by C. C. Payne
Suddenly, Grandma Bernice’s voice cut in. “Hello?”
“Were you sleeping?” I asked, turning away from Alan in a small attempt at privacy.
“’Course not!” Grandma Bernice was quick to say. “I was just resting my eyes is all.” (According to Grandma Bernice, she is never asleep in her lazy-girl chair; she is only resting her eyes. And she doesn’t snore either. Not ever.)
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
Grandma said the same thing she always said under these circumstances: “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
“And you’ll do this waiting…um, awake, right?”
“I’ll be awake,” Grandma promised.
I put the phone back, and when I turned around, Alan was standing in front of the refrigerator, drinking a Yoo-hoo. He gave me a goofy grin.
“You should look in a mirror,” I said on my way out of the kitchen.
Alan’s grin slipped just a little.
Throughout my music lesson, I half-waited for the terrorized screams I thought Alan’s reflection deserved. But they never came.
I’d just pulled my hands back from the piano keys, having finished playing and singing my song for the last time, when Alan began clapping from his usual spying position at the top of the stairs. I meant to give him a dirty look, but when my eyes landed on him, I couldn’t help smiling. Alan had tried to fix his hair—how, I didn’t know—maybe just by brushing it. The result was an explosive afro with the added bonus of static cling. His hair no longer merely said shazam! but SHAZAYAM, BABY!
Alan smiled back, stood, and trotted down the stairs to see me out, like he always did. “Good work on our science project,” he said when we reached his front door.
“You, too,” I said, and I meant it.
Alan and I made pretty good partners. We were both smart, did our fair share of the work, and hoped to earn a good grade. The problem was that Alan didn’t care who knew this. I did. I didn’t want anybody thinking of me as especially smart, because “smart” wouldn’t help me fit in. Which is why I would’ve gladly traded my partnership with Alan for a partnership with almost anybody else, even if it meant doing all the work by myself.
Alan was like tuna when I really needed PB&J.
Paparazzi and Other Problems
I sprinted past the three houses separating the Wests’ house from our house and cut around back, hoping with all my heart that Grandma was still awake.
She was. When I burst through the back door, Grandma Bernice was sitting at the kitchen table, carefully cutting fabric into little squares that were the beginning of a quilt. She was wearing her bootie-slippers along with her soft pink bathrobe that zipped up the front. Her wavy white hair was littered with black bobby pins.
Grandma’s eyes sparked with happiness, and she smiled when she saw me. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Lula Bell! How’d your music lesson go?”
For a few seconds, I just stood there panting. Then I announced, “I wish Alan would stop spying on me (pant, pant). I always feel like (pant) I’ve been caught singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror (pant, pant).”
“You just keep right on singin’, honey.”
I peeled off my sweatshirt, and as I did, Grandma got up singing her favorite song of all time: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”
I used my toes to pry my sneakers off while Grandma opened the refrigerator. “You’ve got to be willin’ to let your light shine no matter who’s watchin’—if you let your light shine, then others will feel better about letting their lights shine, and we all have a light in us that wants to shine, that’s meant to shine. You understand?”
I thought about how I had never once seen light shine from a person and how if I ever did see a shiny person, my first question wouldn’t be, “Hey, how do I let my light shine?” It would be, “What planet are you from?”
“Lula Bell? Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, even though I had no idea what Grandma was talking about. I picked up my sneakers and tossed them into the shoe basket by the back door.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you at school this morning,” Grandma Bernice said, her back still to me.
I froze. “Oh…um…no, ma’am—you didn’t.”
Grandma Bernice gave me a quick glance over her shoulder, and that was enough. I knew that we both knew I was lying.
Knowing that Grandma knew I’d felt ashamed of her made my heart squeezy and my stomach queasy. But what could I do? I’d already tried telling her I wasn’t embarrassed. She knew better. So I stood there, fidgeting with the pinky-finger-size hole inside my left pocket.
