And what if I am? Will Dad be disappointed? Will he be angry? Will he be on Grandma Eloise’s side as she seems to assume?
Will this be one more reason to put me in a group home???
“Um… Hi, Dad… It’s Hattie…” For some unknown reason, I pause here like I’m expecting him to reply. Which is dumb because this is voicemail. Also, his phone will tell him it’s me, so I didn’t need to say It’s Hattie.
Shit. Shit. I should just hang up. Except I don’t hang up. Because if Mom is supposed to tell Dad before Grandma does, then I want to tell him before Mom does.
Right?
Speak on my own behalf?
Do an end-run?
“I really need to talk to you, um, because—” Here, I’m not sure how to continue, and I’m aware that my voice sounds a little thready and my nose is stinging. I’m about to cry, and that’s the last thing I want to do right now.
So I tell myself to hurry.
“I didn’t mean to, but I called Grandma Eloise a cranky old twat. At lunch. At Bon Temps Grill. And I really, really didn’t mean to call her that. I just think it sometimes… Maybe most of the time because she’s mean to me—like all the time. And Mom said if I didn’t apologize to her like, deeply and unequivocally, and not just for saying what I thought, I’d be—I’d be—I don’t know what her exact words were, but I’d be wrecking the peace in the family.”
I pause here because now that I’ve blurted what happened, I don’t feel I’ve made a very persuasive case on my behalf.
Or even explained why I’m calling and why this should involve Dad in the first place.
“I… I’m telling you because Grandma threatened Mom that if Mom didn’t tell you, she would. And I don’t even know why that’s a thing, but it made me feel weird and af-fraid—” Here, my voice breaks because my throat is getting extra clogged with a whole lot of feelings. “So I’m telling you because… because….”
Wait. Why am I telling him?
“Because I don’t think calling your grandmother a cranky old twat is a reason why someone should be sent to live in a group home, and I know that’s what Grandma Eloise wants.”
And just like that, the ugly truth and the uglier certainty come out all at once like pus from a popped zit.
“She hates me, Dad—” And here my voice goes all wobbly and warped because I’m legit full-on crying. “She hates me, and she just wants me to go away. And I don’t see how Mom can think it’s my fault there isn’t peace in the family when Grandma Eloise is trying to get rid of me. And I’m just… just so, so t-tired.”
It’s at this point in my sniveling snot fest that Mom opens the driver’s side door. And as soon as she sees the wreck I am, the look of disappointed disapproval on her face melts to one of disappointed pity.
“Oh, Hattie,” she says, climbing in before reaching between the front seats to put a hand on my knee. I don’t immediately wrench it away, but I don’t love it either.
But jerking away might give her another reason to think I don’t belong.
“M-Mom’s here. I have to go,” I sob into the phone. “Please don’t send me away.”
Mom makes an exasperated sound as I hang up.
“Hattie…” She’s frowning-but-not-frowning at me.
She had the same pained frown on her face that time she hit a feral pig. We were somewhere in Arkansas after she’d picked me up from Camp Ozark.
Mom had pulled over because at first she thought it was a dog. It wasn’t.
The car had struck the pig and knocked him into a ditch by the side of the road, but he wasn’t dead. We’d just broken his back. I’d had to cover my ears because the sounds he was making—a kind of squealing scream—was just awful.
And Mom didn’t know what to do, so she’d called my dad—with that exact look on her face.
I couldn’t hear what he’d said. But it involved pulling the car up the road, turning up the volume on the Kim Possible soundtrack, and telling me to keep my head down and my ears covered. She said to wait in the car, and she’d be back in a few minutes.
It didn’t occur to me until I’d heard the pop-pop what had happened.
But I’d sat up then, uncovered my ears, and looked back at Mom, holding the conceal-and-carry pistol she kept under the front seat of her car, walking back with that look still on her face.
