bandage the wound. She had to unbutton and pull down my favorite pink pants to get to the cut, which made me uncomfortable. When I cried at the sting of alcohol, Mrs. Clifford looked at me with eyes made large behind her rimmed glasses.
“You have a lot to hurt about,” she said. I thought she meant the cut was very bad.
“It must be quite hard.”
“No,” I said, crying more.
She stood back, the tears in her eyes disappearing behind the glare of her glasses.
“Can I go now?” I didn’t want any more people’s sadness. I buttoned my favorite pants, now stained with blood, and wiped my eyes with my knuckles.
On the way home on the bus my friend Paul let me choose from his marble collection. There was one that reminded me of the blue of Heidi’s eyes, with swirls of light and dark blues that went deep into its center, and he let me have it even though it was his favorite. I held the cool orb tightly in my palm so as not to lose it.
In the mornings I sat with Jennifer on the bus, and she counted the freckles on my arms. We both had long hair, but hers was summer blond, with streaks of almost white next to her pale unfreckled skin. She said that even though I had freckles and brown hair, I was pretty, too.
“We’re the prettiest girls in our class,” she said. “Be sure to save me a seat because I don’t want to have to sit with anyone else.”
We walked around the edge of the playground holding hands as she talked of plans to make us popular. I didn’t understand why it mattered so much, but I practiced hula-hoops in the courtyard with her and did jump-rope tricks. When everyone lined up and held hands to play Red Rover in the big field beyond the swing sets, I would run as fast as I could toward Jennifer in the line of kids, knowing she would let her hand break free so I could go back to my team and get cheered. I did the same for her. When we were together, it didn’t matter what the other kids said. That she lived in a trailer. That I was a hippie with a dead sister.
The second-grade teacher, Mr. McGuffie, was new and a bit of a radical. He organized our chairs in a big circle, rather than traditional rows. I sat between Jennifer