Frankie got such a sweet look in her eye that for a moment I thought she might do as I’d asked, but her mouth said otherwise. “Forget it,” she snarled. “That’s what she gets for wantin’ to watch those disgusting movies and botherin’ us about chasing after Aunt Jane May and some stupid mystery man a hundred times a day. She made her bed.”
“I’m begging you.” I waved my prayer hands around. “She can’t even talk!”
But Viv, a resourceful child who had four obnoxious older brothers to contend with, as well as her fervent granny, proved me wrong when she uttered what she usually did when she needed to distract an attacker long enough to escape from the corner she’d been backed into.
“Don’t look now, but …” she said and pointed her spindly arm over our shoulders. “The handyman is watching us in the shadows behind the creek.”
“No, he’s not! You’re just tryin’ to make me forget about the dare. Admit it!” Frankie said like she was arguing a case in a court of law. “And remember—you’re under oath!” She jabbed her finger toward the rusty mark in the middle of the hideout floor like it was damning evidence, which, of course—it was. Because that wasn’t any old stain. It was an indelible reminder that the girls and I weren’t just best friends. We were family. Blood sisters. That stain was our coat of arms.
Of course, it’d been Viv’s idea to perform the ritual we’d seen the natives do in Voodoo Island. A goat had been tied to a stake in the movie, so she suggested, “Let’s steal a kid from the Erdman farm.” Not feeling entirely sure she wasn’t referring to one of the Erdman children, I put my foot down. “I’ll beat the bongo,” I told her, “but that’s as far as we’re going.” And after I grabbed the drum off the shelf, we mumbled some jumbo, lit a few candles, and Frankie used a penknife to prick my finger and then hers. But when she cut thin-skinned Viv’s thumb, the blood came gushing, and the stain remained to remind us what we meant to one another and always would.
With my last hope for a night meant to honor my mother’s memory and my father’s devotion to her destroyed by Viv’s baiting and Frankie’s dare, I blew a gasket. I got to my feet, drew myself up to my full height, and growled, “If you don’t go to sleep, I’m gonna throw the both of ya out the window!” (I could’ve, if I wanted to. I had five inches on them and the shoulders of an English milkmaid.)
When we were woken the following morning by a cardinal that called the oak tree its summer home, too, and the smell of pork sausage emanating out of the kitchen window of the house, I’d hardly describe the girls and me as bright eyed and bushy tailed. With sweat wiggling down my sides, my stomach complaining, and a hope hangover, I couldn’t have cared less which of us went down the wooden steps first, but the two of them picked up where they’d left off the night before, and I had to force them to do our agreed-upon tie breaker.
When Viv lost the rock, paper, scissors shootout, she shrugged it off, but I saw her give Frankie a vengeful look before she picked up the jump rope and shoved it down the front of her shorts. Viv could hold a grudge much better than she could her temper, so I suspected she was up to no good. But as I ran across the backyard to catch up with them, there wasn’t a doubt in mind that if the rest of the summer went as badly as our first overnight had, we’d remember it for as long as we lived. If we survived it.
Chapter Three
After Frankie, Viv, and I burst through the squeaky screened door that we were sure Aunt Jane May refused to oil so she could keep track of our comings and goings, we mumbled our good mornings, took our preordained seats at the kitchen table, and awaited delivery of pork sausages, flapjacks with maple syrup, home fries, and the daily lecture she expected us to digest along with our breakfasts.
I felt bad for letting her down and was worried almost to tears that she’d ask if the sleepover had been the kind of respectful evening she’d expected it to be, but all she said was, “’Bout time” and went back to shuffling the silver fry pan across the burner.
She was planted in front of the stove, so the girls and I couldn’t see her heart-shaped face, navy-blue eyes, and generous mouth, but the auburn hair she’d stopped winding into a tight bun and begun folding into a French twist was hard to miss. Viv certainly didn’t.
She nodded toward Aunt Jane May, raised her eyebrows a few times—Groucho-style—and whispered to me, “I’m tellin’ ya … hot to trot.”
As if the girls and I weren’t terrified enough by all the “creature features” we were taking in, we were about to fall into the abyss of adolescence and were pretty fuzzy about where we’d land. We weren’t complete ignoramuses. We knew we’d grow breasts and hair in smooth places, and we’d rarely ride past a farm without seeing livestock mounting a barnyard pal. But we mostly had to rely on Doc’s medical books—horrifying—and whatever we picked up from girls in town who’d supposedly been around the block. After “Easy Mimi” Kincaid caught us gazing at the sanitary napkin dispenser in the school bathroom like it was the ninth Wonder of the World, she informed us, “One of these nights you’re gonna wake up covered in blood that comes from Virginia and you use these pads to clean off the sheets and then ya have a baby.”
To further muddy the waters, Viv wouldn’t stop spouting off about what she learned from the ladies’ magazines in her mother’s beauty parlor that she treated like a reference library.
“Don’t be disgusting,” I whispered back to her at the breakfast table. “She’s too decrepit to trot.”
With thirty-seven years under Aunt Jane May’s belt, I was convinced she was far too long in the tooth for romance. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good-looking enough to attract a fella. She was. Very. In both face and figure. And her many attributes did not go unnoticed by the bachelors in town. Our elderly mayor had a crush on her and would shower her with compliments, the butcher gave her extra-thick pork chops, and her baker’s dozen was always more generous, but their flirtations were met with nothing more than a curt nod and a “Much obliged.”
Keeping her eye on Aunt Jane May, Viv slowly tilted my way again. “True Confessions says the first things gals do when they’re dating a man is freshen their hairstyle, push up their bosom, and show more flesh. And if they get very worked up, they wear black stockings with seams, high heels with cleats, and their cheeks look like roses in bloom.”
Aunt Jane May’s bosom was where it always was, as were the shoes she bought at Harrington’s Department Store, the same place the nuns got theirs. Her legs, as usual, were covered in the oatmeal-colored mesh stockings the five-and-dime sold on aisle four, and she wasn’t any pinker in the cheeks than she’d normally be on a scorcher of a morning. But I couldn’t deny that she had changed her hair and she was showing more skin, around the house and yard anyway.
“Bare my arms in public?” she’d huffed after I suggested she wear sleeveless tops when the heat came down hard on us. “I’d rather be lyin’ in the ground next to your mama than wear an ensemble that’d give the men in this town the idea that I was advertising my wares.”