“And I’m real sorry for your painful loss. It was just an awful mishap.”
“I never had to watch a friend die.” I sighed heavily just thinking about it.
“Over the past seventy years, I’ve watched everything die, including myself once.”
“Wow! I figured you were at least ten years younger.” I was astonished by the notion that I had been bedded by a septuagenarian.
“It’s the bounce factor. Few years ago I hit bottom. After that I bounced back up. Keep fit. Eat right. Long walks every morning.”
“When I hit bottom, I just landed flat,” I replied. “What’s your sign?”
“My birthday is in early January.”
“That makes you a Capricorn. I would have taken you for a Sag.” I had picked up astrology while writing for the tabloids, another dirty habit.
Tilting my head toward the Blue Suede booth, I mentioned that I had just registered for the Sing the King contest, so I was looking for tips on impersonating Elvis.
“Really?” he asked, amused. “Why?”
“I love Elvis, and since I’m here anyway I could sure use ten grand.”
“God,” he said, “I wish I could just give it to you.”
“Well, I appreciate it, but I wouldn’t take it.” Then I innocently asked him, “Do you work at Blue Suede?”
“Not really, I just kind of watch the mansion and the grounds above it.”
“Do you know this guy John Carpenter?”
“Seen him around, why?”
“Isn’t he the lord of the manor you work for?”
“Kinda. Major is really the big boss.”
“I heard Carpenter was judging the contest.”
“He used to be one of the judges,” Jeeves replied, “but he doesn’t come around much anymore. He leaves Snake to taking care of business nowadays.”
“Snake seems like a shady character.”
“We all live in the shade down here,” he said with a smile, then added, “Hey, I can probably give you a few tips on singing the King.”
“Really?”
“Sure, I saw him perform a few times. Hell, I’ve impersonated him a few times too.”
“When?”
“Oh gee, when he first started out in the early ’50s. Before he was the King. That’s the thing, most people focus on his Vegas years, but he had different looks at different times in his life. I remember when he was clean at the start—and he was much more awkward. Then he got better, but he grew too comfortable, got lazy.”
“Did you ever see him perform when he was high?”
“He was always high. Toward the end he was just plain flying. But I really don’t remember much.”
“Ca-saan-draaaaaa!” came Vinetta’s voice from over near the big wheel. She was headed in my direction with her wayward little cavalry.
“I’m a little short on time, so if there’s any one single magical Elvis lesson you can impart …”
“If I learned any one thing from watching him, it was simply this: be mindful of his moves and voice, but ultimately make the performance all your own.”
Suddenly the seven little ones descended upon me like pygmies attacking a missionary.
“Oh God, are these all yours?” asked Jeeves.
“I’m their drunken aunt,” I answered, producing a big lopsided grin on the wrecked man’s face.
One of the girls thoughtlessly jumped up on Jeeves, who grabbed her under the shoulders and swung her high to the blue skies. She shrieked in horror and dashed away as soon as he set her down.
“What a beautiful little lady!” he remarked. As the children started pulling me away, I thanked Jeeves for his pearl of wisdom. Vinetta and I were promptly dragged off to the petting farm, where each kid paid a quarter to get spat upon by a llama and butted by a baby goat; and finally they got to molest the world’s smallest pony.
We soon wandered back to the gaming section of the fair, where Vinetta vetoed anything she felt was potentially dangerous, like throwing darts at balloons and the automatic BB gun game. She reluctantly allowed the boys to shoot streams from waterguns into the mouths of plastic clowns to see which balloons popped first. Five minutes didn’t pass that afternoon without someone stopping her with a “Howdy, Vin.”
“You should run for office,” I commented. “Everyone in this town knows you.”
“That comes with being in a rut.”
“Mama, Mama!” Floyd Jr. barked. On behalf of all the kids, he said they wanted to see the rodeo. We collected the full crew and got in another line, where we were charged another dollar per child. All pushed through a shiny turnstile and into the gated corridors behind open stalls that bordered the large rodeo.
