The Book of Bright Ideas (25 page)

So it was decided.

And it was a good plan, I guess. Had it only gone right.

23

Mrs. Malone hadn't even hoisted herself off of her chair yet when the front door creaked open and Freeda's voice rang through the house. “Verdella? Hey, I came to see if you and Button can come over. Winnalee ran a nail up her foot and I had to bring her in to the doctor.” I saw Freeda from the dining room where I was standing. Her sandal snagged on the rag rug, and she stopped to right it with her other foot. “She's carrying on like she's dying, of course. She says it hurts to walk, so she wants Button to come over to play paper dolls or something—and I've got to get to Marty's. I'm late for work already!”

Noises went crazy in my throat as Freeda slipped her foot back into her shoe, then clacked through the dining room. I glanced into the kitchen, where Aunt Verdella and Hannah Malone stood, still as icicles.

“Hey there, Button,” Freeda said when she reached me. “Where's your—” And her voice stopped when she ran smack-dab into the same picture of those frozen ladies that I was looking at.

For a minute, Aunt Verdella and Mrs. Malone stood at the table staring at Freeda, their eyes big and round and scared.

Freeda was the first to speak. “What in the hell are you doing here?” I looked up at Freeda. Even from a side view, I could see that her eyes had changed into glowing slits. Like cats' eyes, when their ears go back and the fur on their back humps up.

“Freeda!” Hannah Malone's eyes, which were nothing but two red holes from crying, filled up like rain puddles.

“How in the hell did you find me?”

Aunt Verdella moved first. She rushed to Freeda and wrapped one arm around Freeda's waist, resting her free hand on Freeda's arm. “Honey. Just stay calm. I can explain everything.”

Freeda looked at Aunt Verdella as though Aunt Verdella had suddenly turned into some kind of a scary monster. Freeda squirmed out of Aunt Verdella's hold and turned around until she was facing the dining room.

“Please, Freeda. Sit down. Let's talk. For Winnalee's sake,” Aunt Verdella said.

Freeda shook her head like there were spiders crawling against her scalp. “There's nothing to talk about. I want
her
out of here right now.” She turned back toward the kitchen and pointed toward the table, her finger wagging. “Don't you even think about coming near Winnalee. You hear? I'll blow your fuckin' brains out if you even try.”

Aunt Verdella's gasp was the loudest. “Freeda! That's your mother you're talking to!”

“I don't give a damn who she is. I want her to leave me and Winnalee alone!” I could only see Freeda's back, but I knew from the way she was standing—all stiff, her hip banged over to one side—that she meant business.

“Young lady, don't you talk to me like that!” Hannah Malone said, and her voice didn't sound like a sad little girl's voice no more.

“Shit. My mother, my ass.” I could hear something close to tears in Freeda's voice. She turned to Aunt Verdella. Her voice, when it came, was filled with anger. “Did you send for her? Did you?”

“No, honey. I didn't.”

“Then how in the hell did she find me in this little rat hole of a town?”

“I can explain, Freeda,” Aunt Verdella said. “I can explain if you'll only listen.” Freeda crossed her arms, her fingers pressed hard against her skin.

“I didn't bring her here, but I am responsible for her coming. I'm sorry, Freeda. I didn't do it on purpose. I'd gone to Hopested to buy your ma a plot and a gravestone. For Winnalee's sake. So that poor child didn't have to carry that urn around anymore. That's when I found out that—”

“You had no right sticking your nose in my goddamn business!”

“I wasn't trying to stick my nose in anyone's business, dear. I was just trying to do something nice for Winnalee and you. That's all. The funeral home told your mother I'd been there. I'd given my name and address, of course, and I gave them the name I wanted on the gravestone. That's when they told me that your ma was still alive.”

