Billie Jo’s Mother Character Analysis

Daddy named me Billie Jo.
He wanted a boy.
Instead,
he got a long-legged girl
with a wide mouth
and cheekbones like bicycle handles.
He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl
with a fondness for apples
and a hunger for playing fierce piano.

I ask Ma
how,
after all this time
Daddy still believes in rain.

I wish she’d give me a little more to hold on to than
“I knew you could.”
Instead she makes me feel like she’s just
taking me in like I was
so much flannel dry on the line.

But Ma says, “Can’t you see
what’s happening, Bayard?
The wheat’s not meant to be here.”

And Daddy says,
“What about those apple trees of yours, Pol?
You think they are?
Nothing needs more to drink than those two.
But you wouldn’t hear of leveling your apples,
would you?

I looked at Ma
so pregnant with one baby.
“Can you imagine five?” I said.
Ma lowered herself into a chair.
Tears dropping on her tight stretched belly,
she wept
just to think of it.

Daddy called to me. He asked me to bring water,
Ma was thirsty.
I brought up a pail of fire and Ma drank it. She had
given birth to a baby of flames. The baby
burned at her side.

But the grasshoppers ate every leaf,
they ate every piece of fruit.
Nothing left but a couple apple cores,
hanging from Ma’s trees.
I couldn’t tell her,
couldn’t bring myself to say
her apples were gone.
I never had a chance.

Ma died that day
giving birth to my brother.

“Billie Jo threw the pail,”
they said. “An accident.”
they said.
Under their words a finger pointed.

I think about Ma
and how that birth went.
I keep the kids out and listen behind me,
praying for the sound of a baby
crying into this world,
and not the silence
my brother brought with him.
And the cry comes
and I have to go away for a little while
and just walk off the feelings.

No one talks about fire
right to my face.
They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.

My father’s digging his own grave,
he calls it a pond,
but I know what he’s up to.

My father is waiting at the station
and I call him
Daddy
for the first time
since Ma died,
and we walk home,
together,
talking.

Sometimes, while I’m at the piano,
I catch her reflection in the mirror,
standing in the kitchen, soft-eyed, while Daddy
finishes chores,
and I stretch my fingers over the keys,
and I play.

Daddy named me Billie Jo.
He wanted a boy.
Instead,
he got a long-legged girl
with a wide mouth
and cheekbones like bicycle handles.
He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl
with a fondness for apples
and a hunger for playing fierce piano.

I ask Ma
how,
after all this time
Daddy still believes in rain.

I wish she’d give me a little more to hold on to than
“I knew you could.”
Instead she makes me feel like she’s just
taking me in like I was
so much flannel dry on the line.

But Ma says, “Can’t you see
what’s happening, Bayard?
The wheat’s not meant to be here.”

And Daddy says,
“What about those apple trees of yours, Pol?
You think they are?
Nothing needs more to drink than those two.
But you wouldn’t hear of leveling your apples,
would you?

I looked at Ma
so pregnant with one baby.
“Can you imagine five?” I said.
Ma lowered herself into a chair.
Tears dropping on her tight stretched belly,
she wept
just to think of it.

Daddy called to me. He asked me to bring water,
Ma was thirsty.
I brought up a pail of fire and Ma drank it. She had
given birth to a baby of flames. The baby
burned at her side.

But the grasshoppers ate every leaf,
they ate every piece of fruit.
Nothing left but a couple apple cores,
hanging from Ma’s trees.
I couldn’t tell her,
couldn’t bring myself to say
her apples were gone.
I never had a chance.

Ma died that day
giving birth to my brother.

“Billie Jo threw the pail,”
they said. “An accident.”
they said.
Under their words a finger pointed.

I think about Ma
and how that birth went.
I keep the kids out and listen behind me,
praying for the sound of a baby
crying into this world,
and not the silence
my brother brought with him.
And the cry comes
and I have to go away for a little while
and just walk off the feelings.

No one talks about fire
right to my face.
They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.

My father’s digging his own grave,
he calls it a pond,
but I know what he’s up to.

My father is waiting at the station
and I call him
Daddy
for the first time
since Ma died,
and we walk home,
together,
talking.

Sometimes, while I’m at the piano,
I catch her reflection in the mirror,
standing in the kitchen, soft-eyed, while Daddy
finishes chores,
and I stretch my fingers over the keys,
and I play.