Spelldown (11 page)

I hear the twins’ bus stopping in front of the house. I lift my head, wipe my face with my shirtsleeve, and stop crying. Noah and Josh come bouncing into the house. When they see my face, they run over, and Josh asks me what’s wrong, with that little worried frown of his. I curl up in a ball and cry some more. They huddle up against me on the sofa and start crying too. They’re not used to seeing me so despondent in the afternoon.

A while later the twins are running around in the backyard. When I thought about Mama coming home to a big crybaby and a drunk husband, I washed my puffy face, then fixed the twins a snack and straightened up the house. When I heard
Daddy yell out “Shit!” a couple times, I checked on him and found him agitated and wheezy, but still asleep. I woke him up and made him take a sip of water.

I go into my room and grab the Gund clown Mama gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I named her Elka. She’s my crying buddy. She only cost one book of stamps, which has turned out to be a real bargain. Last year, when I opened the present and read the note,
To my little clown
, written in Mama’s scribbly handwriting, I realized that I had the key to Mama’s laughing place.

As soon as Mama gets home from work, she walks into my room, sees my face, and hears Smokey Robinson crooning “There’s some sad things known to man—but ain’t too much sadder than—the tears of a clown.” She lifts the needle of the record player, turns it off, then walks to the living room. She picks up the phone and dials it. All I can hear her say is “… needs some help.” A few minutes later, she comes to my door, dressed in her old black slacks and white blouse. “We’re having oyster stew for supper,” she says in her nip-this-in-the-bud voice, and closes the door.

Mama amazes me. Since I won the Spelldown, she’s acting all fired up, like she believes in miracles. And even though she has worked all day and Daddy is drinking again, she’s cooking my favorite soup. Lots of times, she makes it after my crying jags.

Someone knocks on my door and I open it. It’s Kelly.

“If you have a minute, I’d like to talk with you,” he says.

“Yes, sir, I’ll be with you in a minute.” I walk to the
bathroom and wash my face again. Kelly sure has a way about him. I heard his testimony last year at a special AA meeting when he got his ten-year chip. He talked about how he had been the proudest, hard-drinkingest, God-defying colored man in South Carolina. That was until Old Colonel High gave him a job and introduced him to the Twelve Golden Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The sad part of the story is that Colonel High started drinking again and crashed his airplane into one of the Great Smoky Mountains.

In the living room, Kelly is sitting in the Naugahyde recliner talking to Mama, who’s sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Excuse me,” she says. “I need to check on the stew.”

I sit on the couch and Kelly talks to me in his deep, buttery voice, asking about my spelling and what’s going on at school. I tell him about Mrs. Helms’s breakdown and how disappointed I am in myself that I never got past her haughty ways and saw how tender her heart was. He says I handled the situation the best I knew how. Then I tell him about Daddy. He talks for a while about how living in this world isn’t always a pleasure, and that sometimes it’s our trials and tribulations that teach us who we really are. Deep down inside, he says, Daddy is a good man, but he’s got an affliction he can’t solve by himself. He says Daddy was sincere when he asked God to help him stop drinking, but Daddy hasn’t learned to let God
stay in the picture
.

It’s sort of like spelling, he says. You have to keep working at it. You can’t ever give up.

1: to make worse (pain, disease, anger)

2: to make more violent or severe

On Friday afternoon I hack down a misshapen cedar from the woods with an old butcher knife and drag it toward our house. I have a bad case of
taedium vitae
, which sounds downright cheerful compared to the English translation—weariness of life. The super-duper Kotex slipping and sliding in my panties isn’t helping my mood one damn bit. Plus, my hands and arms itch something awful from hauling the tree all the way from Bear Creek. Christmas is only four days away, and the way it looks around here, it’s up to me to make the holiday happen. Daddy is God knows where, doing God knows what. Mama’s gone to Psalm 91 Beauty Salon to have her hair fixed, and then to buy groceries.

But at least I have Mrs. Harrison. When she brought me home from school today, she offered to watch the twins while I cut down a tree. As I drag the cedar toward the front porch, she’s looping red ribbon into a big bow. The twins squeal like piglets when I plop the tree up against the house.

Mrs. Harrison looks up. “You got a nice, big one.”

“Big enough, I reckon. Not too ugly, either,” I say in my martyred voice.

