A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  The air felt too thick to breathe, and my legs felt weak.

  Say it, don’t scratch it.

  Say it, don’t scratch it.

  “He was staring at my boobs,” I told her.

  “Guys do that, Button. You know that.”

  “But they don’t stare at their niece’s butt.”

  Winnalee’s lips puckered. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her words a pleading whisper.

  I didn’t know what to say. What to do. So I just stood there, itching.

  “Fine. I’ll take you home in the morning,” she said, spinning around to face the stairs. “When I go to pick up Evalee.”

  I worked the doughnut cutter, keeping the circles close together and making neat rows, as if everything would be fine as long as I kept the cuts in a perfect line. One. Another one. Then another—putting all my energy into butting the metal doughnut cutter up against the last doughnut without cutting a tiny half-moon into its soft side.

  At the counter, Hannah watched the dough sizzle. “You have to watch for the browning edges. And be sure you don’t puncture the skin when you flip them, otherwise grease pools inside. I’ll tell you when to flip them.” I looked up as Hannah was reaching for a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. “Dewey, move,” Hannah scolded. “This grease is hot.”

  Dewey reached across Winnalee and grabbed a handful of doughnut holes from the platter in front of Hannah. She slapped at his hand. “Dewey, those aren’t even sugared yet!” Dewey laughed like a naughty little boy.

  “Oh, turn those two right there, honey,” she told Winnalee. “That’s right. That’s right.”

  I should have kept my eyes on my work, I told myself later. If I had, I wouldn’t have seen Dewey turn toward me, his cheeks bulging with doughnuts holes, two more cupped in his hands. He grinned, flashing teeth caked with mashed doughnuts, then dropped his hand down so the doughnut holes rested at his crotch.

  It was so quick that it was easy to tell myself that maybe he hadn’t meant it like that.

  “Dewey, stop that and get out of the kitchen,” Hannah scolded. Dewey raised his eyebrow at me and popped the two holes into his mouth, just as Winnalee was fishing more doughnuts out of the grease. “Get it! Get it! Stab that doughnut right in the hole,” Dewey said, then glanced back at me and snickered.

  I stared down at the dough, plump and soft and white as Evalee’s skin, and I wanted to scoop it from the table, tuck it back in the bowl, and cover it with its dish-towel blanket. There was a telephone hanging on the wall, the cord looped like Winnalee’s hair, and I longed to yank it loose and call home. Ask somebody to come get me, like I’d done the night of Penny’s slumber party when I was in fourth grade and scared of the Ouija board.

  “Dewey, I mean it. You’re in the way. Go watch TV or something!”

  I stared at the circles of dough, blinking hard, the taste of blood in my mouth. The table jostled, but I didn’t look up. Not until Winnalee snapped, “Did you just grab my ass?”

  Winnalee was holding the long-handled fork, drops of grease dripping from the tines. She stared at Dewey, her mouth hanging open. Then she turned to Hannah. “Uncle Dewey just grabbed my ass.”

  “Winnalee!” Hannah said.

  “I was just pattin’ you out of the way,” Dewey said, and Hannah mimicked his words like a parrot.

  “He was just pattin’ you out of the way, honey.”

  “No,” Winnalee protested. “That isn’t what he did. You saw him! You were looking right over here. He patted my ass first, then he rubbed it. Like this.” She tossed the fork onto the counter and rubbed her behind hard enough to tug her dress along with her hand.

  “Oh, Winnalee. Honey, please don’t use that profane language like your mother. It lowers a girl, talking like that.”

  I was on my feet in a flash, my back to the wall. My purse and Winnalee’s were lying on the heap of shoes in the doorway, and I edged over to scoop them up.

  Winnalee was staring at Hannah, her eyes so big, so pretty, so hurt. “But he …”

  Dewey grabbed another handful of doughnut holes and moseyed out of the room. For a moment, there was no sound but the sizzling of hot grease. Then Hannah shouted, “The doughnuts!” She reached for the long fork, and the sizzling grew fainter with each doughnut she plucked from the pan.

  A TV in the next room clicked on. The local weather. A sixty percent chance of rain tonight …

  Winnalee was still staring at Hannah. “Maaa …,” she whimpered, her voice as weak as a kitten’s.

