The School of Beauty and Charm (4 page)

Florida prayed, “Lord, we need your help. Guide Henry to pull over on the side of the road. Don't let him be too proud to stop. Let him obey you and do your will and not act stubborn.” She paused as she mentally lifted the Ford Galaxie 500 and turned it around to face home. Then she said, “In Jesus Christ's name we pray. Amen.”

When we opened our eyes, the sky had darkened, filling the kitchen with an eerie green glow.

“America the Beautiful is under the refrigerator,” I said importantly.

“Oh shoot,” said Florida. “I guess he got out when I cleaned his cage this morning.” She glanced away from Roderick's stricken face. “No. We don't have time to fool with that mouse this morning. The storm is coming.” When Roderick whimpered she drew her mouth into a firm line that made her look as old and fierce as Grandmother Deleuth. “I said no, and that is final.”

A few minutes later, while Roderick and I waited at the top of the basement stairs with the picnic basket, Florida was on her knees in front of the refrigerator, holding a slice of American cheese and calling out the hamster's name.

By the time she returned with America the Beautiful captured in his exercise ball, Roderick pinned me against the wall by my hair. I could smell the cold, medicinal odor of the inhaler on his breath and feel his wheezing as if it were in my own chest. He punched me in the stomach.

“Say it again!” he breathed into my face.

“Children!”

“Albino,” I whispered, wincing as his fist sank into my belly.

“Children, stop it! I'm going to take a switch to you both!”

“I didn't do anything,” said Roderick. “She's an alcoholic.”

“I'm going out there to cut me a switch. Who's an alcoholic?”

“I am not.”

“She drinks a bottle of vanilla extract a week,” he told Florida, gingerly taking the exercise ball she thrust into his hands.

“Do you want me to flush that mouse down the toilet?”
asked Florida. “Because I will. I have had it up to here this morning.” She adjusted the scarf on her head and added in pianissimo, as if she were just discovering a truth, “I can't take anymore from you children. Or your father. I have
had
it.” Outside, the weird green sky was perfectly still, as if God were holding His breath. I sniffled, once. A Muzak version of “Delta Dawn” played softly on the intercom.

Florida shook her head and looked away. “I am through with you all,” she said. “I have tried and tried. I can't do it anymore. Henry may be lying in a ditch right this minute—in pain.” She grimaced. “While you two fuss and fight and bicker. Act ugly to your mother.” Tears welled up in her eyes. The tip of her nose turned pink.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” said Roderick, but it was too late; Florida was past her boiling point.

“Ugly, ugly, ugly,” she said, describing us to God. “Ungrateful.” She took the vanilla extract from my hand and shoved it into the picnic basket. “You all will just have to fend for yourselves.” With that, she straightened her shoulders so that her zebra-print housecoat fell smoothly around her body, lifted her chin, and with a gaze that suggested she had never borne children and never intended to, she descended the stairs.

Suddenly, the lights went out. The intercom made a sound like a zipper, and the music stopped.

“Lord!” called Florida, and I cringed, knowing that He had found me.

Back on the stairs, Florida cried out to us—the Lord gave her the strength to reclaim us. “Children,” she said sharply. “We are having a tornado. For once in your lives, cooperate with your mother and get down in this basement.”

C
ROUCHED ON
a die hassock, the white one with black dots, in the corner of the rec room, Florida whispered, “Hush,” even though no one had said anything. In the distance, we heard the faint whistle of a train flying through the tops of the pines. Roderick put his inhaler to his mouth and sucked in a cold breath. “Here it is,” Florida said. In the green light washing through the small window, she and Roderick looked like fish underwater. Under the pool table, America the Beautiful ran madly, turning the exercise ball in slow, hypnotic circles.

The wind blew in a long, soft moan, then sharpened into a shriek that hurt the backs of my eyes. Florida gripped Roderick with one hand just above his elbow and tightened her arm around my waist until I could barely breath.
Whoo, whoo
went the wind, hollowing out again, and I began to hear the music inside the tornado, faint strains of Barbara Groche's organ playing “A Closer Walk with Thee.”

