Grounded (10 page)

I never did go to sleep that night. At eight o’clock in the morning I was in the kitchen when Mother came down to make coffee. I tried to tell her the grim news, but after two or three sentences she rushed back up to her bedroom and got dressed. Then she ran outside and stole Uncle Waldo’s copy of
The Digginsville Daily Quill
from his porch steps. The story was on the front page.

Mother read the story twice before picking up the phone.

“Avis? It’s Hattie,” Mother began. She was pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor, as far as the cord would reach. “What about the horse and carriage?”

I had completely forgotten about that. I guessed Avis had, too.

“How many people did he swindle for that boondoggle?” Mother asked, talking fast. “I bet you a
lot
of people, but they won’t like admitting it now. Someone’s going to have to get sworn affidavits from everyone in town. And what about that California family? Did he send them anything in the mail? If so, that’s interstate commerce and the FBI should be all over this thing.”

All those
Perry Mason
episodes were finally paying off.

Mother paused to listen to Avis Brown. She nodded at the phone. “I understand,” she said. “Right. Good point. I agree with you there, Avis, one hundred percent.”

Then Mother was looking at me with a funny expression on her face. “No, I didn’t realize that. Oh, really? Well, yes, now that you mention it, she was
saying something about that this morning when she…She did
what
?”

Now Mother was glaring at me. I squirmed in my chair.

“Is that a fact?” Mother said slowly. “Well, I appreciate all
your
hard work, too, Avis. Good-bye.”

She hung up the phone and crossed her arms.

“I
had
to,” I said. “I was worried about Aunt Josie. She was going to move to Chicago with him. And now…now she could be going to
jail
.”

“Aunt Josie’s not going to jail,” Mother said matter-of-factly. “This wasn’t her fault.”

But all of Aunt Josie’s gentlemen had purchased prepaid cremation plans, which they wouldn’t have done without her nudging them along. It was their money in the bulging envelope, along with Aunt Josie’s and the donations for the horse and carriage, that Clem Monroe took with him when he left Digginsville.

I was too busy worrying about the money to realize that in addition to everything else he took, Clem Monroe had also stolen Aunt Josie’s heart.

Mother skipped church that Sunday so she could devote herself fully to the breaking news.

After returning Uncle Waldo’s newspaper to his porch, she took a broom out to our porch and began sweeping the front steps. Then she started whistling. For once, she was clearly hoping Uncle Waldo would come out of his house to talk. But Uncle Waldo’s house was quiet. Mother eventually gave up and went inside.

“Keep your eye on Mamaw,” Mother ordered me over her shoulder. My grandmother had almost a hundred dolls lined up in military formation on our front porch. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to hide them from her the night before.

It wasn’t until after lunch that I saw Uncle Waldo walking down the sidewalk from the direction of Aunt Josie’s house.

“Hello, Baby man!” Mamaw hollered his way. “Want to play dolls?”

Uncle Waldo smiled weakly. “Maybe another time.”

Mother must’ve heard him from inside the house because she ran out to the porch. “Waldo!” she said with an exuberant wave of her arm. “Is Josie all right?”

“She will be,” Uncle Waldo replied in a tired voice. “She’s been down at the police station all morning, answering questions. They finally released her a little while ago.”

“Thank heavens,” Mother said.

I couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or not.

“Sheriff Whipple said her only crime was falling in love with a flimflam man,” Uncle Waldo said, rubbing his temples. “I tried to tell her to slow it down with that guy. But you know Josie.”

“Oh yes,” Mother said, nodding. “I certainly do.”

“I know Josie, too,” Mamaw chimed in. “She’s real pretty.”

Uncle Waldo laughed. “She
is
pretty, isn’t she? Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m ready for a nap.”

“Of course,” Mother said in her best company voice.

Uncle Waldo turned toward his house, but stopped when his eyes met mine. “Excellent work,” he said.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I scratched my chigger bites, trying not to make eye contact with Mother.

