Free Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums Page B

she, like the approaching wad of clouds the humid spring sky had longed for all day, rolled toward us with the maximum force she too could muster, not tornado-watch-worthy in that summer of tornado watches, but wondrously frightening all the same in her own sudden bluster that could change the day’s temperature just as easily, tighten my throat in anticipation of its outcome, make Coco bark. The girl’s mother now shouted her name with equal gusto, forming a duet of anger as mine continued to call, “Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!” her worry sung aloud at soprano pitch, my friend’s mother’s voice lower, an altogether annoyed alto emerging from her throat, ever-phlegmy with the smoke from the cigarette on which she was no doubt puffing.
    The girl unwrapped her arm from my shoulder and, burying her own cigarette in the dirt, bolted toward the pitcher’s mound. “Come on! Hurry up!” she called, not such a big shot after all. “We’re in deep shit,” she warned as she ran back and picked up a few sticks that were scattered about the dugout’s bench. “Take some of these. Say we were out here looking for stuff.” Such a generic cover story seemed dumb, even to dumb little me, but I didn’t have anything better to suggest, the truth in the last few days becoming an evermore treacherous option.
    Real thunder now sounded in the distance as our mothers appeared,marching toward us over the ridge that led to the ball field. My friend’s mother had put on her new sundress but mine still wore her bathing suit and looked madder than any Miss Mississippi who had failed to make it into the Top Ten of the Miss America pageant after winning a couple of preliminaries. Then there it was—not even the continued roll of thunder could compete with it—that aural warning of her displeasure, which, as I look back on it now, was that summer’s signal call, a sound that no subsequent one has ever been able to drown out: her well-worn flip-flops flapping against her agitated heels. My baby sister, Karole, was held on her hip and bounced about as my mother’s angry stride increased in speed once she spotted me. Coco and my brother, Kim, both came scurrying behind her trying to keep up as they each panted with the toll it was taking on their little legs. Coco—as long as my mother fumed—found the will to bark.
    â€œWe’re in trouble,” I whispered to my friend.
    â€œYou sure are,” my mother said, somehow having heard me and pulling me toward her out on the third-base line with her Karole-less hand.
    â€œWe were just trying to find stuff,” my friend said to her own mother, who grabbed one of the sticks from her and began to spank her with it as, sure enough, a cigarette dangled from her fixed and smoky frown. My friend ran in circles around her—her mother kept jerking her about by her wrist—and began tearlessly to yelp each time the stick landed on her thighs. Her mother spit out her cigarette in the infield toward first base and spanked her harder.
    I handed my mother a stick so she could start hitting me too but she just threw it on the ground. “Never ever go off without telling us where you are,” she insisted and seemed about to cry herself while taking in the scene with a careful sweep of her heightened sensitivities, an ability of hers I was to inherit, like her knack for putting an outfit together or lowering her eyes in my father’s presence. Karole began to wail. “You two both know that there’s a pervert lurkingabout,” my mother said, mentioning something she called a Peeping Tom that had recently terrorized our neighborhood as she jostled Karole on her hip in an attempt to quiet her.
    My friend’s mother, tiring of her attempt to elicit tears over on her side of the pitcher’s mound, was able to light another cigarette and jerk her little hellion home all at the same time. The price tag was