Paper, Scissors, Death (6 page)

Kiki’s list of supplies
for beginning scrapbookers

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get started scrapbooking. Many people become overwhelmed and buy what they don’t need, neglecting what they do need. Here are basic supplies which will be enough to create a nice scrapbook:

1. Scissors: Get a pair of scissors with large blades, and a pair with tiny blades for small cuts.

2. Adhesives: Buy several kinds. HERMA Dotto Removable Adhesive is super for beginners because you can reposition items until you get them exactly where you want. In addition, buy a package of photo splits and a liquid adhesive such as Elmer’s Craft Bond, which dries clear and doesn’t run.

3. An 8” × 8” album: Try the Perfect Scrapbook by Jill A. Rinner. Although 12” × 12” is standard, 8” × 8” is less intimidating for a beginner. Plus, you can trim your 12” × 12” paper and use the extra for mattes.

4. A paper trimmer: Choose one that cuts 12” paper.

5. A craft knife: X-Acto makes a good one with replaceable blades.

6. Archivally safe pens: Sakura has a great line called Pigma Micron.

7. A pencil and an eraser.

8. A ruler: Get a metal one so you can’t cut through it.

9. A paper kit: Buy a package with several sheets of coordinating papers and embellishments. The best kits show you what you are buying so you know if you like all the patterns and colors. If you are making a specific album, take your photos along when you shop for a kit. Hold the pictures up to the paper—you’ll quickly see if they look good together.

10. A half-dozen sheets of archivally safe paper: Buy white (or ivory) and solids that match your kit. The white can be used for journaling. The solids make great photo mattes.

That’s how I came to be standing in a cardboard box, six months to the day that George died.

“This has to be the most embarrassing moment of my life.” I stared through two peep holes. Covered in white and silver paper with an enormous white bow on top, my prison was wrapped like a gigantic bridal shower gift. The container and I were situated on a narrow grassy strip in Elizabeth Witherow’s back yard. In front of me was a flower bed thickly planted with fragrant petunias, salvia, geraniums, and marigolds. Behind me a collection of koi splashed around in a pool at the foot of a trickling fountain. The running water made me need to tinkle. A dangling length of ribbon held the front flap of the “gift” closed. When Dodie pulled the ribbon, the front wall would open flat, and I would burst from my hiding place.

At least, that was the plan.

Geez, was it ever hot inside. The heady sweetness of the flowers filled the air. The blossoms warmed in the sun while bees buzzed about busily gathering pollen.

“No way. I’m positive this isn’t the most embarrassing moment of your life. Not by a long shot,” said Dodie, talking to my eyeballs, her garish mouth larger than the jaws of a giant carp. “And remember, I’m paying you big money to do this. Big money.”

Big money, I thought, huh. My salary was peanuts, but to me it was a king’s ransom. This special event would bring in extra—enough to pay my rent with a little left over to take Anya to see that new Pixar movie.

I adjusted my body, as I struggled to see the garden and the pretty table set up directly across from me. The eye holes drilled into the cardboard were small. I faced the blinding sun. St. Louis is known for manic-depressive extremes of weather, and this spring was no exception. We had four inches of snow on St. Patrick’s Day. Hail pelted us two weeks later. Here we were the last week in May with a scorcher. My prison had warmed to a temperature so hot that sweat dripped into my eyes. I flapped my arms to dry my pits, but I didn’t have much room to move around. Angry bees tapped persistently on the outside walls. I was standing in their salad bar.

“I hear the guests coming. Remember to hop out and scream, ‘Surprise!’ Okay?”

Like I would forget what to do.

The moment of my liberation couldn’t come quickly enough. I counted the seconds until my escape. Sweat moistened my waistband and trickled down the backs of my calves. My bra was soaked from perspiration. I strained to listen as distant voices grew louder. I heard women giggling, talking all at once.

In a stage voice, Dodie said, “Merrilee Witherow, what have we here? Another gift for you? The tag says this present is for our little bride-to-be. Don’t just stand there! Open it!”

Yes, I begged Merrilee silently. Please, release me, let me go!

Ribbon rubbed against ribbon. A sliver of light sliced the top of my chamber and grew steadily larger. The panel fell slowly. I waited until the flap was parallel to the ground before leaping out. I lunged forward and yelled, “Surprise! It’s scrapbook time!”

