Anyway, if you can ignore the fact that there’s possibly raw sewage and a decaying corpse deep in the water somewhere, it’s a really pretty pond.
“Okay,” she says, her sharp voice at odds with this tranquil scene. I turn to her. More sunlight has found us in this spot, and the moss on the ground feels soft as carpet under our feet.
“You gonna change what we see and what we feel,” she announces. “In times of strife, it may be necessary for you to alter the atmosphere you’re in. So. Go ahead and do it.”
I wait for her to say more, because surely there’s more to say. She just looks at me. Not even botherin’ to have an expression right now.
“Can you be—I don’t know—more specific?”
“Yes,” she says. She takes out her pipe and lights it. After her first exhale, I realize she has nothing more to add.
“Change the atmosphere,” I sigh.
“That’s what I said,” she affirms. “Just the one right here. The one that we’re in.”
I glance around me. Why would I change somethin’ that’s already beautiful? But I guess that’s not the point. I plant myself and dig down deep. I’m not angry, nor do I have any reason to be, so I’m not sure how I can possibly do something this big.
I turn to see what Grammie Atti’s doin’. She’s sittin’ on a rock, starin’ out at the water and smokin’ her pipe. She ain’t in no hurry.
Another gentle breeze blows, and some love grass brushes against my ankles and I smile. I imagine bringin’ Clay here sometime, if I could do it without Grammie Atti knowing… and then I feel tickles and I feel the giggles comin’, and I ain’t in the mood to get hollered at, so I push ’em down. Down, down, down…
To another place. There’s something else down here, and it pulses too. I can almost hear the giggles I shoved down here. Are these the giggles of haints? Ain’t sure, but if they are, they don’t bother me down here. I think I know what to do. I internally search for every bit of giggle or happy I’m feelin’ right now and gather ’em all up. I bring ’em on down to this other pulsing, and wouldn’t you know it? I have another band now. This one is greenish-yellow, and it makes me feel how I imagine drinkin’ champagne must feel. I’m giddy and bubbly and silly, and I can’t help it! My whole body erupts in a giant burst of joyful laughter.
“Get it under control,” Grammie Atti calls from her rock.
I’m bent over laughin’ so hard I’m cryin’. She’s right: I gotta get this under control. There can be too much of a good thing.
I leap up from down inside my new greenish-yellow band and focus on the present moment. And then…
I shiver in my short sleeves. It’s cold. Why is it so cold? I look up, and the sun has clouded over and lace droplets fall from the sky onto my hands, onto my eyelashes. Snow. I am seeing… snow. Falling from the sky, covering the ground, the surface of the water, and me and Grammie Atti.
It’s astonishing. It’s an astonishing modern miracle that I can never tell anyone about. It’s too impossible to conceive. I’ve never seen snow before. Is it supposed to look like somethin’ from a fairy tale?
“Grammie? Do you feel it?”
“Uh-huh. You did good,” she says, not particularly interested in the island of storybook winter I just created. “Was it intentional or accidental?”
I watch the dainty crystals melt in the palm of my hand.
“Intentional,” I tell her. It was. I thought it would be fun if I could make it snow. I think about that rainbow I made for Clay and me on our first real date. The laughin’ kids in church. Those things just happened, but if I can do this kinda thing on purpose?
Damn! That is somethin’ else. I feel like a character from a Greek myth.
“Do you know how you did it?” she asks.
“I think so.”
“Revert it.”
“Already? But we just—”
“Revert it. All this is temporary. You can’t be toyin’ with the planet’s real ecosystem. Do it. Now.”
I wanna cross my arms and tell her no, I should be able to spend more time with my first snow, but I’m not brave enough.
“Evalene! If you don’t do what I tell you right this minute—”
It’s simple. I release my hold on my new greenish-yellow band, and it gently dissipates. And winter is gone. All gone. The sun is back. The ground is dry. My body just as warm as it was before. Like nothing ever happened. This time, she is impressed and can’t hide it.
“Okay. You gettin’ good at this, ya know?”
I nod. “Thank you.”
I sniff the air, searching for traces of the snow scent, but all I smell is the warm summer dirt.
“What am I not doin’ right yet?” I ask her.
She frowns. “Hard to say. You catch on fast, but got this li’l girl in you that wants to throw tantrums way too often. She’s impatient as hell. You gotta watch out for her,” she warns. Then, quite uncharacteristically, she smiles, and it’s a warm, almost grandmotherly smile.
“Come. Sit by me,” she says. I sit on a patch of sunbaked grass and look up at her perched on her rock.
“Grammie Atti? How come we can do these things? Do you know?”
She glances down at me; then she sighs, still smiling, but now more wistfully than grandmotherly. “Well. I don’t know how it began, but I know some a your foremothers used it when the masters’ and mistresses’ wickedness became too much to bear. I imagine their foremothers used it too. Somethin’ in our particular DNA is determined to live and to fight. It’s an advantage we’re fortunate to have. You gotta remember that,” she explains.
“Mama sure don’t see it that way.”
“Your mother made a choice. She’s a full-grown
