Hick - Andrea Portes [62]
You probably get to look at the world in every direction around you, from a vantage point right behind your eyes. But miracle replacement me gets to look down at myself, over myself, under myself. Miracle me can turn into that trapped little fly in the rafters and just sit tight and watch myself, might as well be watching the rodeo, that’s how little replacement me has to do with it. Miracle replacement me could dissect my own insides like a frog in a science class, how bout that?
And so now that I got miracle replacement me, all the things that might be burbling up and boiling over, all the wanting to melt my skin into a dew and dry my bones up into dust, all of the things that might make for choking up or gagging or crumbling to the ground, all of those things that would tear me from the inside out, just get left somewhere between Lusk and Jackpot, hidden in a jam jar, gathering dust by the side of the road.
THIRTY–TWO
My mama had a secret boyfriend. it’s true. Tammy had a secret that she and I kept for three weeks and then three years. This secret had parents from Denmark and sunken eyes and a sharp chin and he didn’t eat meat, not even chicken. He had a funny way of looking round like his skin got wrapped around wrong and he never could put it straight.
He’d met Tammy years gone by at some dance they had in Lincoln where he’d picked her out of the crowd, just like every other guy in the room, cause she showed me a picture from that night and it was like God himself had dropped her out of his pocket on the way to bigger and better sock-hops in bigger and better climes. There she was in all her icy glory in a sky-blue dress and a tiara, can you believe it? I bet she’s the only girl this side of the Mississippi to have the gumption to put a crown on her own head and walk tall from the farmhouse.
She had a light coming off her then, like three angel underlings had been hired to follow her around all night and make damn sure you noticed. And it worked cause that sharp-chinned boy from Lincoln picked her out of the crowd, even though he lived on Sheraton Boulevard two doors down from the mayor. Lookit, you wouldn’t drive down Sheraton Boulevard if you knew what was good for you, you’d be shivering in your boots you’d get pulled over just for being poor.
And it was that night, the night with the light coming off her, that was the only time he saw her. Ever. He saw her just that one night and danced with her just that one dance and she got to leave with his soul stuck inside her purse. And he never forgot it.
I know cause he told me like it was a Christmas story, in the lobby of the Cornhusker Hotel, when I was nine. He told me he came back that summer, after running off from Lincoln and turning his life into Falcon Crest, he came back that summer just to find her. He came back and tracked her down through this guy and that friend and the Palmyra High School yearbook.
He tracked her down and took her to lunch, me tagging along, sitting there looking at the black wood rail of the Cornhusker giant spiral staircase, like Scarlett O’Hara was just about to make an entrance and she’d be my mama and he’d be Ashley. Well, that sunk-eyed secret must’ve liked the way she looked cause he stayed in that Cornhusker for three more weeks and he was just supposed to be there three days.
“Can you believe it, Luli? He was supposed to leave last Sunday!”
And my mama didn’t have to walk no more cause now she could just fly everywhere, she could just float across the room and you’d never see her feet touch the ground. it’d be like in two seconds she was gonna grow wings and float up to heaven with those three angel underlings shining that light on her, back on duty.
And then one day, she said