Reverend Waller was saying into his microphone, “Won't you come? Jesus is calling you.” His thick, wet lips drew close to the wire mesh, bubbling the words on the electric current. “He wants you to come to Him, today, right now. Surrender your life to Him, welcome Him into your heart this minute. He wants to live inside you. Children, won't you come home to Jesus? Come on down the aisle.” He stretched his arm out, holding his hand open for anyone to take. “There's still time. Come on down and say, ‘Yes, Lord, yes! I surrender all!'” As I leaned against Florida, watching America the Beautiful spin in circles, the organ music faded, and from deep within the moaning sky I could hear the softest strains of Muzak.

The tornado hit our backyard with a scream. The sound was so human that Florida hollered, “Lawd! Somebody is out there! Henry?” She stood up, as if she intended to go outside and look, but Roderick stopped her. He did exactly what Henry would have done. He said, “Sit right back down. Everything is going to be all right.” To keep me quiet, he passed over the vanilla extract.

Regaining her composure, Florida ordered, “Everybody cool your jets. Your mother lost her mind for a minute. I'm sorry.”

The scream subsided. In its place came more hail and the sound of a vacuum cleaner, a big one, roaring across the sky. Then the hail began to swirl up in the air, faster and faster. Things flew past the window: leaves, pine cones, a red tennis shoe that no one recognized, and finally, clinging to the frayed webbing of a lawn chair, the neighbor's yellow cat. All around us, branches snapped, and then, with a crack like a rifle shot, the hickory tree crashed into the deck. As we stared at all this through the small window on the opposite wall, there was a sudden Pop! and the glass plane flew out into the wind. Right behind it came America the Beautiful, still in his exercise ball, a spinning wheel of fur that sailed into the whorling green sky.

“Mama!” cried Roderick. Florida held him fast; her face swirled between the psychedelic suns in the mirror, eyes flashing, red mouth open wide. I couldn't get close enough to them. No matter how hard Florida squeezed me against her ribs, or how tightly I clutched Roderick's sleeve, I felt as if I had already been sucked out the window and hurled into the cold, howling, madness of the sky.

Then I knew what hell was. It wasn't so bad to be in it, but it was hell for the people who loved you, who had to look at you burning in the flames, out of their reach. With cold panic, I realized that if we died in this storm, the Devil would snatch me down to hell while Florida, Henry, and Roderick wafted up to heaven. I had not been saved. They had been born again to have life everlasting. It was too late for me. Why hadn't Florida listened to me when I told her I had to be baptized? “Wait until you get some maturity,” she'd said. I knew plenty of immature Christians. How were the Pepperses going to enjoy their mansion in heaven if I was in hell? They'd worry about me for eternity. For eternity, they'd sit around their swimming pool, licking ice creams without tasting them, smiling and waving at the angels who floated by so people wouldn't think they were ungrateful, but the whole time they would be worried sick about me.

Florida would probably try to sneak out to rescue me, but God has eyes in the back of His head. “Sister, you get right back here,” He'd say as she sidled up to the golden gate. She'd nag until the angels shrank back into their wings, but God would not budge, not even if she cried. He'd shake His head, unfold the ironed white handkerchief from His back pocket, hold it under her red nose, and say, “Blow.” God was all-powerful.

Henry would get so down in the heart he'd put on a zip-up coverall and sit in a lumpy chair in the corner of a darkened room chain smoking like his brother Earl who had been hooked on Thorazine for twenty-one years, ever since his wife had his brain electrified to make him quit drinking.

Poor old Roderick. He'd kick around in the pool by himself, wheezing, thinking about every time he'd broken into my room with a bobby pin. He'd remember the time he socked me in the stomach for no reason except to show off to a boy neither one of us liked. All those times he called me Dr. Spock. If Jesus tried to talk to him, he'd mumble something polite, then go underwater. All day long he'd mope around in the baby pool, leaving his ice-cream cones to melt. At night, sleeping alone in his star, he'd cry.

N
O ONE WAS
killed in that tornado, except perhaps for America the Beautiful, who was never seen again. The neighbor's yellow cat turned up in the dogwood tree with a broken leg, and Henry walked in the door at suppertime.

