by C. C. Payne
Miss Arnett clipped her pen to her clipboard, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.
I placed my fingers on the piano keys and found that they knew exactly where to go and what to do. “Under the Boardwalk” flowed right out through my fingertips—it was even easy! Well, it was easy, ’til it was time for me to start singing.
Then, all of a sudden, my mouth dried up like it was full of sand, and tidal waves began crashing through my stomach. I broke into a sweat, and my head felt light. I thought I might throw up or pass out—or both. All I could do was play the song’s intro again and again, buying extra time.
But the longer this went on, the sicker I got. I did what I think anybody else would’ve done under the circumstances: I jumped up off that bench and sprinted to the girls’ bathroom. And it was a good thing I did. I just barely made it to the toilet in time!
I was wiping my mouth with the scratchy brown paper that passes for paper towels at our school when Miss Arnett came into the bathroom to check on me.
“Lula Bell, sugar, are you sick?” Miss Arnett said.
Sick? Yes! That’s it! I’m not scared; I’m sick! I nodded my head and tried to look puny, which wasn’t exactly hard.
“Do you want me to call your mother for you?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, doing my best to sound really pitiful. “I think I can do it myself.”
Mama was busy at the salon, so I left a message for her, telling her that I was sick and she should come get me. Then I waited outside. I couldn’t risk Mama running into Miss Arnett.
It seemed like I was out there waiting for a long time. I began to worry that dress rehearsal would end before Mama arrived. If that happened, I’d have to hide behind the garbage Dumpster to keep Miss Arnett from noticing me and waiting with me for Mama—which I wasn’t exactly looking forward to since I could already smell the garbage from where I was.
And what if it started raining? The sky was a solid blah-gray, as if somebody had taken their old string mop into the paint store and asked that the sky be painted exactly the same color. So rain wasn’t out of the question.
Just then, I spotted Mama’s car careening around the corner. When it jerked to a stop in front of me, I noticed that Mama looked a little…mad. How could she be mad at me? She hadn’t even talked to Miss Arnett!
It all was too much: the loneliness, the fear, the sickness, the waiting and worrying, and on top of it, Mama was mad at me. I started crying as soon as I was in the car with the door shut.
Mama’s face softened. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head. “Where’ve you been?”
“I’m sorry,” Mama said. “I came as soon as I could.”
“Grandma Bernice would’ve come right away,” I wailed.
“I know. But Grandma Bernice didn’t have a business to run. There was a hair emergency at the salon.”
“A hair emergency?” I repeated, just so Mama could hear how ridiculous that sounded—hair wasn’t an emergency; vomiting was an emergency!
“Yes, my new stylist, Teresa, had some trouble coloring a client’s hair.”
That hardly sounded like an emergency to me. I mean, how much trouble could Teresa really have had? Had someone’s head erupted in flames? Had someone lost an eye? Had there been bloodshed?
“Blond can be tricky,” Mama tried to explain. “If you don’t leave the color on long enough, the hair turns orange, and if you leave it on too long, it turns white.”
This still didn’t sound like an emergency to me, and I didn’t want to ask, but for some reason, I really wanted to know: “What color was Teresa’s client’s hair?”
Mama smiled a little, remembering. “White. Solid white, like Grandma Bernice’s hair.”
I stuck my chin out and said, “Well, I always thought Grandma Bernice’s hair was pretty.”
“It was,” Mama said easily, “but Teresa’s client couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.”
“Oh,” I said, still thinking about Grandma Bernice’s curly white hair. “Hey, maybe you could give me a perm.”
“Perms are even trickier than color. Do you know what happens if you leave a perm on too long?”
“No, ma’am.” I wiped my face on my sleeve and waited for her to tell me.
“When you rinse the perm out, the hair is stretchy while it’s wet.”
Now I admit that stretchy hair sounded pretty bad, but still, I said, “I really want curly hair.”
Mama continued, “And after that, when the hair dries, it turns brittle, breaks, and falls off. All of it.”
Okay, so maybe I didn’t want a perm after all.
