“Yes, ma’am.”
“When?”
“September tenth.”
“Oh . . . wow. What’s your mama’s name, again?”
“Heather DeLuna.”
“Tell me about her. I bet she’s pretty.”
I didn’t know what to say. Why ask about Mama? She was supposed to ask about Ginger. “Well, yeah, she’s pretty . . . um, and she’s a waitress.”
“How long has she been dating Ben?”
“About a year now.”
“Does he still work at the prison?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why did you call me, Piper Lee?”
I swallowed. “I found your number. I—I did it for Ginger. She talks about you sometimes.”
“Yeah? What’s she say?”
“I think she just wonders about you, is all. How you are.” And why you walked out on her, I almost added.
“Well, she’s got a great father. She doesn’t need me. I’m afraid to say I’ve never been too much of a kid person.”
I replayed those words over in my head, listening real hard, sure I’d missed something—something to show she was sorry about the way things had worked out. But there was nothing.
“She wants to be a cheerleader,” I said.
Tina laughed. “Oh, well, she must have a bit of me in her. I was on the drill team.”
“I guess she must.”
“Well, if there’s nothing more you need, I better go. You tell Ginger hi and that I’m doing fine and that I hope she is, too. All right?”
“All right,” I said. She hung up before I could say goodbye. I sat there, full of shivers, trying to puzzle out why the conversation had gone so differently than I’d figured it would. Tina was supposed to have been all excited that Ginger was thinking about her. She was supposed to ask what grade Ginger was in, about her favorite class, what kinds of things she liked to do. Maybe how tall she’d gotten, or what she looked like now—the things any mama would want to know.
I balled up the paper with Tina’s number and hurled it into the living room. Then I went and flopped down beside the patch of sun where Mowgli lay. His sleepy eyes widened with alarm.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I know how you feel.”
I’d found Tina, but how was I supposed to get her back into Ginger’s life when she acted as if she didn’t care? And if she didn’t care, how on earth was I supposed to get her back together with Ben?
Mowgli fixed me with a furious look.
“Don’t worry your flat face,” I said. “I’m the one with the problem.”
I reached out and grabbed the ball of paper, smoothing the worst of the wrinkles. Something told me to hang on to it a bit longer. I took it into my bedroom and opened the cover of my aviation scrapbook. Daddy grinned out at me. I placed the paper on the lower half of the page, where it wouldn’t cover his face. “Keep this safe for me,” I said. “I just might need it again.”
10
MAMA AND I headed to Ben’s for supper that evening. My rumbling belly did a pretty good job of pushing the day’s events to the back of my mind. It’s tough to think on an empty belly.
Ben sizzled pork patties on the barbecue, and the smell made me crazy hungry. I guess it drove the hornets crazy, too, on account of how they grouped overhead. Ginger and I crunched on pork rinds until Mama handed each of us a wedge of watermelon instead.
One of the hornets landed on Ginger’s watermelon right as she raised it to her mouth. “Watch out,” I said, and slapped at her hands. She squealed like a stuck pig and dropped her watermelon in the dirt.
She stared down at it. “I almost got stung right in the mouth.”
I pictured Ginger with her head puffed up like a balloon—a balloon with a French braid. “Probably would’ve swelled your tongue so bad you couldn’t talk. That would’ve been something.”
Ginger didn’t act bothered by the teasing. She was busy keeping count of the hornets on her melon. “Three of them now.”
“The meat’s about done,” Ben said a moment later. “Y’all can go in and get your buns ready.”
Mama led the way inside. She sliced some Vidalia onions and opened up a big can of pork and beans. I looked at all the beans floating around in the brown-sugar sauce and wondered why they bothered to put the word pork on the label. They were just beans with a tiny piece of fat. They sure did taste good, though. Ginger and I pulled out the mayonnaise and pepper sauce and an icy cold six-pack of root beer from the fridge.
Ben brought in a platter of steaming meat, waving the hornets away as he came through the door. We’d just started passing food around the table when the phone rang.