“—right out the window,” Florida was saying as she slapped his plate on the table. “Roderick nearly had a fit. We'll get you another hamster, honey. If you have to have one. I hate those things. Sit down, Henry. Your soup will get cold. Here's your tea. It doesn't have enough ice.” She was wearing her tornado outfit, a brilliant orange and pink paisley skirt that swirled around her legs as she hurried to and from the stove. The quilted cups of her Jane Russell Living Bra poked through a tomato-red leotard. Gypsy earrings swung from her ears. The ringlet curler she had forgotten to remove dangled against the nape of her neck.

From the doorway, Henry admired her.

Florida said, “Roderick, I am not going to tell you again. Get that chair off its hind legs before you break your neck. Well, Henry? Did you see anything on the road? We thought you were a goner. Louise, no ma'am. I worked hard on this
meal. You put that cupcake right back in the box. Sit. If your father would take off his coat and sit—dad-blame, I burned the rolls. I do it every time. There's too much commotion in here. I guess you didn't close the plant. Honey! Not with your hands. The radio said there were trees all over the road. Roof of the Texaco flew into the duck pond. Give me that burned roll—that one's mine. I'm putting some more in the oven. Henry, what happened to your hat?”

“Gone with the tornado,” he said, sitting down at the table.

“You're kidding.” She stopped suddenly, looking him over to see if anything else had been lost.

“Did it lift you off the ground?” asked Roderick.

“I don't want to know,” said Florida. She lifted the bifocals that hung on a chain a round her neck and set them on her nose.

Slowly, Henry sipped his iced tea, then leaned back in his chair and began. “I was driving down the mountain when the sky turned green.”

“Here, too.”

“Everything was so still, you could have a heard a pin drop. Right then, I knew that sucker was coming. And there was nothing I could do about it, not a thing.

“I told you to stay home,” said Florida, leaning closer.

“All the sudden—” Henry looked around the table to make sure everyone was paying attention—“all the sudden I saw a fire hydrant, that one right in front of the radio tower, you know, I saw the fire hydrant shoot straight up in the air!”

Florida covered her face. Then she got up to put a tub of margarine on the table.

“Now the craziest thing was the water under the fire hydrant.”

“I'm listening,” said Florida, as she dropped some more ice cubes into his tea. “Excuse my fingers. Roderick, if you keep leaning back in that chair you're going to fall through the window. I'm just telling you. For your information.”

Henry cleared his throat.

“Did you crawl into a ditch?” she asked.

He frowned at her. “I'm trying to tell you about the fire hydrant.”

“Well go on. The water was shooting straight up in the air . . .”

“About thirty feet. Then it began to swirl.” With his hand, he showed us how the water swirled high above his head. “I never saw anything like it in my life. Louise, you should have seen that yellow fire hydrant sitting on top of the water. It looked just like an upside down ice-cream cone.”

“You're exaggerating,” said Florida. “Did you get in the ditch?”

Ignoring her, he looked sternly at Roderick and me. “If you ever get caught in a tornado, and I hope you never do—”

“I was just in one,” said Roderick.

“I mean outside, in a tornado, always remember to get in a ditch. That's the first thing you should do. Jump in the ditch, lie face down—make sure there's no broken glass or anything first—and cover your head. That just might save your life.”

“I didn't think you'd get in a ditch,” said Florida. “You wouldn't get your good suit dirty for the world. Put some butter on that roll before it gets cold. This soup is terrible. Don't eat it. I'm sorry.” She buttered Henry's roll, then began to clear the table.

“I'm trying to teach you all something,” said Henry, wrapping his hand around the iced tea glass so she wouldn't take it away. “They need to know what to do in a tornado.”

“They did fine today. Their mother got in a dither. I'm pooped. Louise, are you through with that? Then eat it and stop playing with it. I don't want to be in this kitchen all night.”

“They should teach you all about tornadoes at Bridgewater,” Henry said. “With all that tuition they charge, you'd think somebody would teach a class in safety. Water safety, fire safety, CPR, what to do in a tornado. Around here, your biggest danger is snakes. These woods are crawling with them. Rattlers, copperheads . . . You step over a log, and wham! That snake thinks he's caught him a rabbit.” He shook his head, seeing Roderick and me the way a snake would, as rabbits. “Down in those woods, we'd never be able to find you. You just lie there beside the log, for days and nights—”