A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  Hannah looked confused for a moment, then a cry escaped from a round mouth that looked as small as a Cheerio on a face that size. Her hand came up to pat over her chest, as if she was feeling for her heart. “Winnalee?” she whimpered. She didn’t get up, but swiveled herself to the side. I tried hard not to stare at her belly, which filled her lap to her knees.

  Winnalee rushed forward, wrapping her arms around Hannah. “Ma, Ma,” she kept repeating, as she sobbed like a baby. Hannah was wheezing tears every bit as heartfelt as Winnalee’s, as she patted her back. I felt overwhelmed as I watched. Up until she was five, Winnalee’d believed that Hannah was her ma. And for the next four years, she’d believed that Hannah was dead. Now here she was, crying in her arms. I dabbed at my eyes, happy for Winnalee, but wishing that it could be me hugging Ma, four years later, because her death had all been one big, fat lie.

  “Dewey, Dewey,” Hannah said, her double chin smashed against Winnalee’s arm. “It’s Winnalee. Praise the Lord, it’s Winnalee.”

  Dewey stood near the wall, watching them.

  Winnalee sniffled hard as she sobbed and laughed at the same time. The bathroom door was open, so I slipped inside to look for Kleenex. The room was bare, but for two limp towels, and it smelled like urine. Mottled dirt huddled near the floorboards, and a gummy film edged the tub. I couldn’t find any Kleenex, so I unrolled two lengths of toilet paper and brought them into the kitchen. Winnalee and Hannah paused in their hugging to take the toilet paper wads, and I backed up, looking away to give them their privacy.

  The kitchen, like the bathroom, was void of any clutter. There wasn’t even a set of canisters on the counter, or a spoon rest on the stove. No rugs were scattered on the linoleum, and the sink and dish drainer were empty. The bareness of the room gave the illusion of cleanliness at first, but a closer look revealed black crud gumming the base of the faucet, and scum outlining the ridges on the dish drainer. Spatters of food were dried on the stove top and splotched the floor. I remembered how our already clean house had to become spotless after Boohoo got mobile, and I flinched to think of Evalee crawling around this mess.

  “This is Button,” Winnalee told Hannah as she straightened, nodding toward me. “She’s been my best friend since I was nine.”

  If Hannah realized that I was the big-eared kid who’d let her into Aunt Verdella’s house once, she didn’t show it. Her arms loosened from Winnalee and dropped to the table, as if exhausted. “And this is your uncle Dewey,” she told Winnalee. “You wouldn’t remember him because the last time you saw him you were still in diapers.”

  Dewey gave a tobacco-speckled grin. “Give your uncle a hug,” Hannah said as she sniffled.

  “Ain’t she pretty, Dew? Prettier than Freeda ever was.” I tried to imagine Aunt Verdella comparing me and Boohoo like that, but I couldn’t.

  “But not as pretty as me,” Dewey joked. The three of them laughed.

  “I never thought I’d see you again, Winnalee,” Hannah said. “Praise the Lord for bringing you back to me.” She broke into fresh tears, and they continued to leak as she explained that she was making up a grocery list for Dewey to take to the store. “Dewey’s been on the road for two weeks, and I’m down to nothing,” she said. “I should make something special tonight. Anything you want, honey.”

  Winnalee’s eyes cocked to the side. “Spaghetti! The kind you always made that comes in a box, with that little can of sauce and packet of powdered cheese.”

  “Dew, look up there,” Hannah said, nodding toward the cupboard above the stove. “It should be a red box.”

  Dewey fumbled around, not even checking behind other boxes and cans, so Hannah asked me to look. My too-short shirt rode up my belly as I reached, and I paused to tug it back down, glancing at Dewey as I did so.

  I found one box, but Hannah decided we needed another.

  “Oh, oh!” Winnalee said. “And doughnuts! Can you make doughnuts? I never got doughnuts after I left here. Not even store-bought ones.” She turned to me. “Ma makes the best raised doughnuts in the whole world. They melt on your tongue like snowflakes, only they taste a whole lot better.”

