by KD McCrite
Grandma’s face was flushed and pretty, and the light of all the candles everywhere shone in her eyes. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” for the second time, and she blew out the cupcake candles. That was one of those moments that I wanted to hang on to inside my head and remember all my life.
She took those little candles out of her cupcake and sucked the frosting off of each one, grinning while she did it. I figured Isabel would curl up her nose at such a stunt, but she was laughing as much as anyone else. Isabel surely was being one of the family that night. You’d never know she could be such an all-fired pain in the patootie sometimes.
From where I stood near the archway between the hall and living room, I saw Forest Freebird open the front door. I reckon he heard a knock the rest of us couldn’t hear.
Cold air rushed in from outside, sending shivers over my skin. All the candle flames flickered and laid low like they wanted to go out. Pastor Ross was standing not far from me, and that cold breeze stirred his dark hair. I don’t know why, but right about then those words from his sermon from a couple of weeks ago echoed into my head: “Things are gonna change.”
I’m not sure how I knew it, but right then, I knew that Big Change I had been dreading had something to do with whoever or whatever had come sweeping through our front door. Something in my stomach rolled over and clenched tight at what I saw, and I shivered and scuttled across the room to my daddy and mama.
A Real, Live Screamin’ Mimi
“Hooooweee! Now, that’s what I call cold!”
The frog-croak voice and the mule-bray laugh that followed reached us before we saw the speaker.
Forest led the person toward the living room. She stopped right smack-dab in the middle of the arched doorway. Voices fell away as we all gawked at her. That woman was a sight, and here’s just a few reasons why. Number one: She wore a cowboy hat, and ever since that Event last summer with Jeffrey Rance, who tried to hoodwink my grandma out of her house and our farm with romance and lies, I have no love for cowboy hats. Number two: Beneath that purple cowboy hat, her hair was a color I have never seen on a real human person. (Think Heinz ketchup stirred up with Welch’s grape jelly.) Number three: Her face was as wrinkled and crispy as wadded-up sandpaper, and her orangey-red lipstick gave me chills. And number four: I believe if you’re a million years old, you should not wear miniskirts, even if you’re wearing a frontier jacket with a long fringe on it that comes past the skirt’s hem. A fringe does not cover up bony white knees, let me tell you.
Did I forget to mention she was wearing bright-red cowboy boots?
“Have I interrupted something?” she asked, then brayed that donkey laugh again. She broke into a disgusting cough that sounded like Grandma’s cat, Queenie, when she hacks up a fur ball.
I guess because Forest was the one who’d let her inside the house, he thought he should be the spokesperson, especially as Daddy and Mama stared at her like everyone else and didn’t move or say a word.
“It’s a surprise party,” he told her in his soft, sad-sounding voice when she quit coughing.
“Oh?” She looked around, then flung out her arms and laughed again. “Well, surprise!”
Good gravy, but that laugh was enough to make the wax dribble right out of my ears.
Then she finally seemed to notice Grandma sitting in the special chair with crumpled gift wrap around her and presents at her side and the birthday cupcake in her hand. The strange person looked right at my grandma and grinned, showing the grossest brown teeth you can possibly imagine. It was like something from a horror movie. I am not supposed to watch horror movies, but I did once at 2:00 a.m. at Melissa Kay Carlyle’s house when her mama had already gone to sleep and did not know we watched it or that we stayed up the rest of the night with the lights on because we did watch it.
“Why, Grace Reilly! I almost didn’t recognize you, woman! You got old!”
She laughed again, a wheezing cackle this time. Grinning like a goon with her hands on her bony hips, she ran her gaze all over the room until she found Mama standing beside Daddy on the other side of the room. She gawked at her for a minute.
“Well, my stars, Lily!” she croaked out. “Seeing you is like looking in a mirror thirty years ago.” When no one said a word, she continued, “Don’t you even recognize me, Sandra Kay Moore, your own dear mother? I haven’t changed that much, have I?”
