Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [196]
She wondered what her life would have been like if she had not had that one hour that one day.
Tot’s Flipped
EVERYBODY IN TOWN was concerned about Tot Whooten. Norma was speaking to Aunt Elner on the phone about it. “I am just worried sick. I drove by and there was Poor Tot out in the back of her house, wandering around in the fields all by herself like she didn’t have a thing in the world to do. You know, she’s quit the church and she told Darlene not to drop the kids by anymore. She’s stopped going to bingo altogether. Her yard is a mess and you know that’s not right. She never let her yard get out of hand. She always kept her lawn cut and those hedges neat and trimmed. Why, you could set a place setting on her hedges and serve dinner on them. That’s how right and neat she kept them.”
“Why would you want to eat on a hedge?” asked Aunt Elner.
“That’s not the point; I am afraid she’s flipped. I always thought I would be the first one in town to flip out and it’s turned out to be Poor Tot. Poor Tot, she has just gone around the bend. Just like her mother did.”
Aunt Elner said, “I don’t think so, Norma. I went over to see her the other day and she made perfect sense to me. She’s tired, Norma, that’s all that’s the matter with her, and she’ll either come around or she won’t.”
“Well, that’s a comfort, Aunt Elner. What do we tell Darlene and Dwayne Junior—your mother is either going to get back to her old self or she isn’t?”
“That’s the truth, Norma. What else can you say?”
Norma thought about it. “I guess you’re right. We can’t do it for her, she’s going to have to pull herself out of this one—all we can do is be there for her when and if she needs us. Isn’t that right?”
“As far as I can see, that’s the only thing we can do,” said Aunt Elner.
But other people in town took a different view. Mrs. Mildred Noblitt, a thin woman with a tic in her right eye, marched over to Tot’s house and banged on the door so long Tot finally had to open it and let her in. Tot was in her aqua chenille bathrobe with the pink flamingo on the back, and as Mrs. Noblitt marched in the house and sat down in the living room, she said, “Tot, are you aware that it is already ten o’clock and you are still in your robe?”
“Yes,” said Tot.
“Tot, everybody is very concerned about you. You are just going to have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get back into life and put your phone back on the hook. You can’t just sit around in your house all day with the shades down and your yard going to pot. What are people going to think?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, you have to care what people think. Your yard has always been just lovely—you don’t want it to just go wild, do you?”
“It can if it wants to,” said Tot.
“Oh, Tot, now that’s not like you, you know you’re not like that.”
“No, I don’t. I haven’t any idea of what I’m like.”
“Well, I can tell you, you are a neat person. That’s why we are all so worried about you; you’re not being yourself.”
“How do you know?” Tot said.
“Because you have been the example of grace under pressure, a figure to be admired. You don’t want all of us to be disappointed, do you? We all look to you when anything bad happens, we always say, Yes, but look at what Poor Tot has had to put up with, and it always made us feel better . . . do better. If you fall apart, who can we look up to?”
Tot shrugged.
“All right, I’m going to tell you something that you don’t know. Do you know what people call you? They call you a Christian martyr. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: Poor Tot,