Little Divas (7 page)

Mary got in the car, saw both of us with our arms folded across our chests, and immediately wanted to know what was wrong. Neither of us answered.

In fact, the whole time Mary rebraided Rikki’s hair, the car was silent. And the whole way home, too. Tension between Rikki and me never lasted long, but this time I wasn’t so sure it was going to blow over.

seven

After a few
days Rikki and I were still a little sore at each other, but we were talking again. That’s just the way we are. I still couldn’t believe she’d left me alone with Travis, but it was even worse being alone with Aunt Beanie all day, so I was glad that Rikki had asked to come over. We were jump roping in front of Daddy’s house, and Aunt Beanie was huffin’ and puffin’ from the front porch, lookin’ like she could blow a house down.

“Ya’ll know better than to be swinging those hips like that!” she yelled.

Only two and a half more weeks until Labor Day. Only two more weeks of Aunt Beanie. Thank goodness.

Daddy was working late and had asked Aunt Beanie to keep an eye on us. And boy, was she. She looked like she wanted to march down to the sidewalk and snatch us up, like she wanted to pop us one real good. But I knew she wouldn’t. Aunt Beanie just likes to fuss.

Daddy’s house is in the city, about ten minutes away from the dirt and gravel roads where Aunt Honey and Uncle Lance live. It’s a renewed historic neighborhood near the forest of trees that our city is named after. With restored houses that are so big that they look like mansions, you’d think all the people who lived in this neighborhood were filthy rich, but really it’s upper middle class. Most people buy these houses as fixer-uppers. Daddy is doing a great job on his. He just painted the outside white and the shutters dark green, and it looks very clean and new.

He says he wants to build a kitchen upstairs and rent that out as a one-bedroom apartment someday. The house is
that
gigantic. Rikki and I like to sneak upstairs and pretend we’re the ones renting it, like we’re roommates in a big city, fancy apartment together. We act like we have famous boyfriends with fancy cars parked outside. Sometimes we put our hands to our faces and pretend we’re making phone calls.

Hello, this is Cassidy/Hello, this is Rikki… Can you please have our private jet sent up to the roof? We’d like to leave for Italy in an hour.

The house where Mom and I live is closer to the center of town. It’s a moderate-sized, beige, three-bedroom, all on one floor, with a fenced-in backyard. It seemed much bigger after Daddy moved out. Still, it’s tiny compared to his new house.

I looked up from the sidewalk and wondered how come Aunt Beanie never realizes that that big bouffant wig of hers is always crooked. Then again, maybe she knows and just doesn’t care. I wonder what her hair is really like under there.

A hard, cold glare had set in Rikki’s eyes as she looked at Aunt Beanie, and I knew just what was coming.

But Aunt Beanie fired a look right back. “Out here acting like you’re twenty-one going on thirty,” she said. “God’s gone get ya’ll.”

Well, in that case, He was going to punish every girl between the ages of ten and eighteen living in Forrest Hills, because we all sing these songs. Rikki and I had just gotten sloppy, had forgotten to keep our voices down to a hush. Even Aunt Beanie’s goody-goody daughter, Tosha, knows the words to that song. I could have told Aunt Beanie a whole lot about that daughter of hers, the one that she thinks is oh-so-perfect. But I didn’t say a word because

Rikki put her hand on her hips and yelled back, “Oh yeah? Well, God’s gonna get you, too, Ms. Beanie.”

Aunt Beanie reared back and widened her eyes.

Rikki continued, “Gluttony is a sin too, you know.”

Aunt Beanie gasped.

“That’s right,” Rikki persisted. “How many of them cinnamon coffee cakes you eat today, Ms. Beanie? Three? Or was it ten?”

Aunt Beanie’s words came out slow and steady, like air seeping out of the tip of a balloon. “You’d… better… watch… it… little… girl.”

“Watch
what,
Ms. Beanie, how much food you eat?”

Aunt Beanie gasped again, louder this time. “Talking to grown folks like that! You keep on, you little sassy, no-manners-havin’, mean little youngster, you.”

I watched Rikki fold one of her arms over the other as her trademark satisfied smirk appeared. Gripping the jump rope I was holding, I silently hoped that Rikki was not about to cuss.
Oh Lord, please, no.
Anything. A fat joke. A wig joke.
But please don’t let Rikki say a curse word.

I wanted to stop Rikki, to beg her not to say another word, but that would’ve been like holding your hand out in front of a tornado and politely asking it to stop. All I could do was brace myself.

Rikki shook her head back and forth. “Ooh,” she said, “I’m gone tell my mama what you just called me. I’m tellin’, I’m tellin’.
And
I’m gone tell my uncle Ray.”

Aunt Beanie reared up, looked like she was about to say something, but then she just shook her head and frowned like she was utterly disgusted.

