Spelldown (12 page)

In the kitchen, I open the cabinet and pull out the gigantic Sunbeam Mixmaster. Another one of Mama’s Green Stamps prizes. It’s white with glossy black trim and has twelve speeds. Looks like a little cement mixer for the kitchen. Cost seven books of stamps. I pasted every one of those stamps myself, and feel like the mixer is half mine.

I put on Mama’s green bib apron with bright white daisies. As I flip through my grandma’s batter-splattered cookbook looking for the sugar cookie recipe, it hits me full force that I never even had a grandmother. Daddy’s mama keeled over from a heatstroke while banging the piano in church one Sunday morning. Mama’s mama had one of her breasts gobbled up by cancer. Their pictures sit on opposite ends of the mantel in the living room. My daddy’s mama looks peaceful, as if she’s sure of heaven. Mama’s mama looks riled up about something. The cookbook I’m using is the riled-up one’s. I’d love to have a grandmother, even if she were cranky. I find the cookie recipe on page 118 and place the rolling pin over the page to hold my place.

Headlights beam in the yard, and a car door slams shut. I hear Daddy’s muffled voice at the front door and run to the living room. Kelly is lugging Daddy across the threshold.

“Just lay him on the rug, Kelly,” I say. “He can sleep there tonight. I don’t want him to wake Mama up.”

Kelly lays him onto the green-and-red-striped runner. “I’ll move him away from the door a bit.” He pulls the rug against the wall. “Got a blanket?”

I pick up a pillow embroidered with poinsettias and toss it to him. “Just put this under his head. I’ll get him a blanket later.”

Kelly lifts Daddy’s head and slides the pillow under it.

“Want something to drink?” I ask.

“No, thanks. Got to be getting back to the station.” Kelly stands at the front door like he wants to say or do something.

“Why did it quit working?” I ask.

“Why did what quit working?”

“The Twelve Golden Steps and all that malarkey.”

“The program didn’t quit working, your daddy quit working the program. He still thinks he can get relief from the bottle. It’s normal to relapse. Just keep praying for him.”

“Thanks for bringing him home.”

“You’re welcome,” Kelly says, then nods his head toward the picture window. “Mighty pretty tree you got there.” He leaves, closing the door behind him.

I tiptoe into the twins’ room and find the shabby gold electric blanket in the closet. I plug it into the outlet in the living room, turn it on low, and spread it over him. I sit on the sofa. Daddy’s face looks like a little boy’s, dreaming of his mama.

Mrs. Harrison’s gift glimmers under the tree. I wonder what the Harrisons are doing tonight. Probably driving up to Charlotte for the Singing Christmas Tree or having a candlelit supper at home. I might as well open the present. The bow comes loose with one tug. Inside is a handmade
card with a Christmas tree colored by Celia. Inside, the card reads
Adeste Fideles
. I poke through the tissue paper and pull out an ornate silver music box. I open it and chimes start playing “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” After it stops, I turn the key and listen again and again.

The music lightens my spirit and thrusts me into the future. I see myself going to Duke University, becoming a doctor, moving to Africa, and doing Jesusy things, like Albert Schweitzer. Or sailing to China, feeding the hungry, and eating with chopsticks, like Pearl S. Buck. Whatever I do, it will probably be on another continent.

I close my eyes and feel like a million sparklers are inside my head. A vision comes to me of twelve angels in blue velvet robes, perched right on top of the house. A few of them have harps. A few have trumpets. One has cymbals, and she’s smashing them together. Mary’s up there too, floating around with her baby, who has a gold shimmer around his little body.

A knock at the door interrupts my vision. I open the front door. Billy Ray stands there in his Midway Theater outfit, smiling. “Heard about your spectacular tree.”

“Come in. You can help me make cookies.”

He comes in, then walks over and checks on Daddy.

“Just another Friday night at the Bridges house,” I chirp.

“At least he’s safe at home.” Our eyes meet. I’d like to cut my tongue out. Crawdad’s in the county jail for passing bad checks.

In the kitchen I give him a bowl, some flour, and the sifter. “You’re in charge of the dry ingredients.” Then, as I cream the sugar and butter together, I tell him all about the paratrooping business and how Baby Jesus got lost in the attic.

