I sat down in the middle of my floor. I peered at the perfectly round smudges on my yellow walls from countless games of fetch-the-slobber-ball . There was the small dent in the door frame that I made with Thomas’s head after a mean battle of wills over who was going to get to the first pool party of the summer. I lost by default.
There were the notches I had made in the windowsill, recording the times I had sneaked out through the years . Vicky thought I was keeping track of most-outstanding-student accolades. Jake knew and eventually put an alarm chime on my window. I disconnected it right after installation.
The thought of that made me laugh . The memories were really priceless to me. And no matter how many times one dreams of spreading her wings and flying away, or up the street, the actual event means one has officially grown up. College isn’t growing up. College is a supervised transition . You still live off of Mom and Dad’s money. Well, some of us do; there are always exceptions. And you live with a bunch of other mindless, overexalted youth like yourself.
But moving out. Paying rent. Sleeping alone. Those are grownup things . Waking yourself up for work. That is downright elderly. But necessary. And my growing up was happening today.
The distant sound of thunder caused the hardwood to vibrate underneath me. It brought me out of my soap-opera moment. I stood up and walked over to the windowsill and flaked off a small wood splinter sticking out from one of my last notches, brought on by a need to have ice cream with Paige and Grant at a godforsaken hour of the morning.
The sky over Savannah had turned pitch black. It was already almost ten, but there had been stars out on my last trip home. Looking up, I was met with another clap of thunder that felt as if it had just landed on top of my house. My entire body shook. And before I knew it, rain was pouring from the sky like Savannah hadn’t seen in over a week.
The rain felt poignant for the moment, a washing of the old to begin the new. Then the reality of what was happening struck me about the same time the lightning hit the tree across the street.
“Oh my stars, my mother!” I screamed as I looked out of the window.
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity. I ran around that house like Robin Williams with his fake boobs on fire in Mrs. Doubtfire. In less than five minutes I was flying up the street only to be blocked by yellow barricades. I swallowed the desire to curse and instead drove around the block and parked on the curb behind the courthouse. If they wanted to come out in this mess and tow my car, have at it.
People were scampering under makeshift shelters, running for cover under local shop awnings, and scurrying up the street, racing the cockroaches. I reached Mother only to find her resembling a wet rat. It wasn’t pretty. It was downright grisly. Her umbrella offered no escape from the blowing rain. And the tent the local funeral home had loaned was being chased across the square by a couple men . Vicky’s Mary Kay had slid to her chin. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, goo stung her eyes from the way she was batting them, and her clothes were waterlogged. And the poor thing had taken to crying . Well, more like blubbering, but I wasn’t about to throw stones. I hadn’t been outside for almost an entire week and had still done substantial blubbering today myself.
“Hurry, help me set this up,” I commanded my father,who was running up the sidewalk. In a few minutes we were all soaked but sheltered by Thomas’s camping tent, with only the end of a chain sticking out on the other side.
“Thank you,” my mother cried and gasped at the same time. “Thank you, darling, for saving your mooootheeeer . . .” She wailed and threw her head in my lap.
“It’s okay, Mother,” I said, patting her head. I picked up my hand and tried to sling off the product that she had apparently thought should be added each day.“This is disgusting.” I mouthed to my father, who rested on the other side of her in our tent.
“Be nice,” he mouthed back with a smile.
“Don’t leave me, Savannah. Please don’t leave me,” she cried, never looking up. It was a most heart-wrenching moment.
“I won’t, Mother. I won’t.” I rubbed her rain-drenched arm and watched as the water dripped from her elbow onto her pants.
“I’ll leave you two girls for a while.”
“You sure you want to do that?” I asked,my eyes making clear what I desired him to do. Stay.
“Yes, I’m sure. I better check on Duke anyway. He’s probably floating up Abercorn somewhere. I’ll be back later.” And my only remnant of sanity walked out into the deep, dark, night.
“Okay, you need to get up now,” I said, trying to pull her by the elbow.
“I don’t wanna,” she moaned.
“Mother, seriously, who’s the parent here?”
“It should probably be you at this point.” Her sounds were muffled as they tunneled from the side of my leg.
“Really, get control . We need to make you beautiful.” I tried to tug her again.
“That’s impossible. Have you seen me?”
So she had seen herself. This was worse than I thought. The woman had seen herself and still stayed out in public. “Yes, I’ve seen you. And you look . . . well, you look worn.”
She wailed louder. “I’ve paid a heavy price for freedom.”
“People have paid heavier, I assure you.”
“I know!” and she wailed one more time . This made me laugh. “Don’t laugh at me. I’m bruised.”
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing . . . well, with you.”
“That’s impossible! Because I’m not laughing.”
She had a point . Who was to know what was water running down my leg and what was snot at this point. “Please, Mother, seriously. Get up.” I tugged with great effort, and the battered and tattered former Miss Georgia United States of America rose with her own hair looking as if it had formed itself into a matted tiara of its own.
“Ooh, nice.”
“Savannah Phillips. Do not laugh at me. I’m not in the mood. I’m sore and I’m wet. And I haven’t had my own cooking in a week.”