As we filed slowly past the tight pens with kicking bulls and snorting horses, I spotted Minister Beaucheete in an open-collar shirt. He was moving up the stairs with his family to watch the upcoming sheep-lassoing contest. Two skinny blond kids were walking before him, presumably his own. That was when I saw his own private burden. About five feet behind him, led by a third child, was the minister’s wife, easily the heaviest woman I had ever seen. Children in the area were pointing and snickering as embarrassed parents tried to get them to stop.
Her sad eyes appeared to be drowning in her ever-expanding face. She walked with her arms extended, as if physically unable to fold them inward. Vinetta noticed me staring and explained that diabetes was slowly robbing the wife of her sight.
“Shame that only celebrities can afford stomach staplings,” I commented, not mentioning that this poor woman was the real victim of Vin’s storm-cellar liaison.
“When I first met Thelma she was the prettiest gal in high school,” Vin said.
“Sad.”
“Hey, maybe you can use your literary gifts to write to one of those shows where they do surgical makeovers and they could—”
A loud metallic gong, and Vinetta hit the earth like a ton of bricks. Blood immediately began running from the back of her skull. I thought she had been shot until I saw the old metal pail rolling in a circle nearby.
Screaming, then bursting into tears, the seven children raced around, grabbing their fallen leader.
“Someone get a doctor!” I hollered.
An old cowboy rushed over apologizing profusely as he checked her wound. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, my bull kicked the bucket from his stall.” He pointed a short distance away.
“You asshole!” I screamed. “When we’re done suing your ass, you won’t have any buckets left!”
Slowly Vinetta started coming to. Though blood was still trickling from her crown, nothing was coming from her ears or her mouth, a good sign. Still, she was unable to fully get her bearings. In another moment the ambulance that had been parked out front came around and a gurney was wheeled over. The children started screaming again, some of them hysterically. Floyd Jr. tried comforting them, but it was obvious that even he was having difficulty coping.
“Oh God,” she said dizzily. “I can’t leave my babies.” The seven blubbering kids grabbed on to her like a flotilla in the stormy seas.
“You need stitches and you should get X-rayed,” said the paramedic. “Just to make sure you don’t have internal bleeding or a concussion.”
“But my kids!” she groaned.
“I’ll take care of them,” I said nervously.
“No! Don’t leave us!” shrieked one of the little girls.
“It’ll be okay.”
“You go on, Ma,” the eight-year-old said, strengthening up. “We’ll be just fine.”
“Call Edwina if you need any help …” she hollered out as they wheeled her into the back of the ambulance and slammed the door. I didn’t know Edwina’s phone number.
All her poor babes wept as the ambulance sped off. Floyd Jr. and I gathered the kids, and I assured them their mother would be okay. They cried almost in tune while I led them back to the banged-up truck. All I could think was: I had interfered in her covenant, and God had exacted His toll.
O
n the drive back to the trailer park, I pulled out my cell phone and called information trying to locate a charitable babysitting service somewhere in the county.
The nearest one I could find was in Memphis, Nannies & Mammies. After relaying all the details to a receptionist, she wanted a hundred dollars an hour to send two high school dropouts to watch seven kids for seven hours—the minimum time, which included the three-hour drive there and back. Since I didn’t have seven hundred dollars, I declined.
When we arrived home, where all the kids and the two dogs howled, yelled, cried, and fought, it hit me with full force that I was seriously screwed. Until she was well, I was food provider, diaper changer, and all-around prison guard for seven psychotic, unfinished convicts. That first night was sheer hell. I checked out the food pantry and put together a menu for our collective dinner. It really came down to two diets: one for the one-to-three-year-olds, who I had to spoonfeed, and a second meal for the five-to-eight-year-olds, who ate under supervision. I really couldn’t have done it without Floyd Jr. Not only was he surprisingly well organized at making dishes, he also knew how to handle the other kids. Still, I was the substitute teacher and they knew that meant they could get away with anything. After wearily cleaning up, it was all I could do to push them all in the direction of the bedroom.
“Nighty night,” I called out as I fell back onto the sofa, exhausted. The sounds of shouts and cries did not diminish. Twenty minutes later Floyd Jr. came out and explained that civil war had again broken out.