“Well, anyhoo, how’d it go—with the lunch, I mean. Were you able to sit with Emilou and the other girls?”
“Yes, ma’am…no, ma’am—not really—I tried, but…” I shrugged.
“Aw, I’m sorry—and you wore your Snotty-Brand shirt and everything!”
“Sassy-Brand,” I corrected. “And my shirt was fine. My lunch was the problem—I made the wrong lunch.”
“Oh,” Grandma said. “What’s the right lunch?”
“Peanut butter and grape jelly cut into triangles with no crusts.”
“But, Lula Bell, you don’t even like peanut butter.”
“Lunch isn’t about eating,” I informed her.
“Well, this is.” Grandma returned to the table and set out a small glass of milk for me, along with one of her world-famous, blue-ribbon, homemade, deep-fried, triple-dipped, glazed doughnuts, with extra icing.
I smiled so big that I actually felt my ears move, because Grandma Bernice’s doughnuts were the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth. The best thing. Ever.
Grandma smiled back.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked then, because Grandma Bernice’s doughnuts were like a reward in our house; they meant a job well done.
“Your report card—good job!” Grandma said as she sat down and nudged her glasses back up on her nose. “Oh, and your mama reached her sales goal in hair products. I told her there’d be doughnuts waiting whenever she gets home from the beauty shop, so you can’t eat ’em all.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Grandma gathered up the fabric squares and stuffed everything back into her quilting basket.
I eyed the White House Watch on the kitchen counter.
The White House Watch is the weekly newspaper in small-town White House, Tennessee, where we live. No, the White House isn’t here (it’s in Washington, D.C.) and no, not all the houses here are white. The city of White House is named after a white clapboard house that served as an inn for people traveling between Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee, back in 1829. That inn is now the town library and a museum, too. So the building is for readers and non-readers alike, which I think is very thoughtful of the library people.
Come to think of it, all the business people in White House are thoughtful like that—they all offer something for everyone. The gas station is also a deli and a bakery; the movie rental store is also a tanning salon, with all kinds of lotions and potions for sale; the photographer’s studio sells furniture on the weekends, and then there’s the restaurant/ice cream parlor/arcade. My favorite is the florist’s shop because they sell the cutest jewelry and flip-flops.
But the newspaper just puts out the newspaper and nothing else. It arrives in our mailbox every Thursday morning, like clockwork. And by the time I get home on Thursday nights, Grandma Bernice has shopped the obituaries and decided how she would most like to die that week.
Look, “death is part of life,” Grandma Bernice always says.
I picked up the newspaper and flipped to the obituaries. “So? What’s it going to be? Deadly police chase? Grizzly bear attack?”
No matter that no one ever died of anything exciting here in our little town. In fact, most of the obituaries didn’t even tell how the person died; they just said when they died and who survived them, and gave information ab
out the funeral. It was these mystery obits that really inspired Grandma and me to be creative.
“You’ll never guess it. Never,” Grandma said with a twinkle in her blue eyes. “But try.”
I stood completely still and tried to think of something I would never guess. I thought and thought. The only sound in the house was that of the toilet running in the hallway bathroom—it never stops. I thought some more.
Finally, I came up with, “Explosive diarrhea?”
“Lula!” Grandma started, appalled. Then she covered her mouth…and began to shake all over. She was laughing!
I laughed, too.
When we started to calm down, I asked, “Does it have anything to do with gazelles?” because last week Grandma Bernice had said that she would like to be mistaken for a gazelle and shot by a hunter’s bow and arrow. (There was definitely nothing gazelle-like about Grandma Bernice.)
“Nope, no gazelles.”
“Hmmm. Attacked by a hippopotamus in Old Hickory Lake?” I said, making a swimming motion with my arms and then pretending to be dragged underwater by something unseen. I shrieked and coughed and gasped and then finally lay still on the linoleum, playing dead. After a few seconds I twitched, turned my head toward Grandma, fixed my eyes, and let my tongue loll out of my mouth.
