The Book of Bright Ideas

by Sandra Kring

  “Lying? You dirty bitch!” Freeda pulled herself out of Aunt Verdella’s arms. “You know damn well I’m not lying. You knew it was the truth then, and you know it’s the truth now. Course, I believed I’d made it all up for a while, just like you’d said. It doesn’t take much to fool a kid, now, does it? Especially when that kid wants to be fooled into believing something that horrible isn’t happening. But that forgetting didn’t last nearly long enough. All too soon, the truth came back to me. All of it.”

  “If that happened, Freeda, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Hannah Malone said. She didn’t sound real sorry though.

  “You didn’t know? You didn’t know? It happened right in front of your goddamn eyes! At the kitchen table, while you were cutting out doughnuts from a mound of dough. Dewey sitting right across from you. That fucker had me on his lap with you sitting right there, and his hairy hand went up my dress while he dunked a warm doughnut into his coffee cup. Don’t you even try saying you didn’t know! You sat there, your fat-ass cheeks red and bulging with a goddamn doughnut, while tears rolled down my face. I was so ashamed, Ma. Ashamed of myself, as though I was to blame for what he was doing. And I knew by the look you gave me that you were ashamed of me too. To this goddamn, fucking day, I can’t look at a doughnut, or sleep in an upstairs, without puke rising up in my throat.

  “And later, when you found out that the neighborhood boys were having their way with me, you remember what you told me? Or did you conveniently forget that too? You told me that it was no wonder that Dewey did the things he did, with me throwing myself at him, the way I threw myself at the schoolboys. That’s what you said to me!”

  Freeda looked like she was shrinking as the mad seeped out of her, leaving nothing but the sad. “I was as loving as Winnalee, and, yep, I crawled up on his lap when he first came to stay with us, and I giggled when he tickled me, and even coaxed him to tickle me more. But goddammit, I wasn’t asking for that! I was asking to be loved, because I missed my daddy.”

  I batted at the tears that were falling down my face, tickling my chin.

  “Stop this, Freeda! Kids remember things wrong sometimes, don’t they, Mrs. Peters?” Aunt Verdella didn’t say nothing. “But I didn’t come here to talk about the past. I have no interest in the past or anything except to see my grandbaby. I raised her for five years, Freeda. Five years! You had no right to take her from me as you did. Why didn’t you just stay out of our lives. Why?”

  Freeda turned more mad than sad again, her hands balling back into fists. “I came to get her because I ran into a trucker in Chicago who knew Dewey, and he told me that Dewey had left there to go back home to Hopested, where he planned to truck for his old company. I left that very same night, because I’d be damned if I was gonna let that motherfucker get his hands on my baby!”

  Hannah Malone gasped. “You think I’d let anyone hurt that precious little girl?” Her fat hand came down to clutch the place where her heart should be.

  “You let him hurt me!” Freeda screamed.

  “That was different,” Hannah said. “You were always throwing yourself at him. Don’t think I didn’t see that!”

  “Hannah!” Aunt Verdella said.

  “You’re blaming me for what he did? I was a kid!”

  “I don’t want to talk about you anymore, Freeda. I want to talk about Winnalee. You can’t do this, Freeda. I raised that child!”

  “Yeah, you did. For five years. While I tried to get my head out of my goddamn ass. I was sixteen years old, and so fuckin’ messed up from the shit that went on while I was growing up that I didn’t know which way was up. But when I grew up, and I got myself together some, I wanted my kid with me. And I wanted her away from you, and safe from that sick freak!”

  My head felt all buzzy, and my belly felt sick. I slipped out the front door, but I didn’t go over to Winnalee’s. I knew I couldn’t look at her just then and pretend that it was just another day for playing. So instead I went around and sat on the porch steps.

  I sat with my head down, my heels propped on the second step, a trail of raindrops falling from the eave onto the toes of my shoes. I wrapped my arms around my knees first, then I brought my hands up over my ears. Not to hide them from anyone this time, but to hide them from the yelling still going on inside the house.

  “Button? You were supposed to come over!”