“You’re not running a fever,” Mama said after she felt my forehead. In Mama’s book, you have to run a fever to qualify as sick.
“I know,” I mumbled, wishing with all my heart that I did have a fever so that Mama would put me on the couch, cover me with a quilt, fix me homemade chicken noodle soup, and make me feel better somehow.
Uh-Oh
What with my emergency and all, I’d forgotten that Daddy would be home, but I was sure glad to see him. He didn’t seem so glad to see us though. When we came through the door, Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table with a gigantic piece of chocolate cake in front of him. When he saw us, his face dropped and he froze, his fork midair.
“John Bonner!” Mama gasped. “You are not about to spoil the supper I’ve planned and shopped and prepped for, and am about to cook, by eating half a cake!”
Daddy put the fork down. “You just missed Claira Reese—she brought the cake.”
Mama huffed and headed for the stairs.
Poopoopahduke! I thought. If only I’ d been here a teensy bit earlier, and if only Mama had been here a teensy bit later! (Here’s a little tip for you: if you drop off any kind of junk food or sweets at a house where the mama isn’t home but the daddy or the children are, the mama will probably never know you came by.)
“Oh yeah,” Daddy hollered after Mama, leaning sideways in his chair, “and Claira said to be sure and tell you she’s praying for you.”
“You should’ve asked her to pray for you,” Mama hollered back.
“What? I was just going to taste it,” Daddy muttered to himself. Then he grinned at me.
We moved Daddy’s cake onto a paper plate and ate it over the trash can so we could drop the whole thing the second we heard the stairs creak, the second we heard Mama coming. It was good cake. When we were finished, Daddy poured us both a glass of milk while I rushed to rinse our forks and get them in the dishwasher, getting rid of the evidence.
“Are you ever scared when you’re onstage?” I asked.
“Always. I’m always scared at first,” Daddy said, handing me my milk.
“Then why do you do it?” I said.
Daddy leaned back against the counter while he thought about it. “It’s what I’m meant to do,” he finally said. “And once I get past the fear, I know that. I can feel it. I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
“How long does it take you to get past the fear?”
“Just a few minutes—a few minutes, every night,” Daddy said.
I felt a little sorry for Daddy then. If his fear was anything like my fear had been that day…well, I just couldn’t imagine going through that almost every night of my life.
“You know, Lula Bell, being brave doesn’t mean not being afraid,” Daddy said. “Being brave and having courage mean going ahead even though you are afraid.”
“You must be really brave, Daddy.”
“I must be,” Daddy said, chuckling.
Mama came back into the kitchen then, having changed her clothes. “I have to get supper started,” she announced, which was a nice way of saying, Get out of my way, to Daddy and me.
I got out of her way immediately, noticing that Mama didn’t exactly sound happy about starting supper.
Daddy must’ve noticed, too, because he said, “Aw, c’mon now, you’re not still mad about the cake, are you?”
Mama shook her head as she washed her hands. “You have no idea what I’m going through, John. You just…you have no idea.”
Daddy crossed one foot over the other and settled into leaning against the counter. “Then tell me,” he said. (He should’ve gotten out of Mama’s way. That’s what I thought.)
Mama finished drying her hands and threw the towel on the counter in an angry, frustrated gesture.
Uh-oh, I thought.
And I was right. Boy, did Mama ever tell Daddy.
“Okay,” Mama said. “I hit the ground running every morning, John. I rush to get myself ready, get Lula Bell up and ready, feed her breakfast, see her off, clean up, plan and start supper, and get myself to work. By the time I make it to work, I feel like I’ve already run a marathon, but my day’s just starting, and I have to continue running, working as fast as I can, to get everything done, so that I can leave and be here when Lula Bell gets home from school. But I never get everything done, so I have to spend the rest of my afternoon trying to put out fires over the phone and on the computer. Meanwhile, I’m trying to be a decent mother and cook and housekeeper—do you know that I’ve started choosing my clothes based on what color the next load of wash is going to be?”
Daddy shook his head.