Beside me, Mama gasped and kinda sagged against Daddy. Grandma dropped her special cupcake, frosting-side down. It hit the floor with a splat.
You know what? That old woman acted like she didn’t even notice. Her gaze found me. She eyed me up and down. Then she gave me that brown grin. I shuddered a little. At least I think I did, but maybe we had an earthquake right then.
“Would you look at that? Goodness, you are the spittin’ image of me when I was a little girl. Come here, Sunshine, and give your mimi a great big kiss.” And she hunkered down a little with arms wide open again as if she thought I’d fly on wings of joy to kiss her wrinkly ole face.
I stared at her and felt my eyeballs about ready to pop free of my skull. I prayed for someone, anyone, to please, please, tell me this “Mimi” woman was not my other grandma.
When I did not fly into her arms as she seemed to expect, she straightened and looked at Mama again.
“Well, Lily, I came all this way to see you. Don’t you have anything at all to say?”
Mama made a funny noise, like she wanted to laugh and cry and scream all at the same time, then she ran out of the room, right past that woman and down the hall. Daddy took off after her. I would’ve followed, but if I did that, I’d have to pass that awful old lady, and I did not want to be snared in her arms and kissed by those orangey-red lips. Instead, I edged over to Grandma’s chair and clasped her shoulder, just to make sure I was connected with her. When she stood up, I hung on to her arm.
“Sandra Moore, what are you doin’ here?” She spoke as if there was no one else in that room. I guess maybe she’d forgotten everybody because they were all silent as rocks. They stared at that woman like they thought she was something out of a scary movie.
Boy, oh boy, it takes someone with no couth to crash a birthday party!
“Grandma,” I whispered, “that isn’t really her, is it? That’s not really Mama’s mama, is it?”
“’Fraid so, honey,” she whispered back. Without looking at me, she patted my hand. To that old woman, she said aloud, “I don’t see where you find your nerve, Sandra.”
“Don’t take that uppity tone with me, Myra Grace Reilly. I have every right in the world to be here. In case you’ve forgotten, Lily is my daughter.”
Grandma raised one eyebrow. “I haven’t forgotten that, but I figured you had.”
That woman narrowed her eyes at Grandma like she was gonna charge across the room and slug her a good one. Of course no one in the room, including yours very truly, would’ve let her. Then she changed. Just like that. Her face went from mad to slack. She looked at me again and smiled.
“Little redheaded princess,” she said, coming toward me with her hands stretched out. Let me tell you a couple of things. Number one: If that woman thought I was a princess, she needed to be taken to the hospital in Blue Reed to get her brains examined. And number two: Those hands were as bony as chicken claws and white as chalk, except for liver spots and the tip of her index finger, which were browner than all get-out, like her teeth, and I figured if she touched me, I’d probably just rot away. I edged even closer to Grandma, who put one arm around me, all comforting and strong.
“Won’t you even say ‘Hi, Mimi’?” she said. “You know you gotta call me Mimi and not Granny or Grandma, don’t cha? Because I’m not old enough to be your grandmother.”
Was she kiddin’ me? She looked old enough to be Methuselah’s great-grandmother. I’ll tell you something else. There was just no way, José that she could be less than two million years old.
Then she broke into the worst fit of coughing you ever heard.
I thought she was gonna hack up her lungs, her liver, and maybe half of her toenails—which were probably long and yellow. I shuddered again. I wondered if she had a disease. Then I remembered how Mr. Dreyfuss, the grade-school janitor, used to cough just like that, and everyone said it was because he smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. That was probably true. Every time I saw him, he was outside puffing and smoking like one of those old trains you see on western movies. This Mimi-person looked like a three-pack-a-day smoker to me.
“You’re shy, aren’t you, princess? Just like your mimi when I was your age. Here, since you’re such a bashful little thing, let’s just shake hands.” She stuck out her right hand. Now, let me tell you, I did not want to shake hands, but with everyone in that room staring, I figured I had to.
