Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (3 page)

While walking around the side of the house, I saw Dad’s car parked in the driveway. Just as I opened the back door, I heard Momma’s voice burst through the air. “No. Get out!”

“Damn it, Camille, calm down. We need to talk.”

There was a furious jumble of words, ending with the sound of breaking glass. I ran across the kitchen and hid inside the broom closet. Above me I could hear the shuffling of feet, and then Dad’s words boomed through the house. “Camille, you’ve got to stop this. Now, sit down and—”

Momma screamed, “Don’t come near me. I hate you!”

The slamming of her bedroom door shook the house, and a moment later Dad pounded down the stairs. I stood stock-still in the darkness of the closet, and when he came into the kitchen, I held my breath. When the screen door slapped shut, I pushed open the closet door and peered out the window. As I watched my father get into his car and roar away, I decided to give the praying business a try.

Later that night, while Momma was asleep on the sofa, I searched through a chest of drawers in her bedroom until I found the strand of pearls she kept tucked inside a pink satin pouch. After pulling an old doily from beneath a lamp and grabbing a Christmas candle from a box in the closet, I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I bobby-pinned the doily to my head, lit the candle, and got down on my knees by the window. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, I gazed into the sky and rubbed the pearls between my fingers until they grew nice and warm.

“Hello. My name is Cecelia Rose Honeycutt, and I live at 831 Tulipwood Avenue. The preacher on the radio said if we opened our hearts and asked, we’d be saved. He said it was that simple. So I’m asking, will you please save Momma? Something’s wrong with her mind and it’s getting worse every day. And while you’re at it, will you save me too? There’s nothing wrong with
my
mind, but I sure could use some help down here. I’ll do anything you say. Thank you. Amen.”

I prayed for several weeks, counting off one pearl for each prayer. Every day I watched for signs of improvement, but Momma never got any better. There were sixty-one pearls on my mother’s necklace, and if something didn’t happen soon, I’d run out of prayers. One day it occurred to me that it was time to go directly to God. But I was a little worried about that idea.

Though I was nervous about it, I decided I had nothing to lose, so I went ahead and prayed until I came to the last pearl on the necklace. But summer faded into autumn, and nothing in my life changed but the color of the leaves on the trees. Either God never heard me or had a whole lot more important things to worry about.

On a warm October night I sat outside and rested against a maple tree. I gazed at the branches above me, and while watching the moonlight ride the copper leaves as they let go and swirled to the ground, I wondered about all the prayers I’d said.

When I went inside the house, I fi gured I’d said enough prayers to last a lifetime, so I tossed the doily and the candle in the trash, put Momma’s pearls back inside the satin pouch, and went upstairs to read a book.

Books became my life, or maybe I should say books became the way I escaped from my life. Every day I studied my homework lessons until I knew them inside and out. And, in a strange, upside-down way, Momma’s craziness helped me learn more and rise to the top of my class. For every dish, saucer, or glass she threw against the wall, I’d add a book to my reading list. And every time she cried, I’d read an entire column of words in the dictionary. By the time I was eleven years old I’d read a whole lot of books and knew a ton of words.

When the girls in my class raced home after school to play board games or make themselves up with their mothers’ cosmetics, I turned and walked in the opposite direction. Down shade-dappled sidewalks I’d go until I reached the Willoughby Public Library. I was happy sitting alone on the cool floor between the tall wooden shelves, but I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t long for a living, breathing girlfriend to talk with. Laugh with. Just
be
with. Every day I ached to hear my footsteps walk in rhythm with those of another girl. When that ache got to be too much, I tried to pretend I didn’t need anybody—including a mother.

But my pretending ended on a windy spring day when I was twelve years old.

