The Book of Bright Ideas Read online

  13

  That week, Daddy took two days he had piled up from his vacation time so he could go with Uncle Rudy to a cattle auction somewhere or other. It was a hot day. One of those kind of days where your skin, your clothes, and everything you touch feels sticky. I could feel it in my guts that it was gonna storm. I didn’t like bad storms any more than Ma did. Especially when Daddy wasn’t home.

  While we weeded the vegetable garden, every now and then Ma would stop chopping at the ground with her hoe and look up at the clouds that were piling up like giant marshmallows stacked on a white plate.

  Ma was always quiet when she worked, but on this day there was something different about her quietness. There’d been something different about it ever since the day she said those bad things to Aunt Verdella and Freeda yelled at her. Now it was like her brain wasn’t just empty when she worked, but like maybe she was thinking really hard about some things. Sometimes, I figured she was thinking about sad things, because her face would get all droopy. But other times they must have been happy thoughts, because her lips would tilt up just a bit, and her eyes would look softer.

  We didn’t get to finish the weeding before the thunder started grumbling in the distance, not loud, more like the sky was trying to clear its throat. “It’s the calm before the storm,” Ma said, as she reached down and ran her hand through the leaves creeping across the dirt, to see what size the cucumbers were. She looked up at the sky, then said, “We’d better go inside.” She wasn’t gonna get no arguing from me, even if I dared to argue, because the air was all foggy with those little black bugs no bigger than specks that always come out in the evening on summer nights. The ones called nats but spelled with a g in front. The mosquitoes were biting too.

  We picked up the gardening tools and carried them to the shed, and by the time we put them away and cleaned our hands off with the hose, the sky was blinking like Christmas, and my stomach was swirling with scared. I wanted to go into the house and hide right then, but Ma spotted the clothes on the line and said we had to take them off first.

  “Don’t yank,” Ma called when I tried to hurry because the wind was kicking up. We barely got Daddy’s work pants in the basket when the rain started coming down. As we ran to the house, the wind and rain pressed our clothes to our skin.

  Ma stood by the dining-room window folding pillowcases as she watched the black clouds roll across the field toward us. I wanted to tell her not to stand there (because even Uncle Rudy thought that standing by a window when it was lightning wasn’t a bright idea), but only noises, not words, came up from my throat.

  When the storm came full blast, we could hear hail clunking on the roof. Ma and I ran to the front door and watched it come down, popping on the grass and pinging off the metal garage like bullets. “I think we’d better go down to the basement,” Ma said. “This isn’t looking good.” She had to say it loud, because the storm was noisy with howling wind and lightning and thunder.

  Ma pushed the front door closed, and we hurried to the basement. We sat on the bottom stair. Out the basement window, I could see the ground, and a tree was bent so far over that it was almost lying down. I crossed my fingers, hoping me and Winnalee’s magic tree wouldn’t get blown over or struck by lightning.

  When the storm ended, Ma and I went upstairs. “A tree must have gone down over the electrical wires,” Ma said when the lights inside the house wouldn’t switch on. We went outside then. The ground was white with hail the size of peas, and there were broken branches strung across the yard.

  After we got back inside, Ma paced around for a bit, then said maybe we should go check on Aunt Verdella.

  Aunt Verdella was just coming out of her house when we pulled in. She had her fists propped on her fat part. “That sure was some storm,” she said. “You’re out of electricity too, I suppose. Freeda’s not. Course, they’re on a different line than us.” She looked out over at the field where the oats—still a lemony green—stood about doll-high. “The oats look fine, but they’re gonna grow mold in the low spots now with this much rain. Corn’s okay. It could have been worse.”

  Aunt Verdella rubbed the top part of her arms, which were goose-pimpled because the air was chilly after the storm. “Let’s take a hike over to Freeda and Winnalee’s,” she said.

  It was Freeda’s idea that we should have a sleepover. Ma laughed a bit at first, like she thought that was the silliest idea she ever heard. “Well, why not? What are you three gonna do, anyway? Stumble around in your dark houses all night by yourselves?”

  “Oh, stay, Jewel!” Aunt Verdella said. “It’ll be fun! I always wanted to go to a pajama party.”

  So that’s what we did. We had a pajama party!

