Chapter 4
In the summer we all walk up the road and cut through Miss Kate’s yard to go to my Aint Nadine and Uncle Henry’s house to have cookouts. That’s my mean cousin Billy’s mama and daddy. His mama and my mama are sisters. Mama is so lucky to have five sisters. I wish I had sisters instead of brothers. They never wanna play with me because they’re always playin’ boy stuff like cowboys and Indians and war.
One time I told ‘em that I could play war too, but Phil said, no you can not because you’re a girl and you would cry if you had a war!
No I would not! I screamed at him and then Jason turned around and yelled boo, right up in my face, real loud and mean like and I started cryin’ and went home.
Anyways, I do like cookouts because we always eat watermelon. I like the way the juice slides down to drop off the end of my chin. I can almost spit the seeds as far as Jason can. He’s better at it just because he’s older than me. He was five years old when I was born. He even remembers what I was like when I was a little baby. He said I cried all the time then, too.
My Aint Nadine and Uncle Henry live up the street from us, and my Aint Delores and Uncle Bill live right next door to ‘em. Both of ‘em are Mama’s sisters. Her other sister, my Aint Mary, lives with my Uncle Ben on the other side of town. Mama’s baby sister, my Aint Ruby, lives outta town near my Bigmama and Bigdaddy.
My Uncle Ben is the best uncle in the whole entire world. I’m glad that all his kids are grown up because when I go stay at his house, I don’t gotta share him with nobody. We have so much fun together. He is the funniest man in the world! When I get ready to go home from his house he always says, see you in the funny papers.
Sometimes him and my Aint Mary take me out with ‘em on the weekends. We go shoppin’ and he buys me hot fudge cakes at Shoney’s Restaurant. That’s the best place to eat because they have Big Boy cheeseburgers. I can’t never eat the whole thing and Uncle Ben says I’m not supposed to because I ain’t no big boy. See how funny he is!
Uncle Ben talks to me about real serious stuff, like I’m somebody real and not just some stupid kid. He was in a war in somewhere called Korea. He said that it was so cold over there, him and his soldier friends couldn’t even talk to each other without puttin’ their words in a hot fryin’ pan to thaw ‘em out.
Uncle Ben has a dead mama. I don’t never ask him how she died because I don’t wanna make him sad. She’s buried in the cemetery in town and he lets me pick flowers off the road and I carry ‘em when we walk together to go visit her grave.
I love walkin’ with him because he always holds my hand and I start wishin’ we could just keep on walkin’ forever. Feelin’ his hand around mine don’t scare me at all.
When I’m sittin’ at my desk in school and the teacher says to me, Wanda please stop daydreamin’ and pay attention, it’s usually him that I’m dreamin’ about. Way down deep inside the dreamin’ part of my brain I can see us walkin’ to the cemetery. His hand is wrapped around mine when all of a sudden he stops and looks down at me, smilin’ that smile that makes me feel like the bestest kid in the whole wide world. The prettiest, smartest, cleanest, shiniest, best smellin’, long beautiful dress wearinest kid in the world. Then he bends down to my size, sayin’ he has to tell me something. I smile and then his mouth opens and he whispers that he is my daddy. My real daddy! My eyes start cryin’ and he don’t get mad at me or call me crybaby, so I fling myself in his arms and tell him that I love him, that I’ve always loved him! Then he lifts me up off the ground, hugs me tight and in my ear he whispers the words that make my heart explode and swirl all around me in the color of happiness. My princess!
I keep wishin’ it could be real because he would be the best daddy for me. We both laugh at the same things and we both love watchin’ Wonder Woman. Aint Mary don’t like watchin’ Wonder Woman. She keeps tellin’ Uncle Ben that Wonder Woman ain’t all that attractive because her hips are too big.
I have a lotta family livin’ around me. All Mama’s family, though. I don’t know any of my daddy’s family. Mama said they live all the way up the map.
I like to walk up the road to my Aint Delores’ house because she always has something good to eat. There’s a closet in her kitchen and she lets me go in there and get out one of those Little Debbie cakes, the ones that are chocolate on the outside and have a little cherry spot in the middle. Those are the best. I like to pretend that I’m lickin’ on a cloud when I smoosh my tongue between the layers of cake and lick up the cream like a kitty.
Sometimes when schools over Mama takes us to the battle grounds to have a picnic and she takes some of those Little Debbie cakes for us to eat after we finish our fried chicken and potato salad. Sometimes though, she makes a real chocolate cake and I run my finger around the side of it and then just let the frostin’ melt real slow like across my tongue. I love anything with creaminess. My favorite things that I would like to eat would be a cloud when it’s big and fluffy white. Oh, and also that little Pillsbury Dough Boy because you can just tell by lookin’ at him that he would be so tasty good.
Anyways, I do love goin’ to the battlegrounds to have picnics. We play in the water, ride on the pedal boats and my Mama’s face smiles and life is just the way I like it; happy!
There’s ducks all around the lake and Jason feeds ‘em bread but I can’t feed ‘em anymore because one time I was feedin’ ‘em and when I run outta bread they all came after me. I slung the bad at ‘em to show ‘em that all the bread was gone but they just kept right on squawkin’ after me so I threw my arms in the air and took off runnin’, screamin’ my head plumb off. Nobody came to help save me. I made it to a picnic table and climbed on top. When I looked back at my family they was all laughin’ like crazy and I got so mad I was wishin’ those ducks would eat me up, right in front of everybody, then see how bad they would feel. I started cryin’ my eyeballs out and Mama had to get up off the blanket that was spread out on the ground and walk over to the table to get me down.
I’ve hated ducks my whole life since. Mama said they wasn’t really after me but I don’t believe her. Now I dream a lot about mad squawkin’ ducks and I wake up cryin’ and scoot closer to Mama.