I braced myself to look her in the eye like it is right and proper to do when you shake hands, but I could not force myself to look higher than the brown-stained tip of her nose. Actually, I wanted to hide my own face against Grandma like I used to do when I was little and I’d see something awful or scary. Slowly, like molasses being poured on a frozen pond in January, I put out my hand.
You know what that sneaky old woman did? I’ll tell you. She grabbed my hand and yanked me hard against her.
“Ha!” she crowed. “Tricked you so I could get some sugar, didn’t I?”
Then she kissed me all over my face until I thought I’d die from toxic-waste lips. And then she laughed and coughed about two inches from my nose. Boy, oh boy, her breath stunk like an ashtray. I clawed my way to freedom in the most unprincess-like way you can possibly imagine, grunting and squirming like crazy. I think I might have wiped my face with my sleeve, but I’m not sure. When you’re traumatized, you just don’t remember every little detail.
“I’m gonna go see about my mama,” I choked out, and fled from that room faster than you can believe. That yucky old woman could not possibly be related to my beautiful, sweet, clean mama.
I wanted to run outside and suck in fresh air, which I dearly needed, or run upstairs and take a hot shower, which I planned to do, believe me. You know what? If one of Temple’s concoctions had been sitting somewhere within reach, I’d probably have grabbed it and stuck my nose right in it, just to clear my nose holes. But right then I needed to see if Mama was all right. I rushed into the kitchen. It was empty, but I thought I heard my daddy’s voice and followed the sound right through to the service porch and on outside. The moonlight was soft and silvery as the night stretched away, frozen and dark and secretive, like it had completely forgotten that sunlight would fill up the sky in a few hours and reveal all the night’s hidden places.
“Mama? Daddy?” I said when I saw them a few feet away in the windy, cold shadows of the house. My breath fogged around my face.
There was a short silence, then Daddy said, “Go back to the party, April Grace.”
I did not budge an inch. Instead I asked, “Is Mama all right?” and the scared feeling I had in my insides sort of made me feel nervous, like last fall when Mama was really sick and I didn’t know she was pregnant. This time, though, I knew what was going on, and I wasn’t so much worried as concerned that that old Mimi-person had upset her into being ill.
I heard the soft murmurings of their voices, and I waited because I’d been taught better than to barge right over and interrupt.
“Come here, punkin,” Daddy said at last, softly.
In that murky moonlight, Mama’s face was whiter than the sheets on wash day. Her eyes were swollen. She held her arms out to me, and I ran to them. She wrapped me in a hug so tight I could hardly breathe. Then she kissed me all over my face, like I’d been gone a thousand years. She kissed the places that Mimi-person had kissed, erasing them completely. I surely hoped Mama did not catch any Mimi-germs.
Daddy stroked my hair as I put one hand on either side of her face and looked right into her eyes.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Sure, honey,” she said, smiling at me as she caught both my hands in hers and squeezed them gently. “Just . . . shocked.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out. Daddy stroked my head again, ’cause I’m sure he knew I was upset. It felt good to be close to him and Mama, to know we loved each other.
“Mama, is that woman really your mother?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, honey.”
She scrubbed at her eyes like they were itching her to pieces.
“Why?”
She stopped rubbing and gave me a funny look.
“Why what, honey?”
“Why is that woman here, on Rough Creek Road, in our house?”
A cold breeze shot across us. Mama rubbed her bare arms, and Daddy pulled her close into the circle of one arm and me into the circle of the other. Not one of us was wearing a coat, and the wind whipped our bodies like it was trying to get our attention. I snuggled in closer.
“I don’t know why she’s here,” Mama said to me. “I guess she wants something.”
“What do you reckon she wants?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, like she was tired.
“Do you think she’s gonna stay long?”
“Oh goodness, I hope not!” And then she bit her lip as if she shouldn’t have said that.
