Tupelo Honey

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by Lis Anna-Langston


  The air was so cold and still, little puffs of breath hovered in front of my face. “Jesus, Tupelo Honey.” Nash accidentally slammed his head against the trunk. “What are you doing out of bed.”

  I tapped my bunny slipper against the gravel, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m helping Santa,” he offered.

  For a single, solitary second I fell for it. “Santa’s here? Where?”

  Nash used my momentary burst of excitement to regroup as I stepped back, craning my neck to look up at the moonlit roof. My kneecaps were frozen. I was pretty sure I couldn’t feel my nose but I was going to find that big, fat jolly guy who for two years in a row hadn’t left me what I’d asked for.

  Dusting his hands off, Nash stepped away from the trunk, reveling in the distraction of a well-told lie.

  “Hoist me up so I can get a better look.” I kicked up a slipper. “Let’s see if he’s over by the chimney.”

  “Hold on, cowgirl. I didn’t say he was here. I said that I was helping him.”

  Santa’s Helper. What a crock of shit. “What are you helping him with? You’re too tall to be an elf.”

  “I’m unloading all of the presents he left for you.”

  Sucker. “He left me presents. Where?”

  “Um, well . . . he handed them to me and then I put them in the car.”

  “The car? I thought he was supposed to come down the chimney?”

  “Sure,” he said, a little too unsure. “He is . . . it’s just . . . except that . . . sometimes . . . well . . . I left the fire burning when I went to bed and I guess . . . well, the flames must have been too hot and he . . . well, um . . . he singed his beard and the fur on his boots. I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  “You set Santa on fire?” I gasped. My bunnies were frozen. “Where is he?”

  “Uh . . . I ummm . . . I gave him some ice packs and aloe vera.”

  “What about my cookies?”

  “Yeah, and I gave him the cookies too. And a beer.”

  “He’s driving a sleigh.”

  “I was just kidding about the beer. Anyway, didn’t you hear the reindeer hooves on the roof?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it was impressive. I’ll tell you . . . ”

  “Tell me again why my presents are in the car.”

  I was sure Nash had been counting on the fact that this conversation would end earlier. He looked up into the clearest sky of stars and, with a straight face, said, “Santa put them in the trunk so no one would steal them.”

  “Uh-huh.” My teeth chattered so loud I could barely talk. “No one knows where we live.”

  Nash gave the biggest punch-drunk smile I’ve ever seen and said, “Santa does. He knows everything. Let’s go make hot chocolate.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up when Santa got here?”

  “There was a lot going on.”

  Yeah, I bet there was. The truth was probably stranger than the ridiculous lie he’d just told. My Santa was probably working for the drug cartel and used his cover-up of delivering presents to transport big bags of weed. Who knows what he was carrying in that secret sleigh compartment, much less the huge velvet bag full of presents. Wink wink. My Santa had connections.

  A coyote howled. My cold fingers needed a cup of hot cocoa with gobs of marshmallow spilling over the side.

  A burst of warm air rushed out to meet me before I’d even stepped inside. The house was completely silent. Near the fireplace, the Christmas tree glowed in its colored light. Shimmering icicles twinkled. My stocking hung over the mantel. The air smelled of pine and firewood.

  Without a word, Nash ushered me into the kitchen and put on a double boiler to warm the milk. I sat down in the much-too-big-for-me dining room chair, with my legs stretched out in front of me, wondering how I could have ever been so gullible. My present list was taped to the refrigerator. Santa hadn’t even bothered to check off the items he’d left for me. When I looked down again, my bunnies were looking up with their glassy eyes. It was Christmas according to the clock. I glanced over again at my list taped big and broad to the front of the refrigerator. Magician’s Cape was written in big, block letters across the top. I’d underlined the words in red crayon. Three times.

  For the past few years the trend had been to give me dolls from all over the world. Dutch girl. Spanish girl. French girl. Yawn.

  I looked down into my cup of cocoa and asked, “Did Santa leave me a magic cape and wand?”

