Kathryn Magendie (21 page)

Father tapped on his typewriter.

Mother breezed in with a bowl of grapes. “Snack time.”

“I’m not hungry right now.”

“Well . . . ”

“I just want to read a while.” I knew Mother wouldn’t take the hint, not when she had the look that said she had something to tell me.

She sat on the side of the bed with her hair in the new cut. It was to her chin, and the two sides slid to points that fell forward over her cheeks when she bent down. The back of the cut was a bit shorter than the front. Her new dress smelled like rosewater from the iron, and was too short for her, in colors too loud for her. Yet, when she didn’t open her mouth and say ugly things, she almost looked like a mother I could snuggle up to and giggle with about girl things. I thought about the days before, when she’d almost seemed like the kind of mother I dreamed about having. But she always ruined it.

“I was at my ladies’ club and heard more news about that Sweet-tea and her mother.”

I pretended I didn’t care, but inside I became very still.

“You can do what you want with this information, but I’m just letting you know.” Mother sighed, and in that sigh I thought maybe she didn’t really want to tell me, but I wasn’t sure. “I told you how there’s a rumor that girl’s father lives here in town. Seems Sweet-tea’s mother ran around when she was younger. You know, kind of loose. And she had her baby out of wedlock, with a married man.” She pushed back her hair. “Wasn’t all her fault. Sweetie’s grandmother was a piece of work. Ran off and left her when she was so small. And that grandfather—he was a strange one.”

“Sweetie’s father is dead.”

“No, he’s not. He, a married man, and Sweet-tea’s mother had a torrid affair when she was still a teenager. Sweet-tea is the product of that. Her grandfather took care of them both, I give him that. But there’s a long line of strange behavior up there where they live on that mountain. All kinds of stories.”

My smile dropped bit by bit into a frown, and then I asked, “If Sweetie’s father is here, why doesn’t he go see her?”

“Besides the fact that who knows why men do the things they do?” She squared her shoulders. “Anyway, they say her mother most times can’t get out of bed with her dark moods and some phantom sickness,” she said. “And, I hear there’s been shooting up there? That is unacceptable. You could be hurt, or worse.”

I watched Mother’s dark red lipsticked mouth move. I saw the ugly words spill out and fall on my bedspread. She still had the bowl of grapes held out to me, and her perfect red-tipped fingernails looked like vulture talons. I wanted to stop her from spilling out those awful words, but my jaws locked down.

“Sweat-tea’s mother is trash. No wonder Sweat-tea’s father walked away from them for another woman. Some women can’t hold onto their man . . . men.” She tilted up her chin.

I faced Mother with a fury. “Don’t say that about Sweetie’s mother! She’s good. I’ve seen her, and I like her and you don’t know anything. You don’t know
anything
. It’s not like that. Sweetie’s father is a war hero. He sailed the ocean for treasures! It’s romantic and sweet and I won’t have you talk like that about them!”

Mother stood and pointed her finger at me. “Why, don’t you yell at me, young lady. You’re too intelligent to believe that rubbish or you wouldn’t be leaving Sweet-tea to go traipsing off to ice cream parlors to find new friends.”

The last part stung. I buried my head in my pillow. As her heels clicked out of my room, I said into the starched cotton pillowcase, “You don’t know anything. It’s not l-like that.”

All that day, I lay thinking, reading, wondering, listening to the storm until late afternoon, then I rose and went to Father’s study, knocked and went in. He sat in his leather chair reading pages from his book.

“Can I talk to you?”

“What is it, Princess?” He put down the pages as if he couldn’t bare to look away from them.

“It’s about Sweetie, and her parents.”

“I heard all that from you mother. I don’t care about gossip.”

“It’s not that.” I stood by his chair and tried to get him to look at me, instead of glancing down. “I think Sweetie’s cursed or has magical powers or something. I mean, I know you say everything is science, but some things aren’t making sense.”

“Huh?” He wrote something on the paper. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. She isn’t like other kids. And I’m confused. I want to be her friend, but sometimes I want to be like other kids, like the popular ones, or even the not-so-popular ones.”

He cleared his throat and said, “Look, I know you’re going through
things
right now. Your mother talked to me. Those are natural things. Nothing to worry over. Why, in some tribal communities—”

“
What
? No! That’s not what I’m talking about.” I looked down at my shoes. “I mean. I’m trying to talk to you about Sweetie. There’s something not right.” I whispered, “She doesn’t feel pain. She says she’ll never die.”

