Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Trying once again to clear my head and brighten the mood, I flip through channels on the radio.  A country song comes in for a minute and then gets static again.  Finally, a classical music station works perfectly so Mom asks me to leave it there for a little bit.  I’ve never been a fan of this genre, but I guess it’s supposed to have all sorts of benefits.  I’ll take what I can get.  

I’m reminded of the little zoo we visited in Arkansas.  They pumped classical music throughout the place to calm the animals.  That’s where I met Kenny.  I just love that guy….

But before I could get too lost in a pleasant memory, something catches my eye from the back seat.

“What’s the matter, Cole?  You have to go potty?”  I swear that kid has got to go all the time.  I shouldn’t complain, though.  At least he doesn’t have accidents like Walker does, but good grief he pees every stinking hour or less!  Our two week trip would’ve been closer to one if we didn’t have to make so many roadside pee stops.  We left Livermore an hour and 15 minutes ago.  He’s overdue.  Here I am with the bladder infection, and yet he’s the one squirming and whining. 

Instead of answering me, he just nods his head with a pained look on his face.  Looks like Late Talker ain’t talkin’. 

Mom’s gotten so much grief from family members about his speech, especially from the ones who don’t care for her choice to home school her kids.  Even I’ve made nasty remarks about Cole.  I mean the kid should at least be counting to 10 and singing his alphabet at this point.  Mom’s not worried, though.  We all do our best to make him talk; making him repeat words until he gets them right.  He’s three and a half years old, and will only say up to five syllables at a time.  But he usually sticks to three. 

He’s a stark contrast to five year old Walker.  A super early talker, that kid was also practically reading by the time he was two years old.  Well, maybe not that young, but I remember Dad was so excited one day at the neighborhood pool when two year old Walker pointed to the “4 ft.” sign and said, “Four-fff-tuh.”  He grabbed his little genius and ran across the street to our house to tell Mom, as if she would be surprised.  She’s the one who taught him…and the one who pointed out to Dad that he had just left Gus and me at a pool unattended.  Anyway, Walker can carry a conversation pretty well for his age, but he stutters quite a bit.  That always makes me laugh.  I know.  I’m so mean.

Mom’s strategy with her youngest is to work with him to talk but never act like there’s something wrong with him.  “He’s just as smart and capable as anyone else, he just processes differently,” so she says.  Well, she’s the one who’s been home schooling her kids for the last five years, what do I know?  When Cole doesn’t answer we’re supposed to make him.  But when you’re little booty is dancing in your car seat trying to keep a full bladder intact, it’s hard for even the best of us to formulate words.

            “Honey, we’re almost ready to stop.  See?  We’re getting onto another freeway and we’ll be in Los Banos in one minute.  Then we’ll stop to go potty.”  Mom’s calming voice definitely helps as she looks at Cole through the extra drop down mirror.  He searches outside the windows watching the roads and scenery change as we take the 152 exit ramp making a large loop clockwise from south to east.  His squirming relaxes a little as he’s now focused on finding Los Banos.  And there couldn’t be a better name for the place we always stop to go potty. 

            “Mom…I’m having a problem,” I hesitantly admit, fearful of adding more stress to our already stressful day.  I barely speak loud enough for her to hear me.  She looks at me questioningly with furrowed brows trying to decipher what my problem is.  “I’m trying my best not to squirm in my own seat,” I say the words through a pitiful looking face shaking my head trying to draw sympathy out of her before revealing my dilemma.

            “But you don’t usually…oh no…the infection’s back?”  I slowly nod my head in confirmation.  “Damn!  I mean, darn.  Sorry.”  The apology was more for Cole’s sake, not mine.  “How bad?”

            “I think it’s really bad this time,” I say, and she responds to my assessment with a long sigh.  I barely hear the word “crap” whispered under her breath.  

She’s apparently in no mood to keep her language perfectly clean, but she’s doing a better job than I’ve seen in the past.

            “I don’t know what to do, Letti.”

            “I’ll be fine, Mom.  I shouldn’t have told you.”  She looks over at me and sighs again.  Just then, Cole notices the town of Los Banos and alerts us of the news.

            “I see it!  I see it!” he blurts out.  Hopefully his excitement doesn’t cause him to break his record of no accidents.

Moments later, we pull into the Wal-Mart shopping center parking lot.  Relief floods my being as I look over the fast food restaurants dotting the place and think about the many choices of public restrooms.  We quickly park as close as possible to the front entrance of the super center.   Unbuckling himself as Mom hurries to open his door, Cole jumps out and races to catch up to me.  I’m already a couple dozen steps away from the car focusing on my own pain management when he slips his hand into mine.  We leave Mom tailing behind yelling at us to wait up.