“Well, let’s not even go there . This could ruin a perfectly good evening.”
“Do you know what I would fix for dinner if I were home?” she asked, eyes glazing over, tongue fluttering across her lips. “I’d fix a chuck roast, slice some potatoes and carrots in there. Cover it with a little flour, salt and pepper, add some onion gravy and mushroom gravy. Bake it at 350 for three hours.” She was hallucinating.“ Fix some butter beans, corn, macaroni and cheese, get out some hot peppers and make homemade biscuits.”
I was hallucinating. “Stop it! Stop it!” I snapped my fingers in front of her face. She came back to our world.“I will not talk with you about food one more moment. If you do, I will leave.”
She grabbed hold of me in a death grip and started to wail again. “Please don’t leave me, darling! Please! Please!”
I jerked her up again.“Now, get a grip! I am here for one reason and one reason alone. I am here to make you beautiful.”
“Look at me, Savannah. Are you blind, child? I am permanently maimed. My beauty is a forgotten treasure. My song a forgotten cadence in the Savannah atmosphere.”
“Okay, drama queen, enough.” I squared her at the shoulders and faced her head-on.“I have starved this week. I have had to turn my underwear on inside out. And I have had to sleep in a house by myself. So, we have no place for drama this evening.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, brown eyes looking like the local lush’s after a ten-day drinking binge.
“I’m here because my mother is not going to meet the president of the United States looking, well, looking like . . .”
“Go ahead, you can say it. Like a former beauty queen.”
“Actually no, I was going to say, like a streetwalk—”
“Savannah!”
“But, if former beauty queen makes you feel better, then that’s what you can have.”
“You better have magic in that bag with that kind of talk.”
“Siste
r, I’ve got anything your heart desires. But we are starting from the top down . We begin with the hair,” I said, pulling some shampoo and conditioner out of my huge duffel bag. “The rest of you is wet, so let’s get this hair cleaned up.”
“How will I rinse it?”
“You will stick your head outside this tent in that downpour and let nature have its way.”
“Ooh, good idea.”
She about drowned on the final rinse. But I told her if she put herself facedown instead of nose up, she might be able to breathe without water going up her nose. I scrubbed that head like one would scrub Duke after a mud bath . We wrapped a clean towel around her saturated head, and then we got to work on that face . We cleaned it from top to bottom, and then we dealt with the breath issue. I treaded sensitively and did not subject her to any comparisons to Duke before he got his two rotted teeth pulled.
“Now, how are we going to change your clothes?” I asked, studying the once pale baby blue pantsuit that had turned a lovely shade of burnt teal.
“Oh, that’s an easy one,” she responded nonchalantly.
“Oh it is?”
“Oh sure. I’ve got the keys to the handcuffs right here in my purse. I can just take them off and change real quick and then put them back on.”
“You mean for six days you have worn the same outfit every day when you could have changed clothes?”
“Duh, Savannah. Do you think I would let someone else keep the key to these chains?”
“Please don’t say duh.”
“Okay. Uh, Savannah”—she could be a total smart aleck—“I couldn’t very well change clothes every day . Wouldn’t that have made a real statement. This process has meant something to me, and I wanted to make sure people realized that.”
“Well, nothing could have said that more than Victoria Phillips in the same outfit for one week straight.”
“My sentiments exactly,” she said, nodding and thankful I had finally discovered her obvious intentions.
“Well, you can’t wear that tomorrow to see the president.”
“You don’t think?” she asked, looking down. It was kind of like the look a person gives you when you question whether they have gained weight. Because it came upon them gradually, they don’t quite see the degree to which they really need intervention. And the hand passes over the body as if feeling for themselves to make sure the other’s assessment is accurate.
“No, that outfit, my sweet child, will have to be burned.”
“Burned?!”
“Yes, burned.”
“Do you know how much this cost?”
“I have a good idea, but this outfit is ruined. And this is not Burger King, so, you can forget about having it your way today.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” She could be so childish for a forty-five-year-old.“Well, I don’t have to decide that today.” And she didn’t.
I would decide it for her. Because it was going in the bag I had, and she would never see it again.
“I brought you some pajamas.” I pulled some beautiful pale pink cotton pajamas out of my “magic” bag.
“Ooh, I didn’t know I had those.” She eyed them like a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate-brownie-chunk ice cream after a four-month chocolate fast . Then her delight turned to puzzlement.
“Why didn’t you bring me a nightgown?”
“Because you are sleeping on the s-t-r-e-e-t.”
“Oh.”
She had her a nice sponge bath and put on her warm pajamas, and because of the safety of her makeshift home, no one was the wiser that for the first time in a week,Victoria Phillips was free from chains. I looked down at her once beautifully jewelry-adorned right wrist, which had been handcuffed to her chain, and noticed it was now adorned with a huge red strip of swollen skin where the handcuff had rubbed her for the last six days. But as soon as she slipped into her pink pajamas, she handcuffed herself once again.
“Mother, no one will know you don’t have those on . You could sleep without them for one night.”