  Hannah laughed, then directed me and Winnalee around the kitchen with her finger, having us check her lard supply—lard made better pastry than shortening, she said—and dig in the bottom cupboard to see how much flour she had. I flinched at the tiny white worms that were curled around the bottom of the crumpled flour bag. “Just throw that out,” Hannah said. “It looks almost empty.”

  Dewey stuffed Hannah’s list in his shirt pocket, but dawdled near the door, grinning and listening. “Dewey,” Hannah said, “are you gonna stand there all day gawking at these pretty girls, or are you gonna get to the store? Go on now!” I glanced at Winnalee to see if that comment made her squirm, too. But she was crouched down, digging in the cupboard for the big yellow glass bowl that she remembered them making doughnuts in.

  After Dewey left, Hannah broke out in tears again. “I just can’t believe you’re here.” I wondered if she cried a lot on regular days, too. “I thought it would kill me when Freeda took you away. You were my baby girl. You cuddled with me and loved me no matter what I looked like.” Winnalee set the bowl on the counter and melted against Hannah like butter. I cringed with shame. I’d noticed what Hannah looked like.

  Hannah yanked the chair next to hers. “Sit down, honey,” she told Winnalee. “You too,” she said to me.

  Hannah talked about her bad knees, her bad hips, her high blood pressure, and a host of other ailments. “I can’t even get to church anymore with these knees,” she said. “Not even with my walker. Janis Marshall used to take me. She still stops on Sundays, at least, and drops off the program.”

  “Awww, Ma,” Winnalee said. I waited for Hannah to ask Winnalee about her life since she’d left. She hadn’t yet, and that didn’t seem right somehow.

  “I was so worried about you …,” Hannah said, shaking her head, and I breathed out a relieved sigh. “So scared that Freeda would lead you down the same bad path she’d taken. I prayed every day that that wouldn’t happen, and hoped my prayers would work just as well here, as in church.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what went wrong with that girl. Lord knows I tried to teach her the difference between right and wrong.” Hannah half patted, half squeezed Winnalee’s arm, which looked as tiny as Evalee’s in Hannah’s meaty grip. “Just tell me that you’re still my good girl. That you didn’t turn out like Freeda. I couldn’t bear it if you told me anything differently.”

  Winnalee winced, and I knew it wasn’t from the pressure of Hannah’s hand.

  “Winnalee is as good as they come,” I said, surprising Winnalee and myself for speaking up. “She’s caring and loving, and tries to do the right thing.”

  Hannah looked pleased, so I forced myself to smile at her. I wanted to mean that smile, but my lips felt tight against my teeth. I looked down, frustrated with myself. Hannah was being Aunt Verdella–affectionate, and was going out of her way to see that Winnalee’s homecoming was a true celebration. Shouldn’t a grandmother every bit as affectionate as a loving, devoted aunt deserve a smile that opened like a friendly hug? And maybe she’d handled things with Freeda horribly, but people changed. Ma changed. Still, in spite of the pep talk I gave myself, there was something that kept me from giving her a genuine smile. Something as sharp as my bones against the wooden seat beneath me. Something that made me feel as shaky as the uneven legs that swayed my chair when I rose.

  Hannah looked up at me. “Did you need something, dear?”

  “No. No,” I said. “I’m just getting a little sore from sitting.”

  Hannah laughed. “No wonder. You don’t have an ounce of meat on that rump. We’ll change that when Dewey gets back, though.”

  “I think I’ll go outside and stretch my legs for a little bit. Give you two a chance to catch up.” They didn’t try to stop me.

  The chickens scattered when I got outside. I stood a few feet from the steps and tucked
my hair behind my ears. This was where Freeda had played when she was little. Winnalee, too, for the first five years of her life. I tried to picture them here—Freeda running free, the sun coloring her skin to copper. Winnalee, her loopy hair dancing as she unearthed treasures—but I couldn’t. Not in this yard, scattered with rusty metal sharp enough to cut and poison tender skin. Not in this house, dripped with stains like dirty brown tears on the outside, filthy on the inside.

  There was really no place to walk. I feared stepping on something sharp, and the wood ticks that had to be thick in a lawn as tall as a field. Walking close to the house didn’t appear to be an option, either: Thistle clumps circled the house, and shards of busted glass were jabbed into the yellowed grass beneath the leaning windows. I went to the stubby driveway and shuffled in tight, restless circles. I was thinking of Winnalee’s desperate cry when she first saw Hannah, and how she had called her “Ma.” And I was wondering how on earth Winnalee had found a way to remember this house, this home, this family, as every bit as magical as fairies.