Sitting on the toilet in the Wal-Mart restroom, the wrenching in my gut squeezes tighter and tighter every second as I attempt to relieve myself.  Breathe slowly…focus…relax…oh, it’s no use!

            “I don’t hear anything from you, Letti.  Is anything happening in there?”  

I hear Mom’s voice from the stall next door where she’s helping Cole.  Listening to his long stream filling the toilet should be helping my reluctant muscles to relax and let it go.  But it doesn’t…figures. 

            “I can’t go, Mom.  It’s burning too much.”

            “The more you hold it, the worse it gets.  Let’s just finish up and see if we can find some miracle pill while we’re here.” 

There’re apparently a million herbal remedies for health problems.  After browsing in the medicine aisle for a good ten minutes, I can tell Mom’s getting anxious.

            “Excuse me…are you from here?  From Los Banos?”  Of course she’s from Los Banos, Mom, I think to myself, she’s wearing the Wal-Mart uniform.  She’s obviously an employee.  Where else is she gonna live way out here in the middle of nowhere? 

            “Yes, can I help you with something?”

            “Do you know if there’s a clinic nearby?” Mom inquires.

            “Oh, is the baby sick?”

            “Uh, not this baby,” Mom answers looking down at Cole who’s clinging to her leg and then up at me standing a couple feet away reading the label of a pill box, “that baby.  My daughter’s sick.  We’re traveling to Fresno for a funeral, but she needs to see a doctor right away.  It doesn’t have to be a free clinic or anything like that.  We have insurance.  We can pay.  I just need some place we can walk in and be seen.  I don’t know.  Maybe we should go to the emergency room, or...”

            “Mom!  No!  We don’t need to go to the hospital.”  Is she trying to humiliate me?

            “Oh, I’m so sorry.  Actually, there is a clinic.  I don’t how long you’d have to wait, but…well, here…I can write the directions down.  It’s not hard to find.”  The sweet old lady digs into her blue apron pocket and pulls out a miniature note pad and pen.

Poor thing got embarrassed when I yelled at mom.  I wonder what she’s thinking.  To the average onlooker, I appear in perfect health.  There could be any number of things going through her mind about why a teenage girl would need to go a clinic.  Well, sorry to disappoint, but a bladder infection is not very juicy news.  Ew!  That’s kind of a sick way to put it.

Climbing back into the Suburban, I try to convince Mom to just forget it.  This is going to make us way too late.  Grandma was already thinking we should’ve left earlier and now we’re stopping at some clinic.  I wonder how many screaming babies there’ll be!

                               

            “Letti, stop arguing with me!  It’s only a quarter after 10!”  Wonderful!  Now she’s mad.  “Look, we only have another hour to Fresno.  The viewing isn’t till 2, right?  If we have to, we won’t even go to the house.  We’ll drive straight to the viewing after checking in at the Ramada.  I don’t want you letting this infection go any longer,” she finishes through clenched teeth tightened facial muscles attempting to hold back her anger.  

I hate it when she does that.

I feel like a burden.  I don’t mind seeing doctors; it’s just the thought of my own issues costing money and time.  Plus, I have this weird creepy feeling of stepping into a clinic where there could be all sorts of low-lifes.  A lot of things seem to creep me out these days. 

             “Are you serious, mom?”  

Not only is she adding the extra stop at a clinic, and no telling how long that’s going to take, but she’s now going through the Burger King drive-thru.  I throw my arms across my chest and shove myself against the back of the seat letting out an ugly sigh.  I half expect Mom to smack me for that one, but for some strange reason she’s choosing to ignore it.  She must feel sorry for me…or guilty for yelling.

After getting fries and a soda for us all to share and hopefully satisfy our hunger for awhile since the other boys had eaten all the granola bars before we dropped them off, we quickly find the clinic.  

Walking in, we find the waiting room surprisingly clean and fairly empty.  There’s an elderly man in one seat watching the news on the overhead TV screen, and one Mexican family; a mom, two boys who look like they’re around four and five years old playing handheld video games, and a little girl in the mom’s lap.  She’s a baby, but not too young.  She’s holding a bottle, and she stares at me.  I stare back at her for a minute until Mom gets my attention.

            “Letti, you alright?  Come on,” Mom says, wondering why I was just standing there in the middle of the waiting room.