He was reading. “It’ll all work out.” He patted my hand. “Right now, your father needs to finish this scene. I’m stumped. You see, there’s this girl and—”

I left his study before he could finish telling me, and went to the kitchen. Mother was at the stove, stirring something. She ignored me and I knew I was getting the silent treatment. The ignoring would go on until I gave her a proper apology.

I stared at her back until she finally turned around. With her hands on her hips, she raised an eyebrow that said,
Well, I’m waiting
.

“All you know how to d-do is make things ugly. Even yourself. You’re buying new s-stuff and have a new hairdo, but you’re still the same inside. No wonder Father stays in his study or off d-doing whatever he does. He wants to be away from you.”

Mother’s face folded in on itself, as if I’d punched it with my fist instead of my words. She stood, her feet planted on the kitchen floor, her new hairdo not quite perfect as before, her short dress showing dimpled knees, her face flushed.

I wanted to take it back, but my angry feelings pressed out of the marrow of my bones and right out of my pores. “All you do is make us unhappy. When you were g-gone to Grandmother Rosetta’s, Father and I were so happy. Happier than ever. The house was quiet and nice and we l-loved it without you.”

“How dare you speak to me that way.” Mother’s chest heaved, and her voice trembled. With a stiff arm, she pointed to my room. “Go. Go now, please.”

I turned to walk away, the victory I thought I’d feel didn’t feel so good after all. Instead of feeling bigger and stronger, I grew smaller and smaller. I was a tiny girl by time I lay on my bed. Tiny as the tiniest germiest molecule.

Outside my door, Mother’s voice broke through, thick and heavy. “No more Sweetie. You hear? No more. I’ve had enough. No more.” There was a sob.

From down the hall, Mother’s bedroom door closed with a
click
, then, more sobs. I’d never heard her cry so hard before. I wondered, did she cry for me, for losing the Melissa she knew to the Lissa I’d become? Or, was she crying for Father? Both of us? Herself? I lay on my bed and wished for things back as they’d been earlier that summer. But it was too late to go back. Everything was rolling down the mountain, faster and faster and faster like a gigantic ice cream snow ball.

NINETEEN

When the timer sounded to let us know dinner was ready, we marched into the dining room, our faces pinchy. I didn’t dare even clink my fork against my plate and draw attention to myself. Father ate while reading his pages. Mother kept her attention on her food. She’d posted the menu on the refrigerator, as she sometimes did, and called her latest creation
Don’t Kiss Me Darling Beef
, which meant roast beef with a whole lot of garlic and onions and some kind of strong spice rub. It was really one of the best meals she’d ever made. And if I let myself be honest about it, her cooking had gotten better, and even her poetry wasn’t as sappy and terrible.

It was hard to think of Mother changing. It was hard to think of her as a person.

“After you do the dishes, Melissa, I want to have a family meeting. We need to straighten this out. We’re a family.” She patted her lips with her ironed and starched and perfect napkin.

I let my sigh escape loud and long.

“And don’t go sighing like a martyr. I am your mother. What I do is for your own good, Melissa Rose.”

Father sipped his wine. He put the glass down on the placemat, looked across the table at Mother, and said, “Melissa is growing up and you treat her like a child.”

“She
is
still a child and needs our guidance. A child is not an amoeba you find under your microscope. You don’t study them; you raise them.”

“Your nagging could peel the bark off a tree.” Father drank the rest of his wine in one gulp. He looked triumphant as he set the glass on the table, refilled his glass, and let some dribble onto the white tablecloth. “Naggity nag nag nag.”

I stared at the wine stain on the white tablecloth, waited for what would happen next. Mother hadn’t said anything.

Father went on, “Sure could. Right off the tree in one long strip.” He made a
ripppping
sound, then, “Nag nag and nag some more. You’d think you’d get tired of hearing the sound of your own voice, for pity’s sake.”

I’d never heard Father speak to Mother in that way. I chanced a look at her.

Tears wet Mother’s eyes and her chin trembled. She stood up from the table, turned as graceful as a dancer, and just as graceful, she left the dining room. I heard her bedroom door close, and the sound of the lock snapping.