  “Come on now, Winnalee. We gotta get more dough in here before this grease burns.”

  “But he grabbed me,” she said to Hannah, who was busy lifting pale white circles of dough from the table and dropping them into the hot grease. “Ma?”

  Hannah didn’t look up.

  Winnalee turned to me. Her cheeks slack, her eyes a muddied blue.

  I held out my hand and mouthed the words, “Let’s go.”

  Winnalee circled the table, catching the edge with her hip as she reached for my hand. She moved like a sleepwalker as I pulled her down the stubby hall.

  “Winnalee?” Hannah called.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I kept saying, because by the time we got down the front steps, she was bawling. I hurried us across the yard, weaving as if the metal scraps were land mines.

  I helped her into the passenger side and buckled her in. I shut the door and ran around to the driver’s side.

  Hannah was in the kitchen window, leaning forward, as if her arms were too weary to prop her up straight. Her hand was over her mouth.

  I jerked open the driver’s door. Winnalee was staring at the house. She turned to me, her eyes screaming, I don’t understand!

  I looked back at the house. At the scraggly lawn filled with broken things that could cut the flesh of children. I could see Winnalee running with a pail of copper pipes, her long loops floating behind her like strands of Harvest Gold yarn. Her hands working hard and her spirit working even harder to bring some music, some magic to this horrible place. I peered into the van. “I’ll be right back,” I told Winnalee.

  I didn’t run. I walked. In long, determined strides. I could feel someone watching me as I passed the front steps, but I didn’t look, and I didn’t speed up. I wasn’t scared that Dewey or Hannah would come outside and try to stop us, because a new awareness had come to me like a Bright Idea: I was armed with the truth, and the truth, for some, was something that could cut far deeper than scrap metal.

  At the oak tree, I unwound Winnalee’s wind chime, determined not to leave even one tiny part of the little girl Winnalee once was behind. The copper pipes sang out as I carried it to the van.

  Winnalee was curled up like a baby when I opened the door. Her legs were tucked under her dress, and her arms were wrapped around her head.

  “Get me out of here,” she begged, and I assured her that I would. I gently set the wind chime behind my seat and climbed in, and we drove away in rain that glossed the roads to black.

  Winnalee cried herself to sleep, and didn’t wake but for the brief moment when we reached St. Croix Falls and I smoothed the tangled hair from her face and asked her if she had to pee. She shook her head no. I locked the van, went inside, and made a collect call to Aunt Verdella. I didn’t know what Winnalee would think of me telling them where we’d gone and what had happened, but now that it was over, I wasn’t feeling so brave anymore, and all I wanted was Aunt Verdella’s arms.

  “Oh no,” Aunt Verdella cried after I told her where we’d gone, and what had happened. “Freeda, they’d gone to see Hannah. Dewey made a pass at Winnalee. No, no, he didn’t hurt her … Button, did he hurt her?”

  I told her how he’d touched her, and Aunt Verdella started to cry. “Oh, that poor baby.” She repeated the story to Freeda, who bellowed cusswords about killing “that sick son of a bitch.”

  Winnalee was awake when I got back to the van, and she talked the rest of the way home, her emotions roller-
coasting with hurt, anger, confusion, and grief. “It’s like Hannah died to me twice now,” she said.

  I reached over and held her hand, waiting for her to mention Freeda. She didn’t until we were passing through Dauber. “She saved me from getting hurt when I was little, didn’t she?” She sounded confused about how on earth she couldn’t have known that until now. “I feel so stupid.”

  I squeezed her hand. “You just wanted to believe something good.”

  It was after two in the morning when we pulled into Aunt Verdella’s driveway. The kitchen light was on, and the door opened before we even got out of the van. Freeda came out first, Aunt Verdella on her heels, their arms opening. I grabbed on to Aunt Verdella, and over her shoulder I saw Freeda hugging Winnalee. Winnalee’s arms were straight at her sides, her head facedown against Freeda’s shoulder.

  They stayed outside talking, while Aunt Verdella and I dozed on the couch, me with my head on her lap. Freeda and Winnalee didn’t come in until the sky started brightening and the birds were chirping. They dropped into Uncle Rudy’s recliner side by side and slept. Neither of them woke when Evalee and Boohoo did.

