Her grandparents wanted to see her. It’d been months, they said. They wanted to make sure she was clean and eating well. Really, though, they missed their daughter and wanted to see what remained of her. To ensure the safety of that last little bit. They’d never trusted Louie’s father.
He brought Louie out to their farm. The dust from the truck still settling, Louie hopped to the ground and ran to her grandparents.
Why he stuck around was anyone’s guess. They all assumed he’d slow down to let Louie out and return to pick her up when she was ready to come on home. It was summer; Louie had nowhere to be. She could stay all season, if she wanted.
After dinner one night her father nudged Louie’s knee with his own. “Sing for your grandparents.”
She looked up from her cobbler, terrified.
“She’s got a real pretty voice.” He nodded at his mother- and father-in-law. It was probably the first he’d spoken since they’d arrived. Everyone seemed a little stunned. Louie’s grandparents looked at her expectantly because they didn’t know how to look at her father.
“Go on, Lou. You know the one I like.” He placed his big, rough hand on the table and began to drum it lightly. Right away she knew it was the song she’d claimed as their own. She started crying. Everyone thought it was because she didn’t want to sing.
The next morning, her father and grandfather drank coffee on the porch while Louie chased the cat around the yard. Her grandmother sat on a swing that still hung from a branch of the tree out front. She snapped her old Polaroid camera, all of the pictures coming out golden.
The cat ran beneath the porch and Louie fell to the ground, exhausted. Her grandmother called to her, “Come here and sit on my lap, Louise. You’ll get your new dress all dirty.” She was too big for her grandmother’s lap, but Louie went to her anyway. Her grandmother leaned down to lift her and Louie kissed her cheek and escaped behind the swing to push her grandmother’s ample behind. “Louise! I’m too heavy!” Louie continued though, and her grandmother laughed at her feeble attempts.
After a walk down the road to visit the horses at the neighbor’s stable, the four of them drove into town for lunch. At the diner, Louie examined the menu carefully and asked if she could order spaghetti for lunch. Her grandfather kissed her forehead and said, “Anything you want.”
Louie pressed her luck and asked for a milkshake as well.
“With your spaghetti?” her grandmother asked. Louie didn’t know how to answer, so she didn’t, but her grandfather repeated himself. “Anything you want.”
When the waitress came again, Louie ordered and her father said, “I’ll have the same.”
Everyone looked at him with lifted eyebrows, but no one said a word.
The silence was long after the waitress left. “Sing for your grandparents? Please, Lou?” Her father didn’t pose it as a command this time; he asked her.
Louie had stayed up half the night preoccupied with the thought of singing. Now that her father made the request again, she felt that with a little time she could get up the courage to do it. She needed a moment to gather herself and in that moment her grandparents took her silence for fear and began bickering about whose turn it was to sweep the porch once they got back to the farm.
Louie dragged the crayons she was given across the paper tablecloth as she began to hum. Her father’s eyes leaned toward what she was drawing: a horse like the silver one she’d seen that afternoon. Soon the humming formed into words, like her father’s botched lyrics rewound. She sang their song slowly and mournfully. She was already to the second verse when her grandmother hushed her grandfather and nodded to Louie, who continued to draw as her voice grew. She knew she had their attention, but she thought if she looked up the fear might erase her voice. Her father watched her hands. Louie’s voice was soft, too small to silence a room, but it filled their booth and spilled over just a little bit to the tables beside. She finished like it was nothing. Her grandparents’ eyes brimmed. Their food arrived and everyone ate in silence.
It was Louie’s father who finally spoke, after their plates were cleared. He lit a cigarette. “If I might take the liberty to say it, your Chandra’s voice bent around corners better’n any slide guitar’s song. I remember one afternoon when she was pregnant with Lou, we were sittin’ in our kitchen and she started hummin’, soft, all edges she kept tight to.
“Through the window, her voice carried. We’d raised the storm glass so the breeze could skate in underneath. We sat at the table, drops of water gathering on our juice glasses.
“I remember she was singin’ ’bout stallions, but it was that voice that galloped at the first thunder crack. The rain started slow, sped up as her song did.
“Sometimes I wasn’t sure the sounds she was makin’ anyone else’d call singin’. It was more like talkin’, but there was this clarity to it that made me cool all over.
“I don’t know where she found those words. She’d come to me to learn earlier that year: saddles, bridles, gaits. She wanted it, so she learned quick. Now she was singin’ of the horses like she’d been born to’m.
“I was afraid to move. I didn’t want to spook’er into silence. The sound was risin’ out of her like heat. The rain was pourin’, bouncin’ off the windowsill onto our bare arms.
“Her body was heavy then and as she sang she grew more and more relaxed. Her legs splayed around Lou, still inside of her and ’bout ready to come out. Her shoulders dropped. Only her head shook ever so slowly as those notes came out.
“And I remember, all of a sudden, I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take how she could make me change just like that. Right away, I just got so sad and I told her to stop. Her eyes opened after her voice quit. She didn’t ask any questions. We just sat and listened to what was left.”
They were all quiet for a long time again. Everyone sipped their coffee.
“I think I need to leave Lou here with you for a while.”
Louie looked up at her father. She’d known as soon as he started talking about her mama, it wouldn’t be long. He could never stick around after he started thinking about her. Even if he stayed in the same place, he checked out until he knew her memory had cleared. Her grandparents nodded. Louie could tell they were torn. They were happy to have the last little bit of their daughter, but they were also thinking, “We were right; we knew he couldn’t handle her.” Everyone gathered their belongings and headed to the street. Louie and her grandmother walked slowly, peeking into shop windows. Her father and grandfather walked ahead a ways, talking quietly. While she looked at a dollhouse, full of its tiny perfections, she heard an engine start and looked back to see her father pull away. Neither waved. Louie certainly didn’t cry.
Her grandmother took her hand. “What do you say we walk on home?”
Louie nodded.
On that last day, on the long walk back to the farmhouse, she wondered if it wasn’t just the fact that she was made out of a lot of mind and he was a lot of world. She hummed a little as she scuffed her shoes, kicking rocks. She thought about how much more quickly she could move with a horse beneath her; she wondered when she would get to learn.