  Nash looked stricken. “Ummm . . . I believe Santa consulted with your mom this year.”

  Crap.

  On Christmas morning I woke, groggy from lack of sleep. It was frigid in my room. Outside my window the gray cold fanned out over the front yard. When I was coherent enough, I made my way down the hall to find . . Huh? I looked everywhere for my magic cape and wand. There was a Swiss girl and a Chinese girl and that . . . thing, a dollhouse. It loomed over the other presents, with its creepy, freshly painted, empty rooms.

  “Tupelo Honey, don’t you like it?” My mother glared me into submission.

  I stared. I scratched. “What else did I get?” Inca jumped up on the sofa and wagged his tail. I made sure my mother didn’t get the reaction she wanted. The next day my mother drove to an after-Christmas sale and bought her own dollhouse. Tiny ceramic cookware, fingernail-sized tile, and miniature claw-footed bathtubs and uncomfortable wooden chairs filled it to the brim. My house sat in the corner. She bought a new marble table for hers, blankets for the tiny beds. I couldn’t have cared less. The only thing I’d gotten for Christmas that I’d actually asked for was a box of Nancy Drew books. When she was done working on her dollhouse, she started in on mine. I watched my empty house I had not wanted fill with furniture. I begged for Magic Rocks. “Pleeeeease . . . ”

  “No.”

  “A new chemistry set?” A new mother? Anything but that stupid dollhouse.

  “No.”

  “Well, then what am I supposed to do with it?”

  “You play with it.”

  “How?”

  “You move the people around in the house. Like this . . . ” She dragged the little rubber man over to the table to sit down for dinner.

  “That’s not very interesting.”

  “Oh, Tupelo Honey, use your imagination.” She threw the rubber man on the cobbled bathroom floor.

  I wasn’t making my point very well, so I slept in the hall to protest. At 5 AM I woke to the sound of her bedroom door opening, then I heard my mother say, “You are so ungrateful.”

  “Is it time for cartoons?” I cracked open an eyelid.

  She stood over me, glaring. “No, get in bed.”

  I wasn’t going without a fight. “I don’t want to sleep with the evil, evil dollhouse.”

  “Do you know how much money we spent on that thing? The house alone cost Nash a thousand dollars.”

  I was relieved that Santa hadn’t wasted his money on it.

  “So. It’s evil.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Well, it is. It’s a haunted dollhouse.”

  “It is not.”

  “It is.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you. It stays.” She slammed the bedroom door.

  Okay, but my rubber people weren’t dull. They threw china, slammed doors, had affairs, ran away with pirates, returned from voyages overseas, collapsed in piles of sorrow, drank too much, developed acute paranoia, formulated theories on why their house seemed so small and why therapy wasn’t helping them with the sensation that they were always being watched, and although not entirely realistic, never once sat down to dinner. I took my old Barbies and let them stay upstairs without paying rent. The butler, Sam, developed a drinking problem. The oldest daughter, Sadie, slipped into a deep depression and disappeared for days in my sock drawer.

  “Hank,” Sadie would say, “you’ve simply got to help me. I’ve been wearing the same clothes my entire life.” She clawed at the front of her dress. �
�It’s like it’s glued to me or something.”

  She constantly auditioned for parts on soap operas. She’d practice all day in the kitchen driving the hired help closer to the bottle. Angeline was the cook. No one knew anything about her except . . .

  “Tupelo Honey,” my mother screamed.

  “What?”

  “Who are you talking to in there?”

  “I’m not talking to anyone. It’s the rubber people.”

  “Well, stop. It’s creepy.”

  Then Sadie turned to Hank as he refilled the ice bucket. “Darling, don’t you think it’s strange that none of us remember anything before we came to live in this house. It’s like we didn’t exist,” she whispered.

  Sadie was a sharp one.

  Hank looked over, his eyes swimming in stolen bourbon. “Honey,” he’d say, “let’s just forget about it.”

  “Only because you can’t remember, either,” she snapped back.

  Then she took a lover. I didn’t have any more rubber people so Sam had to double.

