WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (27 page)

“Ty-ph-oid.” I said in slow remorse. “That’s it—isn’t it?”

“Typhoid?” Dell looked at me oddly and then at Papa Hart. “Where did that come from? No. Land’s end.
No. 
She—she doesn’t have typhoid. I honestly don’t know where you come up with this stuff Willodean.” Her brows furrowed and she glanced at Papa Hart
again. Silence filled the room. Her eyebrows rose and she cut a few glances back and forth. 
This was the beginning of the eye squints, head nods, hand shoos, elbow flicks and other oddities that grown-ups share when their concealing information.

“Maw Sue is just sick, she’s mixed up a little, confused, that’s all.  Had to get some rest before she comes back.” 

The hell you say. 
I wanted to scream as I watched her mannerisms. 
Her lips winced, her eyes glanced across the room, flitting deception here and there.
The silver lighter in her hand erupted into a flame.  It laughed at me while the lit her puffing stick.  The end embers burn red,
sizzling and laughing while dark shadows emerge
in the smoke. 

“She has mental problems.” Dell said flatly.
The room shifted with her words or maybe it was my eyesight. 
“Do you know what that means Willodean?” She looked at me auspiciously, the same way she looks at Maw Sue right before they tote her off, unwillingly, kicking and screaming. It terrified me. 
How could someone do this to a loved one?
 I saw them cart her off, more than once, which was enough to instill the fear of God in me, more so, the fear of adults and the
powers that be.  D
ell squinted her eyes and head nodded Papa Hart
as if to coax words out of him. 
Nod. Nod. He
turned, ignored us both and rummaged through the pantry.  He pulled out a bag of fig cookies and began eating them, nonchalantly. 

“Willodean. Do you understand what I said?”  Dell said.  Her words
linger heavy in the space that separates us, where I’m stuck, mortified, tortured. 
Of course, I understand. The family curse, the subject no one talks about.
That’s
what I understand.
It’s all anyone says. 
“It doesn’t exist Gavin Clark.” Drip, drip, drip, says Lena Hart. I hear them talking through the thin walls of our house. I know what they say about me. 
About Maw Sue.
 
About the curse.
“She has a vivid imagination—invisible friend, you know stuff like all kids do.” Lena said. “It’s nothing to worry about.
She’ll grow out of it. 
She’ll be fine.”

Maw Sue warned me of this a long time ago. The gift, the curse—it was our secret. I had to be careful who I told
, what I said, what I did.  N
ot everyone understands.

“Willodean, your grandmother gets out of whack sometimes and has to go away to a place where she can get some rest and get back to herself again. Nothing more, nothing less.” 

The Amodgians have her.
I was positive. 
 My mind was restless and pouring out
thunderclouds of fearful matter. 

“What she’s trying to say is that she’s bat-shit crazy.” Papa Hart spat. 
Salvia shot from underneath his tongue like a water gun.  Dell gasped and glared at him. 
He responded with the old 
what—the—hell
 look. Her eyes burned him, then went slant and hard as two nickels. Her cheeks matched the shade of her lipstick
.
I knew exactly what this meant. 

PTA is the nostril flaring, old testament, Moses with a stick, Jesus with a whip, southern hellfire and brimstone shit storm. It starts out as a normal discussion about something pointless, which suddenly
turns sour.  It
ends up with people fighting over nothing, which ends in slamming doors, burnt cornbread, pissed off women reverting to silence and men drinking whiskey till the wee hours of the morning. PTA
has stages of various degrees. 
Dell hit P (pissed) and T (ticked) simultaneously, which rarely
happens, except in murders.  P and T crashed into
A (asskicking)
which was the crème Della-crème of mother lodes.  This causes a cosmic explosion.  

“Well Mr. Doctor know it all.” Dell 
growled. 
“She’s sick. How dare you speak of my mother like that?

“She’s always sick.” Papa Hart yelled back.
He crammed two fig cookies in his mouth as if that was a ploy for revenge or something. 

“Why don’t you just scream it out loud?” Dell screamed about screaming. “Tell the whole damn neighborhood for God’s sakes. My Mother is Crazy.” PTA escalated into a full blown, kitchen sink, no wholes barred argument. They forgot I was there.
Listening. To. Every. Terrible. Awful. Word.

“Well you said it. Not me.” Papa Hart blared. “And besi
des…” he grabbed another cookie and crammed the package into the pantry and slammed the door.  “
Hell that woman could be hit with lightening and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. Probably fuel her more. She needs to be somewhere she can’t tear the whole house apart or take a dozen goddamned pills mixed with poppy seeds and dancing around the neighborhood like some drunken Indian. People see her marching around her house like a lunatic. Shit. Got the whole town talking, you know. Your mother honestly thinks she saw Jesus playing a banjo on her rooftop. As far as I’m concerned they can hallucinate together and sing go tell it on the fruit filled mountain.”

Dell turned ten shades of red, blue, and purple. “Youuu—youu stop that right
now.” Anxiety riddled her voice like bullet wounds. 
She zoomed past PTA and went into the kill zone. The kill zone was about fifty kilometers past the dead zone.
I know these things.  I live in them. 

“You 
know
 
I don’t like those places William Henry.  How dare you say
that. I don’t have a choice. She
is
out of control but what else am I supposed to do?” Dell looked as if she could fold up on the counter, helpless, defeated
. 

“I mean…I know what they do.” She sobbed.  “
They strap her down and give her electroshock therapy and God…who knows what else…I—I dddon’t’ want to know what else to do.”

What?  What do you mean strap her down?
Any breath I had left was now gone. 
Taken—snatched away by horrible words. 

