The Dyer’s Daughter is a journal based on the mother-daughter relationship between June McKenry and her daughter Olivia. The journal is all about natural dyes and the beautiful, soft colours to be found in the natural world. It features 12 dye colours, all used in the making of the journal.
Twelve Bolts of Cloth
At age nine, Flora had asked her father what he had wanted to call her when she was born. He had thought about it and said “Well, I always liked my mother’s name Olivia, though you had so many names already, there hardly seemed any point giving you more.”
“Olivia,” she had said aloud, yes – that was far more normal. A sensible name it had seemed to her, and so Olivia is what she had become.
At age eleven, whilst doing her homework, she had asked her mother “…so, is it a colon or a semi-colon?” June had looked up from her foraging basket and given her ‘that look’, that infuriating half smile-eyebrows up-peering over the top of her glasses look that told Olivia she would never get a straight answer. “June!” she had insisted, “colon or semi-colon?”
“It really doesn’t matter, Olivia, nobody cares,” June eventually replied. There was never any point dragging it out. “I care,” Olivia had thought to herself, “you never care what I care about.”
“Honey, take off your shoes and go outside for a while, you’ll feel better.”
“Take off your shoes?” Olivia glared, “go outside? It’s raining! Who does that? ”
“Well that would be the point,” her mother had said, going back to her sorting. June had an English degree, Olivia never understood why she wouldn’t help.
At age fourteen, Olivia had elected to leave her mother’s home. She said it would be easier for school and later for college. She went to the city to live with her father, a water surveyor. An orderly, rational, tidy, water surveyor. He drove her to school, he picked her up. He hired plumbers when the pipes didn’t work, he paid for piano lessons, he went to every appointment her school asked him to, he went to bed at 10 o’clock and did not like to dance. He was never late for anything, not a single day in his life. He always knew what day it was, where his keys were, and when to use a semi-colon. She had the sense that June had been relieved when she had gone.
At twenty-nine, Olivia finally stopped being angry at her mother and so many things just clicked into place, a place that began to make sense. Now, two years after June’s funeral, it was the first time that Olivia had associated anything June had ever done as making sense.
June Willow McKenry, born 1964, a true flower child. She was twenty-six when she bore her daughter, Flora Leilani Primrose Sorrel Midsummer Clover Rowan McKenry. At twenty-eight she dropped out of law school after one year and went to live on her great grand-parents’ property in rural Pennsylvania. In 1999 June asked Olivia’s father to have her while she did a twelve week course in property and environmental law.
June Willow McKenry who talked to herself, talked to trees and dye pots and cats and junk mail, and apart from her daughter, hardly said two words to another human being. She always knew when it was going to rain, when the geese would fly home, and the name of every green creation in the northern hemisphere. How two people so opposite in every way had ever gotten together would always remain a universal mystery.
Olivia grew up annoyed by a lot of things. For instance, her mother cooked, but not like other mothers. She would make an apple pie and there would be no other food in the house. They’d eat apple pie for three days straight until June decided to cook something again. Or sometimes it would just be apples. They would sit down to eat and literally eat apples. It was too embarrassing to invite friends home. June was too embarrassing. But Olivia was allowed to go to friends’ homes for dinner and sleepovers. Their mothers would do normal things like take them to the mall and let them hang out. June didn’t mix with the other mothers. Olivia walked two miles down to the main road to catch the bus for school, and two miles home every day. When patches of plaster fell off a wall June would drag a piece of furniture in front of it, or hang a bunch of dried herbs over it. Doors came off their hinges and June would use them for an extra table or a pumpkin bed or a bridge over the brook.
June had once gone an entire year without owning shoes. She usually only owned one pair at a time. One day they were at the far end of the garden and June, an excellent shot, had thrown her shoe at a racoon, or rather, at the shed door above the racoon’s head. He had frozen to the spot at the loud thud, and then run for his life when the shoe dropped down onto his head. June, easily distracted and too busy to retrieve the shoe right away, had gone back to look for it a few days later and found it missing. “Oh well,” she had said, “I guess he needed it more than I did.” And she had remained barefoot till the following January.
“Are they dangerous?” Olivia had asked when the racoon ran away.
“No, just lazy,” June replied.
“Lazy?”
“The whole of yesterday he watched me gather acorns, and now that’s all he thinks about, all gathered together nicely in a basket in the shed, and he’d rather have mine than find his own, that’s all.” Olivia scrunched up her chin and bottom lip the way she did whenever she was anxious and June added, “You can put a piece of cheese out for him if you like, he can get his own darned acorns, but he cant make cheese.”
