by Joy Redmond
Mandy answered, doing her best to remember what she was taught in school and what she had learned while working at After Hours Clinic.
Dr. Barrow smiled and suddenly he was as cute as a button to Mandy. “You done good, girl. You know what to do. I do in-office surgeries on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So how about I see you bright and early come Tuesday? Surgeries begin at seven, so be here by six.”
Mandy’s heart did a flip-flop. “Thank you. I’ll be here.” She stood to shake his hand, then said, “Wait. Do you mean I’ll only be working two days a week?” She felt her heart sink deep into her chest.
“Hell no, girl. You’ll be working five days a week, trailing behind me, seeing patients, and getting me what I need for whatever the patient requires. I hope you have a pair of comfortable shoes. You’ll be doing a lot of standing and walking. There’s no end around here. Now, my wife Helen will be with you for a few days. She’s bossy and she’ll retrain you to do things her way, but she’s a good instructor, so listen to her.” He paused and wiped his hand over his brow. “I have to.” He chuckled and his belly jiggled.
Mandy was tempted to give the fat little man a hug. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you bright and early Tuesday morning. That’ll give me time to get things worked out with the children and get a sitter for my youngest one.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I worked hard for these initials,” he said, pointing to the MD after his name on his desk nameplate. “You call me doctor.”
“See you, Tuesday, Doctor!” Mandy laughed and Dr. Barrow laughed with her.
Mandy felt as if she were floating on air as she left his office. She ran to the front desk, grabbed Wanda around the waist and almost pulled her out of the chair. “I got the job! I got it! Thank you so much!”
“Good God. Calm down. You might be cussing me after a few weeks. This place can be insane at times. Make that, all the time.”
“I can handle it. I’m in heaven when I’m doing what I love. I’ll see you when you get home.”
Wanda smiled, then waved her hand. “Get outta here. I’ve got work to do.” Mandy headed for the door and Wanda called after her, “Congratulations!”
Mandy smiled and waved, then headed out the door. Thank you, Lord, and holy spirits.
The next two weeks, Mandy and the children went to the beach every day after Mandy got off work. They dug their toes in the sand, waded in the water, and built sand castles.
The first of September, Mandy had all the children enrolled in school, and though Kati put up a fight, Mandy managed to get her to school. Two months passed, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened since Phantom Farter had paid a visit.
One Saturday night, Abbie was at a sleepover at Debbie’s house, Tony was fishing off the pier with Todd and his dad, and Kati was out with two friends she’d made at school. Mandy settled down on the couch in the TV room and picked up a book. How nice and peaceful, she thought.
She had read a few pages when suddenly she heard music. It was the same music that used to play when Kati would open her jewelry box. When she lifted the lid a little ballerina would twirl and it played the tune, It’s A Small World. She put the book down and kept listening. The music was clearly coming from a few feet away. She knew Kati’s jewelry box had disappeared years ago. To her knowledge there was nothing in the house that played music—especially the same tune.
She searched the room like a detective on the prowl for drugs. She found nothing. By the time her search was over the music stopped. “Well, I don’t know who you are, but the music was sweet.” It reminded her of a sweet time in her life. Kati was so crazy about her jewelry box, and she had been so in love with her stepdad, Billy, when he had given it to her for Christmas. Back when he was a good stepdad. Back before the alcohol took him from them.
Shortly after school started, Tony decided he wanted to display his beer can collection, which he knew would be worth a fortune someday. He had ordered many of the cans from a catalogue with names that neither he nor Mandy had ever heard of. He even had a can of Billy Beer and it was his favorite. The catalogue also sold display shelves and mounting devices for the cans. Using his birthday money from his grandparents, he ordered a shelf with slots for each can.
Mandy helped him assemble and mount the shelves to the wall. Then, they painstakingly used the sticky cubes. One side of the cube was to be stuck to the can and the other side was to be stuck to the shelf slot. The directions read: place in selected spot and wait thirty minutes before touching. They had four rows fixed just so and waited thirty minutes.
