Kathryn Magendie (9 page)

Sweetie screeched it again.

“Come at ten-thirty tomorrow morning. Please don’t be late. Mother is funny about that kind of stuff.”

“Uh huh.” Sweetie stood. “I best get on home now.” She turned to go down the path towards her house.

“Wait!” I jumped up and ran to her. “You
could
come by now instead, if you want to.”

 
“Can’t. Got to go somewheres.”

“Where?”

“Get Mama’s medicine.”

“A mushroom or root or something?”

“Curiosity kilt the cat.”

“I could help you find it.”

She eyed me as she did when she was trying to figure out whether to tell me something. “Mama said she got to have them pills she takes and the preacher is where I get them from. Stupid pills.”

“Pills?”

“She thinks she got to have them.” Sweetie blew out her breath.

“And you get them from a preacher? That’s weird.”

“It just is what it is.”

“Well, Doctor Timothy could give them. Father said he’s a good doctor.”

“I got to get them where Mama said to.”

 
“Sounds complicated. I don’t get it.”

“You got to pick apart ever littlest thing, don’t you?”

“But when Mother needs medicine, she calls Dr. Timothy, then she goes to the drugstore and buys it.”

“Why can’t you let things be?”

“I get curious.”

She stamped her foot. “The preacher said them pills get paid by somebody secret and they give it to the church for Mama, since she believes in the church and not in no doctor.” She lifted her chin.

“Oh! I wonder who it is. A secret admirer?”

She stared up at the top of the trees.

“Nobody would think bad of you. If your mother’s sick.”

“I tried to cook up cornbread and pie for them what paid for them pills, but one time I saw that preacher stick it all in the trash.” She frowned, then said, “I don’t cook for that church no more. I just get them stupid pills and be on my way.”

“What kind of pills are they?”

“Let it be, Miss Mouth. I got to go.” She turned, ran off into the woods.

“Sweetie! Wait! Are you coming tomorrow?”

She was already gone. I sure hoped she was going to show up. And on time. And cleaned up. And on her best manners. I walked back home, wondering about the mystery of her mother. What kind of pills she took and who paid for them and why at the church and not at the drugstore and . . . nothing made sense to me, but then, nothing about my friend ever did.

TEN

That evening, during my parents’ cocktail time, I told them Sweetie would be coming over for brunch. I prattled away. “She has a friend Zemry and he made us stew. And he’s part Cherokee, and has all these masks that mean different things. He carved me a wolf, and Sweetie a bird.” I swallowed Coca-Cola fast to feel the burn on my tongue, but that didn’t stop the babbling. “We saw deer today, and Sweetie visits the preacher for her mother’s medicine, but he threw away her food . . . ” I pressed my lips together so I’d quit telling Mother about Sweetie’s business, especially when her eyebrow raised at the last part. Sometimes it was hard not to talk when things backed up and bubbled over.

“Isn’t that nice.” Father didn’t look up as he shook his head back and forth over the newspaper story he read. “This war. It worries me.”

“Jack, I don’t want to hear anything about that nasty war stuff. Talk to your students about it, not here while I’m having a cocktail.” Mother took a sip of whisky sour, swallowed and said, “War war war. You’d think that was the most important thing in the world.”

“It is important, Pauline. Our boys are dying and—”

“Oh rot! The war isn’t happening here. What’s happening here is I’m having a drink on a glorious Saturday evening. I simply don’t want to hear about bad things right now.”

“What do you think, Melissa?” Father folded his paper and faced me.

“What?” I wasn’t used to my father asking me important questions during cocktail time, or really any other time.

“What do you think about the war?”

Mother stood up. “I’ll refresh my drink.” When she huffed off, I noticed that her stocking had a big run in the back.

“Well, Sweetie’s father got killed in a war and that makes her sad. I bet there’re lots of sad people because of it.”

“Yes. But don’t you think sometimes it’s necessary to have wars?”

“I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. Every time I think about war, all I can see is Sweetie’s father blown up so he can’t be with her.”

“I suppose that’s as good an answer as any.” He went back to reading his newspaper.

When Mother came back into the room, I thought to tell her about the run in her stocking, but I decided not to. I let it be my secret that she wasn’t perfect for once. She sat in her easy chair, crossed her right leg over her left, and asked, “Will Sweet-tea’s mother be joining us, Melissa?” She eyed me over her glass.