“It’s perfect.” She gives me a quit-feeling-sorry-for-yourself look.

If it weren’t for Mrs. Harrison, I’d have sunk into this dunghill of a life. When I finally told her about Daddy’s drinking, she said she was familiar with that type of situation. She said I was lucky to have something as grand as the spelling bee to focus on. Now, when she drops me off from spelling practice, she often chats with Mama.

“Hey, Jelly Bean, I have to leave.” She hands me a package wrapped in silver foil with a red satin ribbon. “An early Christmas present.” For a second I feel like boo-hooing, but I choke it back. She rises from the porch step. “Save it for later. It’s just a little something.” She grabs me and hugs me hard. I squeeze her back, wishing I could go home with her.

“Come on, you little knuckleheads,” she says to Josh and Noah. “Escort the queen to her chariot.” Laughing, they run in circles around her all the way to her station wagon. “Hey, call me later if you want to talk,” she yells, then drives away, tooting the horn.

I put the tree in our old red-and-green Christmas tree stand. It leans a little to the right, but it will have to do. A crooked Christmas tree isn’t the worst thing in the world. After I drag the tree into the living room, I make an afternoon snack. The house feels peaceful with just the three of us munching on our peanut butter crackers and sipping hot cocoa at the kitchen table. But I notice the twins need a haircut. Until recently, Mama has always kept them looking like the little boys in the Sears catalogue. I’ve been trying to
keep our family shaped to Mama’s standards, but trying to do things the Lila Bridges way wears my nerves to a frazzle.

Mama has always complained about being at the end of her rope, but I can tell she’s almost ready to turn the rope loose. She goes through the same motions as before. Work. Church. Sleep. But she’s about quit eating anything except cornflakes, and her sick headaches come more often and last longer. My parents have fallen back into their old routine. They work every day on different shifts and they sleep in the same bed, but they hardly speak to each other. Daddy still spends most weekends someplace else, showing up drunk on our doorstep late Sunday night. But at least he makes it to his loom-fixing job almost every day, which keeps us out of the Poor House.

After the twins finish their snack, they beg to decorate the tree. I tell them they have to take their baths first, and put on their pajamas. While they play in the tub, I curl up on the sofa and—

Something strikes my cheek. I must have dozed off.

“Yee-haw!” Noah screams, standing at the door swinging a huge sanitary pad like a slingshot.

I jump up and slip on several pecans on the floor, falling flat on my butt. Noah fires more pecans at me and runs away. I chase him into the kitchen and find Josh wearing a giant purple Kotex box on his head, with holes cut in it for his eyes. He’s stomping around with his arms held out stiff like he’s Frankenstein. Unable to see out of the eyeholes, he’s banging into everything. Sanitary pads are strewn all over the
floor. Noah has jumped on top of the table and is slinging pecans from his Kotex slingshot. A pecan whizzes by my ear and strikes the Kotex Frankenstein. I yank the stupid box off Josh’s head, jerk the pad from Noah’s hand, and scream, “I’ll kill you if you touch this stuff again.”

“What are those things?” Josh asks.

“It’s private lady stuff, that’s what it is.” I don’t know how to tell them about blood and babies and all that icky stuff that happens to girls. Why did the Kotex people make their dumb boxes so gargantuan and in that impossible-not-to-notice purple? This is the final humiliation. Tomorrow, I’m buying the Tampax. I’ll master tampon insertion if it kills me.

“Josh.” I dangle the sanitary napkin in the air. “Pick up the rest of these and put them back in the box.”

“Noah, you pick up all the pecans and put them in the bag. Then get that box of construction paper and crayons and go sit at the kitchen table with your brother. Draw Mama a Christmas tree. I don’t want to hear another sound from either of you. You understand me?”

The boys set about doing as they are told.

Before Mama gets home, I want to make sure the tree is decorated and supper is ready. She has always made home-cooked meals, but for the first time in our family’s history, our freezer is filled with Dixie Darling—brand TV suppers, chicken potpies, and frozen French fries.