“Time to test,” Tony said. He flicked the cans, shook them, pulled on them, but they were as secure as if they had been placed in cement.
“By cracky, they won’t fall down,” Mandy said.
A few weeks later, the three children had overnight plans and Mandy was home alone. Since she didn’t have to monitor TV programs, she decided she’d watch a movie on HBO. She enjoyed the movie, then picked up a good book and headed to bed. She had been propped up reading for a few minutes when she heard a strange sound. She glanced at the clock. It was midnight. She sat up in bed and listened. Bing! Bing! Bing! She got out of bed, walked into the living room, and heard the sound coming from Tony’s bedroom. Did Tony come home, she wondered.
She flipped on the light. The room was empty. She looked around the room and saw several beer cans on the floor. She picked them up and put them back into their slots on the shelf. Just as she had placed the last one, the cans started popping out of the slots as if they were being thumped, one by one in, in a straight line, and in rhythm. “That’s amazing!” she said in a whisper as another one fell and rolled to her feet.
She stood transfixed as a dozen cans flipped off the shelf slot and hit the floor, still falling in a straight line and in perfect rhythm. Finally, two rows were empty and they stopped falling. She folded her arms and said, “Is that all you’ve got?” She waited a few minutes. That was it. The show was over.
She went back to bed, picked up the book, read one chapter, then she heard, Bing! Bing! Bing! She didn’t bother to go look. “If that’s you, Daddy, you’re funny. I know how you liked your beer, but I really don’t think you can drink one.”
The binging stopped. She fell asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Mandy and the children had been in Florida for three months and they were all happy, enjoying the beach, and the time went by quickly. It was October and the severe heat had finally let up with some cooling breezes. Kati and Tony had celebrated their birthdays on the beach with friends. They ate cake, sand and all, and thought they were the greatest birthdays they’d ever had.
Mandy was having as much fun as her two oldest children. But she was having a hard time accepting the fact that her first born was seventeen, and her son was fourteen. It seemed as if it was just a few months ago that the nurses had laid them both in her arms.
They had all adjusted to Florida and loved it, but it was the skittering of lizards they were trying to adjust to. There were various kinds and they had names too long to remember, so they just called them lizards. When they first moved in, there were a few on the sidewalk that led from the front door to the driveway. As time went on, they grew in number.
Soon, the lizard population was unbelievable. They covered the sidewalk and Mandy had to either walk on them or manage to kick them from underfoot. The neighbors were even commenting that all the lizards seemed to like her sidewalk better than any on the street.
Mandy and the children knew they were harmless and they grew to like the colorful little things, and there were times when they seemed to be putting on a show for them. They never knew if they were playing, mating or fighting, but they were entertaining —until one night.
Mandy turned back the bed covers and a lizard ran across the top sheet and dropped to the floor. She didn’t see where it ran off to because it was moving too fast. She just hoped it didn’t want to crawl back into bed with her. Then she remembered Houdini. He had been
in her bed and had come back after she had shooed him outside. Or at least it looked like the same one.
One night she went grocery shopping, and as usual, she bought a good read. She placed the book on the coffee table in the living room. The next morning was Saturday and she had the day off. Tony was fishing off the pier, Kati and her friend Marti had gone to the beach to fish for boys, and Abbie was in the TV room watching cartoons. This was her time to kick back, enjoy the quiet, and lose herself in a good book.
Mandy sat on the couch in the living room, picked up the book from the coffee table, and opened it. A dead lizard fell into her lap. At first she thought it was the one that scampered out of her bed—until it dawned on her, she had just bought the book the previous day.
She picked up the lizard by the tail and tossed it outside, saying, “Happy trails to lizard heaven, little fellow.” Then she put on her old yard shoes and called out to Abbie, “I’ll be working in the yard if you need me.”
As she was headed out the door, she picked up a large, heavy vase and set it on top of the book. “Now let’s see if a dead lizard can get in there!” she smugly said. She went outside and worked for two hours, a chore she enjoyed doing, but she needed to get away from the heat. It was the last of October, but the heat was still bad enough to cause a heat stroke if you were pushing a lawn mower and pulling weeds.