Staring in speechless astonishment was a seated row of neatly dressed women, cool and collected in their linens and silk.

I brandished a big photo album open to a page announcing, “Merrilee’s Bridal Shower” in large gold letters.

What a sad sight I must have been. My clothes dripped with sweat. I could tell my mascara had smeared under my eyes, and my curly hair stuck out like a ’60s Afro. I probably looked like Bozo the Clown after an all-night binge.

The guests’ eyes traveled down and up my body. Their faces reflected shock and awe. While my personal grooming stunned them, the capper was the geeky gift bows Dodie had insisted on pinning all over my clothes.

No one moved. The women gawked at me, their faces blurred by the sweat in my eyes. I struggled to keep a huge smile plastered across my face.

Okay, maybe it looked like a grimace, but I tried, I really tried to smile. Sweetly.

An insect crawled along the back of my knee. I held my pose until that nasty sweat bee jabbed his stinger into my flesh. Then I yelped with pain. I dropped the album as I reached behind to swat him. I aimed to kill, but I missed by a mile. He was a poor sport. He must have called in reinforcements. My whole body was attacked by sweat bees.

“Ow!” A dozen angry flying objects zapped me. A zillion volts of venom pulsed through me. “Ow!” I hopped from one foot to another. Molten lava raced through my flesh. The throbbing pain made me dizzy. A bee landed on my neck. “Ow,” I stepped to one side, then the other, trying to dodge my torturers. Searing stingers plunged into my skin. A bee nailed me under my arm. Another punctured my lower lip. One landed under my ear. I slapped at them furiously.

“Get off my flowers!” An angry woman in a purple silk A-line dress shouted. “Move it! Now!”

I staggered like a drunk, battling bees, clutching my painful stings.

Dodie screamed, “Watch out! Pay attention!”

“Ow!” The insects swarmed me. Desperate to escape, I hopped back into the box. A bee sank his stinger into my eyelid. “Ow!” I swatted at him. My cardboard jail rocked side to side. Other bees took up the chase.

Dodie chanted, “Be careful! Be careful!”

But I heard, “Bee! Careful!” I spun and writhed, bumping each wall of the box in turn.

“Help!” The box and I tipped too far to recover. I fell into the fish pond with a loud splash.

___

“The swelling is going down. Nothin’ better than meat tenderizer for a bee sting. How do you feel?” Mert dabbed a cotton ball full of liquid on the bump by my eye. She was kind enough to buy tenderizer on her way to my house.

You don’t need tenderizer when all you eat is hamburger.

I considered myself lucky to have driven home without an accident. My half-closed eye and overblown lower lip hurt like the dickens. My depth perception was distorted, making the world one-dimensional. I couldn’t judge distance accurately. I compensated by driving very, very slowly.

“I feel woozy. Benadryl makes me sleepy. How’s Anya?” I tried to peer into the living room where my daughter was. I perched on the edge of a straight-back wooden chair, while wearing nothing but an old T-shirt and panties. Drinking ice tea was difficult with my overblown bottom lip. Using a paper napkin, I caught a trail of drool before it slid down my chin. My reflection in my spoon assured me I looked like I’d been in a bar fight. And lost.

Mert poked her head around the doorway and checked on Anya. “Hey, kid, you okay in there?”

Anya smiled at Mert and gave the older woman a thumbs-up. Her shoulder-length hair framed her oval face with two smooth wings of silken blonde strands. She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, a book open in her lap. Her coltish legs were still pale from the winter, her knees knobby and childlike. “Better than Mom. Just trying to finish my English assignment. I hate tests on Mondays. They wreck your whole weekend.”

“Tell me again,” said Mert, hugging a glass of iced tea to her chest, savoring the cold. She was wearing a low-cut top with sparkling beads and sequins around the neckline. Platinum polish turned her fingernails into ice-cube talons. “Old Mrs. Witherow told you she didn’t have any Benadryl or Caladryl—”

“Or baking soda. Nothing. Nothing to put on my stings. No aspirin or ibuprofen either.”

“And she couldn’t spare anything to help the pain. Or wouldn’t. She’s a real ‘begins with B and rhymes with witch’.”