I didn’t say anything for just a second, then I said, “You never talk about her, Mama.”
“I know.”
Again it was quiet, but I’m not much of one to let things stay silent for long, if there are things going on that create drama in our house.
“You gonna tell her to leave?”
Daddy cleared his throat, and I looked up at him.
“April Grace,” he said, “we’ve never told anyone to leave our house.”
Well, that was true enough. Ian and Isabel lived with us for what seemed like forever last year, and they were regular pills, and not once did Mama or Daddy say to either one of them, “I think you ought to get out now, ’cause you have done worn out your welcome.”
“My own personal self, I don’t want that woman here,” I said, because someone needed to say it.
“She’s my mother, April Grace,” Mama said sadly.
“But Mama, there is something . . . scary about her.”
“I know, honey. She’s different.”
I looked at Daddy, and he gave me a gentle smile I could see in that moonlight. His smile seemed to say, “It’ll be all right.”
“She’ll probably leave soon,” Mama added. “As far as I know, she’s never stayed in one place for very long.” She said nothing for a minute, like she was praying or seeking guidance or something, but then she took a deep, shuddering breath and turned to Daddy and blurted almost the same thing I’d asked her. “Mike, why is she here? After all these years, why now?”
He hugged Mama up to him, kinda rocking her in his arms a little.
“I wish I had some answers for you, sweetheart,” he told her. “Maybe she’s . . . oh, I don’t know . . . lonely and needs someone around.”
“Then where has she been all this time?” I asked. “If she was lonely, why didn’t she show up before?”
I stood there, hoping Mama would confide some details about that old woman. You see, I knew a few secrets about Sandra Moore. Secrets that Grandma shared with me last summer about stuff I wasn’t supposed to know. She told me that Sandra Moore had abandoned Mama and given her to a mean old great-aunt who starved and mistreated her. Grandma had shared this with me only because she felt I needed an example of doing good things even when life has kicked you in the teeth. You see, Mama forgave her mean ole aunt and took care of her until she died. Grandma said Mama had never allowed her Unfortunate Circumstances to turn her into a bitter, rotten person.
Mama never wanted to discuss these events, so I have never, not even once, hinted that I knew anything.
“I don’t know where she’s been. I haven’t heard from her in years and years. You see, April Grace,” Mama said, lifting her head and straightening her
back as if gathering courage, “my mother left me behind when I was just a baby.”
“And you were raised by Aunt Maxie.” That much was common knowledge in our family.
“Yes. Great-Aunt Maxie did her best to take care of me, but she was old and never in the best of health. She wasn’t always kind,” Mama said, then she went on to tell me some of those things I already knew, like how Aunt Maxie didn’t always feed her very much or make sure she had the right kinds of clothes for whatever the weather was.
“Sandra came for me once and took me with her. I’m not sure what happened, but she brought me back after a year or two and gave me to Aunt Maxie again. By then, Maxie was getting sick, she had a very small, fixed income, and she did not want me. But Sandra didn’t care. She left me there anyway.”
“And this is the first time you’ve seen her since then?” I asked.
Mama nodded. “I thought she’d probably died long ago.”
I sucked in a lungful of that cold night air and nearly froze my sinuses.
“I don’t think she should get to stay here in your nice, clean, warm house and eat your good food and kiss your very own daughter with her nasty lips and act like she’s related to me, or that I should love her, because I don’t!”
“Well, honey, I never said I wanted her to stay here. In fact, I don’t expect her to stay. Let’s just take it one step at a time, okay?”
The back door opened, and I squinted into the darkness and made out the skinny form of Isabel St. James. She stood for a time, peering around, but when she spotted us, she came trotting over in her high heels. Have you ever seen a tall, skinny woman trot in high heels and a slim, straight skirt? Well, most of the time it’s funny. Right then, though, I was too worried to snicker at Isabel’s tottering approach.