American Housewife (9 page)

The kitchen door opens and Eddie sticks his head in.

One whack of my wooden stool makes Eddie go down. I whack him again before he gets up. And then whack him a few more times to make sure he’s dead.

I have to bake cookies for the board, so I’ll leave the blood for later. I’m careful not to step in it as I move from my fridge to my cabinets to my counter canisters to the mixer. Eggs, butter, Quaker Oats, vanilla. The secret to keeping brown sugar from getting hard is storing it with a marshmallow. I put the first batch of oatmeal raisin in the oven and then return my attention to Eddie. I turn on my radio. Dismemberment and freezing are the priorities.

John fixes the doohickey on my jammed electric carving knife.

I work from Eddie’s feet up and bag each little bit. Tomorrow I’ll give Tony the head to take away with my lunch. The next day: a shoulder. Until evidence of Eddie, puzzled in my freezer, is gone.

When my husband tells the board that Eddie is missing, he’ll be happy to report that another doorman problem has solved itself. When Eddie comes back, I’ll tell him that my husband gave him to me to murder. When Eddie haunts my husband, he won’t do it with repairs or errands. He’ll scare him to death. And then I will claim this whole apartment as my own.

L
isten up. We’ve got exactly four minutes before they notice you’re not backstage with the other contestants. In eight minutes, they’ll lock down the Radisson. In twenty, they’ll issue an Amber Alert.

So get in the van. Hunch down. Take off your dress. There’s a T-shirt and shorts under the front seat. Wipe off your makeup and take off that wig. Put on
that
wig. Stay down! Don’t look in the rearview mirror. I can assure you, sweetie, you look like a boy. I’m sorry, but that’s part of the drill. Remember, you asked for this and I’m here to help.

You can call me Aunt Mandy.

Here, take this Dramamine. It’s chewable and tastes orange. It’ll make you sleepy but keep you from getting carsick. These back roads are bumpy. Last year your friend, the Ultimate Grand Supreme Little Miss Savannah Stars and Stripes, refused to take her medicine and puked Mountain Dew across the Louisiana state line.

Yuck is right!

Hey, do you still suck a binky?

No? Well, aren’t you a big girl! Breaking a binky habit is half the battle of relocation.

Relocation—that is a big word! It means change. Like when you change from your two-piece into your Little Orphan Annie outfit for talent. You contacted me because you want to change your life. You want to change mommies. You don’t want to be hollered at to “Shake it, GIRL! Get it!” for the next eighteen years.

To change you’ll need to do what I say and look like I say and talk like I tell you to talk. No more
y’alls.
No more
mamas.
We’re on our way to New York City.

That’s right, New York City! Lose your accent and no one will know you were a Miss Anything anymore. Don’t and you’ll be on the next bus back to Birmingham. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’m not going to prison because you can’t quit saying
cain’t.

Don’t
ma’am
me. Ma’ams are a tip-off. A ma’am in Manhattan is like a dirty bomb.

The good news is: in New York City, no one will ask you to lip-synch “It’s the Hard Knock Life” or burn your neck with a curling iron. Your friend, the Ultimate Grand Supreme Little Miss Savannah Stars and Stripes, now goes by Mavis.

Yes, Mavis. It’s a family name. A family name is how super-rich people tell everyone they’re super rich.

How rich? Oh, sweetie, richer than Britney and the Doodlebops combined.

Mavis lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park and plays center forward for her school’s soccer team. Her do-over mommy, like all my New York City do-over mommies, got Mavis into private school. Private means it costs what your parents’ double-wide cost to learn how to point to France on a map without using a computer.

Yes, that does sound hard, but it’s not any harder than trying to tap dance your entire family out of a trailer park.

You don’t want to go back to Serenity Acre, do you?

Okay then, I’ll put my pedal to the metal.

Until you’re placed in a no-take-backs home like Mavis’s, you’ll stay with me. I live on Madison, which is not as rich as Mavis’s address, but is rich enough for me to stay home with you girls, who my husband tells friends are foster care kids. My husband is a magazine editor, which means his job is no more secure than a Pixy Stix backstage before Pro-Am modeling. He’s too old to get a new job, so he appreciates the risky but lucrative business I’m in.
Lucrative
means good for you and good for me. Like a bouncy house! Girls bounce in and girls bounce out. To help, my husband does a certain kind of laundering for me and pays off our super, who finds it suspicious that all of our alleged government charges are as white as mice after your spray tans peel off.

