Chocolate-Covered Baloney

by KD McCrite

  Their voices rose and fell, but the wind blew in my ears so much, I hardly heard a blessed word. How in the world was I supposed to find out what my sister was up to, or if that Mimi-person was in cahoots with her about it? I regretted even more that Melissa went home, because maybe she would’ve been able to hear what those two were chatting about so intently. My ears were beginning to ache way down deep inside where all those funny-looking, little hearing doohickeys are located. And when I sneezed or coughed—which I was now doing pretty often—I did it into my coat. Yes, I know that’s gross, but what would you do? Sneeze and hack right out loud where they’d hear you and spoil everything?

  Those two females stopped all of a sudden and turned. I dropped to the cold, hard ground so fast, I like to have broken every bone in my body, plus my face. I reckon I stayed out of their sight, because they walked right past me, right back the way they’d come, murmuring quietly like two best friends telling secrets, like they thought someone might overhear right out there in the middle of nowhere. As if a soul in Zachary County cared . . . well, except me, I guess.

  Once they were out of sight, I sat up and stared glumly at the ground. I had not learned a single, solitary thing, but I was cold. My ears ached. My head felt dizzy and pained. Finally, I got up and walked back to the house, completely depressed.

  “Where have you been?” Mama said the very second I walked in the back door. She was refilling the sugar bowl at the kitchen counter.

  “Takin’ a walk,” I said, sniffling, wiping, and blowing just like anyone does when they’ve been outside in the middle of winter.

  “In that cold wind, and without your hat? And where’s Melissa?” she said, putting the sugar bowl on the table.

  “She got kinda mad and I got kinda mad, and she went home. Can I have some hot chocolate?”

  Mama narrowed her eyes and put one hand on her hip. “What did you girls fight about?”

  I glanced around, saw no one else was in the kitchen, and said quietly, “Mimi.”

  “Oh, mercy. Well, that’s nothing to fight about.”

  She started making a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched for a little bit, then I said, “Mama? Myra Sue and Mimi were walking along the road together like they were buddies. Do you think Myra invited Mimi to come here?”

  Mama’s mouth flew open, and she looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Now, how on earth could she have done that? Your sister never knew a thing about Mimi.”

  “You never told her anything at all?”

  “Never! I didn’t think you girls needed to hear about her and . . . well, about how she is . . . or how she was.”

  That made sense to me. Daddy would have never uttered a mumbling word if Mama asked him not to. So that only left one person who might’ve said something, even though I doubted Grandma would have mentioned Sandra Moore to Myra Sue. You better believe I was gonna ask her anyway. But not right then.

  “Mama? I don’t feel so good.”

  She lost her irritated expression and looked at my face real close. She laid her hand against my forehead.

  “Oh, honey, you’re feverish. Run upstairs, take a nice, warm bath, and put on your warmest jammies and robe. I’ll fix you some hot tea.”

  “I was kinda hoping for hot chocolate ’cause chocolate always makes me feel better.” In fact, my grandma always says, “Chocolate is always good for what ails you,” to which I always respond with a strong “Amen!”

  “Tea’s better for you. Now, scoot.”

  When I came back downstairs, Mama looked at me and said, “Back upstairs with you, honey, and crawl into bed. I can see you’re sick.”

  Now, I have to admit I felt almighty rotten from the top of my head right down to my toenails. But no matter how sick I was, I did not want to lie in bed in Myra Sue’s rat’s nest of a room.

  “In my own bed?” I asked with all the hope in the world.

  “No. In Myra’s bed, and Myra will have to bunk down with Sandra. We don’t want your sister catching whatever you’re coming down with.”

  “You really think I can recover in that awful bedroom?”

  “Yes,” Mama said firmly. She put a hand on my shoulder and gently steered me toward the stairs. “Up you go.” Then she followed me up, one hand lightly on my back, like she thought I might fall over backward or something. I wasn’t that sick, but having her hand there made me feel better.

  “My goodness,” Mama said, looking around Myra’s cleaned-up room with a smile. “That girl’s been busy.”

