WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (20 page)

“You can’t find a car for five hundred dollars.” She
said.  Her tone was unbelief.  “Pfffttt,
you’ll be lucky to find a hubcap and four tires for
five hundred dollars if that.  I mean, h
ave you seen the price of groceries now days?” She went on and on, turning ever so often to give me that parental look of 
you know nothing.
 “That’s all you need is a piece of crap car to break down on the road somewhere. Then some maniac will haul you off and…”

Oh, crap. 
I braced myself.

“Lord, its bad.” She said leaning on the cabinet.  “
Why I just saw it last week on the news, some naïve college girl. And do you know…” she pointed her finger at me sternly, “They haven’t found that girl yet. Nope. This world has gone to hell in a southern hand basket, I tell you. It wasn’t like this in my day. I didn’t smoke that marijuana stuff and drugs….no, I barely drank.
Jesus. Mom.  Shut up.
  “
And your daddy and I, we want to go to Washington one day but I heard they are nothing but drug heads up there. So there goes our trip. Hell in a hand basket.”

“Oh my Go
d, mom.” I said cutting her off, unable to take anymore. I almost missed the four walls of my miserable bedroom.  It was better than this, for sure. 
“I know. We
all
know. You never done
nothing. 
You’re a saint. You should be canonized or something, okay, okay,
everyyybody
knows this ‘cause you don’t shut up about it.” At this point
in the conversation I am looking for dead zones to fling myself into them, on purpose. 
“Jesus Mom! I mean, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Throw the baby out with the bath water
.” My insides were boiling over so much I had to walk the kitchen to drive it out of me. 

“Well.” She said.  “I never…” Her eyes glazed over. “And besides, it’s the truth.  The world is dark and people are wacked.”  She scanned the distance for a dark harbinger and she found one,
her favorite one
. 
“
It’s going to get worse.” 

And there it was.
 The doomsayer. Five words. 
Five hopeless words.
 My mother’s lack of hope always puzzled me. For as long as I remember she’s been this way. No matter what positive conversation one might have—it always turned to despair in the end. The same disappointing, bubble popping dark cloud of cynicism.

“It’s going to get worse.”
 The world according to Lena Hart always gets worse. I fight the film of hopelessness like a deathly fog drifting my way. I focus my thoughts. 
Faith and 500—Faith and 500.
 I say it over and over hoping it wasn’t just some illusive chamber of my mind playing tricks or a fake room inside the house, inside me. Besides, I learned a long time ago to never—
ever
, in a million dark years—to answer Lena’s doomsday statements. Pandora’s Box has nothing on her. Lena lamentations are devastating.

Jesus loves me. This I know.

In my vision, I sat in the wondering tree, felt the breeze on my skin and watched hope arrive on the horizon.
A leaf crackle, tree climbing, crumb filled hope.

“Mommmm.” I said in an outburst. “Five hundred. That’s it. I don’t need anything fancy.” My voice was whiny and pleading. “Just something to get me here and there.” It was hard talking to a cloud of doom. I felt like I was five years old begging for a piece of gum at the candy counter. Saying the words out loud made them real to me, as if they connected one to another, manifested a map, lighted a pathway and brought the vision to life, inside me, in my gifted eyes and hearing ears. It was beyond me and bigger than me. 
More than me.
 
Made for me.
 Lena Hart was steadily scrubbing the dishes. Soap particles flew across the room, little bubbles filled with rainbows only to be popped by a wand of sharp cynicism that shattered them, pop, pop, and pop.

“—fancy?” She said turning around. 
“Five hundred dollars? I say not.” Her voice flattens full throttle. Her hands scrub viciously, expelling grime, food particles and my ridiculous words. Forks, spoons and metal pans land like bullets inside the stainless steel sink, killing my hope, my dreams, my faith and 500.

“Why don’t you let your daddy find you something?” She held up a soapy coffee mug. “Besides, if you want a piece of crap, you can always get that from your Uncle. And from the look of his yard…” she rolled her eyes at me, “he’s got plenty of junk.” Lena thought salvage yard southerners should keep their junk hidden unlike my uncle, who thought it was part of his prideful heritage. Of course, I knew what Lena was doing. She was trying to alter my course, shift my fate to a realistic road and make a sweet crumb of hope, taste bitter. I leave my body momentarily to gather my wits. I feel the hot shine of the sun on my face while sitting in the wondering tree. I linger to the back woods behind our house and smell the fresh scent of pine. I see the glow of red eyes and tiny clawed feet and hear laughter. 
Clang! Bang!
 Two realms emerge.
The adult and the child.
 My body is invaded. A seven year old crosses paths with a twenty-two year old and toget
her they throw a temper tantrum inside the lair of the pessimist. 
The past mingled with the present. Everything was the same. Everything was different.

“I DON’T want to ask Dad.” I said slamming the porcelain coffee cup on the table. Lena spun around
not amused with my backtalk.  She pulled her bangs off her eyes leaving a trail of soap bubbles in the strands. 
“I don’t want one of Uncles cars.”

My heart beat errat
ically. 
“I can do this. I can. I know you
don’t
 think I can—but I can and I will. I know I have problems. God…I mean, I know.” I looked at
Lena, stared right through the gaps that separated us.  My hands rubbed my jeans till my
knuckles burned. “Seriously. I know I’m not perfect. I’m messed up. Shit. I know that. B
ut at least give me some credit Lena.”  Her face sunk and her eye flinched.  She hated being called Lena.  She no doubt held it against me but she never understood me anyway, so what did it matter.  “
If you don’t like me, fine. Whatever. But at least, 
at least
… I’m trying to get through this. One day at a time. That’s all I can do. You think I like being divorced?”
Eye to eye we stared.  Her chest breathed in deep heaves. 