            “She looks like Skylar.” I say, nudging my head in the direction of the baby.  Following my eyes, Mom nods her head in agreement to my comment but remains silent.  Then she tugs my arm to walk with her over to some available chairs.

We had just seen Skylar on Wednesday when we were at Aunt JoAnne’s house.  It was the first time I’d seen her in seven months.  Even though she’s only a little more than half Mexican, she really looks like she’s full-blown Hispanic.  The dad has never been in her life.  That’s where she gets most of the Mexican.  And now…that poor baby girl has just lost her 16 year old mother.  The little babe’s an orphan.  I can’t seem to decide to be sad about baby Skylar, or glad knowing the rest of the family has her…kind of like having a part of Charlotte with them…through her illegitimate child.

Illegitimate pregnancies, I shake my head pondering, is well known in this family.

Both Mom and Tiffany became pregnant as teenagers.  Charlotte and I were born out of those pregnancies.  I’ve been told plenty others in the family fell into that same sinful behavior.  It’s like some epidemic with us.  Is sin an epidemic?  Sounds about right. 

What a conflicting phenomenon…the guilt of an unholy act is evidenced in the birth of an innocent child.

Charlotte, I believe, has been the youngest in the family to become “great with child” outside of marriage.  She was younger than I am now when that scandalous news was discovered.  

Tiffany found out about her momentous promotion to grandma at the age of 34 while she and Char were driving in Will’s beautifully restored White 1963 Chevy; the truck he was always working on when I was little.  Mom and daughter were fighting…of course.  It seems like as long as I can remember, Char was picking fights with her mom.  I suppose similar personalities tend to knock heads with each other.  All of a sudden, she blurted out, “Oh, and by the way, I’m pregnant!”  And Tiffany crashed.  Man!  It really was a beautiful truck too.

Two months before the loss of the Chevy, we all saw Tiff and the girls at my uncle’s wedding; that is…the girls minus Char.  She was in a halfway house at the time.  Her parents insisted on it after the first time she ran away.  She couldn’t have been home from that troubled teenage center for very long before that day when Tiffany wrecked that classic piece of machinery. 

Well, turned out Alberto wasn’t ready to be a daddy.  Plus after he tried to cause a miscarriage by punching Charlotte in the gut, they told him the baby wasn’t his and got a restraining order against him.  He eventually moved out of California. 

Little Skylar was given Charlotte’s last name, Reece.

I can still picture Charlotte at her baby shower when she was the same age as I am now.  It was shocking to see her so hugely pregnant.  At 14 years old, you don’t expect to see that in someone you knew so well as a little girl. 

We also came for a visit when Skylar was 7 months old.  Charlotte wasn’t around.  Nobody knew exactly where she was.  She would call from time to time asking about her daughter but not willing to come back home.  Tiff and Aunt JoAnne have been taking turns with the baby since they both worked.  It’s been a balancing act.  They manage together.

Now 7 more months later, it’s unreal to look at that 14-month old little girl.  She’s starting to show a resemblance to Char…eerie…sad…but kind of a relief.  It was hard not to stare at her on Wednesday, and it’s hard not to stare at this baby right now.

“Stay here, Honey.  Mommy and Sissy will be right back,” Mom says while getting Cole settled into one of the chairs.

She leaves him with the fries while we both walk to the counter to get me checked in.  Two minutes into the process, we hear a sudden gasp.  Raising our heads, we see a horrified look on the face of the lady behind the open window.  We both quickly turn to see a mess of fries all over the carpet with the culprit jumping off the chair in an attempt to fetch them, adding to the disaster a large soda splashing to the ground.  Oh, my gosh!  Three year olds!

            “Letti, finish up here,” Mom commands as she rushes to try to clean up the disaster. 

This is all we need! 

So, here I am left with answering the questions of a lady that I can barely understand.

            “Ohh Kayyy…so you’re name is Leticia, correct?” At this point, all I can do is close my eyes and throw my head back.  She keeps saying, “Excuse me, Honey,” but I can’t focus on answering her.  I’d actually rather be cleaning up my little brother’s mess. 

            “Mom!”

            “What?”  She snaps back looking up at me while trying to mop up the spill with a bunch of paper towels from the bathroom.

            “It’s the Leticia thing again.”  At one of the stops on the trip, a woman kept thinking my name was short for Leticia.  It was so annoying.

            “Are you serious?  Oh hell no!  I am not doing this right now.  You get over here, and I’ll take over at the counter.” 

