How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [46]
When we finally got to the car, I yanked free and flung myself onto the hot hood of the car, not caring that it burned my skin.
“Ramona, stop it. You’re hysterical.” My mother touched me gently. “The world is not ending, baby. I promise.”
“You don’t know. You just don’t know.”
Poppy joined us. “Come on, sweetie, get in the car. Let’s go home and you can have a nap. Everything will look better when you get out of this hot sun.”
“But I thought we were going to Denver! For my birthday!” I straightened, feeling my hair stick to my wet cheeks and neck. “I was only talking to him, Mom! And I only had sex one time. One time! It’s not like I’m having sex with every guy in the universe, ripping off my clothes if they just look at me!”
“I know that, Ramona.” Her voice was completely calm, and she opened the door. “Get in the car. We’ll go back to Poppy’s and have a rest, then figure out the trip to Denver. Okay?”
As quickly as it came, the fury drained out of me. I felt completely empty, exhausted. Like a doll, I fell into the backseat and covered my face with a sweater. In seconds, I was asleep.
At Poppy’s, they took me upstairs. My mother set up a fan while Poppy washed my hot face with a cool cloth. I felt about three years old but had no energy to resist.
I slept for a long time, cocooned by the oscillating fan, and dreamed Alice in Wonderland dreams—enchanted apples, and honey dripping from the trees, and bread rising with alarming steadfastness until a baby popped out, laughing.
When I woke, I was starving and thirsty, and I could tell the afternoon was spent. I jumped up to see if my mother’s car was still there, but it was gone, which crushed me all over again. I slumped against the wall, tears leaking out of my eyes once more.
But the urgent need to pee took over. I ran into the bathroom and peed like a big horse, on and on and on and on. My disappointment seemed to drain right out of me, and I felt as if I’d eaten that enchanted apple in my dream. My head was filled with gauzy splashes of color.
Poppy was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of tea with floating mint. “Well, hello there, stranger!” she said.
“Did my mom leave?”
“She did, sweetie, but she will come back on Saturday. I think you needed sleep a lot more than you needed a trip to Denver.”
I slumped in the chair. “I guess.”
Poppy folded up her newspaper. “This gives you both a chance to calm down, too.”
“She humiliated me.” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Completely.”
For a long minute she didn’t say anything. I could hear the drip of water in the sink. “Even mothers have wounds, Ramona. Your mother—”
“What?”
Poppy inclined her head. “You must promise never to let her know that I told you.”
“I promise. What, was she pregnant, too?”
“Not until later, and you know about that already, little love child.” It was true—I knew that my mother had been pregnant with me when she married my dad. It was a romantic story.
“What, then?”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“You know those scars on her thigh? She says they’re a burn, right?”
Something in me felt sick suddenly. “Yeah.”
“Our mother found out she’d had sex and beat the holy hell out of her. She was fifteen, and it left a scar on her heart, too, baby. She was worried about you today. She’s been worried about you all year.”
“Wait. My grandmother did that?”
Poppy nodded. “I told you, she was a different person then.”
My stomach felt upset. “That’s terrible.”
“It was terrible, and you will hurt your mother if you let on that you know, okay?”
“Okay. I promise.”
“Don’t be mad at Adelaide, either. Her life was no sweet walk in the park, either.”
I loved my grandmother. I didn’t want to be mad at her, but I would have to think about this. It was almost impossible to imagine her in such a fury that she would