Late that afternoon, a thunderstorm moved through town, cooling things down and providing the dramatic soundtrack the day called for. I sat on the porch swing, listening to the rain hammer down on our house. I thought about what had transpired.

For almost a whole month, a common criminal had lived among us. It was going to take a while for that to sink in.

And Digginsville wasn’t going to get a horse and carriage.

And Aunt Josie wasn’t moving to Chicago. At least that part was good. But then I felt guilty for feeling glad about that.

Poor Aunt Josie. As the summer storm lumbered past Digginsville, the sound of thunder was replaced by the sound of crying coming from her porch. Her sobs hung in the moist air like wet laundry on a clothesline.

Uncle Waldo must’ve heard her, too, because he came out of his house and sat on a porch chair. Mother, Mamaw, and I were all sitting on our porch. I was pretending to read an old
National Geographic.
Mother was brushing out fake hair extensions. Mamaw was rocking her dolls, one by one.

“I…Oh!…The
nerve
of that man!” Aunt Josie cried from her porch.

Uncle Waldo sighed loudly.

“I never thought…I just never
ever
thought,” Aunt Josie wailed.

Uncle Waldo stood up. “I better go back down there,” he said from across the yard.

“No,” Mother said, stuffing the hair weaves back in the plastic bag. “You stay. I’ll go. Daralynn, you stay here.”

She marched down the porch steps and turned left, toward Aunt Josie’s house.

At first the sobs became softer until they disappeared all together. I could just picture Mother standing with her arms crossed in front of Aunt Josie, telling her what a darn fool she’d been to trust Mr. Clem in the first place.

Then, sure enough, ten minutes later the crying
was worse than ever. It sounded like someone was dying.

I jumped off the porch and ran down the sidewalk. Good gosh! Aunt Josie didn’t need Mother to point out all the dang mistakes she’d made. She needed someone who could make her feel better, not worse.

As I sprinted toward the end of the block, the cries from Aunt Josie’s porch were getting louder, more desperate sounding. Almost bloodcurdling.

“He’s gone, and he’s never coming back! He’s gone, and he’s
never
coming back!”

I ran faster, feeling madder at Mother with every cry. When I got to Aunt Josie’s house, I took the porch steps two by two. I was almost to the very top before I stopped. What I saw could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

It wasn’t Aunt Josie crying after all. It was Mother. Her head was in Aunt Josie’s lap.

“He’s gone, and he’s never coming back,” Mother sobbed.

“I know,” Aunt Josie said, petting Mother’s hair. “Let it out, Hattie. Just let it all out.”

I backed away quietly. I knew Mother wouldn’t
want me to see her like that. So I walked home and listened from our porch as Mother and Aunt Josie cried together most of the night. They were two women in love with men who were long gone and never coming back.

The next day we started planning Mother’s living funeral. She invited everyone in town. We held it the following Saturday afternoon at Danielson Family Funeral Home.

Mother wore the same navy blue suit she’d worn to the funeral for Daddy, Lilac Rose, and Wayne Junior. The jacket and skirt hung more loosely on her because of all the weight she’d lost. She wore her hair pulled back in her signature black bun.

I wore the same dumb dress I’d worn before. It was tighter on me and quite a bit shorter on account of how much I’d grown over the past nine months. Mother slicked down my hair with a generous glob of Dippity-Do. I tried to be agreeable because I knew
this was important to her. At least she didn’t make me wear gloves.

We used a glossy display casket as a buffet table, just like we did at Uncle Waldo’s living funeral. Our sandwich selection included cucumber and cream cheese, tomato and mayonnaise, and pimento cheese. Mamaw helped for a while, but then retreated to a corner with her dolls for most of the afternoon.

We played fake classical music on the stereo until it was time for the eulogy, which Mother delivered herself.

“I want to thank you all for coming today,” she began. “I’m glad to see everyone’s doing well in spite of what we’ve been through lately, which hasn’t been entirely pleasant.”