Grandma Bernice giggled. “Nope.”
I sat up and thought some more. “Eaten by a great white shark while surfing in the Cumberland River?” I had water on the brain now.
No matter that gazelles and hippos only lived in Africa, and the closest sharks were probably off the coast of Alabama or Florida. Accuracy wasn’t the point of this game; fun was.
“You’ll never guess it,” Grandma said again, pleased with herself.
I got up off the floor and took my place at the kitchen table, across from Grandma Bernice. “Then tell me,” I said, picking up my doughnut.
“You know, Eula Beth Wilks died late Sunday night,” Grandma said.
Eula Beth Wilks had been in my grandma’s Sunday school class at church.
“No, I didn’t know,” I said once I’d swallowed. “I’m sorry, Grandma.”
Grandma Bernice shrugged. “Part of life.”
“What did Mrs. Wilks die of?”
“Old age—she died in her sleep,” Grandma said matter-of-factly. “I saw her at church on Sunday morning. She was fine…happy, excited.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Eula Beth’s whole family was coming to her house for lunch after church.”
I nodded and chewed.
“And I’ve decided that’s exactly how I’d like to go,” Grandma said.
My eyes bulged. “In your sleep? But that’s so boring!”
Grandma leaned over the table like she was about to tell me a secret and said, “Yes, but I’m tellin’ you, Lula Bell, it really is the way to go—peaceful and warm in your own bed, having been surrounded by those you love.”
I didn’t consider this to be Grandma Bernice’s best work. Not even close. “Well, um, okay,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. I didn’t have to try too hard; it was almost impossible to feel disappointment while eating one of Grandma Bernice’s doughnuts.
“Eula Beth almost died on her birthday,” Grandma pointed out. “I think it’s nice when a person dies on the same day they were born. It gives the impression that things went exactly as planned—it’s just so…elegant.”
“Yeah, elegant,” I said with a mouth full of doughnut. No way did I want to die on my birthday. Then I wouldn’t have time to enjoy my presents!
“Make sure it says both my date of birth and my date of death on my headstone, will you, Lula Bell?”
I nodded.
“And you?” Grandma said, leaning back in her chair.
That was the moment I’d been waiting for. I swallowed, sat up straight, and proudly announced, “I’d like to be crushed to death by a mob of adoring fans and paparazzi. Then, the next day, the newspaper headlines will read ‘International Superstar Lula Bell Bonner Loved to Death—Literally.’”
“Excellent,” Grandma said with real appreciation, just before her whole face twisted up. Her mouth puckered, her nose bunched, her eyes and forehead scrunched together, and wrinkles appeared—everywhere. This was how Grandma Bernice pushed her glasses up on her nose using her face instead of her hands. (Also, sometimes, all this squinchy-face action caused Grandma’s dentures to knock around inside her mouth, which always embarrassed me in front of other people.) It was not an attractive habit, as I’d recently pointed out—as politely as possible. Ever since then, Grandma Bernice had been trying to stop. She’d made me promise to tell her whenever she did it.
“Gotcha!” I said, pointing a finger at her. “You just did it again!”
Grandma’s hands clenched. “Oh poopoopahduke! You’re right!”
“Poopoopahduke” was Grandma Bernice’s version of “darn” or “shoot.” I once asked her where she learned that and she said, “Oh, you know, it’s a saying.” (Here’s a little tip for you: it’s not a saying if nobody else says it.)
“All right, you got me this time. But it’s not going to happen again.” Grandma seemed to settle herself.
“Anyway,” I said, “after my death, the paparazzi will descend on my hometown to cover the local reaction to my tragic death.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. This place’ll be swarming with news helicopters and vans, journalists, photographers, lights, and cameras!” Grandma Bernice said.
“And all my friends—by then, I’ll have lots of friends—will cry their eyes out on TV and say how they always knew I was destined for stardom.”
