side. I can feel the little bumps of her seersucker nightgown against my fingers. I stroke her hair and kiss her neck. You are magnificent, I tell her. You are my most beautiful, intelligent child. I adore you. Don’t ever run away from me again.
I kiss her one more time before I leave the room. I still have guests in the house. It’s late, but I fix a round of drinks for everyone. Except for Mother, of course. She has put the other kids to bed and just sits there, pursing those chapped lips, acting like a martyr.
Shep stands behind me, rubbing my shoulders. I don’t even know when he showed back up. He says, Thank you, Viviane. You did good.
You’re welcome, I tell him. See? I don’t just sit on my butt and eat Ritz crackers.
When the Ya-Yas leave, I take off my makeup and cleanse my face. I rub on my cold cream—I don’t care how tired I am, I never go to sleep without doing my cleansing ritual. Then I go and peek into Sidda’s room. There she is, propped up like the Queen of Sheba against the pillows, holding her flashlight and reading.Not even trying to hide it. I am so mad I want to slap her. Reading, laying up in bed, relaxing, after all the shit she has put me through!
But I do not say a word. I tiptoe down the hall to the kitchen. I reach up to the pill cabinet and get myself a Darvon too, and swallow it with a jigger of bourbon. That child is not going to get all the attention in this family. I work hard as hell in this house and I am sick to death of never getting what I want! I swear I could write a book about all the things no one has ever thanked me for.
In summertime the child just lives for the bookmobile. Which is the whole reason why she hid up there and rode downtown and let them lock her up. She thinks books are her best friends and she wanted to be surrounded by them.
I understand. None of this is strange to me. I am her mother, though, and it is my job to teach her that you cannot escape from life. Life is not a book. You can’t just set it down on the coffee table and walk away from it when it gets boring or you get tired.
Cruelty to Animals
Little Shep, 1964
B uggy, my Mama’s mama, has got the meanest little lapdog you ever laid eyes on. One of those puny-butt poodles that’s nothing but bone and fluff. And to Buggy that dog can’t do any wrong. It can pee or poop or tear up the bedspread and Buggy just says, Isn’t that just the darlingest thing you have ever seen?
Even though I don’t care for yap-butts like that dog, I still think an animal oughta get treated with some respect and not like a nutcase, which is what Buggy has been turning that puff-ball into.
My Daddy says, Buggy is going to drive that animal as crazy as she did her daughter.
See, I’m real fond of dogs myself. Yard dogs, that is. We got three of them at Pecan Grove and I’m the one that gets up early in the morning to feed them. They get a cut or scrape, I’m the one that cleans it. We got a Catahoula hound named Jep, who is so dumb that oncehe ran into a telephone pole and knocked himself out cold while he was chasing my Daddy’s truck. We also got Lamar, a German shepherd that Mister Charlie Vanderlick gave us. And we got Jolene, a white collie that Lulu picked out from my cousin’s dog Josie’s second litter. Josie was a dog famous for her ability to sleep standing up. She got shot with porcupine quills once when Daddy took me and her deer hunting with him in West Texas, and I’m the one that pulled them out of her, one by one. I still got those quills in a pickle jar in my bedroom. I’m saving them for when I’m a vet. Gonna put them in my office to remind me of my first surgery. Because removing those quills was a operation for me, that’s for sure. You just try and pull dozens of quills out of a collie. It hurts them something awful, and they’re all crying and squirming, but you’ve gotta pull those quills out or they’ll hurt even worse, maybe even get an infection.
You can have those
I kiss her one more time before I leave the room. I still have guests in the house. It’s late, but I fix a round of drinks for everyone. Except for Mother, of course. She has put the other kids to bed and just sits there, pursing those chapped lips, acting like a martyr.
Shep stands behind me, rubbing my shoulders. I don’t even know when he showed back up. He says, Thank you, Viviane. You did good.
You’re welcome, I tell him. See? I don’t just sit on my butt and eat Ritz crackers.
When the Ya-Yas leave, I take off my makeup and cleanse my face. I rub on my cold cream—I don’t care how tired I am, I never go to sleep without doing my cleansing ritual. Then I go and peek into Sidda’s room. There she is, propped up like the Queen of Sheba against the pillows, holding her flashlight and reading.Not even trying to hide it. I am so mad I want to slap her. Reading, laying up in bed, relaxing, after all the shit she has put me through!
But I do not say a word. I tiptoe down the hall to the kitchen. I reach up to the pill cabinet and get myself a Darvon too, and swallow it with a jigger of bourbon. That child is not going to get all the attention in this family. I work hard as hell in this house and I am sick to death of never getting what I want! I swear I could write a book about all the things no one has ever thanked me for.
In summertime the child just lives for the bookmobile. Which is the whole reason why she hid up there and rode downtown and let them lock her up. She thinks books are her best friends and she wanted to be surrounded by them.
I understand. None of this is strange to me. I am her mother, though, and it is my job to teach her that you cannot escape from life. Life is not a book. You can’t just set it down on the coffee table and walk away from it when it gets boring or you get tired.
Cruelty to Animals
Little Shep, 1964
B uggy, my Mama’s mama, has got the meanest little lapdog you ever laid eyes on. One of those puny-butt poodles that’s nothing but bone and fluff. And to Buggy that dog can’t do any wrong. It can pee or poop or tear up the bedspread and Buggy just says, Isn’t that just the darlingest thing you have ever seen?
Even though I don’t care for yap-butts like that dog, I still think an animal oughta get treated with some respect and not like a nutcase, which is what Buggy has been turning that puff-ball into.
My Daddy says, Buggy is going to drive that animal as crazy as she did her daughter.
See, I’m real fond of dogs myself. Yard dogs, that is. We got three of them at Pecan Grove and I’m the one that gets up early in the morning to feed them. They get a cut or scrape, I’m the one that cleans it. We got a Catahoula hound named Jep, who is so dumb that oncehe ran into a telephone pole and knocked himself out cold while he was chasing my Daddy’s truck. We also got Lamar, a German shepherd that Mister Charlie Vanderlick gave us. And we got Jolene, a white collie that Lulu picked out from my cousin’s dog Josie’s second litter. Josie was a dog famous for her ability to sleep standing up. She got shot with porcupine quills once when Daddy took me and her deer hunting with him in West Texas, and I’m the one that pulled them out of her, one by one. I still got those quills in a pickle jar in my bedroom. I’m saving them for when I’m a vet. Gonna put them in my office to remind me of my first surgery. Because removing those quills was a operation for me, that’s for sure. You just try and pull dozens of quills out of a collie. It hurts them something awful, and they’re all crying and squirming, but you’ve gotta pull those quills out or they’ll hurt even worse, maybe even get an infection.
You can have those
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