Hannah Malone, who was standing now, braced her hands on the table and glared at Freeda. “It doesn't matter how I found out, Freeda. What matters is that I am here now. And you, young lady, owe me an apology, as well as proof that my grandchild is well and happy. And if you had an ounce of sense in that head of yours, you'd hand Winnalee over to me right now, so that child could finish growing up in a good Christian home.”

I could almost feel Freeda's rage then, so hot that it seemed it could burn us all in one swipe. I stepped backward and slid around the dining-room table, not wanting to be too close when Freeda went all the way berserk. “I don't owe you a goddamn thing. Not one fuckin' thing! And don't you talk to me about good Christian homes either!”

Hannah Malone slapped the kitchen table with one fat hand. “Stop that foul language right now. And whatever you do, do not take the Lord's name in vain in my presence. You hear me?”

I heard Aunt Verdella mutter, “Oh dear.”

Freeda laughed, but there was no fun in her voice. “Yes, oh my, we could not have the family embarrassed by Freeda's foul mouth, now, could we?”

“You
should
be embarrassed!” Hannah said. “After the things you've done to our family. Dragging our good name through the mud, and breaking my heart as you've done!”

Freeda sprung at her then, her hands wrapped in tight fists. “Shut up, you self-righteous bitch! Shut the fuck up!”

Aunt Verdella grabbed Freeda's arm and held tight. “Freeda, please. Hannah. Let's all calm down, please! All this screaming isn't gonna solve anything. Don't go saying things you'll both regret later.”

Freeda yanked her arm away and wrapped it back around herself. She was huffing and stepping from side to side, like she was waiting for one of those starting guns to tell her it was time to run. “I want her out of this goddamn town. Now. Or I'm gonna bolt. You understand, Verdella?”

“Freeda, please, say anything you want to me, but I can't bear to hear my Lord's name taken in vain,” Hannah said.

Freeda laughed, but I don't think she thought what her ma said was really funny. “Isn't it a joke, Ma? That after all that happened, the issue to you is what cusswords come out of my mouth? Jesus H. Christ. Somebody slap me before I lose my fucking mind over the absurdity of it all.”

“Will you sit down, Freeda? Please?” Aunt Verdella asked.

Freeda shook her head.

“Okay. Okay. Just calm down, then, dear, please. And maybe you and your ma can have a good talk and—”

“No, Verdella. This isn't my ma sitting here. My ma died to me, years ago.”

More tears squeezed out of Hannah's puffy eyes. “Freeda, please. Don't be cruel now.”

“Don't be cruel? Oh my God!” Freeda grabbed at the sides of her head and shook it. “I can't believe you'd dare call
me
cruel. My God!” She started crying then too, but those kind of angry tears that make people gasp and gulp, and growl.

“Calling your mother foul names isn't cruel?” Hannah asked. “Telling her own grandbaby that she's dead, and ripping away the child I raised by myself for five years, isn't cruel?”

“You want to talk about cruel, Ma? Is that what you want to talk about? Fine! Let's talk about cruel!

“Let's talk about a ten-year-old girl coming to you—your own baby girl—to tell you that her uncle Dewey has been slipping into her room at night and touchin' her pee-pee. And let's talk about you slappin' her face for saying a bad word like
pee-pee
!”

Hannah Malone gasped, as did Aunt Verdella. Aunt Verdella looked up then and saw me standing behind the table, watching and listening. “Button. You go over and sit with Winnalee. You hear me?”

I ducked away from the door and walked through the living room. My stomach felt sick, and I could taste blood inside my mouth. I knew I should keep walking. Right out the front door and across the lawn, just like Aunt Verdella told me to. But I couldn't get my feet to keep moving, and I couldn't get my big ears to stop listening either. And before I knew it, my feet were walking me around back to listen and peek at the kitchen door.