  I looked up and saw Winnalee rounding the corner. She was hopping on one leg, her hand against the siding of the house to keep her steady. One foot was wrapped in white gauze, and she had that leg flipped up by her butt. Her loops were darkened from the rain, and she was dressed in real clothes.

  “Freeda tell you what happened to my foot? I had to get a shot too, so I wouldn’t get locked jaw. Whose car is here? You got company?”

  I stood up fast. Not knowing what to do but knowing that, no matter what, I couldn’t let Winnalee go inside that house.

  “Let’s go to your house and play paper dolls,” I said quickly. “Or write something new in our book. We got a whole ninety-nine ideas now. We could write the one hundredth idea down, and then we’ll know everything there is about living good. Let’s do it, Winnalee.” I grabbed her arm and tried slinging it over my shoulder, but she pulled it away.

  “Who’s Freeda yelling at?” Winnalee asked. She hopped to circle around me, her hand on my shoulder so she wouldn’t tip over. “Okay, but first I want to show Freeda my arm. It’s hot and it hurts where they gave me that shot.” She reached for the railing and hopped up the first step, her head tilted toward the screen door.

  “No. No. That’s the TV. Let’s go to your house, Winnalee. Come on. Now!” I tried my best to keep my voice little, so no one inside would hear me.

  And then it came. Hannah Malone’s voice. So loud that you could hear every word clearly when she said, “It doesn’t matter, Freeda. You had no right stealing my baby girl from me and telling her I was dead!”

  Winnalee turned around to face me. The color that normally pinked her cheeks was gone. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost.

  She started shaking then. Worse than Freeda had when she set eyes on Hannah Malone. I reached out to touch her, but Winnalee hopped off the step, coming right down on her hurt foot. “Come on, Winnalee. Come on. It’ll be okay.”

  I think Winnalee was too shocked to cry, or even to yell out. She backed away from my hand, as though she couldn’t trust that it was really my hand, then she turned and started running as though she couldn’t even feel her hurt foot.

  Across the yard she raced. Not going toward home, but toward our magic tree.

  I didn’t know what to do. I hurried up the steps to tell Aunt Verdella that Winnalee had heard Hannah, and that she wasn’t acting right either.

  When I peeked into the kitchen, they were all standing. Freeda was rocking back and forth and making horrible noises as she cried those kind of tears that come when someone’s so mad they can’t hardly breathe, and Aunt Verdella was holding her up. “Leave now, please, Mrs. Malone,” Aunt Verdella said. “Freeda’s too upset to talk right now.”

  “Aunt Verdella?” I said. She turned and saw my face and hands pressed against the screen.

  “Button, Auntie told you to go sit with Winnalee! Go on, now. Mind your auntie!” she snapped.

  In my whole life, Aunt Verdella had never said a word in a mean voice to me. I backed out of the porch, then ran down the steps. The rain was falling heavy again, and a strong, colder wind was blowing raindrops against my wet eyes.

  I could see Winnalee in the distance, crouched down beside our tree. I ran as fast as I could to reach her. Winnalee was sobbing, and her arms were buried inside the hollow part of the trunk.

  “What are you doing, Winnalee? Come on. Let’s go to your house and play, or write something in our book. Only one more to go, then we’ll know all the secrets to life, remember?”

  Winnalee was digging in that hole like a dog, kicking back bits of dirt and bark that clung to her wet legs. I looked at the
house, then back at Winnalee. I didn’t know what to do, because it was like Winnalee couldn’t hear me.

  Winnalee yanked our adventure bag out of the hole and got to her feet. She was bent over like she had a stomachache, holding the bag against her middle. Her bare knees were muddy, and her teeth were gritted, even though her lips were stretched wide so the screams could still get out. She turned then and started stumbling in the direction of her house.

  “Winnalee?” I called. “Where you going?”

  Her voice was thick with tears, and her loops were sagging under the weight of the rain. “I’m going to find the fairies!” she screamed.

  “No. Let’s not go right now. It’s raining. See? We’re going next weekend, remember? We made a deal!”

  “No! I’m going now!” she screamed, her voice howling just like the wind. “Are you coming or not?”

  “No. Not today. It’s raining too hard, and your foot’s hurt. We have to go to your house and wait. Aunt Verdella said.”

