The Cottage on Juniper Ridge Page 12

  “You’re going to break that!” she cried.

  “There’s no room anywhere else,” protested the Santa with the glued-on head.

  He was right. They covered every inch of floor space. They sat on the bed. One of them sat on her legs, almost crushing them.

  “Get off!” she yelled.

  The Santa didn’t budge. “We’re going to smother you,” he threatened, and began crawling up her body.

  “Let’s party,” said another, and suddenly they had her Christmas dishes, and plates were flying everywhere. Another Santa had hauled in an entire drawer from her kitchen, the one with all the gadgets she never used. “These could go in my sleigh. I know women who could use them.” Meanwhile, the Santa who’d been crawling all over her sat on her chest.

  “I can’t breathe,” she choked.

  The Santa leaned over until his face was inches from hers, and now his red nose and his twinkling eyes were gone, replaced by the grimacing face of some dark monster. “That’s because you have too much crap!” he roared.

  She sat up in bed with a gasp, breathing hard. Okay, there was the cosmic sign. She got it. She needed to lighten her load.

  Chapter Ten

  Less is more. Which is something that goes for the people in our lives as well as the things.

  —Muriel Sterling, author of Simplicity

  Chita had been thinking about clearing her schedule since the book club meeting. Even taking mental inventory of everything that filled her days was exhausting. Saturdays were a blur of errands and cleaning and running kids around. She had Mass on Sundays, followed by Sunday dinner with her siblings at her mother’s, and during the week, there was work all day followed by more work once she got home, plus helping the kids with their homework and taking them to their various activities. None of that was negotiable. Then there was book club once a month. She sure didn’t want to give that up. It was her sanity break.

  That left one thing, one big time-suck. The Girls of America. (Their slogan: Today’s Girls Are Tomorrow’s Leaders.) Such a worthwhile organization. And they needed volunteers. But sometimes, especially when the girls were being difficult, she wondered if the organization really needed her. And if she really needed the headaches. She not only had to host the meetings, she also had to prepare for them, organize the activities, make sure she had snacks for the girls.

  Why didn’t any of the other moms offer to bring snacks or come over to help? Oh, yes, they were busy. That was the excuse she always got when she put out an SOS.

  Like she wasn’t? Most of these women had husbands to take up the slack. She had...her mother. And Mama had a husband, other children, other responsibilities. She couldn’t be around all the time to help her daughter. Considering how much her mother nagged, this was actually a blessing in disguise.

  Girls of America night rolled around, and once again Chita had eight girls in her small living room, breaking the sound barrier with shrieks and laughter. She’d lessened the chaos by two. Enrico was at a friend’s house and Hidalgo was locked in Anna’s room where he wouldn’t be tempted to eat the craft supplies.

  Tonight was Earth Night, and their craft project was to make jewelry out of recycled items. The two card tables she’d set up were littered with plastic bottle caps, paint, cut-up egg cartons, gum wrappers and glue. She’d learned early on that tomorrow’s leaders were also today’s slobs and had put plastic dropcloths under the tables to spare her carpet.

  Alice Graves, who met all the qualifications for being a handful, was already finished and wearing her necklace. Chita had suggested that she make a second one, but she preferred to toss bottle caps at the other girls.

  “When do we eat?” she asked Chita.

  “In a few minutes,” Chita said. “Would you like to come into the kitchen and help me get tonight’s snack ready?”

  “I’m not finished,” Alice said, and grabbed a paintbrush.

  Right. This was one leader of tomorrow who was probably never going to lead by example, at least not a good example. “Okay. You finish and I’ll see about the treats,” Chita said. “Five more minutes, girls, then we’re going to clean up.”

  She slipped into the kitchen to cut up the Rice Krispies Treats and pour juice. She was just setting eight plates around the table when her daughter’s angry voice drifted in to her. “Am not!” This was followed by giggles.

  Madre de Dios, what now? Chita rushed back into the living room. At the sight of her the giggles stopped. Her daughter was looking daggers at both Alice and her sidekick, Zuzu Welling.

  Zuzu had an adorable little freckled face to match her adorable little name. Zuzu was a demon child. She kept her gaze down but she couldn’t keep the smirk off her face.

  “Okay, what happened?” Chita demanded.

  Everyone looked at her innocently. No one said anything.

  Except Anna, who glared at Alice and cried, “I hate you!” Then she ran from the room and up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “Alice, what happened?” Chita asked, working hard to keep her voice level. This was taking superhuman effort considering the fact that she could get sued for what she’d like to do to Alice and Zuzu right now. Whatever they’d done to make her child cry, spanking was too good for them.

  “Nothing,” Alice said, wide-eyed.

  Chita planted her hands on the table and leaned over the child. “I think you’d better tell me, chica.”

  Alice blinked several times and for a moment her lower lip wobbled. But the child had a will of iron. In the end, she narrowed her eyes and stuck out her chin at a pugnacious angle. “I just told the truth.”

