The Bouquet I Handed My Mother

The Toss

I stood at that door for a while after Dot went back inside.

I thought about my mother at twenty-one, in a borrowed yellow sundress pinned in the back, holding dandelions. I thought about her watching some other girl in white down a courthouse hallway.

I thought about her at the kitchen table in February, saying, “Nobody bought me a dress. Let me do this one thing right.”

I had been so angry all afternoon, under the smiling. Angry in a cold, careful way, like a ledger that would not balance.

And standing in that doorway, I felt the anger go somewhere. Not gone. But somewhere I could set it down.

I knew then what I was going to do.

I went inside and found the DJ, a young man from Danville with a beard, and asked him to make one change to the schedule. He raised his eyebrows, but he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

At about a quarter past seven, he took the microphone. “All right, ladies,” he said.

“It’s that time. All you single ladies, come on out to the floor. The bride’s about to toss the bouquet.”

Maybe twenty girls and women came out onto the boards, laughing and pushing each other. Pam was there, and Austin’s two cousins, and a couple of the girls from the farm credit office.

I picked up my bouquet from the head table. White roses and eucalyptus, tied with ivory ribbon.

Austin’s mother had put it together that morning in her kitchen, out of roses from a wholesaler in Louisville.

And I walked right past the dance floor.

I walked down the length of that barn, past the long wooden tables, under the string lights, with my skirt in one hand and the bouquet in the other.

The music was still playing, but people at the tables stopped talking one by one as I went by.

Mama was sitting at the family table near the back with Dot. She saw me coming, and I watched her face change.

She thought, I believe, that I was finally coming to say it. That here, in front of everyone, was the reckoning.

She stood up. I think she wanted to take it standing. Her hands were at her sides, and she held her chin up the way she does at school board meetings.

I stopped in front of her. I could hear my own heart. The whole barn had gone so quiet I heard one of the mares outside blow through her nose.

I held the bouquet out to her.

“You never got one of these,” I said. Just that, quietly.

Her face did not move. She looked at the white roses. Then, slowly, she reached out and took the bouquet in both hands, carefully, the way you would take a newborn from somebody.

Daddy had come up behind me without my hearing him. He stood a step back, with one hand out, waiting for mine.

I turned and took both of Daddy’s hands. The DJ, God bless that bearded boy, started our song right on time.

It was “My Little Girl” by Tim McGraw, which Daddy had picked out himself.

Daddy and I danced, right there on the old boards by the family table, not even on the dance floor.

And I did not look back at Mama. Not once. I did not want her to feel watched.