Kathryn Magendie (11 page)

“Yeah.”

We walked along, then she said, “You can ask me some questions now if you want.”

I acted casual. “Let’s see.” Pretended to think it over. “Okay. I got one. How come your mother never leaves the house?”

“Maybe she’s too tired since she gets sick a lot.

“How come she doesn’t like people coming over?”

“One time way back, a fella come to the house and Mama got so upset, she set the shotgun in his face. Then she cried for a week, saying how that man disgraced her. I do recall he was a handsome man, with pretty eyes, but I was sorter little.”

“You have pretty eyes.”

“That so?” She kicked at the dirt.

“Did you ever find out who he was?”

“Don’t reckon I ever did.” She reached down, picked up a rock and threw it hard as she could into the woods.

“Your mother wasn’t always sick, was she? I mean, she used to go to town and be around people?”

“I guess so.”

“I wish I could meet her.”

“You will.” She ran into the woods, and as always, I ran to catch up with her.

***

That night, Mother started in about Sweetie. How she wasn’t so sure about
that girl
, and how
that girl
seemed a little strange, and how
that girl
this and
that girl
that.

Father surprised us both. “You wanted her to get out and play instead of staying cooped up in her room or watching television. Well, that’s what she’s doing. Aren’t you ever satisfied?” He rattled his scientific periodical. “Besides, I found the girl intriguing. At least
something
interesting happened around here while she visited.” Father crossed his legs. “Leave them alone, why don’t you?”

Mother stared at him. She stomped off to her bedroom and slammed the door.

Father looked at me. “So, tell me about this Sweetie. Where does she live? What’s all those scars about?” He leaned towards me.

“I have a stomachache and need to excuse myself to the bathroom.”

“Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then go on about it. We’ll talk later.”

I didn’t want to talk to Father about Sweetie.

***

A week later, Sweetie wrote in the dirt,
mama wants to see you
.

I nodded, hiding the excitement bubbling up.

I ran back to the house that night filled with special feelings that out of everybody in
Haywood
County
and anywhere else and beyond, I was the only one invited to see Sweetie’s mother.

ELEVEN

I woke early while the light was still pink over the mountains and the early birds just beginning to twitter. I wiggled my toes, pointed and flexed them, then shot out of bed. I made my bed, stretched up to the ceiling on my tip tippy toes, bent forward to touch my ankles, straightened and turned right and left with my arms straight out, and then did ten jumping jacks. I hurried through my chores and sneaked out of the house quiet as a cat burglar, except I wasn’t stealing anything, I was escaping it.

I was at Triplet Tree by
six forty-five
. I reached my hand into my satchel and touched the presents wrapped in the newspaper comic section. I’d had those presents made since right after Sweetie had said, “You will,” to my meeting her mother. I’d just been waiting for her to say when. I worked for hours on two leather and bead bracelets for them.

The idea came when Mother had to go to the grocery in another town. She was preparing
Cluck in the Grass
, which meant chicken on top of lettuce. She wanted to have with it the dressing she’d had at a restaurant when we lived in
Arizona
. She couldn’t remember what the seasonings were, she kept trying to perfect it, and that meant looking for special ingredients in different stores. Father said she just liked to get in the car and go places because she was a bored housewife. Mother sighed when he said that.

She first dropped me off at the five and dime. I couldn’t wait to be where she couldn’t see me so I could buy a treat to enjoy in peace. While I read the menu at the lunch counter, three old men were sitting on stools talking about a time when some students sat in a five and dime, and how they’d changed history just by sitting at a counter and being brave and strong. One of the men smiled and wiped his eyes with a napkin, and the other two smiled back at him and said something about an anniversary and they all smiled again, then took big happy bites of their sandwiches.

I didn’t want a sandwich or fries, or even a malted. Those things would take too long to make and eat. As I walked through the five and dime, I passed two teenaged girls giggling as they picked up lipsticks and tried them out, smacking their lips and making kisses in the air. I passed a very old woman trying to reach a tube of toothpaste and I reached it, handed it to her, and she said, “Thank you kindly, sweetheart,” and tried to give me a quarter. I said, “No, thank you,” and she said, “Oh! Bless your parent’s heart for teaching you good manners,” and tootled on her way.

