Cousins (3 page)

Lordy, Cammy thought. “Do you always have to get so dressed up for your lessons? I mean, can’t you ever relax?” Cammy asked.

Patty Ann raised her eyebrows. “Ho-hum, I am relaxed,” she said. “Some people I know wouldn’t never know how to be relaxed in pretty clothes, if they ever had any pretty clothes.”

Cammy’s ears felt hot. Anger flashed in her eyes. “You know what you look like in that brand new dress?”

“It’s not so new,” Patty Ann said. “I’ve had it a week. Mama says not every girl can have a dress like this because it costs high. You know,
expensive
. She says but I’m not just every girl.”

You’re trying to make me feel small, Cammy thought. Well, you won’t!

“You look like death,” Cammy told her. “Like you are going to a funeral, which is your own.” Once she got started, she couldn’t stop herself. She saw Patty Ann’s mouth turn down. “You look like a skeleton. I’ve never seen anybody that bony outside of a Halloween white cardboard skeleton.”

“You are so jealous just because I can sit on my hair and I get all A’s,” Patty Ann remarked. “I got my picture in the paper for never having below a B plus, and you have
never
had your picture in the paper.” She said this while looking out of the window and swinging her legs. Her voice was up high on itself but still husky.

“They’ll spread your hair out on that little satin pillow,” Cammy went on, heart beating fast. “They’ll pin your eyelids back with glue and make your eyeballs look down at some toy piano in your lap. They’ll break your fingers to curl them so it looks like you are playing the keys.”

Cammy even shocked herself with her own meanness.

“You are just so stupid,” Patty Ann said. “It’s your loved one, Gram Tut, that smelly old bag of bones, that’s dying.”

“You shut up!” Cammy whispered. They had both been talking softly, in case Aunt Effie passed by the door.

“If you weren’t so dumb,” said Patty Ann, “you’d know she’s gone into a fate-all position.”

“A fate—what?” Cammy said, alarmed. She didn’t know what a fate-all position was. Never had heard of it. “You take that back!”

“It’s true. She’s beginning to curl up like an unborn baby,” Patty Ann said. “That’s the way real old folks do before they pass away.

“And by the way,” added Patty Ann, staring down her nose at Cammy, “where are your clothes, did you forget to wear them? Or did they just rot off you?” Patty Ann turned on Cammy in triumph.

Cammy got to her feet. If she ever doubted that Patty Ann was some enemy cousin, she didn’t now. She shook her head. “You are trying to make me mad and you use Gram Tut, which is no fair. She’s old,” Cammy said.

“By now, she’s about dead, too,” Patty Ann said.

“Stop it!”

“You stop it. You started it.”

Cammy smiled, her heart swelling for Gram Tut. “I know all about you,” Cammy said, quietly. “I know what you do in the bathroom when you think nobody can see.”

Patty Ann grew still. Cammy knew she ought to stop, but she couldn’t help it. She had to finish, for Gram Tut’s sake. “You stick your finger down your throat,” Cammy said. “You force up all the food old Aunt Effie makes you take for lunch to camp. Kids say you did that a couple times last week. I know all about you.”

Patty Ann’s chest heaved. She looked sickly thin and strange to Cammy. Tears filled her eyes.

Cammy went on, although her heart wasn’t in it. What good was it if Patty Ann was going to cry?

“You think you are fat. You’re afraid of your own mama, afraid of doing anything wrong. That’s why you get all A’s. Andrew said so. You’re afraid of what mean Effie will do to you if you don’t. Wonder what she’d do if she knew you upchucked your food on purpose.”

Patty Ann covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“I don’t care,” Cammy said. “You just better learn to keep your mouth off Gram Tut, you hear? You don’t say nothing bad about her or I’ll come while you’re asleep and cut your hair off!”

Patty Ann screamed, “Moooother!” at the top of her lungs. She ran for the door but Cammy beat her to it. Cammy heard Aunt Effie upstairs, heading for the steps.

Cammy forced Patty Ann away with a thrust of her hip. She got out of there and sprinted to the kitchen. She turned off the dryer and got her clothes out.

“What’s going on?” cried Effie, coming down the stairs.

“She made fun of me, Mother,” Patty Ann called.

“Heifer,” she heard Aunt Effie say.

I’m outta here! Cammy flew out the back door, clutching her clothes in her arms. She forgot about the missing bottom cement step and fell to her knees. “Ouch!” She got right back up, though, no matter that the pain was awful.