1: to make better or more tolerable

As I pack my pajamas into the new suitcase, I write the obituary in my head:

Imploded
is a better word to describe how my head feels. But at least I have my very own Samsonite suitcase. It’s cherry red with a gray silk lining. Mama gave it to me for Christmas, traded in five books of Green Stamps for it.

It’s a miracle, but we made it through another Christmas. Gloria Jean and Wendell insisted we come to their house on Christmas Day. Mama got pretty emotional when she saw Gloria Jean had cooked the traditional meal: turkey with corn bread dressing, giblet gravy, cranberry
sauce, green beans with fatback, sweet-potato casserole with marshmallows on top. She even made one of those icebox fruitcakes with graham crackers and condensed milk that you don’t even have to cook. Thank God, Daddy stayed halfway sober.

Finally, it’s the middle of January. Tomorrow is the state spelling bee. As soon as I finish packing, Mama, Daddy, and I are driving to Anderson to stay at Howard Johnson’s, about a hundred miles from here. I press hard on the top of my suitcase and close the latches. There’s a piece of callused skin on my thumb that’s aggravating me, so I yank it off with my teeth. Blood oozes from the tiny rip. I suck my thumb. The blood tastes rusty and sweet.

Since I won the Shirley County Spelldown, my nail-biting habit has gotten a lot worse. Now I’m chewing the skin around my nails. I can’t help it. Mama used to dip my fingers in garlic salt and castor oil to keep me from biting them. But it never worked. Some people pick their noses. Some smoke cigarettes. Some pray too much. Some drink too much. I chew things that aren’t supposed to be chewed. Daddy calls me Chipmunk because I mutilate my pencils.

“Did you pack your pumps?” Mama says, standing at my door, wearing her charcoal gray slacks and white wool sweater. Every hair is in place, lipstick perfectly applied, cheeks lightly rouged. No matter how much Mama gets on my nerves, I always know I’m in the presence of a lady.

“Yes, ma’am, I packed them,” I say, sucking on my wounded thumb.

“Good. What about your new tights?”

“I packed them.”

“Just wanted to make sure.” She walks back to the living room.

Mama’s been in a twitchy mood ever since last night, when she caught me reading
Tanya Marie’s Enlightened Guide to Astrology and the Tarot
, a thick book I bought at the dime store a while back that also included a deck of tarot cards. She started sermonizing on how it wasn’t good for me to read those hocus-pocus books. Not a single one of them even mention the Lord. I ought to get to the bottom of the religion I was born into instead of dillydallying around with that nonsense, and that since I was born in South Carolina, God intended me to be a Christian. Otherwise, I would have been born in China or India or Africa.

“Don’t forget, you promised to call Mrs. Harrison,” Mama hollers.

I rush to the living room, pick up the phone, and dial the number, sucking my aching thumb. Mama’s sitting on the sofa reading the
Baptist Courier
. The phone rings four times before Mrs. Harrison says hello. “Hey, Mrs. Harrison. We’re leaving in a few minutes. Just wanted to let you know.”

“Bless your little pointed head, I was just thinking about you. Go show them what you’re made of, Karlene. Vowels and consonants. Consonants and vowels. Always in the right order.”

“You still coming tomorrow?” I ask.

“Is a sheep sheepish?” she says.

“Baa-aah, baa-aah,” I bleat. Mama just shakes her head and keeps reading.

Mrs. Harrison laughs. “See you tomorrow, Ace.”

When I put down the phone, Mama rises from the sofa, slings her purse over her shoulder, and picks up both volumes of the dictionary. “Your daddy wants to get to Anderson by six. You know how riled up he gets. I’m going on outside to keep him company.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” I rush into the bathroom, open the cabinet, and grab the metal box of Band-Aids. Daddy honks the horn three times. I spill a bunch of Band-Aids into the toilet.
Damn it all to hell
. I pull one from the box, wrap it around my wounded thumb, then flush the fallen Band-Aids down the toilet.

