WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (17 page)

“
A cuss word, Lena? 
Watch it now.” 
I said. 
“You’ll shame the Christ.” My voice dripped the pure sap of southern sarcasm straight from the family tree planted in the cursed 
I don’t give a shit
 soil. “Oh—I forgot.” I paused for full unbridled poetic affect. “I’ve done enough shaming for the whole family, huh?”

She glared at me in silence, her mouth forming small lines and her eyes squint with concern. 
Lena hated confrontation and come backs were not her forte. Avoidance was more her style. Her face was a wishbone, demons pulling on one side and pink elephants pulling on the other, both hoping and waiting for the bone to break and for the daughter of her dreams to pop out, discard the crazy, malfunctioning, rebel
dirt seed of despair and shame and be normal. 
 

Ours eyes lock onto each other saying what neither of us would voice out loud. 
My devil-may-come attitude wore her thin to the breaking point. I could always outlast Lena Hart. It was a given.  She was spent and her octopus arms long ago, put away, useless. 
From this point on, if I wanted to climb a tree and save a leaf crackle—
I would.
 If I wanted to act like a lunatic—
I would.
 If I wanted to entertain the neighbors and have the entire populace of Pine Log whispering behind my back—
I would
. And there was nothing Lena Hart could do about it. My free spirit always rubbed Lena the wrong way. Her facial expression
looks the same as it did when I was eight. 
Confused, weary, and
where did I go wrong?
I am everything she hates and everything she longs for. I
see it in her blue eyes, an imprint of mine in patterned replicas.  It’s the only perceivable limb I can read on the woman. 
She turned and stormed out but stopped halfw
ay in front of the bathroom hitting what seemed to be an invisible wall.  But it wasn’t a wall, it was my declaration of lipstick scribbles on the bathroom mirror that froze her in her tracks.   

I couldn’t see her eyes but I read her back as she ran out the door. 
Never enough. Not my daughter. Not my child.
 I fe
ll back on my man pillow.  The mattress sank with my weight and the vintage coils inside the box springs
squeaked in muffled vibrations, spilling out secrets in rusty codes that only my childhood ears could decipher. I let out a deep heaving breathe and watched my past and my present tumble out in snippets. The number 500 appeared
like a neon sign again.  Its invasion in my mind had me puzzled. 
I pondered its meaning and fell asleep, dreaming of crumbs, crackles and little girls with tattoos of I AM ENOUGH on their
hearts. 

Southern Sap

Pine Log wasn’t much for entertainment. We had one Dairy Queen, a drive-in theater, a car-hop 
burger joint, a sucky miniature Putt-Putt, an indoor movie theater, and a poor excuse for a skating rink. If that wasn’t enough to rouse your spirits, you could venture to our shopping mall that took exactly two minutes and eight seconds to walk from one end to the other.  It had eight stores including the infamous
 green stamp store which sent every female this side of the southern plains into a licking frenzy. What Pine Log lacked in activities, the S&H Green Stamp store made up in volumes of mass merchandise. There was a certain 
je ne sais quoi
 to collecting green stamps if one was to save enough to purchase the latest state of the art gadget. Lena was the top 
kitchen contender. Her plan was to have one of everything regardless if she needed it or not.  She hoarded up shoe boxes full of green stamps until her tongue was green. 

When we was too broke to do any of those things and it rained outside, M
ag and I sulked like tit babies.  We wasn’t indoor city folk.  How was we to entertain ourselves inside a house of confinements?  We were country folk, meant for the outdoors, well except Mag, she was just buying time and waiting for eighteen. 
Thunder and rain ruined any hopes of going outside so we offered the Gods sacrifices, in hopes they’d cease their wrath and let us out of house prison. 
I offered up Mag—and she offered up me, until finally we agreed on a cricket.  After an hour of chanting cricket words, the cricket escaped.  So much for sacrifices.  By this time, Mag was tired of the hoopla so we dragged out the city toys.  Those last ditch playthings not created by God or nature.  The abominations.  I decided to make it fun for both of us, so we agreed to take
the Mattel rich kids down a notch or two by afflicted them with the simplistic realities of country life. It started with a namesake and a downgrade. Barbie and Ken became Bertha and Earl. We traded in their uptight sports car for a rusty ‘ole pick-up truck. It had class and charisma and was purchased from the corner car lot, from top salesmen himself, Joe Burton. We donated their name brand clothing to charity and dawned them in thrift store hand me downs, some bearing a striking resemblance to our patchwork pedal pushers. Mag was highly offended about the whole process. It was way too country bumpkin for her taste.