When you run into Mavis, she’ll be less glitzy than you remember. In fact, she’ll be completely glitz-free. Her hair will be flat. Her face will be bare. Not even a tinted lip balm. Without pancake foundation, her freckles will mask the features in the glamour shot used for her police “Missing” posters.
You’ll
be unrecognizable without your fake eyelashes and flipper. After JonBenét Ramsey, you’d think pageant moms would learn to take pictures of you girls when you’re not all done up. But they don’t. Pageant moms don’t want records of you girls being anything but Christmas card perfect. They never expect their prize possessions to get stolen. Or in cases like yours and Mavis’s: to get up and go on their own.

The whole point of relocation is for you to continue to think for yourself. Your first thought was that being the most beautiful girl in the room isn’t all it’s cut out to be. And you were right. It’s hard work and it takes an army of pushers and pullers and toxic glue to keep you that way. And here’s a secret: beauty cracks like a mud cake. To secure your future, you’ll have to rely on your wits. Wits are ideas, which means they’re invisible.

Like poots in a pool? That’s right! See there, you are clever.

Quick! Where’d you come from?

That’s right, you don’t know.

What happened to your birth family?

Oh, tears are good. They’ll shut a conversation down.

You’ve got to have brains to play dumb. Mavis is a shrugger. But you know what? She shrugged her way out of a genetic predisposition for childhood obesity. You two are smart to get off the circuit before you age out. I wish I had. It’s the Ten and Over division that’s hardest to place.

Placing an older girl is like trying to get people to take a cat from the pound. Everybody wants a kitten, which is you.

That’s right:
MEOW
!

People think kittens are cuter than cats, and those people are right. They think kittens are easier to train and pass off as part of the family, and they’re right about that too. No nosy neighbor is going to give you lip about a cute kitten in your apartment. They’re going to say, “What a cute kitten!” and go on about their day. But bring a cat into your home and your neighbors won’t like it. Maybe your new cat stares out your window like a ghost in a scary movie. Maybe your new cat makes dogs on the street bark. Maybe your new cat is too eager to fit in and rubs against people’s legs in an uncomfortable way. Whatever the case, when neighbors get uncomfortable, they make anonymous calls. Anonymous means they don’t like what you’ve done, but won’t say it to your face. They think the older girl you’ve taken in is stolen or psychotic or perpetually in heat. They don’t want trouble, but they want that older girl gone.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you have to be blasé to blend in. Blasé means lose the pretty cupcake hands. Never sassy walk. Making eye contact with anyone and everyone draws attention, which you don’t want anymore, so you’ll have to quit it. Smiling like a nutcracker will get you sent to a shrink. A shrink is a doctor who digs through your head like a plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin. If he finds proof you don’t belong, he’ll pass you off to the cops. The cops will ship you back to your pageant mom, who—last you told me—made you smear chocolate on another girl’s formalwear.

Yes, mommies can be bullies.

No, it wasn’t chocolate, was it?

Bad sportsmanship is inherited like a cowlick. It’s a little part of you that’s twisted and nearly impossible to tame. So when you have a playdate with Mavis for potential do-over parents to observe you, you will play nice. If she wants to kick a hacky sack around, you will kick that hacky sack around. If she wants to point to France on a map, you’ll say, “Bonjour!” There will be no princess dress-up because that is asking for trouble. There will be no TV because nobody wants to see you second-guess yourself when you see your pageant mom cry on a ninety-inch flat screen.

And she will cry. They all do. But you can’t let that make you feel bad enough to go back. You made your choice to relocate and it’s the right choice and I’m going to help you stick with it. Now, why don’t you take a nap for Aunt Mandy? Go on, close your eyes. Dream, while I beat the traffic.

I
f someone moves to make room for you, take up more room. If someone is looking over there, there’s something to see. If somebody sneezes, run. If someone brings a bag into your home, look inside it. If you don’t want someone to leave, sit on his suitcase.

Clean between your toes. Flaunt your full figure. Hide loose change. Even though you can take care of yourself, it’s okay to let someone be nice to you. It’s fine to take a nap on the laundry.

If you stand in a kitchen long enough, someone will feed you. If you’re alone in bed, use all the pillows. Just because it’s gorgeous outside doesn’t mean you have to go outside. Just because you can fit into something tight doesn’t mean that you belong in it.

If you trust someone, open yourself like a cheap umbrella. If you want to be left alone, park yourself in a closet. If you want to surprise someone, lie in a bathtub and then jerk back the curtain when he sits on the toilet. If you’re not interested, don’t look interested. You don’t have to chase every bird that you see.