“Don’t answer it, Daddy,” Ginger said. “Just say the blessing. I’m starved.”
Ben hesitated, then shrugged and said, “Aw, just let the machine get it.” He said a quick blessing over the ringing.
I took my first bite, and the wonderful salty taste of smoked pork filled my mouth.
“Hello there, Ben,” said a lady’s voice on the machine. I nearly choked. I knew that voice. It was Tina.
I could tell Ben knew, too. He froze, the bottle of pepper sauce tilted in his hand.
“I hear you’re getting married,” she continued. “I just wanted to say congratulations and maybe talk to Ginger a bit. Sometimes I miss that little girl an awful lot, you know. I’ll give a call back tomorrow night and see if you’re around then.”
Ginger looked as though somebody had sneaked up and walloped her from behind. “That was Mama. That was her, wasn’t it, Daddy?”
Ben lowered the bottle of pepper sauce.
“I believe . . . so,” Mama answered for him.
“How in the world would she know about the wedding?” Ben said. “We haven’t spoken a word in ages.”
I got a real strong urge to go pee. I buried my face in a big bite of pork patty.
Ginger dashed over to the answering machine and replayed the message. “She’s gonna call again tomorrow. Can I talk to her?”
Ben grimaced as though he’d been stung by a hornet. “In a pig’s eye.”
Ginger’s face turned into a huge wrinkle. “What? Why not? She misses me, didn’t you hear? She wants to talk to me!” Her voice went up, up, up, with each word till she was nearly hollering by the last one.
Ben shoved his chair back. “Scuse me a minute.” The screen door creaked open and slammed behind him. The whoosh of air sent a ball of plastic wrap rolling across the table.
Ginger crept back over and peered into Mama’s face. “Why doesn’t he want me to talk to her, Heather? I need to. I’ve never got to before.”
Mama’s eyes darted from Ginger to me to the screen door. I could tell she didn’t have a clue what to say. “I think he’s just a little put-out right now, honey. Give him a minute.”
My insides felt as shook up as a bottle of salad dressing. I couldn’t believe Tina had actually called. Sometimes I miss that little girl an awful lot. Why did she pretend to miss Ginger when she hadn’t even asked me about her? I’ll give a call back tomorrow night. Would she? And if she did call, would she tell Ben how she’d learned of the wedding? How in the world would I explain myself? And how come I’d been so dumb as not to see this problem ahead of time?
Ginger slipped back into her chair. I picked at the rest of my food, but there wasn’t much left of my appetite. After a while, Mama lifted her glass of sweet tea and stood. “I think I’ll go check on your daddy now.”
“Tell him I need to talk to her,” Ginger whispered. “Please?”
The screen door creaked open again, and Mama let it close gently behind her.
Ginger kneeled in her chair to peek out the kitchen window.
“Can you see them?” I asked.
“They’re on the porch swing.” She ducked back down. “I didn’t think she’d ever call again. Maybe she does care about me, just a little, no matter what that letter said.”
“Course she does,” I said, thankful that Ginger seemed
too distracted to connect me to the phone call.
I started stacking plates, and Ginger put the refrigerator stuff away. We left Ben’s plate of food on the table. He hadn’t taken a single bite. His and Mama’s voices were a low murmur outside, barely loud enough for us to tell which of them was talking. But all of a sudden they got louder, and then louder still, until Ben sounded plain riled up and Mama barely spoke at all. It was the closest they’d ever come to arguing, and knowing it was my fault didn’t feel good.
Ben strode through the door a moment later. Ginger and I scooted out of his way as he sat down at the table and took his first bite.
Mama wandered in behind him looking a little teary-eyed. She forced a smile and pushed a strand of hair back from her face. “Come on, Piper Lee. I think we best go home.”
Ben shook his head. “I never said I wanted you to leave, Heather.”
“I know. I just think the two of you need a little time to talk. You can give me a call later if you like.”
“This is not the way supper was s’posed to go.”
