WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (11 page)

The charismatic DJ on the microphone said, “All skate. All skate.” Lights flickered and the disco ball in the center rink spiraled in a cosmic glow of colors and lines. Bangs, clangs and loud shrills 
came from behind the partition. 
The music blared from the speakers and a mob of skaters entered the rink. The particle board
partition was like a rubber band pop to the face.  It knocked me clean on my back.  I felt a leering dark shadow over me. 
It was Sue Fletcher.
Her slanted eyes told me she knew I was snooping and likely heard every word.  To save face, I grabbed the wallet and jumped up, “This must be yours
”
and I skated away.  Evidently, a group of boys were speed skating where they shouldn’t have been and careened into the table of women gossipers, and knocking the partition off its stand. 

That’s okay, gossip fest or not, I had
all the information I needed for now.  I skated around the rink and pondered it.  Every family has a pink elephant, imagine that? 
It’s a secret that’s not really a secret, per say. A secret behind the secret but everyone refuses to talk about the secret because the secret is in plain sight for everybody to see but no one wants to talk about it, so it’s really not a secret but a pink elephant. It’s confusing but made total sense to me. I couldn’t wait to start searching. Would our pink elephant be big as Texas, as big as Baptist churches, as big as Texas hairdo’s
? 

Lena picked us up from the skating
and I didn’t hesitate. 
As soon as the door slammed I asked her where I should start looking for our pink elephant. She almost had a wreck pulling out on the highway. I grinned and took this as a sign I was on the right track. 

“Where on earth did you hear such a thing?” Lena said in a snippy tone. “Have you been hanging around that 
girl
again?” I rolled my eyes. 
Not again.
 That
girl
is part of a white trash family who lived down the road. I learned real quick-like growing up in
a small southern town that families are labeled and white trash is only one of the nicer ones. 
Lena forbid us to have anything to do with
the likes of white trash. 
That
girl
she referred to is
Bonnie McAdam's. 
Bonnie is Mag’s age and a freckled redhead with matted hair and impetigo from top to bottom, a skin conditio
n that came from being unclean, so sayeth Lena.  Bonnie’s mother
reminded me of Natasha, a cartoon character on Rocky and Bullwinkle, pale skin, toothpick figure and oily black hair. 
Her name fit her perfect too. 
Lucinda
Pearl’s paper skin contrast with her black eye liner and it made her look like a vampire.  Lucinda was having an affair
with a married man which didn’t seem to bother folks in Pine Log, it was more his skin color that drove folks nuts. His coal black skin matched her coal black hair and that made women nervous and bite their nails and made men load their sh
otguns and hide their daughters.  Oh, but worse than that is the offspring the affair produced.  Which according to town gossip is an abomination.  The child was a little boy name Nathaniel, a half breed which is another label. 
We just
called him Nat for short.  He was two years old
with tanned skin and olive green eyes.  Looking at him was like staring into a miniature God, the way his eyes
just sparkled with an intensity that stilled me. 

Lucinda Pearl and her family get the same reaction all over town. Stares, back talk and hushes. People scatter when they walk in, afraid
they’ll have to speak or talk or address the elephant in the room. 
I never understood the
way people acted towards them.  It actually made me angry.  Why are people scared of pink elephants? 
Mag and I ignored our parent’s warning
and did what kids do.  We interacted.  We played.  We laughed. 
Our parents weren’t home half the time,
anyway. 
Mag and I had free reign to come and go as we pleased. About the only time, we got uncomfortable was when the brown Cadil
lac pulled up in the driveway.  When the engine shut off you could have heard the dead speak.  He was tall and big boned, the whites of his almond eyes stood out like two chalk drawn circles.  He walked with a certain swag to one side, a hitch every step and when he seen us, he upturned his chin as if to speak without speaking.  No one said a word.  No one barely breathed.  He would stay a few hours or so.  When s
trange noises made their way out the open windows of the
bedroom Bonnie became embarrassed and would always start to sing real loud.  I knew what she was doing.  We all did.  She sang the same song every time.  Bad Moon Rising by CCR.  At first, we were like, “What’s happening?” but then we just joined in with her.  I felt sad for Bonnie sometimes but she never talked about it.  I’m pretty sure it was her pink elephant. 

