Little Divas

by Philana Marie Boles

  I saw Mary making her way back up the hill, and I could not possibly have been any happier.

  Rikki saw Mary coming too, and said, “Here she comes.”

  But I was determined to sit in silence.

  With a hint of desperation in her voice, Rikki said, “Come on, all right? We have to go to that party, Cassidy. We’ll say we’re going to the library, ’k?”

  I exhaled. “Like I said, you don’t need me to go.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Okay. Fine, then.”

  Silence. And more silence.

  “Cassidy, come on,” she eventually started in again. “If I see Lane Benson, with her giraffe-looking self, I’ll pop her.”

  “I am ignoring you,” I sang.

  Rikki turned back around in a huff. “You know what? I will go by myself. I’m not gonna beg you.”

  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.

  August 17

  Dear Mom,

  This is still the best summer ever, for the most part. Daddy is doing everything he said he would. Going to church, fixing up the house, and working. That’s it. On top of that, every night he and I do something fun together. Last night we played Bingo on the sunporch.

  I think me living with Daddy was a great idea, Mom. Don’t you? It’s not that I don’t love Aunt Beanie, but I don’t know if she’s doing so well. In fact, I wonder if she’s sick, a brain tumor or something. Whenever she’s over here, it seems like all she does is rub her temples. But whenever I ask her what’s wrong, she just shoos me away, groans, and tells me, “Nothing. Not a thing. Just go on somewhere.”

  Hope you’re not too scared of all the elephants and zebras running around. Hope you’re not staying up late wondering if I’m okay. I am, for the most part.

  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

  1.I am Ray Carter’s daughter, which means that I am a Carter girl, which means that I am loyal. A Carter girl must never ever tattle on anyone. Ever.

  2. Being labeled stuck-up can be a real bad thing, but being known as a rat is just flat-out planet doom. This is another reason why nobody likes Tosha.

  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!

  I like coffee. I like tea.

  I like Darwin, and he likes me.

  Shimmy-shimmy cocoa puff.

  Shimmy-shimmy swirl.

  I know he loves me,

  ’Cause I’m the cutest girrrrl….

  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.

  Rikki was rocking back and forth, like now all of a sudden she was in tremendous pain.

  “You all right?” I asked, even though I knew she was doing better than me. I was the one who was not okay. Rikki should have been asking me.

  “I can’t wait to go back to school,” she said.

  Rikki had a chronic case of the couldn’t waits. She couldn’t wait to turn sixteen, couldn’t wait to drive. She couldn’t wait for Mary to turn eighteen, and couldn’t wait to go live with her when she did. She couldn’t wait until she, too, was grown, and she was leaving Ohio first thing when she was.

  Now she couldn’t wait to go back to school.

  She said, “I hope Darwin is in every last one of my classes.” And of course, she couldn’t wait to find out.

  I stared out into the acres of trees and felt my eyes burning again. What if Daddy did make me go to Clara Ellis? What would I do? Tosha. Lane Benson.

  I’d run away. I’d go live out there in the woods with nobody to bother me except maybe a friendly deer every once in a while, a quiet bird looking for a worm down by my feet, or an occasional squirrel to feed.

  I sighed, and began wondering what kind of trees Mom was looking at right then. Was she okay? Was she afraid? She’d sounded so happy on the phone the other night. She’d gone on and on about how rewarding her trip was, how when I’m older she’s going to take me back there so that I can experience true humanity. I had tried to sound cheerful, but in a strange way it was weird that she didn’t sound at least a little bit sad. She sounded extra cheerful, in fact, and it seemed like her voice was coming from so far away.

  We didn’t get to talk long. Mom asked me if I’d been writing in my journal, and I told her I had. I told her that when she gets to read it, she is going to be amazed at how much fun I’ve been having. I would too, she said, when I read hers.

  I continued staring at the trees, partially lost in my own thoughts, partly listening to Rikki still complaining.

  Only a couple more weeks left of summer vacation. Soon the leaves will fall. The trees will be nothing but plain old brown and naked twigs. And still, Mom would be gone.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed the anguish I felt.

  The more I thought about Daddy telling Aunt Beanie before talking to me, the more furious I became. I didn’t know if I ever wanted to talk to Daddy again. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn’t.

  Rikki kicked a pile of gravel rocks. “Maybe I should be a gospel singer.”

  “You could,” I said with a sniff. “If you really wanted to.”

  “What are you gonna be?”

  I thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

  “You’re always writing in that journal of yours. You could travel the world and write about fabulous places.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “As long as we’re important in the world.”

  “Definitely,” I agreed.

  “And can go wherever we want, whenever we choose.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “As long as we’re respected,” Rikki added. “You know what I mean? I want people to know my name when they see me coming. I want ’em to salute me.”

  I thought about that. “I think I’d rather just be rich,” I conclu
ded. “Not famous.”

  “Still, we’ll have our own private airplanes and everything.”

  “Every day I wanna wear white linen suits and high-heeled shoes with open toes.”

  “And walk down a red carpet that’s been laid out especially for me.”

  “Blowing kisses to the crowds of people.”

  “Lane Benson is gonna be begging you for your autograph one day, Cassidy. Watch.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and then blew on my fingernails. “I don’t have time.”

  “Not for stupid idiot girls. That’s right.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I can’t wait to grow up,” Rikki said. “And to be able to make my own decisions about my own life.”

  “Me either,” I said. For the first time ever, I knew exactly how Rikki felt.

  “Look at Mary. She still has to sneak around to see that big fathead boyfriend of hers.”

  I felt bad for Mary, always on constant lockdown. You’d think Aunt Honey and Uncle Lance would at least let her have a little more of life now that she’s sixteen. She’s practically an adult.

  “I bet if Mary was ugly,” Rikki said, “they wouldn’t make her stay all cooped up in the house like that. Bet if she looked like Tosha, they’d be hoping a boy would look at her. It doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that kids aren’t allowed to have boyfriends. If Mary ever does run away, I swear I’m going with her.”

  “I’m going too,” I said without hesitation.

  Rikki sulked some more. “But yeah, right. And go where? Everywhere you go in this little bitty town, somebody knows your parents.” She stood up, brushed the gravel off her backside, and looked up the street. “We’d probably only make it down there to the corner before somebody would see us and call our parents.”

  Rikki gazed down the street, and I got up and let my eyes follow hers. Forrest Hills. One of the smallest cities in Ohio, where it really seems like everybody’s parents know everybody else’s.

  I had just started humming my agreement when we saw a big orange and white U-Haul truck coming our way.