while tugging the door handles and pacing the bright green Astroturf leading up to the side door. He sat down on the cement step of the church and scratched his head. I wandered away to avoid listening to Carlene and Rhonda blister and bellyache over Lester’s latest blunder. Those two gals pickled me, they were so sour. Thinking about my own momma, I felt sorry for Lester. Rhonda’s voice was nothing like what a momma’s ought to be. Of course, my momma was extra-special, I reminded myself. My momma was perfect.
“It took months for me to figure out my savvy when I was your age,” I remembered Momma telling me one day. We had been in the kitchen, me and Momma and Gypsy, and Momma had been trying to teach me how to make a perfect pie crust. But my crust was far from perfect. Gypsy had been more interested in squishing her fingers deep inside her own small lump of soft dough, pulling out pinches and eating them when Momma’s head was turned.
My crust had kept on crumbling and breaking, or sticking and tearing; I’d smash it back together and try rolling it out again and again, while Momma’s crust lifted up clean and easy, spreading out across the bottom of the pan as soft and smooth as silk—perfect as perfect.
“How
did
you know, Momma?” I’d asked, flour tickling my nose and falling like snow from the edge of the table where I stood with my own large rolling pin. “How did you figure out your savvy? When did you first know that you were perfect?”
Momma looked down at the mess on the table and laughed; the sound was like the church bells in Hebron on a clear morning. At first I thought Momma might be laughing at my wounded and weary blob of dough, then I remembered that my momma would never do such a thing. She pulled one of the kitchen chairs up close and sat down, setting aside my rolling pin and taking my floured and dusty hands in her own. She smiled up at me with a sweet smile.
“I’m not perfect, Mibs. Nobody’s perfect. I just have a knack for getting things right. Maybe that looks a lot like perfect sometimes. Besides,” she continued, her smile faltering a bit as she squeezed my hands, “you’d be surprised at how many people dislike spending time with someone who constantly gets things right. It’s not always an easy way to be.”
I nodded at Momma as she hugged me. I was hardly able to imagine anyone not wanting to spend time with her.
“In most ways, Mibs, we Beaumonts are just like other people,” Momma said, letting go of me and adding a bit more flour to my dough as she recited the words I’d heard so many times before. “We get born, and sometime later we die. And in between, we’re happy and sad, we feel love and we feel fear, we eat and we sleep and we hurt like everyone else.”
I thought about Momma as I walked around the side of the church and up the rutted dirt road a short way, listening with relief as the voices faded and an ensemble of crickets began warming up their evening act—maybe I’d woken them up, I mused to myself. Kicking at rocks, I crossed the road and headed toward an old boarded-up and falling-down house that looked as though a truckload of white paint had dropped on it from top to bottom once upon a time ago. Fish had stayed on the bus with Samson; he was still stewing and grouchy and was now almost as quiet and broody as our little brother. Bobbi was outside the bus chewing on a new length of Bubble Tape and cursing under her breath, so we all gave her plenty of distance.
I stepped up onto the porch of the old house cautiously, thinking that a porch swing would have made it a perfect place, once upon a time. Since we didn’t have our own in Kansaska-Nebransas, Poppa would take us to the World’s Largest Porch Swing in the park in Hebron. That swing could hold fifteen people at one time. Poppa would load the whole family into the station wagon and let Rocket’s spark drive us up there on Sunday afternoons to sit all together on that long, crazy
“It took months for me to figure out my savvy when I was your age,” I remembered Momma telling me one day. We had been in the kitchen, me and Momma and Gypsy, and Momma had been trying to teach me how to make a perfect pie crust. But my crust was far from perfect. Gypsy had been more interested in squishing her fingers deep inside her own small lump of soft dough, pulling out pinches and eating them when Momma’s head was turned.
My crust had kept on crumbling and breaking, or sticking and tearing; I’d smash it back together and try rolling it out again and again, while Momma’s crust lifted up clean and easy, spreading out across the bottom of the pan as soft and smooth as silk—perfect as perfect.
“How
did
you know, Momma?” I’d asked, flour tickling my nose and falling like snow from the edge of the table where I stood with my own large rolling pin. “How did you figure out your savvy? When did you first know that you were perfect?”
Momma looked down at the mess on the table and laughed; the sound was like the church bells in Hebron on a clear morning. At first I thought Momma might be laughing at my wounded and weary blob of dough, then I remembered that my momma would never do such a thing. She pulled one of the kitchen chairs up close and sat down, setting aside my rolling pin and taking my floured and dusty hands in her own. She smiled up at me with a sweet smile.
“I’m not perfect, Mibs. Nobody’s perfect. I just have a knack for getting things right. Maybe that looks a lot like perfect sometimes. Besides,” she continued, her smile faltering a bit as she squeezed my hands, “you’d be surprised at how many people dislike spending time with someone who constantly gets things right. It’s not always an easy way to be.”
I nodded at Momma as she hugged me. I was hardly able to imagine anyone not wanting to spend time with her.
“In most ways, Mibs, we Beaumonts are just like other people,” Momma said, letting go of me and adding a bit more flour to my dough as she recited the words I’d heard so many times before. “We get born, and sometime later we die. And in between, we’re happy and sad, we feel love and we feel fear, we eat and we sleep and we hurt like everyone else.”
I thought about Momma as I walked around the side of the church and up the rutted dirt road a short way, listening with relief as the voices faded and an ensemble of crickets began warming up their evening act—maybe I’d woken them up, I mused to myself. Kicking at rocks, I crossed the road and headed toward an old boarded-up and falling-down house that looked as though a truckload of white paint had dropped on it from top to bottom once upon a time ago. Fish had stayed on the bus with Samson; he was still stewing and grouchy and was now almost as quiet and broody as our little brother. Bobbi was outside the bus chewing on a new length of Bubble Tape and cursing under her breath, so we all gave her plenty of distance.
I stepped up onto the porch of the old house cautiously, thinking that a porch swing would have made it a perfect place, once upon a time. Since we didn’t have our own in Kansaska-Nebransas, Poppa would take us to the World’s Largest Porch Swing in the park in Hebron. That swing could hold fifteen people at one time. Poppa would load the whole family into the station wagon and let Rocket’s spark drive us up there on Sunday afternoons to sit all together on that long, crazy
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