The Leaf Collector

Every autumn, my sister collects dead things.

She says they're not really dead, just sleeping, but I know better. I've watched her gather fallen leaves in her little red wagon since I was five, treating each one like a wounded bird. Now I'm twelve, and she's fifteen, and nothing has changed except the size of her collection and how far we have to walk up these mountains to find the best ones.

"Look at this one, D.J.," Sade whispers, holding up a maple leaf the color of Grandma's candied yams. "It's still warm from the sun."

Her dark eyes shine with that familiar fever-bright gleam that only appears when October wraps its misty fingers around Mount Shasta, turning our little piece of the country into something out of a dream.

The afternoon light filters through the sugar pines, casting shadows that look like grasping hands across Sade's deep brown skin. She doesn't notice them; she's too busy arranging her leaves in neat rows on the forest floor.

Each one gets cataloged in her leather-bound notebook with precise measurements and delicate sketches. The pages are yellow now, stained with decade-old chlorophyll and secrets.

"Do you remember when we first started?" she asks, not looking up from her work. "That October when Mama..."

"Yeah," I cut her off. "I remember."

How could I forget? That was the October when Mama went to bed with a headache and never woke up. Daddy said it was an aneurysm – quick and painless, like falling asleep. But Sade and I knew better.

We'd seen the way the shadows under Mama's eyes had grown darker as September faded into October. We'd heard her whispering to herself in the garden where she grew her collards and okra, her hands buried in the cold earth as if searching for something.

The air up here in the Cascade mountains has that peculiar thickness it gets in October, like breathing through cobwebs. The wind carries whispers that sound almost like words, and the sunset comes earlier each day, as if the night is eager to claim more territory. Our town becomes a different place in October – the houses huddle closer together, the streets curve in ways they don't during other months, and the forest behind our house seems to breathe.

Sade started collecting leaves the day after the funeral. She said Mama had told her to in a dream, that it was important work. Daddy called it grief. The therapist called it a coping mechanism. I called it what it was: a warning.

"They're getting ready," Sade says now, running her fingers along the veins of a big-leaf maple. "Can't you feel it?"

I can. That's what terrifies me.

"Sade," I say, trying to keep my voice steady, "maybe we should head back. Grandma's making sweet potato pie for dinner, and you know how she gets if we're late." I add, "Better late than never, I guess."

She looks up at me with Mama's eyes – that same deep brown that sometimes flashed gold in certain lights. "Just a few more minutes. I'm almost done with today's collection."

I sit on a fallen log and watch her work, my hands shoved deep in my pockets to hide their trembling. The truth is, I know why she collects the leaves. I know because I've seen what happens to the ones she doesn't take.

They dance.

Not in the normal way leaves dance in the wind. They dance like they're alive, like they're trying to remember what it was like to be part of something growing and green. And sometimes, late at night, during what my grandma calls the voodoo hours, I hear them scratching at my window, begging to be let in.

When we finally make it home, the house smells like cinnamon and nutmeg, like Grandma's been baking all day. She moved in with us after Mama passed, saying Daddy needed help with two growing kids. But sometimes I think she came because she knows something about October too, something she's not ready to tell us.

"There you are," she says as we come through the door, her silver locs tied back in a neat bun. "Wash up for dinner. I made your mama's favorite – smothered chicken, mac and cheese, and sweet potato pie cooling on the windowsill."

Sade heads upstairs with her wagon full of leaves, but not before Grandma catches her arm. "Baby girl," she says softly, "you be careful with those things you collecting. Some things ain't meant to be kept."

But Sade just smiles and continues up to her room, where she'll press the leaves between sheets of wax paper, just like Mama taught her, then add them to the albums that line her bedroom walls.

The house feels different when it's just the three of us, like it's holding its breath. Daddy won't be home until late – he works longer hours in October, as if he's trying to stay ahead of the lengthening shadows. Over dinner, Grandma tells stories about growing up in Louisiana, about the things that lived in the swamps and how you had to be careful what you collected and what you left alone.

"Your mama knew," she says, spooning more greens onto my plate. "That's why she started teaching Sade about the leaves. To keep them from finding their way back."

"Back from where?" I ask, but Grandma just shakes her head and starts humming an old spiritual under her breath.

That night, I lie awake listening to the wind coming down from Mount Shasta. It sounds different in October, like it's trying to speak in a language I almost understand. From Sade's room comes the soft rustle of pages turning, the scratch of her pen. She doesn't sleep much during October – none of us do.

I think about Mama, about how she used to spend hours in the garden during autumn, planting bulbs that would sleep through the winter and bloom in spring. "Everything comes back around," she used to say, "but sometimes it comes back wrong."

The scratching at my window starts just after midnight. I pull my grandmother's handmade quilt over my head, but it doesn't block out the sound of dry leaves whispering my name, begging to be let in. They sound like Mama sometimes, in those last few days before she went to sleep and didn't wake up.

Sade's collection grows larger every year. Sometimes I wonder if she's trying to save the leaves, or if she's trying to save us. Maybe both. Maybe in this October state of mind, there's no difference.

I roll over and watch the shadows dance on my ceiling. In the room next door, Sade turns another page in her notebook. The leaves at my window scratch and whisper, and somewhere in the distance, a clock strikes midnight in our own private October country, where the fog rolls down from Mount Shasta and the mist rises up from the Sacramento River.

They say love and fear are opposite emotions, but that's not true. Sometimes they're the same thing wearing different masks. I love my sister, and I fear what she's becoming. Or maybe I fear my sister, and I love what she's becoming. When October wraps around our mountains like a shawl, it's hard to tell the difference.

The leaves keep whispering, and Sade keeps collecting, and I keep watching, caught between love and fear like autumn caught between summer and winter. And sometimes, late at night, I think I understand why Mama went to sleep that October day. Sometimes, when the shadows are long and the air tastes like decay, I think about joining her.

But then I think about Sade, alone with her leaves and her notebooks and her terrible purpose, and I know I can't. Someone has to remember what happens to the leaves she doesn't collect. Someone has to remember why we started collecting them in the first place.

So I lie awake in our mountain home, where the hills disappear into fog and the rivers run with mist, where my sister collects dead things and calls them sleeping, where love and fear dance together like leaves in an autumn wind. And I wait for November, knowing it will come too late to save us, but hoping it might come just in time to help us forget.

Until next October, when we'll do it all again, because that's what autumn people do. We think only autumn thoughts, and we guard against the things that come dancing back, wearing faces made of leaves and memories.

After all, as Grandma says, everything comes back around.

But sometimes it comes back wrong.