  Me and Winnalee made ourselves bologna sandwiches. I made mine just like Freeda did, with bologna and mayonnaise, and lettuce, and pickles and gobs of potato chips crushed over the whole mess. I made it so big that my mouth could hardly fit over it. Ma looked at me like she wanted to tell me to eat like a lady, but then she closed her mouth.

  When we got done with our sandwiches, Freeda made us all a banana split. My tummy hurt by the time I scooped up the last bit of banana, floating in a white, pink, and brown swirl of mixed-up ice cream and Reddi Wip.

  Aunt Verdella said she almost needed a nap after that, but Freeda said, “No such thing as sleeping tonight!” Then she got out a case as big as a tackle box and opened it. It was filled with makeup and nail polish. “I used to sell cosmetics,” Freeda said.

  “She lies,” Winnalee said. “She bought those at a garage sale.”

  “Sit your butt down here, Jewel,” Freeda said. “You’ve got the good-hair thing going on now, but we gotta do something about that pale face of yours.”

  Winnalee grabbed a bottle of nail polish and shook it. “Let’s do our faces too, Button,” Winnalee said. I looked up.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Ma said.

  Freeda, who was taking out compacts of this and that, and tubes of lipstick, and lining them on the table, looked over at Ma. “Why in the hell not? What, you think the kiddie police are gonna crash our party and arrest you for letting a nine-year-old wear makeup? Loosen up, Jewel. For cryin’ out loud.” She looked up at Ma for a second, then she sprung up from her chair. She went to the cupboard and took down a big bottle filled with something that looked like water, though I didn’t think it was. Then she grabbed the pitcher of orange juice from the counter, where me and Winnalee had left it.

  “What are you doing?” Ma asked, as Freeda pulled down three tall glasses.

  “I’m fixing us a little drink. Something to help you loosen up enough to let that rod slip out of your ass.” Freeda clinked ice into the glasses, half-filled the glasses with the water-colored stuff, then poured orange juice up to the rims. “Ah,” she said, as she took a big gulp of hers. “It’s hotter than hell in this house. It cool off outside any?” she asked, and Ma said it had.

  Winnalee unscrewed the bottle of pinky-red nail polish she’d been shaking. “You paint mine, Button, and I’ll paint yours.” I looked over at Ma, but I couldn’t see her eyes because she had them closed so Freeda could yank out her eyebrow hairs with tiny metal pinchers. “Ouch! Ouch!” Ma said, and Freeda told her to stop flinching.

  “Go on, Button!” Freeda said. “A little nail polish ain’t gonna hurt nothing.”

  Aunt Verdella giggled every time Ma cried ouch, and Freeda said, “You just wait, Verdella. You’re next!”

  Freeda took another gulp from her drink and made Ma do the same, then she smeared some stuff the color of skin on her face. When she had her face all covered, she started drawing lines along Ma’s eyelids with a tiny paintbrush. “You keep still too, Button,” Winnalee said, as she brushed pink color on my fingernails. I liked the way the polish looked, all pinky and pretty, and I liked the way it felt too, all cool and wet.

  “Jesus, I’m hot,” Freeda said. She stopped what she was doing and pulled the front of her shirt out to blow at her
boobies. She opened the back door wider. “These old houses take forever to cool down after a storm. I need to get a goddamn fan,” she said. She peered outside. “Looks like more rain’s coming.”

  When Freeda had Ma’s eye lines drawn, she moved over to Aunt Verdella’s chair and started drawing lines on her eyes too. “Oops,” she said when her hand slipped and she drew a zigzag almost to the soft spot on the side of Aunt Verdella’s head—the spot you aren’t supposed to whack, because it could kill you or make you mental. Freeda giggled as she dabbed at Aunt Verdella’s eye with a wet cotton ball.

  After Freeda outlined their eyes in black, she started painting the lids up with eye shadow—green for Ma, and blue for Aunt Verdella. She brushed those colors on until she bumped into their eyebrows, which she’d already plucked into tipped-over half-moons.

  Freeda picked up this funny-looking metal thing with finger holes like scissors and clamped it over Aunt Verdella’s eye. “Ouch!” Aunt Verdella cried.

  “Sit still, for crissakes, so I can get ahold of your lashes to curl them. And stop that blinking.”