A few long, tense seconds later, Aunt Beanie’s nostrils were flared open and beads of sweat were pouring down her puffy cheeks, and she looked right at me.

“Cassidy Carter,” she said, like
I
was the one who’d just sassed her, “ya’ll not gonna give me a headache today, you hear? I’ll just wait until your daddy gets back here. I’m gonna tell him just what ya’ll was down there singing about, too. You just wait until your mother calls.”

Rikki rolled her eyes, snatched the rope from me, and started jumping solo.

Aunt Beanie has this way of looking people up and down and breathing so heavy at the same time that it seems like the very sight of you is making her angry. Mom always says that that’s Aunt Beanie’s way of sizing people up, and that’s just how she was looking at me.

“If you ask me,” she said, “that daddy of yours
does
need to send you over to Clara Ellis Academy. That’s just where you need to be. Watch me tell him so, too.”

That made Rikki miss a jump. And me a breath.

“That’s right,” Aunt Beanie said. “I said it.”

We had definitely gotten on Aunt Beanie’s last nerve at this point. I knew because when she stormed into the house, she let the screen door slam. Aunt Beanie
never
leaves me unattended.

So it
was
true! Daddy
was
trying to ruin my life! And so not only had he told
Aunt Honey,
but he’d told
Aunt Beanie,
too, probably even the whole city of Forrest Hills, Ohio! Maybe he’d talked to everyone in the world about this before me.

Rikki grunted, and I looked over to see a bright red spot on her leg where the rope had burned her shin. She smacked her lips. “Look what she made me do.” She shouted out her favorite curse word, making me extra glad Aunt Beanie was gone from the porch.

But Aunt Beanie reappeared in the living room window with her eyes squinted and a look of complete satisfaction on her face. Having just caught Rikki in a major sin, Aunt Beanie lowered her chin, narrowed her eyes, and gave a slit of a smile before she stepped away from the window.

Rikki groaned. “Made me peel my leg. I’m tellin’ Daddy.”

She wrapped the pink and silver jump rope tight around her hands, planted her feet, and said, “She needs to mind her own business. Big fathead.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

“Nobody’s listening to her, Cassidy.”

I sniffed, but didn’t say anything. I had kept my promise to Rikki and hadn’t said a word to Daddy. But the fact that Aunt Honey and even Rikki knew about something so major before I did really, really bothered me.

“That woman always has something to say,” Rikki said. “She makes me sick. Her and that irritating daughter of hers.”

“I know,” I said, but my head was cloudy with confusion. Daddy had told
Beanie
before he told me, the very person whose life he was going to ruin? Instead he’d told the very person that he and I had joined together and pleaded with Mom not to make me go live with?

Rikki said, “That’s why she’s chubby and ugly, because she deserves to be.”

Hearing Rikki say this made me think about those songs on the radio that make Daddy smile, even laugh out loud sometimes. Songs about big fat women, the man singing about how he wanted a big woman to be his wife, a woman so big that only one of them would be able to fit in the front seat of the car. He said a skinny woman couldn’t do anything for him. Only a dog wants a bone, he said, and it
buries
that when it gets one.

This made me want to laugh, and I thought about telling Rikki about that song. But I knew she wouldn’t grin and snap her fingers the way Daddy and I do. She’d just say it was stupid. Plus, on second thought, that’s a pretty hefty woman. Only room enough for one person in the front seat of a car? Man. Whoa.

Rikki’s face was impatient as she handed me the other end of the rope. “Twirl,” she instructed me.

I tied one end of the rope to the mailbox, while Rikki tightened her ponytail. And then it was on. But I was so distracted by Daddy’s betrayal that I twirled extra hard this time. I was never going to listen to that blues station with him ever again. Never. Ever!

Rikki could do the swirl part so good. She could go way down to the ground, still twirling her hips like she was hula hooping, all the while jump roping. But this time she missed.

My extra strong twirl made the rope hit the scrape on Rikki’s shin. Immediately it produced a stream of blood that raced down to her white cotton socks.

She muttered something and snatched open the flap on the lime-green purse that was hanging down across her chest. Then she sat down to apply pressure with a Kleenex.

I joined her on the ground, pulled my legs into my chest, and began apologizing.

She didn’t reply at first, just kept wiping and wiping.

I gazed out across at the galaxy of trees throughout the neighborhood, and I started wishing I could fly. Far, far away, way above the trees.

Daddy has always seemed so much more normal than Uncle Lance, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe he, too, thinks that what he says goes and that his daughter’s opinion doesn’t really matter. Maybe on the first day of school he’s just going to hand me a stiff plaid uniform and say, “Here. Put this on. You’re not going to King. Off to Clara Ellis you go.”

I felt the heat of tears coming and tried to focus on counting the trees. I had only gotten to twenty-nine when my eyes got blurry, and I had to blink away the aching in my chest.