Chocolate-Covered Baloney

by KD McCrite

  “Well, maybe you better tell her where she understands it, Isabel. I think she needs to hear it. And also . . .”

  “And also . . . what?”

  “Well, she really likes the soaps, and you said they were low class, and I think you hurt her feelings.”

  “Oh dear! Well, I must rectify this, mustn’t I? The darling girl really must understand no serious actor would want to be in a soap opera.”

  Uh-oh. Myra Sue would not like to hear that.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. A person can have a successful career, of course, but not if she wants the acting community to take her seriously. I really must explain this to Myra.”

  Well then. There was nothing I could do about it. I doubted Isabel was going to win her “darling girl” over with such information.

  When we went into the house, Isabel went to talk to Myra Sue, but whatever was said remained between the two of them, because neither one told me a single, solitary word about it. When I asked Myra, she threw a magazine at me and told me to get out of her room. When I asked Isabel, she just said Myra darling was going through a difficult phase.

  Boy, oh boy, did I dread the time when I’d have to go through phases.

  A Song of Beauty in a Time of Need

  The next morning, I did not have to wait ninety-seven years for Myra Sue to get out of the bathroom. And guess what? The bathroom was clean. I have never seen it clean at seven in the morning, except when Grandma stayed with us before Eli was born. Usually Myra’s wet towels are on the floor, her wet washcloth all soppy in the sink, the toothpaste uncapped and squirted all over the place.

  Boy, oh boy. I ought to take a picture.

  I gathered my books and homework and carried everything downstairs to place in a stack on the dining-room table. Myra Sue and I had been doing this every school morning since forever, so we could grab everything when it was time to catch the bus, but that morning her books weren’t there.

  Mimi was sitting at the kitchen table, hacking and coughing her rattly, loose cough like she did every single morning.

  Mama set a bowl of oatmeal and raisins and a small plate of buttered toast in front of me.

  “Your sister about ready?” she asked as she poured me a glass of milk. She glanced at the clock. “The bus will be here soon.”

  “I dunno.” I looked at Mimi. “Was she about ready when you came downstairs?”

  “I haven’t seen her this morning.” She sipped her coffee. “I got up while you two girls were still sleeping like angels. I’m glad she’s back in her own bed. That girl hogs the covers!” She gave us her crusty laugh.

  “She didn’t sleep with me last night,” I said. “She’s afraid she’ll catch my germs. She and Isabel are just alike.”

  Mama and Mimi both looked at me like they didn’t understand.

  “Well, you shoulda seen Isabel yesterday with her mouth and nose covered up with eight hundred Kleenexes while she talked to me. I might sound kinda croaky, but I’m not infectious anymore. Am I?”

  I did not feel infectious. And I was going to school that day. Then, little by little, as all three of us stared at each other, realization oozed into my brain: if Myra Sue did not sleep with Mimi last night, and she did not sleep in her own bed, then where did she sleep?

  “Mama,” I said, with my voice quivering. “Our bathroom was all clean this morning. Myra Sue never cleans the bathroom when she’s finished.”

  I swallowed hard, remembering these last few weeks of her being so secretive and weird and quiet, then yesterday when she was all giggly and giddy. I thought about how she was rummaging around in her dresser drawers. I thought of the neat bathroom, none of her books on the table . . . Something grabbed hold of my guts and my muscles, and I started to shake from the inside out.

  “Mama!”

  I nearly flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and burst into Myra’s bedroom. Mama and Mimi were right behind me. I yanked open the top drawer where she keeps her undies and socks, and it was empty.

  Then Mama opened the closet and we saw, plain as day, a lot of my sister’s clothes were gone. The old, soft-sided flowered suitcase that was usually on the top shelf was gone, too.

  “Mama, where’s her underwear? Where’s her shoes and clothes? Mama, where is Myra Sue?”

  Mama looked at me, her face ghostly white.

  “Go get your daddy,” she said in a voice so frozen, she did not sound anything like Lily Reilly.

