Billie Standish Was Here (8 page)

“If you hit me again, you better knock me out.” I didn't recognize this person talking. “Because if I'm still conscious, I'll lay you out flat.” Whoever she was, she meant it.

A few thick seconds ticked by. Then all the air went out of Mama and her arm went down to her side. She was staring, zombie-eyed, and muttered, “My own child—”

I matched my voice to hers. “—doesn't like being called an idiot?” I wiped at my face and rubbed my eye. “Doesn't enjoy getting hit—and burned, to boot?”

We looked at each other until she blinked. Then I set the chair in its place at the table, turned to go clean myself up, and didn't look back.

My cheek hadn't blistered but even a gentle washing
hurt. When I finished it looked like I had a port-wine birthmark. There was a bloodshot spot toward the corner of my eye but it had stopped stinging. I stared in the mirror acquainting myself with this girl. Then I took a deep breath and headed back to the kitchen.

Mama was exactly where I'd left her. I walked past, got the dishcloth, started wiping sauce off the wall and wringing it back into the pot that still sat on the floor where it had fallen.

“That's ruined, you know.” She sounded like a whiny child. I turned to her with a blank face.

I said, “I hadn't planned to eat it. Would you rather I not clean it up?”

Her chin lifted so high I could see up her nose. “No. You made the mess, you can just clean it up yourself.” I half expected her to stamp her foot. “And when you're done, you can just cook dinner to replace the one you ruined.” She flounced out of the room about as well as a forty-year-old woman can flounce. I went back to wiping and wringing.

When the kitchen was back to square one, I took stock. The chair I'd flung had missed the pot of water boiling for spaghetti. That was a start. I dumped a box of macaroni into it and halfway replaced the lid. Then I turned on the oven and started pulling stuff out of the refrigerator.

Miss Lydia had taught me how to make a white sauce one day and promised it would come in handy. If you can make a white sauce, she'd said, you can make gravy, creamed vegetables, chowders—all sorts of things.

Ten minutes later I had a tuna noodle casserole in the oven and had put some canned peas on to simmer. I mixed up some biscuits and rolled them out on newspaper spread across the table. We didn't need the extra starch with the macaroni, but my parents had never had the biscuits Miss Lydia had taught me how to make and I knew they were a long sight better than Mama's.

It was cooking with a vengeance. That doesn't paint me in the best light, but at the time it seemed as mature as Mama was acting. I could hear the TV blaring and I would have bet she had her nose stuck in a book as well. Whatever it took to tune me out.

Daddy went on and on about how good dinner was. You could almost see Mama's blood pressure rising point by point. When he reached for a third helping of casserole and a fourth biscuit and asked, “Why haven't you ever made it like this before?” she finally spewed.

“I didn't make it.
She
did, after she ruined the dinner
I
made.” She jerked her head in my direction.

Daddy studied my face and frowned. He hadn't looked at me since he'd come in. Now he said, “What's that on your cheek?”

“I got burned,” I muttered.

“Well, boy, I guess you did!” Good food always made him friendlier. “How on earth did you manage that?”

I counted to four before Mama exploded. “I slapped her smart mouth, that's how!”

Daddy sat with his fork in midair and looked back and forth between us. “Slapped her with what?” he asked, but he was looking at me.

“What was handy,” Mama told him. “It just happened to be the spoon I was stirring spaghetti sauce with.”

Daddy put down his fork and sat back in his chair, taking in a wider picture. “What did you say to her?” Now he was talking to me but looking at Mama.

“Listen to me a minute,” I said.

“Okay.”

“No. That's what I said. ‘Listen to me a minute.' ” It was tattling, sure. But if tattling didn't feel so good people wouldn't do nearly so much of it, and just then I felt like singing it. In three-part harmony, all by myself.

Daddy stared at each of us in turn, then told Mama, “We'll talk about it later.” To me he said, “And you, if you're finished, go to your room.”

Like I'd had other plans.

T
  he next morning I almost jumped out of my skin when I walked into the kitchen and found them sitting in the same chairs. I hadn't seen them both at the breakfast table since winter. There were coffee mugs in front of them and Mama looked like she had either slept too hard or done some serious crying.

Daddy cleared his throat and said, “Sit down, please.” I slid into my chair. “Your mother is concerned.” Mama kept her head down.

I sneaked a look. He was speaking for her now? He went on. “Don't you think it's . . . well,
unwise
to spend time with an old woman addled enough to take her own boy for a prowler?”

I concentrated on my hands. “Oh, as long as I don't wait till the whole town's been gone a month and then try sneaking into her house at three in the morning, I imagine I'll be safe,” I told him.

Mama pounced. “What's wrong with you that you can't spend time with girls your own age, anyway?” she said.

A few weeks earlier I would have winced. “Nothing's wrong with me,” I told her. “The only two girls around who are my age live about eight miles away. Plus they're tight as ticks. And even if they did want me in their little club, would you drive me out to their farms all the time?”

She took the bait. “I'm not your taxicab.” I had heard that often enough.

“Didn't say you were. Just answering your question.”

“I guess what your mother and I don't understand is why. Why do you want to be around an old woman like that?” Daddy looked honestly perplexed.

I didn't mean to, but I started laughing. Then tears sprang to my eyes and I just overflowed all over. I wiped my face on my T-shirt sleeve when I could and said, “She's my friend.”

Mama sucked her teeth and shook her head at Daddy like this had proved something.

I concentrated on breathing. It seemed like I could forget to. The eye of the storm was coming back.