I passed a row of Fli-Back paddleballs, jacks, yo-yos, pick up sticks, and Old Maid cards, and wondered if I had enough money from my allowance to buy Sweetie and me a game. We couldn’t play Monopoly with just two of us. Peter and I had tried that, and it was nothing but boring for two people to play by themselves. Chinese checkers or regular checkers would be fun, but I had those already in my closet along with the Monopoly game.

I headed to the candy aisle to buy my treat, and there they were, right where all the sewing stuff was: a bin full of pretty glass beads. I forgot all about the people in the five and dime, the candy bar, the toys and games, and began sorting through the bin.

When Mother came in to get me, I was still picking through gajillions of beads. She said, “I’ve a few things to get. I’ll meet you up front.”

I searched until I had all the perfect ones I’d need, and then found two strips of leather to thread the beads on. When I went to the front to pay, Mother was tapping her foot, but she didn’t make a fuss about it and I was surprised. She even admired the beads I bought. She was always doing things to confuse me.

That night, after I ate dinner and did the dishes, I ran to my room, poured out the beads and admired them again, held them up to the light and watched how they sparked. The leather was a bit stiff, so I pulled and stretched and rolled it until it was soft. Then I sorted the beads into two piles, so each bracelet would be different. Next, I threaded the beads onto the strips of leather, knotted behind the first and last so the beads would stay on, and left enough at the ends to tie the bracelets to their wrists.

When done, I admired my work, and at the same time, was nervous with hope that they would like my gifts. I wouldn’t go to their table empty handed, if she had a table, and if we were going to eat. Sweetie never said.

When Sweetie showed up I checked my watch even though I just had three minutes before. “Late again. It’s
twenty-two after seven
.”

She dropped an old cracked leather bag on the ground, and flopped beside it. “If I start getting on time, people might start ex-pecting other stuff out of me, too.” She smirked her lips. “Seems you
been late before, too, Miss Lissa.”

“I was late
once
. And only because Mother wouldn’t let me leave.”

She shrugged, put her hand on her bag, hummed.

I tried to act as if I didn’t care about anything she had to say or do. I picked up a rock and threw it into the woods, and then looked up at a squirrel jumping from one tree to the next. I whistled. I knew she hated whistling more than she hated history lessons with a side of boiled goat liver. When she opened the leather bag and took out a man’s white cotton handkerchief and then some twigs bound up with a piece of yarn, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s that for? What’re you going to do?”

She sang, “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what he could see, see, see; but all that he could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea . . . ”

“Sweetie!”

She looked inside her leather bag.

“Stop fooling around.”

She pretend yawned.

I leaned forward and tried to look into the bag, but she closed it up tight.

I poked her skinny arm. “Come
on
.”

She grinned at me, opened the bag.

I scooted forward.

Sweetie pulled out of the bag: a box of matches, a tin box with a latch to keep it closed, our diary, a tiny pinecone, some green stuff that looked like parsley, a vial filled with yellowish liquid, and a shiny curved knife.

I stared at the knife. “I bet that’s pretty sharp, isn’t it?”

She untied the twigs and placed one on top of the other, criss-crossed, leaving a few to the side. On top of the criss-crossed twigs, she put the green parsley stuff, and on top of that went the tiny pinecone. She poured most of the yellow liquid onto the twig mound.

“What’s that do?”

Sweetie lit the pile, and the flames jumped up high, then settled down to a small, crackling fire that smelled bittersweet. She laid the handkerchief on the grass, smoothed it out until it didn’t have any wrinkles, and then put the knife on top of it.

“What’s that knife for?”

Situating herself cross-legged, she picked up the tin box and held it with her right hand on top and her left on the bottom.

“What’re you doing?”

 
She finally spoke. “We will bury our secrets deep in the earth under guard of Triplet Tree.”

“What’re you talking about? How can we bury secrets?”

“You able to stop waggle-womping that tongue for a second?”

