IMOGENE
DAILY SPECIAL
Chocolate Cupcakes .10¢
Closed for Sunday Mass – Open again at 11:00 A.M. sharp!
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH and I hadn’t been on speaking terms for years. But maybe Theo was right about creating order for Tula. “Order out of the chaos,” he said. Fine. For her, I’d go, begrudgingly. But no sitting up front. The back row, close to the door.
My store’s specials sign would give the busybodies something to gnaw on. Imogene went to church! I was tired of their theories on the still-unsolved murders. It was time they had something new. I hung the sign in the window, grabbed a pack of gum, and went upstairs.
“Ladies,” I said plunking down on Tula’s bed. “We only have twenty minutes.”
Tula and Pearl stood next to the mirrored vanity. Pearl had tried for several days to persuade her to wear the coat that matched ours. It lay crumpled on the floor in the corner. She also tried to convince Tula to wear the dress; then was the struggle with her hair. All lost battles.
Pearl wrestled to braid her wavy shoulder-length hair.
Tula turned to me, her eyes pleading and said, “Do I have to?”
I ran my hand along the edge of the untouched bed I’d made the day before, wondering when she’d stop sleeping on the floor.
“No honey,” I said, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Ouch! Stop that!” Tula yanked away from Pearl.
She’d been angrier and more distant since Bud took her mother’s red shoe. It was, after all, evidence. Such a clinical word for such a gruesome thing. Evidence. Proof that something unexplainable and grotesque had taken place.
“Pearl, let her be now,” I said, gently patting the top of Tula’s unruly chestnut hair. “Let her choose.” I motioned for Pearl to follow me.
“She look like boy,” Pearl said as she marched down the hall to the kitchen.
I set a cup of mint tea in front of her at the table, then another cup for her ghost, and said, “Let her find her own way.”
I thought about Tula’s face when Bud put her mother’s shoe in the bag marked OCTOBER 1956 – MULTNOMAH COUNTY SHERIFF: EVIDENCE. How her eyes blinked away the tears. I thought on how he had her mother on a cold slab in the morgue, unable to release her body because it was confirmation of a transgression: evidence. And if he could release it, there was nobody to release it to, nobody old enough to understand, nobody to care what happened to Tula’s mommy. Bad mommy that she may have been, she was still a mommy. Even though Tula didn’t know those things, I think she sensed them. That was enough for now. And for now she could bloody well wear whatever clothes she wanted.
“She just needs more time,” I said. “That’s all.”
Pearl stared into the empty mug next to her tea, cupped her hand around it, and relaxed into the vinyl chair. “We be late to church if—,” she started to say, but right then Tula slithered into the kitchen.
“I’m ready,” Tula grumbled, staring at the linoleum floor, her hair haphazardly braided with the pink ribbon Pearl wanted her to wear, knotted in the rubber band and dangling like a hangman’s rope along her left shoulder. She didn’t have on the dress—her slacks and white cotton blouse, of course—but she was wearing the sweater that went with the Sunday school dress. Never mind that it was buttoned all kiddywampus. It was on, and we were near ready.
A smile as broad as a Moon Pie spread across Pearl’s face.
Inch by inch, I thought, that’s how we will discover this amazing though somewhat cranky child. Inch by inch.
“You have time for a quick breakfast,” I said, pulling a chair away from the table for her. “Cereal, hotcakes, eggs?” I knew to not fuss over how cute she looked. Pearl’s syrupy smile was plenty to embarrass her to pieces, maybe send her running back upstairs to tear off the sweater, yank the ribbon out of her hair, and lock herself in that room for the third time in as many days. “Hot cocoa?” I asked, real swift before she had a chance to reconsider. “We’re out of Tony the Tiger, but we have—”
“Twinkies,” Tula said, dropping onto the bench and trying to straighten her ruffled sweater cuffs. “And milk . . . please. Solomon lets me have Twinkies.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to put a wrinkle in things by telling her Solomon didn’t know everything. After all, along with his fish he’d eat an entire pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I’d let him.
“You so pretty,” Pearl said, cautiously leaning forward and patting her hand.
Tula slid her hand off the table to her lap and offered a strained thanks.
“Twinkies?” I said pondering my open cupboard. I hadn’t thought about Twinkies in years. “Hm . . . ” I searched the shelves. “If I let you have a Twinkie, for breakfast, will you also eat one egg, then?” I found a box of Twinkies behind the Ovaltine and Quaker Oats.
Tula’s face pinched up. “Ew! . . . Okay . . . But I need mustard. Eggs need mustard.”
“Okay,” I said. “Mustard on eggs, coming up.”
The Twinkies had been shoved to the back of the freezer some years ago. I stared at the white box. My body tensed.
When I was pregnant with Christina I’d craved and eaten them every day for eight months. Then, when she was born, my taste for them turned to disdain, like smelling alcohol the morning after a drunken night—I never wanted another. Besides, I had all the sweetness one heart could handle in the tiny fingers and rosebud lips of my baby girl.
I opened the package, wrapped one in foil and set it on the woodstove to thaw while I scrambled eggs.
“There ya go,” I said. “One Twinkie and two scrambled eggs with mustard.”
We watched her devour the Twinkie. The creamy filling spread across her lips. I felt for the charm on my bracelet and massaged the letters.
When Christina died I bought several boxes of Twinkies and scarfed more than a few each day for a month, unable to get enough. I’d open the package, peel off the cellophane, smell, touch, squeeze, and pick at the apricot-colored cake. Then I’d shove the whole damn thing in my mouth. The centers split open and coated my throat with cream so sweet it reached into my tear ducts and ruptured the dam that held back what was left to spill. I’d weep and eat, starved for something, anything to sustain me.