I knew Father would be sleeping in the extra bedroom. It had happened before, those separations between my parents; although, Father had never acted as mean before. What usually happened would be arguing, then slammed doors, then after a week, or two, once it was three, Father went crying back to Mother. She’d rock him to her and he’d tell her how stupid and foolish a man he was, how his brain couldn’t always connect to his heart. She’d pat him on the back and say how she just wanted to have a contented family, a nice home, not like her family life had been. Then things would go back to normal for a while.

Father looked at me. “You go on like you’ve been doing. That’s the end of that.” He rose, grabbed his glass and the second bottle of wine that was half-empty. He then said, “Wait. What were you saying about your friend? Something about pain and dying or something?”

“You must have dreamed it or thought it up in your books, Father.”

He looked confused, and then walked heel-to-toe-heel-to-toe to his study. That door clicked and locked, too.

I gathered the dishes to wash. Maybe after this fuss was over, Father wouldn’t pretend to be a pushover to Mother and then take it out on her in other ways, and instead he’d pay more attention to her. Maybe she’d soften up some, because Father would show he loved her more than his science and his books. Maybe we’d stay in the mountain valley and not have to move again. I poured dishsoap into the sink, watched the bubbles rise.

One huge bubble lifted into the air and stayed right at eye level. I tried to see to the other side; the other side was wavery and blurred but beautiful. I wanted to step through to the other side of the bubble, step through and see what things were like there. The bubble lifted, lifted, hit the ceiling and disappeared.

***

On the way to Whale Back early the next morning, I hummed the theme to Flipper. I wondered if Sweetie would be there already, hiding behind a tree or thicket to jump out and say, “Hah!” I was ready for us to be the
old
us—best friends and blood-bound sisters. Sweetie was right. The mountain and creatures were the important things. I would stay a girl instead of a woman for as long as I could. Maybe forever. The summer lasted forever in books and in dreams, why not for me?

I ran along the path, in my new shorts and t-shirt. The inseam of the shorts didn’t ride up. At the old mossy rock, I sat and waited. After thirty-one minutes, I slapped my forehead. We hadn’t written where to meet. Our plans were messed up with all that had been going on. Maybe she’d left a moccasin mail. Hidden in the thicket under our rock was the plastic bag I’d put my note to Sweetie in about Grandmother Rosetta. And, I hadn’t noticed before, but there was also red yarn tied to the branches, and more leading away down the trail.

“Sweetie! You did it!” I laughed and clapped. She’d remembered what I’d asked her about: tying yarn to mark the way. I opened the bag and slipped out Sweetie’s note and a map. I looked at the map first. There were circles with “yarn” written in them. I thought it was a nice touch. But as I read her note, my happiness faded away, across the mountains, and off a high ridge, lost, floating up and away like the bubble.

mama got bad sick. worser than she ever been. got you a map. tied yarn on them branch like you said. guess i need you come since i’m a bit
skart
skared and need help.

I grabbed my satchel, ran then, fast as I could go and still read the map and search for the yarn Sweetie left for me to find her place. The red threads were tied here and there, wet and dripping from the storm. Things looked familiar, but sometimes they looked all the same. I passed rocks and boulders we named, trees we carved our initials into, following those strings of red yarn, checked the map when I couldn’t see yarn.

Below Sweetie’s cabin, I ran up the hill, breathing hard, sweaty, dirty. I knocked once, and then just turned the knob and let myself in, threw my satchel on the floor by the door. I smelled the sick right off, and something else, like something was rotting. I gagged, ran up to Sweetie’s room first, but her bed hadn’t been slept in. I didn’t want to go in Miss Mae’s room, but I had to.

I hurried down the stairs and called outside her mother’s door. “Sweetie?” There was no answer. My stomach knotted and twisted. I took a deep breath, let it out, and opened the door. Sweetie lay in bed with her mother, and they were both very still. The room smelled like vomit and sweat, but the rotted smell wasn’t in there, so I hoped it was something else, something in the kitchen or a mouse or something that’d died. I went to the bed, still scared of what I would find. Their eyes were closed.

“Sweetie?” I reached out and touched her. She didn’t move, so I pushed her shoulder, saying, “Please please please please.”

She raised her head from the pillow, and I almost fainted with relief. She said, “Lissa?”

She struggled to sit up and as I helped her, I asked, “Are you sick?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Mama’s bad sick. Not me.”