  I stood for a time, kicking at the pebbles on the dirt, wondering what Boohoo was doing at the moment, and whether Uncle Rudy was still in the garden, or settled in for the local news. I wondered what Aunt Verdella was cooking for supper. I could almost see her glancing out the window as she cooked, and again after the dishes were done. Then once night settled in, realizing our lights weren’t on and fussing to Uncle Rudy and Freeda that we should have been home by now, and wearing herself ragged trying to guess where we’d gone. I stared at Hannah’s house, and longed for my own.

  “Button? Button!” Winnalee called as she busted out of the door and leapt down the front steps.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  Winnalee disappeared behind the house, and I followed.

  She was jumping up and down in front of an oak tree, her face turned up. “She said she didn’t think anybody took it down. That it should be here.”

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, so I could help her find it.

  “The wind chime I made. Right before Freeda took me. I found these copper pipes in a bucket in the barn, all different sizes, and I strung them from an old hubcap. I used a fat branch in the center for the pipes to clang against. It was really pretty cool, and it made cool sounds, too. Like a real wind chime.” She cocked her head to listen. “Why can’t I hear it? You’d think I could at least hear it.”

  She hoisted up the hem of her dress and stepped high to circle the tree. “Button, if I hung something on a low branch thirteen years ago, how far up would that branch be now?”

  I smiled. I had thought that trees grew from the trunk up, too, until Uncle Rudy set me straight. “Trees don’t grow taller from the bottom, Winnalee. The branches get longer, the trunk thickens, but the growth happens at the top so it would be hanging at the same height.”

  And then I spotted it, tethered to a branch by a long loop of plastic-coated wire, the kind Aunt Verdella made Christmas wreaths with. The wood hanging in the center of the chime was gray and pocked and rotted to a stub. “It’s right here.”

  Winnalee squealed. “Where? Where?”

  She bounced with excitement when I reached out and whacked the copper pipes against one another so they’d jangle.

  Winnalee batted at the chime again, giggled, then stopped when the sound of a vehicle joined the chimes. “Come on. I think Uncle Dewey’s back. Let’s go make doughnuts!” She headed toward the house.

  I didn’t want to go help Dewey carry in groceries, or eat spaghetti that came from a box, or make doughnuts. Revulsion churned in my stomach, and I was stiff with fear. All I wanted to do was leave.

  But I followed Winnalee anyway.

  Winnalee was scooping flour straight from the bag into a sifter. “You always let me sift the flour, remember?” she said to Hannah, twirling the green-capped handle, and bent to watch the flour float into the bowl like a snowfall.

  “And you always made a mess,” Hannah said, then gave a wheezy laugh.

  “I’m not kidding, Button. These doughnuts are the best you’ll ever taste.”

  I thought of the story Freeda told when she confronted her mother. How Dewey had held her on his lap, right across the table filled with cut doughnuts, his hand in her underwear. Hannah had sat across from them as though nothing horrible was happening, even while tears ran silently down Freeda’s cheeks. I wondered if Freeda was being held on this side of the table, in this very chair when it happened, and the thought made me feel sick to my stomach.

  Hannah instructed Winnalee from her stool, and Dewey teased her that she had more flour on her dress than in the bowl. I scrubbed the table good, and took a turn helping Winnalee knead the dough. Hannah greased the bowl, rubbed the mound of dough until it was shiny, then flipped it and covered the bowl with a towel. She set it in front of the window so the sun could plump it.

  I felt like a bad person, the way I kept noticing Hannah’s fat. Like the way her short hair—the silver strands straight and thick like the handles on Fourth of July sparklers—bent over the rolls at the base of her neck, so that when she looked down and the roll smoothed some, the hem of her hair stayed bent in a downward curl. And try as I might, I couldn’t stop staring at the way her upper arms were made of bulges, and pocked like rotted wood. It wasn’t nice to notice those things, so I turned away so I couldn’t. God and Ma were catching me, I reminded myself. Probably wanting me to remember that my scrawniness wasn’t exactly pretty, either.