  “I knew you’d never go with me. I just knew it!” Winnalee screamed. “Even if it wasn’t raining, you wouldn’t go, because you’re a scaredy-cat! You hear me? A scaredy-cat! Well, you might be a-scared of dead people, but I’m not! I like dead people! I love them even! I love dead people best!”

  She turned then and started running, her sobs trailing behind her like her loops.

  “Come back, Winnalee! Come back! Goin’ now ain’t a bright idea. You hear? It ain’t!”

  She didn’t stop, but she turned her head to yell at me. “Leave me alone, scaredy-cat! You never believed in fairies, anyway. Well, I believe in them! I know they’re real!”

  I stood there, watching Winnalee get smaller and smaller as she raced past her house and across the oat field. I didn’t know what to do. I swatted at my eyes and looked back at the house, then out at the field where I could only see Winnalee’s head bouncing above the glossy, waving oats.

  My throat was so thick with scared and tears that I couldn’t run fast, but I tried my best to catch up with Winnalee. Even limping, she was going real fast. “Winnalee!” I screamed, but the wind against my face must have blown my voice behind me, because she didn’t turn around.

  I reached the oat field just as she was clearing it. I waved my arms, parting the oats as I ran. The scared I had in my belly ever since Hannah Malone had arrived wasn’t nothing compared to the scared I felt when I saw Winnalee disappear into the patch of red pine. “Wait, Winnalee!” I called. “I’ll go with you. Wait!”

  But she didn’t.

  24

  When I reached the edge of the field, I took a few baby steps into the woods, then stopped. “Winnalee? Winnalee!” I called out, then turned west and listened for her. All I heard, though, was the sound of the wind swirling the branches and the tapping of rain against the leaves.

  I’d never been in the woods by myself before. I looked up at the sky. The clouds scooting across it were as fat as Uncle Rudy’s belly, and their bottoms were the color of bruises. I knew that on a sunny day the sun could have been my compass, because west is where it goes to bed at night, but with the sun hidden behind dark rain clouds and the trees working like an umbrella, I knew I had to think of another way to find west.

  I looked back at Winnalee’s house and found her bedroom window. From there we could see due west, she’d said. I lined my back up with her window and stood facing the same direction. Everything would be okay, I told myself, as long as I kept walking in a straight line.

  I tried to look for prints Winnalee’s bare feet might have left on the ground, but walking in the woods, I could see, was nothing like walking through the fields. When you walked in the fields, you left a flattened trail wherever you stepped. But not in the woods, with the ground all bunched up with brush and dead tree limbs and last fall’s rotted leaves. Uncle Rudy had told me once that in the old days, when the Indians would go out into the woods early in the morning to collect sap from the trees to make maple syrup, they used to bend willow branches so that the broken limbs would work like arrows, pointing the way to where they were strapping those weaved baskets to the trees. Then, when their kids woke up, they could go into the woods and find their mas without getting lost. As I listened for Winnalee, I wished that I’d thought to tell her that story. Then maybe she would have made tree arrows so I could find her if she left for the fairies before I did.

  I knew Winnalee was way ahead of me. She was a fast runner, especially when she was riled up. And she had the compass too, so I knew she wasn’t wasting time looking down at her feet to make sure they were walking in a straight line. Still—her being way ahead or not—I couldn’t make myself run. It was like the scared in my throat had sunk down to my feet, making them so heavy that I couldn’t move them fast enough to do more than walk.

  I didn’t let myself turn my whole body around when I looked to see if I could still see the empty field and Winnalee’s house behind me. I was afraid that if I did, I’d forget which way I was heading and start going in one of those other three directions. I twisted my body and looked as hard as I could, but I couldn’t see nothing but trees and brush behind me.

  My chest was doing that fast, in-and-out breathing that people do when they’re scared. I wanted to turn my whole body around and run as fast as I could for Aunt Verdella’s house. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Not with Winnalee in the woods alone, all upset because the ma she thought was in a jar was right in Aunt Verdella’s kitchen. Besides, me and Winnalee had a deal: We were gonna find the fairies together. So I walked on, stopping before a dead, tipped-over tree. It was a big one, its sticking-up roots black like giant, hairy spider legs. I thought of skirting around it, but that tree seemed to stretch on forever, so I swung my leg over it, the bark scraping against my bare skin.