“Well, I have,” Mama said. “And I’ve started keeping a cooler in my trunk, just in case I’m able to leave the salon long enough to get the grocery shopping done, which never happens. Whatever I do, it’s not enough. I’m always behind, always frantic, always frazzled, and always wishing my mother was here to help me. Which makes me miss her even more, and…and…”
Daddy pushed off from the counter and took a step toward Mama, like he was going to give her a big hug.
But Mama pointed her finger at him and said, “And you! All you have to do is take care of your-self—dress yourself, feed yourself, make it to the show on time. You only have one job, while I’m here juggling ten!”
“Is that my fault?” Daddy said quietly.
Mama thought about this. “No,” she admitted just before her face crumpled and she started crying.
Daddy did hug Mama then. Which only seemed to make things worse. Mama cried so hard that it sort of scared me. I’d never seen her come apart like this.
“I just miss her. I miss her so much,” Mama sobbed into Daddy’s shoulder. “It’s not fair that she’s gone—it’s just not fair—she never would’ve wanted this for us, for me…she…she…”
“Grandma Bernice got what she wanted for herself,” I said then. “She even died the way she wanted—”
“Not now, Lula Bell,” Daddy interrupted.
I closed my mouth.
When Mama was all cried out, she let go of Daddy and took a step back. Her whole face was blotchy and wet, and little straggly pieces of hair stuck to it in odd places and formations. She left it that way.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Daddy said. “You’ll see. We’ll work it all out somehow.”
“But how?” Mama said.
“I don’t know yet,” Daddy admitted. “But I know we’ll figure it out.”
“John, I’m just so tired. I’ve never been so tired in all my life.”
“Go and rest then,” Daddy said. “I’ll fix supper.” Mama rested, and Daddy fixed the only supper he knows how to fix: he picked up the phone and ordered a pizza.
That night, after I took a bath, Mama called me into her bedroom.
“Sit down,” she said, pulling the stool out from under her dressing table for me.
I did as I was told.
Mama parted my wet hair and combed it. Then, without saying a word, she started sectioning my hair and wrapping it around pink sponge rollers.
“Curls! Curls! You’re giving me curls!” I exclaimed.
“I’m trying,” Mama said. “That’s all I can do.”
“Thank you!”
For a few minutes we were quiet as Mama continued rolling my hair. I loved watching her work in the mirror. She was so neat and orderly. She had a rhythm: section, comb, roll, clasp; section, comb, roll, clasp.
“I have to tell you something,” Mama said then. Section, comb, roll, clasp.
“Okay.”
“It’s not good news,” Mama warned. Roll, clasp.
I waited.
“Uncle Cleburne’s sick. He’s in the hospital,” Mama said. Her hands went still.
I turned around to face her. “Is he going to die?”
“I don’t know, Lula Bell. He’s very sick,” she said quietly, lowering her head.
“Oh, Mama, what should we do?”
Mama lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes were sad. “Cousin Ethel wants me to come…tomorrow.”
I nodded. “You should take some sweet tea. Great Uncle Cleburne loves your sweet tea. I bet that’ll perk him right up.”
“But, Lula Bell,” Mama said, “you’re performing in the talent show at school tomorrow.”
Oh yeah, that. I thought for a few minutes. Finally, I said, “Um, I don’t really think that’s going to work out…but I do know that Great Uncle Cleburne and Cousin Ethel need you.”
“It’s all going to work out beautifully, you’ll see,” Mama said.
I shook my head. “It’s scary up there on that stage, Mama. I wish somebody could be up there with me, you know?”
“I bet Grandma Bernice’ll be with you in spirit.”
“Yeah…I meant somebody wearing skin.”
Mama laughed her breathy little laugh. She just didn’t understand how scared I really was.
“There,” Mama said as she clasped the last roller in my hair.
“Thank you,” I said.
Mama knelt in front of me and placed a hand on my knee. “Lula Bell, I can see that you’re scared, but I know you can do this. You’ll be fine, just fine. You’ll see.”