She came around the house just as Aunt Effie with Patty Ann on her heels burst from the screen door. But by then, Cammy was on the street and on her way. They couldn’t catch her, she didn’t think. Oh-my-lordy! Aunt Effie was coming across the lawn. Cammy sprinted away.

The still warm clothes in her arms made her all hot and sweaty. She ran around some trees and dressed behind a tree trunk. Lordy, what if folks have seen me out here half nekkid? she thought. They’ll just think I have on a swimsuit.

Cammy looked around to see where Aunt Effie was. She held her breath to listen. But it seemed Effie hadn’t gone any farther than the curb.

Cammy got everything back on again. Even her sneakers. It was then she noticed it was still raining and she was wet all over again. Well, let lightning hit me, I don’t care, she thought. She was burning mad, boy. Anything’s better than that enemy place! she thought.

She raced the weather halfway home. A truck was coming toward her and slid to a stop next to her, spraying puddle water practically over her head. She recognized the two guys inside and grinned. Stuck her thumb out, real sassy. The door opened on the passenger side and a strong arm hauled her in. Today, it seemed that people were hauling her, one way or another.

3
Long Sleek Roads

ANDREW CALLED THE
pickup his pup. It was named P’up for short by the car maker, he told Cammy. And it was smaller than a full-size pickup. It was spiffy and Andrew drove it fast down roads shining almost forever. Silver band roads. It could still be raining, or storming, too. Andrew didn’t mind. He liked the way the tires sounded on the wet blacktop. He was a good driver, even though he was only sixteen. He never drove too fast in a storm; he didn’t slow down, either.

“You watch. That child’s in for some serious trouble,” Aunt Effie said to Maylene. “No boy at that age has any business with a car.”

Cammy had been right there. What she forgot about the conversation, Andrew remembered. “Shows how much she knows—it’s not
even
a car,” later Andrew told Cammy. “And I’m not any
boy
,” he said. “I’m a young adult.”

“My dad gave me the pickup as a gift,” he told Aunt Effie, “so you just mind your business.” She didn’t scare him one bit.

But she went on just as if he weren’t there. That was the insulting part, Cammy’s mama said later. “Oh, I know all about his
dad
,” Effie said. “His big-shot dad’s too good for this town and this family.”

“All right, Effie, that’s enough,” Maylene told her.

“You better keep your mouth off my father,” Andrew told Aunt Effie, “or I’ll tell you all about
your
own self, too.”

Cammy recalled how shocked she had been at her brother’s boldness.

“Disrespectful. Just smart aleck,” Aunt Effie said.

“I’ve never known another family that is always at one another, like this one,” Maylene said. “Effie, you started it and it’s finished, now. Not another word.”

But Effie went on. She said it was up to her to say something when her own son was sitting in a cheap truck, in the death seat next to a sixteen-year-old driver.

“Nobody’s making Richie ride in my pup,” Andrew told her.

“If you didn’t have it, he couldn’t ride in it!” Aunt Effie had shot back.

And then Cammy’s mama said something about what were they supposed to do. “Not have any transportation? Not ride for fear something bad
might
happen?” Maylene had said.

In the pup now with her brother, Cammy couldn’t help smiling. Old Maylene was something. Cammy felt bold, calling her own mama “Old Maylene”!

Cammy was fairly soaked again from the rain. Andrew had reached over and hauled her up off the road. She’d climbed over Richie to take a seat in the middle.

Andrew’d brought a towel for her, too. And turned on the heat a moment over their cousin Richie’s protesting. “It’s too hot for heat, man. It’s summer—man?” Whining Richie, Aunt Effie’s only son. He was in the passenger seat by the window.

“My sister’s wet, dork,” Andrew told him. “She’ll catch a cold and I’ll get blamed.”

“I’d blame Richie before I’d blame you,” Cammy said.

“Swell,” said Richie.

Andrew laughed. Then he said, “You ran off, Cam. I don’t fashion that.”

“Were you driving around looking for me?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Had to find you before Mom got home.”

“You’re not mad at me?” she asked.

He smoothed her hair back with the towel, as he drove, drying it more. “Oh, you’re about up to par today, kid,” he said. “Who could get mad at that? And getting yourself wet in a storm.”

“I got soaked before now,” she told him, explaining about Aunt Effie.

“No kidding, she came after you?”

“Great,” Richie said. “Now she’ll get on me for being around you guys.”