  I had one leg on each side when I heard something. I jerked my head up and saw leaves move, then stop. “Winnalee?” I called. “That you?” But it wasn’t. It was only a deer. She peeked her black nose out at me. Her eyes were round and black and soft-looking. Around her skirted her baby, which wasn’t real little, though it still had spots on its back. The mama snorted, and the baby stopped. Then they both turned and hopped away, their white tails pointing up like flags as they went. “Don’t go,” I whispered.

  I suppose I was crying some. Not only because the woods were getting darker and I was scared of getting lost (or, worse yet, scared of getting found by Hiram Fossard’s ghost), but because I was sad for Winnalee, and sad about all the things I’d heard. I thought of those things as I slid down the side of the broken tree and kept walking straight, my big ears sharp for any sound of Winnalee, or shovels.

  Winnalee said once that a kid had to search for the secrets to life, because a grown-up wasn’t gonna tell you shit. She knew what she was talking about there, because she sure wasn’t told nothing. I thought of Winnalee talking to those ashes, thinking they were her ma, and how that wasn’t nothing but a big fat lie. I thought of Hannah Malone too. I thought of how it must have been when she wrapped her fat arms around Winnalee. She seemed like a nice lady to me at first, yet she’d slapped Freeda when she was a little girl, just for calling that place between her legs where she got hurt a “pee-pee.”

  I didn’t want to think about what Freeda said her uncle did to her when she was a girl like me and Winnalee, yet I couldn’t help but think of that either. I didn’t know there was bad uncles like that. I felt sad for Freeda, and I wished that she’d had a good uncle like me, who only patted her on the head and told her stories, instead of a bad uncle who touched her pee-pee and made her puke.

  The farther I walked, the darker it got. I wasn’t sure if that was because the sun was hiding behind rain clouds or if it was because it was turning into night. I came to a patch where the trees weren’t so thick and tipped my head back to look up at the sky. Rain washed my face and I blinked my eyes. The sky had that dark, purple look to it that rainy skies get right before dark. “Winnalee? Winnalee, where are you?” I called, but all t
hat answered was the wind. I paused a minute, then started walking again. My clothes were sticking to me, and the frizzy curls limping against my neck were dripping. I had smears of mud on my legs and cloud-shaped wet spots rimming my shoes. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that I was in big trouble for running off and for getting all dirty.

  Then it came. A moan so loud that I thought I’d jump right out of my wet skin. I froze, just like that mama deer did. I waited. I listened. My heart was rapping so hard against my chest that it seemed it should hurt. It was like I had two voices talking in my head then. One of them said the loud moan was nothing but the wind, but the other said that it was Fossard’s ghost. Both voices were wrong.

  I saw a glimpse of pale blue when I turned to run toward what I hoped was home, and then I heard the moan again. “Winnalee!”

  I went to where she was sitting, her back against a tree, gulping for air as she cried. She flinched when she felt my hand on her and looked up quickly with eyes so scared that it made my tummy hurt. “It’s me, Button,” I said, even though there was still enough light that she could probably see that anyway.

  For a second it looked like she was going to slap my arm away, but then she held hers up to me instead. I sat down beside her, and we hugged and cried.

  “I heard my mama’s ghost,” she said. “Freeda stole me, so Mama’s ghost came back to get me.” Winnalee’s teeth were chattering and snot was running out of one of her nostrils.

  “No, Winnalee. That wasn’t a ghost.”

  The way Winnalee felt in my arms when she cried made me so sad for her that I didn’t even care that her snot was getting on my shirt.

  She pulled her face off of my shoulder. “Then my mama was there? For real?”

  “Hannah was really there,” I told her.

  Her wet loops were stuck to her cheeks, so I brushed them aside, even if it hurt more to see her face. “But my mama’s dead,” she said to me.

  “No, Winnalee, she’s not.”

  “Freeda said she was dead! She came to my school and said that. And then she gave me the jar and said Ma was in it, because I wanted my ma and I wouldn’t stop crying. Why’d she take me if my ma wasn’t dead?”