Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser McAlpin

Poor, Pitiful Pearl Trumps Mr. Lizard

Since I’m working on my manuscript today, I won’t spend time writing about the lizard that jumped out of the toaster the first morning I was here.  I had pulled the cover off and pulled the toaster out of the corner to plop my bread in, and screamed after a short-tailed, dark-brown monster flew into my face.  So today, when I open drawers and cabinet doors, and root around in the backs of shelves, and pull the cover off the 50-year old toaster , I move tentatively, with both feet aimed toward the living room, ready to make a run for it at the slightest provocation.  No, I’m not going to write about that.  Instead, I will include a tidbit from my manuscript.

I never understood why Pearl was supposed to be poor and pitiful.  She arrived one Christmas in a box with a see-through plastic window on the lid, and she wore a perfectly fine polka-dotted, navy blue dress with a zigzag hemline and a red kerchief tied over her sandy-brown hair.  Packed with her was a fancy, pink dress over a stiff petticoat, white Mary-Janes and ankle socks edged in lace, which I ignored.

Her fancy clothes stayed in the box, which found its way to a top shelf in my closet and eventually vanished.  I never saw the dress and accessories as beautiful, rich clothes compared to poor, pitiful rags, never saw the need to transform her out of herself.  I saw dress-up, party clothes compared to play clothes.  I knew she was more comfortable in her play clothes, so these she wore to tea.  In fact, these she wore every day for everything.

The Broken Chin

From my manuscript:

Once the numbness took hold and the stitching was underway, I began to feel a different feeling, a pink feeling, like rosebuds and raspberries creeping over me, growing stronger against the pain and outrage.  Nothing hurt anymore.  The relief lifted me.  It relaxed my face, unclenched my teeth, turned my fists into hands and wiggled my toes, as if softness had been left to heat in the sun and was then wrapped around my body, teasing me into warmth and well-being.  I felt like I was floating.

My mother began to smile.  “That’s much better, honey.  You’re going to be just fine,” I heard her say.  She sounded far away.  The shot with the foot-long needle had disappeared.  All that was left was the white-coated doctor leaning over me sewing, and coming out of the darkness were the hands that held my face, their grips softening, loosening.  He smiled at me and I felt the hands release altogether, which made me float all the more.  Faces faded into view and were smiling now, as an amazing relief lifted me, as light as feathers.  My mother continued stroking my cheeks and forehead, gazing down at me.

“I love you,” I blurted out to her, to him, to them, to the room.

Everyone laughed.

Here's hoping that this weekend you're better at hard-to-get than I am.  Have a good one!

from Louise

Mom and Aunt Jane

I have a picture of the two of them, snapped at my cousin Barb’s wedding, where they looked like twins—the same size, the same smile, the same square face and the same prettiness.  One wore peach and the other a pastel green.  Small and full of life they were.

After mom died, Aunt Jane discarded the headband she wore for most of her life to keep her hair out of her face and started wearing her hair like my mother’s, pulled back on one side and fastened with a bobby pin.  Once when she was turned away from me, I gasped and held my breath.

“Mom?”  I wanted to touch her shoulder and turn her around to see my mother’s face smiling at me.  But I snapped myself out of it, for I knew it was Aunt Jane, after all.

“Does it bother you that I wear my hair this way?” she asked me once.

“No, but there have been several times I thought you were mom, so don’t be surprised if I call you that some day.  I can’t believe how much you look like her with your hair like that.”

We laughed then because we didn’t know what else to do.  She never told me why she changed her hair and I never asked.