Rebel McKenzie (10 page)

1. M
   ake good impressions on others and cultivate the qualities of charm, confidence, and personality.
   
2. P
   ractice wholesome, healthy thoughts.
   
3. B
   e neat, clean, and attractive.
   
4. H
   ave a sunny disposition.
   
5. P
   ractice good ethics: honesty, fairness, courtesy, and respect for the rights and feelings
   

“P
ersonally, I think Miz Odenia's standards are slipping,” pI said to Lacey Jane as we headed down the street, clinging to patchy shade. It was Saturday, hot as blue blazes. Lynette was off from school and work, so Rudy had stayed with her.

I went on with my complaint. “The food we served at her card party yesterday was terrible. Canned soft drinks. Peanuts. Vanilla
wafers
. At her other party, she fixed fancy sandwiches and tea cakes.”

“You didn't notice it was stuff we couldn't spill?” Lacey Jane said. “Miz Odenia probably doesn't trust us. And after the way you spied on Bambi's mother, I'm surprised she still wants to give us pageant lessons.”

“Bambi's mother cheats,” I said. “She acts like butter won't melt in her mouth, but she's a card cheat.”

Miss Odenia was pulling weeds in her zinnia border. When she saw us, she stood and waved. “'Morning, girls.”

“'Morning. Are we gonna practice walking and turning today?” I asked, following Miss Odenia into her trailer.

“I think you have pivot turns down,” Miss Odenia replied wryly. Obviously she hadn't forgotten the neat pivot I had done at Viola Sandbanks's party. “Today we're going to work on the talent part of the pageant.”

An old-fashioned record player was set up on her coffee table. I flipped through her collection of record albums.

“I never heard of any of these people,” I said.

“That's good, isn't it?” Lacey Jane asked Miss Odenia. “Bambi sings an old-timey song and the judges like it.”

Miss Odenia nodded. “Bambi also plays an unusual instrument. Harpists and violinists are often in the top ten. Pageant judges like to see a show. You need to stand out. Be unique.”

“Unique like play the ukulele behind your head?” I said. No way was I going to do anything that stupid.

“Make fun of Bambi all you want, but she has a nice voice. Her mother was in the Sweet Adelines. Singers connect better with audiences.” Miss Odenia put a record on the turntable. Judy Garland's “Over the Rainbow” flowed out of the speaker. “Lacey Jane, sing along, please.”

“What? Really? Okay.” Lacey Jane clasped her hands together and belted out,
“Some-WHERE O-ver the rain-BOOOWW, Way UP hiiiigh—”

Miss Odenia made chopping motions with her hand. “Lacey Jane, you aren't even on key. Rebel, you try.”

I tried to figure out where Lacey Jane went wrong. Maybe she was loud in the wrong places.
“SOME-wherrrre o-VERRR the rain-BOOOOOWW, WAAAY up—”

Miss Odenia lifted the needle so fast, she scratched her record. “Maybe I'm going at this backward. Tell me what talents you have. Rebel?”

“I have
lots
of talents,” I said, as if I had to wade through drifts of blue ribbons just to go brush my teeth. “I can hear like a dog and read things upside down and I'm a very good observer. Plus, I'm a paleontologist.”

And an expert belch-talker, but Mama always said it didn't pay to brag too much.

“Hmmm. Those are all interesting abilities, Rebel, but kind of hard to perform onstage. Do you play a musical instrument?”

“No.”

Lacey Jane raised her eyebrows. “What about that you-phone thing?”

I had to think what she meant. “Oh! The eu
phonium.
I'm really not that good.”

Miss Odenia turned to Lacey Jane. “What about you?”

Lacey Jane dug the toe of her sandal into the rug. “I don't have a lick of talent. When we put on plays in school, I always paint the sets.”

Miss Odenia put her arm around Lacey Jane's shoulders.

“Everyone has a natural gift in something. It just needs to be brought out. Sit down and think about what you'd like to do. I'll work with Rebel first.”

“I can do anything,” I said, practically quivering with talent. “Except play the ukulele behind my head. I mean, I can. I just won't.”

