Sleepovers Read online

  “She’s okay, Sister,” Annie Pearl says, stroking the girl’s wild hair. “Let’s just get her to her mama. She needs her mama now.”

  “Take me to the coondog castle,” the girl says. “Please.”

  “They didn’t ever finish that did they?” Hildy says as she pulls out the drive.

  “No.” The girl looks into her lap.

  “That’s a shame,” Hildy goes on. “That coulda been an attraction for the area. I bet folks woulda drove down from Virginia to see that.”

  “I know,” the girl tilts her head. “Too bad my daddy had to screw everything up.”

  Annie Pearl hands the girl some tissue from her purse.

  The girl blows her nose and gets quiet. Then she says, “Look you can just go on and tell her everything. I know she wants to know what’s going on.” The girl turns to Annie Pearl, “I don’t care, tell her everything. I can feel her looking at me and thinking I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy! I’m just feeling like I—,” the girl lifts her head like she’s looking out beyond the top of the car. “I don’t have no control over nothing. No control…I, I, I,” she brings her head back down and starts to twist her hands in front of her, “I found her Bible in the truck door. Made me sick. I told him I didn’t want to see it no more. And then he didn’t come home. He don’t love me. He don’t love me! And I ain’t got nothing! I ain’t got…”

  Annie Pearl pulls the girl closer and tells her it’s alright.

  Hildy stops looking at the girl. It’s dark now. She takes a left at the light on Main Street. Most everything is abandoned and no one is out. Folks are home, some windows shine but it’s so dark.

  “Well baby, you didn’t tell my sister the GOOD news,” Annie Pearl says from behind.

  Hildy sees Annie Pearl put her hand under the girl’s chin. She lifts the girl’s head. Hildy can see the girl’s face is sad.

  “Hildy, we’ve got a real miracle back here,” Annie Pearl pauses and puts both her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Megan is going to have a baby. Ain’t that a blessing?”

  Megan bends over trying to catch her breath. She starts shaking.

  “Oh baby, sweet baby,” Annie Pearl says leaning over her.

  “Well congratulations,” Hildy says. She does not look back anymore, just watches the road as they drive on to the edge of town.

  Hildy hears that Megan has almost stopped crying. She listens to Annie Pearl talk to her so calmly. It’s so low she can’t make anything out. And Hildy remembers something their mama’d say every time Annie Pearl was newly pregnant, “Eating summer corn brings sunshine to a baby in the belly.”

  “You know, I’ve got some fresh corn I’ve just blanched and canned in the boot,” Hildy says.

  “Yes baby, we’ll give you some. It’ll be good for you and that baby. It’ll make y’all strong,” Annie Pearl says.

  Hildy looks and sees her sister smiling and she smiles back at her. Hildy hears her sister talking quietly again. She thinks she’s talking to the baby. She’s telling it a prayer.

  What would you have done when your husband, the biggest Bluetick coonhound breeder this side of the river, was busted in Big Bay Odom’s dope ring out of Arrowhead trailer park, when you never even knew he had anything to do with it and he was thrown in prison and left you with all those dogs to care for that no one wants to buy anymore because your husband’s a criminal and then you found your only child, your 16-year-old daughter, out in the dog house naked on top of a full grown married man who everybody knows steals when he owes drug money?

  You’d carry on and do the best you could and try to get your daughter to stop messing with that man. That’s what Janet wants everyone around here to know. She didn’t throw Megan out. She didn’t want her to end up dropping out of school, hanging on the porch of that shack house for everyone to ride by and see. She tried her best. Janet tried to tell Megan that Daniel Adam didn’t really love her. But Megan wouldn’t listen. And Megan ran away and refused to come back. She said she needed to be where she felt loved and that wasn’t with her mama.

  Now everyone looks at Janet, asks how she’s doing, has put her on their prayer lists. She is living in a broken home. With a damn half-built giant dog house Coonie always dreamed of, driving two hours on weekends to see him for a few minutes. And when he asks if Megan’s doing ok, if she’s still catching for the softball team, Janet says, “Yes.”

