Sweet Tea: A Novel by Wendy Lynn Decker

here.”
    CeCe went to the couch and finished her nap. I thought about Matt again. Before, thoughts of him could take my mind off Mama. Now there was no place my mind could go for rest. I couldn’t forgive Matt and go to that party. I’d look pathetic and desperate. I needed a new distraction. It was time I set my sights on someone else.
    The phone rang again - this time it was Jonzie.
    “Maybe you can fool Bessa, but you can’t fool me,” she said.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I saw your eyes today. I saw the same sadness I felt after Michael died. You had better tell me what’s going on with you.”
    “Meet me at the park by the lake,” I said, and hung up. I couldn’t hold it all inside anymore. I had to talk to somebody, and since Jonzie had gone through tough times before, maybe she would understand without judging.
    The phone didn’t wake CeCe this time, so I left her a note. On my bike, it was a quick mile and a half to the park. Jonzie was sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette.
    “When the heck did you take up that nasty habit?” I asked.
    She held the pack out and offered me one.
    “No thanks,” I said, although I had to admit the thought of trying one did entice me.
    “It’s not a habit yet,” she said, the cigarette hanging from her mouth as she shoved the pack into her pocket. “I’ve only done it a few times. My mama took it up after Michael died. I felt like doing everything bad after that. Maybe she did too. So I thought you might want to join me.” She took a drag and made a couple of smoke rings that followed each other toward the lake and disappeared.
    I shook my head. “No thanks. Luke’s doing enough bad things for the both of us.”
    “Luke? What’s going on with him?”
    I sat down next to her on the picnic table and put my feet up on the bench, my elbows on my knees. I shoved my fists under my cheeks and pushed them into my eyes to hold up my head. “My mama’s gone crazy,” I blurted out.
    Jonzie took another drag from her cigarette then flicked it into the lake. “I knew that the day I met her,” she said with a giggle.
    Tears filled my eyes. “No. Not just mama-crazy. I mean really crazy. She’s in the hospital.”
    Jonzie moved closer to me on the bench. “I’m sorry, Honey. I didn’t mean any harm. Where is she?”
    “She’s in Central State,” I said, and started bawling.
    Jonzie slid her arm around me. “Oh, crap. How’d she end up there?”
    “I guess it’s like you said,” I said between sobs and sniffles. “She’s always been kind of different, but not the kind of crazy she is now. She buried our turkey on Thanksgiving. In the front yard . . . to save our souls!”
    Jonzie’s eyes bulged. “Whoa, that is definitely one I have not heard before. I guess that is pretty crazy!”
    Leave it to Jonzie to say it like it is.
    “She never really got over Daddy’s death,” I said. “She doesn’t cry all the time like she used to, and she goes to work and all, but sometimes it’s like a page is missing from her brain. And when the anniversary of his death comes around, she gets worse. She disappeared one night. The police found her, but she ended up in Central State before CeCe and I could get to her. The doctor says she has mental illness. You know what people will say about that. . . . I can’t tell anyone. And you can’t either!”
    Jonzie got up off the bench. She paced the ground with her head down. I thought she was about to give me another lecture, like the skiing one.
    “When Michael died, my mama went to Central State too. I didn’t tell anyone. My daddy brought her there. She wouldn’t talk, cook, clean, or do anything. She just lay around like she was dead but still breathing. I didn’t even care ’cause I felt the same way.” She stopped pacing and took a deep breath. “But . . . instead, I hurt myself on the outside so the inside wouldn’t feel so bad.”
    Jonzie pushed up the right leg of her jeans and exposed the rest