“You don’t have to be rude.” I put my lips together and pressed them.

She then sang, low and sweet, about rivers, cold creeks, and old mountains, about Whale Back, Turtlehead, Bear Claw, Tablet Rock, Jabbering Creek. She sang of the bear we saw running up on the high ridge one early morning, and about other animals that lived in the woods, and of the hiding wolf we were sure we both heard howl as we played—and Sweetie’d howled back.

It was as if I’d laid my head right down on the soft grass and fell into a dream.

When she stopped singing, she added a couple more twigs and a little more liquid, and up jumped the flames again, reflected right into her eyes. She picked up the knife and waved it over the flames. “The mountain spirit is happy we will be bound-sisters.” She pointed the knife towards me. “Tell your secret first.” She put the knife back on the handkerchief and waited with her hands on her knees.

“What kind of secrets?”

“Whatever secret you got to let loose. What’s been itching at your insides.” She opened the box, “Tell it so it goes in the box.”

“Tell the box?”

“Just do it for frog’s sake.”

I leaned forward towards the tin box. “Well. Um. Let’s see.” I felt foolish, just a little.

“Tell what you wouldn’t tell another soul.”

Then I knew. “Sometimes I hate my mother. Sometimes I wish she wasn’t my mother. Sometimes I wish she’d go away and I’d never ever see her again.”

She closed the tin box, rubbed the top, said, “Keep the secret forever and ever.” She then re-opened the box.

“Won’t the secrets escape when you open it?”

“Hush.” She spoke into the box, “One night I snuck to T. J.’s house and peeped in his winder. He was sleeping like a ugly baby. I had a stinky dead coon in a sack. I put it nice and easy through his winder and on his floor. The next day at school, T. J. come to class with a swolled up eye. I felt sorry I did it. His daddy must a tore into him for it.”

“He deserved it.”

She closed the tin box. “Nobody deserves to be treated like a dirty worm under a dirty foot by they’s own kin. T. J.’s mean but his daddy’s a long-sight meaner. Guess his daddy teaches him how to be.” She rubbed the tin box, told it to keep the secret forever and ever. “Your turn again.” She opened the box.

“I have a hole in my mattress where I hid things from Mother, like . . . like candy and stuff. She found it and took the candy bars and told me I’d never get married as long as I was chubby and acted stubborn.” I lowered my head. “But I had candy hidden in my sock drawer and in the pocket of my winter coat. I locked myself in my room and ate all five candy bars.” I looked up at Sweetie to see if she had a disgusted face. She didn’t. “I don’t want to get married anyway. But still . . . that’s why I’m fat.”

“Huh. If I was you, I’da eat all them candy bars, too. Just for spite.” She closed the box, rubbed it, and kept it closed. “We got to let the secrets get to know each other and get settled in.” She rubbed it faster, said, “Secrets, stay in.”

I picked up the diary. “Are we going to write stuff in here today?”

She snatched the diary from me and set it back down.

“Sorry! I just asked.”

Her face softened. “I wrote up some stuff in it last yesterday we can read later, okay?”

“You did?”

“About how we went to Zemry’s and all. You was right, it made things fun all over again.” She said, “I made some maps in it, too.”

“Maps?”

“So you won’t ever get lost up round here.” She leaned into me, her face serious. “The next secret I got to tell is so secret, I cannot tell it unless we are bound.” She picked up the knife, held it between her palms, and looked to the sky. “Grandpaw, me and Lissa are telling our secrets. You told me not to tell a soul mine. But I just got to, it’s itching at me something fierce.”

A cool breeze whooshed by and goosebumps marched on my arms. Father would shake his head at my foolishness, but I felt as if we weren’t alone. Behind Sweetie, the air seemed to bend, move in and out, wavering like heat waves, but it was cool not hot.

Sweetie added the last of the twigs, the rest of the yellow liquid, and when the fire jumped up once more, she stuck the knife into the flames and held her left hand over her heart. “Mountain Spirit, I am calling to you. I got my friend to be a bound-sister. If you could take off her pain, too, I would be truly thankful.”

My stomach turned. “What pain?”