“It’s supposed to be rags to riches—not riches to rags.” She 
snorted loudly and crossed her arms.  Mag protested because most times, she l
ived entirely on the upper echelon of things which caused us to disagree on most everything. Her disdain for simple living riled something fierce in me. How could anyone separate themselves from their upbringing? Everything they are—is everything they are to be. That’s the way I look at it. Surely it was necessary for those high society types to get a taste of how the working man lives. I mean, if not, how can one remain humble? Mag railed
and didn’t care what I thought at all.  She
insisted we bring along PJ, the rich bitch hussy that every town must have. To satisfy her craving for fame, I reluctantly agreed but to keep with Pine Log tradition, I gave PJ a necessity. 
A Pink Elephant.
 

What Mag doesn’t know, is the story is true. I heard it firsthand amongst hairspray and hair dye at the Clipper Snipper. This scandalous woman was the daily topic of conversation, Pine Log’s soap opera. Her name was whispered across laundry lines and in church pews, phone lines, at prayer meetings, card games, bingo halls and juke joints. Mag could care less who she was, as
long as she had hordes of money.  Besides,
she thought hussy was a term of endearment. I wasn’t going to tell her it was simply another word for 
upscale white trash
 which is one notch from a flat bottom boat jacked up with lawn chairs in your front yard or truck tires made into garden props, or a bad bleached out hair job and too much lipstick, or cleavage at church, or being barefoot, pregnant and married to a lush. Hell, it’s all the same around here. PJ is the secret behind the secret, the irresistible, magnetic pink elephant in the town.

She isn’t married but has a slew of suitors, twelve to be exact, one for each month. She’s the kind of woman you can’t take your eyes off of. Men fall into gazes and women too. The outer beauty pulls and tugs and you make a deal with the devil or give away your first born just for her company. Her hour glass figure causes broke neck stares, car wrecks on side streets and scorching cheek slaps by jealous, seething wives whose men have strayed. She doesn’t have a job but drives a new car every year and lives in a nice brick house with a white picket fence, white shutters and a gold trimmed door with stained glass windows. Women say the door should be red to match her red tramp
heels. 
She dresses Hollywood with petite gloves, low cut blouses and tight skirts hugging her melon cheeks. She jet sets the sidewalk in the evening, wiggling the melons in perky high heels while she walks her dog, a white Pekinese with a
diamond collar, painted nails and the same wiggle. 
She waves like a pageant queen and is quick to speak. “Heyyyy good morning ya’ll. Fine day we’re having huh?” Or “Hi. How ya’ll doing” or some other southern greeting no one wants to hear. 
Doors slam, women hide their husbands and pull down the blinds. 
She’s the type of woman you can’t look in the eye but it’s not her fault. 
Not at all.
  Inwardly, h
er personality begs to be seen, to be looked at through the ey
es of the soul, but most folks say men, since the beginning of time, can only look with their tallywacker, which has messed the whole world up, no doubt.  No one sees
past her outer beauty, and her heart is ignored, left out, abandoned, so she makes do with what she has and uses it to her advantage. 
I can’t say I doubt her really. 
Her striking outer beauty is her curse. Rumor has it that PJ is in cahoots with Dealership Don, a fat slob of a married man who wears white cowboy boots, high water pants and flashes money around like he’s made of Wall street. He tells off-collar jokes and drinks whiskey like water. When PJ bends over, it’s
money in the bank.  Before
she gets home there is a new car in her driveway. Folks around town say she is living above her means—which is another way of saying, men provide the excess means and she
means
 to spend it. According to the pink elephant, she is sleeping with Ken, Commando Steve and G. I. Joe, among others who are married and hell bent on keeping their Pink elephant safe and secure. And just to be clear, I changed the names in the story to protect the innocent and my uncle.