  “Hmm,” I said. My throat was getting sorer, and I wasn’t going to waste what little bit still felt good by talking about the most aggravating girl who ever lived.

  Mama pulled back the quilts and sheets, fluffed the pillows, then beckoned to me.

  “Hop in, sweetie, and snuggle down. I’ll bring you some hot tea.”

  I could not believe what I was about to ask, but I asked it as I crawled into bed while the sun shone in the afternoon sky.

  “Will you call Temple?”

  “Oh?”

  I nodded.

  “Her special tea. It tastes purely awful, but when I got sick winter before last, it made me feel better. Remember?”

  “Well,” Mama said, smiling and tucking the covers around me, “we’ll see how you feel a little later. I’ll call her, though.” She kissed my forehead with her soft, cool lips, then she left me alone in that room that hardly resembled Myra Sue’s bedroom at all.

  I could hardly believe my goofy sister had cleaned her room this well in such a short amount of time. I mean, it seemed to me an entire crew of cleaners might have to work for at least twelve years just to clear a path between her dresser and her closet. Thinking about it hurt my brain, but some things are stronger than pain, and for me at that moment, curiosity won out. I hung my head over the side of the bed, lifted the bedskirt, and looked. Well, there you go. Every blessed thing she had scattered everywhere had been shoved under that bed. It looked like a landfill.

  I pulled myself back into the bed and laid down flat. For a while, it seemed my thumping head would never return to normal. If I opened my eyes, the room spun like crazy. Not only that, I thought I might barf. So much for curiosity. For the time being, I planned to lie there and not move so much as an eyelash.

  You want to know the bright side of being sicker than a dog? If it lasts long enough, you get to miss school, that’s what.

  Almost a Civil War in Our Very Own Kitchen

  I was going to have to stay in bed until Mama decided I wasn’t infectious. When you’re coughing and sneezing, rubbing your eyes, being hot one minute and cold the next, and your hair aches, and your teeth itch, being infectious is just bound to happen.

  Every single adult in our family, including Mimi, came right into my room to lay a hand on my forehead and ask how I was feeling. Even the St. Jameses and the Freebirds popped in. Well, you knew good old Temple was bound to pop in with her natural cures. I was glad to see her and that awful tea, which tastes and looks like axle grease and toadstools boiled in stump water. I slept really well after I slugged down a cup of that stuff, even though she would not let me add sugar to it. When I woke up, my head did not hurt so badly.

  I surely felt cut off from the rest of the world, even though Mimi insisted on being in the room with me some, and thought she ought to Read Out Loud to me, like I was unable to read for myself. I practically begged her not to, but she just smiled her brown smile and read to me anyway. Little kid books. Oh brother.

  Grandma visited as much as she could, and so did Daddy and all the rest, except Myra Sue, but nobody got very close or stayed very long because they did not want to carry germs to Eli. Which I understood. I did not want that boy to feel as rotten as I did. Mimi had the good sense to sit across the room from me so I did not breathe on her—or her on me— while she read.

  At one point, while Grandma was smoothing my covers, I croaked out, “Grandma?”

  “Yes, hon?”

 
“Did you ever tell Myra Sue about Mimi?”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “Why, no. Rise up and let me plump up your pillows. Why would you ask me such a thing?”

  While I was sitting up, I took a minute to blow my sore nose. “Because she’s been hanging around the mailbox and the telephone a lot, and it seems to me that she might have been writing letters or calling Mimi and inviting her here. Especially as they seem to be such pals.”

  Grandma plumped my pillows then put them behind my head again, and it took me a little scrunching around to get all comfortable again.

  “April Grace,” she said, sighing loudly, “I declare, you have got the wildest imagination. If your sister is ‘pals’ with Sandra, I don’t see it. And if she talks a lot on the phone, it’s because she’s at that age. And as for writing letters . . . I don’t know anything about that. Have you seen any letters?”