“She is
my
mother, William Henry!” Dell said with tight lips. “You know she has more good days than bad days. I—I try to see the good but, but…she’s getting worse. So YOU tell me. What am I supposed to do?” Dell was standing up and only inches from his face, ratcheting
her fingers in the air. 
“That—that—Jesus day stuff—that was just a bad day.”
She began to stutter and cry more.  Her eyes sank inside her to a dark place, then suddenly sprang back up, unhinged and fighting mad.  In the south, fighting mad is co
mpletely different than mad. Fighting mad is like declaring war.
The shit gets real. 

“Maybe she did see Jesus on the roof. How do you know?”
She spat.  Her lips curled under and her eyes locked onto his not letting go.  She was a lot shorter than him, so she had to crane her neck upwards.  I could see the blue veins sprouting in anger underneath her cool toned skin.  Papa Hart unaffected by chaos, having survived WWII, simply leaned against the counter and ate a cookie. 

“AAAAND it’s no different than you and your damned corn whiskey or your preacher father getting drunk and trying to pick up a mule. Now THAT was a fruit filled go tell it on the mountain kind of day, huh William Henry.”

“Preachers can drink. What’s the harm in that?” He
said popping his fingers. 
Dell’s eye went wild and big again.

“Well, I‘d rather see Jesus on a roof top than a jackass trying to pick up a jackass.”

Ewww…Burn.  I wish I knew what the hell they were talking about.  I’m not sure whose winning.  Not knowing the whole story has me in the middle. 
I was lost in a sludge of a grown up conversatio
n. 
Dell
walked furiously back to the bar and angrily lit a cigarette, her hands trembling. 
She sucked it viciously. The swirls of smoke flee the wrath of the room. 
And I fled with them. 
I went to that place all children go when the adults in their life break and the world spins out of control, leaving the innocent amongst the rubble, in a cosmic upheaval of screaming, shouting
and bickering. My mind traveled backwards in previous conversations.  I was
lost somewhere between shock therapy, Jesus on a rooftop and a drunken Jackass. I was sorting things out in my head when a rapture of bizarre laughter befell my gifted ears.

What? What could this be? Did I miss something?
 I returned to find them both falling over in great racking laughs. 
Had there been
a joke?  But how?  They were arguing.  How did it
become funny?
 Papa Hart laughed his way to the record player. He turned the knob and
dropped the needle on the record.  The speakers blasted a country song. 
Papa Hart moseyed across the room, one hand in the air, the other on his hip, one foot out in front and one foot behind, as if this was a dance hall floor. He made his way to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a wooden spoon. Dell giggled like a school girl
watching him.  She
reached for her bic lig
hter and held it like a microphone. 
What in Sam Hill is going on here?
 I felt weird and out of place. Do they even know I’m here? Maybe I don’t exist after all.

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.”
They sang together.  “
We've been talkin' 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out.
” 

I watched the bizarre engagement act itself out. 
It was like 
fighting, except in a lyrically duke it out way. 

“I'm goin' to Jackson, I'm gonna mess around, Yeah, I'm goin' to Jackson, Look out Jackson town.”
 
Papa Hart sang.  His tone was
matter of fact. 
Dell reacted to him and his words by getting in his face, on her tippy toes and her lighter to her mouth. 

“Well, go on down to Jackson;” she sang. “Go ahead and wreck your health. Go play your hand you big-talkin' man, make a big fool of yourself, you're goin' to Jackson; go comb your hair!”
 She bar stepped some dance moves across the floor and then Papa Hart’s big voice met hers, 
“Honey, I'm gonna snowball Jackson.”
“See if I care.”
 Dell’s voice rang ou
t loudly. 

“When I breeze into that city, people gonna stoop and bow. (Hah!)
 Papa Hart s
ang and stomped his feet. 
All them women gonna make me, teach 'em what they don't know howwww, I'm goin' to Jackson, you turn-a loose-a my coat. 'Cos I'm goin' to Jackson.”

"Goodbye,"
 S
ang Dell.  She cocked her head to the side and flicked her hand in the air as if she gave two shits an iota. 
I was leaning against the wall that separ
ates the kitchen from the den. 
I didn’t know what to think about all this. I was used to silence and slamming doors.
I wondered how I was still standing.  I
hadn’t taken a breath since the conversation, turned shit storm, turned song fest, started. I mean, heck…five minutes ago, I could have bawled like a baby but
now I want to sing and I don’t even know why exactly.  I guess it just seems like the thing to do.  I never understood adults no how.  And I did like Johnny Cash.  So I joined in, tapping my hand on my knee and singing what words I knew, which wasn’t many. 
After a few minutes, the only thing I could hear was my own ridiculou
s knee slapping hillbilly laugh and a butchered version of Johnny Cash’s song. 
That’s because everyone else had stopped singing. 
Suddenly, they realized I had been there the whole time and I heard every single word spoken.  Words before the song fest ensued. 
And w
hen they realized it—I suddenly realized it myself and what it meant. 
Maw Sue was in all sorts of trouble. 
Information filtered and found place. Words went full throttle. Images flashed inside the house, inside me, pictures of horrible awful rooms where doctors strap you down, poke and prod and electrocute with therapy. My heart pounded in my ears.

“Oh…no, no Willodean, it’s
not what you think.” Dell said.  She cupped her hands to her face until her words muffled. 
“It’s not what you think.” She
reached for her puffing sticks pack and nervously lit one.  She got up
and made her way around the bar. The pitter patter of her tiny feet was a mouse scurrying through a maze looking for a way out. I felt her hands on my shoulders and could smell the earthy scent of tobacco burning. She squat down on my level and went through a spill of crap
common to adults who are trying to crawfish. 
Lie.
 
Make up stuff. Lie again.