“I know that, Momma. I do. But we worked, too. We baked gingersnaps and lemon twist cookies and banana bread until I hated the sight of sugar with a passion, and I don’t want you twisting our history into your own victimhood.”
She said nothing, but her face reddened. “You may leave now.” She tilted her head at me in dismissal and picked up her nutcracker. The symbolism was not lost on me. “I have decided that your presence is unnecessary.”
Cecilia leaned against the wall, the color of coffee foam, shaking her head back and forth, her blue eyes beseeching me. “Don’t leave me with the witch,” she hissed.
“You may leave, I said,” Momma sang out. Her eyes were bright. Perhaps there was a tear?
Nah. Nada. Not our momma.
Silly me.
Behind me, Janie started to chant. “I will make my own boundaries and hold myself to them, I will make my own boundaries and hold myself to them…”
Cecilia put her hands together in prayer, pointing the tips of her fingers at us, mouthing, “She’s wicked. You must stay.”
“We’re all fine without you. More than fine.” Momma’s perfectly manicured hands did not still.
Cecilia had taken the brunt of Momma for years. She could have left, like me and Janie. But she hadn’t. I tried to smash my guilt down.
“You two have lived your own selfish lives without us. Cecilia has been the only daughter who has valued family.”
Cecilia closed her eyes tight, her breathing labored. “Please, please, please,” she mouthed at me. “Help me!”
It was like living inside a horror flick and the resident she-devil was directing what happened.
“I can make my own decisions. I do not have to choose to stay,” Janie muttered. “I am strong. I am mighty. I am not a doormat for others’ abuse. I can say no. No. No.”
“Janie,” I told her. “Grab your suitcases. We’re moving in.”
Janie sounded like she was choking on a rock. Cecilia squeaked with relief.
Momma cracked a nut, a slight smile tipping the corners of her mouth.
I wanted to heave that bowlful of nuts through one of the stained-glass windows, followed by my momma.
Like I said, if you happened upon Momma, she would remind you of a southern belle. A model for petite, older women’s clothes. A serene lady.
You would never guess, I thought, as I stomped out to my motorcycle, my stomach churning, my anger switch flipped on high, that our elegant, proper momma had been a stripper when we were growing up.
That’s right.
A stripper. Pole, G-string, and glitter.
Va va voom.
4
C ecilia, Janie, and I trooped toward Janie’s Porsche parked outside Grandma’s house.
Henry bopped along beside us. “Sisters home! Sisters home! Who want to play the hide-and-seek! That game! Hide-and-seek!”
“We’ll play with you, Henry,” Cecilia said. “We have to get Isabelle and Janie settled first.” Then she muttered, “They’re moving into the witch’s house.”
“Okay dokay!”
I hugged Henry. He’s the nicest person I know. My poor brother had survived one wrecking-ball blow after another in his life and he miraculously still found eight hundred things to smile about. “Let me unpack. How’s your stamp collection?”
He laughed. “I have fifty-six stamps, Isabelle! Fifty-six! I have a stamp from North Dakota! Do you know where that is? I don’t!” He clapped twice. “Do you know where Michigan is? I don’t!” Clapped twice. “Do you know where Florida is?” He loved this game. “I do! They have swamps and alligators and an ocean and Disney World!” Henry loves Florida. Never been there, but he loves it. He started singing, “Mickey Mouse! Donald Duck! For ever ever ever…”
I noticed that Janie was not with us anymore. I stopped and turned around. Janie was crouched on all fours in the middle of the grass, her skinny body jerking as she went through a series of dry heaves.
“You think this is hard, you counting hermit?” Cecilia snapped, her usual compassionate self. “Try living with it day in, day out, for years. Know how many times I’ve been told I’m the size of a pregnant hippo? How she never thought she’d have a fat daughter? Get up, Tapping Queen, and suck it up.” She flounced past me, grabbed two suitcases, and marched back to the house. “Get in the house, hermit.”
“I’ll get your stuff, Janie,” I told her. She nodded weakly, went back to dry heaving.
Janie had brought five suitcases, a laptop, a sack of self-help books and her classics, a giant picture of her houseboat (“so I can visualize a peaceful place”), East Indian music, her embroidery basket, teas, a Yo-Yo Ma CD, a yoga mat, a picture of her therapist, and nine new journals to “write in when I feel like Momma will overwhelm or diminish me. My journals will recenter me, help me to find the goodness and strength within myself, and the courage to stand up tall as a person who deserves respect.”
I left Henry patting pale Janie, slung my favorite camera around my neck, and dragged my suitcases into the house, up the wood stairs, down the yellow-painted hallway, and into my old bedroom.
My bedroom was painted a light sage color and had a window seat overlooking the front porch. I used to climb out this window at night to meet one boy or the other for attention and copulation purposes. My bed was a twin, with a flowered bedspread on it. Two white nightstands and a white dresser and desk completed the room.
Janie’s room was pink with white curtains. Her room was smaller than mine but had a funky, pitched ceiling and two dormer windows. I knew she would soon be cowering in her closet, chanting to herself, rocking, embroidering flowers, trying not to let Momma undo years of therapy.
I already felt like the walls were sucking me in, stripping away my fragile, tenuous hold on sanity. The blackness in my head foamed a bit, bubbled, swirled. I had been an adult for so long, but a few minutes in this house and I was regressing.
I flicked my braids back and took a shuddery breath.
I was home.
Welcome back to your nightmare, I told myself. Welcome back.
I heard the van pull up in front of the house about an hour later. I leaned out the window of my bedroom, that busy wind blowing my braids and beads.
There she was. I couldn’t help chuckling. Within minutes I heard her marching up the steps, then a brisk knock on my door.
I smiled at my grandma, a tiny woman with white, curly hair, standing in the doorway wearing old-fashioned, air force flight gear, including an antique flight helmet and goggles. It was hard to believe that until a few years ago, when dementia caught up to her, Grandma was a firebrand who’d nitpicked Momma until she could barely see straight through her fury.
“Amelia!” I exclaimed. “Amelia Earhart!”
“Good to see you, young lady.” She narrowed her eyes at me, saluted, clicking her black army boots together two times. “You’re familiar to me. I believe we met during my speaking tour in 1929. That tour exhausted me!” She flipped a hand to her forehead. “It was my sinuses. Clogged. Burning. Running.”
“How are your sinuses today, Mrs. Earhart?”
“Better.” She tipped her head up, touched her nose. “Probably because of my latest operation. The doctors had no idea what they were doing, none. Men are stupid. I’m surprised my nose is still on my face.”
“I’m glad it’s still there, Amelia.”