Uncle Ray’s Camo Sleeping Bag

In the center of the garden stands a spurious weed that the gardener continually overlooks as he amends the soil. It keeps dodging him, a chameleon grown from a dubious single seed, that does not belong between the beets and the rutabaga, until it is unearthed.

***

Ipecac syrup was still there on the same third shelf, isle two, but it was no longer at my eye level. If I hadn’t thought my Momma’s antidepressant was a chiclet, I could have avoided my acquaintance with that cranky sounding elixir. Kalamazoo Meemaw had been in town, and it was she that commandeered the mission over to Lee’s Drug Store hair’s on fire. I assume my Momma would have let me face press the carpet if we had been home alone. Meemaw said she didn’t mind cleaning up the ladles of vomit, while Momma feigned another one of her headaches. Who doesn’t mind cleaning up vomit?

What was I trying to do? No matter how many times I put my hands in my pockets, the money for the gift was not going to magically appear, but I convinced myself of the notion “sometimes miracles do happen.” The pharmacy counter was not particularly busy, but as luck would have it, Mr. Spooner was last on the line. The big and tall shop was in the next town over, the only place he could possibly shop for clothing. Years ago I had blurted, “Momma why is that man so fat?” just as he sauntered by us near Schaffer’s ice cream parlor. “You’re getting the soap.” she said. The soap was a thing at our house. That time it was Ivory. Not as bad as Irish Spring, but still, I don’t get what I said that was so wrong to deserve swallowing suds. The man was a side of beef. Did I lie?

It was not Ipecac syrup I was hunting, but rather a second bottle of Aquamarine, my favorite and the first and only perfume I had ever used. When Meemaw sent me $5 for my birthday, I ran up to Lee’s and scored the last bottle on the shelf. If you ask me, the name Aquamarine might conjure up a stench of something akin to the scum at the bottom of Uncle Ray’s fish tank. But au contraire! The TV commercial delivered. “It smells just like flowers in the rain.” My Momma disagreed with me and the TV because after my first splash, she told me I smelled like a cheap boar, laughing her rump off when I fought back, “Don’t call me a pig!” Wouldn’t I have loved to offer her a dose of the soap. Preferably Irish Spring.

But soap was far from my mind as I pretended to shop. It was pretty popular Andrea, and procuring her a bottle of Aquamarine in my amygdala, motivating me towards what was about to come next. Surprised she invited me to her sleepover birthday party, I wondered if the invite was a pay back because I never stopped her from looking at my math answers. Who cares? I was going come hell or high water. When I asked my mother for money for a gift she laughed and told me to figure it out.

So I decided to figure it out by using Mr. Spooner’s wide girth as a solution to my dilemma. Thankfully, a recent shipment of Aquamarine had come in so that was not a part of my problem, but my empty pockets were. Keeping one eye on my prize, and the other on the backside of Mr. Spooner, he conveniently blocked not only Mr. Lee’s view of me and mine of him, but half of the front counter too. I lifted the blue glass bottle successfully tucking it under my tie-dyed T, slithering backwards out of the store, for however many harrowing seconds it took. When the jingle jangle on the door ceased, my angst did not and I vowed to find a way to pay good ole’ Mr. Lee back. It was the first and only time I had been driven to steal, and I wasn’t sure if I believed in God, but I decided to ask for forgiveness anyway.

Andrea said to bring a sleeping bag, which could have been another dilemma and wasn’t because when I called good ole’ Uncle Ray for a ride, he told me I could borrow his. If it wasn’t clean, it would have to do. Spongers can’t be persnickety. When he picked me up in his rusty dodge dart, the first thing I did was look in the back seat at the sleeping bag. Without sniffing it, I wouldn’t know if it was clean or dirty, because camo print does just that. Camouflage. “It will have to do.” I thought and then I gave him the address. 2345 Vineyard Way. He slapped the steering wheel so hard with both hands, I thought he would break it, and spit, “Girl, you be heading over to the hoity toity side of town!” I wasn’t sure what that meant but figured it out when we pulled up to what looked like Gracie Mansion.