When I came home from school and opened the front door, a cloud of gray smoke swirled into my face. I dropped my books and ran into the kitchen to find a saucepan burning on the stove. Coughing till I thought I’d choke, I grabbed a pot holder, put the scorched pan into the sink, and turned off the burner. After opening the windows and doors and fanning the smoke till the air cleared, I looked around to see how much damage had been done. Gooey cheese and burned macaroni were stuck to the stovetop and splattered on the cupboard doors, and the smoke had left a gray fi lm on the ceiling. While I stared at the mess and wondered how I’d ever clean it up, I heard Momma wail like her hair was on fire.

I bolted up the stairs and found her sitting in the middle of her bed, wearing a red lace bra, a petticoat, and her tiara. She was crying so hard I could barely find her face behind all that blotched puffiness. Momma smelled real strange—like hair spray and Shalimar perfume mixed with urine.

As I moved across her room, my heart went wild, like a bird beating its wings against a closed window. I wrapped my hands around the bedpost to steady myself. “What’s the matter, Momma?”

Her face turned tragic. “Look at this,” she said, lifting her scrapbook.

The picture she wanted me to see was a photograph of her smiling like a goddess in her white pageant dress. A green silk sash was draped from one of her shoulders to the opposite hip, and the words 1951 VIDALIA ONION QUEEN were written across it in glittery script. She was standing on a skirted platform framed by two wooden barrels overflowing with onions.

“My life is here; this is my
real
life,” she whimpered, poking the picture with a stiff finger. She wiped her eyes, smearing mascara across her cheeks. “I was so beautiful and young.”

Knowing that compliments always made her happy, I took in a breath and said, “You’re still beautiful, Momma.”

Her chapped lips quivered. “You think so?”

I nodded and tried to think of something to say that would bring her back to reality. “But Momma, winning that pageant wasn’t your life—it was only a
day
in your life—that’s all. Mrs. Odell says life is what we make it. Maybe you’d be happier if you adjusted your thinking a bit.”

She looked at me with dilated eyes. “Who’s Mrs. Odell?”

My stomach started to churn, sending a wash of bile into my throat. I leaned my forehead against the bedpost and took in a slow breath of air. “She’s our neighbor, Momma. She lives next door. Remember?”

“Our neighbor is Colonel Braxton Griffin. He’s a direct descendant of General Robert E. Lee and a fine Southern gentleman.”

“No, Momma, please listen to me. There is no Colonel Griffin. Mrs. Odell has
always
been our neighbor.”

She screwed up her face and looked at me like
I
was the one who was nuts. I had the horrible feeling that she had, once and for all, slipped over the edge. She began rocking from side to side, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I walked to the side of the bed, sat down, and took hold of her hand. I could hardly hear my own voice when I said, “Momma. What’s my name?”

She stopped rocking and stared at me for the longest time. The room grew quiet. The clock on her night chest ticked on and on. I swallowed hard. “Who am I, Momma?”

The blank look on her face terrified me. As I was about to run next door and get Mrs. Odell, a small flicker of reality sparked in her eyes.

“Momma, what’s my name?”

“Cecelia Rose,” she blurted. Then she crushed the scrapbook against her chest, flopped forward, and buried her face into the bedspread.

“You stay here. Everything will be okay. I’ll be right back.” I rose from the bed, walked down the hall on shaking legs, and drew a hot bath. While the tub was fi lling, I returned to her bedroom. One by one I pried her fingers from the scrapbook, helped her out of bed, and led her into the bathroom. Why, I don’t know, but Momma refused to take off her bra and slip. I didn’t have the energy to argue, so after I gathered a wad of tissue and wiped bubbles of snot from her nose, I let her sink into the tub while I sat on the toilet lid and began reading aloud from one of my Nancy Drew books.

When Momma’s tears finally subsided, she looked at me with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “Is Nancy Drew a friend of yours? I don’t recall.”

My mouth dropped open in disbelief. I was so worn out by her illness that I wanted to scream. I stared at her, shaking my head. “I don’t have any friends.”

“You have lots of friends,” she said, scooping up a drift of soap bubbles and blowing them from the palm of her hand. “They come in and out of the house all the time.”

