Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

Author:Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938235672
Publisher: Hub City Press
Published: 2020-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Since the death of her husband Mrs. Creech has been eating mostly Special K for dinner, the kind with the red berries in it and sometimes J.J.’s carries it and sometimes they don’t. But she always asks the Richards girl working the register anyways because there might be some in the back that they ain’t put out yet, because that’s happened before. So when Mrs. Creech comes in the door, that Richards girl goes to the back and today one box of Special K with the red berries is left in the whole store.

Mrs. Creech puts it on the grocery belt with milk, eggs, white bread, and baloney. When the Richards girl picks up the cereal box, Mrs. Creech tells her the doctor show on TV said that red berries help with your memory. Also deodorant without aluminum is what you’re supposed to use and the only place to get that around here is Walgreens in Ahoskie, she’s looked all over.

The Richards girl doesn’t say much back, just bags the groceries. She’s mighty shy and seems like she’s in her own world and Mrs. Creech doesn’t understand why J.J. would hire a girl like that to run the register. She don’t even greet people when they come in the door. And that’s important not only when running a business but in life. Mrs. Creech’s mama raised her and her brothers and sisters to be able to talk to anybody, no matter what. “Nobody is ever so good or bad that you can’t talk to them,” she said.

Coonie’s daughter pushes the door too hard and it flies open. She looks sweaty but still very pretty like she always has. She walks fast into the aisles. The whole town knows the story, how Daniel Adam’s keeping her in that shack house behind the Black church. He’s probably got her on drugs. Mrs. Creech has seen her out there tending the tomatoes. But here’s the part only Mrs. Creech knows: Coonie’s daughter coulda been with Daniel Adam the night he broke into her house, picking out all the jewelry she wanted from her jewelry box. The pieces her husband gave her over all the years: the bracelet with rubies on their first Christmas together in 1962, the ruby ring from the next Christmas to match it. It looked like a red little pinecone.

The Richards girl hands Mrs. Creech her change and asks her what kind of stone is in her ring. And Mrs. Creech felt herself falling into wanting to tell the girl all about it, how it keeps coming up. The love of her life is dead. She won’t open his closet. She won’t sleep in their room. How she still wakes up in the middle of the night on the couch in the living room where his hospice bed was. She wakes up to check on him, to make sure he’s still breathing, to drop water in his mouth with a straw. To lightly scratch his back. But he’s not there when she wakes.

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