“You are so right, Lula Bell! And it all starts with the fifth grade talent show—I can hardly wait!”
Oh. Here I thought we were just kidding around, but the look on Grandma’s face made it clear she wasn’t kidding around about that talent show—not one little bit.
I ignored Grandma, put on a sad face, and tried to change the subject. “After I’m dead, Kali Keele is sure going to be sorry about the way she treated me.”
“She’ll feel terrible,” Grandma agreed. “Kali probably won’t even get to be on TV!”
I almost smiled at that but caught myself. Now wasn’t a time for smiling. Now was when we pretended to feel sorry for all the people who’d have to carry big, heaping loads of guilt following our tragic and untimely deaths.
“And after I die in my sleep,” Grandma said, “Alyssa Bolgery will feel just awful about the way she pushed ahead of me in Al’s Food Valu yesterday.”
“She will,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “She’ll never forgive herself.”
“And to think, I’ve been praying for Alyssa and her mama every night for weeks!” Grandma Bernice added.
I wasn’t overly impressed by Grandma’s prayers. Not only does everybody know everybody here, but everybody knows everybody else’s business. Business gets passed around in the form of prayer requests; for example: “Bernice, did you hear about poor Shug McFee? No? Well, you need to start praying for him ’cause he done fallen off the wagon and started drinking again, and Lyla Langford heard from Carol Shaeffer who heard from Judy Hibbard who heard straight from Shug’s next-door neighbor that his wife is ready to throw him out of the house!” To which, Grandma Bernice always replies, “Oh, I will! I’ll start praying right away!” As much as I hear this kind of stuff, well…I’m pretty sure that everybody’s always praying for everybody here. So I figure Grandma Bernice was only one of about eight thousand people praying for Alyssa and her mama—whatever their problem was.
We heard the garage door then. Grandma and I both zipped our lips just in time, as Mama clacked into the kitchen lugging her big black purse. With effort, she hefted her purse onto the kitchen counter. (My mama carries the biggest purse I’ve ever seen. It has all the usual stuff in it, plus pepper spray, Germ-X, Band-Aids, Neosporin, an extra cell phone battery, her favorite hair-cutting scissors in a special leather case,
her appointment book, and Dentyne gum. What can I tell you? I guess if my mama were attacked, she could fend off her attacker with pepper spray, call the police, wash her hands, treat her own wounds, give haircuts while she waited for the police to arrive, and book appointments for all those she couldn’t get to—all without ever having to worry about bad breath.)
A little piece of fabric peeking out of Grandma Bernice’s quilting basket caught Mama’s eye right away. “Mother, you didn’t buy more material today, did you?”
“Just a little,” Grandma hurried to explain. “There was a remnant sale over at Jo-Ann’s Fabrics—it was practically free!”
Mama closed her eyes and took a deep breath, like she was trying very hard to hold on to what was left of her patience. Then she opened her eyes, blinked, and said, “You’re never going to be able to make use of all that fabric. You should give some away. And for goodness sake, stop buying it!”
Grandma Bernice let out an angry little “Hmph!” It was her way of having the last word whenever she couldn’t think of one.
For a minute Mama just stood there, studying Grandma Bernice and me. Then she said, “You two were doing it again, weren’t you?”
I picked up my remaining half a doughnut and stuffed it into my mouth with both hands. (Since I’m not allowed to talk with my mouth full, I knew I wouldn’t have to confess—not right away, anyway. Also, guilty or not, there’s no good reason to waste a doughnut.)
“Doing what?” Grandma Bernice said, all innocent-like.
Mama slipped out of her clacky shoes and dropped them into the shoe basket. “You know what,” she said, giving Grandma a stern look.
Grandma crossed her arms over her chest and managed to look insulted.
Mama grabbed the newspaper and held it up as evidence of our crimes. “It’s not natural, not normal, to talk so much about death. It’s unhealthy.”
“It’s not unhealthy. Death’s part of life,” Grandma said, getting up from the table.
