Thirteen (11 page)

“Just a trim,” Dad said to me. “Is it really such a big deal?”

“
Yes
,” I said. “Ty's being a pain. You need to be talking to him, not me!”

“He's going through a phase,” Dad said. Which was true—Ty was going stir-crazy like the rest of us.

“I'm not getting my hair cut, Dad. It's important.” I tried to communicate with my eyes the whole Locks of Love thing, because I didn't want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud would taint it, given the ickiness of this situation.

Dad rubbed his temples. I felt sorry for him, but I also thought,
Hey, he's your son, not mine. And it's your wife who got you into this.

“Then would you reason with him?” he said. “Your mother's going to kill me if I bring him home looking like a street urchin.”

“Street urchin.” Mom's term. Geez, she cracked the whip even when she wasn't present.

“I
want
to look like a street urchin,” Ty said. “I
like
street urchins.”

“Stop lying,” I said. “Why don't you want to get your hair cut, for real?”

Ty glanced at Dad. Then he glanced at the haircutter lady.

I stepped closer, bending down and putting my ear way up close.

“My hair is my
friend
,” he said, his breath hot. “I will
miss
it.”

Oh, god. It was the fingernail thing all over again. Only the fingernail thing hadn't truly been about his fingernails…so what was truly bothering him now?

“Are you feeling sad about something?” I asked.

He hesitated, then nodded.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“
Some
thing.”

He picked up the Nintendo controller. He wiggled the joystick. I straightened up in frustration.

“Sir?” the haircutter lady said to Dad. Her tone suggested that there were other children waiting, children who would be happy to get their hair cut and be given a cheap balloon.

Ty beckoned. I lowered my ear back into range.

“I don't want Mom to break into pieces,” he whispered.

I was confused. He didn't want Mom to break into…?

Then I got it.
Ohhhh.

“Ty, Mom's not going to break into pieces. She's not going to break at all.”

“But last night—”

“She didn't mean like that, like a plate or something. She meant that if we didn't start behaving, she'd get so overwhelmed that she'd…” I broke off, imagining Mom in a nuthouse. I imagined her rocking back and forth like a Weeble Wobble and never washing her hair.

“She'd what?” Ty asked.

“Never mind. Nothing's going to happen to Mom.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do. Because I'm your big sister.”

“Oh.”

“So…are you ready to get your hair cut? We're holding people up.”

Once more, Ty hooked his finger to draw me close. He whispered into my ear.

“
Ty
,” I said, after absorbing his request.

He made begging hands. “Please?”

I rolled my eyes and headed for the door of the salon.

“Where are you going?” Dad said.

“He's going to get his hair cut,” I assured him. “Just give me a sec.”

I went to our car and rooted around in the backseat until I found a grubby plastic bag with a few lonely animal cracker crumbs in it. I turned the bag inside-out over the asphalt and emptied it as best I could.

“Here,” I said when I was back inside the salon.

The haircutter lady was confused. “Why are you giving me that?”

“For his hair. He wants to keep it.”

She blanched. She turned to Dad, who shrugged. Then she turned to her coworker, and the look she gave her said
Why me?
as clear as day. Reluctantly she accepted the bag, pinching the uppermost edge with thumb and forefinger.

“Thank you, Winnie,” Dad said as the lady shaved Ty's head and shook the clumps of brown hair into the plastic bag. “You're the best.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Tell that to your wife, will you?”

 

For the entire next week, Ty kept his bag of hair safe and close. He placed it beside him on the sofa when he watched TV. He snuck it into his lap during dinner. He cuddled it like a teddy bear when he slept. At his birthday party, which was at the Buddy Factory, he tried to persuade Mom to buy his hair bag one of the cute buddy outfits or at least a pair of shoes.

“No, and don't ask again,” Mom said, balancing a Tupperware container of cupcakes and a bag of plastic dinosaurs.

“That thing is vile,” Sandra said the following afternoon during a halfhearted game of M&M Monopoly, which Ty had gotten as a present. It was still boiling hot outside, and Sandra was pissy because Bo had canceled their trip to Lake Lanier. The heat had thrown his Jeep into vapor lock—or something oil-and-gasket-y like that—and he was busy doing boy stuff to fix it.

“It really is, Ty,” I said. “It's disgusting.” It was a cold hard fact that hair looked far prettier when it was actually on someone's head. In a bag, it looked dull and scuzzy. It didn't help that Ty was constantly fondling the hair through the plastic, molding the individual strands into a fat mud-colored sausage.

“It's like a hair turd,” Sandra said. She threw her Monopoly money into the center of the board with a gesture of finality, and I followed suit. Our game was going nowhere.

Ty opened the bag and plopped his hair turd onto the table.

“Put that thing away,” Sandra said. “It smells!”

Ty lifted it to his nose. “No, it doesn't.”

“Yeah-huh,” Sandra said. “It smells like poop.”

“Really?” Ty asked.

She grabbed it and sniffed, then tossed it back. It held its shape alarmingly well. “No, but it does smell musty. You're seven years old now. You need to throw it away.”

Ty turned to me. “Does my real hair smell musty?”

I leaned toward him and inhaled. “Ugh. Yes!”

Ty giggled. He loved being musty. “Look,” he said, holding the hair turd above his upper lip. “It's a mustache.”