  “Tupelo Honey, it’s time for bed.”

  The next week Sam stole the plastic Mercedes and ran away with a Barbie six inches taller than him because he couldn’t take the stress. Barbie thought he was rich because he always wore a tuxedo.

  In the meantime, Nash had begun trafficking loads of narcotics out of our basement. Men who didn’t speak English carried boxes out to trucks in the middle of the night. These people had no names, no identity, no past, no future. Sort of like the rubber people.

  “Hank,” Sadie slurred, “Hank, why don’t we have a front yard, honey? I feel so confined. Honey, I feel like someone’s watching us.”

  Sadie was going to have to go on medication. Little pellets of artificial sweetener I’d stolen from the kitchen cabinet appeared on her bedside table. Hank left every day saying that he was going to the office but he really spent his entire day on the windowsill.

  “What a fake,” Sadie exhaled.

  “Tupelo Honey, it’s time to do your homework,” Nash yelled from the other room.

  “But Sadie’s waiting on a call from a TV producer.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Sam came back after a week. Barbie dumped him and kept the Mercedes. Penniless and rubber, he returned, smelling like exhaust and cigarettes. Angeline poured him a stiff one.

  Later that night a bright light flashed in Hank’s eyes. He bolted upright. “What was that?”

  Sadie looked around in a daze and said, “Aliens.”

  I turned off my flashlight and went to bed amused.

  “Tupelo Honey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop talking to yourself,” my mother yelled at the top of her lungs.

  The next day my mother curiously disappeared.

  “She has a headache,” Nash said. “She’s resting.”

  “Where?”

  “In a comfortable place.”

  “Like a chair?”

  “Yes, like a chair.” Then he bought me a Happy Meal.

  With my mother gone the antics of the dollhouse seemed less interesting, so I went to discover lost civilizations out in the woods behind our house. I looked for Mars in the night sky and tried to imagine the world three thousand years before. I lay very still, under the stars, and traveled on caravans through ancient worlds.

  The next morning we had runny, undercooked, hardboiled eggs for breakfast. Nash stared down at his plate.

  “There’s a diner down on the highway,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  “Yeah.” He stood up. Then he threw our plates in the trash. The glass plates.

  After breakfast Nash took me to the mall and bought me Magic Rocks. When I got home I went into my room and saw Hank lying face down on the tiled floor. When the coast was clear I sneaked across the hall and put him in my mother’s empty dollhouse. There were no porcelain cats, no felt-covered birds in tiny cages, no squatters, no renters, no hired help, no nothing. Just a big, empty, perfect house full of perfect furniture that looked good if you were looking in. Hank hated it. There wasn’t a drop of booze anywhere.

  Nash went outside to smoke a joint. I heard the glass door slide shut so I went into the kitchen to finish my homework. Nash came back in. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Really, I was kind of bored, so I was happy when Sadie had a relapse and the butler drained the bank account.

  On Tuesday Nash left me alone in the house. He made me promise not to turn on the stove or tell Marmalade I was ever by myself. I read a Nancy Drew mystery, ate leftover Italian, then padded down the hall and stared at the empty dollhouse in my mother’s room. There was something about its perfection that made it tainted, jaded, unfit.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Sadie said, just before running off to Mexico.

  Late that evening Nash guided my mother through the front door. Her eyes were heavy, with dark circles underneath.

  “Someday,” she told me over breakfast the next morning, “you’ll get married and have a house, too, and you’ll be happy you learned something.”

  “But you’re not married,” I pointed out.

  She stared down into her grape juice.

  Nash hustled me out of the kitchen and took me to school.

  “I don’t want the dollhouse anymore,” I announced in the car.

  “Tupelo Honey, now isn’t the time to start changing things around. Just play with the dollhouse the way your mother wants.”

  “But I don’t want it.”

  “It’s just a silly toy,” he sighed.

  I started crying. “No, it’s something else.”

