Forty Brushes for Mom’s White Fence

Sheree went red. “Bernice, I…”

“I know why you said it,” Mom said. “You found me in March. You were scared. I was scared too, laying out there. I haven’t forgot what you did for me that day, and I never will.”

Sheree’s eyes filled up. She did not say anything.

“But that fence is your father-in-law’s hands,” Mom said. “You don’t let that fall down to make a point to an old woman. You come and tell her you’re scared. You tell her to her face.”

Nobody moved. Sheree stood there in front of forty people who had spent the day undoing what she had wished out loud. Every one of them knew.

She knew every one of them knew. That was the hardest thing anybody could have done to her, and nobody had done it but Sheree.

Then Corliss stepped up beside Mom. She had a piece of notebook paper folded in her hand.

“Sheree,” she said, kind of gentle. “We know about the fall. Robyn told us. So we made this at lunch.”

She unfolded it. It was a sign-up sheet, written in three or four different hands. Every day of the week, two names.

Morning and evening. Somebody to check the mare’s water, somebody to stop in and see Mom, through the end of the year.

“Twenty-six people signed up,” Corliss said. “Booker’s taking Mondays. The pastor took Wednesdays. She won’t be out there by herself anymore. Not if we can help it.”

Sheree took the paper. She read it for a long time, longer than it takes to read twenty-six names. Her hand was shaking a little.

Then Dean walked up. He had dried his hands on his jeans. He did not say anything hard to her. He just stood next to her, the way a husband does.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Sheree said to him, very low.

“I know,” Dean said. “I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you a lot of things.” He looked at Mom. “Mom, I should’ve been out here before now. That’s on me, not her.”

Mom reached over and patted his arm, the paint still on her fingers. “Well, you’re here now,” she said.

Sheree looked down at the folder in her other hand. She looked at it like she did not know how it got there.

Then she bent and laid it face down in the grass by the gate post, and she straightened up and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“Is there any of it left to do?” she said.

Booker pointed with his chin. “Gate’s not done. We saved it for Miss Bernice, but she’s wore out.”

Mom held out her brush.

Sheree looked at it for a second. Then she took it, and she went to the gate, and she knelt down on that bottom board and started to paint.