“I don’t. I hate it. But yet here I am. I’m here. I’m alone. I gotta deal with it. How?
” I shrugged.  “
I have no idea. But I got it whether I want it or not. That’s it. Happy now?”

Lena has a downward look that says I must have hit the crazy button inside me and she longs to know where it is, so she can turn it off.
Dismantle it. Take it apart—fix it for good.
 I think she’s spent her life looking for that button.

Faith and 500. Faith and 500.
I say it in my mind to convince myself that the words are real. I hear them, feel their fit and try them on for size. 
Doubts filter in.  The dark days of youth come to mind. 
Slumber, pitch, shadows, voices.
 I retrace my lost days in elementary, junior high, high school, those awful, brutal days when I wondered hallways with no memory, couldn’t find my locker, brain fog, afraid to say anything to anyone, always late for class, unable to tell the teacher why. I didn’t have pens, paper, no
supplies.  I came to class unprepared mostly.  Some days I couldn’t get out of bed, and I’d miss the bus.  Other days when I did manage to find
my locker, it was a garbage dump, scattered homework assignments, candy bar wrappers, empty cigarette packs,
and other objects I didn’t remember.  If the Amodgians did anything to me, they must have started early on, and used memory muzzling on me—and it certainly worked.  I was a mess. 
I remember closing the locker and wondering if I’d ever find it again. I wondered what
could possibly be wrong with me to make me this way.  I blamed myself.  I was simply different, badly different, messed up. 
My memory lapsed when it wanted, and how it wanted. My mind had a mind of its own. “What do you do with your school books? Eat them?” Lena would say.

“I don’t know.” I said. And it was the truth. I had no idea. It was like this other person was using my body, doing things with it and
didn’t bothering telling me. 
That
girl doesn’t seem real to me now. The fog is beginning to lift a little and I can actually see things I couldn’t see before.
No one actually knew the real me, not even Maw Sue, although she knew me better than others.  I felt alone,
separated, distanced from everyone in the world as
no soul could understand. 

The little girl inside me, on the porch, in my past, she vowed 
to never let go and always find her way back. 
But the sad girl, the ugly girl, the girl that didn’t fit
anywhere—found it difficult to hold on.  I wanted to simply vanish.  Not exist. 
I was dying inside for someone to love me, accept me,
see me.
Really, really see me.  Yet at the same time, the fear of doing so, the fear of exposure, of rejection was overwhelming and too much for the
girl who wrote grotesque poems of dying and fantasized about her funeral and if anyone would bother to come. 
Clang. Bang.
 I
had forgotten where I was.  Going out of mind in the pessimistic lair is dangerous.  I had to snap back quickly.  When I did, I find
Lena slit eyed and defeated. I
decided to try again.  One last time. 

“Okay mom. Listen…here’s the deal.” I
threw up my hands for lack of anything else to throw. 
“You either trust me or you don’t. Simply as that. You either let me borrow the money or you don’t. Either way—I’m going to get on with my life…I have too.” 
Faith and 500. Faith and 500.
 The words, the vision echoed in my head over and over, giving me hope with each breath, each startling look.
It was surreal
. I pondered the words, ate them, consumed them, let them transform. 
I spoke my peace. I let my voice be heard.
It was like breathing for the first time. The words mine. Foreign but mine. The voice, familiar yet vague as if locked away for ages, without access, 
until now.
 I sat in amazement and see my reflection in an aluminum pan hanging on a prong against the kitchen wall. 
The girl I loved. The girl I hated.
 

In reality, I
knew neither of them.  Lena
didn’t agree with the steel rod up my back regardless of who it belonged to. Me or the little girl. My words left her dumbfounded as she leaned agains
t the kitchen sink for support and gathering her ammo. 
She glared at me for what seemed like eternity and in her eyes, I saw my birth pains, my rebellious waywardness. She blinked, turned around and vented her frustrations on the helpless dishes. 
Again.

“Mom.” My voice milder in tone. 
Subdued. Respectful.
 
It couldn’t be easy being my mother.  S
he did her best to raise me. A part of me, more than I wanted to admit, really loved her, deeply, and so desperately wanted that love in return even though we were canyons apart. “I’ll pay you back the five hundred dollars as soon as I get a job.”

Lena kept her back to me, no words but her hands screamed and scoured the aluminum pan. “It’s time, mom. It is. Branson is over and done. I need to move on.” Saying it out loud was like coughing up stones lodged in my throat. It shook me to the core. I stared into the Mt. Everest of my mother’s back. On the other side of the mountain, she tormented the devil out of the china, bap
tizing, dunking and drowning its sins. 
I sulked
and prepared for plan B, although I didn’t have one.  Luckily, fate stepped in. 
Faith and 500.

 Fifteen minutes, thirty six seconds and twenty eight tortured dishes later, I’m speeding down the road in Lena’s burgundy suburban with five hundred dollars in my pocket and a heart swelling with hope. It felt like the beginning of something. 
What—I didn’t know but I could feel it.
 Even the dark house inside me, the one that threatened to destroy me was mu
ted and held back by small hands and a shield of faith and five hundred dollars. 
The horizon of unknown expectations thrilled 
me. I rolled down the window to let the air in.  I wanted to feel it on my skin, blowing my hair back.  Maw Sue’s words drifted. 
Look for the crumbs Willodean.
 
I smiled at the thought. 
My
hands guided the steering wheel at three and eleven. 
I glanced at them and suddenly they looked small and fragile, childlike. The delightful crumb of nostalgic fell upon my tongue and dissolved into a magnificent morsel of memory, so outrageous, so joyful, all I could do was grip the steering wheel and hold on for the ride.