“Oh, I could spit on you, for that look of shock you just plastered on your face,” Freeda said to her ma. “I could! I came to you after putting up with that son of a bitch's sick shit for months, and I was so scared to tell you what he was doing that I puked. Remember that? I puked before I could even get all the words out, just as I held puke in my mouth every time that sick bastard came and touched me like that, and made me touch him too. I was terrified, because he'd told me that if you ever found out what
I
was doing, you'd be so heartsick that it would kill you. I was terrified that you'd die on the spot when I told you, but I needed some comforting bad that day. Unfortunately, you didn't have any comfort to give me. You gave me a slap and a goddamn rag and told me to clean up my mess, because you couldn't bend. And after that, you said you couldn't make the stairs anymore because of your knees, and you let me sleep up there alone with that fucker every single night.”

“Oh my,” Aunt Verdella said, and there was pain in her voice. She went to Freeda and wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, honey,” she said. Freeda let Aunt Verdella hug her a bit, but she pulled her head off of Aunt Verdella's shoulder.

“Is it any wonder, Ma, that I turned out the way I did? Hating men as I do? Yeah, I give them what they want, but goddammit, if I gotta play the role as somebody's whore, the way I had to play that role with my own uncle, you can bet I'll pick and choose the time, and place, and the guy. Because no matter what, I will never lay there helpless and scared while some sweaty, fat bastard paws me, telling me to lay still and be quiet. Not ever again in my life will I do that!”

“Stop this, Freeda. Stop it!” Hannah yelled. “You're making all of this up to justify taking Winnalee from me! What you said never happened. You're lying!”

“Lying? You dirty bitch!” Freeda pulled herself out of Aunt Verdella's arms. “You know damn well I'm not lying. You knew it was the truth then, and you know it's the truth now. Course, I believed I'd made it all up for a while, just like you'd said. It doesn't take much to fool a kid, now, does it? Especially when that kid
wants
to be fooled into believing something that horrible isn't happening. But that forgetting didn't last nearly long enough. All too soon, the truth came back to me. All of it.”

“If that happened, Freeda, I'm sorry. I didn't know,” Hannah Malone said. She didn't sound real sorry though.

“You didn't know?
You didn't know?
It happened right in front of your goddamn eyes! At the kitchen table, while you were cutting out doughnuts from a mound of dough. Dewey sitting right across from you. That fucker had me on his lap with you sitting right there, and his hairy hand went up my dress while he dunked a warm doughnut into his coffee cup. Don't you even try saying you didn't know! You sat there, your fat-ass cheeks red and bulging with a goddamn doughnut, while tears rolled down my face. I was so ashamed, Ma. Ashamed of myself, as though
I
was to blame for what he was doing. And I knew by the look you gave me that you were ashamed of me too. To this goddamn, fucking day, I can't look at a doughnut, or sleep in an upstairs, without puke rising up in my throat.

“And later, when you found out that the neighborhood boys were having their way with me, you remember what you told me? Or did you conveniently forget that too? You told me that it was no wonder that Dewey did the things he did, with me throwing myself at him, the way I threw myself at the schoolboys. That's what you said to me!”

Freeda looked like she was shrinking as the mad seeped out of her, leaving nothing but the sad. “I was as loving as Winnalee, and, yep, I crawled up on his lap when he first came to stay with us, and I giggled when he tickled me, and even coaxed him to tickle me more. But goddammit, I wasn't asking for
that
! I was asking to be loved, because I missed my daddy.”

I batted at the tears that were falling down my face, tickling my chin.

“Stop this, Freeda! Kids remember things wrong sometimes, don't they, Mrs. Peters?” Aunt Verdella didn't say nothing. “But I didn't come here to talk about the past. I have no interest in the past or anything except to see my grandbaby. I raised her for five years, Freeda. Five years! You had no right to take her from me as you did. Why didn't you just stay out of our lives. Why?”

Freeda turned more mad than sad again, her hands balling back into fists. “I came to get her because I ran into a trucker in Chicago who knew Dewey, and he told me that Dewey had left there to go back home to Hopested, where he planned to truck for his old company. I left that very same night, because I'd be damned if I was gonna let that motherfucker get his hands on my baby!”