The Baton Mom Twirled at Homecoming

Kenzie

Kenzie came out to the hayfield the next Wednesday, by herself, in her scrubs. She’s a nursing assistant at the care center and she’d come straight off her shift.

She didn’t say much at first. She sat on the tailgate of Neal’s pickup and watched her grandma do the routine, all of it, start to finish, the toss included. Mom caught it.

“Grandma,” Kenzie said, and her voice was funny. “That’s really good.”

“I know it is,” Mom said, and winked, and went back to the start of the strip to do it again.

Kenzie scooted over on the tailgate so I could sit by her. We watched Mom for a while without talking, the baton flashing in the headlights each time it went around.

“Mom hasn’t slept right since April,” Kenzie said finally. “She sat in the emergency room in Purcell with Grandma for seven hours. Grandma was gray, Aunt Dana. Mom thought she was having a stroke.”

I hadn’t known that. Teri had told everybody it was a bruise and a sprain, which it was, in the end.

She hadn’t said a word about the seven hours, or what she had thought while she sat there.

Our little hospital in Pauls Valley closed back in 2018. So when something happens, it’s the thirty minute drive up I-35 to Purcell, or longer to Norman.

Teri made that drive with Mom gray in the passenger seat.

“She cried in the parking lot after,” Kenzie said. “In the van. I’d never seen her cry like that. Not even at Grandpa’s funeral. She just kept saying, I’m not ready, I’m not ready.”

I sat there with my hands in my lap. All those weeks I had been thinking of my sister as the one who laughed. I’d forgotten she was also the one who drove.

“She’s not trying to be mean,” Kenzie said. “She just can’t stand to see it happen again. So she laughs. That’s what she does when she’s scared. She did it when I broke my arm, too.”

“I know,” I said. And I did know. I’d just let myself forget it, because it was easier to be mad.

Then Kenzie said, quiet, almost to herself, “I always wanted to learn to twirl. Mom never let me. She said it was too dangerous. Isn’t that funny.”