Free Billie Standish Was Here by Nancy Crocker Page A

circus. “What on earth have you done?”
    It’s hard to make eye contact with someone who looks horrified at your appearance. I went to the sink and started washing my hands just for something to do. “Mama hit me with the spaghetti spoon.”
    â€œWhatever for?” she gasped.
    â€œI tried to tell her something and she didn’t want to listen. That’s pretty much it.”
    She was quiet for so long. I finished drying my hands and had no choice but to face her. “This have anything to do with me?” She looked at me so fiercely I couldn’t pull my eyes away.
    â€œOh no, Miss Lydia. Not at all.”
    She was glaring out from under her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
    â€œWell, Mama might tell you something different, but as far as I’m concerned this had absolutely nothing to do with you and everything in the world to do with Mama,” I told her.
    Miss Lydia deliberated a long minute, then nodded. “I made pot roast,” she said.
    Halfway through the meal she asked, “So underneath all that Cover Girl, what exactly you got goin’ on?”
    â€œSome of it may be a bruise by today, but mainly it’s a burn.”
    â€œYou put anything on it besides makeup?”
    I shook my head.
    She nodded and started telling me about some real-life drama she’d read about in the new Reader’s Digest .
    After the dishes were put away, she told me to go to the big bathroom upstairs and wash my face clean. I didn’t want to, but she said something about having seen worse no matter how bad it was. And it did seem silly trying to hide what she knew was there.
    When I walked back into the kitchen she got out the poultry shears and cut a big tentacle off a plant in the windowsill above the sink. A clear gel starting oozing out the cut end. When she came at me with some on her fingers, I took a couple of steps backward.
    She chuckled. “Aloe vera, Billie Marie. Main ingredient in some of the most expensive skin cream you can buy and that’s watered down. Best thing in the world for burns. That’s why I keep it in the kitchen.”
    I winced at her touch. Then I was amazed by how cool the stuff felt as she spread it across my cheek. It looked like it should be sticky, but it wasn’t. It was just cool and soothing. I shut my eyes.
    â€œUh-huh,” Miss Lydia agreed. “You take that plant with you when you go, and use some every night and morning until that heals.”
    â€œOh, I can’t—” But that’s as far as I got. I could see her mind was made up.
    Mama was making pot roast when I got home that evening and didn’t turn around as I took the plant to my room. I guess Daddy had dropped her off and gone on to run some errand, because the truck pulled in a little later. I heard Daddy tell Mama hello and figured that was dinner call.
    He nodded at me without breaking his running commentary about the cultivator breaking down that afternoon. She stood at the stove murmuring at the appropriate junctures.
    When she turned, she had filled a plate with food. She grabbed a knife and fork off the table and left the room without a word. A minute later we heard the TV come on. Daddy and I looked at each other. He shrugged and made a plate from the pots on the stove and then sat down at the table with the morning’s newspaper.
    I weighed options while I filled my own plate. Then, carrying it in one hand and a glass of water in the other, I left Daddy with the paper and walked to the living room. Mama wasn’t so much watching TV as glaring at it. I kept on walking and ate my dinner behind my closed bedroom door.
    And that’s how we ate from then on, in three separate rooms, no tie left to tether us to the kitchen table.
    As I passed through the living room with my empty plate after that first silent dinner, the phone rang. Mama’s expression didn’t register any change, so I went over and grabbed it on the