As he sang me a song...

"He's not your real uncle, he's your godfather."

"Why isn't Aunt Thellie my godmother then?"

"Because Aunt Mary is your godmother."

"But I've never even met her.  Besides, you said she's not my real aunt either."

"Oh, can't you just shut up!"

She stormed off and began washing the breakfast dishes, slamming them into the strainer with enough clanging that my father came out of their bedroom. 

"Leah, what's the matter now?" 

"You don't care what I think."

"I just asked you what the matter is. Of course I care."

I wandered out of their reach and quietly slid out the back door.  I could hear my mother's voice rising wildly countered by the low baritone of my father, his words too controlled to be distinguishable.

The sun was already warm. I looked back at the house but could only see my reflection.  The curtains had been closed in an effort to keep the house cool.  The windows would be shut until long after dark unless the wind picked up.  When my mother finally opened them the hot air would get sucked out of the house like a vacuum and we would all be able to breathe again.

I walked out to the barn and sat down near the chicken house.  Two bantam hens sidled over to me and I petted one on either side of me as they scratched and pecked for bugs in the dirt.  My older sister and her friend were lying on their stomachs torturing dragonfly nymphs in the little pools that had formed between the ridges in several Ice-age era, granite boulders. 

This miniature mountain range formed a natural barrier between our house and the property next door.  Two old ladies lived there who my sister said were lesbos.  I asked her what country that was but as usual she wouldn't tell me, leaving me to feel completely ignorant.  I knew better than to ask anyone else what it meant as I'd gotten into trouble too many times for repeating the things she said.  The last time was when I asked my mother what 'menstruation' was.   She'd told me I was much too young to even know that word and had slapped my face.

My father came out the back door and walked down to the big pond.  His ducks and geese saw him and swam toward shore hoping for some extra feed.  He squatted down and began weeding the first row in the lower vegetable garden.  This summer the swisschard and rhubarb were still growing wildly.  The leaves were huge and looked more like tropical foliage than greens, but we both knew they wouldn't last long.  As soon as the weather heated up for a week or two the leaves had to be picked, washed and frozen.

I walked towards him.  When I squatted down several feet away he didn't look up.  I quietly began to weed the rows too.  Gently pulling on the tiny weeds, I was careful not to disturb the carrot seedlings that were growing so thickly.  The flies and bees buzzed around our heads, the sun warmed our backs and it was humid but peaceful for a while.

"Why isn't Aunt Thellie my godmother?" I finally asked.

"Your mother can't stand the woman."

"Why not?"

"Because she can't.  Doesn't like her eyes and never did.  Says she's a drunk, but I think Thellie's all right."

"How come they never give me presents?"

"Why should they?"

"Maria Cucuru's godparents give her jewelry and pretty things all the time."

"Well, maybe you should go live at her house then.  Maybe her godparents will adopt you."

We were quiet for a long time before I spoke again.

"Can I have a new dress for my birthday?"

"When's your birthday?"

"Next week."

"I'll have to ask your mother what she's got planned.  Money's pretty tight right now.  Besides you keep growing.  It won't fit you by the end of the summer."

"It's not fair to give one kid all new clothes and the next kid all hand-me-downs."

"Don't tell me you're gonna talk about what's fair again.  Your sister is the oldest.  There are no hand-me-downs for her.  Your clothes go to your other sister, and your brother gets new clothes 'cause he's a boy."

"It's still not fair, dad."

"Life's not fair.  Might as well get used to it."

I got up and said, "I'm going to the beach.  It's too hot to weed but I'll get us some periwinkles for lunch."

"Don't go leaving them out of the water on the way home or they'll die before we eat 'em."

"I won't, Dad." 

He was treating me like a little kid, but I tried not to show my annoyance. He didn't like a tone in our voices.

Grabbing a couple of plastic pails I started running through our back yard and then through the shortcut. I thought we were pretty lucky to have it.  I could run to the store or the beach in half the time it took me to walk the long way. 

The previous summer I'd gotten a tick in my hair, so any time I passed the trees, I ducked my head way down.  No point in giving the buggers an easy target.

When I got to the beach it was deserted compared to the afternoons.  The moms were still doing their cleaning and laundry during the cooler mornings.  By the time it was absolutely stifling they could pack a lunch and round up their kids.  Two ladies I didn't know were sunning themselves like slimey salamanders, all lathered up with coconut oil I could smell from ten feet away.  They were talking loudly about their husbands but didn't look up as I walked by.

Already barefoot I walked into the frigid water with my pails and climbed up onto the seaweed-covered rocks.  The periwinkles were clinging to their posts as the waves slapped up against them.  I began to absentmindedly pluck them off and toss them in my bucket.  On a dare the week before I had pulled one out of its shell and eaten it raw.  The other kids were so busy 'ew-ing' I'd felt superior all day. 

It had always been pretty easy for me to impress the locals, as they all thought I was smarter than they were.  Once, for fun, I had cleaned some fish and put the eye balls in alcohol in my mother's empty pill container.  I'd carried them around for a couple of days and even the boys had been grossed out.  I wasn't trying to be scary, but they were... well, child's play. 

Another time I had caught a two-foot long garter snake and let it slither and crawl around my neck, all to my cousins' horror.  You see I had nothing but boy cousins my age and until that week they had delighted in trying to scare me with all kinds of creepy crawlies.  I never let them see me playing with my Barbies, as I knew they would relentlessly tease me over playing with dolls.  I wasn't ready to defend my childishness, and besides, it wasn't any of their business.

The worst had been the wasps my cousins let loose in my face, but there had been spiders they claimed were black widows, a baby bat they swore had rabies and some black racer snakes they tried to pass off as poisonous copperheads.  They were bored by July without school and I knew if I kept giving them the rise they wanted it would never end.