“I would know . That would be enough.” She pulled her arms up around her, enjoying the feeling of being clean.“My pillows are soaked.” She pointed to the pillows that sat next to her rolled-up sleeping bag that we had pulled from the rain.
I gave her a wink.“I’ve got extra.” I pulled two perfectly fabulous down-feather pillows from my bag.
“You got drugs in there too. ’Cause I think you’re high as a kite.” Her brow crinkled.
“Would you hush and let me dry your hair?” I jerked the towel on her head . We decided instead to let her hair dry naturally to avoid electrocution from the downpour . Then we would use the battery-operated curling iron that I had brought before she went to sleep. We could fluff it up again in the morning. But at least she was clean.
We dried off her sleeping bag, tossed her foul clothes in the bag, and sealed them up . When those were safely tucked away, I laid out a beautiful pink suit that I had brought, with cream pumps, for her viewing of the president of the United States tomorrow.
I pulled us out two bottled waters, but she declined hers.“I try not to drink much . You know. The bathroom thing and all,” she whispered. She hurt my heart. Until tonight I hadn’t thought about all she had been going through.
We fluffed out our fresh pillows and laid down on the sleeping bag.“This was fun, Savannah . Thank you. Ooh,my right hand’s itching . That means I’m going to get pleased. But I couldn’t be any more pleased than I am right now.” She looked up at me, smiling.
“You know, I think we’re going to have to deal with that.”
She gave me a look of an exasperated child.“Now what?”
“That old wives’ tale stuff. It’s either number one or two on here,” I said, tapping the concrete monument behind us. “I’m not sure which. But we shouldn’t be believing in it.”
“You don’t think?”
“No, I really don’t.”
“Well, my Lord have mercy, I’m sitting here chained to this monument, and I’m breaking these commandments even as I breathe.”
“It’s okay . We’re going to do better.”We nestled down into our sleeping bags, and I stared up at the ceiling of the red nylon tent.
“Tell me a story, Mother.”
“What kind of story?”
“You know, like the stories you told Thomas on Sunday.”
She giggled.“Oh, about my antics as a little girl?”
“Yeah, those kind of stories.”
“Well, after that we need to talk about your little-girl antics.”
“Oh, the whole city will be talking about that tomorrow; let’s save something to talk about for then.”
“But, Savannah, who is this ‘Sugar Daddy?’ Did you have a crush on Virginia Cooper’s daddy, Sug?”
I belly laughed.“Are you for real?”
“Are you depraved? My stars, child, you were just a baby.”
“For your information, crazy woman, a Sugar Daddy is a piece of candy, and Sug was Virginia’s mother’s pet name for her husband, Larry. I stole candy, Mother. Now, get over it. No more talk about it. Please.”
“Well, thank the Lord and call off the cavalry, because I was about to search your room from stem to stern, and see where Sug was hiding.” She giggled after that. She may play stupid, but we both knew she was smart as a tack.
For the next two hours my mother shared some of the funniest, silliest, and greatest stories I have ever heard. And for the first time in a week, I slept like a baby. Who cared that the newspaper would declare I was a thief tomorrow . Who cared that I was sleeping on the sidewalk, in a tent, in front of the courthouse, with a crazy mama. She was my crazy mama. And I was immensely proud of her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ow, pain.” I tried to stretch my body out.
Mother pulled her earplugs from her ears.“What?”
“I’m battered and bruised,” I said, rubbing my backside.
“I know. I’m permanently debilitated,�
� Mother said, rubbing her eyes. “But you get used to it.”This from a woman who takes her own sheets to hotels.
“There ain’t no way.”
“Don’t say ain’t.”
“Don’t boss me around at the crack of dawn.”
She laughed.“I am bossy, aren’t I?”
“Totally,” I said, leaning up on my elbow to look at her.
She rolled over on her side so we could talk face to tired face. “Your dad thinks I’m a control freak.”
“You are.”
Her eyes widened in complete shock.
“I’m certain of it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You are chained to a monument . What makes you ask?”
“But this isn’t about being in control . This is about fighting for what I believe in.”
“I’m sure it is. I’m sure it is. Now let’s make you beautiful again.” I sat up to help pick out her mushed do.
“It really is, Savannah. I know you don’t believe me.”
I started fluffing her hair.“No, actually, I don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you are always in the middle of everything. And you couldn’t be more in the middle of this unless you had been chiseled into that monument yourself.”
“But this isn’t about me,” she said, trying to pout.
“I didn’t say it was about you. I said it was a control issue . You don’t think anyone could do it like you, so you think you have to do it yourself.” I took her by the arm and unzipped the front of the tent.“Look out there, Mother.”
“Ooh, pretty day.”
“Not at the sky, at the people . These people slept out here last night too. Any one of them would have been just as capable as you of chaining themselves to this monument.”
“But they wouldn’t have—”
“There. See, you don’t know what they would or wouldn’t have accomplished. Because you didn’t let them.”
“You think they wanted to?”
“I’m not sure. But I know at least some of them would have.”
Hildreth 2-in-1 Page 56