was nine and snatched that kettle right off the stove. I carted it out some distance behind the house to a spot where the grass grew in patches and dumped it. Then I got Mama’s garden spade and buried the whole mess. When I got back to the house, the kitchen still reeked, so I flipped a dish towel around in the air, then put a pot of water on with some cinnamon in it. By the time Mama woke up, the evil smell was almost gone.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, thinking about the stuff I’d buried in the backyard and wondering if it would have helped Mama. Wondering if it was just what she needed. Wondering if I had gotten rid of the very thing that would have healed my mama. Wondering if I really had thrown away the Queen of Cures.
Tallie’s Book
Twins have powers.
It’s hard to figure out what will kill you
and what will cure you and how to
know the difference.
People shrink when they get old.
six
At noon, the temperature hit one hundred on the First Federal thermometer, and by five, when we finished up with the last Seniors’ Day discount customer—not
one
of them tipping, like “discount” meant “permission to be cheap”—it only dropped to eighty. Raylene got real bossy and said it was too hot for me to be riding my bike. Even when I said I wasn’t a baby, she insisted on tying the Raleigh to her car bumper and driving me home.
There was a note on the table from Daddy saying he was taking a truckload of grain over to Redden with one of the Halley brothers and he’d be home after dark. Well, what else was new? I might as well have been living alone.
There was nothing on TV except reruns, so I got out my rule book and put in a couple of things I’d heard from the ladies at the Kurl, like what Hattie Jones’d said about nylon panties and Easter Davis’d said about raspberry tea. Stuff like that. Then I got myself a beer and went out and sat on the glider. It was too hot to eat or read or do much of anything and there was no telling when my daddy’d be coming home. Finally I finished up the beer, grabbed my bathing suit—which was way too small and probably doing damage to my woman parts—and rode over to Baldy, pumping easy and walking the uphill parts so I wouldn’t get a stroke. That time of day, it was quiet at the creek. No one was there but me. I left my bike leaning against a tree. It must have been the heat or the beer or something, because the next thing—without even thinking about it—I stripped to the skin, tossed my bathing suit on the ground, and dove right in the creek, inhaling sharp at the first touch of water on my belly, then stretching out and enjoying the absolute freedom of it. If Goody could have seen me she’d have said I was cheap, cheap, cheap. It was continually amazing to me that someone as fun loving as Mama had been birthed by Goody, who, before she moved to Florida and took up golf, was hard as dirt. Goody wouldn’t know a good time if it walked up and bit her. She maintained you were sinning if you so much as held a deck of cards. Not Mama, though. If Mama’d been there, she would have been skinny-dipping right along with me, shouting and laughing at the pure joy and freedom of it. Mama just loved swimming. She said she was in her element when she was in water. That was about the only way she differed from Natalie. For a while I swam laps (breaststroke and crawl), then I flipped over on my back and floated faceup, just staring at the sky, enjoying the slippery sensation of the water against my skin. It reminded me of how I felt nights when I’d sit on the porch glider and open my pajama top so the evening air could cool me down.
Off in the distance I heard the whistle of the six o’clock heading toward Roanoke. Train whistles always made me think of my granddaddy. He’d been a physician for the Southern Railroad. A railroad man head to toe, Mama said, even after he’d had to quit because he’d developed a weak heart. Granddaddy used to have a
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, thinking about the stuff I’d buried in the backyard and wondering if it would have helped Mama. Wondering if it was just what she needed. Wondering if I had gotten rid of the very thing that would have healed my mama. Wondering if I really had thrown away the Queen of Cures.
Tallie’s Book
Twins have powers.
It’s hard to figure out what will kill you
and what will cure you and how to
know the difference.
People shrink when they get old.
six
At noon, the temperature hit one hundred on the First Federal thermometer, and by five, when we finished up with the last Seniors’ Day discount customer—not
one
of them tipping, like “discount” meant “permission to be cheap”—it only dropped to eighty. Raylene got real bossy and said it was too hot for me to be riding my bike. Even when I said I wasn’t a baby, she insisted on tying the Raleigh to her car bumper and driving me home.
There was a note on the table from Daddy saying he was taking a truckload of grain over to Redden with one of the Halley brothers and he’d be home after dark. Well, what else was new? I might as well have been living alone.
There was nothing on TV except reruns, so I got out my rule book and put in a couple of things I’d heard from the ladies at the Kurl, like what Hattie Jones’d said about nylon panties and Easter Davis’d said about raspberry tea. Stuff like that. Then I got myself a beer and went out and sat on the glider. It was too hot to eat or read or do much of anything and there was no telling when my daddy’d be coming home. Finally I finished up the beer, grabbed my bathing suit—which was way too small and probably doing damage to my woman parts—and rode over to Baldy, pumping easy and walking the uphill parts so I wouldn’t get a stroke. That time of day, it was quiet at the creek. No one was there but me. I left my bike leaning against a tree. It must have been the heat or the beer or something, because the next thing—without even thinking about it—I stripped to the skin, tossed my bathing suit on the ground, and dove right in the creek, inhaling sharp at the first touch of water on my belly, then stretching out and enjoying the absolute freedom of it. If Goody could have seen me she’d have said I was cheap, cheap, cheap. It was continually amazing to me that someone as fun loving as Mama had been birthed by Goody, who, before she moved to Florida and took up golf, was hard as dirt. Goody wouldn’t know a good time if it walked up and bit her. She maintained you were sinning if you so much as held a deck of cards. Not Mama, though. If Mama’d been there, she would have been skinny-dipping right along with me, shouting and laughing at the pure joy and freedom of it. Mama just loved swimming. She said she was in her element when she was in water. That was about the only way she differed from Natalie. For a while I swam laps (breaststroke and crawl), then I flipped over on my back and floated faceup, just staring at the sky, enjoying the slippery sensation of the water against my skin. It reminded me of how I felt nights when I’d sit on the porch glider and open my pajama top so the evening air could cool me down.
Off in the distance I heard the whistle of the six o’clock heading toward Roanoke. Train whistles always made me think of my granddaddy. He’d been a physician for the Southern Railroad. A railroad man head to toe, Mama said, even after he’d had to quit because he’d developed a weak heart. Granddaddy used to have a
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