Twice a year Olivia’s father sent her a ticket to come visit. She stayed for two weeks, slept on clean sheets, ate take out and TV dinners, went out with the girl in the next apartment, complained about June, walked on concrete in her shoes and then went home… home to kitchen smells that were not edible, eucalyptus, red cabbage, vinegar and geraniums. Home to piles of dusty paper bags full of dried leaves, flower heads and catkins, piles of notebooks and botanical books with scribbled notes on every page, papers with scrawls and charts and paint splotches, cats sleeping on the stove, jars of brown liquids and strange nature collections, lichens, Old Man’s Beard, fungi and oak galls. Home where all the rooms sort of merged into each other, there were no separate uses, it all became one huge work in progress, but Olivia never figured out the end purpose. She never witnessed June tidy up or do housework, although the bathroom had always been spotless. June tidied by rummaging in a pile until she found what she wanted. What she needed right there, right then, that was June.
There were two distinct periods that Olivia remembered of her mother’s life. It was Flora’s Fields that separated the two. Everyone else called it ‘The Wasteland,’ but June had told her off when she heard Olivia call it that. “How is it a waste?” she had cried, “because there isn’t a house or a car-park or a railway on it?”
“It’s just what they call it June,” Olivia had sighed.
“Well its ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” Olivia exclaimed, “I thought you loved ridiculous names! You named me like you were naming barnyard animals!” It was shortly after this that she had declared herself ‘Olivia.’
Every Sunday at 4 o’clock was when the telephone rang. Olivia would be waiting ready to answer it, and would tell her father all that she had done and learned that week. He would nod and make favourable noises, occasionally chiming in with “that’s fine, well done.” He would close the conversation after ten minutes with “and how’s your mother?”
“She’s fine.”
“Good, good. Well, have a good week, I’ll speak to you next Sunday.”
The phone never rang at any other time, so Olivia remembered distinctly the one time that it did, just after 8pm one Thursday in May. She had come halfway down the stairs in her bare feet and crouched on the step to watch her mother answer it. June had sat down and listened to the caller without speaking for what seemed like forever. Then at last said “thankyou,” put the phone down, leaned back and sighed deeply. Olivia couldn’t tell if it was good or bad news, she went back to her room. That night, she wasn’t sure what sound had woken her up, but when she got up and looked from her bedroom window, June was outside in her nightdress, quite far away, just beyond the big beech tree dancing round a bonfire and waving a branch of something above her head. It was one of those memories that you are never quite sure whether you dreamt it or if it was real. When Olivia came down the next morning, June was coming down from the attic. “If there’s ever any question you’ll find the paperwork up there with my old law books,” she said. Olivia was kept home from school that day and June took her out. She was different that day, distracted as always, but happy or anxious, Olivia couldn’t tell. “You must remember exactly where we walk today,” June had said, “don’t get mixed up with other days and other places you know. Today, this walk, this is important.” They had walked together, which was unusual and June didn’t have her foraging basket, which was unheard of. The basket went everywhere with her and in her pocket she always carried an extra collecting bag and her snips. Sometimes they did go out together, June would gather dyestuffs or herbs or blackberries. Olivia enjoyed blackberry picking but none of the other stuff, she would run ahead and do her own thing while June peered at bark and twigs and took her own sweet time. But today they walked together, and Olivia waited quietly to be told something terrible, but June said nothing except reminding her where they walked. Starting from the house they climbed the bank at the back and reached the edge of the woods by Payton’s Flat. They traced along the tree line and down to the fence which was about a mile from the house. The fence marked the railway which Olivia was never allowed to cross. They followed the fence all the way to the Newtown Crossing, circling back through the fields where Mr. Arnold was allowed to pasture his cows, and came at last to the low ground where they followed Mill Brook part of the way as it trickled back towards the house. Half a mile from here they came to an old stone wall. Your great-great-grandfather built this wall,” June said, “in an old Scottish style,” nobody else around here has walls like this one.” The wall marked the edge of their territory and on the other side of it was The Wasteland. June approached the gate and taking her snips out of her pocket she took down the notice, “Public Notice for Change of Use” it read, “Construction to start 2013”. June folded it and put it in her pocket smiling. She leaned her arms on the top of the wooden gate and Olivia did the same, standing on one of the fence rungs to reach high enough. “This is where our land stops,” June said, “all where we walked today and up to here. But this land belongs to itself now.” She looked over to Olivia and smiled. “We did it, it’s safe.” Olivia had no idea what they had done, but she would never forget the peace on her mother’s face that day. They stood in silence for some time and a bumblebee landed on June’s hand.
“Oh!” Olivia gasped.
“It’s alright,” June assured her, “just look,” the bee sunned itself a while before exploring June’s hand. She lifted it slowly as the bee crawled over each finger in turn. “You’re welcome,” she said as it flew away. On the other side of the meadow, the next property along was Henderson Farm, but that was four miles away from where they stood and barely visible on this hazy, sunny afternoon. Here was twelve square miles of bumblebee heaven and somehow June was part of it. It was astonishingly beautiful that day, Olivia couldn’t remember the meadow ever looking quite that perfect, before or since. A carpet of daisies, cornflowers, long grasses, poppies, and buttercups, and around the gate, vetch, harebells, forget-me-nots and silverweed clung to the shadier areas while bees and dragonflies bobbed about examining all, it was like the whole thing had made a special effort for June’s sake that day. “The Railway can’t touch it,” June had said, “it’s called Flora’s Fields now, we’ll get a sign,” and she had cried, happy, relieved, noiseless crying that shook her body.
