~ Deluged ~

by

Roberta Olsen Major

"It’s just for a few hours," I said for the forty-seventh time.

"You’re only sixteen," my mother responded, also for the forty-seventh time.

"I’m six-and-a-half," my little sister interrupted.

Way to go, Jilly, I thought. If I’d had to go through the whole call-and-response thing again, I might have had to resort to foot-stomping and name-calling--not the way to win an argument with my mother about my level of maturity.

"I don’t like to leave you two when there’s a storm heading this way," Mom said, moving on to the second verse of this endless song.

"It’s not necessarily heading this way," I said, barely restraining myself from rolling my eyes. "It could make landfall anywhere between here and Brownsville, Mom, and it could be days from now, or never. You know how unpredictable the weather is in Houston."

"Unpredictable," Mom repeated with special emphasis, as if proving her point.

"It’s not even a hurricane," I went on. "It’s a tropical depression. And if you don’t get on that plane, the depression around here is going to be a lot more than just tropical!"

"I’d take you both, Rebecka," Mom said, her voice trembling a little, "but I just don’t have the airfare. She was your grandmother."

"Who was my grandmother?" Jilly asked, then, "I didn’t know I had a grandmother."

Mom winced, but Jilly had it right. Grandmother Fisk washed her hands of Mom seventeen years ago, and refused to acknowledge the births of either of her only grandchildren--or even our existence--in the years since. The old lady was as unbending as a steel-reinforced girdle, and there was not a soft bone in her body.

We now had proof of the bone thing, since she’d fallen and shattered her hip a few months back. Mom’s brother had called with ghoulish updates: the bones weren’t knitting, the doctors had found underlying problems, and finally, "Ding dong, the witch is dead..."

"I’d send you over to the Campbells," Mom said for the thirtieth time, "but they’re leaving for Dallas early tomorrow morning."

I sighed. "It’s just for a few hours," I said. Wrong thing to say. I could see Mom’s lips forming the standard response for the forty-eighth time. "Mrs. Magruder will probably be back before dark," I added quickly. "We won’t even have time to notice you’re gone."

Uh-oh.

Jilly turned big eyes on Mom, her lower lip starting to wobble. "I don’t want you to go."

"Sure you do, Jilly." I said it quick, before the maternal guilt lever could be yanked any farther. "It’ll be like a sleepover, just us. We’ll make pizza--" Jilly loved to cook. "--and watch videos and paint each other’s toenails."

Jill’s eyes lit up. I figured I could live with blue toenails for one night, if it kept her happy.

I looked at Mom, who appeared marginally less conflicted. I started to relax.

"Can Patrick have a sleepover with us?" Jilly asked, as if this was the greatest idea yet.

I winced.

Before Mom could return to full meltdown mode, I said, "No, Patrick can’t come. This is just a sleepover for sisters. Patrick isn’t a sister."

Far from it. But Mom was already touchy where my newly-acquired boyfriend was concerned, so listing all of his excellent qualities would be counter-productive at the moment. Instead, I mustered up the most reasonable tone I could manage, and put a hand on my mother’s arm. "We’ll be fine, Mom. You have to go. She was your mother." She was a wicked old witch with a heart stonier than Plymouth Rock who deserves to rot in the third ring of hell for all eternity--but this was also not the thing to say right now to my tender-hearted mother. "We’ll be just fine," I added soothingly.

"You’ll keep the deadbolt on?"

I nodded.

"You won’t tell anyone you’re in the flat alone?"

I nodded again.

"You’ll make sure Jilly brushes her teeth and says her prayers?"

Two more nods--and I was beginning to feel like a rubber raft in the Gulf of Mexico: up and down, up and down, up and down.

"If I could’ve just talked to Mrs. Magruder up in Conroe, found out when she was going to be back this evening..."

"Mom," I said. "She’ll be back early. She hates to spend the night away from here. She’ll be home before dark. Jilly and I will be fine."

"What kind of mother flies off to California without leaving a babysitter in charge?" Mom was practically wringing her hands.

"I’m the babysitter," I said. "I’ll take care of everything."

After all, what could happen in a few short hours?

~ * ~

"No pepperoni?" Jill’s lip was starting to wobble again. Great. Mom had only been out the door since noon and we’d already gone through a dozen major emotional outbursts.

"We’ve got ham," I said. "We can do pineapple and ham."

"I hate ham," Jilly said, which was a lie, but she’d gone through a dozen of those already, too. "I want pepperoni, Beck." Her lip wobbled some more. "I want Mom." Now it was tears--the big fat kind she could muster up at will to flood her blue eyes until they looked like bluebonnets in a spring rain.

The little brat.

"Fine," I said. "We’ll walk over to the store and get pepperoni."

"And doughnuts," Jilly said.

"No doughnuts," I said. "Get your shoes on."

"Doughnuts and ice cream," Jilly added on her way out of the kitchen.