  “What eyelashes? I haven’t had eyelashes for fifteen years! You might not be able to see that, in your drunken state, but trust me, all you’re curlin’ there is my skin!”

  “Oh, Verdella. Stop pissin’ and moanin’,” Freeda said. “You gotta suffer to be beautiful. Now sit still so I can get this mascara on without smudging it, or I’ll have to start all over.” Freeda dabbed at Aunt Verdella’s bent eyelashes with a teeny black brush until they looked like stubby black spider legs.

  After she was finished with their eyes, Freeda stood back to admire her work, and me and Winnalee joined her, me keeping my fingers spread and my hands in the air, like Winnalee told me to do so I wouldn’t mess my nails. “Now we’ll color up your lips and cheeks,” Freeda said. She did that, then dusted their faces with powder. “There! Done! Now go take a look, girls, but don’t blink hard until your mascara dries.”

  Ma and Aunt Verdella raced into the bathroom, and Winnalee and me followed. They crowded in front of the mirror, blinking at themselves and each other. “Good Lord, Freeda!” Aunt Verdella said. “Whose makeup did you think you were doing, anyway? Cleopatra’s?” We giggled.

  “What? You two never looked better in your whole lives! Don’t they look gorgeous, girls?”

  “They look like movie stars!” Winnalee said, and Aunt Verdella added, “Godzilla, maybe!” then she ha-ha-ed hard.

  “All I have to say,” Freeda said, “is too bad the Peters men are out of town. Look at the two hot tamales they’re missing out on tonight! Owee!”

  “Oh my God,” Aunt Verdella said, as she braced herself against the bathroom counter. “I keep laughin’ like this, and I’m gonna wet myself!” This made Ma laugh all the harder.

  When things settled down, me and Winnalee played checkers and hula-hooped in the big part of the living room, while the ladies talked about hair and clothes, and dropping-down boobies and fat bellies, and all that other stuff I guess ladies talk about when they have a pajama party. After we hula-hooped, Winnalee wanted to play movie stars.

  “Let’s have a TV show for them!” Winnalee said, as we were clunking down the stairs in high heels that flopped at our feet. I didn’t want to, though, because that would mean that Ma would be sitting in the audience. “I’ll be an audience lady tonight,” I told Winnalee. She didn’t argue, because she thought she had a good story.

  Downstairs, Freeda had the lights out and candles lit, even though the electricity wasn’t out. In the candlelight, Ma’s eyes looked like two pieces of coal and her skin ghost-white (but for those two dark stains on her cheeks). “Look at me, Button. Not your ma,” Winnalee said right after she started her show, about a dancing, singing saloon girl.

  Winnalee kept flashing her painted fingernails and fiddling to keep the balled-up socks in the pointed part of her too-big blouse. When she yelled to the cowpokes to watch her dance, then did that butt-shaking thing I knew meant sexy, I cringed. I glanced over at Ma, expecting her to be all crabby-looking, but she wasn’t. She was laughing in slow motion, just like Freeda and Aunt Verdella.

  Ma put her glass—which was almost empty—to her mouth and some slopped down her blouse. “Good grief,” she said, “I think I’m drunk!”

  Aunt Verdella giggled. “I know I’m drunk!”

  When there didn’t seem to be much left to Winnalee’s story, Freeda stood up and threw a pillow at Winnalee. “Go play like a normal kid,” she said.

  Freeda went to the front door and flicked on the porch light. There were sparkles in the trail of rain dropping off of the eaves. “Okay, that’s it!” she said. “I’m gonna cool off one way or another.” And out the door into the rain she went.

  She wasn’t outside more than a couple seconds when she rapped on the living-room window. “Come on out where it’s cool!” she yelled, her voice some muffled through the glass.

  Winnalee ran to the window. “She ran that way,” she said, pointing toward the back of the house. Winnalee ran to the back door, and I chased after her.

  “Ha-ha-ha, come see Freeda!”

  I scooted beside Winnalee and looked.

  “What’s she yelling about?” Aunt Verdella asked. Even her ha-ha was slurred as she came into the kitchen and peered over our heads. “Freeda! What on earth…”

  And there was Freeda, dancing across the backyard in her birthday suit—as Aunt Verdella called naked—her skin glowing and glossy in the light shining from alongside the door. She stretched her arms wide and swirled in circles, her bumps bouncing. “Come on!” she yelled. “It feels wonderful!”