Mama patted his shoulder. “I know, guy. But it was a real good supper anyhow, wasn’t it, Piper Lee?”
I nodded. “Especially the pork.”
Ginger hovered by the sink, not saying a word, but I could tell she didn’t want us to go. I tried to think of something nice to say, but my brain was doing too much bouncing around. “See ya later,” I said.
I waited until we turned off Hillman Lane and onto the main road before asking, “Why doesn’t Ben want Ginger to talk to her mama?”
“’Cause, honey. He’s worried she might get hurt.”
“Does he think Tina’s a bad person?”
“No, not a bad person, just . . . irresponsible, you might say. And he’s not real sure what Tina’s motive is. He doesn’t feel he can trust her.”
“I still don’t get it, Mama. How can Ginger get hurt just by talking to her?”
Mama didn’t answer right away. She drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel. “You know how sometimes when you only know bits and pieces about somebody, you’re forced to let your imagination fill in all the rest? And when it’s a person you really wish you knew, you tend to put them up real high on a pedestal, so high they can start to seem almost perfect . . . kind of like you do with your daddy.”
“I know Daddy wasn’t perfect.”
“But when you think of him, you only recollect good things, right? Like how he was funny, and brave, and a respected pilot. You probably don’t recall how impatient he got with slow drivers, or how he spanked your behind the time you threw your cup of milk off the table, or how he got cranky if I talked too long on the phone. I bet you don’t recollect any of those things.”
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that I remembered lots about Daddy—good and bad. But I couldn’t. I felt as though she’d sucker-punched me.
Mama sighed. “Your daddy was all the good things you remember, Piper Lee. But he was also a flesh-and-blood person with quirks and flaws like the rest of us. And so is Tina. In fact, if you look at her track record, she’s a downright selfish person. And Ben’s afraid Ginger thinks she’s near perfect, and that if she talks to her mama and finds out she’s not, she might be real disappointed.”
I nodded to show Mama I understood, but I knew Ginger didn’t think Tina was perfect. Especially not after finding that letter in her daddy’s box. “So is he not gonna let the two of them talk?”
“I convinced him he ought to.”
“Is that what you were fighting about?”
“We weren’t fighting, Piper Lee. I was just trying to help him see that if he doesn’t allow Ginger to talk to her mama, she’ll surely resent him for it.”
Mama smiled as if everything were just fine, but once we got home, she paced from one part of the house to another. She puttered around in the bathroom for a bit, then gazed out the kitchen window for a while, then finally sat down to fix a hole in one of the aprons she wore at work.
I spread some newspaper on the kitchen table and brought out my model ARV Super2. If I could get the wheels assembled, I’d finally be to the painting stage. But some of the parts were so tiny, they were almost impossible to work with. I used Mama’s tweezers to lift a tire and dropped on a single drip of glue, but when I tried to fix it in place, it slipped free and landed on the newspaper. I grabbed it up quick before it could stick and tried again—and again. I wished I’d stuck with the level 3 models instead of convincing Mama I was ready for a level 4.
“I’m thinking now that maybe we shouldn’t have left,” Mama announced out of the blue.
“Why’s that?”
“I just feel funny about walking out, leaving Ginger like I did. I think she needed me to stay.”
“She’s got Ben there.”
“I know. There’s just times when a girl needs a mama around.”
Hot pressure flowed down from the top of my head. “You talk like you’re her real one.”
Her sharp look shamed me. “No, Piper Lee, I’m not her mother from birth. But in this past year alone I’ve been more of a mama to her than Tina ever has. Most any woman can carry a baby inside her, but it’s the one who loves you and tries to raise you up right that makes a real parent. You remember that.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt all closed up, as if it were full of model glue.
11
THE NEXT MORNING after breakfast Miss Claudia called me over and asked if I’d like to earn a few dollars. She led me into her bedroom and pointed to a huge plastic flowerpot full to the brim with pennies.
“Wow, Miss Claudia, how long have you been saving these?”
