Swapping Slobber ~ Chapter 1
Daddy used to always say the raising young’uns part of life was best left to the woman as the mama is the heart of the home. But Daddy had no way of knowing he and Mama would leave home and never come back.
After that, Mitchell thought he’d be the one to finish raising me, bragging right out loud about Mama calling him responsible. My brother’s plans for ruling the roost changed, though, the day she blew in. She was our next of kin—our grandmother—Gam we’d always called her, but because of some feud between her and Mama and Daddy it had been a bunch of moons since we’d laid eyes on her. She didn’t even bother showing up for the funeral. At least if she did, we didn’t see her. So, if she thought I would welcome her with open arms, that was never going to happen.
I was four when I last saw her, and Mitchell was seven. I could recall a few things, like eyes that disappeared when she laughed, and the way she pinched my cheeks so hard it hurt. What I remembered most, though, was the store-bought hat she always wore: purple, with a feather on the side that stuck straight up and flicked like a bobwhite’s tail when the wind caught it just right. And who could forget her lime green pants? Hideous.
But there was no hat, nor even a hint of lime about her the day she drove onto Malone land in a shiny brown Buick to take us from our home to start a new life. Matter of fact when she stepped out of the car onto the dirt-packed ground in her high heeled shoes and short cropped pants, she looked different than I remembered. Sort of city-fied, modern even, like she’d been ripped from the pages of the magazines Mama would sneak peeks at when she thought Daddy wasn’t looking.
It was her perfume I smelled first—the same Chanel No. Five Mama wore—with its soft hints of jasmine and lemon that reminded me of sheets hung outside to dry on a warm sunny day. Smelling it again made my heart feel squeezed.
But Mitchell didn’t seem to even notice the perfume because she came bearing gifts.
Mitchell’s gift was a cell phone. When he opened it, his face instantly paled, and he looked away quickly. I suppose he was hoping I hadn’t seen, but I was intentionally watching. Sometimes I knew my brother better than he knew himself. There was guilt swallowing up every inch of his face just from having touched the thing. He shoved it into the back pocket of his overalls so quickly you’d have thought it was something illegal and that the sheriff was standing close, ready to throw him in the pokey.
My gift? She called it a tablet.
I slung that thing on the ground like it was a steaming cast iron skillet just pulled from the oven.
Unlike my brother, I saw through it all. Her gift was nothing more than stink bait being used to try and slip my affections onto her hook. But I wouldn’t be bribed, and I couldn’t be bought, and I’d never conform to her newfangled, citified ways. The old ways—Mama and Daddy’s ways—were good enough for me.
I shoved my bean shooter into my back pocket and raced up the side of the hill towards my treehouse. Climbing through the window, I turned to holler back, “You can just get right back in your shiny car and hightail it on out of here, Marie. We don’t need a guardian. We’re doing just fine on our own, thank you.”
From the corner of my treehouse, I snatched the plaid shirt I’d ripped from Mama and Daddy’s closet the day the preacher came to tell us about the wreck. Remnants of Daddy’s aftershave, machine oil from the tractors, and the sweet scent of prickly hay lingered on the shirt, filling my brain with his image. If I took a really deep breath, I could even catch a hint of Mama’s perfume. I closed my eyes, wishing with all my might that when I opened them, he would be there, wrapping me in a big old bear hug and making everything right again.
He wasn’t, and my heart was shattered.
But if there was one thing almost as bad as Mama and Daddy being gone, it was that … that woman, marching around Malone land in high heels and short cropped pants, acting like she’d just visited yesterday.
“Grace, please come down,” she hollered up to me. “We need to talk.”
Huh! She didn’t even know my name! “My name is Gracie, not Grace!” I shouted.
Looking between the boards I saw my brother move closer to her and her shiny Buick.
“Mitchell, don’t get in that car!” I shouted—the way I always shout at my brother. The same way Mama shouted at Daddy, and at the farm animals, and at the mosquitoes that dive bombed the porch in summer.
And Mitchell—like Daddy—rarely shouted back. In fact, this time he didn’t even look my way.