I thought my family was poor until I went in
side Bonnie’s house.  Come to find out, we were
living high on the hog
in comparison.  It was a run-down plain, white frame house,
loose shutters and a dirt yard with not a blade of grass. The inside was as barren as standing in the middle of a rock canyon listening to the eerie swirl of the wind howling.
The only furniture was a ratty old loveseat and a few scattered pillows pushed up against the wall. 
The floor was unfinished concrete and scattered with Nate’s broken toys. Lucinda and Nate shared a room with one mattress draped with purple sheets and a black bed cover. Bonnie
tried to make her room homey with what she had.  The walls were lined up with library books at the baseboard across one whole wall.  A single twin mattress was draped with a faded purplish sheet and a flat pillow with a peace sign pillowcase.  It was neat and tidy. 
The bathroom dripped with death from every rusty pipe. 
What struck me most about the hollow house, was there didn’t seem to be any attachments to personal things or relationships for that matter.  No
personal items, no pictures on the wall, no rugs, no knick-knacks, no comfort items—just nothingness.
I feared for a second they were common squatters who had found an abandoned house.  I don’t remember a time when they actually had electricity.  During the daylight hours, they kept all doors and windows open. 
Crumbs of food were
scattered everywhere as if no one had swept in years.  Or maybe they felt sorry for the roaches and left them the crumbs. 
No oven or stove top, just a Coleman’s camping stove on the cabinet and a squat refrigerator from the forties with a hum so loud it sounded like
the ring of a gong that was stuck.  There were rat traps in
corners, on cabinets, mixed in with toys, and stuck inside holes in the wall. No air conditioner and no heater.
Dead bugs littered the floor, cabinets, everything.  I
was in a state of shock
when I got home.  Then in gratitude,
I went through our house touchin
g each precious item as a gift.  From that moment onward, I
l
ooked at my parents differently.  I saw dad’s callous hands from working two jobs and moms tired feet from standing all day at the department store.  And that night, when I laid in my comfortable bed with expensive comforters and bed sheets, I felt a tinge of overabundant thankfulness, but at the same time, I felt sorrow.  It was hard to sleep that night, but once I did, I dreamt the wind howling in a fury through empty canyons and it would turn into a scream, Bonnie’s scream, and then my screams, and then both our screams.  I woke up in a pool of sweat. 

I heard those screams all over again, ricocheting in my head, inside the car, on the way home from the skating rink that night, when Lena had the nerve to blame Bonnie for me asking a question about pink elephants.  Of course, I freaked out. 

“No. Mother.”
My tone was a smidgen away from getting side slapped.  When I call Lena,
 
mother;
I’m pretty much done anyway. She
didn’t like my backtalk and gave me a glare. 
“Bonnie can’t afford 
to go skating.” I said hearing the wind howl in my ears.  “
They barely eat. So no—I didn’t hear it from Bonnie or while hanging out with Bonnie.”

She cut me another glare that melted into concern.  Mentioning food rationings or lack of, always concerned her. 
“Well, that’s probably her mother’s fault and that…that …man.” Her lips
twisted so hard she could barely finish her sentence.  Lena proceeded to ramble on and on about nothing, until it made no sense whatsoever.  I never heard a peep out of Mag in the back seat.  She was content to not stir the nest. I was pretty sure I was fixing to be a fledging and own my own. 

The cab was filled with the sound of the wheels turning down the highway and the hum of silence.  A
t each intersection, the street lights lit up the flare of Lena’s blue eyes of steel. I’ve learned to read them over the years. 
DON’T REVEAL IT. DON’
T DISCUSS IT. SEAL IT OFF. DENY. DENY. 
IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.
 If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this whole car reeked of pink elephants. I was on to something.