She fixed a glass of ice water, laid a towel on the couch, and sat down to cool off. She tipped the glass to her mouth, took a sip and almost choked. There on top of the book sat a lizard, blowing out its big red throat. “Houdini! Get your butt off my book and get back outside!” The lizard seemed to stare at her as it continued to blow out its throat. “Fine, you can have it,” she said, and went into the kitchen.
By late November, Tony was having a hard time at school. Black students were carrying knives and other sharp objects, and there were a few stabbings in the hallways, and one teacher had been stabbed. Mandy was a nervous wreck but she couldn’t pull Tony out of school, and she couldn’t walk the halls with him every day, and she couldn’t afford to pay tuition to send him to the middle school in Largo. She was frantic. What the hell am I supposed to do?
Mandy was even more horrified when she found a switchblade in Tony’s jeans pocket when she was doing laundry one Saturday morning. She took the knife and went to Tony’s room. “Son, what are you doing with a knife, and where did you get it?” she asked in a demanding voice, her hand lightly shaking.
“Todd’s daddy got us both one.” He hung his head for a moment then said, “Mom, I either carry a knife or I can go to Juvie for not attending school. I want to go to school, but I’m not going unarmed. I’ll use it if I have to defend myself. The blacks hate us whites and the principal isn’t doing anything to control them. I’ll either knife one or I’ll beat one to death,” he said, as he raised his fist up and threw punches into the air.
Mandy stared at her son, her heart in a panic because she knew Tony well enough to know he meant what he was saying. He had inherited his daddy’s fighting genes. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said, feeling as if her trembling legs weren’t going to hold her up. She went into the kitchen, sat at the table and buried her head in her hands. Lord, I don’t understand. I thought you had led me to the perfect place. We’ve all been so happy. Life was perfect. Now what am I supposed to do with this situation?
Abbie was watching cartons, and Mandy stuck her head around the corner of the TV room. “Abbie, I’m going down to visit with Wanda. Do you want to go with me and play with Debbie?”
“Yeah, Mama. Hold on a minute.” Abbie ran to her room, grabbed an armload of Barbie dolls, and then ran back to her mother’s side. “I’m ready. Debbie has got some new outfits for our Barbie dolls.”
Mandy and Wanda sat out on the patio, both of them in tears. “What are we gonna do? Todd and Tony have to go to school, but damn, I can’t let my son carry a switchblade. I don’t want him cutting up a student, and I sure don’t want a student cutting up our sons. I’ve never had to face this problem. Does this go on in Florida and people just ignore it?”
“No. This is the first year we’ve had a black and white problem at schools. But it’s bad, and from what I’m hearing, it’s gonna get worse. I’ve talked to my ex. He said he’d take Todd and put him in school in Largo. I hate to let my son go, but I don’t want him to get killed or be sent up the river, so to speak, for either harming or killing a student. What kills me, is his daddy will encourage him to fight the blacks. His daddy is a racist asshole from Mississippi.” Wanda broke down into tears. “I’m going to lose my son either way. He’s fourteen. His life has just begun, but—” Her voice shut off.
“Well, Jiminy Christmas. We’re both in the same boat. Come Monday, I’m going to that school and have a talk with that pansy-ass principal.”
“It won’t do any good. Other parents have been there and reamed him out, so I’ve heard. Nothing changes. You’re either rich and send your child to a private school, or send them to the public schools and let the chips fall.”
“The chips aren’t going to fall on my son. I can tell you that. If I have to, I’ll go back to Missouri. But it’s probably just a matter of time before the same trouble starts there too. Shit! Is there no peace and happiness in this crazy world anywhere?”
Wanda just shook her head.
Mandy went back home. Okay, spirits, I need your help. Show me something. Help me save my son.
