Rocks

by Gabby Kiser

At Grandma’s house, there’s a pond out back. It’s covered in green, and she says she’s going to have them bring fish in next summer. She says they pack up a truck with pond fish and take it out to people with ponds, and that the fish eat up all that green and make it so you can see the frogs swimming in there. I’m really excited because the frogs always jump off the rocks whenever they hear me coming, and I only get to see them for a second before I see a hole in the green where they fell in.

I’m like the frogs because I sit on one of the rocks by Grandma’s pond. She had it painted pink for me. That’s how you know it’s Isabella’s rock, she says, because it’s pink. I don’t really like pink, but I like the rock. When I go out by the pond, Grandma tells me to stay near my rock and not go into the tall grass where the cinderblocks are. It’s easy to stay there because the rock is always nice and warm. Sometimes I see a bubble in the pond where a frog’s breathing. I can wave to the people on the road from my rock, too, and they can see me and wave right back. I like it, but it’s not like the rock Frances has got.

Grandma takes me to see Frances on Sundays. It’s not every Sunday, but sometimes after she makes me ham and eggs, she fills her yellow bucket with water and soap and puts a rag in it. That’s how I know we’re going to see Frances. When I’m done with breakfast, I get my rag and carry it, and Grandma carries the bucket out to the car. I hold both of them in the back seat while she drives us up the mountain.

It’s always quiet up there. When Grandma walks, the water in the bucket makes a funny noise. It makes me think about the frogs in the pond out back. We have to walk a ways to get to Frances’s rock, through a bunch of gravestones. The ones with pictures on them scare me, with those black and white eyes staring out like that, so Grandma says to look out for the flowers instead. When it’s summer like it is now, people put out little flags, too. There’s one tiny stone that always has a big yellow snowman next to it, but his hat fell off and I think it flew away because it’s windy up there. I asked Grandma if we could get a snowman for Frances, but she said it was sad to leave a snowman up all year.

Frances’s rock looks like lumpy bar soap to me. Grandma says that’s a lamb on top, but I thought it was a lot of chewed up bubble gum. Frances has got the only white rock I’ve ever seen, which is part of what makes it Frances’s rock. The other part is that it has her name on it. Grandma says her rock is white and not as big as the others because Frances is tiny. When we get there, it’s a little green or brown sometimes, but then we make it shiny and white again and Grandma always smiles real big. When Grandma smiles like that, her dentures look like she has a bunch of little white rocks in her mouth.

I never met Frances, but Grandma says she’s as old as my Ma. They would’ve been sisters. I know that she’s not here anymore for me to meet, but when I ask about Frances, Grandma talks like she’s still around, saying stuff like “Frances is” and “Frances has.” When she takes out her wet soap rag and starts to clean the lamb, she says, “Hello, little Frances,” and I say hi too. Then we clean together.

Grandma washes the front, and I wash the back. I get done first because it’s just like any old rock on the back, and Grandma takes a long time because she rubs the rag in every little letter and number on the front. She sings Frances the same lullaby she sings me when I go to bed, the one that starts out, “Close your bright eyes, little sleepyhead.” Sometimes I lay in the grass and wait, and sometimes I get up to look at all the big gray rocks while she’s still cleaning. I come back when I see Grandma wash the little lamb for the second time, then we pick up the bucket and walk back to the car. She really likes that lamb.

When Grandma talks about Frances’s rock, she calls it a gravestone like the other ones in the cemetery. Since Frances is just little, I don’t think she should have a gravestone. She should have a rock just like me. I had a dream one night where Frances sat on that rock and watched the birds that fly on the hill like I sit and watch for the little frogs by the pond. There aren’t any pictures of her, but something in my head told me that little girl was Frances. Grandma says it’s not nice to sit on someone’s gravestone, so Frances must have been thinking she had a rock in my dream, one just like mine. 

One time, Frances went out to the tall grass behind the pond out back while Grandma was doing laundry. That’s the story Grandma told me. She says that’s why I can’t go to the tall grass, because there’s snakes back there. I’ve never seen one of the snakes, though. I’ve only seen the frogs, but only barely because they jump in when I get close. One time, I saw a frog jump onto one of the blocks back there, so I went into the grass just for a minute to see it. That was the day that Grandma painted my rock pink and told me that’s how you know it’s Isabella’s rock.

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