Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [63]
“So, Mandarin,” she said. “What did your own mother do for your birthdays?”
I wanted to kick Momma under the table. It was as if dinner had been going too well, and she thought the universe needed upsetting. Taffeta, a veteran of dinnertime tension, slipped halfway below the table so only her big eyes rolled about.
Mandarin stared at my mother straight on. “Nothing much at all,” she said. “We hardly had the chance.”
“Oh no,” Momma said, feigning sudden enlightenment. “Oh dear! That’s so unforgivably clumsy of me. I entirely forgot. It’s rotten when a mother stays away like that, a dreadful shame …”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mandarin said. “She’s dead.”
“Is that so? Because—”
“Just stop it, Momma!” I cried. “It isn’t any different than my dad, okay?” I looked at Mandarin. “I never even met my dad.”
As if I had started it all, Momma thrust her chair away from the table and stood. “Grace! You will not talk about that man under this roof, in this kitchen, over this supper I laid out with love on your birthday. Understood?”
I glared at her.
“Now, how about some ice cream?” She twirled toward the freezer like a ballerina, her too-short cocktail dress flipping out around her thighs.
I glanced back at Mandarin. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I mouthed.
She shrugged.
As soon as we’d finished our excruciatingly silent dessert, I pushed back my chair and stood. “Where are you running off to so fast?” Momma asked.
I looked at Mandarin for help.
“Didn’t you know?” she asked, beaming grotesquely. “Tonight’s the cowboy dance. It’s the biggest event of the year!”
An attack of laughter threatened to overcome me. I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded.
“The dance is tonight? Grace, honey, you can’t wear those awful jeans. If you like, you can pick an outfit from my closet. How about that spotted teal dress with the belt?”
“Um, we’re stopping by Mandarin’s first. I’ll just borrow a dress from her.”
“Wait! You can’t leave without your gift.”
Momma pulled a box from under her chair. It was wrapped in pink tissue paper, the same kind she used to wrap my sandwiches. “I found it at Nelly’s Bargain Boutique after you left,” she said, sliding the package to me. “I couldn’t believe I found it. It’s perfect for you.”
It had to be the rock tumbler. What else could it be?
I felt a sweeping rush of affection for Momma, a sensation so new it was almost debilitating. I used a bread knife to split the Scotch tape, aware of Momma’s affinity for reusing wrapping paper. When I uncovered a shoe box instead of the rock tumbler package, my heart sank.
I lifted the lid and found a camera. Not a digital camera or a video camera. But the decades-old, film-only kind, as big as a brick and half as heavy. She’d also included a few rolls of film in black canisters.
“What do you think?” Momma asked. “I used a film camera for all your old pageant photos, you know.”
I picked up the camera and touched the lens, the shutter release, the focusing rings, notched with tiny numbers. The attached leather strap smelled faintly of sun-warmed bomber jackets, of cowboy boots and rodeos. I unsnapped the lens cover and peered the wrong way, as if the camera were a gun aimed at my head. My reflection, tiny and distorted, peered back.
As Mandarin and I snuck onto the football field, nearly two hundred teenagers climbed the stairs of our school on their way to the cowboy dance.
They wore their cowboy best, or so I imagined: Stetson hats and pointy boots with heels, fringe and chaps, denim and leather, accessorized with spurs and lassos. The girls curled their hair in beauty pageant ringlets or bound them in double cowgirl braids, like Mandarin’s. The boys sprayed themselves with their fathers’ Cattleman Cologne—a real scorpion in every bottle! They passed through the double doors adorned with balloons and barbed wire, and filtered into the cafeteria decorated with bales of hay and cardboard steers.
That was how I