“You can’t just dump six kids into a room and expect them to go to bed!”
“I can’t?”
“No, you have to go back in there, make them put their pj’s on, watch them as they brush their teeth, have them all say their prayers, and finish them off with a bedtime story.”
So I pulled myself back up and tiredly did so. By the time they were all properly back in bed, I was barely able to kick off my shoes.
That morning I slept right until seven, when the two-year-olds started bawling their eyes out again for Mommy. It was the first night most of them had ever been away from her. With the help of Floyd Jr., meals were prepared and children were comforted.
Vinetta called that afternoon. Before I could say that I didn’t think I could do this much longer, she explained that the X-rays had revealed a hairline fracture in her cranium. The good news was that she had received a CAT scan and MRI, and though there was mild swelling, the prognosis seemed generally fine. Still, they wanted to keep her for a few days just in case.
“To be honest with you, Vinetta, this is not really something I have an aptitude in, and I—”
Floyd Jr. suddenly snatched the phone out of my hand. “Ma! How’s your head! You okay?” he shouted desperately, “Yes’m, Ma, sorry.” He handed the phone back to me. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Listen, Sandra, good parenting comes down to balancing power with compassion. Focus on meals, laundry, and getting them out of and into bed. In terms of their behavior, they are all little rebels. And they are constantly testing your borders. You have to give it to them twice as hard, single them out for praise and punishment. No one hits my kids, but humiliate them with the Elvis songs. They work. There’s a lot of shame in Elvis’s music, a lot of remorse.”
“What do I—”
“Assign them specific chores, specific times when things begin and end, otherwise they’ll completely overwhelm you. Just remember, if they fear you they love you.”
“I guess I can try—”
“Try hell,” she shot back. “You’ll
do
! You’re all I got and you have to hold down the fort till I get back. The good news is you’ll find strength you never thought you had. And I’ll be home tomorrow night, the day before your big Elvis contest.”
Her gung-ho talk invigorated me. This was one mission that would be accomplished. At my best, I had been an anal-retentive, fault-finding bitch. It never occurred to me I could use that as a weapon. Since the other six kids were swarming around me to say hi to their mom, I made them form a line and handed the phone to the first one.
“You got one minute, then hand the phone behind you.” I stared at my wristwatch.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What should we call you?” asked one of the half-pints.
“Mother Bloomgarten,” I replied.
“Yes, Mama Bloomgarten,” their adorable Southern-accented voices said in chorus. I had to struggle to keep from smiling.
The next day, in addition to my maternal duties, I was able to make some phone calls. They were precautionary, in the event our little extortion backfired again and turned into a murder case with me as the corpse. Intermittently I shouted out orders and the kids jumped. I used them to guide me through the chores, but wasn’t timid about modifying what didn’t work. The hardest part was formulating activities: telling the kids exactly how many minutes they could play on the collapsed swing set, or ride their tricycles with flat tires. At the same time I didn’t want to push them too far. I knew that if my demands became too arbitrary, the eight-year-old—despite his helpfulness—was just waiting to revolt.
Vinetta called that night with good news: the doctors were waiting for final results, but if all went well, she should be back at the trailer the next night.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell them,” she added. “I want it to be a surprise.”
My maternal stint would soon be over. This got me thinking about my own mother. Even though I didn’t believe it was my fault, I felt bad about parting with her on such bad terms. At noon the next day I called her. She answered, but her voice sounded strangely free of all that stressful bitterness. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t her at all, but my sister Ludmilla.
“Cassie,” she said upon recognizing my voice, “I can’t believe it’s you. Sweetie, I have awful news: Mama passed away in her sleep two days ago. We just buried her, and we’re all here sitting shiva today and tomorrow.”
“Oh my God!” It was exactly as Rodmilla had said. She had probably just been waiting to see me one last time. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was going to, but I knew you were on bad terms,” Ludmilla responded. “I figured you were on assignment somewhere and I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me? She was my mom too!”
“Please don’t be cross,” she said. “I just meant that we all have our kids here, so it’s a little tight and I know you and her didn’t really see eye to eye.”