“Wake up,” she demands. I’m usually awake for about a half hour before she comes to the door but I don’t get out of bed until I hear her voice, it’s the only way I can be sure the world is safe.
We’re in the car and on the way to church and my mother turns down the radio which is tuned to FM 94.7, the Christian station.
She nags, “Do you know which route we are on, Pauline? Pauline? Pauline?” I’m in the passenger’s seat with my head between the pages of Angela’s Ashes. I’m engulfed in the winding tale of Frank McCourt and my mom wants to bother me about my direction skills. She always says I have a bad sense of direction, which is completely untrue; my problem is my attention span. If someone suffered from chronic seizures and couldn’t make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because they might splash jelly on the counter, is the big issue their peanut butter and jelly ineptitude?
“Route 23, Pauline. Pay attention or you won’t even know where to go when you get your own car,” she torments.
“Alright, Mommy. I’ll remember it next time.” I say, knowing that she knows I really won’t remember it and we’ll go through the same thing all over again, only next week she’ll say, “You’re totally hopeless, Pauline.” And then we will all smile and laugh just like they do on Scooby Doo. You know, when the gang catches the crook, then they pull off his mask and he says “I could’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” Then Scooby says something like “Ruh- Roh” and Velma says “Oh Scoob!” and they all laugh obnoxiously. As much as I hate that show, I wish life was that easy to navigate and predict. What kind of a name is Scooby Doo anyway?
As always, we arrive at Church about five minutes before the service starts.
When the service is done , coffee, croissants and whatnot are being served afterwards and that is definitely the place to be for chit chat after church.
My sister and I sit at a table and I have a cup of coffee and a croissant. I have no idea why I drink that stuff every week. I do believe the recipe consists of tar and hot water. Desperate to get the taste out of my mouth I bite into the croissant. I hate croissants, I thought maybe today would be different but I still hate them. I suppose my sister might want it.
“Do you want this croissant, Kiki?” I proposed while tapping her shoulder. She turned and faced me with a different croissant sticking out of her mouth “Roh” she says as flaky crumbs hit my face. “Oh Scooby!” I chuckled.
“What?” She asks. “You know what would be funny?” I say, cooking up a scheme to brighten up this drab day “Put this croissant in Mommy’s purse.”
“ I don’t know, should I? It’s not even wrapped in anything” she asks unsure about what I was planning.
“Do it.” I utter without acknowledging what kind of havoc those two syllables would soon wreak.
We leave church and from that point on we try all day to get my mom to go into her purse and find her surprise so we can all have an “Oh Scoob!” laugh. “Pauline, give me my cell phone,” she requests on the way home.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“It’s in my purse,” Purse always sounds like pahhs when she says it. My mother has been in America for about 20 years and the accent has not faded at all. I still find it delightful especially when she says words like beach and sheet because it’s hard to tell if she’s using swearwords unless one uses context clues. “Pauline! Pauline- my cell phone,” she nags until “Pauline” melts into “Po-leen”
“Why don’t you go in your purse and get it?” I sneer, trying to coerce her into opening the bag. She gives me a hard look. I succumb and reach into the handbag for it.
When we get home for our routine Sunday cleaning and laundry marathon she announces “I’m going to Costco. I’ll be back soon.” That’s also part of the Sunday routine. She loves Price Club.
“The first rule of Price Club: Don’t talk about Price Club,” I tell her as she walks out of the door. That lame joke is also a part of the routine.
When my mother returns my sister and I are on the couch watching television and the house is not much cleaner than it was when she left. She walks in, surveying the room and says “Let me ask you something.”
Oh God, I think to myself, if there is anything I’m more frightened of besides the cat that lives in our shed, it’s that one phrase. No matter how calmly she says it, a storm usually ensues afterwards. She then asks the anticipated question, “Whose idea was it to put a croissant in my pahhs?”
I come forward, shaking in my boots and trying to suppress a laugh at the same time. “ Kiki did it.” I say solemnly as my sister’s jaw drops. She stares at my mom in horror while also attempting to hold back a laugh.
“Do you know how embarrassing it is when you are at the store and you go into your pahhs to pay for something and a croissant falls out?” my mother asks too calmly. The room is silent. My sister and I stare at her and she blinks twice, from this point forward the dialogue is completely telepathic:
Kiki asks me whether it’s ok to laugh or not. I tell her I’m not sure. My mother expresses how much she loathes us right now in her flaring nostrils. I glance back at Kiki, telling her that we can’t laugh. We face my mother and we don’t know where to go from here. She faces us and she doesn’t know where to go from there.
Without missing a beat, our dog, Pepper, scuffles past us and pees on the rug as if to say “Take it easy… and clean up this mess I just made,” My mother laughs, then my sister laughs and I say “Oh Scooby!” and all is well.
I was also 16 when I wrote this story. Although it is based on true events, whenever I told this story there was always two versions of it: The Normal and Theatrical versions. If you know me, you know that I like to add literary embellishments to the spoken tale. I don't call it lying, I call it poetic license. =)