  Right now she is looking at their marriage photo that Megan loved so much. When Megan found it in the attic she made a big deal about it. How could her mama and daddy ever looked that young and happy before? Megan made a special frame for it, spray-painted some sticks and wove them together. She hung it above her dresser, showed it to her friends when they came over for sleepovers. “Look at mama’s hair!” she’d say and they’d all laugh.

  Janet pulls it from the wall. She’s done all she needed to do for the day. Fed the dogs, gave medicine to the ones that needed it, she forgot to take the clothes off the line but that could wait till tomorrow. She’s tired and it’s dark out. She lays down in Megan’s bed with her wedding picture. She looks at it again before putting it on the nightstand. She wishes that for her daughter’s birthday today, wherever Megan is, she will not be afraid. That is all she can hope for. And Janet goes to sleep to the sound of the dogs barking outside. It’s nothing. Those dogs bark all the time now that everyone is gone.

  The baby can hear. Mama is calling. She says, “Honey.” There is nothing coming back to Mama except barks. She calls louder. The baby feels Mama running fast for a long time, and Mama keeps calling, and the barks turn to howls that get quieter and quieter and the baby can remember too, hearing someone say it was a blessing.

  You Go Into the ABC Store and the Saleslady Says

  Now you listen.

  Do you believe in ghosts?

  Because I’mma tell you right now they exist.

  There’s this one in my house, see, and I don’t know what it’s for. I hear it coming down the hall at night creaking the floor. Coming closer, closer. Until it gets to my bedroom. I can feel it looking at me, standing at the end of my bed, it feels like forever and I can’t move. It comes and sits on my feet. So cold so heavy, like it’s trying to push me down through the floor, under the house. And I stay there with the blanket over my head. I don’t want to look at it.

  They say the devil comes for you when you’re weak. And Lord I know it. And Lord I’m angry—been left here so alone. All this hurt in my heart, what’s happened to me.

  And you know some of it. Everybody knows some of it. How my girls don’t come home nomore. It’s easy to figure. It’s hard for them now, coming home to me. Their Daddy in the nursing home losing his mind, his memory. I tell them to come on home NOW, he MIGHT be able to still say their names.

  And everybody wants to know. Asks me all the time when’s the last time I saw my husband. Like I just threw him in the home whenever he started getting too bad for me to take care of by myself. Like I’m just getting on and dancing on bars and having men over to my house. Let me tell you, yesterday I sat and rubbed his hand for thirty minutes before he looked at me. I was calling him Baby like I always called him. I told him about our girls. I just went on and on. And he didn’t say nothing.

  He is a baby now, so afraid. You got to hold his hand and pull him out of bed, pull him to the table.

  He’s not my husband. I don’t know where my husband is.

  I want to believe he’s the ghost that’s been coming to me. If I could only pull back the covers and look, it might really be him trying to come see me, trying to pull me out of bed, twirl me on the floor. Spinning like we used to dance by the river. We met in the summer. I was wearing a blue dress. He loved to tell that story.

  Could you look?

  Could you pull back the covers and look?

  ’Cause what if it ain’t him.

  My husband. He’s a ghost, a spirit, he’s off somewhere else fishing, he’s a fish going upstream, laying under a fallen tree,
he’s a baby that’s too big for me to hold. I want to cradle him, with his clean hands.

  Yesterday I watched him eat with his fingers. He dipped his roll in his sweet tea. He never liked sweet tea before.

  Whoever he is, whatever he’s becoming, he’s got clean hands.

  You remember how dirty they always were. Always working. Always grease and dirt way down beneath the fingernail. He fixed your carburetor, your cotton picker, your air conditioner. He built your girls a tree house. He BBQ’d a pig when your son got engaged. He gutted all the fish and he gave all the fish to all our neighbors. We all remember his hands.

