Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (26 page)

Lucky for Emma, the shoe department was conveniently located
right
next to the linens. And there was a colorful display bed, there for the taking. Emma climbed onto the display rack and belly flopped on to the bed. I was pinned between two racks of shoes and my stroller and couldn’t reach her. My mother had on two different shoes, a wedge sandal and a ballet flat, and was limping across the shoe department to try to get to Emma. But before either of us could grab her, Emma climbed under the covers and jerked them over her head, sending the plastic sale signs clattering to the floor.

I finally extricated myself from my roadblock and pulled Emma out of the bed just as a helpful sales clerk came to see if my Momma needed any help and to give me the stink-eye. I recognized her “When-
I
-have-children-they-will-behave!” look, and just went right ahead and laughed in her face. “Guess it’s nap time!” I joked as I made the bed and replaced the signs. She rolled her eyes at me and walked away just as Emma twisted out of my grip and jumped back into the bed.

This time I was ready. There was no stroller blocking my path and I lunged for her, which was the first in a series of Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote-ish moves that lead to Emma and me darting and weaving around kiosks of purses, belts and accessories. The child is
fast.

I darted one way and she would dash the other, keeping a wall of merchandise between us at all times.

“Emma Jean O’Bryant! You’d better come here RIGHT NOW! Do you hear me?” (Her name is actually Emma Rachel after my Momma, but when she’s bad I call her Emma Jean and always have. It's her evil redneck alter ego.)

“MOMMA DON’T ‘PANK ME!! PWEASE MOMMA DON’T!”

Well chit.
If
I was going to I’m not now, because now everyone in the store is staring at us, and I personally don’t have the time to talk to Child Protective Services and explain my disciplining techniques.

Momma finally got her own shoes back on and helped me block Emma in near a rack of costume jewelry. As soon as I was within reach of her, I picked her up.

“Emma.
Get in the stroller
. We are going home.” I said maintaining eye contact and low tones.

“I WANNA WALK!!! STOP TOUCHING ME! YOU AH HUTTING ME!” she screamed at
full
volume.

“Emma, if you do not
sit down
in the stroller, right now. I will strap you in. Do you understand?”

I was walking now and holding her as she continued to writhe, scream and generally make a public spectacle of herself. My mother pushed the stroller along behind me, several
feet
behind me if I remember correctly. Like she didn't even know us and she
certainly
wasn't with us. As soon as we were out of the store, I knelt in front of Emma and once again gave her the choice to sit willingly in the stroller or I would strap her in.

“I WANT TO WAAAAAAAAALLLK!” she shrieked.

I’m not even sure if I can accurately explain how loud she was. I am not
exaggerating when I say that every
single
person in the mall heard her, and many people walked out of stores to see what was going on. My children have pitched fits before in public but never, ever like this.

Emma wouldn’t cooperate, so I put her in the stroller and strapped her in, while she straightened her arms and legs and bowed her back to try to keep from being put into the seat.

She was actually
in
the seatbelt for less than fifteen seconds before she pulled a Houdini, jumped out of the moving stroller and took off running in the opposite direction.

I gave chase and when I caught her, I held her around her tiny waist while she kicked me and screamed at me. She was
thrashing.
Had I not been so completely and totally shocked at her behavior I would have been mortified, but at this point I could think of only one thing: getting the
hell
out of there.

Of course, we were as far from my car as we could possibly be and still be in the mall. I was forced to walk/run the
entire length of the mall carrying my feral child. At one point, my shirt had ridden up to my bra line, Emma was upside down with her feet over my head, her dress over her head and her panties half off of her booty as I struggled to keep her in my arms.

I kept waiting for security or a concerned citizen to stop me and ask, “Is this your child?” My plan was to say, “Never seen her before,” pass her off to the well-meaning stranger and high-tail it out of there, but no one approached us. No one had anything to say to me. Not even the Dead Sea Minerals chick, which really,
really
pissed me off.

“WHAT?” I yelled at her kiosk. “What was your question? Doesn’t seem so important now does it?? What!? You don’t
want
me to stop and talk now, do you?”

She wisely avoided eye contact and said nothing.

Finally,
finally,
we made it to my car. My mother’s feet were covered in blisters from running the length of the mall while pushing a double stroller and Emma had completely worn herself out pitching the World’s Biggest Hissy Fit. My mother slipped off her shoes in the passenger seat as Emma whimpered herself to sleep and I wished to God I had thought to pack a sippy cup of Mommy Juice in the diaper bag.

I
had a really great childhood. My teenage years were full of angst, turmoil and my parents’ divorce, but as far as childhoods go, I had a great one. I grew up in a small close-knit town and I have wonderful memories of backyard barbeques, fish fries and birthday parties with friends. (In the South a barbeque is when you cook
actual
barbeque, not just throwing anything on a grill.
That
would be a “cook-out,” as in, ‘We’re cooking
out
-side.’)

The sounds and smells of Alabama summer time still bring back a flood of memories: a lick of wild honeysuckle, running barefoot through freshly cut grass, charcoal burning on a grill, crickets singing and frogs croaking while we chased each other through muscadine vines and fig trees playing hide and seek. (Or seek and destroy as the boys called it because once they found you, they basically beat the crap out of you.) All the moms bustling around in the kitchen getting side dishes ready while the men sipped cold beers around the grill.