  “No, ma’am, but it just seems like—”

  “It just seems like to me you need to quit fretting about things that don’t concern you and concentrate on feeling better. You can’t get over being sick if you’re worrying. Get you some sleep now.”

  And with that, she gave me a kiss on my forehead, patted my shoulder, and left the room.

  Boy, oh boy. Even when you’re sick they don’t take you seriously.

  The next day was Monday, and that morning, Myra Sue stood in the doorway and glared at me.

  “I need some socks,” she said as if she thought I should rise up out of my sickbed like Lazarus from the grave and hand her over a pair of socks, or maybe even put them on her lily-white tootsies.

  “Help yourself,” I said, then coughed for about five minutes. Temple’s tea had not helped my coughing in the least.

  “Do not cough your germs all over me,” my sister said, as uncompassionate as a rotten egg. Then she tiptoed in, yanked a pair of pink socks from her drawer, and ran back out like she thought I was gonna blast her with cooties and germs.

  “You are the biggest wimp in the entire known universe, if not beyond,” I croaked.

  She flounced off and slammed the door to my very own private bedroom, which she was sharing with Mimi. Boy, oh boy, I dreaded going into my room again when those two vacated it for good. Just the thought of the smell and the mess discouraged me right to the bone and nearly made me feel sick all over again.

  Monday at about noontime, Mama came into the room with a bowl of broccoli-and-cheese soup, a peanut butter sandwich, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of hot tea—her own regular kind of tea with sugar this time, not Temple’s tea. On that tray, Mama also brought in my schoolbooks and pencils.

  “I called the school and got your homework assignments for today.”

  Since Mimi had wasted so much of my time reading me Goodnight Moon and The Berenstain Bears, I really planned to read the last bit of Rebecca while I had the chance. Well, I guess I’d just have to wait to find out what was gonna happen with Mrs. de Winter and Mrs. Danvers. Do you know in that whole entire book, you never do find out the first name of the character who tells the story?

  I felt good enough on Tuesday to go downstairs, and I could have probably gone to school, but I was awfully tired and weak.

  “You’re still a little peaked,” Mama said. “I want you to stay home one more day.”

  Let me tell you, I did not argue with her. She called the school again and got Tuesday’s homework assignments from the teachers’ assistants, and I sat at the dining room table that morning while Mama mopped and vacuumed, and Mimi piddled around with a dust cloth.

  At ten o’clock, she said, “Come on, Sunshine, let’s watch The Price Is Right.”

  “I’d like to finish this homework,” I said. I wanted to get it over and done with so I could spend the rest of the day reading the last of Rebecca.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, grinning at me. “Betcha I can win every game.”

  “Every single one?”

  “Yep. Every single one.”

  Well, now. I doubted anyone was clever enough to win every single one of those games on that show. I figured she’d bug me like crazy until I agreed.

  “All right,” I said. “Prove it. Every game.”

  So we sat side by side on the couch, and she hollered out bids with the contestants. Mama came into the room about halfway through the show. She sat in Grandma’s rocking chair and watched it with us. You know what? Mimi came closest to the actual retail price without going over every single time. And she would’ve won the showcase, too.

  “My goodness, Sandra!” Mama said, almost smiling. “You know your stuff!”

  “Thank you, honey,” Mimi said, smiling at her, as if she was glad Mama had noticed she was good at something, even if it was just knowing the prices on a TV game show.

  “Wow!” I said. “You woulda won a lot of prizes if you’d been on that program.”

  Mimi nodded energetically.

  “Yep. And maybe someday, when you’re all grown up, you can take your mimi to California and she can be on The Price Is Right and meet Bob Barker.” She hollered this like she thought it was an actual possibility and she was already on contestant’s row.

  I wanted to say, “Don’t count on it,” but I didn’t.

  “I’m gonna finish my homework now,” I told her, polite as you could hope for when talking to a screaming mimi, and went back into the dining room before we could do any more of that bonding business I’ve heard people talk about.

