Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere

by Julie T. Lamana

  “What’d your teacher tell you?” Daddy asked.

  I swallowed and sat up a little straighter in my chair. “Well, she said that yesterday, somewhere in Idaho, a cow gave birth to a chicken.”

  Georgie, my older—not smarter—brother, spit a wad of half-chewed chop across the table. He put his fist up to his mouth and started cracking up. He threw hisself back in his chair so hard, he just about fell over backward. “Oh, my gawd! You’re so stupid, Armani!” The boy was laughing so out of control, tears were streaming down his ugly face.

  “I ain’t stupid!” I yelled. “You’re stupid!” Heat filled my cheeks. My head throbbed. I slumped into my chair wishing I was an only child so I didn’t have to be in the same room with thickheaded people like Georgie.

  “That’s enough, Georgie,” Daddy said, trying to stifle his own laugh.

  Memaw and Mama chuckled and shook their heads. My whole face was on fire.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” Georgie said, shaking his head back and forth, wiping tears and holding back more laughs. “But that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. A cow having a baby chicken! What’d they call it, Armani—a cow-icken?” Everyone at the table was laughing—except Sealy. “Or, wait, wait, I got it . . . how ’bout a chick-ow!”

  “Chick-ow! Chick-ow!” Khayla and Kheelin sang, moving their shoulders up and down. They were banging away on the tabletop doing some kind of chicken high chair dance, singing the ridiculous word. My whole family was acting like fools.

  “Why are y’all smilin’ an’ lookin’ so crazy?” I whined.

  “Is that true, Armani?” Sealy asked with big puppy eyes. She was interested in what I had to say.

  “Yes, Sealy, it is true. My teacher even said it was on the news.”

  “Lord, have mercy,” Memaw said.

  “Then your teacher’s a dummy,” Georgie said, shoving a pile of collard greens in his mouth.

  “Mr. Curtis, I think that will do,” Mama said to Daddy. But her head nodded at Georgie.

  “Shut up, Georgie! You think you know everything!” I hollered.

  Daddy wasn’t laughing no more.

  “Well, I know more than you do,” Georgie mumbled under his breath, still feeding his face.

  “Yeah, right, that’s why you barely made it to the sixth grade,” I said, putting sass behind my words and a slide to my head.

  Daddy stood up. I can’t speak for Georgie, but I’m smart enough to know that when Daddy goes and stands up like that, it’s best if I just shut up altogether.

  “Your mama’s right. That’s enough,” Daddy said. “Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” we fussed at the same time.

  Daddy sat back down. Before he went to eating he turned to Georgie. “I don’t ever want to hear you speak disrespectful toward a teacher again. I know Armani’s teacher and she’s a good woman.”

  “A good woman with a vivid imagination,” Memaw said into her napkin. Mama bit down on her bottom lip, shaking her head at Memaw.

  I seen my opening and took it. “You need to speak respectful to your sister too.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Memaw coughed. “Here we go.”

  “In your dreams,” Georgie said. His voice sounded like a whiny little girl’s.

  Sealy leaned in so close to me I could see food stuck in her back teeth. “I can’t wait to get to fourth grade,” she happy-whispered. “Y’all learn so many interesting things.”

  After supper Daddy handed out chores. Georgie had to cut the grass, and I had to clean up the kitchen. I didn’t care. I’d rather clean ten kitchens than push that rickety ol’ contraption across the yard. The blades on that ancient thing were so dull, it took going back and forth over the same spot at least twenty times before the grass looked even close to cut.

  Mama had Kheelin in the bath, and Daddy was outside, most likely supervising dimwit Georgie. Memaw was sitting in the living room, watching her sacred Weather Channel, talking with Sealy about some book called Roll of Thunder. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but it didn’t surprise me none that the two of them would waste their time discussing a book about storms. Memaw would be getting Sealy all worked up about the weather. It was only a matter of time.