  I hardly remember running out of the house and to the barn. I guess it was pretty cold outside, but I didn’t feel it even though I wasn’t wearing my coat. I do remember seeing the school bus slow down and stop at the end of the driveway, but no one from our family was going to get on that thing that day.

  I burst into the barn, and even though I know I’m supposed to be quiet and not scare the cows, I hollered as loud as I could, “Daddy! Daddy! Come quick!”

  All those stupid cows shifted and stomped and tried to tug their big ole heads free of the stanchions, and when they couldn’t do that, they set up to making noise and stomping even more.

  Daddy charged out of the feed room, frowning like you wouldn’t believe.

  “April Grace!” he said. “You know better than—”

  “Daddy! Come quick!” I shrieked, all but jumping up and down with anxiety. “Myra Sue is gone!”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “We don’t know. Oh, Daddy, do you think she was kidnapped?” Which made no sense at all, because a kidnapper would not have taken her clothes, but I was so upset that logic wasn’t even considered.

  Daddy didn’t answer me as he tore out of the barn. I tore out after him, on his heels the whole way to the house.

  “What’s going on?” he shouted as he opened the back door and we burst inside. “Where’s Myra Sue?”

  Mama stood in the kitchen, looking more frozen and white than ever. She held a yellow-and-white dish towel and was twisting and twisting it between her fingers. She shook all over.

  “I th-think M-Myra has r-run away,” she choked out.

  “What do you mean, she’s run away?”

  Mimi came into the room. She held Eli, cuddling him to her, patting his back gently, making whispery, shushing noises near his ear.

  “The sheriff’s on the way,” she said. “Honey, you better sit down before you fall down.” She pulled out a kitchen chair with one hand. “Mike, help her to sit. She’s been standing there like a statue. She’s going pass out if she doesn’t move.”

  Daddy urged Mama into the chair, then he looked around like he didn’t know where he was.

  “Are you sure she isn’t here?”

  “We’re sure,” Mimi told him.

  “She’s got to be here somewhere,” he said. He ran to the back door, opened it, and hollered, “Myra Sue! Myra Sue, get in this house right now!” After a few seconds, he came in and ran upstairs, shouting, “Myra Sue Reilly! Girl, you better answer your daddy!” Then he thundered down the steps, out the front door, and shouted the same kind of words from the front porch.

  I went out there, too. I grabbed his arm and dug my fingers in until he looked at me.

  “Daddy, her clothes and shoes are gone. That flowered suitcase that Grandma gave her is gone, too.”

  He looked at me like he didn’t know who I was, then scooped me up in his arms and carried me back into the house.

  “You shouldn’t be outside without your coat,” he said. “Go put on a sweater and turn up the furnace till you get warm.”

  Daisy followed us into the kitchen and stayed near when Daddy set me down.

  Mama sat in that kitchen chair, wringing that dish towel in her hands, shaking like the last leaf in a cold winter wind. Daddy poured her a cup of coffee and placed it in her hands. He even wrapped her fingers around it.

  “Maybe Myra is at Mom’s. Or over at the St. Jameses’,” he said. “Or with Forest and Temple.”

  “I already called everyone,” Mama said. “She’s not
with any of them.”

  Eli started to fuss, and Mimi gently rocked him back and forth in her arms.

  “Lily, honey, this boy’s hungry.”

  Mama turned her head slowly toward Mimi. She stared at her like she didn’t hear a word the woman said.

  Eli’s little arms started waving above his blanket, and he let out a single, loud “Waaa!” About five seconds later, he set up to howling. Mama blinked. I do believe that’s the first time she had blinked since she sat down.

  “Oh!” she said. “Oh, he’s hungry! I’ll feed him.” She stretched out her arms and Mimi placed the baby in them.

  The back door opened and Grandma rushed in. Her hair hung in little wet curls, and she was wearing sweatpants, her pajama top, her bathrobe, a red slipper on her right foot, and a white sneaker on her left. She smelled of Dial soap and Prell shampoo.