I made my face blank. “She talks to me,” I said. “She listens to me. She teaches me things. How to cook, how to crochet, how to fix stuff.” I took a deep breath. “She likes me.”

“Your mother can do all those things with you, can't she?” Daddy's
face was so drawn in on itself it looked like a fist.

“Miss Lydia enjoys it,” I said.

“Oh, but—” Daddy started. Then he looked at Mama and whatever he saw stopped him. His eyes came back to me and, for the first time that morning, I remembered the big red splotch on my cheek. I stared at the sugar bowl. From the corner of my eye I saw him study my face.

Several minutes passed with no more said. I got up and slid my chair into place, went to my room and closed the door. I got dressed, then rummaged in the top drawer of my desk for the stationery I'd gotten for Christmas. I took out a piece and wrote in my most careful hand.

Dear Miss Lydia,

You can ask me anything and tell me whatever you want, too. We can talk about anything under the sun you think needs to be talked about, as far as I'm concerned. You are not alone, either.

XOX,

Love,

Billie Marie

I folded it in thirds and slid it into an envelope. I wrote her name on the front, sealed it, and laid it on the sewing machine next to the door so it was ready to grab on my way out. Just then I heard doors slam out in the driveway, one-two, and gravel crunched as the pickup drove away. I opened the door and helped myself to a great big breath of their air.

I thought the two hours doodling with makeup had produced a perfect result. I guess the sun had some harsh thoughts otherwise, though, because Miss Lydia jumped when she opened the door. I was afraid she'd get tangled up in the throw rug and fall. I grabbed her elbow just in case.

“Lands, child,” she said. She pulled away like I was something from the circus. “What on earth have you done?”

It's hard to make eye contact with someone who looks horrified at your appearance. I went to the sink and started washing my hands just for something to do. “Mama hit me with the spaghetti spoon.”

“Whatever for?” she gasped.

“I tried to tell her something and she didn't want to listen. That's pretty much it.”

She was quiet for so long. I finished drying my hands and had no choice but to face her. “This have anything to do with me?” She looked at me so fiercely I couldn't pull my eyes away.

“Oh no, Miss Lydia. Not at all.”

She was glaring out from under her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Well, Mama might tell you something different, but as far as I'm concerned this had absolutely nothing to do with you and everything in the world to do with Mama,” I told her.

Miss Lydia deliberated a long minute, then nodded. “I made pot roast,” she said.

Halfway through the meal she asked, “So underneath all that Cover Girl, what exactly you got goin' on?”

“Some of it may be a bruise by today, but mainly it's a burn.”

“You put anything on it besides makeup?”

I shook my head.

She nodded and started telling me about some real-life drama she'd read about in the new
Reader's Digest
.

After the dishes were put away, she told me to go to the big bathroom upstairs and wash my face clean. I didn't want to, but she said something about having seen worse no matter how bad it was. And it did seem silly trying to hide what she knew was there.

When I walked back into the kitchen she got out the poultry shears and cut a big tentacle off a plant in the windowsill above the sink. A clear gel starting oozing out the cut end. When she came at me with some on her fingers, I took a couple of steps backward.

She chuckled. “Aloe vera, Billie Marie. Main ingredient in some of the most expensive skin cream you can buy and that's watered down. Best thing in the world for burns. That's why I keep it in the kitchen.”

I winced at her touch. Then I was amazed by how cool the stuff felt as she spread it across my cheek. It looked like it should be sticky, but it wasn't. It was just cool and soothing. I shut my eyes.

“Uh-huh,” Miss Lydia agreed. “You take that plant with you when you go, and use some every night and morning until that heals.”

“Oh, I can't—” But that's as far as I got. I could see her mind was made up.

Mama was making pot roast when I got home that evening and didn't turn around as I took the plant to my room. I guess Daddy had dropped her off and gone on to run some errand, because the truck pulled in a little later. I heard Daddy tell Mama hello and figured that was dinner call.

He nodded at me without breaking his running commentary about the cultivator breaking down that afternoon. She stood at the stove murmuring at the appropriate junctures.

When she turned, she had filled a plate with food. She grabbed a knife and fork off the table and left the room without a word. A minute later we heard the TV come on. Daddy and I looked at each other. He shrugged and made a plate from the pots on the stove and then sat down at the table with the morning's newspaper.

I weighed options while I filled my own plate. Then, carrying it in one hand and a glass of water in the other, I left Daddy with the paper and walked to the living room. Mama wasn't so much watching TV as glaring at it. I kept on walking and ate my dinner behind my closed bedroom door.

And that's how we ate from then on, in three separate rooms, no tie left to tether us to the kitchen table.

As I passed through the living room with my empty plate after that first silent dinner, the phone rang. Mama's expression didn't register any change, so I went over and grabbed it on the second ring.

“Thank you.” It was Miss Lydia. It took me a minute to remember the note I had slipped in with her mail.

“Sure. I meant it.”

“I know you did, Billie Marie, and I thank you. Now, is your mama there?”

I nearly choked. “Oh, no—well, I mean yeah, but—” Talk about a disaster just waiting to happen.

Miss Lydia chuckled and said, “Oh, lands, child, don't worry. I got some business with her that's got nothin' to do with you.”

“Mama?” I had to say it three times before she pulled her eyes away from the screen and frowned at me. “It's for you.”

“Who is it?”

“Miss Lydia,” I said and, when that news registered, she looked downright scared. I had to move for her to get to the phone, and I took the opportunity of being on my feet to get out of Dodge.