Maybe I will, I thought. Maybe I can do it, since my hair’s going to be curly and all.
“And Daddy’ll be there,” Mama promised.
My stomach turned over. What would he think if I froze up onstage—or worse?
By the time I closed my eyes that night to try and sleep, which wasn’t easy with the rollers in my hair—rollers curl your hair by pulling it, apparently—I’d decided that if I couldn’t perform in the talent show, I’d distract Daddy by breaking out my Second Place Science Fair ribbon. I figured that between my ribbon and my curls—especially my curls!—he couldn’t be too terribly disappointed in me. Could he?
It All Began with Curls
On Friday morning, for the first time in my life, I was sorry I’d stuffed my raincoat into the lost and found box. It was raining, and I had curls to protect—curls!—not to mention I was wearing a Sunday dress. As a result, I had to wear Grandma Bernice’s raincoat, which was covered in huge polka dots of all different colors—I’m pretty sure we could’ve spread it out on the floor and played Twister on top of it. This was far worse than wearing my own raincoat—obviously. Even so, I didn’t dare take it anywhere near the lost and found box. Instead, when I arrived at school, I went directly to the music room without even bothering to take off the coat.
“Do you still want me to be in the talent show?” I asked Miss Arnett as I stood in front of her desk, dripping.
Miss Arnett looked a little surprised. I didn’t know if it was me or my Twister raincoat or the rain running off me, forming little puddles on her floor. Or maybe it was my curls.
But then Miss Arnett smiled. “Yes, of course, if you’re feeling better.”
I nodded and felt the curls in my hair move back and forth. “Okay then,” I said, and I turned to leave.
“Your hair looks pretty,” Miss Arnett called after me.
The talent show started right after lunch, which worried me, because my stomach was then fully loaded. But when I found out that I’d be the last person performing, after twenty-two other acts, I calmed down a little. Plenty of time, I told myself. Time for my food to digest a little, time for me to calm down a li
ttle, plenty of time.
I stood off to the side of the stage, just behind the blue velvet curtain, wearing the red dress that Grandma Bernice had loved best on me. Once, I peeked out from behind the curtain, but when I saw what had to be nearly every student in the entire school, plus teachers and some parents, too, well…I decided not to look out there again—it wasn’t exactly calming or helpful to the digestive process. So I focused all my attention on what was happening on the stage.
Miss Arnett stood in front of a microphone, thanked everyone for coming, and talked about how the money from ticket sales would help the music department. Then she introduced the first act. It was a juggling act set to music. Nobody else backstage paid any attention, but I thought Mike Tate’s juggling was pretty good. I liked it.
I liked most of the acts, even Kali’s. Although I hated to admit it, Kali and her friends were pretty good dancers. They weren’t great dancers, but they were good, unified, and peppy—like dancing cheerleaders. Plus, their song was bouncy and happy.
But my hands-down, absolute favorite number was Celia Thompson’s tap-dancing act. First of all, Celia had on a bright purple costume covered in sequins. Second, she danced to “I Feel Good,” which made me feel good. Third, Celia Thompson is a terrific tap dancer—you should’ve seen her! She made great, wide circles around the stage with her feet moving and tapping so fast, you could barely keep your eyes on them. It was like she was a drummer, only she tapped out rhythms with her feet. By the time Celia was done, I wanted to rush right out and sign up for tap-dancing lessons. Only I couldn’t, because it turned out that I was the next act in the talent show. When I heard Miss Arnett say my name, my stomach flipped.
I took a deep breath, reached up and touched my curls—just to make sure they were still there—and walked out onto the stage.
Miss Arnett looked mighty relieved.
I took my place at the piano and unfolded my “Under the Boardwalk” sheet music. Then I adjusted the microphone and spoke into it.
“This is for the best friend I ever had,” I said.
Just then, a spotlight hit me. At least, I thought it was a spotlight. But when I looked, I realized that a single beam of sunlight had broken through the rain clouds and was streaming in through a window in the back of the gym. It landed right on me, just like a spotlight!