A sudden, seething anger flared inside me. It was so powerful that my hands started to shake. I grabbed a hand mirror from the side of the sink and held it close to her face. “How could I have friends? Just look at what you do to yourself.”

Her lips parted when she saw her reflection, and a slow, unspeakable sadness fell across her face. She turned away and gazed at the flowery wallpaper, as if the secret to her damaged life was hidden behind a faded petal or leaf.

I put down the mirror, ashamed by what I’d just done. “I’m sorry, Momma. I didn’t mean it.”

Without looking at me, she whispered, “Nancy Drew is jealous because I’m a pageant queen and she’s not.”

I lowered my eyes and went back to reading my book.

When the bathwater grew cold, I helped Momma out of the tub, peeled off her slip and bra, and dried her off. After getting her into a nightgown, she climbed into bed and fell asleep before I fi n-ished untangling the tiara from her hair. When I finally pulled it free, I set it on the night chest and went downstairs to the kitchen.

After fi lling a bucket with hot soapy water, I scrubbed the macaroni and cheese off the stovetop, then I stood on a chair and wiped down the cupboard doors. There was nothing to be done with the scorched pan, so I tossed it in the garbage. Once I’d cleaned everything up, I got down on my knees, reached behind the stove, and pulled the plug from the outlet. From now on Momma could eat cold sandwiches unless I was home to keep an eye on things

Though I always tried to hide the worst of my mother’s illness from everyone, that night I couldn’t stop myself from running next door to Mrs. Odell’s. I was too embarrassed to tell her the really bad parts of what had happened, but I managed to give her an idea of what had gone on.

She wrapped me in her arms. “Oh, honey, your mother is a tortured soul. Shall I go over and see if I can help her?”

“She’s sleeping,” I said, fighting back tears.

“Good. Then, you’ll stay and have supper with me.”

Hungry for anything that even remotely resembled normal, I followed Mrs. Odell around her little kitchen, but she didn’t seem to mind. We talked about what I was learning in school as she prepared our meal, and then she served it up on chipped porcelain plates while I set up TV trays in her living room. Pretty soon I all but forgot about Momma as we ate our supper and laughed at a rerun of
I Love Lucy
.

After we did the dishes, Mrs. Odell and I played Chinese checkers until it grew dark, and then she walked me home. She went upstairs to check on Momma, and returned a few minutes later with a sad look on her face. “She’s in a deep sleep, honey. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.”

Mrs. Odell gave me a squeeze and left, her white hair glowing like a fuzzy moon in the darkness. As I stood at the window and watched her disappear, the truth blazed in my mind. There would never be a better day, because no matter what day it was, my mother, Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen, was crazy.

I blew a foggy circle on the windowpane and pressed my palm against it. The coolness of the glass was strangely comforting. While watching the mist evaporate around my fingers, I thought about Gloria.

Gloria used to live across the street. She and Momma were friends and had spent a lot of time together when I was real little. They would do each other’s hair like the pictures they’d seen in magazines, and sometimes they’d dance around the living room while watching
American Bandstand
on TV.

When Momma started having her spells, it was Gloria who tried to talk to my father.

I remembered the day I was sitting in the grass by the side of the house, playing with a toy bear. I looked across the street and saw Gloria unloading bags of groceries from her car. As I was about to call her name and wave, my father pulled into our driveway. When Gloria saw him, she trotted across the street, her short black hair shining in the sun.

“Carl, I need to talk to you. It’s important. Something’s wrong with Camille,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m worried about her, and I’m scared for Cecelia. Please come over to my house so we can talk in private. I’d like to—”

“Gloria, I’ll handle my own family,” Dad said, holding up his hand.

“I just think—”

But Dad turned and left her standing in the driveway.

Gloria was never the same after that day. She came over less and less, and then she stopped altogether. She’d always smile and wave hello whenever she saw me, but she didn’t come across the street and talk to me like she used to. Then one day a big green moving van pulled up and parked in her driveway. Later that afternoon, Gloria and her husband locked their front door and moved away. She didn’t even say good-bye.