I hugged Uncle Ray good-bye and he said with a grin, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at ten. Enjoy yourself! And try to take home some leftovers for me!” I gave him a love punch in the arm before I apprehensively left his jalopy, noticing the musty smell of the sleeping bag as I placed it under my left arm. “It will do.” I thought.

For a minute, I thought I had arrived at a costume party, because the woman that answered the door was in a maid’s outfit, quickly noting the nature of her dress was occupational. Hoping the whole evening wouldn’t be filled with similar faux pas, I followed the maid’s direction. She said, “Come with me,” so I could put down my things. I obeyed. How does one act when in a palace? Maybe it wasn’t exactly a palace, but it was by far more palatial than any home I had been in. The stolen Aquamarine was burning a hole in my backpack. I couldn’t wait to give it to Andrea. Rosario asked me if I had brought a gift and if she would like me to put it with the others. “Sure,” I said, briefly considering although the pinched Aquamarine was meaningful to me, perhaps it wouldn’t be to Andrea. If I was going to steal, why didn’t I at least pinch a Timex? “It will have to do. She’ll love it….I hope….”

Walking the echo filled endless halls two steps behind Rosario, something began nagging at my sensibility, biting me, telling me that being me in this big house was like trying to fit a jigsaw piece into a word puzzle, so when I finally got to Andrea, I automatically morphed into a cuttlefish, absorbing the environment as if I belonged. My sleeping bag and clothes might not have been an exact match, but what was in them had to be. I was good at that game, having done it many times before. So I thought.

It was all going okay. I was passing. We played music and danced, talked about boys, played twister, ate food that Uncle Ray would have drooled over, and ate seven layer cake in sync, so I thought. Andrea said she was going to open up the presents. After the second or third unveiling I wanted to dissolve myself in the hot cocoa I was drinking. The other gifts were not $5 gifts. What was I thinking? None of the girls were on my school bus. They were all from the other side. There was nowhere for me to hide when she was opening my gift. “Thanks,” she said with lackluster when she opened it, tossing it with the other gifts like she was discarding a used kotex, and I heard random giggles. Maybe they were laughing at something else?

When it was time to get ready for bed, I went into the bathroom to change. Apparently walls can still be thin in expensive houses. This is what I heard. “I’m not sleeping next to her. I think she has cooties.” “Nice sleeping bag. Is it from WW1?” “Why did you invite her anyway?” “I really don’t know. She was nice to me in math and now I wish I hadn’t. My mother will kill me if I get cooties.” “Only the poor girls wear Aquamarine!” And then they all laughed and I knew I couldn’t climb out of the window without jumping to my death and I knew my Uncle Ray would be out at Shuckers Grill, drunk as a skunk, on the other side, so I couldn’t call him, so I broke up their laughter, busting back into the room with my very own freakish laughter, drowning them out, and I took a little pleasure in seeing a half dozen pubescents’ anxious eyes looking back at me. Then I lied, “I’m kinda tired,” and I laid down upon the camo and pretended to sleep until they were all asleep. When I was sure they were, I snuck over to the present pile and tucked the Aquamarine under my jammies and then into my backpack.

Uncle Ray was there at 10 am to pick me up, hungover. “How was it Kitten?”

“Don’t ask.” I said. “Uncle Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me one more favor?”

“Sure Kitten.”

“Can you pass by Lee’s Drug Store on the way home.”

“Sure. You sick?”

“Nah.”

“What then?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay kitten.” And he didn’t and he waited out in front of Lee’s. When I got back in his car, my backpack was lighter and so was my heart.

“So please just tell me something, anything about the party. I’ve never been inside one of those McMansions. The food. How was the food.”

“It was good Uncle Ray. It was real good, but not as good as you may think. In fact I think Meemaw’s food is even better.”

“You don’t say.”

“Say.”