“No Ma’am. She’s not feeling well.”

“The ladies at my club said she’s too ashamed to come to town.”

“We don’t need to hear gossip from your ladies’ club.”

“No, we’ll just talk about war war war.” Mother smoothed her skirt. “My friends say her father isn’t dead at all. That he lives in town married to someone else and takes care of Sweetie’s mother through the church. What you said confirms that.”

“That’s n-not true. He died in the war holding onto a l-locket with their picture.”

“Now, don’t start it up,” Father said. “All you two are doing is proving how societies clash and how war begins. Two people can’t agree, push their opinions on the other, they argue, they push, they shove, next you know, rocks are thrown, guns are drawn. You are just proving how war happens.” He sipped his drink and raised his perfectly manicured pinky.

Mother stared at Father, then said, “Dinner is almost ready. I’ve prepared roast pork with a cherry cream sauce. I’m calling our dinner
Pig in a Berry Patch
. That’s the name of a poem I wrote today.” She watched Father, to see if he’d ask her to recite it. When he didn’t, she lowered her eyes. “Anyway, it inspired me to cook pork in a berry sauce and all I had were these cherries.” She ate the cherry out of her drink, then said, “Not that you’d notice. Not that anyone notices at all. Not that I’m appreciated.”

 
“I think we’ve heard enough, Pauline.”

“Except for war war war.”

Father rose from his chair. “I think I’ll have another scotch.”

Mother waited for him to walk into the kitchen before she turned to me. “If it was up to me, children wouldn’t be allowed in the cocktail hour. Sometimes parents need to discuss things children shouldn’t hear.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Now, run-along.”

 
I went to my room to make sure it was all set for Sweetie’s visit. I hid my stuffed animals in the closet; she might think them babyish. In my chest of drawers, underneath my underwear, was my diary. I had to keep hiding it in different places ever since Mother found the hole in my mattress and had gone through my things. She’d thrown away the candy and gum, questioned me about the picture of Jeremy’s eyes and lips, and asked me was there anything in my diary that she should know about (I couldn’t believe she hadn’t picked the lock to read it), until I thought I’d die of embarrassment. I planned to lend the diary to Sweetie so she could write things in it, too.

Later at dinner, my parents drank their wine in the fancy glasses, and ate their dinner saying boring things like, “Pass the salt,” and “This cream sauce is quite good; cooking is both an exact and inexact science . . . ,” and “Keep your elbows off the table, Melissa,” and “Scientific blah blah and biological bleah bleah and ladies’ club blah blah bloing bloink and my poetry blah bleah and yes dear oh dear dear ding dong doodle blah bleah blah.”

I wanted to be sitting on a log eating stew with Zemry and Sweetie. There was a hunk of pork on my plate, and the cherry sauce looked like blood. I ate the potatoes and asparagus around it, and tried not to think about the cute little pink piglets I saw at a fair once.

After dinner, while I was washing the dishes, Mother wrote the brunch menu into a poem and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a bouquet of flowers. When she left the room, I read:

Ode to the Brunch! Crepes filled fatly with golden cheese—oh here’s to you cow!—and delicately fragile eggs—oh thank you chicken!—scones with blueberries nestled like baby boys in the womb, and finally, exactly, perfectly, beautifully cut to a paper-thin parchment, the lowly potato—oh bless you farmer! To drink! The mimosa—orange and fizzy with champagne, guggle guggling down the throat with glee (except for the girls who shall imbibe orange juice and ginger ale to mimic our delightful mimosas.) Oh! What joy to sip and eat what has been made with perfection by earth’s bounty and a woman’s touch
.

She came into the kitchen while I was reading it, and her mouth straightened out, as if she knew I was laughing inside, which I was. She said, “Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed. I’ll finish up the kitchen.”

***

The next morning, I woke at five. I read Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang comic books for thirty minutes. I slipped out of bed, stretched my arms to the ceiling, bent over and touched almost to my ankles, swung my arms back and forth back and forth, did six jumping jacks. Tiptoeing down the hall to the bathroom, I eased shut the door, scrubbed my face with Ivory soap, and then went back to my room.

