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Authors: Alle Wells

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BOOK: Leaving Serenity
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Mama’s fingers pressed into the soft spot in our backs as she led us out of the store. The boys jumped off the crates and threw their apple cores into a barrel when Mama stepped off the green tiled stoop outside the grocery store.

“Come along, children. The b
akery
closes at eleven.”

The Bakery

Malone’s Bakery smelled like heaven to me. I drooled over the doughnuts behind the glass while Mr. Malone wrapped the bread and dinner rolls for Mama.

Bouncing up and down, I begged, “Mama, can we have a doughnut? Please? Please?” Mama looked at me, purse
d her lips, and shook her head.

I watched Mr. Malone’s large tummy move back and forth as he walked back to the counter. His deep,
husky
voice
filled the store. “No worries, Mrs. Bevels. They’re on the house!”

He pulled the big tray of shiny, glazed d
oughnuts from behind the glass.

Adam reached for a doughnut first. He smiled at me and said, “Gee, thanks, Mr. Malone.”

Beth and I sang out
,
“Thank you!”

The doughnut squished in my mouth, warm and gooey. It made my head tingle. Outside, Mama lined us up on the bench in front of the bakery. She breathed hard in our faces and tried to clean our hands with a Kle
enex that stuck to our fingers.

She fussed at me. “Annette, I don’t know why I let you talk me into such things!”

The Drug Store

I giggled at Jack who worked at the soda fountain counter. His eyes moved from me to the scoops of ice cream he threw into the air. Jack wobbled and danced to keep from missing the milkshake cup.
A row of wrinkle
s gathered between Mama’s eyes.

“Hush and eat your hotdog!”
she snapped at me before taking a bite from her hotdog.

Adam poked at his Cherry Coke float with a red-and-white striped straw. “Yeah, he’s just white trash showing off. But Annette’s too stupid to know that.”

Mama wiped her mouth and talked quietly into the paper napkin. “Mind your manners, Son.”

Adam roll
ed
his eyes and snicker
ed
at me, and then at
Jack
. I kep
t
my eyes on the boy with the milkshake cup. He w
ore
a paper hat and ha
d
freckles across his nose.
He winked at me, and
I smile
d
at him around my hotdog.

The Beauty Parlor

Beth and I played hopscotch on the squares of the pink and white linoleum floor while Miss Ruby put the big silver dryer bowl over Mama’s rolled up hair. I thought that Miss Ruby was the most beautiful person in Serenity. Her eyelids
we
re bright blue and her thick, black eyelashes
we
re so long that she look
ed
like she
wa
s winking all the time. But the best thing I liked about Miss Ruby was her hair. She had the brightest yellow hair,
just like my Chatty Cathy doll.

Miss Ruby’s white shoe pumped the bar under her chair to let it down so that my brother could climb in. Then, she pumped it up again and swirled him around. The pink and white chair sparkled as it spun around.

Miss Ruby got tickled when Adam wobbled his head and made silly faces. “Wheee! How d
o you like that, little buddy?”

Adam’s endearing, cobalt blue eyes beamed up at Miss Ruby. “That’s swell! Hey, can you give me a flat top like Daddy’s?”

Miss Ruby pointed at Adam and yelled at Mama over the roar of the hair dryer. “That’s a good boy you have here, Shirley. He wants to be just like his Daddy!”

Mama glanced over the
Look
magazine in her hands and turned up her lips. Miss Ruby shaved the side of my brother’s head with an electric razor. I waited to see if blood would gush out of his skin when she cut him. I blew a sigh of relief when Adam hopped out of the pink and white chair without a scratch. Jeff jumped in the chair behind Adam. He pulled his cowboy hat off his head so that it hu
ng around his neck by a string.

“I want to be just like Adam.”

Miss Ruby took Jeff’s hat off and pushed it down over his eyes. “You got it, Pardner!”

Miss Ruby shaved Jeff’s
head
,
too
, without any blood. Then she walked over to Mama and pulled a curler from Mama’s hair. A curl snapped back
tight against Mama’s bare head.

“You’re done.”

Miss Ruby turned toward Beth and ran her fingers through Beth’s dark, curly hair, fluffing it up. “Law, Shirley, this child has the most beautiful head o’ hair!”

Mama looked at Beth lovingly as she pulled the sticky, yellow and blue curlers from her hair. “Yes, she’s such a beauty, and blessed with my mama’s hair.”

Miss Ruby let Beth sit in the chair, but she didn’t cut her hair, just fluffed it up a little more. Then she looked down at me and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, well. What are we going to do with this little one?”

Mama tossed the last of her curlers in a big plastic basket and jumped into the pink and white chair. “Comb me out first. We need to be moving along.”

Miss Ruby teased Mama’s dark hair real high and sprayed it back
down flat
. Then, she pumped me up high enough to see myself in the
big mirror behind the counter.

Miss Ruby held up a few strands of my colorless, fine hair. “We’ve got a few cowlicks going on here.”

I turned my head and looked
up
at Miss Ruby’s pretty face. “What does that mean?”

Miss Ruby chuckled. “Well, Darlin’, that means that the cow licked you before you was even
born,
and now, there’s no hope for this hair of yours.”

I turned back around in the chair and looked in the big mirror. Grandpa Zeke said that we all came from Heaven. I tried to picture a cow licking
me when I was still in Heaven.

I gave Miss Ruby my best
snaggletooth
smile. “Can you make me have yellow hair like yours?”

Miss Ruby laughed out loud this time. “Sure I can, when you’re old enough. But, until then, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to settle for dishwater blonde.”

Miss Ruby sighed real loud like she was feeling tired. “Now, Miss Shirley, what are we going to do here?”