He just stood there with one overalls strap unhooked and hanging loose, his ax handle propped against his leg, and his caramel-colored hair hanging like mop strings around his shoulders. Tall and slender like the birch saplings fighting for sunlight on the soggy banks of the creek, he reminded me so much of Daddy. Especially when he spit in his hands and wiped them down the legs of his overalls.
“Thank you for coming, Gam,” I heard him say, offering her an outstretched hand. “I wish things were different and not because Mama and Daddy are … well, you know … gone.” He cleared his throat and looked away. I suppose he thought something as simple as wishing it might wipe away the pain of what we’d been through. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, the words flowing from his mouth like water from a garden hose.
“Oh Mitchell, I’ve missed you and your sister so much,” she said, opening wide her arms. “Let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we? Come closer, dear, and give your grandmother a hug.”
I slung Daddy’s shirt into the corner. “She don’t want a hug, Mitchell. See how she’s pooched out her lips and cocked her head? She wants to swap slobber, but don’t do it. If you do your lips will rot off.” Leaning as far out of the treehouse window as I could get without falling, I bellowed. “And Mama and Daddy aren’t just gone. They didn’t just go to the grocery store and forget where they live. They’re dead, Mitchell. Dead.”
My brother continued to ignore my shouts. “Thank you again for the cell phone, Gam.” He pulled the gift from his pocket and turned it around and around in his hands.
“Of course, sweetheart,” she said, pulling her own phone from her pocket. “You’re going to love it, you’ll see.”
“Oh, yes Ma’am, I’m sure I will—when I learn how it works. We haven’t been allowed … um … what I mean is, I don’t know much about cell phones. I’ve seen them, but that’s about all.” He tossed the hair from his eyes with a flick of his head.
“I’ll teach you. You’ll enjoy it when you learn,” Marie said. “It’s a wonderful way for you to keep in touch with your friends.”
Mitchell shrugged. “Yes, Ma’am, I’d like that—and my friends would like it too I suppose.”
“All the kids your age have cell phones,” Marie said. “It’s hard for me to believe this will be your first.”
“There’s not much time for talking on the phone here on the farm. Mostly there are just chores to be done,” Mitchell said. Then he hesitated.
“We’ll have plenty of time when we get to the city,” Marie said.
“The city?”
“Well, now that your parents are …” She cleared her throat. “Now that I’m with you, I’m going to take you to my home.”
“We already have a home, Marie!” I shouted.
Mitchell scratched at the dirt with the side of his boot. My brother was contemplating. Mitchell always contemplated. “Couldn’t we just stay here? This is our home. We’ve never been—”
“Oh no, dear,” she interrupted, “staying here is out of the question. Besides, the city will be a whole new adventure for you. You’ll love it, I promise. Come on, now. Leave your ax and climb in. No need to pack. I’ll be buying your new clothes. These things you’re wearing will not do for your new school.”
“Um … well maybe I should take my ax. I might get some use out of it.”
“We ain’t leavin’, Mitchell,” I yelled. “Leave your ax right where it is, you hear me? If you put that ax in her car, you’re a traitor, not the brother I know.”
They both ignored me.
Fingering the leopard print glasses higher on the bridge of her nose she said, “Oh, sweetie, I understand your hesitancy, but you have no idea what life is like away from this holler your parents have had the two of you holed up in.” She wrapped her arms around Mitchell in a tight hug. “I know this is hard,” she said, “and you’re both being so very brave. In time I promise things will be better.”
She lifted Mitchell’s chin to look into his eyes, but her shoulders dropped, and her face lost its perky smile when she looked past him and fixed her gaze on our home.
“My poor daughter—God rest her soul—and … and your dear daddy of course, have had you sweet children stuck back in these hills for far too long. Mitchell, there’s a whole world out there you’ve never had a chance to experience. A fine-looking lad like yourself should be enjoying life, learning to drive and meeting young ladies, not slinging axes, being responsible for providing an entire winter’s worth of warmth to your family.”
“But I like chopping wood,” Mitchell said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Mama said hard work builds character.”
