A Mother to Embarrass Me Read online

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  DELL YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor's degree from Marymount College and a master's degree in history from St. John's University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  Special thanks to Gary Price, and

  Dan Hildreth, famous sculptors,

  who-spent hours answering my questions

  Dedicated to

  Elise, Laura, Kyra, Caitlynne and Carolina,

  my sweet, and many times embarrassed, daughters

  I wasn't even all the way home and I could hear it. Music. Old-timey music. Music that a lady almost forty would listen to. It was the Beatles, their “Twist and Shout” song, blasting so loud from my house that in my imagination I could see the curtains straining at the screens to get away from the sound.

  I heaved a sigh and shifted my pile of library books from one hip to the other.

  “Mom,” I said under my breath. My voice came out a growl.

  Here it was, the second day into summer vacation, and already there was trouble with my mother.

  I turned the corner onto Maple Drive and looked in the direction of my place.

  And that's when I saw him. Quinn Sumsion, probably one of the best-looking guys I know. Probably one of the best-looking guys anyone knows. He walked toward me, his younger brother, Christian, in tow. They bounced a yellow-and-purple basketball between them, taking turns.

  All of a sudden my books seemed sweaty and heavy. My face turned red. I wiped at my brow with my free hand and pretended I had never been more interested in a purple-and-yellow basketball.

  The three of us were close enough now that I knew if I looked straight into his face, I'd see how blue Quinn's eyes were. I couldn't look, though. I mean, there was that basketball. And the music blasting from my house. And all these books I was carrying.

  “Hey, Laura.” It was Christian. He gave me a small smile, his braces catching just a glint of sunlight, then passed the ball to his brother.

  “Hey,” I said. I allowed myself a peek at Quinn. I moved a bit to the right and, without meaning to, stepped off the sidewalk with one foot. Three books skidded from the top of my pile and landed faceup on the sidewalk. One was called The Dummies' Guidebook to Falling in Love. I sucked in a breath of air through my nose and resisted the urge to kick this traitor book into the gutter, or to cover the title with my foot.

  “Oopsie,” I said. I hadn't thought it possible for my face to get redder than it was. Why oh why couldn't something different have fallen? Why not Lord of the Flies? I went into a crouch and tried to pick things up. Christian bent too and scooped the books together, then heaped them back on for me.

  Quinn bounced the ball, and from where I knelt I saw dirt puff up from the ground like a tiny explosion. “You gonna read all summer?” he asked. But he didn't wait for an answer. “I can't believe anyone would waste a summer reading.”

  “I read every summer,” I said, not looking at him. My gosh, he was talking to me. To me!

  “My brother—the big fat brain,” Christian said. He tried to steal the ball from Quinn but missed, and his hand swiped at air.

  “College coming up,” Quinn said, twisting from Christian. “I want to have some fun before I start grinding away at learning. I want to rest my brain.” He dribbled the basketball, allowing it to bounce in a figure eight while he stepped around it.

  You are the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life, I thought. My brain shouted these words. I could have stood there all the rest of the summer, holding my ninety-pound stack of books and staring at Quinn Sumsion.

  Quinn nodded a little, almost like he knew my thoughts.

  “I can hear your mom's working,” he said.

  “Uh,” I said. I think I might have said more, at this one chance to talk to him, but right then, at that very moment, Mom began to yodel. It's this thing she does with her voice every time she sings with an old-fart song like the one that was on now. She finds a harmony and sings it louder than anyone without a microphone should be able to do.

  “Twist it, baby,” Mom sang. “Twist it this way and that way and this way. Come on, baaa-bee. Shout, shout, shout.” She was making up her own words. She always makes up her own words.

  I couldn't look at Quinn when the yodeling began. I couldn't even look at Christian, and he and I have been friends since third grade. All I could do was pin my sights on my front door, which stood wide open, and walk fast toward home. “Gotta go,” I said.

  I planned on jerking that Beatles Anthology CD out of the player and slinging it to Kingdom Come, a place my father is always talking about.

  “A little game later?” Christian asked me. From the corner of my eye I saw him steal the ball from Quinn, who put his hands in his pockets like he meant for that to happen. Then Christian twirled the ball, trying to make it spin on his finger the way those guys on TV do.

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe. I gotta get this stuff home.” My voice came out almost whiny, the way it sounds when Mom gets on my nerves and I want her to stop something. Lately that's been everything she does. She embarrasses me more than should be allowed. This was a perfect example.

  I pushed past the Sumsion brothers and, with my face burning with shame, tried to run the half block home, which isn't so easy when you're carrying as many books as I was. Lucky for me nothing else fell, including myself.

  “Hey, Laura,” Quinn called again.

  I turned, slowing my flight, hoping my face didn't appear as bright as it felt. I tried to swallow a big glob of spit as Mom belted out, “Do it, do it, do it, sweet thing.”

  “Tell your mom she's got a great set of lungs.” Then he laughed.