The vehemence in Mert’s voice awakened Gracie from her slumber. The big girl lifted her sloppy muzzle to rest it on my knee.

I shivered as I remembered my slow crawl out of the koi pond. “Dodie yelled at me for ruining everything. She was so nervous. She’s not usually like that. The guests went inside to eat and watch Merrilee open gifts. Mrs. Witherow’s maid directed me to the guest bathroom. I toweled off with toilet paper.”

“I can see.” Mert shook her head at the clumps of wet paper still stuck to my skin.

Gracie stretched as she rose from her dog bed. Milton and Bradley, the two Chihuahuas I’d been dog-sitting for Mert, stood up along with her. The little dogs raced to wrap themselves around Gracie’s front ankles.

From their positions near her feet, the two canine lover boys stared up at my Great Dane with intense expressions of passion.

So close and yet so far away.

At this rate they’d never get to doggy Nirvana. They clung to her like twin Ugg boots. Gracie took a robotic step forward, dragging the two hairballs along for the ride. They remained attached, whining and yipping for all they were worth.

Which was not much in my opinion. Gracie concurred. She rolled her eyes and took another shuffling step, trying to knock off her freeloaders.

Poor Gracie. She was so ill-used, and so patient.

“Hey, you two, stop that.” Mert bent over to peel the Chihuahuas off my dog. I took one from her so that we both held puny excuses for man’s best friend on our laps.

Thinking about Mrs. Witherow’s behavior toward me brought on a wave of remorse for not paying more attention to the plight of the hired help in my upscale former neighborhood. “Mert, is that the way people always act toward you? I mean, was it like this—is it like this when you clean for people?”

Mert’s five hoop earrings marched in formation up her earlobe. They tilted to one side as she shrugged. Her penciled-in brows puckered to consider the question and then relaxed in surrender. “Some do. Some don’t. You never did. Some folks make you come in through the back door. And a couple check your purse before you leave. One woman I worked for patted me down each time I left. Another gave me leftover food and tried to take it out of my wages. It don’t pay to dwell on it.” She closed the topic with a wave of her hand. “What happened after you dried off?”

I handed over Bradley—or was it Milton? Mert arm-wrestled the wriggling dog into her lap.

“I went into the family room where they’d set up work tables for scrapbooking. My page kits were in the boxes I delivered last week.”

“You call them make ’n’ takes, right?”

I nodded. “A make ’n’ take includes all you need to create a pre-designed page except for adhesives, paper trimmers, and ink products. All the crafter does is assemble the page.”

“Or project,” she corrected. “A make ’n’ take can be a project, right?”

“Right. Like a customized candle or bracelet or a notebook.”

My make ’n’ take was a particularly nifty page design, if I do say so myself. The theme was a garden party, so I used silk flowers, matching ribbon, and four patterned papers plus pre-cut letters spelling “Bridal Shower.”

Mert refilled my mug with ice tea. After George died, she brought me a special coffee cup that says, “No More Mrs. Nice Guy.” After I read the slogan, she leaned close and said, “For the next year, you are my project. I’m going to turn you into a woman who can stand on her own two feet. No more life as a human doormat, just waiting for people to wipe off their shoes on you. Makes me sick at heart, but you got to toughen up or you ain’t gonna make it. And you got no choice but to make it because your little girl depends on you. Hear?”

That was hard, but she was right. That’s what a real friend does—she tells you what you don’t want to hear, even risking your friendship, because you are important to her.

I heard. And I obeyed. I’m the star pupil in Mert’s School of Hard Knocks, better known as Tough Tamales University or TTU. I’m hoping to graduate Magna Cum Laude. Or as Mert says, “Magna cum LOUDLY. That rhymes with proudly.”

I’m her only pupil, but I’m sure enrollment will increase when word gets around. I bet I’m not the only woman in the world who has a wishbone where her spine should be.

She handed me the mug, and I dutifully drank. When Mert’s around, I’m only allowed to drink out of my special mug or I get demerits. “Best to flush out your system. You got all them bee sting juices in you.” She poured herself another glass of ice tea as well. “Now tell me about this floozy. What’s her name?”

“Roxanne. Roxanne Baker.” I’d seen her photo a million times in the society section of the Ladue newspaper.