Happy to take on the role of clean-up duty, I walk away from the counter switching positions with my frustrated mother.  “So, my daughter’s name is Scarlett.”  I hear her pick up where I left off with a sigh and spelling out my name. 

From the floor, I look up to see Cole’s chubby lips sticking out in the most pathetic pout.  I’m tempted to laugh, but pain and irritation suppresses my urge. 

            “I know you want the fries and Dr. Pepper, Babe, but it’s not gonna happen.”  He forcefully crosses his arms and throws his little body up against the back of the chair just like I did in the car.  I couldn’t possibly be that much of an influence on his behavior.  Could I?  Nah!

            “Letti, they’re gonna see you right now,” Mom says after running over to me to help with the rest of the spill, “I think they want us to leave, so they’re rushing us in.  They’re putting us in ahead of everyone else.  I hope nobody gets mad,” she continues in an excited whisper looking over her shoulder at the others in the waiting room, “I feel bad, but oh well.  We need to take this opportunity and get the heck out of here.”

Mom grabs my brother, flings him on her hip, and in we go. 

Of course, they want a urine sample.  I barely squeeze out a tablespoon or two.  After taking one look at it, the doctor gives us an antibiotic.  What?  No prescription?  They’re not even running any tests.  They’re just giving it to us?  They would never do this back in Tracy let alone Livermore.

            “I can’t believe we’re back on the road already!”  Mom, amazed with our luck, flies through the last stop light in town.  However, I’m sure our impatient attitude and the messy preschooler had more to do with the success.  “I thought I was gonna lose it when that lady started calling you Leticia.  I was not in the mood for that.”  Well, she seems to be laughing about it now.  “It sure was funny when it happened to you in Oklahoma, though,” she says smiling. 

(Day 4)

It was a picturesque little stop right past the panhandle of Texas barely into Oklahoma.  We’d been on the road for 2 hours.  My bladder was feeling better, so I didn’t need to stop so much, and we got Cole to hold off on his frequent stops by controlling his liquid intake.  So, a little ways into Red’s home state, we stopped at the cutest little touristy place complete with tee pees and all.  They had the best souvenirs there. 

Mom got Dad a bowie knife with a hand carved handle made out of a deer antler.  Grandma indulged in plenty of jewelry as well as a CD with old cowboy ballads that she couldn’t wait to play for us all once we got back into our Suburban Bubble.  All the boys found cool little novelty items.  

Grandma suggested I get a dream catcher.  But one look at them totally creeped me out.  They looked like spider webs.  If anything, hanging one of those in my room would cause nightmares, not catch them.

I decided on a beaded leather purse.  It’ll look great in my new room hanging next to the blanket Mom and Dad got for me last August when they went on a weekend Mexican cruise.  They offered the purses to be customized.  Giving a choice of already beaded designs, there was room at the bottom where they would finish up the beading with your own name.  I can never find anything premade with the name Scarlett on it.  So, I chose to take advantage of the opportunity. 

I brought my purse up to the woman who sat on some sort of an “American Indian” looking throne, and she started writing down my name.  

            “Ok…so, you’re name is Leticia…L, E, T….”

            “No Ma’am.  My name is not Leticia,” I corrected her.

            “Oh no?  But you’re Mama called you Letti.  That’s Leticia, L, E, T….”

            “No, I’m not Mexican.”

            “Oh yes, I can see that.  So, just Letti, not Leticia…L,E,T…,” she continued to write down the wrong name.

            “Wait.  Yes, it’s Letti, but I want the beads to say Scarlett.”

“Escarlata?” she questioned me with face drawn up in a weird confused look?

She looked at me like she’s never heard of someone named after a color.  I guess she just couldn’t fathom that Letti would be short for anything other than Leticia.   And why was she working in a tee pee novelty store on the side of the road in Oklahoma selling Cherokee items anyway?  It was obvious by her accent that she was Mexican, not Cherokee.

Several minutes of arguing with her, including a few more stubborn attempts by her to actually write down the name Leticia, resulted in me giving up on my beaded purse as well as Mom and Grandma calling me Leticia while our purchases were getting wrapped up at the counter.  That was bad enough, but then the boys caught on to their “funny” and continued for the next two hours of driving pushing all my buttons by using that one name.  Mental note…don’t ever clue little boys in on an inside joke.  Oh my gosh!   My name is not Leticia.  By noon, all three of us women had the chance to yell at the boys to shut the heck up!  That was just before we arrived in Oklahoma City.

Written by Amie Spruiell

Amie Spruiell After the Event © 2016