A Life of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring

Author:Sandra Kring
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780553908022
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

14

BRIGHT IDEA #16: If your babysitter tells you that the best place to hide things is right out in the open, don’t believe her.

The whole ordeal of Winnalee’s marijuana plants might have been over for me and Winnalee, but it wasn’t over for Aunt Verdella. “I’m worried about that girl,” she told me a couple of nights later, when, restless while Winnalee was at work, and still obsessing because Jesse’s last letter ended with Okay, gotta go. I got a letter from Amy—sort of an apology—and I suppose I should answer it before it’s lights out, I hiked over with a basket of dirty laundry.

I startled Aunt Verdella when I came through the door. She dropped the paper she had in her hand into the opened kitchen drawer and shoved it shut, leaving a fringe of envelopes peeking out. “Sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t want to wake Uncle Rudy or Boohoo by knocking.”

“Button, since when does family need to knock?” she said. “Come on in. I dozed off late this afternoon and now I’m wide awake, so I was just catching up on your dad’s laundry.”

I looked down at the basket I’d just brought in and cringed. “I wasn’t going to bring ours over, but …”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “Running downstairs is good exercise for me.” She grabbed the basket and made an exaggerated phew face. “With as much beer as our little Winnalee spills on her clothes, the customers must go home stone sober. I’ll just presoak these in the washer tonight and get them whirling in the morning.

“Oh,” she told me, stopping halfway across the dining room. “I called over to the Bishops this evening and talked to Marls herself. She’s got placenta previa and that’s why she was spotting.” I must have looked confused, because she explained how that means the placenta was down by the cervix, instead of above it, and the pressure of the baby caused some tearing. If the truth be known, pregnancy scared me, and I was creeped out by all those parts inside, which seemed as foreign to me as Japan, so I just nodded like I was listening and understood.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

“Well, the doctors think her placenta will move, but she’s got to take it easy for a while.”

“I’m glad the baby’s okay,” I said.

Aunt Verdella’s eyes, like her bladder, weren’t what they used to be, so when she worked in the evenings she kept the room well lit. I examined her freshly cut and colored hair in the stark light as she prattled more about Marls’s pregnancy. The old growth was a medium auburn, but the inches of roots were more of a Pepto Bismol pink. Aunt Verdella noticed me staring. “Does it look all right?” she asked, patting the side of her head. “Fanny said it’s two-toned.”

I told her it looked real pretty and she said, “Maybe it was just the lighting at The Corner Store. I told Fanny; Claire knows what she’s doing.

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