We’ll decorate the tree first. I climb the rickety hideaway stairs to the attic and bring down several old hatboxes full of ornaments and a large cardboard box with tangled strands of
Christmas lights. I call for the boys and let them help. Only one string of lights works, and I wrap it around the unfortunate tree. We take turns placing all the homemade and dime-store ornaments on the branches. From a green silk pouch I pull out the ornament Mama calls an heirloom. She got it at the stationery store, back when she had the Christmas spirit a few years ago. It’s a miniature red book made out of wood.
A Christmas Carol
is written on the front in gold letters, and on the back cover is the inscription
God bless us all. Each and every one
. I hang it high, out of the twins’ reach.

Instead of making the twins place the silver foil icicles individually on the tree, I let them throw them in clumps that now hang crookedly over most of the branches. I pull out the creamy-faced ceramic angel in a starched white dress from a cardboard box. One of the wings is hanging by a thread. I tape it to the angel with masking tape and then stand on a chair and place it at the top of the tree. I jump down, turn off both lamps, and stand with my little brothers, admiring the tree as it twinkles in front of the picture window.

I hear a car pull into the driveway. “Shh. Let’s surprise Mama.” I peer through the blinds and see Kelly putting the grocery bags on the front porch. When Mama comes into the room, she looks startled. A peace-on-earth look flashes across her face for half a second, then disappears.

The twins help bring in the groceries, and then they play quietly in their room while I make a big pot of oyster stew just like Mama’s, with lots of evaporated milk, butter, and pepper. For the boys, I make fried bologna sandwiches. I set the table
and find two half-burned red candles and light them.

The three of us children eat quietly, watching the tiny soup crackers grow soggy in Mama’s barely touched stew. She thanks me for cooking such a good supper and then takes a long, hot bath and goes to bed. I get the twins situated on a blanket in front of the TV to watch an episode of
Get Smart
with that stupid Maxwell Smart and sexy Agent 99.

After I wash the dishes I decide it is a good time to better familiarize the twins with the real Christmas story, so I climb into the attic and lug down the rectangular pine box with the Holy Family inside. I carefully unwrap each figurine: the three Wise Men, Mary, Joseph, and the animals, and put them on the kitchen table with the manger. Baby Jesus is missing.

The boys run into the kitchen and want to play with the Holy Family. The figurines are made of sturdy plastic, so I say okay, then climb back into the attic to search for Jesus. I fumble through layers of yucky insulation, but can’t find him. I sit down on a piece of plywood and rack my brain trying to figure out what might have happened to the figurine of the pretty baby. Downstairs, Josh and Noah are mooing like holy cows, baa-baaing like holy sheep, and cock-a-doodle-dooing like holy roosters. Their frolicking reminds me that some people are born happy.

When I come down, both boys are standing on the kitchen counter. Mary and Joseph are wearing GI Joe parachutes. Noah tosses Mary so high into the air that she hits the ceiling and crashes to the floor. When Josh tosses Joseph into the air, the parachute opens perfectly, allowing Jesus’ daddy to float
gently to the kitchen floor. I try my hardest not to laugh. They scurry down from the counter, pick up Mary and Joseph, and hand them to me, sly grins on their faces.

The Jesus part of Christmas will have to wait.

I grab one of the red candles and escort the boys to their room. They both climb onto the top bunk and beg me to recite “The Night Before Christmas.” I light the candle, then Josh flips off the light switch. I lose myself in the story. Each word glides from my lips and swirls around my little brothers. I don’t even stumble on that clunky sentence right before Santa shows up, “The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a lustre of midday to objects below.” By the end of the third recitation, they are asleep. I’m too tired to move one of them, so I leave them together on the top bunk.

I go sit on the sofa in the dark, looking at the tree. Except for the cedar scent, it doesn’t smell like Christmas at all. I miss Mama’s happy, busy smell mixed in with the smell of cinnamon. For holidays, baking the right cakes and pies has always been as important to Mama as having the right clothes. Every year, like clockwork, she bakes fruitcake for Christmas, almond pound cake for New Year’s, red velvet cake for Valentine’s Day, fresh coconut cake for Easter, cherry pie for July Fourth, pumpkin pie for Halloween, and sweet-potato pie for Thanksgiving.

This is the first December in my life that Mama has
not
spent every spare moment in the kitchen making fruitcakes for Christmas. I don’t exactly like fruitcake, but every year I help her by grating fresh coconut, shelling pecans and black
walnuts, and chopping dates and figs into tiny pieces.