Outside, Daddy’s standing at the rear of the car, smoking a cigarette, his foot on the bumper. He takes my suitcase and puts it into the trunk, then slams the lid. “Let’s go, Chipmunk.” He winks and holds the car door open for me.

The car smells of Aqua Velva and Listerine.
Velva
sounds like something sexy, lickable. Sounds like the words
velvet
and
vulva
mixed together.
Listerine
sounds like something you’d swish around in your mouth to kill germs. Quite unpoetic to name a nasty-tasting mouthwash after Dr. Joseph Lister, who, after all, discovered
a-n-t-i-s-e-p-s-i-s
. I sit in the backseat of the station wagon, feeling soothed by a rare silence that says everything might work out after all.

I gaze at Daddy as he smokes a Camel with one hand and steers the car down Highway 200 with the other. He

looks a lot like Lloyd Bridges on
Sea Hunt
. Mama looks like a virgin queen from King Arthur days. From the back they look wonderful together. I feel all hunky-dory, as if I’m in a Norman Rockwell painting titled
Girl in the Backseat
.

When we get to the highway, Daddy steps on the gas to pass a car, and a pint of Southern Comfort slides from under his seat into my territory. At least the seal on the bottle is unbroken. I imagine a big, fat eraser eliminating the bottle from the painting we’re in. Then, with my foot, I push the bottle back underneath the seat where it belongs. I have enough of my own crap to worry about. My vocabulary is filled with words I have seen but never heard, and I am afraid I won’t recognize them when they are spoken, that some of the letters will be silent and I won’t know it, like
impugn
, with that stupid silent g that makes the
u
say its name.

I ask Mama for volume
A-K
of the dictionary. I randomly flip to a page and place my finger on a word.
Henchman
, an obedient, unscrupulous follower.
Obedient
and
unscrupulous
don’t seem to belong together. Sometimes dictionary definitions are obscure, like this one, and I have to look up the definition of the definition. But I don’t want to bother Mama for volume
L-Z
, so I put the dictionary on the floor and lay my head on the seat. A while later I awake in a pool of drool. Daddy has already checked into the motel, and we are parked in front of the restaurant.

The waitress is a pretty redhead with good manners, and she brings our drinks right away. Mama and Daddy sit across the booth from me, sipping their coffee from thick beige
mugs. Daddy’s eyes look like those of a starving lion that has stepped into a steel trap. His hands are shaking a little. I understand how hard it is for him to be here like this, trying to act like he doesn’t want a drink. Mama looks at me as if she has never seen me before. They both order fried chicken, rice and gravy, and green beans. I decide to try something I’ve never eaten: Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy. I’ve never eaten a mushroom in my life.

The food arrives and looks appetizing, but the mushrooms have the texture of rubber bands and taste like nothing at all. The Salisbury steak is just plain old hamburger meat molded into an oval patty. The mashed potatoes taste like spitballs.

Later that evening, after we settle into the motel room, I walk across the street to Sears. I’m shocked at how big it is. The Sears in Red Clover is just a catalogue store with a few appliances and lawn mowers, but this is a huge department store. I head straight for the toy department, where I fondle a girl’s bicycle, then yank the plastic streamers hanging from the handlebars. I wonder what kind of glue holds them so firmly in place. I remember the Christmas I got that pathetic little oven from Sears instead of the bicycle I’d circled and memorized in the Green Stamps catalogue:
A Murray girl’s 26-inch deluxe model, turquoise body with chrome fenders and rims, dual headlights, white sidewalls, and waterproof two-tone saddle
. I refused to take the oven out of the box. Eventually, Mama realized Jesus would come back before I baked a precious little cake in the precious little oven, and she shipped it back to Sears.

The smell of fresh popcorn draws me toward a large booth in the center of the store, surrounded by glass containers full of candy corn, jelly beans, chocolate-covered peanuts, peanut brittle, cashews, and
p-i-s-t-a-c-h-i-o-s
. A young man with a crew cut and a
c-o-n-t-a-g-i-o-u-s-
looking case of acne is scooping white puffy kernels from the popcorn machine into bright yellow bags. He looks like an Eagle Scout. Y
VES
B
AUKNIGHT
is engraved on his name tag. I love when
y
pretends to be a vowel.