{"id":2489,"date":"2023-07-19T22:31:27","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T02:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2489"},"modified":"2023-07-19T22:31:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T02:31:27","slug":"the-bead-collectors-memories","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2489","title":{"rendered":"The Bead Collector’s Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Mary Alice Dixon<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Issue 16<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My mother collected beads. Worry beads. Bone beads. Beechnut, butternut, and bitternut beads. Made pregnant goddess beads from plum pits wrapped in seaweed. Buried her beads by the roots of the devilwood and wild plums growing near Sunset Beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m feeding trees with my memories,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCrazy witch,\u201d the preacher pronounced. Said she threatened his flock with her made-up religion, the one that grew on the shore beyond his church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe trees remember. You\u2019ll remember, too,\u201d she told me, \u201cwhen you branch in green and petal pink.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight as the strawberry moon rose full above the sea, my mother donned a floral nightgown stained with dirt. She cut flesh from a plum, kissed its skin, then laid the pit in a broken clam shell on her pinewood dresser.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She picked up a small bundle of sage, what she called \u201csalvation plant.\u201d Holding the sage high, arms outstretched, my mother smiled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome ripening June, come strawberry moon, light this night,\u201d she chanted. \u201cNow nourish, now flourish my trees.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She lit the sage. She waved its smoke at the plum tree growing close by her window. The sage smelled green and light, like lime and silver thyme. Smoke streams drifted, then curled around the plum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was then I remembered I was once a child who held my mother\u2019s hand. Her knuckles felt like beads of bone. I remembered my sisters. Their names were beechnut, butternut, and bitternut. I looked at my mother through the open window and I flowered. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mary Alice Dixon<\/strong> grew up in Carolina red clay and Appalachian coal dust. She has been a popcorn waitress and a professor of architectural and landscape history, a Pushcart nominee, Best Short Fiction nominee, and Pinesong award winner. In 2023 the NC Poetry Society named her a Poet Laureate Award finalist. Her writing appears in Fourth River<\/em>, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Stonecoast Review<\/em>, <\/em>and elsewhere. Mary Alice lives in Charlotte, NC where she gardens with cow manure, and communes with trees and the ghosts of her dead cats, Alice B. Toklas and Thomas Merton.\u00a0
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\"\"<\/a>
Read “A Hundred Ways…<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Read “Gifts for Men<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “The Mermaid Riot<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mary Alice Dixon Issue 16 Flash Fiction My mother collected beads. Worry beads. Bone beads. Beechnut, butternut, and bitternut beads. Made pregnant goddess beads from plum pits wrapped in seaweed. Buried her beads by the roots of the devilwood and wild plums growing near Sunset Beach. \u201cI\u2019m feeding trees with my memories,\u201d she said. \u201cCrazy witch,\u201d the preacher pronounced. Said she threatened his flock with her made-up religion, the one that grew on the shore beyond his church. \u201cThe trees remember. You\u2019ll remember, too,\u201d she told me, \u201cwhen you branch in green and petal pink.\u201d Tonight as the strawberry moon rose full above the sea, my mother donned a floral nightgown stained with dirt. She cut flesh from a plum, kissed its skin, then laid the pit in a broken clam shell on her pinewood dresser.\u00a0 She picked up a small bundle of sage, what she called \u201csalvation plant.\u201d Holding the sage high, arms outstretched, my mother smiled.  \u201cCome ripening June, come strawberry moon, light this night,\u201d she chanted. \u201cNow nourish, now flourish my trees.\u201d  She lit the sage. She waved its smoke at the plum tree growing close by her window. The sage smelled green and light, like lime and silver thyme. Smoke streams drifted, then curled around the plum. It was then I remembered I was once a child who held my mother\u2019s hand. Her knuckles felt like beads of bone. I remembered my sisters. Their names were beechnut, butternut, and bitternut. I looked at my mother through the open window and I flowered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2489","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}