  While the dough was rising, Hannah moved to a stool propped at the stove and made spaghetti and heated two cans of corn. After we ate, Hannah instructed us to go upstairs to strip the bedding in the guest room. “You can’t sleep on dirty sheets,” she said. “I got a washer and dryer downstairs now, though I wish Dewey would move them up here so I could get to them.”

  “Which room used to be yours?” I asked, as Winnalee led me past two closed doors.

  “I had a crib in Ma’s room downstairs. After I got too big for that, she tried to move me up here. But I didn’t like being upstairs alone—Dewey lived in Colorado then—so she ended up letting me sleep downstairs by her.”

  Winnalee stopped before the last room at the end of the hall. The only one with the door hanging open. “This is the guest room. I think it used to be Freeda’s.”

  The room was small, the walls the color of brown mustard. It was empty, but for a bed and a small nightstand. The sheets smelled musty as we tugged them off the mattress. “Winnalee, did you tell Hannah why you’re here? You know … about Evalee?”

  “Button, we just got here.”

  I bit my cheek. “Winnalee, I hope you’ll reconsider this whole thing. Hannah … she’s not, well, in good enough health to take care of a kid. Maybe she could handle it while Evalee’s this young, but she’ll be crawling and walking soon. Think of how much running around Aunt Verdella has to do with Boohoo.”

  “She’s always had bad knees and bad hips and stuff,” Winnalee said, her chin set. “And she took good care of me.”

  I looked down and yanked the corner of the fitted sheet free. “How long are we staying?” I blurted out. “I have sewing to do.” And this house is a hellhole!

  Winnalee went still, the pillow she was holding dangling half in and half out of its case. “Button, I haven’t seen her in thirteen years. Would it hurt you to stay a night or two for my sake?” Winnalee jerked the pillowcase free, wadded it up, and tossed it toward the hallway.

  “No,” I said quietly, as the pillowcase drifted behind the half-opened door. “I’m sorry.”

  I rolled the sheets and kicked the door closed with my foot so I could grab the pillowcase. I bent and paused, shocked by the childish graffiti that covered the inside of the door.

  I straightened up, still staring. At my eye level, the words Fuck You were carved into the thick paint in angular letters, clear down to the wood. A trail of triangles—tears? blood?—ran from the words. Drawings in faded bla
ck marker filled the bottom third of the door. It was the picture in the center, drawn with skill no greater than that of a kindergartner, that held my attention, though. A rectangle formed the body, and straight lines made the limbs. A round head floated above it, and a wide smile stretched across the circular face. Two dots formed the eyes, and from the bottom of each ran an unbroken line, all the way to her L-shaped feet. Red marker was scribbled across the floating, smiling, crying face.

  My insides went cold, even as my skin was damp from the stuffy, upstairs air. The dirty sheets turned slimy in my fists and I dropped them. I stepped back.

  Winnalee scooped up the bedding—she was humming “Who’ll Stop the Rain”—and kicked the door open so wide that it banged against the wall. She stopped in the hall and looked at me. “You coming?”

  I started after her. “I want to go home,” I murmured.

  She turned around so fast that the toes of her sandals butted up against mine. “Why?”

  The skin on the inside of my elbows quivered and I clawed at them. “I just do,” I said, not wanting to lie, yet not knowing how to tell her the truth, either.

  Winnalee shook her head. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. You never stayed overnight at my place when we lived in Dauber the first time. I’ll bet you never stayed at Penny’s, either, even after you were older.”

  No amount of scratching was quieting my skin. “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Why then? Because you don’t like Hannah? I saw the way you were staring at her, Button. Like she’s some kind of circus freak.”

  “No, no.” I tried to keep my voice hushed so they wouldn’t hear us downstairs, even though I doubted they could over their playful banter. “It’s him,” I said. “He gives me the creeps.”

  “Uncle Dewey?” She rolled her eyes. “Why? Because Freeda told you bad things about him?” She didn’t mention the drawings on the door. “Well, she’s a liar. I’ve told you that a hundred times already, even though I shouldn’t have to. She told me Ma was dead. Isn’t that proof enough to make you question the things she said about Uncle Dewey?”