  “I got here as soon as I could,” she said. “What happened?”

  Before you could count to ten, Isabel and Ian charged through the back door, and right behind them came Temple and Forest.

  The whole kitchen was full of people and talking and confusion, and poor little Eli was so upset, he cried and cried. He didn’t quiet down for a while, even after Mama took him out of the room. Don’t anybody tell me that kid isn’t smart. He knew something bad was going on in our house, and he didn’t like it one little bit. Daisy whimpered because she has never liked it when things get all upset. I led her back out to the service porch, right to her bed, then I kissed her big, fuzzy, white head, hugged her hard, and she gave me a look like she understood how I felt.

  “Stay here, Daisy,” I told her. “You’ll feel better.” She settled down, I petted her some more and stroked her head for a little bit longer, and I returned to the kitchen.

  I’ll tell you something right now: I may have thought my sister was a drip and a dipstick most of the time, and I may have wished she’d move in with Grandma or Ian and Isabel or something like that, but this business of packing her things and running off was nothing I ever wanted to happen. I’ve seen things on the news about runaways, and it scares the daylights out of me. You know as well as I do that Myra Sue doesn’t often have the sense to come in out of the rain, so how was she gonna have sense to take care of herself out there all alone in the world?

  I thought about all this, and I saw inside my mind the images of her meeting some awful stranger who would hurt her, or getting lost and freezing to death in a ditch. Or getting run over by a truck, or falling off the side of one of these old, narrow, Ozark mountain roads. Before you know it, all those pictures got into my head and became a thrumming, loud buzz like swarming bees. I could not understand one word of anything anyone said, and I got so dizzy I could hardly see. Before I knew it, I hurled right there on the floor in front of everyone in that kitchen.

  “Oh, mercy!” Grandma said, rushing to me.

  “Poor little Sunshine!” Mimi gasped, hurrying to my other side.

  Clucking like two mother hens, they led me out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom, where they removed my clothes and bathed my face. I’m not sure who did what because right then I felt like I was sitting off in the corner somewhere, watching through dark glasses while everything whirled around me.

  “Grace, I think she has a fever,” Mimi said with her cool, wrinkled, old hand against my forehead.

  Grandma touched my cheek with the back of her hand. She nodded.

  “I believe she’s had a relapse of whatever has made her sick these last few days. April Grace, you need to go straight back to bed.”

  “But Grandma, I need to help find Myra Sue . . .” Even as I said it, I felt the room might be slipping away.

  “I’ll go get your pajamas while your grandma helps you clean up,” Mimi said. “Then we’re taking you straight to bed. No arguments.” I didn’t argue.

  Once I was in bed, the world around me quieted.

  “Grace,” Mimi said, all soft and warm, “if you want to go downstairs with the others, I’ll stay up here with Sunshine.”

  Grandma paused, eyed me a moment longer, then nodded. She kissed my forehead.

  “You lay still for a while.” She glanced at Mimi. “Thank you, Sandra,” she said softly, with a small smile. I would have marveled at that, but right then, I hardly noticed it.

  Now, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to go right back downstairs, too, because Myra was gone and everybody needed to be helping to find her. But I knew I couldn’t. Number one: My whole entire body felt like it was made of foam. And number two: I knew they’d never let me go down there. Number three: If I was sick again, I might be infectious again.

  I lay there, weak and jittery at the same time. I kept hearing my own voice saying over and over again, “My sister needs me.”

  “There, there, honey. Just relax. The sheriff is here now, and he’ll get to the bottom of all this. Would you like me to read to you?”

  But I didn’t want to hear a story. I just wanted to know everything was all right.

  “I’ll just go sit on the top step and listen,” I said, but Mimi pushed me back and covered me up again.

  “No, you won’t. Your folks have enough to worry about right now.”

  I had not really thought of that. Me getting sick would just make things worse, and everyone needed to think about that crazy Myra Sue, not dumb ole April Grace.