***

Mag and I grew up on
Royal Pine Road in a three bedroom, one bath modest home.  Dad’s parents, William Henry and Dell lived on the street too, as well as Papa Hart’s father who lived in between our house and theirs, and down the street a distance, but not far enough, according to Papa Hart, was Dell’s mother, Maw Sue.  This communal housing gave me plenty of time to figure out our barbaric ancestral tree roots which I was sure had a few pink elephants hanging on the limbs.  I tried to acquire the help of Mag but she scorned my request and acted
as if she originated from a line of nobility only found in a jeweled oak tree, some scandalous fifteen-minute affair in the back room of the white house, JFK meets Maid Merry kind of shit. From what I can remember, her efforts at obtaining royal status began at a young age when she learned of her precious namesake and then snubbed off everyone, except old money. She
learned to smell greenbacks like a blood hound. 
While she was punished temporarily to live in squander, she believed a royal knight was going to drive up in a Mercedes
.  Out jumps a squat chauffeur driver wearing a stuffy white suit and holding a ruffled pillow, and in the center sits a sparkling rhinestone baby rattler with Mag’s name inscribed and other documentation to prove her theory of a royal bloodline. Then she’d high tail it out of here, leaving us rednecks to our pig sticking.  I’ll give her this much.  She has a vivid imagination when she uses it.  I just find it hard to believe that we are related. 
We are so different. I mean, I bleed the south so much it’s like thick pine sap flowing from cut tree bark and according to our dad, that’s a true blue southerner. I’m simply southern sap through and through. Mag straddled fences from the get go which I consider a travesty of the worse kind. I mean, just pick a side—
for or against
—it’s not that hard. At home she pretended to be content with 
our life style, but we all knew she wasn’t.  And when
she left the driveway and hung out with her rich friends,
she always brought it home with her until it just became a part of her permanently.  One day I just snapped and knocked her off that high and mighty fence. 

“You gotta make a choice Mag” I said tired of it.  “
You can’t have it both ways.” Being a girl of few words, she left two distinct rows of teeth marks o
n my arm. I took this as a sign. 
Papa Hart had always said, bite marks were characteristically republican in nature. He knew this because
he was a hard core democrat as the rest of the family. 
Of course, this aggravated Mag to no end and she was content to give us both hell. If Mag ever has a pink elephant—it wil
l probably be adorned in jewels and easy to spot. 

I rarely got a haircut but when I did, it was at the Clipper Snipper, a popular beauty shop
among residents of Pine Log. 
It was a sixteen by thirty, red and white shack of coiffed haired ladies talking about big hair, big guns and a big Jesus.
Mag and I called it the suffering shack because we suffered to listen to them. 
Wome
n gathered once a week to tease, chop, dye and curl their hair and at the same time, catch up on the rumor mill.  One topic of interest particular in interest is the e
qual rights bill gaining mass appeal with the efforts of the 37
^th
 President who supported a woman's equality and their right to do whatever in the hell they wanted to do. Discussions were varied; nothing but a big yick-yacking, jaw-jacking, huffing and puffing gossip fest. Complaints, whining, money, lack of money, equal pay, so and so said this and that, whose wearing what dress, who died in Hollywood, the latest trendsetter, who killed who, whose pregnant, who died, who married, whose cheating and a whole, whole lot of politics. Here lately the talk is all about protesters lining the streets of Washington against the Vietnam War or the shocking deaths of music legends, Jimmy and Janis. Local gossip spread like wildfire in the suffering shack and Mag and I were right smack in the middle of it. I learned right then and there, I
did not want to grow up and be like those chatty types. 
Talk and talk. God. They just never shut up. The only glimmer of hope is
Ms. Blanche, the shampoo lady who did not participate. 
Ms. Blanche was a large round black woman.  Everything about her was circled and puffy, round face and round eyes, not slanted in the least, round belly, and round legs like two pillars mounted in the ground.  She was considerably older than the rest of the ladies who worked there.  She wore a
blue wrap around her head and knotted in the back and a matching ap
ron to cover her oversized chest.  I sat close to her on the red bench against the wall which was near her shampoo station. 
She reminded me of Maw Sue in a way that was comfortable, like a big hug. She walked
slow and with a limp.  If she stood still, she leaned to one side.   While s
he scrubbed women’s heads, she hummed and it made her plump cheeks vibrate.
It reminded me of the bees that invaded the wondering tree in spring.  It soothed my chaotic mind. 
At other times, she’d sing old time gospel, her voice soulful, filling the room with spells and made us yearn for things unseen. It was Jesus this and Jesus that. One day, she must have got tired of Jesus because she sang a different song.