  Do you feel sad now? See I didn’t mean to make you feel sad. But I got to get it out of me somehow I can feel it welling up inside when I just sit and think. Nobody to talk to. I’m alone in my house. Alone here. Preacher says I need to start writing and I’ve been working on a poem here’s how it starts:

  I want to share my life with you, just another day

  But you’re forgetting who I am

  As you fade away

  See, you ask me how I am and here I am telling you. I’m telling you that sometimes I sit here at this counter and get so sad that I’m just staring. Just like my husband. Just nothing. I feel like I’m becoming nothing. I’m not his wife no more, I’m not his mama. My girls won’t come home. I’m lost.

  And then I hear her singing. Miss Ann Ruby. I can see her out behind you now. She’s down in the ditch with her red pea coat. She’s picking up trash. She’s singing What a friend we have in Jesus.

  Hear her?

  I can hear her right now.

  All our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Seems like she’s out there every other morning, as old as she is. Cleaning out the ditch and talking to folks before they come in here. And yes I’ve called her nephew to come and pick her up and take her to the house. And I’ve seen him come out here and try to get her in the car and she fights him and screams at him. Folks think Miss Ann Ruby’s crazy but I’ll tell ya. She’s lived with ghosts. Still living with them now. She knows ’em better than any of us.

  See when I was little she lived by my school. She’d come in with that red peacoat, holding her guitar, and interrupt the teacher and ask us if we knew Jesus, that Jesus was our only friend. And the teacher would let her interrupt. Talk for as long as she wanted. She’d say, “Raise your hand if you love music.” And we all would raise our hands. She’d say, “Raise your hands if you want to learn how to play it.” And Cindy Liverman was the only one to keep her hand up and Miss Ann Ruby walked to her in her desk and stood over her and told her that God was going to touch her that night. God was proud she was going to learn how to play His music with Miss Ann Ruby. And at the end of it, the teacher just said thank you Miss Ann Ruby. And Miss Ann Ruby went on to the next classroom and did the same thing all over again.

  And here’s the other part you might not know, folks don’t like to talk about it. For when she was a young mother—Miss Ann Ruby was a beautiful woman, a classically trained musician—her husband tied her and their son up in their basement and shot himself in front of them. Made them watch it. But she went on and raised her son to play the piano the prettiest you’ve ever heard. And then he killed himself too.

  And we all know what happened last year but I’ll tell it again. When them neighbor boys of hers, 13, 15 years old came over to help her take the clothes off the line like they’d always done. Knocked her in the head with a pipe and ’bout beat her to death. Threw her in the boot of her car. Poured gasoline all on the outside of it and lit it on fire. She was in that car burning. But she pulled herself out.

  Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

  Miss Ann Ruby she was waiting for me outside one day. She looked me good in the face. I hadn’t been that close to her since I was a real little girl. She said I looked familiar. She asked me where I was from. And then before I could say anything her face turned to look like an angel. And she said, “I remember you, I’ve known you all your life.”

  And she’s out there now waiting for you.

  It’s alright if you’re lost.

  But know you’re not a stranger.

  The Mattress

  H Hope’s sitting at work, her daddy’s septic tank business. She’s the secretary. She’s looking at seafood recipes on the computer, a seafood pizza to spice things up. She read in Cosmo that you can do that. Changing things up in the kitchen can entice your man to change things up in the bedroom. Because food and sex are both natural desires, going all the way back to caveman times.

  Hope’s husband is named Dale.

  Dale’s trying to sell a BeautyRest ReCharge Extra Firm mattress to an elderly woman. Her name is Mrs. Creech. But the elderly woman is buying the mattress for her son. It’s a bit confusing.

  Dale’s laying down beside Mrs. Creech on the mattress.

  She’s telling him, “Now my boy Bobby, he’s fat, I mean real fat.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he says, his eyes closed.

  “Now these springs gotta support him.” She goes on.

  Dale thinks of My 600 Pound Life, and Mrs. Creech’s son inside his house, trapped like a whale. Hope loves that show, she laughs at the sad people and their loved ones washing out their fat layers and folds.

  Dale’s phone goes off then, vibrates the bed.

  But Mrs. Creech doesn’t notice, she pokes her finger into the mattress.

  Hope’s texted him and she wants to know: SHRIMP or SALMON.

