Authors: Jennifer Browning
Miss Celia came over and gave me a warm, but formal hug and let go quickly. “How are you Andy? We miss you around here. You were always one of my favorite students.”
“Thanks, Miss Celia, that’s kind of what I was coming to talk to you about.
I’m trying to save up some money for going to college this fall and you always said you’d love for me to help you teach a class, so I thought I’d see if you were still interested.”
“Oh, yes. I could use the help, sugar. Sometimes youth has the advantage over experience.” She said wistfully. “If you’re here, we could do the hip hop class for the young kids. I haven’t had the energy for years, but the parents would be thrilled. I can pitch it to them as a special summer class and I bet enrollment would double.
” She sounded excited and turned to the kids for confirmation “What do you think, class, would you like to learn some hip hop dance?”
One little girl squealed, but the others looked like they could care less and were only there because their mothers made them come.
Tough crowd.
“Do you still know the routines?” Miss Celia asked me hopefully. She had been a backup dancer for a short lived pop group in the 80s before
moving to
Palmetto
and setting up shop. Compared to the videos I watched online, her technique was pretty sloppy, but it was never really my place to say anything about that.
“Of course I do
.” I reassured her, knowing that if I suggested any changes to the dry and straightforward routines she taught me 10 years ago, she would balk.
S
o
we
decided that I would teach a limited edition hip hop class and sub
stitute
in on a few ballet classes a week
in exchange for a little bit of pay and all the studio time I wanted
.
I hadn’t danced recently, except at the senior center with Nan, and I missed it.
3
Noah wasn’t there when I went to Mrs. Merchant’s house
for
a
cooking lesson
, which was fine by me since my mother had come along to see Mrs. Merchant’s daughter. It turned out they had been in school together,
but
Theresa
had left town and forgotten to keep in touch.
Theresa
immediately hugged my mother in what appeared to be unexpected affection.
S
he introduced herself to me as
Trixie
. Mrs. Merchant grunted disapprovingly.
Trixie
seemed a little loose for an early afternoon and I guessed the open bottle of liquor on the counter had something to do with it. She took my mother by the hand and led her to another room, right past Jessica without the care I expected a grandmother to bestow upon a little girl, much less her own granddaughter. Jessica didn’t seem to notice. Her face brightened when she saw me, but she checked Mrs. Merchant’s face before she came over to say hello. When she saw that I was alright
in Mrs. Merchant’s book
, she took my hand and jumped up and down.
“Hi Andy!
Wanna
play tag you’re it?”
she
asked excitedly.
The girl looked starved for playtime, but I was
t
here for cooking lessons.
“Sorry, Jessica.
I’m here to play with your great-grandma today. She’s going to teach me how to cook some things.” I apologized.
Jessica seemed disappointed but not surprised. I promised we’d play tag after the cooking, but she looked like she didn’t believe me. It made me a little sad a
nd I wondered how many grownups
had broken their promises to her.
David came along after a minute to say hello and tried to distract Jessica, but
he looked tired.
I guessed he could use a break and asked
him
if
Jessica
could help us in the kitchen. Jessica’s smile lit up again and David was powerless to refuse. He quietly read
a book
on the porch just outside the kitchen door while Jessica and I got our first lesson.
Thankfully Mrs. Merchant assumed I knew how to boil water, which was true. So our first lesson was a little more advanced: how to make mashed potatoes. Sure, it seems like a simple concept, but even that was a culinary ch
allen
ge for me. For Jessica’s part, she wanted to do the peeling and cutting, but was relegated to adding salt to the water and milk and butter to the mash. I found the whole process fascinating. When we were almost done, my mother came in to see how we were coming. She was ready to leave, but I’d promised to play with Jessica. David spoke
up
for the first time from the porch through the screen door. I could bring her home
Mrs
….?”
“Taylor, but please call me
Jospehine
.”
“Josephine, then.
It’s really no troub
le. I need to go to the laundry place
again anyway.”
Mrs. Merchant scowled.
“There’s nothing wrong with a
line dry. Clothes last longer that way.”
She said gruffly.
David didn’t respond. This was clearly
not the first time they’d had that discussion
. My mother asked if that would be okay with me and
walked out to the porch to giv
e David a look over as if she might use her mom-radar to see if he was a rapist or serial killer. Apparently the mom-
dar
stayed silent so
she
agreed.
Jessica and I spent an hour playing Tag and hide and seek in the backyard. We even convinced David to play a few rounds, but he acted a lot like an old man in young skin. When Jessica started to get cranky, David decided to take me
home. It wasn’t a long drive,
but Jessica fell asleep in the back of the car before we got there.
David thanked me for playing with
Jessica
and admitted she doesn’t get enough time with kids her own age. I told him about an indoor park at the mall in Greenville.
He wasn’t very talkative and I guessed that he was tired.
I didn’t want to pry about his mother seeming distant with Jessica, or to seem too eager to know about Noah so we left it at that.
4
Trixie
had been
perfectly polite to my mother – complimented her dress and acted like any normal person seeing an old friend. My mom
acted
strange
ly
, though
,
and I could tell there was some subtext under the exchange
when they saw each other
. Exactly what, I couldn’t tell. I had always imagined I knew my mother pretty well. She told me almost everything in her life and, while I knew her li
fe didn’t begin when I was born,
I thought she’d told me the important things. Maybe this wasn’t very important, but I would ask later.
I waited until
she had settled down into her favorite chair
when I thought she’d have trouble avoiding the question.
“So, what was going on between you and M
r
s.
Bastion
?”
She looked uncomfortable at the question. “What do you mean?” So she wanted to play hard to get. I wasn’t going to let her evade me.
“I mean you were acting really strange. You don’t like her do you?” My mom sighed deeply, opened her mouth to say something then stopped and started again. “We knew each other a long time ago. We were different people then. It’
s just…
sometimes it’s hard to forget the way people treated you when you’re young.”
She explained.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that it’s between me and
Trixie
and
it’s
over and done with.”
I
t
was hard to imagine my mother as a young girl – my age. I’d seen pictures, of course, but they hardly looked like the woman who sat next to me, who made me breakfast, checked my homework and slept in a chair next to my bed when I was sick as a kid. She was a
mom
. I never really thought about what she was before being a mom. She was a nice person and I had a good idea she wouldn’t tell me anything else about
Trixie
. I’d ask my dad.
Being an only child had
it’s
down sides. It meant there were
no
other kids in the house taking the parental attention away from me.
I couldn’t blame a brother or sister for breaking my mother’s favorite vase or for putting dish soap in the washing machine to see what would happen.
It also made navigating family politics a one man job.
I found a quiet moment when my mom was busy in the laundry room and my dad was in a good mood because
his
basketball team won their game the night before. He was reading the paper, drinking coffee and nibbling at some pastries mom had brought home.
“Dad?”
I started.
“Hmm.”
He muttered absentmindedly.
“How come mom doesn’t like that lady
Trixie
that just got into town?”
I asked as innocently as I could.
He folded down the corner of his paper and looked at me over the rim of his glasses with an amused look. “Sounds like a question you should ask your mother.”
He said.
I pretended to scratch at a mosquito bit
e
on my leg so he wouldn’t think I was too interested in the response, but felt like he could read me as easily as that newspaper. “I did.” I said as casually as I could
.
“She said something about them being different people, but it didn’t make sense.”
He laughed easily.
“So you thought you might squeeze it out of dear old dad?”
he asked, pretending to be surprised.
I flashed him my best
‘
daddy’s little girl
’
grin and walked around wrapping my arms around his neck like I’d done when I was little. Manipulating dad was so much easier than mom. He patted my arm.