  I nodded a little and opened my mouth to answer him, but no real sound came out. I tried to hold my head high as I left. But I couldn't. It was like I felt myself folding up: my shoulders moving closer to the books, moving closer to my stomach, moving closer to my toes. I was curling up like a potato bug.

  “Mom,” I whispered toward my belly button. “Mom.” Only what more could I say after that? I needed a plan. I needed control. I was on the front porch now, the wraparound porch that reminds Mom of Florida. I needed the music off to think.

  I pulled open the screen door and closed the solid wood door behind me. Maybe that would block some of the sound. I peeked out the side window, allowing only one eyeball to look. Christian stood gazing at my house. Quinn walked down the street away from his brother. Away from me. Away from my heart. I fell back against the wall and clutched at my chest.

  “Oh, I love him. I love him,” I whispered. At least I think I whispered those deep and pained words. Really it was hard to tell, what with the music so loud.

  This music! I made my way to the stairs. I took them two at a time up to my bedroo
m, where I piled the library books next to my desk.

  Mom must be in her front-room office, probably drawing. She always listens to music this loud when she's designing something. Or else she was sculpting in her studio. The “work” Quinn had suggested.

  There was a moment of silence when “Twist and Shout” finished. It seemed the whole house breathed a sigh of relief. I know I did. No more music, maybe. I wrinkled my forehead, hoping. Then came the huge sound of someone snapping his fingers and Billy Squier was singing, Mom accompanying him, to “Rock Me Tonight.”

  I slammed my door hard. The bedroom floor vibrated with what Mom called one of her favorite dance songs.

  “Jeez, Mom,” I hollered through the closed door. “Give it a rest. The least you could do is listen to good stuff.” The stuff that was on the radio. The stuff real people listened to. But she didn't hear me. How was it possible with Billy Squier nearly rocking our home off its foundation? Wasn't it bad enough that I knew all the olden-day singers because of her? I was probably the only kid in the world that did. It wasn't fair.

  I went over to the window and looked out at the back two acres that we call our land. This two acres, no, all of Mapleton, Utah, didn't seem big enough to hide Mom.

  I had to think of a way to change her.

  On the nightstand next to my bed was a slip of paper. I had lots of these, which I would later staple onto a page in my journal. On them I wrote lists. One list was of my favorite books (that one was really long), one was of who I thought was cute (that one was short—Quinn Sumsion), one was of dreams of what I'd do if I had two million dollars. I started another. “Things to change about MY MOTHER.” I underlined it three times and had about ten exclamation points following the title.

  I was ready.

  I lay in bed for a long time staring at the ceiling. It seems that for all my life Mom has been embarrassing the heck out of me, but I know that isn't quite true. Not when I really think about it. I mean, only last year I can remember being proud of Mom.

  Mary Wolf, one of my best friends, and I shared fifth grade. She lives only two doors down from Quinn and Christian. That makes it easy for me to walk by Quinn's house, what with him living so close to Mary.

  Anyway, she and I sat side by side, right in the front of Mr. Bennion's fifth-grade class. It was there, sneaking notes to each other, that we became friends.

  And it was Mr. Bennion who had parents come and visit our class and tell what they did for their job. I think it was some career day thing.

  Derek Larson's mom talked about being a three-dimensional artist. She showed a couple of her paintings, complete with doors you could open and close.

  Allie Keene's dad talked about being an inventor. He showed a pager that he had worked on that showed all kinds of important information on it, like when your next appointment was and where.

  Mary's mom is a stay-at-home mom. She brought in jars of food she had canned and a loaf of fresh bread that was still warm and even a great big carrot cake for everyone to try.

  Then in came my mother, dressed in her work clothes, a pair of blue jeans and an old T-shirt. Now, at the memory, I shivered with embarrassment. Why did she wear those clothes, spattered with paint and smeared with clay, to school that day? And why hadn't it bothered me then? Like it did now. It could have been worse, I knew that. Sometimes Mom works in her pajamas.

  Anyway, I remember she held up a sculpture she was working on, one that she called Freedom. It was a little girl, her hair blowing forward, holding on to a kite that really seemed to tug from the girl's hand.

  “I modeled for that,” I had whispered to Mary. And she said, “Wow, that's cool, Laura.”

  I hadn't been embarrassed of Mom then. In fact, I was so full of pride that day that when she came to sit in the back of the room with the other parents, I grinned big at her. She grinned back and I felt this big gush of love. So big that I actually wanted to hug her. In public. In my classroom, of all things. Right in front of everybody.

  I shivered again, glad that I hadn't been so stupid that day to do something like hug my mother in front of other people.

  So when had the change happened, this being embarrassed? It almost seemed an overnight thing that Mom went from cool to geek. How could anyone change so fast?

  I looked at my list. My mother-changing list. The list that just might succeed in making me the happiest woman alive. Right at the moment I felt like a woman. Not just a twelve-year-old. I felt like a woman with a list waiting to emerge from her fingertips—well, really the pencil I held in my fingertips—to fall upon—well, really write—the things that would set my mother straight. Forever.