  I was done washing, except for the big ol’ black cast-iron skillet Mama used for frying up the pork chops. I still couldn’t believe how stupid Georgie was, and I sure wasn’t in no mood for scrubbing that skillet. Every time I washed that heavy thing, I got a crick in my neck. It had to weigh at least a hundred pounds. I was fixin’ to start on the bothersome blob of iron when one of Kheelin’s little cars rolled right up over my bare toes.

  Khayla was tucked up under the gym-floor table playing with the cars Kheelin had got for his birthday present. It didn’t make no difference to Kheelin that his twin had them, because he never played with them anyhow. He was always too busy being snug up against Mama. If Khayla was wearing pockets, you could bet good money the girl had a tiny car shoved into one. Mama had washed cars in the laundry more than once by accident.

  I used my foot to roll the tiny car back to Khayla. She looked at me and gave me one of her famous chubby-cheeked smiles. I smiled back, and gave her the “I love you” sign with my soapy fingers. My cousin, TayTay, had taught me how to do it when we were out on summer break. I’d been trying to teach the sign-language symbol to the twins, but they couldn’t get their pudgy little fingers to stand up straight.

  I was fixin’ to walk over and help Khayla situate her fingers when she stopped me cold and looked me dead straight in the eyes singing, “Chick-ow! Chick-ow!” She scooped up the itty-bitty cars and took off running scared like a fat little bunny.

  I grabbed the wet, red-checkered dishrag out of the soapy water and threw it at her. But she scooched quick around the corner. Just then, Memaw came walking toward me around that same corner. The slopping-wet rag slapped her smack in the middle of her face and stuck there like flypaper.

  My hands flew up to stifle the scream that wanted to leap out of my mouth. Memaw froze. She stood there, with the rag covering her whole face—dirty dishwater dripping down her housedress. We were both still as statues, like all the clocks stopped ticking, and the earth stopped spinning.

  “Memaw, oh my gosh . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Slow as a slug, Memaw took hold of the bottom edge of the rag. The wet cloth inched down off her forehead slower than cane syrup. The first thing I seen was her eyes. They just stared at me. My heart pounded harder. I was fixin’ to get a whipping for sure.

  Then . . . real slow-like, I seen her nose pop out. You can’t tell nothing about how a person feels by looking at their nose. Even still, seeing half her face uncovered like that made my knees wobble. Then, with one final tug, she pulled that dishrag all the way down, and I seen her mouth. She was smiling! I couldn’t believe it! I thought for sure Memaw was gonna tear me up. But there she was, just smiling. I gulped down a sigh of relief. We both took to laughing.

  She walked over and gently swiped me upside my head. She tossed the dishrag into the sink, grabbed a towel, and patted her face dry.

  “You’re lucky,” she said, in a pretend-serious voice. “I s’pose I’m gonna go ahead and let ya live to see your double digits.” She swatted me a good one on my butt when she strutted by, grabbing a cold pork chop off the leftovers plate.

  “Now, hurry up and finish your chores, child,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be waitin’ for ya.”

  Sitting on the porch swing with Memaw was always my favorite time of day. Whether I was doing my homework or finishing my chores, I always did them without dragging my feet if I knew Memaw was waiting for me on the swing. Evening time, after supper, was the best time for swinging. The smell of honeysuckle strong in the breeze, crickets singing their never-ending song, June bugs flickering about, and neighborhood after-supper music spilling out into the still evening air. I never even cared about the little pieces of white paint chips peeling off the swing and sticking to my clothes. Mama kept asking Da
ddy to sand that ol’ swing down and paint it, but the truth was, Daddy was scared that if he messed with the thing too much, he might ruin the names on it.

  My PawPaw, Mama’s daddy, had made that swing with his own bare hands for Memaw when they first got married, back before there was such a thing as microwaves or computers. Every time they had a baby, he’d go and carve their names on it, making the swing even more special. Then when Mama and Daddy got married and started having us kids, Daddy took to carving our names on there too.

  When Georgie was about to make eight years old, he snuck one of Mama’s favorite butter knives and did his best to dig out the I sitting up between the last G and E of his carved name. But all he managed to do was leave behind a big ol’ ugly, sloppy fat letter I instead of the nice skinny one Daddy had put there. He said he did it because he wanted to be just “George” like Daddy—not Georgie. From then on, it just looked like his name had a big ol’ scratch. Daddy was mad for two or three days after that.