Mandy walked into the house and found Tony in the kitchen. “I have no idea what to do. I can’t let you carry a knife. I can’t let you go back to a school that isn’t safe. I know nothing about home-schooling, I have to work—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Tony said, “While you were gone, I called Granny and Poppa. They said I needed to come back to Kentucky and live with them. And I want to go. I miss them and I miss my cousins. They said they would drive down and get me if you’ll let me go with them.”
Tears welled as Mandy’s arms encircled him and held him tight. Her heart was in her throat and she wanted to hold him safe in her arms forever, but Tony pushed her away. “I’m fourteen, Mom. Knock it off with all the hugs.”
“You’ll never be too old for me to hug, so get used to it.” She stood back and gathered her thoughts. “I can’t stand the thought of you leaving, but I do understand. I want you safe and mostly I want you happy. If you think you’ll be happy with them, then the right thing for me to do is put aside my feelings and think of your well-being. Call Granny and Poppa and tell them I’ll give them permission to take you.”
Tony hugged his mother then. “Thanks, Mom. I didn’t think you’d approve. I know how you dislike Granny, but she loves me and I love her. And my poppa is the greatest.”
“My dislike for Pearl has nothing to do with you, Son. I know you love her, as you should. I know she loves you. Our problems are between us. Being a Granny is different than being a mother-in-law. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that. I just want you to be happy, either with me or with Granny and Poppa.”
Three days later, Pearl and Lester arrived.
Mandy was choking on the knot in her throat as she hugged Tony goodbye. She stood in the driveway and waved until the car was out of sight. My only son is gone. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to breathe again. Her heart felt as if it would truly fall out of her body. She tucked her head and wiped her tears. Get it together. Don’t fall apart and upset Abbie.
She jumped when she felt something run across her bare foot. She looked down and there sat Houdini, staring into her eyes and blowing out his red throat. “Yeah, I know little fellow. I feel like blowing out my throat too.” She paused and ran the other scenes of her meetings with Houdini through her mind. “Is this what you’ve been trying to tell me all this time? I’m sorry. I don’t understand lizard. I’ll try to pay more attention the next time you pay a visit. And what spirit comes in the form of a lizard?”
She walked up the sidewalk. Maybe God uses his creatio
ns, be they human, animal, or lizard to bring us messages. I just wish I understood them. Houdini was giving me a warning sign. But can he give me back my breath. I don’t think I can go on breathing. I really don’t.
Chapter Nineteen
Mandy was still breathing as the months rolled on by, and she slowly came to accept that Tony was with his grandparents, and it was the best and safest way for him.
Tony came back and spent the summer months with her. She had hoped since he would be in high school the coming year, that he’d come back to live with her. But he let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would be staying in Kentucky and living with Granny Pearl and Poppa Lester.
It was Abbie’s 8th birthday and Mandy had promised her a new bike. Since the bike wasn’t going to be a surprise, Mandy took Abbie shopping so she could pick out the one she wanted. Abbie’s eyes glowed when she spotted a bright orange bike. That thing is bright enough to put my eyes out, Mandy thought, but Abbie loved it. “Happy birthday, darling,” Mandy said as she pushed the bike out of the store and loaded it into back of the station wagon.
Abbie squirmed all the way home. When Mandy pulled into the driveway, Abbie said, “Look, Mommy. There’s a kitten in the yard. That’s a great birthday present.”
“Well, honey, I didn’t get you a kitten. It probably just wandered into our yard. I’m sure it belongs to somebody—”
Mandy was in mid-sentence when Abbie was out of the car, headed toward the yellow and white striped kitten. Mandy walked over to Abbie, who had picked up the cat and was hugging it. “He looks like he’s half-starved. Poor little kitty,” Mandy said, and wondered where it had come from.
“Can we keep it, Mommy?” Mandy heard the tiny kitten purring and knew it was a lost cause. Nothing short of the world ending would make Abbie give up the kitten.
Mandy patted the cat’s head. “I guess so,” she said, and her heart hurt, looking at it so frail and weak. “We need to find it something to eat.” Mandy raised up its tail. “It’s a him.”