He might never have admitted it, but my brother was as uncomfortable standing before that woman as he was the day the preacher baptized him in the creek in front of the entire county. He pointed to the tractor sitting just beyond the rusty truck parts scattered about the yard. “And I already know how to drive,” he said. “I drive Daddy’s tractor all the time. As for young ladies, well, Mama wouldn’t—”
I stomped loud enough for the both of them to hear. Daddy called it floor cussing.
“Mitchell, get away from her right now!” I yelled.
She glanced my way, shook her head and then turned back to Mitchell. She brushed the hair from his eyes with her hand. “Go ahead, sweetie,” she said, “You may bring your ax. I can’t imagine you’ll need it where we’re going, but put it in the trunk if that’s what you want to take.”
She whirled around to face the treehouse. “Now, Grace,” she said, letting out a long breath. “Will you please come down so you and I may talk?”
“No, Marie, it’s best you go home right now.”
Mitchell looked pained. “You won’t get her down if she doesn’t want to come,” he said, placing his ax in the trunk as gingerly as if it were one of the vipers that slithered across the floor from time to time. “Daddy used to say Gracie’s more stubborn than an old mule at plowin’ time.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, straightening her blouse. “Well, in that case I suppose there’s only one thing to do.” She turned to Mitchell. “By the way, how old is she now, thirteen, fourteen maybe?”
“No Ma’am, she’s eleven.”
“Eleven?” She did a double take. “That spunky and only eleven? Oh, dear.” She nodded. “All right then, Grace, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll come to you. We’ll talk this out together. Sensibly.”
Gripping to every shrub and bush that lined the well-trodden path, she stumbled, her high heels digging deeper into the ground with each step. “Oh, mercy,” she said, panting, stopping to catch her breath halfway up the hill. She fanned herself with her hand. “If only I’d run that 10K like I’d promised, I wouldn’t be this out of shape right now.”
“There’s no use in you coming up here,” I shouted. “I’m not getting in your fancy car, and I’m not leaving my home.”
Through the trap door at the bottom of the treehouse I watched her approach, huffing and puffing as she came.
“All right, Grace,” she said, finally reaching the tree. “You’ve got me here. Now, please come down, and let’s talk.”
“I’m not coming down, Marie. I’ve got no use for your big-city ways, and you can’t bribe me. I’m not like my brother. I can’t be bought with fancy toys. Why do you want us to leave anyway? Mama and Daddy wouldn’t take kindly to you making us leave our home.”
“Oh, honey, I know this is hard, but I’m afraid we must.”
She glanced toward the car and held out her hands, silently pleading for Mitchell to try to persuade me. It wouldn’t work. It would take a lot more than my brother getting all sappy and oily tongued to make me change my mind.
“Come on, Gracie. That’s enough!” Mitchell took two steps toward the side of the steep hill and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Do what she says,” he yelled. “Mama wouldn’t want you being disobedient.”
“You’re not the boss of me, Mitchell!”
I wadded Daddy’s shirt in my hands and pulled it to my chest. “Just because you’re three years older don’t mean you’re in charge.”
“Oh, my, I can see right now this child’s going to need a firm—”
“What’d you say?” I yelled, watching her reactions through the cracks in the boards.
She shook her head and eyed the treehouse. A knotted rope dangled from the trap door and there were rotting slivers of two-by-fours nailed to the tree to form a makeshift ladder. “I said it was going to take a firm hand for me to get into that treehouse,” she lied. Then she reached to take hold of the rope. Just as her fingers grazed the knot, I jerked it through the hole in the trap door.
“Grace! We need to talk. Won’t you please let down the rope? Or better still, come down here with me.”
“No, Marie, I won’t.”
“Oh, Lord, you’re going to have to help me with this one,” she said softly. Reckon she thought I couldn’t hear her. She was wrong.
“You can just go back to your big city,” I said. “Mama and Daddy left Eli and the farm hands in charge of us. If they were good enough for Mama and Daddy, they’re good enough for us. We’re just fine here on the farm, thank you.”
“Grace, that’s enough,” she said. “You come down here right now or I’ll—”
Mitchell scrambled up the side of the hill past her like a coyote running a jackrabbit. “I’ll go up, Gam,” he said. He scaled the tree with ease, but I was ready.
If my brother was looking for a fight, he wouldn’t be disappointed.