“A long while now. I’ve no idea how many there are, but if you roll them for me, I’ll give you twenty percent of the total.”
I stared at the pot and mulled things over for a minute. Rolling that many pennies would take forever and a day, but then I remembered the sonic boom simulator ride at the air show. I had three dollars saved up—surely there were enough pennies to earn me the other four dollars I needed. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Miss Claudia clapped her hands like a little kid getting a present and said, “Well, bless your heart.” She lifted the edge of the quilt hanging over her bed. “There’s a whole sack of penny rolls under the bed here. Do you mind savin’ my old knees and getting them for me?”
I groped around in the dark until I found the paper bag. It was so coated with dust that it made me sneeze. I dumped a bunch of penny rolls out onto the carpet and pushed the bag back under the bed.
“Jus’ holler if you need me,” Miss Claudia said. “I got some kitchen towels I’m making for your mama, to go along with the potholders. They’re just the cutest things—red and green like a watermelon.”
Her saying “watermelon” made me think about Ginger dropping her wedge on account of the hornets. I wished I could go just one single day without thinking about her, or Ben, or the wedding. I stacked pennies into little towers of ten and fretted over Operation Finding Tina. I didn’t know what the next step should be, or if there even was a next step.
I’d piled thirty-four penny rolls into a pyramid when Mama stopped by to tell me she was headed to work. She paused out in the living room to talk with Miss Claudia, and after a bit I noticed she’d dropped her voice down low. I crawled over to the doorway.
“ . . . after four years, just out of the blue,” Mama said.
“Well, I’ll be hog-wallered,” Miss Claudia said. “What could she be thinking?”
“Maybe it’s some sort of control issue. She wouldn’t tell Ben how she knew about the wedding. Just said she knew more about things than he thought.”
I went limp as a dishrag with relief. Ben had talked with Tina and she hadn’t tattled on me. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she liked making Ben puzzle over the mystery.
“I surely wouldn’t worry too much over it,” Miss Claudia said. “I just don’t see how that girl would have a leg to stand on after walking
out the way she did.”
“You wouldn’t think,” Mama said. “But I’m afraid she walked out because of Ginger, not Ben. I think she loved him.”
“Well, surely she doesn’t think she can waltz back in and pick up right where she left off?”
“No, Ben set her pretty straight on that. But she could still cause trouble for us if she wants.”
“You know what that girl’s problem is, don’t you?” Miss Claudia said. “Jealousy. Pure and simple.”
“I think so, too. I’m just praying Ginger doesn’t get hurt over it.”
“Now, that little girl is one hundred percent Ben’s, and her mama knows it.”
“Maybe,” Mama said. “But you know how things work nowadays. She could demand visitation, maybe even sue for custody.”
Goose bumps popped up all over my arms. What if Tina tried to take Ginger away from Ben? Never in a million years would I have thought up such a thing.
Miss Claudia heaved a big grumble of a sigh. “Well, it’s like the Good Book says, Heather: ‘Each day is sufficient for its own badness.’ So don’t fret too much about what could happen when it likely won’t happen at all.”
“Course you’re right,” Mama said, and I could tell she was smiling. “And now I better skedaddle ’fore I make myself late. You know, I do so appreciate all your help with Piper Lee while I’m at work.”
“My help? Why, she’s the one in there helpin’ me right now.”
“Bye again, Piper Lee,” Mama called.
I skittered back to the middle of the room. “Bye, Mama.”
I was all in a flap after that. I kept losing track of my counting and had to start over. I finally stretched out on my back across Miss Claudia’s carpet and closed my eyes for a minute to get my head to stop spinning. I’d been so scared to call Tina, not knowing how she might react. Never once had I thought she might get all jealous and riled up.
A shiver passed through me when I recalled the Real Investigations website. Deep down, I didn’t really expect much to come of it, but what if I was wrong—again? Right then I started wishing I’d given things a bit more thought before posting Daddy’s story for all the world to see.
A Smidgen of Sky Page 6