The phone rang all the time after that, the newspapers at first, then later advice seekers, students, parties asking for representation, more lawyers. She had to bring the box back down from the attic, and the files kept expanding and growing. Eventually she had to allocate part of the downstairs for an office space. Olivia could see that she hated it, the scheduling, the appointments, the order – when all she craved was the chaos, as Olivia called it. June’s compassion had been one of her strongest qualities.
In some ways, things around the house improved a little after that. Workmen came in and fixed this and that. June would sometimes ask Olivia if she needed money, as though she had only just registered its existence. Olivia never quite knew how to answer. June became more and more distracted and withdrawn. Olivia had not realised back then, but June had anxieties of her own, and as the outside began to intrude on her more and more, the more she became unable to deal with it. It was before Flora’s Fields that June was June, and after it that she began to be pushed and pulled into… not June – June had gotten crowded out. It was then that the world caved in on her, the letters, the telephone, the research, the demands, the constant demands. In one of her saddest moments Olivia recalled her saying “ I feel like the world has turned on me, that I did this good thing, and I have to pay for it. I’m being torn away, torn away from myself.”
Whenever Olivia thought about her mother by accident, those occasional flashes that one gets when you are actually thinking of something else, it was to picture her bent over in the garden, the black soles of her feet exposed, crouching over, tending, searching, gathering, making contented little noises to herself like some storybook creature in the undergrowth, or peering into a dye pot on the old stove, dressed in the green pinafore dress that she favoured because of its big pockets, that had so many stains on it that June was almost camouflaged when she went outside. Somehow these things that had annoyed her most at the time had now turned into her best memories.
Flora Marigold Sweetpea Bryony Blossom Daisy April McKenry, born 2012 to Olivia McKenry, who spent the entire night stroking her baby’s hand and yearning for blackberries.
Seven years later, they stood together in the corridor of their Boston apartment. “This is the last cupboard,” Olivia said to her daughter. She lifted the latch, opened the door and took a deep breath. Twelve bundles of cloth had sat on the top shelf of Olivia’s linen cupboard for so long that that was all the cupboard smelled of now, June’s house, the smell of the outside, of woodsmoke and coal tar soap mixed with a sort of greenness that Olivia could never quite grasp. She took them down one by one and handed them to her daughter, who arranged them into the moving trunk. June had sent a bolt of hand dyed linen every year since Olivia had left home. Every year for twelve years. “I don’t even know how to sew,” Olivia had told her after the first one arrived.
“But I hardly see you,” had been June’s reply, “at least this way, you can see some of me.” Soft yellows, mauves, greens, mocha browns, grey, coral pink. Olivia caressed the soft folds of cloth as she handed them over and felt her mother’s hands. They closed the lid of the trunk together and Olivia locked the clasp. “Right then,” she said to Flora, stroking her yellow hair, “it’s time to look for bumble bees.” Well it was a strange thing to say, Flora thought, because there was always bees in the park, and Grandma’s house was a really long way away, but Mommy had been saying and doing a lot of strange things over the last few days, and she never gave a straight answer when she was like that, so she decided to stay quiet.
By noon of the following day, seven year old Flora was carefully tracing her finger over the letters of the sign that bore her name. “Flora’s Fields,” she repeated.
Olivia watched the sunshine reflecting off her own eyelashes through half closed eyes, the bright light made patterns on the ground through the leaves and Flora almost disappeared behind the tall cow parsley as she climbed up and down the fence and sang to herself. The sun shone down and lulled Olivia under its spell, all the rest of the world began to shrink further and further away till all that was left was this place where they stood, and apart from the sign, there was no indication of where or when they were; it could have been plucked from any moment, past or future. Flora’s Fields lay on one side, and just beyond, the start of the lane home. It was hard to wake herself up. “Come on Flora,” she called at last, “time to go.” Olivia took the handle of her case, Flora jumped down from the gate and skipped along beside her mother. As they reached the edge of the field and the lane began, Olivia said it was time to take off their shoes. “Huh?” said Flora.
“…is not a word.” Olivia said to her, as she slipped off her shoes and picked them up.
“Why are we taking off our shoes Mommy?” Flora asked as she began to pull off her sneakers.
Olivia looked down and stretched out her toes, it was a long time since she had felt the grass under her feet, it felt good. “Mommy, why can’t we wear shoes?” Flora called as she caught up. “Well you can if you like,” Olivia smiled at her, “but I think we ought not to, we’re on June’s ground now.”