  You know what that Mimi did? I’ll tell you. She tucked those covers around me again, she stroked my hair away from my forehead, and then she started singing, just as soft and pretty as anything I’ve ever heard, as if all those years of smoking had not given her the voice of a bullfrog when she sang. She sang a song I’d never heard in my life, something about how our lives go through seasons like flowers and grass. It was the prettiest song I’d ever heard, and I closed my eyes, listening to the tune and hearing the words.

  “That was real pretty,” I murmured, about half-asleep.

  “Did you like that? I wrote it myself.”

  My eyes popped wide open, and I looked at that wrinkled face. For the first time, I noticed she had eyes green as the moss growing on the north side of a tree in the woods. When she smiled, I didn’t so much notice the brown teeth as I did how that smile made her eyes all soft and shiny like Mama’s. Had Mimi always had pretty green eyes like that?

  “Would you sing it again?” I asked, closing my eyelids because they weighed a ton. I did not want to go to sleep because I needed to stay awake and think and pray about Myra Sue, but I could not keep my heavy eyelids open a moment longer.

  Mimi sang that life’s seasons song again, and I couldn’t help it. I just drifted away.

  Pillaging the Plunder Under Myra Sue’s Bed

  I’m not sure how long I drifted, but all of a sudden it felt like someone plugged me into an outlet and gave me an electric charge.

  I sat straight up in bed, clearheaded, full of energy, and brimming with an idea.

  “Mimi!” I nearly shouted. I startled her so bad she practically jumped three feet out of the chair by the window. I reckon she had been sitting there this whole entire time, even though I don’t know how long I’d been lying in bed asleep. Quite a while, I reckon, because it was nearly dark outside the window.

  “My stars!” she said, putting one hand to her chest as she rushed to me. She turned her head and coughed hard for a few seconds into her elbow, then faced me again and said, “Sunshine, are you all right? I thought you were asleep!”

  I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, realizing a Big Clue or two was probably hiding beneath that landfill of junk under Myra Sue’s bed. After all, that mess was so big and so awful, it probably hid life-forms as yet undiscovered by modern man.

  “No, no!” she fussed. “Get back into bed. You’re sick!”

  “No, I’m not!” I hollered. “I’ve recovered, and I think I know how we can find Myra Sue.”

  Mimi gawked at me.

  “Honey, I . . . What . . . Sunshine, you need to . . . What are you doi
ng?”

  By then, I was on the floor with the bedskirt yanked up, revealing that mess Myra Sue had shoved under there on Sunday along with every other thing she’d shoved under there since she was a little kid.

  “Help me, Mimi!” I shouted as I started hauling out papers and magazines and trash.

  “Honey,” she said, catching my arm. “Get up now and crawl back into bed.”

  I looked at her over my shoulder and saw pure alarm in her face. I bet she thought I was out of my ever-lovin’ mind, which I was not, I assure you.

  “Mimi,” I said, grabbing the hand on my shoulder, “I’m not sick. I think that somewhere, in all this junk and trash, there might be a clue about where Myra Sue ran off to.” I squeezed her fingers encouragingly. “Help me go through this mess. Please.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Myra spent hours and hours writing notes and stuff, telling Mama it was homework, but it wasn’t. She was real sneaky about it, and she even slept with her notebooks.”

  Mimi sank down on the floor next to me, her face serious.

  “You think she was writing to someone?”

  I nodded and told her about those times I saw Myra at the mailbox. “She was writing to someone, but I don’t know who,” I declared.

  “Maybe she was writing stories and sending them off to get published,” Mimi suggested. “I used to do that a long time ago. Stories and poems and songs.”

  “One thing I know for sure,” I said, “is that she was not writing homework assignments like she kept saying she was.”

  As anxious as I was about Myra, Mimi’s statement shocked me a little. For one thing, Myra Sue did not have enough imagination to write stories or poems, and she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it, so I know she hadn’t written any songs. And for a second thing, I am the person in the family who’d like to write stories someday.

  I wonder if I got that from Mimi, who seems to be a good storyteller.