It was still early, so I spread out an old sheet, took out my paints, and began painting, trying to get the flames on the burning barn just right—Grandmother Rosetta could do it the best. When my parents stirred around at nine, I put away the paints, went to the bathroom to wash up, and once back in my room I dressed in a plaid skirt and white shirt, for Mother made us dress nice for Sunday Brunch.

When I poked my head out of my room, I listened to see where my parents were. Mother was in the kitchen; Father was in his study, probably to work on his latest story about a veterinarian whose marriage was a mess, called,
Love Became Too Heavy, So He Put It Down
.

I eased out the front door and sat on the front steps to wait for Sweetie. When my Timex read ten thirty-one, I began sweating.

At
ten thirty-two
, I heard, “You hot in that there get-up?”

“Sweetie! You came and you’re on time.” Two minutes late wasn’t late at all. I almost hugged her.

She stood in her battered boots and a blue dress with tiny white polka dots that was similar to the yellow dress with the roses she wore to school. The dress was clean and unwrinkled and looked as if it hadn’t ever been worn. Her hair wasn’t brushed very well but it was tamed, pulled back with a piece of wire wrapped with a red cloth, like a headband. Her face was scrubbed clean, shiny and cheeks pinked. She smelled like warm sugar.

Stiff-armed, she held out a bunch of wild flowers in one hand and a bag in the other. “Mama said never come with empty hands to someone else’s table. The flowers are for your mama, and the bag’s got some cornbread I made myself.”

I took the bag from her. “Wah-doh.” I didn’t take the flowers. “You can give Mother the flowers yourself.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh. Huh. Okay.”

I held the door open for her. “Come on in . . . um, o-see-ya?”

She smiled at that. She then looked down at her feet, then back to me with an unsure face. “My boots got mud on the bottoms. I don’t want to take mud in your nice house.”

“We can both take off our shoes.”

She looked hopeful and it made me feel bad.

I put down the bag, took off my shoes and socks, and left them by the door.

She’d taken off her boots, without socks, and put them by my shoes. Her toes were like little niblets of pink corn.

Grabbing the cornbread bag with one hand (and it was still warm), I held the screen open for her with the other.

She put her skinny shoulders back and walked in.

It was strange seeing her in my house. She was like an animal trapped inside where it didn’t belong and any minute would thrash around to get back to the woods. Like the bird I saw in a house they were building on the next street over. After the workers closed it up and left, the little thing kept peering out of the window. I watched it for twenty-two minutes, wishing I knew how to set it free. It flew up to the sill, looked out at me with little begging eyes, and then flew off, over and over. I was too sad to watch it anymore. When I went by the next day, the door was open. The bird found its way out and sang sweetly in the sky as it flew to freedom. I hadn’t
seen
it happen, but I knew it
could
have happened, and that’s how I decided it was.

I led Sweetie into the study first. “Father, this is Sweetie. My best friend.” It felt good saying best friend.

He put on the mask I knew was the one where he noticed Sweetie’s scars and hurts and was curious about them but it wasn’t the time to ask. I thought maybe he would want to later ask me, and if he could ever think of a way to ask Sweetie he would, but he’d be careful about it, like he always was about things he was curious about. He stood, straightened to his full length, and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sweetie. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Sweetie took his hand with the one that wasn’t clutching the flowers and pumped it up and down. “I never heard too much about you, but you seem nice enough from what Lissa did say.”

My father laughed, sat back down, put his fingers on the typewriter keys, and said, “Go on and see your mother. She’s in a good mood.” He began typing again.

When we stepped into the kitchen, Mother’s back was to us. She turned a crepe with a flip of her wrist.

I sucked in air, blew it out slow and easy, then said, “Mother, this is Sweetie. My best friend. She made this cornbread for you. It’s still nice and warm.” I set the bag on the table.

When Mother turned around, her eyes widened. She caught herself and smiled. It reminded me of the plastic smile one of my dolls wore. She said, “Why, now, there you are. How nice to meet you at last.”

“Here in my flesh.” Sweetie stiffly held out the flowers to her.

Mother took the flowers, and nodded to the cornbread. “Thank you for the gifts. You needn’t have.” She set the flowers in the sink. “I’ll put them in a vase for our table this morning.” She said vase like vaahhzz. Turning back around, she put her hands together in a silent clap. “Well. Let’s see here now . . . ” then, “ . . . what’s your
real
name, dear?”