“Aunt Effie and that brat sister of yours are both
weird
, Richie,” Cammy said.

“Maybe Aunt Effie will forget about telling Maylene,” Andrew said, “but I doubt it.” He thought it amusing to call his mother by her first name. Maylene didn’t think it was.

The conversation hung on the air. Richie didn’t like the way Aunt Effie was, either, so he said. They couldn’t get along for more than five minutes. Still, he didn’t care to hear his cousins talk about her.

Andrew and Cammy knew that. Her brother gave her a look and she knew to stop talking about Aunt Effie.

The sky was bright gray at the storm’s edge. Just a line of blue showing, but more to come. Cammy had her head on Andrew’s shoulder. Her legs were crossed like a grown-up girl. Her knees stung where she had fallen. She tried to forget about it, resting her hands easily in her lap. Richie had his window open and Cammy’s shoulders were getting chilly.

“I want to go home,” she said, looking up at Andrew. “I’m pretty wet and cold. I think I scraped my knees some.”

Andrew glanced over at Richie. She heard Richie’s window roll up.

She was turned to Andrew. “Andrew?” she said.

“Shhh,” he said. He was listening to the radio. Some song about “You drive me crazy when I’m with you.” She didn’t much care for love songs. Andrew seemed to like them; Richie, too. They would stop what they were saying to listen when a love song came on. Like they were trying to learn something.

“Dumb stuff,” Cammy said, under her breath.

“So, Gram Tut was okay today?” Andrew asked her, when the song was over.

“I don’t know,” Cammy said. “I guess. She talked some. Old Man Vance came in and bothered us.”

If Cammy had known her brother was going to ask, she would have been ready. She would have had time to close herself off from how she felt about Gram Tut. From how she loved her just to death and hated Patty Ann for teasing so mean.

Old, funny Gram, I love you much! She missed coming home to find her Gram in the rocking chair, snapping some beans.

“You are snappy, yourself, just like them green beans,” she’d told Gram.

And Gram said, “Those green beans, child. Don’t they ever teach you the proper English in school?”

Cammy’s eyes filled with tears. She sniffled and moaned a high, sad sound.

“Come on now, Cam, don’t do that,” Andrew told her. He put his arm around her shoulder, patted her.

“Andrew, Gram Tut’s going to die!”

“No she’s not,” he said. “Least, not for a long time.”

“She’s old!” Cammy cried.

“Well, there’s lots of old people,” he said. “They walk around every day and they’re all not going to pass on tomorrow.”

“No, but …”

“No buts, Cammy. I swear, Gram Tut’s not about to go anyplace just yet,” Andrew said.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Cammy asked.

He was quiet a moment. “Last Sunday,” he lied. He couldn’t bear to see his Gram wasting away like that. “On my way over to see Dad.”

At the mention of their dad, Cammy sat up straighter and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. She had the feeling he could see her. He listened to every word she said. Cammy never could say about her father. She’d been so young when he first was out of the house. When he came over now, a rare event, she just sort of circled around him, stared at him, said nothing much to him. Sandy hair and light eyes. Not that she felt there was something missing at home. But she suspected he fit somewhere between their days and nights. A shadow something, before dawn and after sundown.

“I haven’t seen Gram Tut in six months,” Richie said. “Mom don’t ever say Patricia Ann has to go see her.”

Cammy remembered something Patty Ann had said. “Andrew, is it true that Gram Tut is in a fate-all position?” She thought that was the way Patty Ann had said it.

“A what?” Andrew and Richie both asked.

“A fate- or fete-all position? It sounded like,” Cammy said. “Patty Ann told about it.”

“It’s a place to die in, you mean?” Richie said.

But Andrew was grinning; then, he caught himself. “S’nothing for you to worry about,” he told Cammy. “You just go visit Gram Tut anytime you want to. Anybody bother you, tell ’em to come see me. Tell Gram Tut I said hi and I miss her, too.”

Richie made up reports about having seen Gram Tut to please Aunt Effie. Patty Ann knew he was lying. She told Cammy; then, she was sorry she had.

Everybody knew Richie was a barefaced liar. Andrew said that Richie would lie about anything even when there was no reason for him to lie. Like the time he said he helped rob the bank in downtown Dayton. He had a lot of money suddenly and spread it all around about being a robber. The police came and took him away. He was back the very next day, after Aunt Effie proved he had been with her brother working on constructing a playground—the only job he ever held for more than a week. Lasted a month before he didn’t show up one day, and the next and the next.