  I needed a hundred pages of suggestions to make her an acceptable mother. Hundreds. This task before me was huge, one I felt only a woman could undertake. A twelve-year-old woman.

  With great sincerity I wrote a large number one. I took my time, coloring around the edges with a gel pen.

  Next to the number one I wrote: “Complete overhaul needed.”

  Just what would a complete overhaul take? Brain surgery? Did we have money for that? I was sure we did. In fact, I knew Mom and Dad had a college fund for me. Would they let me use it for something that might make me truly, truly happy?

  “Start with something easier,” I said out loud. “Something Mom could do if I helped her set her mind to it. Something—”

  At that moment Mom's voice pierced through my door like a javelin might. “My baaa-bee.” These two words were repeated many times.

  Okay, number two on the list was easy.

  2. her awful singing

  So was number three.

  3. her awful singing that is so loud all the world can hear

  And four.

  4. her awful, loud music

  I stopped. Where were all the ideas now? All I had thought of were music-related items. But could I be blamed? Even a jury from Ally McBeal would agree with me that no human mind could think of anything more with that music blaring away.

  Fine. I knew how to end the list. I turned five pages ahead in my notebook. At the bottom of the fifth page I wrote the number 100 and spelled out in careful, neat letters, “Change her whole mother self.” I could fill in the rest as it came to me.

  Mom was in the kitchen below, I could tell by her voice. She was singing again, this time making up the words to “Rock Me Tonight,” along with a harmony that no one would recognize even fitted the song. Without going down there, I knew what she was doing. Dancing. Swinging her hips and hopping around on the stone kitchen floor, probably getting ready to start Dad's dinner.

  “How much more of this can I take?” I asked the ceiling, where I had pinned a poster with the words WHO YOU ARE IS IMPORTANT,complete with a rainbow and a wrinkled-looking dog who didn't know how ugly he was.

  I flung myself off my bed and stomped to my door. I threw it open wide, hard. It bounced against the wall, leaving a tiny ding.

  “Mom,” I shouted. “Mo-om.” Anger warmed my cheeks. “Turn down the music.”

  Right at that moment the music stopped. “What's that, Laurie?” Mom sang the words, using another new tune. For sure she was in what she calls a “creative mode.” All this singing proved that.

  “It's Laura,” I shouted. Why in the heck can't she even get my name right? “Can you please turn down the music?”

  There was a moment of silence and then Mom said, “All right, honey.”

  “Thank you.” I used my most sarcastic voice, then slammed the door shut for good measure. I plopped onto the bed again and for a moment felt a bit of satisfaction. Things stayed quiet downstairs. There was no music at all. I smiled to myself.

  Mom's last words, “All right, honey,” played back in my head. Guilt crept in around the edges of my satisfied feeling. Guilt! As if I should feel guilty about anything. Mom had embarrassed me. I had a right to be angry with her. Why did this guilt thing always happen to me? Why not to her?

  “Fine,” I said. “Just fine.” I got up and stomped
to my door and opened it. Mom wasn't going to win the battle without a fight.

  I could hear the sounds of dishes being clinked together. I made my way to where Mom worked in the kitchen. She looked up when I came into the room.

  “Hey, baby,” she said. She looked worse than the day when she visited my classroom. She wore an old pair of blue-and-green flannel pajamas even though the sun was high in the sky. They're four inches too short and they bag in the butt. These are jammies that she doesn't sleep in but works in. In fact, she doesn't sleep in anything at all, a thing that has always embarrassed me, since before my birth, I'm sure.

  “I like to be comfortable when I'm creating,” she tells people who come to the door and see her in nightclothes.

  “Did you find anything good at the library?” Mom asked.

  I didn't answer for a second, then with an icy voice I spoke. “Yes.” I looked in the fridge even though I wasn't interested in anything, a little amazed at how only one word could seem to mean so much.

  But Mom didn't even notice my strong yes. “How about grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner tonight? I'm craving something fried.” She didn't wait for me to answer. “I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to anyway.”

  I glanced at my mother with only one eye. It wasn't easy to do, even with the practice I had had at my front door, when I had looked out at Quinn and Christian. It wasn't easy to look at her, I mean, without really looking. From this position I could see that her cheeks were plump.

  A little shock tremor went through my bones. I jerked my head around to get a full-on view. I nearly dislocated my neck in the process. Mother was a little… well, a nice word for it would be chubby.

  “I'm working on a new piece,” she said.

  Shock had frozen my tongue. My skinny mother, bulging. When in the world had that happened? While I was at the library?

  There was a knock at the door. Still I stood, staring at my mother with both eyes now.

  “Would you get that, Laurie?”

  I wanted to say yes but I couldn't. Instead I turned and walked toward the front door. I felt like a zombie, only slower. Mother—fat. My mother, fat. My mother, ex-model turned sculptor, fat. It was enough to make a crazed man sane.