Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [21]
“Grace?” Momma called. My sister stopped singing. “Could you come here a minute?”
In the living room, Taffeta stood on top of the coffee table, wearing her new blue pageant dress. Her cheeks glowed pink with exertion. My mother, kneeling in a pool of sewing debris, squinted at the needle she was attempting to thread.
“You want me to do that?” I offered.
“No, I wanted you to …” She paused. “Just a second. One second. Almost got it. Oh, it slipped. These things are awful. There! It went in. Lovely!”
I glared at her. She was being Princess Adrina: teacup-toting British royalty out of a bad television miniseries. Her newest character to go with the phony accent. Even when we were her only audience, she felt it necessary to pretend. The real Adrina Carpenter emerged only when she yelled. Or on those mornings when she sat staring at the kitchen table, inexplicably depressed.
“I need you to hold the dress tightly around Taffeta’s middle while I sew it together. This is real fine quality fabric, did I tell you?”
With both hands, I pulled the dress taut around Taffeta’s middle. I leaned away from Momma as she leaned in to stitch. Even so, I was assaulted by the scent of the apple conditioner she used to glossify her brown hair, mulled with the smell of the spicy cinnamon gum she liked to chew. A pleasant fragrance to anyone else, but it made me gag. I breathed through my mouth.
Mandarin’s mother is dead.
The thought set my insides reeling. Everybody knew that Mandarin lived alone with her father, Solomon Ramey, a man who seemed to exist only in and around his bar—except for the time I saw him at the Sundrop Quik Stop. He was tall and gaunt, his face dreadfully unique: a beaky nose, yellow skin, thin black hair, a crumpled brow. Like some kind of bogeyman. When I tried to imagine him at home with Mandarin—the two of them drinking coffee at the table or eating canned chili in front of the TV in that dark house—the scenario seemed outrageous. Almost as outrageous as my helping Mandarin with her schoolwork.
Mandarin’s mother had always been this shadowy, mysterious figure the town knew little about. Some people supposed she was an alcoholic. Others claimed she had a pain disorder. Physical or mental, they never specified. Still others assumed she was simply too poor to take care of her daughter.
Nobody guessed Mandarin’s mother was dead.
A dead father, like mine, was nothing shocking. In a town where every man owned at least two guns, hunting accidents happened frequently. Also mining accidents. And car wrecks, like the one Momma’s parents had been in, even though the county highways were wide and lonely. Washokey men always found ways to get themselves killed. Often explosively.
Fathers, in a way, were expendable. Having a mother was the important thing, the thing that made you normal.
Well, except in my case.
Momma tapped Taffeta’s stomach with the back of her hand. “Can’t you suck in a bit more, baby?”
“But then I can’t sing.”
“At the pageant you’ll have to suck in and sing at the same time. You might as well start now.”
Taffeta glanced at me. Then she sucked in her belly as best she could and attempted to squeeze out the notes.
Without looking at me, Momma remarked, “So I heard you went to tutor the Ramey girl today.”
I practically jumped. “From who?”
“I’ve got my sources.”
Polly Bunker. Alexis’s mom had spies everywhere, probably including Plains Street. Half the mothers in town were part of her coven of gossips.
“I don’t like you going over there,” Momma said quietly, as if Taffeta couldn’t hear her. “That girl’s a tramp.”
“I know that,” I said, hating the plaintive tone in my voice. “But she needs help in school. Ms. Ingle asked me to. It’s for my service project.”
“I thought we decided you’d work backstage at Little Miss Washokey!”
“You decided that.”
She shook her head. “That girl’s beyond help, Grace. The mother’s who-knows-where, and the father’s a drunkard. You know what they say