  CHAPTER

  30

  BRIGHT IDEA #13: Just because a girl is wearing a raggy dress and ugly brown shoes and doesn’t have milk money, doesn’t mean you’ve gotta let her pull your hair.

  The summer after Ma died, I was standing in the middle of the living room, watching a storm rage outside the window. Uncle Rudy was lowering himself into his favorite chair with the Dauber Daily, and he glanced up. “In a little bit, those storm clouds will have pushed off, leaving nothing behind but blue skies,” he said. “Storms never last forever, Button.”

  I thought of his promise a couple of mornings after our trip to Hopested, when we woke to skies so bright and blue that it stung your eyes when you stepped outside. Sure, questions about the future hovered in the air like rising fog. Yet no one seemed concerned—not even me—because when Freeda and Winnalee woke that morning after Hopested, they were behaving how they had in the past, which meant that their storm had passed.

  “Crissakes, Winnalee. It’s just a shit diaper. It won’t kill you,” Freeda said as she shoved a disposable diaper and a cleansing cloth into Winnalee’s hands the afternoon of our return.

  Winnalee was sitting cross-legged on the floor, Evalee lying on a blanket before her. “I’ll gag,” she said as she gingerly lifted Evalee’s legs. “Maybe even throw up. Freeda, come on, you know I have a weak stomach. Especially when I’m overtired.”

  “Yeah, well, time to muscle it up,” Freeda said.

  “Just cross her ankles with one hand, and hold her legs up out of the way,” Aunt Verdella called from the kitchen.

  “How?” Winnalee asked.

  “Like this.” Freeda demonstrated, while Boohoo stood nearby reciting, “Cupcake’s a poopy pants. A poopy, puppy, poopy pants!” Freeda was crouched down beside Winnalee, giving step-by-step instructions that could hardly be heard above Boohoo’s chanting. I told him to quiet down as I checked the window for the mailman, since I thought I’d heard a car.

  “Boohoo, come on, knock it off,” Winnalee said, as she struggled to undo the diaper tabs while holding Evalee’s legs high. “You’re getting her all rowdy and she keeps kicking.”

  Boohoo revved up the tempo of his little song and started hopping in place.

  “Boohoo, you’re going to jump on her head if you keep that up,” Freeda snapped.

  He started clapping his hands. “Here, Cupcake. Here, Cupcake!” He followed this with cartoon sounds.

  “Boohoo!” Aunt Verdella and I called in unison.

  “Damn it, Boohoo. Knock it off right now!” Winnalee snapped.

  “Winnalee. Don’t cuss at kids,” Freeda said.

  Evalee wiggled a foot loose from Winnalee’s grasp. “She got her heel in it!” Winnalee moaned.

  “Okay, that’s it!” Freeda said. “You’ve been acting up for days now, Boohoo. Tying Aunt Verdella up again when she dozed off after lunch … swiping more diapers to put on Knucklehead, even after we told you no more because those things cost money. Enough!”

  “Cupcake’s a poopy heel. A poopy puppy with a poopy heel.”

  Freeda scrambled to her feet and lunged. Boohoo dropped to his knees and scampered under the table. She grabbed him at the ankles and tugged him out. Then she did what she’d been threatening to do since she came: She sat on him.

  “Ow! Ow!” Boohoo screamed. “You’re hurting me!”

  Aunt Verdella appeared in the doorway, a mixing spoon in her hand. She flashed me a wavering, lopsided smile.

  I could tell that Freeda wasn’t putting all of her weight on Boohoo, and hoped Aunt Verdella realized this, too. Still, I was fretting for Boohoo, just as Aunt Verdella was.

  “Freeda, maybe we should just send him up to his room,” she suggested.

  Freeda shook her head. “Send him upstairs where there’s six hundred toys to play with? That’s punishment? Nope. I’m not budging until this kid cries uncle.”

  “Uncle Rudy! Uncle Rudy!” Boohoo called, while Winnalee continued to cuss and gasp over the mess she had on her hands. Literally.

  “Not that uncle,” Freeda said, without even cracking a smile. She reminded him that Uncle Rudy was haying at the Smithys—a sensitive issue with Boohoo since he wasn’t allowed to go along. “Say you’re sorry, and that you’ll listen from now on, or I’m not getting up. And trust me, after all the backbreaking work I’ve been doing over at your dad’s the last few days, and with little sleep last night, I could easily sit here all day. Maybe even into tomorrow.”