She was wearing an army jacket that was three sizes too big for her. It made her look smaller, pitiful, and sad. I asked, “Are you sure you aren’t sick?”

She shook her head. “Just Mama.”

My stomach hurt from all the guilt and foolish feelings curdled deep inside. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Didn’t I learn you nothing?”

“I wanted to see Jeremy and that’s why I went to town. I wanted to do what my brother used to do. He made it all sound so fun and happy. Then Mother punished me over my smart mouth. And then the storm. It’s all so stupid. I’m a stupid idiot. I’m sorry.”

“This is not about what you been feeling or doing, Miss-Lissa, not this time.” She let out a sigh, said, “We will worry over you being a stupid-idiot later.” She stumbled out of bed and stood wobbling.

I shrank to a tiny size. I remembered a teacher once telling me that not everything was about me. How I needed to see the world from other’s perspectives and that was what growing up was about. Or maybe Mother told me that. Or Father. Someone . . . someone.

“I’m losing my mind, Lissa. Preacher didn’t give me no more them pills and they’s almost gone.” She shook her head, as if to sling the preacher’s words from her ears. “He said my heathen ways was hurting her not helping.” Her mouth trembled.

“The preacher said that?”

“When I went to fetch Mama’s medicine, he told me she had to quit them pills. He said if I really wanted to help her, I’d try God’s way, even if I didn’t believe in it.”

“God’s way?”

“She’s been getting sicker and sicker without them pills. I been trying to help her.” She picked at thread on the quilt. “He told me I got to think of her and let her be healed proper. Maybe this time it’s true.”

“Healed proper? What’s he mean?”

“He said they’s a faith healer in a tent come to town. Said my mama believed in faith healing even if I was an ornery mule and didn’t believe in nothing but mountain evil ways.” Her face reddened.

“Hey! I bet that’s what Mother and her ladies’ group were gossiping about the other day. They went on and on about a tent at the edge of town, and all kinds of singing and yelling going on. We passed it the other day. I saw it, Sweetie; I saw it!”

Sweetie took a cloth from a basin of water and washed her mother’s face. Her mother groaned and tossed her head, then went still again. “I will do whatever I got to do to help Mama. Even listen to that toady preacher.” Her face hardened until it was almost like one of Zemry’s masks.

“I know exactly where that tent is, too.”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“I saw it. Mother said the preacher was up to strange shenanigans. She told me to keep away from it. It’s got to be the same thing. How many church tents could there be?”

“My magic tea don’t seem to be working. Maybe the preacher is right. I don’t know, Lissa. What about how Grandpaw taught me? I can’t set my mind straight.” She rubbed her eyes again. “I’m wore out.”

I followed her to the kitchen. With a long match, she lit the stove, and put a kettle of water on to boil. Her hands were shaking. She then picked up a nasty rotten potato, stepped to the opened window, and threw it out.

“I still don’t get this healing stuff. If the preacher has medicine, then he should give it to you.”

She lowered her head as she chopped a root, her tangled hair falling over her face. “He said she left the church cause of me. She was shamed. Said we got to release all the demons and then she’ll be better.”

“Release the demons?”

She bit her lip, hard. Blood beaded. “He said her head hurt because the devil was in there biting her brain.” She let out a sob, but she didn’t cry. I’d never seen her cry.

I touched Sweetie’s shoulder, her bones were sharp against my hand. “He’s a liar and he’s mean. Don’t listen to that stuff.”

“Then who I got to listen to? I done all I can for Mama and it is not working no more.”

“What about a doctor?”

She shook her head as she cut up leaves. “Can’t go to no doctor.”

“Why not? That doesn’t make sense.”

She looked at me. “Life don’t all’a time got to make sense, Lissa. Sometimes it just don’t.”

“What about Zemry? He’d do anything for you and your mother.”

“I done tried. He weren’t home.”

“Maybe he’s home now.”

She put the roots and leaves in a strainer. “I left Mama to put the note and yarn and when I got back, she was walking outside without no clothes on.” She bit her lip again, drawing more blood, then said, “Oh, it was pitiful, Lissa. She was looking for some little kitty she had when she was a girl. I likened to never got her back inside and in the bed.” The water bubbled and boiled. Sweetie poured it over the leaves and root shavings, and then put a dishcloth over it. “When I got to leave her, it’ll be to see that healer. Got to be done. Much as it leaves my tongue bitter.”