Previously published in Kudzu, 2008

The smell of honey crusted ham drifted through every room of the house. It was so rich, so intense, that the scent alone brightened the kerosene stained walls. Brown sugar on the sweet potatoes swirled in my nose, into my sinuses, lighting my eyes to see the good in life, the glow in life. Everything was sunshine yellow.

Momma called us into the kitchen for our after-church lunch, table piled high with rolls, beans, corn and, of course, the ham and potatoes. Marcy and I sat to Momma’s right, faces streaked with rich garden soil, while Mark sat quietly to her left. Opposite Momma was Daddy’s seat. It was vacant, as it had been for the past four months, but Momma always sat clean dishes out at his seat and a stem vase with a single tiger lily. “Gone but not forgotten,” she’d tell us with a smile. “It’ll be ready for him when he comes home.”

Momma led us in saying Grace, and divvied up the food. Grace was a ritual of ours before every Sunday lunch, never dinner or any other day of the week, while we were still filled with the spirit of the Lord, and less filled with food. The ritual had changed a bit… Daddy used to lead us, and it didn’t last very long. Now Momma was in charge, and took an extra minute to say a prayer for Daddy and other soldiers like him who were, as Daddy would say, fighting for our freedoms. Our stomachs growled in protest to this change, but we soon learned to hush verbal protests. Momma could get rather snappy if her prayer was interrupted.

I was making my way through a second slice of ham, and Mark was telling Momma about a little green snake he found in the garden (“Can I keep him, please?”) when Marcy perked up in her seat. A crunching noise came from the driveway, followed by the soft whirring of an engine. “Whossat? Whosit!” she chirruped, sounding as froggish as her pop-bottle glasses made her look. Momma rose slightly from her chair to peer out the window.

“Wait here,” she instructed. “Finish up with those plates, okay?”

We set to work on filling our bellies the rest of the way. Momma hadn’t come back in by the time we finished, even though the crunching and whirring retreated back down the driveway to the road over five minutes ago. I walked to the window and saw her standing, just standing, by the old flag Daddy put up on a fencepost. I watched her, wondering, as she rolled the edge of the flag between her fingers. Her shoulders shook, and she wiped her eyes with the corner. Looking down again, Momma cried out… pain or anger or something else that I could not understand, but only feel through her echoing voice. She took the flag firmly in her hands and pulled, jerked, tore it down so forcefully that she fell backwards onto the ground.

“Momma!” I ran out to meet her in the yard. She didn’t move, not even to look up. She cradled the flag in her lap, bringing it to her face and breathing deeply. “Momma?” I said again.

“The stripes will divide,” she said quietly, absently. “And the stars will fall.”

“You alright, Momma?”

Momma nodded, first yes, then no. She stared out across the field and sighed. “Go in and clear the table, would you please. And the vase. There won’t be any lilies waiting for what will never come.”