  There’s names scattered all over that chair swing, but most times I sat resting my back on my own name. It’s been a special chair for a long time, all right. So I sat there, never minding the specks of white, and rested my head on Memaw’s shoulder.

  “Memaw, why don’t we call you Grandma, or Nana, or somethin’?” I asked.

  She took my hand and sandwiched it all sweet between hers. I reached over and played with the loose skin on the back of her hand. It felt soft and buttery, like the leather cover of Daddy’s ol’ wore-out Bible. I took to wondering how her veins could move back and forth like that without hurting.

  “Well,” she said, “I always called my grandmother MawMaw, and your mama called her grandmother MawMaw. So it seemed natural when my first grandbaby was born, I’d be MawMaw too.”

  “Georgie was your first grandbaby, right?”

  “Yes, he was. And when that sweet child started talking, he gave me the name Memaw.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he was tryin’ to say ‘my MawMaw.’ ” There was a smile in her voice. “But it came out Memaw. I’ve been Memaw ever since.”

  “It don’t bother you that he messed up your name?” Seemed to me, Georgie sure did like messing up names.

  “No, indeed, I think it’s a fine name. He didn’t mess it up. He just named me special, that’s all.” She patted the top of my leg. “Now, I have a question for you.” She paused a good long minute. “That cow of yours in Idaho—are you suggestin’ that it laid an egg or did a whole chicken pop out?”

  I let go of her hand, sat straight up, and planted my feet down firm on the cracked concrete, bringing the swing to a stop. “Memaw . . .” I whined, giving her my full-face pout. All of a sudden, I got a picture in my head of a cow laying an egg. I seen the laugh around her eyes. I tried to cover my mouth before it broke into a big smile, but my hand was too slow.

  She reached up and put my head back on her shoulder. “I’m just askin’. You know, sometimes we’ve got to think for ourselves before we start repeatin’ the foolishness of others. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  We went back to the business of swinging. We weren’t talking or nothing—just swinging. My right foot was wrapped around her left foot, and it was like we were one big ol’ foot pushing down on that square of concrete. When the swing slowed down, we knew at the exact same minute that it was time to push again. The high-squeak, low-squeak, high-squeak, low-squeak sound of our rocking just made the feel-good feeling better. Being with Memaw was easy.

  Every time the huge fern hanging from the porch above Memaw’s head brushed against her updo, she’d reach up and slap herself in the head. I tried hard not to laugh. It looked like she was swiping a fly, except there wasn’t no fly—it was just that overgrown plant hanging outside Mama’s kitchen window.

  Right when I thought that she might’ve forgot, Memaw reached into the half-torn pocket of her favorite yellow housedress and plucked out one of them hard caramels she knew I’d walk all the way from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, for. She handed that little piece of Heaven to me, and then she pulled out a second one.

  She opened hers, I opened mine, and just like we’d been practicing for years, I plopped the candy I was holding into her mouth, and she plopped hers into mine. We rocked and sucked on our candies, watching the trees sway side to side, like they knew our secret.

  “My, my, my, now ain’t this nice?”

  “Umm-hmm,” is all I said.

  Long after my candy was gone but while the sweetness of it lingered, I stared up at the honey-colored sky, tilted my head back, and settled into Memaw’s shoulder. I closed my eyes and listened to the wind. It was stronger and thicker than usual, moving from here to there, blending in just so with the sound of Memaw softly humming a hymn from church last Sunday. The porch swing added rhythm, with its high-squeak, low-squeak.

  The screen door smacked open. “Memaw, they’re coming on the TV after the commercial break with an update about that storm,” Sealy rudely interrupted.

  “Girl, are you serious?” I said, sliding my head with my lip curled up to one side, making sure she knew with more than my words how aggravated I was. “Can’t you see we’re busy?”

