Page 88 of Just One Look
Chocolate Milk
He was looking at her.It normally made her nervous when somebody did that, but tonight, it didn’t. Maybe she was too tired to be nervous. His hand was warm around hers, too, and she could feel Webster’s breath against her foot. Both of those things holding her here, even though the monster was here, too.
He said, “You can tell me.”
She wouldn’t have said she wanted to, but she was saying it anyway, because the monster was too close. “It was a tropical storm, not even a hurricane. We were driving to South Carolina to visit my Memaw. We weren’t supposed to go. I think my dad and mom were fighting about it.”
* * *
Hushed voicesat the breakfast table, after she’d finished and was coloring in the next room. Her mama’s voice sounded like she was crying. Elizabeth hated when her mama cried. She’d try to hug her and make it better, but even though her mama would hug her back and say, “You’re so sweet, baby girl,” she still always cried.
Her dad’s voice wasn’t loud. It was never loud. It was mad, though. He talked really fast when he was mad.
She stopped coloring and raised her head to listen better. Her dad was saying, “… stupid to drive up there in this storm. Why on earth would you need to go visit your mother now anyway?” She couldn’t hear what her mama said back, but her dad said, “For God’s sake, Mae. She’s in school.”
“She’s only in kindergarten!” She heard her mama say that, anyway.
“And she needs to do well this year, or they’ll be having her repeat it. They didn’t like her starting early. They only allowed it because she can read and because I insisted, and you know it. She’s far from having the motor control to ride a bike, though. She can’t even tie her shoes, and her writing isn’t anywhere close to her reading. She needs to catch up. She needs to know it’s important, not think that she can run off and have fun anytime she feels like it. Anyway, you’re going to see your mother at Thanksgiving, and you were just up there in August. Surely you can go one month without her. You’re a grown woman, and the last thing Elizabeth needs is more exposure to those bad habits. I swear, she comes back every time talking like she was born in the backwoods, and she comes back with a pot belly, too. What’s worse, she hangs back, and she’s a crier. She’s got no assertiveness in her at all, and she’d better get some, or she’s going to get passed right over. You have to be tough in this world, or you’ll get left behind. She’s mousy, and we’re not going to do her any favors by pretending that’s all right, or letting your mother do it.”
Her mama had come out of the dining room after that pretending like she wasn’t crying, had smiled and wiped her face off and said, “Go get ready for school, baby girl.” So they weren’t going to see Memaw after all, which was sad, because Memaw would always let you have parts of the dough to roll out for yourself when she baked pies, and she’d help you make it into tarts. Memaw made fried chicken, too, and batter bread and greens, and all the best things there were to eat, and if you sat in the porch swing reading instead of playing with the neighbor girls, who threw the ball too hard and called you a baby when you cried, all Memaw would do was bring you a glass of lemonade. She never said you had to be tough in this world, and she had the softest lap there was.
She told her mama, “I wanted to go see Memaw,” and her mama said, “I know, punkin. Go on, now.”
Her dad came out right then, though, and kissed her mama goodbye, then put his hand on her face and said, “I’m glad you saw reason. Tell you what, we’ll go out to dinner tonight, unless I’m in surgery. If not tonight, tomorrow for sure, hey?”
“Sure thing,” her mama said, and her dad kissed her again harder, then bent down and kissed Elizabeth. Her mama usually reminded him, because he was a surgeon and had to think about surgery, but this time, he remembered. Then he said, “I’m late,” like always, and left.
When she and her mama were in the car, though, her mama said, “I’ve got a surprise for you, Birdie girl. We’re not going to kindergarten today. We’re going to take a girls’ road trip instead.” Her voice was really excited.
“OK,” Elizabeth said. “What’s a road trip?”
“It’s a trip up the road,” her mama said. “To wherever the wild wind takes us. Maybe it’ll blow us right smack dab to Memaw’s house, who knows?”
“Dad said we weren’t supposed to,” Elizabeth said.
“Don’t you worry about that,” her mama said. “You leave that to me. Lord have mercy, would this rain ever stop? Tell you what. We can’t open the windows and stick our arms out, but let’s turn on the radio real loud anyway and sing along to all the songs.”
“Can we get a coke, too?” Elizabeth asked.
Her mama laughed. She’d been sad, but now, she was so happy. “You bet, darlin’. Today’s a celebration. Today is our very own Independence Day, and that means we can get a coke. Think you can wait till Ruby’s? That’s two hours, more if this godawful rain doesn’t stop, but if we’re singing, that time will go by faster than green grass through a goose.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Elizabeth said. “I can wait.” She loved it when her mama talked like Memaw.
“So let’s go!” her mama hollered.
“Let’s go!” Elizabeth said.
* * *
Elizabeth was quiet a minute.He wasn’t even sure she’d go on, and then she said, “I think she may have been leaving my dad, or thinking about it. She was talking to herself in the car when she thought I was asleep, saying, ‘What in the world am I supposed to do, though? What am I supposed todo?’She said it was Independence Day, too, and it wasn’t. It was October. Almost Halloween. I remember that because she made me a junebug costume, and it was real cute, but she wasn’t there to go trick-or-treating with me, so I couldn’t go.” Her voice had even more of that soft accent than usual, and she was looking straight ahead, at black windows streaming with rain. Looking at nothing, and talking like she was back there. Like she’d just lived it.
Or relived it.
* * *
Her mama kept talkinglike that for a while, and Elizabeth went back to sleep again, because it was raining so hard, and that was a loud sound that was a quiet sound, too. She had her favorite pink blanket over her, and she was nice and warm.
She woke up with her head against the cold glass, the radio off, and her mama saying, “Good lord above, would this rain stop? I thought it’d be better up here, but I can barely see the road. Good thing we’re following that big ol’ semi. Just follow after those red lights, and you’ll get right on through, because those boys always know where to go.”