“Because you like to
talk
a lot,” Miss Odenia broke in, “I think you should do a recitation of a poem.”

“You want me to tell a
poem
for my talent?”

“Not tell, recite. Act it out dramatically. Watch me do ‘The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe. ‘Once upon a midnight dreary—'” She hunched over like a witch. “‘While I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.'” She nodded over an invisible book. “‘While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.'” She looked up sharply, as if she heard someone knocking.

“Where's the poem at?” asked Lacey Jane. “I don't see you reading it.”

“You memorize it. I still remember the poetry I recited when I was a girl. ‘The Raven.' ‘The Village Blacksmith.' ‘Hiawatha.'”

Miss Odenia doubled over suddenly. I thought she might be having a spasm, but she was laughing.

“In fourth grade, I got up to recite ‘The Village Blacksmith,' and my mind went blank as a slate! I could only remember the first line. ‘Under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands.' And stands and stands and stands and stands, and stands and stands and
stands
.”

“So what poem do you want me to recite?” I asked, not much liking this talent.

She handed me a book called
Complete American Poems
. “Pick out something by Longfellow. Not ‘Hiawatha.' Everybody knows that one.” Everybody but me. “Try ‘Evangeline' or ‘Paul Revere's Ride.'”

“I figured out what I want to do,” Lacey Jane announced, sliding off the sofa. “I want to dance.”

“An interpretive dance!” Miss Odenia exclaimed. “Good choice! Put a song on the record player and start moving the way the music makes you feel.”

Lacey Jane pulled out a record with a brown-haired woman on the cover. “This one,” she said, pointing to the list on the back.

“‘Sweet Dreams' by Patsy Cline? Do you know this song?” Miss Odenia asked.

“No, but—I like her brown eyes,” Lacey Jane said. “I want to hear the song.”

Miss Odenia dropped the needle on the spinning record. Instantly, a chorus of swirly violins poured into the room and then a powerful voice filled every molecule of space.

“Sweeeeeeeeeet dreeeeams of yoooouuu.”
The voice slipped into my body, slid down my arms and legs. It gave me the chills. I'd never heard anything like it.

If Lacey Jane could dance to Patsy Cline's song, she would win the talent part of the pageant. I could recite the entire encyclopedia, but it would be a waste of time.

“How does the song make you feel?” Miss Odenia asked her. “Let the music flow through you and move.”

Lacey Jane swayed a little. She shuffled her feet to the left and then the right and did a little hop-thing. Her arms hung stiffly at her sides. Then she stopped.

She couldn't dance. Not a single step. Probably had to do with that lurching walk of hers. My heart soared. I still had a chance!

Lacey Jane burst into tears.

“Oh, honey, it's not that bad,” Miss Odenia said, patting her on the back. “We'll find something else for you to do.”

“No! I'm gonna dance to that song!” Lacey Jane's wet face was splotched and red. “I'll practice night and day and it'll be good! You wait!”

“All right,” Miss Odenia said. “We've worked enough this morning. Let's have some refreshments. I have soft drinks and cookies left from yesterday.”

When we were sitting around the kitchen table, Miss Odenia tactfully kept the conversation away from the subject of pageant talents.

“I don't think it's going to be as hot today,” she said. “The paper called for only in the mid-nineties.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Ninety-five is so much cooler than ninety-eight. We'd better dig out our winter coats.”

Miss Odenia laughed. “I had the strangest dream last night.” She gazed out the window over the sink. “I was back home in Terrapin Thicket. And everything was just like it was when I was a girl. The bachelor buttons Mama grew along the fence. Our dog, Daisy, dozing under the chinaberry tree.”

Personally, I get bored listening to other people's dreams because they sound so dumb. But Lacey Jane seemed to be hanging on every word.

“I walked up the porch steps,” Miss Odenia went on. “And my old shoe box of paper dolls was sitting by the porch swing, where I kept it. Mama's old sewing scissors were lying there, like I'd been cutting up the Sears, Roebuck catalog and gone inside the house for a minute. I could hear Mama in the kitchen, humming as she dried dishes. In the garden, I saw a cloud of dust—Pap plowing under the cucumber patch. Oh, they both passed so many years ago, my heart squeezed to think they were alive again.”