Mama
cocked her head and looked at the gold wrist watc
h Daddy gave her for Christmas.

“Annette’s hair has a mind of its own
just like her daddy’s
. Do the best you can.”

My face fell to the ground when Miss Ruby turned me around to look in the big mirror. My sawed off hair didn’t look anything like hers. I wondered if Miss Ruby didn’t like me, or if she was just too tired to make me look pretty since I came last.

Outside the beauty parlor, Adam slipped his hand through the crook in Mama’s arm.

“Mother, can we take a look at that new bike at the Western Auto?”

Mama hugged him close and placed a peck on his brand-new flat top. Adam always had his way with Mama because he was the oldest and called her Mother. But I didn’t care, as long as it meant going to the toy aisle in the Western Auto store. Adam and Jeff jumped on the red Western Flyers and made motor noises with their lips. Mama filed her nails and smiled at Adam perched on the new bike.

Beth and I climbed inside the Lincoln Log playhouse. Inside the playhouse, I cried because the cow licked me, and my haircut made me feel ugly.

Beth sat on the bench next to me. “What’s wrong, Annette?”

“I’m not pretty like you,” I sobbed.

Beth patted my shoulder and sighed. “Aw, you can’t help it. You just wasn’t blessed like me.”

Chapter 3

Lessons

Neglected Victorian-style houses greet me as I turn the corner. Their turrets and gables look majestic, even in their ruined state. The sad looking street reminds me of the hard less
ons I learned on School Street.

Music Lessons

             
Mama’s
1960 Chevy
s
tation
w
agon stopped at the curb. Beth opened the passenger side door. She wore a blue
and
green plaid jumper over a simple white blouse as she pranced proudly up the gray clapboard steps. The motor under the car hood rumbled. Mama flailed her arm over the back of the red vinyl seat and popped me on the thigh.

“Go on. Don’t dawdle. You can sit on the porch and do your homework until Beth’s lesson is over. And remember your arpeggios!”

             
“Yes, ma’am.”

There was no spring in my step as I crawled out of the car, wearing a jumper and blouse identical to Beth’s. The cold metal glider on the front porch stung the backs of my thighs.
I listened to Beth’s measured scales float through the open window.

Miss Field’s voice snapped, “One and two and three and four. Good. One and two and three and four.”

             
I slipped a school library copy of
The Moonspinners
from underneath my fifth grade history book. I took up a British accent after seeing the movie with Hayley Mills until my fifth grade teacher threatened to send me to Daddy’s office. A trip to Daddy’s office meant a paddling at school and one at home, too. So I went back to being plain old Annette. But, secretly, I dreamed of becoming the lovely,
blonde Nikky in a faraway land.

“Annette, I’m ready for you,” Miss Field called too soon through the window.

I felt Beth’s eyes on the back of my head as
Miss Field place
d
the exercise sheet on the music desk of
the
ancient, mahogany upright piano.
The teacher
tap
ped
her ruler in measured beats on the
in
si
de of her long, skinny fingers.

“Annette, I must warn you. If you
haven’t mastered the fourth and fifth fingering today, you will not be eligible to perform in the Music Guild. And you know very well that you can’t continue your lessons
if
you aren’t Guild material.”

My fingers fumbled and then collapsed over the complicated scales. The piano keys felt too big and resisted my touch. Music lessons made me feel like a dunce. Miss Field continued to tap the ruler on her hand
, but she d
id
n’t say, “O
ne and two and three and four.”

I thought,
Uh-oh, this
is
a bad sign
.

Thirty long minutes later, Mama marched up the porch steps with the checkbook in her hand. “Good day, Gloria. How did my girls do today?”

Miss Field motioned to Beth and me. “Girls, run along to the car while I speak privately with your mother.”

Beth and I watched them talk through the car windows. “What do you think they’re saying, Beth?”

Beth shook her head. “I dunno, but I betcha it ain’t good.”

“Aw, I hate those dumb scales. My fingers just don’t bend that way.”

Beth made a funny face and twisted her fingers into knots. I laughed.

Mama slammed the car door hard. “Well, that’s that! No more lessons for you, Annette.”

Mama turned and looked at me with her eyeballs rolled upward and her chin pointed down. “Your father is going to be furious when he hears this. Two years of music lessons down the drain!”

I stared at the windmill in a faraway land on the front of my book. Mama started the car and hit the gas. “Well, you can help me in the kitchen while Beth practices. Lord knows, you must be good for something.”

Daddy never said anything about my music lessons. Instead, he patted me on the head and said I was a good little trooper for helping Mama in the kitchen.

Ninth Grade

I was a gawky kid, too tall and too
skinny
,
a
dishwater blonde with a big nose and a long face. My classmates dubbed me cat eyes because of the cat-eye glasses I wore to straighten my lazy eye. At thirteen, I developed a painful case of acne that would linger for years. Self-consciousness made me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I lagged behind my siblings in age, beauty, and brains. My parents doted on Adam, a cocky, straight-A student destined to do great things in life. They took pride in Jeff, the high school heartthrob and sports star. Beth followed in Mama’s footsteps, a perfect daughter who did all the perfect things. I lived a secret life inside
my mind where no one could go.

Kizzie Butler was the only friend I ever had in school. Being friends with Kizzie made the ninth grade the happiest year of my life at Serenity School. Kizzie’s father was transferred to Serenity by the United States Postal Service
in
the
beginning
of 1969. She told me that her father’s transfer had something to do with demographics. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that Kizzie and her two little brothers were the only black kids at Serenity School.

BOOK: Leaving Serenity
13.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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