Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes(5)

 

When I pulled onto our street of older bungalows, I knew I was late. The rustle of curtains in the front window as I parked in the gravel driveway confirmed it. Momma had been watching for me.

 

The over-grown landscape encroached on the broken concrete sidewalk. I had to sidestep the bushes to walk to the side of the house. Daddy had taken great pride in his house and would be upset to see the state of things. He’d always kept the hedges neatly trimmed, the yard meticulously cut, and a multitude of flowers blooming along the edge of the walk. Daddy had loved his flowers. I often wondered if that was how Violet and I had gotten our names. Momma would never say. I did the best I could with the yard, but it was a big lot and Momma refused to hire anyone to help maintain it. I was lucky to get the lawn mowed and tend to my rose garden in the back.

 

I walked in the side door and set my purse on the kitchen table. The sounds of the television filtered in from the living room. I knew Momma would be watching the national news on the Shreveport channels we used to get with our giant antenna outside. Now the news came through a little black box that sat on top of the TV. Momma resisted the box and pronounced it a government attempt to spy on us, but the alternative meant no television since Momma refused to get cable. Momma declared cable full of pornography, though what I’d seen at Violet and Mike’s house looked perfectly respectable. Even if I could have convinced her otherwise, she would never have stood for paying to watch television.

 

“Hello, Momma. Did you have a good day?”

 

I heard her harrumph. “I most certainly did not. Ya left the air conditionin’ on. It cooled off so I had to go through the entire house and open all them winders.”

 

“I’m sorry, Momma. They said it might rain so I worried you would have to close the windows if I left them open.”

 

“I ain’t made of money, Rose Anne.”

 

“Yes, Momma.” I let the detail that I paid the electric bill slide right on by.

 

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the meatloaf I’d made in the morning before work. I would’ve asked Momma to put it in the oven so it would be ready when I came home, but she claimed she couldn’t bend over anymore. She was only sixty-two years old, but you couldn’t tell by the way she behaved. Our eighty-two year old neighbor, Mildred, often acted younger than Momma did.

 

“Why’re you so late?” she called from the other room.

 

I ignored the so late comment. I was only ten minutes later than usual. “It’s the Friday before Memorial Day, Momma. Everybody’s trying to get out of town and head to the lake. The intersections downtown were plum crazy.”

 

There was a moment of silence as I pulled a bag of potatoes from the cupboard.

 

“I heard about your faintin’ spell.”

 

I sighed and grabbed the peeler from the drawer. It didn't surprise me she’d heard already. Gossip in Henryetta spread faster than a smallpox plague in an internment camp.

 

“I heard ya had a fit right there at your desk, thrashin’ and foamin’ at the mouth and flingin’ your arms everywhere. I must say it didn't surprise me one bit, what with your demon and all.”

 

“That’s not what happened, Momma. I just got a bit dizzy after lunch is all. I lost my balance and hit my head on my desk.”

 

“Hmm…that’s not what I heard from Mildred.”

 

“Momma, Mildred wasn’t even there. I promise you, it was nothin’.”

 

“Hmm…”

 

Her voice faded into the national news anchor’s monologue. Momma loved the nightly news. Nothing made her happier than watching carnage and pestilence sweeping through the world so she could mutter, “I told you so” to the television. Momma said the world was the devil’s playground and the people in it weren’t nothing but the devil’s Barbie dolls, dressed up in floozy clothes and lettin’ loose in fancy cars, God bless their souls. The fact that a good portion of the world lived in poverty remained lost on her.

 

I finished peeling the potatoes and started them boiling on the stove. Cleaning the scraps out of the sink, I peered out the little window. A soft breeze fluttered the gauzy curtain while I studied my next-door neighbor pulling a lawn mower out of the dilapidated, rusted shed behind his house.

 

He wasn’t from around here which made him an outsider, kind of like me. I’d never talked to him. I was too shy to approach a man, especially an attractive man close to my own age. He had moved into the old Williams house a couple of months earlier. The neighbors suspected he was single since they never saw a woman come and go. Trust me, if a woman had shown up, it would have been caught by the eyes of the Busybody Club. The elderly women of the Neighborhood Watch loved to snoop under the guise of being vigilant.