Doll playing and jokes aside, regardless of what everyone in town says, I caught a glimpse of the inner works of PJ aka Addy Mae Henderson. My gift, or shall I say, my curse made its presence known and those pink elephants couldn’t hide if they wanted to.

It happened a few months ago, when Addy came inside the Clipper Snipper to get her Blonde roots touched up. The shop went as quite as a church on Monday. The whispers were rampant, eyes slanted in every direction,
and backs turned. 
The only noise over the hiss of hair dryers was Addy’s
southern twang and clicking high heels. 
It was like watching a dog wag her tail wanting attention but nobody was petting. 
Not a lick of kindness, no respect, no compassion.
 I don’t know if Addy has a true friend in this whole town and I could tell it bothered her. The beauty shop was
a deep freeze.    Artic cold. 
Addy prissy potted around the shop in her click-click heels,
a brick and mortar shell encased around her heart.  She thought she was friends with the whole town apparently, by the way she talked. 

“Hidy Ms. Johnson. How’s Ben doing this week, is he still down on his back?” 
Click…click.
 “Why Jolen
e—girl, that is the pretty hair style.  I
t goes well with your facial structure.” 
Click…click.
 “I just love the smell of hairspray, don’t ya’ll?” 
Click…click.
 Eyes flare and heads twist. Not a word
replied. 
The deep freeze was becoming an unbearable chunk of polar ice caps. Addy received not the slightest bit of acknowledgment, not one hello, not a nod, not one eye blink—only wrinkled up noses and awkward glances which included, Lena Hart who buried her nose inside a magazine. It was clear, the ladies inside the beauty shop wanted nothing more than to claw Addy’s beautiful blue eyes out and eat her heart for supper. I ached for her. The meanness of people pissed me off to no end but once again, I remained on the red bench, immovable, tangled up in fear. I wondered how Addy could be so unaffected by the behavior of others and still respond in kindness? And with that thought, 
it happened.
 
My heart shuddered with fear.  The kinetic energy struck me like a slap of pearls. 
My vision distorted.
I couldn’t stop it.  I saw her for what she was, or is, or what she had become.  I wasn’t sure, all I knew is that it was another Dresden.  My
mouth gaped open and my second skin trembled. 
Oh. My. God. Not Again.
 
First, the old crow and now, Addy Mae Henderson.
She transformed before my eyes, her perfect, petite and pale face grew granite hard into a white, pasty crackling horror. The hollow sockets where her blue eyes used to be, freaked me out the most. Tendrils of smoke substance leaped in and out, flowing with a pain that grabbed at me with chalky fingers, pulling me into her vortex of emotions, to feel, to see, to labor all that was inside of her. The stabbing pain knifed me in the chest, then twisted and ground its way into my organs, chopping them into little pieces.
I felt the urge to vomit the chunks of gore up and out of me. 
Addy went from a Hollywood starlet to the most frightening doll faced horror I have ever witnessed. The Dumas of Umbra, inside me, rolled and flipped, ruptured on its foundation
, throwing everything in the rooms into a frantic uproar. 
Whatever was inside Addy acutely connected to an energy inside the house, stirring up a host of demons and things untouchable, unknown, unseen—until I thought I might crumble on the red bench. My right hand grew constricted and burned.
My head was so heavy I could barely turn, afraid I would look down to see it charred and burnt.  I
nstead, a fat black hand was gripping mine, absorbing and pulling things out of me,
sponge to water.  Before I could see the horrible, terrible, awful, her hand took it away.  I’m sure she saved me from ruin.