  But just as quick as a swat, Memaw scooched herself to the edge of our swing. Bearing most of her weight down on my thigh, she umphed herself up and out of the chair. Her sweet caramel breath floated down and settled in my deserted lap, leaving me to swing half-crooked by myself. She tapped the loose arm of the chair without even so much as looking back at me. “Hold the door, Sealy, baby. I’m comin’.”

  The plump purple muscadines hanging from the vine called my name. The grapevine was another one of Mama’s babies. It spread from one end of the chain-link fence clear to the other side where Daddy kept his homemade charcoal grill.

  I lifted a few of the top vines, because the fat dark grapes are almost always hiding up underneath. Everybody knows that the darkest ones are the juiciest and the sweetest. I found what I was looking for and plopped the yummy grape in my mouth. I about choked on the dang thing when Georgie tapped me on my shoulder.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’?”

  I rolled my eyes and ate another grape. “Makin’ a pie.” ’Course, I wasn’t, but a stupid question deserved a stupid answer. I spit a seed over my brother’s shoulder.

  Georgie plopped his own grape—from a top vine—into his mouth. He wiped muscadine drool on his shoulder and said, “The Babineauxes are out front, loadin’ their car with suitcases.”

  The Babineauxes were our neighbors.

  I plucked another grape from Mama’s vine. “Why? Are they takin’ a trip or somethin’?”

  “I guess. Mr. Babineaux told me they’re evacuating ’cause of the storm.” He picked another grape.

  I all but sucked an entire grape right into my lung. A tiny thump started up in my head. “Evacuate?” I said, like the word smelled bad.

  “Yep. He says I should tell Daddy. They’re headin’ north, probably to Mississippi. He says we should pack up and head north too, while we still can.”

  Without even thinking about it, I grabbed hold of Georgie’s shoulders and got up in his grinning face. My heart was thumping like a snare drum at a jazz funeral. “You didn’t tell Daddy that, did you?”

  Georgie pulled his face as far away from mine as he could. His big ol’ grin shrunk right up, and his glasses were hanging on to the tip of his fat sweaty nose.

  “Not yet.”

  “Georgie, you gotta promise me you won’t tell Daddy.”

  He wiggled out of my grip and pushed his glasses back into place with his finger.

  “Why shouldn’t I tell him? Maybe we should evacuate.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. My brother was so slow. “Georgie, it’s my birthday weekend. My party’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “So?” he said. He might as well have slapped me upside my head.

  “So?” I did the best head slide I’ve ever done in my whole life.

 
He plucked a half-green grape off the vine and started walking for the back door.

  I scooted in front of him, forcing him to a stop. He rolled his eyes and folded his arms up across his chest.

  I took a deep breath and forced a smile that most likely showed too many teeth. “Please don’t tell Daddy. Please? Just don’t say nothin’ till after my party Sunday—please, Georgie?”

  His eyes softened. He opened his mouth to say something, but the screen door squeaked.

  “There you are. Your mama’s looking for the two of you.” Daddy stood in the doorway, holding the screen open.

  Me and Georgie stood there froze like a couple of fools.

  “Is everything all right?” Daddy stepped out of the doorway. All the muscadine juice in my mouth dried up and sweat beads popped out across my forehead.

  “Sure, Daddy, everything’s fine. We’re just eatin’ some grapes.” Georgie play-slapped my arm and walked over to the screen door. “You better come on, Armani, before them mosquitoes eat you up!”

  Daddy put his hand on my brother’s shoulder and the two of them held the door open, waiting on me. “Your brother’s right. We don’t want the birthday girl covered with bug bites.”

  “Yeah,” Georgie said over the top of his glasses. “You don’t wanna show up at your party on Sunday looking like you dragged yourself up outta the swamp.” He laughed. Daddy shook his head from side to side, a nice smile shining across his face.

  I smiled so big I could feel it in my ears.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saturday, August 27, 2005 – 7:19 A.M.

  Tap, tap, tap. Someone was knocking on me and Sealy’s bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I loud-whispered. It was early, and Sealy was still asleep beside me. I moved her arm from across my face. I hated sleeping with my sister. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for the fact that instead of her occupying her side of the bed, like she was supposed to, she felt inclined to find new ways of sleeping on top of me.