My mom’s best friend Linda Murphy lived right through the woods. My brothers, my sister and I spent countless hours walking a path through the woods to see the Murphy family next door. We did everything with them; we went to the beach, to Smith Lake, to Disney World. The first time I remember spending the night away from home was at their house.

So many of my happiest memories are intertwined with memories of them, they were as close as siblings. We fought, laughed and cried together. We swung each other in our hammock to see if we could flip it 360 degrees, then bandaged each other’s wounds when we realized that in hand to hand combat with the law of gravity, we would lose every time. We made stupid home videos dressed up with wigs and
heinous
80s accessories. My older brother Matt acted as our lead singer while we made up dance routines so horrible I can only thank God there was no ‘YouTube’ back then.

Their second child, Lawson, is the first baby I ever remember holding. Some of my memories of Lawson are so vivid, I can flip through them in my mind as if they were snapshots instead… perfectly detailed without the fogginess that sometimes surrounds my childhood memories. When Lawson was only a few months old, my brother Matt was lying on the floor playing “airplane” with him. Lawson was giggling that effervescent baby giggle that had everyone in the room, including my teenage brother, laughing. Matt held him upside down for a little too long and was still laughing with his mouth wide open, when Lawson threw up in it.

I remember being completely and totally grossed out by the skid marks in his first pair of “big boy” underwear. And I remember watching Lawson and his younger brother John play “rough and tumble” in their tiny Auburn football jerseys in the Murphy’s living room until one of them inevitably ended up flying head first into the coffee table.

I only have two real memories of my first trip to Disney World. One of them was being involved in some sort of silly street play, but the other is of Lawson at our hotel swimming pool. He was trying to “flat foot it” and see if he could touch the bottom of the deep end of the pool.

When I turned sixteen, I drove him and “the girl next door” to Maddox Middle School basketball games in my super cool maroon Oldsmobile, “The Hot Tamale.” I teased him unmercifully all the way to her house, “I can’t believe you have a girlfriend.”

“She is NOT my girlfriend!”

“She is SO your girlfriend!”

“She is NOT! And you better stop when she gets in the car.”

I kept my mouth shut once she got in the car and we cranked up the music and rocked out to Weezer the rest of the way there.

Lawson and I traded CDs and
years
later called each other on occasion to blast our favorite parts at each other, and hang up without saying a word.

When I got married and moved out of state, Lawson and I didn't talk for several years. But then my phone rang and it was as if no time had passed at all. Lawson had just started Auburn — the college of his dreams. I was living in Auburn, too; busy being married, working and finishing nursing school.

“Hello?”

Music blasted in my ear, “IF I HAD MY TIME AGAIN, I WOULD DO IT ALL THE SAAA-AA-AME!” Big Audio Dynamite sang through the phone.

“HEY! That’s mine!! I’ve been looking for it for five years!” I yelled into the phone.

“Yeah? Well when you cough up my Weezer CD you can have it back!” Lawson bartered.

“LAW! You know that CD got destroyed in the Hot Tamale! Seriously, I’ll buy you a new one… or, I’ll cook for you if you give it back!”

We both made good on our bargain and the CD bought him a couple of meals a month as I continued to play the big sister role and cook for him to give him a break from college life.

He came over one evening for chili and Mexican cornbread that was a poor imitation of our Mommas’ version.

“Sorry,” I kept apologizing to him and Zeb as I checked the cornbread repeatedly. I had doubled the recipe and used a glass dish and
seriously
underestimated the baking time.

Every time I walked passed Lawson into the kitchen to check the oven he coughed, “Ah-huh-ROOKIE-huh!”

The night Lawson came over for chili and cornbread would be the last time I would ever see him. He was only eighteen.

I was twenty-five-years-old, and on vacation with my dad, stepmother, brothers and my sister. There weren't any grandchildren, yet. We were at the beach six hours from home when Mary Beth, Lawson's older sister, called my sister Blair's cell phone.

I wasn't even awake on the morning when she stumbled into my room crying, “There was an accident at the lake and they can't find Lawson,” Blair choked out.

They couldn't find him. They couldn't
find
him. If he couldn't be found, then he couldn't be gone, I reasoned. They would find him. Wouldn't they?

The day was a blur, I remember it as though in a post-anesthesia fog. I felt drugged. My dad drove my sister and I home. I remember buying a Diet Coke and powdered donuts at a gas station because they were by the counter and I had to eat something. It seemed ridiculous to eat donuts when someone I loved was probably dead but I had no idea what else to eat, so I grabbed them. I don't remember calling my mother, though I suppose I did. I don't remember where Zeb was. I know he was at the beach with me, but I don't remember him being in the car that day as we drove north.

We made our way to the lake, to our other family and were told: Lawson had been found.

He was found, but lost forever. Gone, but home.

I cried so hard I thought my heart would actually shatter as we drove back across Duncan Bridge. The lake sparkled in the sunlight, the baby blue beams of the bridge almost disappeared into the sky over my head. I remembered the hundreds of times as a child that we had ridden in a boat underneath that bridge, screaming at the top of our lungs just to hear the echo. But our voices were one less now. Lawson's was gone but I still wanted to scream.

My grief was physical. It hurt and throbbed and ached. I could not fathom the actual the pain a mother feels to lose a child, or that a sibling feels to lose a soulmate. How could the rest of us be expected to go on and just
live
, without him?