  Winnalee ran down the back steps and started tugging off her clothes, tossing them on the ground to join Freeda’s. The night air filled with giggles as she ran after Freeda, waving her arms and legs, just as Freeda was doing. “Come on, you guys, while it’s still raining!”

  “What on earth are they doing?” I turned and looked around Aunt Verdella in time to see Ma’s Egypt-lady’s eyes stretch wide. “Oh my God, are they naked?”

  “Come on! Button, Jewel, Verdella, come on!”

  Winnalee didn’t wait for us to come out. She ran up the steps and grabbed my hand and Aunt Verdella’s and tugged us outside. “Come on! It’s fun!”

  I put my head back to let the soft rain cool my face, just as Aunt Verdella was doing. “Oh my, this rain does feel good!” Aunt Verdella said.

  “Get naked, and it will feel a whole lot better! Come on! There’s no one here but us girls.” Then Freeda added, “Unfortunately!” and she tossed her head back and whooped loudly.

  “Oh, why not!” Aunt Verdella said with a giggle, as she unbuttoned her dress. She pulled it off and set it over the railing. I clamped my hand over my mouth when I saw Aunt Verdella prance across the grass in her white bra and big, white undies.

  “Come on, Jewel!” Freeda coaxed. “You chicken?” Freeda flapped her bent arms, leaned forward, clucked, and strutted like a plucked chicken.

  I never, ever thought I’d see the day when my very own ma would strip her clothes off and dance in the rain in her bra and undies, but that’s exactly what she did.

  Winnalee came to me and started tugging at my shirt, then trying to pull it over my head. I helped her, because my clothes were wet and sticking to me. I stripped right down to my undies, and that rain sure did feel good slipping down my skin.

  “Ouch!” Ma cried out, stopping her dance to hop on one foot.

  “What’s the matter?” Aunt Verdella asked, rushing over to Ma.

  “I stepped on a sharp stick or something!”

  Freeda laughed as she danced. “No, honey, that was no stick. That was the rod that just fell out of your ass!” And Ma and Aunt Verdella laughed till they had to lean on each other to stay on their feet.

  Our ha-has filled up the whole night sky, as we danced naked till our hair was soaking wet and we felt chilly.

  “Look! Lightning bugs!” Winnalee shouted, as we were heading
inside. Sure enough, there they were, one here, one there, bright yellow blinks in the night. “Let’s get a jar!” Winnalee’s bare butt disappeared into the house. She came out with a canning jar and a lid and skirted around the women, who were going inside.

  “Look at us,” Winnalee giggled, as we chased lightning bugs across the yard. “With the porch light on, we are lit almost like the lightning bugs. Wish we could blink too!” It took us a while, but we finally got five bugs.

  It started getting cold, so we picked up our clothes and went back inside. Freeda was just coming from her bedroom. She was wearing a short nightie and carrying a stack of blankets and pillows and two folded nightgowns, which she tossed to Ma and Aunt Verdella. She dumped the blankets onto the couch. “Winnalee, you find something dry for Button to wear. And get the sleeping bag from upstairs.” Freeda went back into her room and came back dragging the mattress from her bed. “There,” she said, as she dropped it on the floor. “Jewel and I can sleep on this, and Verdella, you take the couch.”

  Winnalee ignored her. “Hey,” she said. “Our lightning bugs stopped blinking!” I peered down into the jar, where our bugs were walking up the glass, looking like nothing but ordinary, ugly bugs. “One of the bug’s butts lit a couple times, but barely. Why?”

  “Oh, they don’t blink real good once you put them in a jar,” Aunt Verdella said.

  Winnalee looked sad. “Why? Because they’re scared or not happy anymore?”

  “I guess so,” Aunt Verdella said.

  Upstairs we found a couple shortie nightgowns, then we got out our book and wrote Bright Idea #91: When the weather’s bad and your lights go out, have a pajama party. Eat till you feel sick, hula-hoop, paint your faces, catch fireflies, and dance naked in the rain. If you do, then your bare butt will light up like a firefly’s after it’s been let out of a jar.