  I’ll let you in on a little something: I liked Mimi more right then than I had liked her the whole entire time since she’d walked in our door. Maybe something Melissa said on Saturday had worn off on me. I thought that maybe, just maybe, Mimi might actually be sorry for the things she did and was trying to be a good person, and maybe . . . Well, I shoved all those thoughts right out of my mind, because I did not want to be disloyal to my mama and grandma. Of course, it seemed to me like things weren’t as tense and ugly as they had been. I mean, Mimi jumped right in and helped in the house, and she did a good job of it, too. I think Mama appreciated that, because she’d always thank Mimi for whatever she had done. Plus, she was a good cook.

  I was almost finished with my history questions about the War Between the States when Grandma came in the back door. You could see she was almost bursting with something to tell us, and when she saw Mimi frying pork chops at the stove, she pointed at her. Now, I was taught pointing was impolite, but I guess Grandma forgot her manners right then.

  “Well, Sandra Moore, just about the time I think you’ve sunk as low as you can go, you just sink even lower.”

  Mimi raised her penciled-on, dark-red eyebrows.

  “Oh? I always thought cooking pork chops was a good thing.”

  Well, now. I forgot all about the Battle of Bull Run right then, because I thought we might be getting our very own personal Civil War right in our very own kitchen.

  “I go into Cedar Ridge every Tuesday and do my week’s shopping,” Grandma told Mimi.

  “Good for you,” Mimi said. “Did you buy me anything?”

  Grandma narrowed her eyes. “I do all my grocery buying at Ernie’s Grocerteria.”

  Mimi grinned her brown-tooth smile. “How is Ernie, anyway? We had such a good time on our date. That man is—”

  “Knock it off, Sandra!” Grandma said, almost yelling. I have never heard such a thing in my life as my very own grandmother yelling because she was mad. In fact, Grandma doesn’t get real mad—at least she didn’t until Sandra Moore came on the scene.

  Mama came into the kitchen holding the handle of the dust mop like she’d forgotten she was sweeping. Her eyes were large with surprise and, like me, she did not say a word.

  “Ernie called me back into his office, and he told me a few things.”

  Oh, wow. I wriggled in my chair because this sounded important.

  “He told me he most definitely did not ask you out on a date.”

  Mimi just stood there, half-smiling while the pork chop
s sizzled. “We went out, Grace. What would you call it, if not a date?”

  “I’d call it a dirty trick. You told him you needed a ride to the bus station and he thought he was taking you there so you could catch a ride back to Omaha. That’s what you told him.”

  Mimi shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the stove.

  “I wanted to check the bus schedules. Ernie and I had a good time,” she said.

  “That’s not what he told me—”

  “Oh, really, Grace Reilly,” Mimi whirled around, holding up the fork she’d been using to prod those chops. “He wouldn’t tell you he had a good time, because he knew you’d get jealous. You’re an old woman who needs to grow up.”

  “Don’t you call me old. You are older than I am, Sandra Moore!”

  “By four months! And I have kept my figure, and my looks.”

  “You haven’t kept anything, and you need to quit trying to take what isn’t yours.”

  “Now, you listen to me! If your boyfriend, or boyfriends, find me more appealing than they find you, that’s too bad for you—”

  “Okay, that’s enough!” Mama said. “I will not have the two of you shouting at each other in my house in front of my children. See? You’ve woke up the baby with all this yelling.”

  Wow. I nearly swallowed my aching tonsils. They must have really gotten on Mama’s last nerve, because she hardly ever snapped at people.

  Mimi’s mouth flew open, but she did not say anything. Mama marched out of the kitchen.

  There was so much silence in that kitchen between those two grandmothers that my ears nearly melted.

  “I think it’s time you left,” Grandma finally told Mimi. “You have done wore out your welcome.”

  Mimi put the pork chops on a platter and set about making gravy in the skillet.

  “And I think you should mind your own business, Grace. If Lily wants me to leave, she’ll tell me to.”

  Oh brother. If we waited for Mama to get rid of that old woman, I’d be staying in Myra Sue’s room until Myra Sue became a rocket scientist or the world came to end, whichever came first.