  The dollhouse loomed dark over my thoughts, placed on the floor between the dresser and window. Four stories tall, filled to the brim, secrets stashed in every drawer. Late at night, when everyone else was sleeping, it whispered and creaked like it was alive.

  So, I started sleeping in the hall again. This time my mother ignored me.

  For days I sat in my desk at school, plotting. How does an eleven-year-old make an entire house disappear? We had a hammer in the kitchen junk drawer but I knew my mother would blow a gasket over demolition. I slept on it, obsessed, considered my options, begged for aliens to come and take it away, slept on it again, paced the hall in my footed pajamas, obsessed, and then at the end of the week a light bulb clicked on so bright in my head it nearly burst. That night while everyone was sleeping I took the rubber people out to the side of the house and buried them.

  “Tupelo Honey, where’s the family I bought for the house?”

  Why did she care?

  Not bothering to glance up from the Nancy Drew mystery, I said, “They’re not a family and I don’t know.”

  “Well, they were here a few days ago.”

  “Yes, they were.” I picked at the dirt under my fingernails.

  “And you don’t know what happened to them?”

  “Nope, maybe the dog ate them.”

  Later that night I eavesdropped outside my mother and Nash’s bedroom door.

  “Don’t you think the whole thing is a little creepy and a little odd?” my mother asked.

  The Christmas tree was upside down in the trash. It was snowing. Jimmy Carter was on the tv again.

  Nash shook his head hopelessly and let it go.

  I went back to my room and thought about the rubber people. If Sadie had been there she would have said, “Hank, honey, hasn’t anyone noticed that the backside of the house doesn’t have a wall? Don’t you think that’s strange? I mean, people could be watching us.”

  Angeline would hear the whole thing as she dusted the furniture with a Tupelo Honey ball. Sam would have been wondering why there were so many lamps in the house and no electricity.

  And Hank would have stopped making gin martinis long enough to say, “Honey, I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing. I mean, we have three sides. So what if the back is missing. It’s always been that way.”

  Chapter 9

 
My mom and Nash summoned me to the living room. Bong smoke lingered in the air like the rings of Saturn. I looked back and forth at the both of them. Through squinty, red eyes, she announced, “Tupelo Honey, you’re going to be in beauty pageants.”

  “Huh?”

  “Beauty pageants.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said flatly. I had a lot of free time now that Christmas was over. I didn’t have time to parade around like a circus monkey.

  Nash was too blitzed to move his arms. “How do you know you don’t want to do it when you’ve never even tried it?” he asked.

  Oh, I don’t know . . . I’ve got this feeling.

  Apparently that paid vacation to the psych ward had encouraged her to take control of her life. By ruining mine. Nash was all for it and paying the bill, the traitor.

  First things first. I was enrolled in ballet lessons for poise and grace.

  Nash dropped us off at the mall and went to do something more interesting. My mother took my hand and jerked me through the mall as I dug my heels into the floor. We stopped in front of a dance wear store. She pointed at the fake people dressed up in the store window. “What color do you want?”

  “It’s like a giant pair of panties that I stretch over my whole body,” I wailed, terrified of the cotton crotch.

  “It’s what you wear to be a ballerina.”

  “I thought I was going to be in pageants.”

  “You are. But you’re going to need a talent.”

  A what? What was happening to my life?

  I began to map an escape route. The sales lady approached, smiling big and wide. She definitely had a cotton crotch.

  “What color do you want?” my mother asked loudly.

  The fact that I’d been lured into this travesty was bad enough. Now I had to stretch a pair of panties over my whole body. And I had to choose the color of my ultimate embarrassment. “I don’t care,” I said, completely annoyed. Pirates do not wear cotton crotches.

  Big mistake.

  I ended up with two bags of clothes that made me look like a midget dipped in Pepto-Bismol. I screamed every time my mother tried to make me put them on.

  Without warning, I was enrolled in etiquette class. A crusty old lady sat very erect in a chair and stared at me, mentally daring me to misbehave. Her hair was pulled so tight a drill sergeant could have bounced a quarter off it.

 

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