  Hope’s daddy’s septic tank business is a mile outside of town, across from wheat fields, and beside Arrowhead trailer park. No one really comes in the septic tank business until around 3pm when the schoolbus lets off the kids at Arrowhead. They buy Little Debbie cakes and Cokes and Snickers bars and Doritos that the septic tank business sells for snacks at the counter.

  But right now it’s noon and a girl Hope’s seen before comes in with a baby on her hip and asks to use the phone. She says she needs to call her probation officer. And her phone’s been cut off.

  The baby is drooling and squirming. It reaches for Hope’s hand when she pushes them the phone. It’s wearing a tee shirt with a ladybug on it that says “Love bug.”

  The girl dials and says, “Yes ma’am,” over and over.

  Hope realizes then that the girl is Coonie’s daughter. But she can’t remember her name.

  The baby squeals so the mama-girl puts it down. It crawls fast as lighting to the corner basket filled with dog toys.

  Hope’s two dachshunds, Pookie and Peanut, are currently at Puppy Paradise getting their nails painted: Strawberita and Lime.

  The baby reaches for Pookie’s favorite squeaky hamburger and Hope jumps up to snatch it from her.

  Now the baby’s screaming.

  And the mama-girl hangs up the phone and grabs her, picks her up by the arm. “Shut up,” she says. The baby wobbles standing on her own two legs and the girl whoops her. “Shut up,” she says. She whoops her so hard the baby’s knees buckle. And the baby is really squalling now.

  Hope puts the hamburger toy in the dog basket.

  The mama-girl picks up her baby and heads towards the door.

  “Where are your yip dogs today,” she asks her over the baby’s cries.

  Hope tells her they’re just at the doggy salon.

  “A doggy salon,” the mama-girl pauses for a minute looking at the basket of toys. “Well I’ll be,” she says and walks out the door.

  Hope sits behind her desk, reaches for a Snickers.

  She still hears the baby squalling and Dale still hasn’t answered her text.

  Dale has always dreamed of taking Hope on an Alaskan cruise because she’s always wanted to go since she was little. He dreams of making an Alaskan cruise baby. It would start with eskimo kisses, then he’d rub his nose down Hope’s neck, ’round her arms and elbows, legs and butt too. And outside the porthole of their c
abin, icebergs grow and somewhere, of course, cute polar bears cuddle under a blanket of snow.

  But we return to him on the mattress with the elderly woman, Mrs. Creech.

  “You know this is actually our bestselling mattress to bigger people,” he says.

  “You can call him fat,” she says. “’Cause that’s what he is, Bobby is sooo BIG. I’m telling ya.”

  Then she slaps the bed, “But you know what, I’ll take it!”

  This will be Dale’s first sale in four days. He’s been working alone all week. He’s so excited. He tells the woman he’ll deliver it too, no extra charge.

  “Now, Bobby, my big son, he don’t live with me,” Mrs. Creech says. “I live in that big white farm house with the barn behind it out on 258. And Bobby, he lives across the road from me in that trailer. Can’t hardly see it because of the pine trees. I told him we ought to cut them down when he put that trailer there. I told him that the pine cones were gonna tear his lawnmower all to pieces.”

  “I see,” Dale says.

  “But you go on and deliver it to him there in that trailer across from my house. I would get my other boy Craig to come get it but he can’t leave the field cotton season like it is.”

  “I understand,” Dale says.

  “Thank you so much,” Mrs. Creech reaches for Dale’s hand. “That’s so kind of you.”

  Dale’s preparing the paperwork at his register for the BeautyRest ReCharge Extra Firm Mattress, when he sees a tall male figure walk in towards Mrs. Creech.

  Dale hollers to him from the counter, welcomes him to the store.

  “Oh, look here,” Mrs. Creech says. “It’s Craig! This here is my other boy! He ain’t the fat one.”

  When Dale gets to them the man is pulling Mrs. Creech off the mattress. And she’s telling him she’s getting that special mattress. “Like the one you told me to get,” she says.

  Mrs. Creech looks at Dale with big eyes. “Show Craig the paperwork you got on it.”