“You got that right,” someone in the crowd said. Heads nodded in agreement.

“I’d like to give that Mr. Clem a piece of my mind,” someone else said.

“I can certainly appreciate that,” Mother said. “But I wanted to talk about something else today, if you don’t mind.” She cleared her throat nervously. “As you know, I lost my husband, my son, and my baby girl in a plane crash last October. And I’m
ashamed to admit this, but…well, for a long time, I wished I’d died in that crash, too.”

I knew it.

“But that was crazy thinking on my part,” she continued, her voice quivering. “Because I have so much to live for. Just look around this room. Look at all these wonderful friends I have, all this support I’ve had. All the casseroles and pies you brought to my home last fall. I don’t think I even remembered to thank you all for that. So I want to say thank you now.”

“You’re welcome, Hattie,” someone in the back said.

“It’s no trouble to make a pie,” another voice added.

“It certainly has been for me lately,” Mother said. She was trying to laugh but her voice got caught on a tear. “I want to thank my family, too. I have a brother-in-law who’s become a neighbor. I have a sister-in-law who’s become like a sister to me. I have mother who’s become…like a daughter.”

Everyone was looking at Mamaw, who was in the back of the room, tearing off pieces of a tomato sandwich and feeding them to her dolls. She waved to the crowd. I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but
Mamaw
had
become sort of like Lilac Rose—or what Lilac Rose was like when she was four or five years old.

“And I have a daughter,” Mother said, looking directly at me, “who’s…who’s been a lifesaver for me.”

A line of tears was rolling down her cheek now. Mother had done so little emoting in her life. Listening to her now was like listening to me when I first learned to read. There was no stopping her.

“I’m sure you all know,” Mother added softly, “that Daralynn was her daddy’s favorite.”

What? Was this true? Good gosh, nobody ever tells me anything!
But there it was, just like that: a postcard from Daddy. For me. I should’ve known it’d take this long to arrive. (Did I mention how slow mail delivery was in Digginsville?)

I smiled a big happy-cat smile at all the people staring at me, which was every single person in that funeral home. I could’ve cried, too, right then and there. But I closed my throat tight to keep the tears down.

Mother was still talking. “And I thank the good Lord that Daralynn disobeys from time to time.
Otherwise I’d have nobod—” Her voice broke off. She shook her head back and forth before resuming. “There’s no denying my family’s smaller now. But that just means we have to love each other harder.”

“Does this mean I can play my music as loud as I want, and not have to worry about you
crabbing
about it?” Aunt Josie asked from the first row.

Everybody laughed.

“Yes, it does,” said Mother. “In fact, I might even thank you for providing some evening entertainment now and then.”

“Now don’t turn all sugary sweet on us,” teased Aunt Josie. “You wouldn’t be yourself without a little vinegar.”

Even after all the commotion, you could always count on Aunt Josie to lighten the mood when necessary.

“One more thing,” Mother said. “And I don’t mean this as a criticism of anyone because I know you don’t mean it that way. But I wish you all would stop calling my daughter Dolly. Dolls are lifeless reproductions of little girls. After the events of this past week, I hope you’ll agree with me that Daralynn is one of the most alive, most beautiful, and certainly one of the
bravest
young women this town has ever seen.”

Oh, jeez. Now this was getting just downright embarrassing.

I smiled as politely as I could, but narrowed my eyes on Mother. I was trying to give her the sign to move on already. She just smiled back at me. So I smiled back with big saucer eyes that clearly said:
Mother, get on with it, please!

“All right then,” she said, “we have sandwiches and cake and ice cream. I apologize that the cake’s store-bought from the Schwan’s man. But I hope you’ll enjoy it. Please make yourself at home. And thank you for coming.”

“Wait, please.”

It was Uncle Waldo. He was standing up in the third row.

“Before everyone goes, there’s something I’d like to ask Hattie. And as God is my witness, I’d like to make this a public request.”