  I spotted the mailman pull up to my mailbox, and suddenly I was as eager as Boohoo to have Freeda get off of him, because it didn’t feel right to leave in the midst of the drama.

  “Boohoo,” Aunt Verdella said. “If you mind, I’ll let you help frost the cake that’s baking.”

  “He can’t just say it, Verdella. He’s got to mean it.”

  Boohoo was crying now.

  “Get off of me! Evyyy​yyyyy​yyyyy​yyyyy​yyyy, help!”

  “Just say you’ll mind,” I told him, my eyes on Freeda, who wasn’t showing even a drop of pity.

  “He’s gotta mean it,” Freeda repeated.

  “Okay, okay!” Boohoo shouted.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  “What else?”

  “You’re breaking my back!”

  “What else?”

  “I’ll behave!”

  Freeda got up, and offered him her hand. Boohoo knocked it away, and as soon as he was on his feet, he backed up a good six feet and stuck out his chin. “Ha-ha. I was fibbin’!” he said, his fists punching at his sides. “I’m not sorry at all! I was just being behaving to get you off of me.”

  Freeda propped her hands on her hips and stared at the screen door Boohoo had just slammed. She shook her head. “Verdella, you have got to stop babying that boy like you do. Button, you too. You guys are turning him into a little brat. And for what? Because you feel sorry for him? Why?” I glanced outside where Boohoo was digging his towel out from under the picnic table. I closed the front door so he wouldn’t hear.

  Pity flooded Aunt Verdella’s face. “He lost his mama, Freeda. When he was just a baby.”

  “That’s right,” Freeda said. “When he was just a baby. But he’s not lacking for a mother’s love. You’re his mom, Verdella. And between you, and Rudy, and Button, that kid’s not lacking for anything—well, except for knowing his father. And knowing who his birth mother was.”

  Freeda picked up the dirty diaper and paused alongside Aunt Verdella. “And that goes for Reece, too. Your pity for him is only hurting him, too. And it’s hurting his kids.”

  Aunt Verdella’s arms moved over her belly, one hand to hold the other wrist, the spoon limp in her hand. “Reece has had it hard,” she almost whispered.

  “Yeah, and that’s a bummer. But life kicks everybody in the ass, sooner or l
ater, Verdella. Come on, you’ve seen enough of life to know that eventually, everybody gets smacked with something so awful that they have every reason to want to roll over and play dead. But it’s time for Reece to get back on his feet and start living again. And if you love him, you’ll help him do that by knocking off this coddling shit.”

  “But—”

  “No,” Freeda said. “No buts.

  “I’m all for the no butts thing, right about now,” Winnalee said.

  Freeda pointed the rolled diaper at Winnalee. “Stop being a smart-ass. I’m trying to make a serious point here.”

  “You just swore at your kid,” Winnalee said.

  “You’re a big kid, you can take it. Now shut up.”

  Freeda turned her attention back to Aunt Verdella. “Take the baby booties off of Reece. He’s a man, and he needs to start walking like one.”

  Freeda went to dispose of the diaper, but Aunt Verdella just stood there, teary-eyed and shaky. I wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but I was afraid if I did, Freeda would jump all over me.

  “I did it!” Winnalee said, holding up Evalee, her fresh diaper hanging haphazardly low on her hips, but on all the same.

  Freeda came back into the room, patted Evalee’s droopy bottom, and said, “Way to go, Mamalee.” She looked over at Aunt Verdella and went to hug her. She said something I couldn’t hear, and Aunt Verdella nodded. “I know you’re right … it’s just hard, you know?”

  “I know. But it’s necessary.”

  I slipped out the front door. Eager for nothing more than to find a letter from Jesse. Something that could lift my spirits up above the problems that still hovered.

  But no letter came. Again.

  CHAPTER

  31

  BRIGHT IDEA #65: If you’ve been wearing a Band-Aid for six days and the edges are starting to curl, don’t cry because you’re afraid it will fall off and you’ll have to look at that bloody mess again. After your sister rips it off and the hair on your arm is done ouching, you’re going to see that the owie is healed.