Her long slim fingers sketched her dream in the air, like watching a flower blossoming.

“And then I saw, sitting on the arm of the porch swing, my bottle of Revlon nail polish.”

“Cherries in the Snow,” I said.

“Yes! And don't you know I sat right down on the porch floor and pulled off my shoes and started painting my toenails. Except my feet were old and wrinkly like they are now. I was my regular old self, but inside I felt eleven or twelve again.”

“What happened?” Lacey Jane asked.

“I was painting the little pinky toenail—the one that's so hard to reach—when somebody came up the walk. I could only see old work boots. I kept trying to raise my head up to see who it was, but everything above the shoes was dark, like somebody had taped my eyes partway shut. And then I woke up.”

“Do you think it was Ercel?” Lacey Jane said. “Bringing you the Marriage Turtle?”

“The Marriage Turtle,” I said scornfully. “Honestly, Lacey Jane, I bet you still believe in the Easter Bunny.”

“Job? I don't know,” Miss Odenia replied. “If it was Ercel, wouldn't I have been able to see him? Oh!—today is Saturday.”

“Did you forget to set your trash out or something?” I asked.

“No, it's about telling your night-before dream on a Saturday.” She thought a moment. “‘Friday night's dream on the Saturday told is sure to come true, be it never so old.' I haven't remembered that in years! My granny taught me that saying.”

“You don't believe that, do you?” I said. “It's not very scientific.”

“Not everything has to be scientific,” Lacey Jane said.

“There's some stuff you can't explain.”

Miss Odenia put our glasses on the counter. “Lands, I was supposed to be at Viola's twenty minutes ago to pick up my Madame Queen order.” Leaning against the sink, she toyed with the dishrag. “I'm so tired of jewelry parties and playing cards.”

“Then quit,” I said. Honestly, grown-ups made things so complicated. “Thanks for the Cokes. And the lesson.”

Lacey Jane paused by the front door. “Did you see your mother in the dream?” she asked Miss Odenia.

She shook her head. “No, but I knew she was there.”

All the way back to our trailers, Lacey Jane was quiet. But that didn't matter. I talked enough for both of us.

“Hand me that bobby pin and don't open it with your teeth,” Lynette said to me. She twisted a hank of Rudy's fine bangs into a flat snail and anchored it with two crisscrossed bobby pins. “There! Pin curls with ends outside the curl. And pin curls with the ends
inside
the curl.”

Rudy grinned at himself in Lynette's makeup mirror. “Cool! Metal Head!”

I wondered what Mud Hog Chuck would say if he walked in and saw his only son sprouting pin curls. No worries there. Chuck only seemed to call Lynette after Rudy was in bed. Rudy always got upset when he found out he'd missed talking to his father.

“How come you have to do such old-fashioned hairstyles?” I asked, glancing at her cosmetology book. “Nobody wears their hair like that anymore.”

“Some old lady might and I have to be able to do it.” Lynette accidentally jabbed a bobby pin in Rudy's scalp. “Oops. Sorry, dipsy doodle.”

The doorbell rang.

“Leave that mongrel out there,” Lynette said. “Doublewide threw up on my bedspread this morning.”

“Y'all home?” Lacey Jane called. I let her in. She was grinning with excitement. “Guess what? Daddy gave me thirty dollars to buy a pageant dress!”

“Well, I hope you find something real pretty,” I said with fake heartiness. Lacey Jane already had a zillion dresses. Like she needed another one.

She punched me on the arm. “
Both
of us! We split the money.”

“Your father's buying Rebel a pageant dress?” Lynette asked.

“Yeah. Because he's glad she's here, he said.”

I looked down at the floor. Lacey Jane's father probably meant he was glad I was Lacey Jane's friend. He didn't know I was her fake friend, just like Ainsley Carter was my fake friend. She dumped me in fourth grade, but I still pretended we were best friends so I wouldn't seem so pathetic.