Call Me Tuesday by Leigh Byrne Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t want to talk to her. Tell her I’m going to swallow this bottle of sleeping pills. Answer the phone now, and tell her what I said.”
    I picked up the phone. “Hello.”
    Mama was right. It was Aunt Barbara, Mama’s sister.
    “Tuesday, is that you?” she asked, sounding surprised to hear my voice. “Let me speak to your mother, honey.”
    I offered the receiver to Mama. She shook her head no. “She doesn’t want to talk,” I said to Aunt Barbara. “She’s going to swallow her sleeping pills!”
    “Where’s your daddy?” Barbara asked.
    “He’s gone to the grocery store.”
    “Tuesday, what is your mother doing right now?”
    “She’s crying and holding the pills.”
    “Hand her the phone, tell her I want to speak to her. If she won’t talk to me, you’re going to have to run next door and get a neighbor for help while I call an ambulance. Now tell her everything I just said.”
    I did as Aunt Barbara instructed. When I’d finished talking, Mama jerked the phone from my hand. As soon as she got the receiver to her ear, she said, “You don’t know how it is to lose a child. You don’t know, and you don’t care. Why do you act like you do?”
    Right about then, I heard the front door open. Daddy was home. He walked into the bedroom carrying a white fast-food sack in one hand, and my milkshake in the other. “What’s going on in here?” he asked as he handed the milkshake and food to me.
    “Mama is going to swallow all her sleeping pills!” I said.
    He walked over and took the pills from her. “Tuesday, go to the kitchen and eat your supper with your brothers.”

THE STRANGER
IN MAMA’S
CLOTHES

10
     
    It was Sunday morning, and Mama was still in bed. Daddy had gotten up early and driven to Nashville to go to church with Grandma Storm. I was at the kitchen table, in a morning daze, shoveling Rice Krispies into my mouth.
    Nick was sitting across from me, slicing a banana over his cereal. “You look like you have popcorn balls in your cheeks,” he said.
    “Who, me?” I asked, glaring at the sunlight reflecting off the silver flecks in the linoleum tabletop.
    He pointed the butter knife he had in his hand at Jimmy D., who was beside me. “No, him.”
    I looked at Jimmy D., his cheeks bulging with cereal. Milk was oozing out of his lips and running down his chin. “You do look like you have popcorn balls in your cheeks!”
    Jimmy D. got tickled, and blew milk and bits of Rice Krispies through his mouth and nose onto Nick’s face.
    I cracked up.
    That’s when I heard Mama calling out from her bedroom. “Tuesday!” she yelled in her gravelly morning voice. “Tuesday!” she called out again, this time more insistent. “Come here now!”
    I put my spoon down beside my bowl of cereal, wiped the milk from my mouth on the front of my pajamas, and ran down the hall to her bedroom.
    When I got there, she was sitting up in the bed. She had just woken from a hard sleep. I could tell from the deep creases in the side of her face.
    I bounced up to her and sat down. “What do you want, Mama?”
    “I don’t know what you’re so happy about, young lady, because you’re in big trouble!”
    Springing up, I started backpedaling and searching my memory for something I might have done to upset her.
    I couldn’t remember doing any of the usual things that got me into trouble, like running in the house, or fighting with my brothers, and my school grades were good. But it was obvious she was mad about something. I could see the rage in her face, hear it in her voice.
    I stood before her, nervous, and suddenly cold from the wet spot where I’d wiped milk on my pajamas. “Why, Mama, what did I do wrong?”
    “Don’t play dumb with me, girl! You know exactly what you did!” she said in a growly tone she had never used with me before. “As punishment I want you to stand in the hallway with your face to the wall.” From her bed she pointed to an area between two doorways right outside her room.