~
Acid and Alkaline
Linda was worried there was no baking soda in heaven. Without baking soda, how would her grandfather cope with his heartburn?
She sat in the backseat gazing out the closed car window at the Elizabeth River as the car crossed the Hodges Ferry Bridge during the short drive to Ma and Ba’s apartment. Her grandparents had lived in that small box of a home in Portsmouth, Virginia for as long as she could remember, but like all small children, Linda assumed her five years of life was an epoch. And she was nervous; she didn’t want to go visit her Ma so soon after Ba went to heaven.
Just last weekend, she spent the night with Ma and Ba. Linda sat for hours in Ba’s lap watching Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett until she fell asleep. Sometimes Ma made her go to bed earlier if she had been cranky at dinner, but often Linda would sneak out of the small second bedroom when Ma was busy cleaning up the kitchen, and scurry behind Ba’s easy chair, sitting in a tight little ball, nightgown stretched over her knees, with her arms tightly wound around her spindly legs. Ba knew she was there, of course, and would take a Lorna Doone butter cookie and slyly dead drop it behind the chair. Linda knew to suck on the cookie and not to bite it—no noise or crumbs. Otherwise Ma would find out and that would be an end to that.
Linda loved her Ma but, no question, Ba was first in her heart. He was always fun and always willing to break rules. Others got mad at Ba for unknown reasons, but never Linda. Cliffy, they would say, Damn You Cliffy. That was Ba’s name to other people: Damn You Cliffy.
Linda didn’t know what threesheetstothewind meant it but seemed to have something to do with the bottles in the cabinet under the sink. The wind caused Ba to have to attacks in his chest, and this last time, it sent him to heaven. No one ever told Linda she was threesheetstothewind but Ba often was. All the same, Linda made sure to close her bedroom window since Ba went to heaven. The wind could kill you. Linda wanted to be with Ba again but wasn’t sure about heaven. She stole Vicks Mentho-lyptus Drops from the A&P once and she wasn’t sure where she might end up. So, in the end, the window stayed closed.
It was almost Thanksgiving, and Linda was mad that Ba didn’t wait until after the holiday to die by the wind, almost as mad as the time Ma yelled, “Cliffy, Damn You Cliffy, that’s not the toilet; that’s the closet!” She and Ba had a trick to show everyone at Thanksgiving. Ba took the Land O’Lakes butter box and his pocketknife to make a funny thing. He would cut out the tiny box of butter the lady on the front was holding, except for the very top of the box, to make a little peekaboo flap, and then fold up the lady’s knees so it looked like she was naked with no shirt! It was so funny. Linda worried how she would show everyone next week. She didn’t have a pocketknife.
The car pulled into the apartment parking lot, the muffled crunching of the oyster shell driveway reminding Linda to roll up her window. She reached to the handle but remembered she had sworn off wind.
She didn’t want to see her Ma. What if she was crying? The apartment was a fun place and Linda didn’t want Ma the Rule Maker to make it dreary.
Linda and her mother walked up the stairs to Apartment 202. As she stepped inside the apartment, Linda saw the Arm and Hammer box on the shelf over the stove. “He needs that,” Linda wailed, pointing an angry finger at the box but concentrating her angrier eyes on her Ma.
Ma wasn’t crying. She came over and lifted Linda, patting her back, and carried her over to Ba’s easy chair. Ma sat down, enveloped Linda, and began talking. Linda cried but sat still as Ma and Linda’s mother talked about the funeral, the many people, the casseroles, the dishes to return, the flowers, the hairdos people showed up with! So much to do and talk about when someone dies. Linda wanted to listen, so she stifled her cry to a soft whimper but otherwise stayed silent—that’s the way you get grownups to talk, to be quiet so they forget you are there.
Slowly, though, Linda’s eyes grew heavy. She thought of the baking soda box. I wonder what I could cut that up to be, thought Linda, to go with the nekked butter lady on Thanksgiving. She fought sleep to hear the adult conversation, but sleep won.
She dreamt of holding a Lorna Doone cookie in her hand. Convinced there was no heartburn in heaven, she released the cookie.
~
KD Leslie is a Baltimore-based writer. For money, she practices law. For further survival, she reads and swims.