I guided his hand down to his chin. “Now it's a beard. You look like Santa Claus.”

“No, you look like a pervert,” Sandra said. “With musty hair.”

“What's a pervert?” Ty asked.

Mom strode into the kitchen. “Hey, kids. What are you guys up to?”

“We're playing Monopoly,” Ty said.

“We
were
playing Monopoly,” Sandra clarified. She pushed back her chair, but didn't stand up. “I'm going to call Bo and see if his Jeep's fixed. As soon as I get enough energy.”

I peered at Mom from beneath my bangs and stayed quiet, because I was still feeling hostile toward her. Or not hostile, exactly, but…something. In the deepest fiber of my being I knew I loved her. I mean, of course. She was my mom. But she'd been acting so strange recently, and it had twisted that easy love into a more complicated shape.

She hadn't repeated her crazy-lady screaming episode, but yesterday I'd found her in her walk-in closet, sitting with her back to the wall and her knees drawn to her chest. I'd come to ask if I could go swimming with Dinah and Cinnamon, but seeing her like that made the question fly from my brain.

“Mom?” I'd said. “Are you
hiding
?”

At least she had the decency to blush. “I just…”

“You just what?”

“I needed a moment to myself.” There were circles under her eyes, and she was hiding in her closet. My
mother
.

“You're not having a breakdown, are you?” I said. I felt angry before she even answered.

“I don't know. Maybe,” she said. Not the reassurance I was looking for.

She caught my reaction and sighed. “No, Winnie, I'm not having a breakdown. I sometimes wish I
could
have a breakdown, but I'm not constitutionally wired that way. Unfortunately.”

I narrowed my eyes. She was digging herself into a hole.

“You look pale,” I accused.

“My stomach's been a little queasy,” she admitted.

Whoa, whoa, whoa
, I thought, an insane idea blooming in my brain. Mood swings? Queasy tummies?

“Holy pickles, you're not
pregnant
, are you?”

Mom's lips twitched. “‘Holy pickles'?”

“Are you?!”

“No, Winnie, I'm not pregnant. I'm just hot and queasy and ready for summer to be over. Now—did you need something?”

That dose of weirdness had happened yesterday. Today, from my spot at the kitchen table, I studied her critically. Would we get Nice Mom or Psychotic Mom? Happy Mom or Grumpy Mom?

I hadn't seen Happy Mom in a long time.

She spotted Ty's hair turd. “Ty, put that thing back in the bag
now
,” she said. “You're going to get hair everywhere.”

Ty's lip trembled. I dropped my eyes.

Almost as if she'd read my thoughts—which was that she was a mean mother, and she should just move to Mexico if she hated us so much—she softened her expression and tried again.

“Sweetie, I'm sorry,” she said, coming over and giving Ty a leaning-down hug. “I didn't mean to snap at you.”

“You used your sharp voice,” he said.

“I know. But I love you. So sorry, 'kay?”

Ty stroked his hair turd. “It is my baby,” he said. “You have to be nice.” His mouth did that funny sideways thing that meant he was thinking. “His name is Jimbo.”

“It's a boy?” I said.

“Yes, because it has a penis.”

“It
is
a penis,” Sandra said under her breath.

A bit of a smile poked through my mad-at-mom mood. The hair turd—
Jimbo
—did look a bit like a penis. More like a penis than a vagina, that's for sure.

Mom put her
oh, you children
face on, but it was more pretend than real. “Well, please put Jimbo back in his crib.”

“Is his crib his bag?” Ty asked.

“Yes. It's time for his nap. Babies need a lot of sleep.”

“Okay,” Ty said, tucking Jimbo in.

“Winnie, can I talk to you for a sec?” Mom asked.

Uh-oh
. I hadn't done anything wrong—but my stomach tightened as if I had.

I followed her to the living room. She took a seat on the sofa and patted the spot beside her. I sat down, leaving a ribbon of space between us.

“Winnie, I need to tell you something,” she said.

My heart beat faster. “Okay.”

She started to speak, then stopped. Twin spots of color blossomed in her cheeks.

“What is it?” I said.

“I
am
pregnant,” she said. She gave me a sheepish glance. “Can you believe it? Is that not the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?”

“You're pregnant?” I repeated.

“Uh-huh. Go figure.”

“You're
preg
nant.”

“I'm pregnant, all right.”

“Did you just find out, or did you already know?”

“Your dad and I have known for about a week.”

Oh,
I thought, piecing it together.
Since the screaming day
. “So you lied to me, yesterday in the closet?”

“I guess so,” she said. “That wasn't good of me, was it?”

“No, it wasn't.”

“But that's why I'm telling you now.” She put her hand on my knee, and I looked at it. Her graceful long fingers. Her silver wedding band, because she'd always preferred silver to gold.

“It wasn't exactly a planned thing,” she said slowly, checking to see if I understood.

Heat rushed to my skin as I caught her drift.
Mother. Father. Sex.

“Uh, okay,” I said.

“But you know what? I love you kids more than anything in the world. Another baby will just add to the love.”

Another baby
.
Another baby.
I knew that's what pregnant meant—duh—but the reality of it suddenly sunk in. Forget the sex, forget the lying…Mom was having a baby!