When I got back from the beach my father would boil the periwinkles and he and I would take nut picks, pull them out of their shells and dip them into melted butter.  No grown up ever bothered collecting periwinkles as they were so little and time-consuming to round up it was like picking huckleberries.

My mother liked to dip her periwinkles in vinegar and each time made sure she told me I would get fat if I didn't change my ways.  I enjoyed ignoring her, protected by my monster of a father.  Everytime she criticized me for no reason, I fantasized about telling her she reminded me of the [mean] stepmother in Cinderella.

Of course, I never did.  It is one thing to disrespect your mother in your head, but entirely another to do it out loud.  I never enjoyed hurting anybody, even if they sort of deserved it from time to time.  I had learned it felt terrible when I watched my words sink in and their faces got all contorted.  Part of my brain was very cruel.  I could think of the meanest things to say to people but I usually didn't.  If words escaped you could never take them back.  I wished my mother would take that into consideration, but she was already a lost cause.  She lacked the verbal editing gene.

As I filled my buckets up I grabbed some of the seaweed and ate it.  I loved the salty texture and the watery bulbous part.  Every summer I lost weight and by the end of August was actually skinny.  My mother attributed this to my love of seaweed, but it wasn't the seaweed, it was the freedom.   She was usually too busy with the other kids to pay any attention to me.  I would go to the beach, the quarry pits, ride my bike up and down a monster hill, and walk for miles in the Dogwood reserve. 

Twice single men chased me in the woods, but I was a fast runner.  Neither of them ever caught me as I had quite acute hearing and stayed alert.  Dogs didn't scare me, but I was terrified of mountain lions and bears so I ran at the first crack of a twig.  Of course, I never told my parents about being chased because I would have gotten a beating for being stupid.  That was pretty much the rule in our household.  If you did something stupid, you got the belt.

Of course, the definition of stupid changed daily.  Sometimes it was letting the dog out and other times it was not reading my mother's mind.  She was a strange woman for her time as she'd been educated and treated like a prima dona when she was an opera singer and classical pianist.  I used to wonder how she felt on her hands and knees waxing the floor.  It wasn't like singing Madame Butterfly.  It seemed sad to me, really, as she was so beautiful.  I hated to see her sweat or that piece of hair that would fall down over her eyes.  Her black, black mane was truly that thick, wavy movie star hair every girl wanted.

She would talk about the musicians she had met, the great conductors, the other opera stars, and her eyes would light up.  She almost looked crazy at times as she talked about how everyone thought she was so talented, but she'd fallen in love.  The way she said it, it sounded like a contagious disease.  She would sigh and moan and go back to snapping green beans or hanging the clothes on the line, or drinking the glass of wine she'd hidden behind the Tide detergent box she always left on the kitchen counter. 

When I got back from the beach I noticed my Uncle's car.  I dropped the buckets on the patio table and ran into the house.

"Uncle Tommy!" I called.

"Could this beautiful young goddess be my goddaughter?" he asked with twinkling eyes.

They were an icy blue and didn't have the exotic flare my mother's brown eyes did, but they had the same wild look as hers.

"Uncle Tommy!  Aunt Thellie!"  I said the latter with the same enthusiasm, so as not to hurt her feelings. 

Thellie smiled at me tolerantly and poured a little more vodka into her drink.  Then she stirred it with her finger as my mother reminded me to keep my voice down.

"Did you bring your ukelele?" I asked eagerly.

"How could I serenade a fabulous young lady like yourself without it?"

He always winked and then smiled as if we were sharing some secret privy only to the two of us.  He handed me a box tied with a lovely red ribbon.

"Thank you so much," I cooed.  "Can I open it?"

"Of course you can and don't let anyone tell you to share it either," he added conspiratorially.

I carefully untied the satin bow, respectfully winding it into a circle to show how I knew it was too pretty not to be reused.  As I pulled open the box I saw at least a pound of peanut brittle.

"Thank you so much, Uncle Tommy, and thank you so much too, Aunt Thellie."

I said this in my biggest faker voice possible.  I hated peanut brittle, but who would be rude enough to say that?

"Have a piece," he urged happily.

"She hasn't had lunch yet, Tommy.  It will ruin her appetite."

"Oh, Leah, leave the girl alone.  She's certainly not emaciated.  Look at her.  She's perfect!"

Dutifully I ate a piece of the brittle thinking how much I hated peanuts and how much more I hated the candy part.  I smiled at both of them before I excused myself.

"Thank you so much, but I left the periwinkles on the table in the sun."

"Ooooo, periwinkles.  Heavens, is the beach clean enough for that?"  My Aunt Thellie had already crossed the alcohol barrier.  "Don't those septics empty into that part of the ocean?"

"Here, Thellie, have some cheese and crackers." 

My mother pushed these toward her as my father cast his disapproving eye on my Aunt.

"Oh, no, Leah, I'm dieting.  I'm fine." 

She poured another shot of vodka into her drink and repeated the same finger-stir, even though my father had silently handed her a stirrer stick.

I quietly walked to the back door just as I heard the juvenile chords spring from the ukelele.

"I'll be down to get you in a taxi, honey,
Better be ready bout a half past eight
Now honey, don't be late
I want to get there when the band starts playing..."

I looked back and his eyes were smiling at me.  Later he would serenade me some more and then while my mother and father played "Roll out the barrel", we would dance the polka.  He would spin me around much too fast, often lifting my feet off the ground and we would laugh joyously.

Written by Elizabeth Madrigal

 © 2008 Elizabeth Madrigal