  Chita narrowed her eyes right back. “Oh? And what truth did you tell?”

  Anna’s friend Emma piped up. “She said you’re aliens and you shouldn’t even be here and that nobody wants you here.”

  Chita straightened and backed away, feeling as if she’d been slapped. Alice obviously had heard this at home and now, here she was in Chita’s house, spreading the poison. She looked down at the child in disgust. Alice was a spoiled little bully and Chita wanted nothing more than to smack her. And her mother. Or father. Or both. And Zuzu was just as bad. Alice was the more vocal of the two, but Zuzu’s wickedness was subtler. For all Chita knew, Zuzu had put those words in Alice’s mouth.

  “And is this how a Girl of America, a future leader, behaves, spreading things that aren’t true?”

  “It is true!” Alice insisted. “Zuzu’s grandpa said so. He said Anna’s probably an anchor.”

  As in anchor baby, a child born to an illegal alien or undocumented worker, whichever term you used. A parade of choice curses marched through Chita’s mind, but she kept them there. “Well, I’m afraid Zuzu’s grandpa is wrong. Anna and Enrico and I are all U.S. citizens, just like you. My grandfather came to this country to work in the orchards and he became an American citizen. Unless you’re a Native American—” no one present was “—someone in each of your families also came to this country in search of a better life and had to apply for citizenship. And I would hope they were treated more kindly than you’ve just treated Anna.”

  Alice frowned and studied the painted bits of egg carton in front of her and Zuzu’s smirk dissolved.

  Chita glanced around the table. “Is this how Girls of America behave?” she asked them all. “Do you bully and tease other girls? Do you spread lies?”

  A couple of girls hung their heads. Alice scowled. Zuzu tried to look innocent.

  “No, Mrs. Arness,” Emma said. “They should
apologize for being mean to Anna.”

  “Yes, they should.” Chita looked around the table. “Now, I’m going to bring Anna back down here and I want you all to apologize.”

  She went up to her daughter’s room with a heavy heart. Prejudice was nothing new. She’d experienced her share growing up, but really, she’d thought people were more enlightened now, especially here in Icicle Falls where everyone was so friendly. Obviously, she’d thought wrong.

  She found Anna lying across her bed, sobbing, Hidalgo by her side, whimpering in sympathy.

  She sat down next to Anna and stroked her lovely dark hair. “Oh, bambina. I’m so sorry those girls were mean to you.”

  “Make them go away,” Anna sobbed.

  “They’ll be going soon. But first they want to say they’re sorry.”

  “No, they don’t. They’re only saying sorry ’cause you’re making them.”

  Children were way too perceptive. “I think some of them are sorry.”

  Anna shook her head violently. “I don’t want to go down there.”

  Chita knew how her daughter felt. She didn’t want to deal with those children anymore, either. “You need to hear their apologies and they need to make them.”

  “They’re mean!”

  “Yes, they are. But there are mean people everywhere, and the sooner you learn how to deal with them, the better.” She gave her daughter’s shoulder a supportive rub. “Come on. I’ll be right there with you.”

  The sobs were subsiding into sniffles. Chita went down the hall to the bathroom and grabbed a tissue, then returned to her daughter’s room and told her to blow her nose. “There, now let’s show them how a true Girl of America behaves.”

  So back down the stairs they went.

  The group was subdued, but little voices floated out to Chita and Anna. “Mrs. Arness is mean...” “My house is way bigger than this house...” “Her dog is stupid. So’s Anna...”

  Anna balked but Chita gently guided her forward.

  They walked into the living room and two of the girls blushed. Had they been contributors to that conversation or were they feeling guilty by association?

  “Alice? Zuzu? I think you both have something you need to say to Anna,” Chita said sternly.

  “Sorry,” Alice muttered, her tone anything but repentant.

  “Sorry,” Zuzu said softly, refusing to look in Anna’s direction.

  Two more girls added their apologies.

  Anna said nothing in return. Instead, she turned and ran back upstairs to her room. Her friend Emma and another little girl went after her, probably to offer comfort.

  Chita let them go. “All right, let’s get our mess cleaned up.”

  “Shouldn’t Emma and Portia help?” Alice asked.

  “They’re helping in a different way,” Chita replied. Cleaning up the emotional mess you made.

  The girls were quiet during cleanup, but by the time Chita had squeezed them in around her small kitchen table for treats, they’d forgotten the incident and were talking and giggling again.

  One by one the mothers arrived to pick up their daughters. Alice’s mother came to pick up Alice and Zuzu, and Chita had a quiet word with her before calling the girls out from the kitchen. “No matter where people stand on the immigration issue, there’s no excuse for bullying.”

  “Oh, my,” the woman said weakly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I,” Chita said, “since it was mean and not true. I asked her to apologize and she did, but I thought you should be aware of it.”

  The woman nodded. “Thanks. I’ll...speak to her.”

  The words held such dread that Chita doubted Alice’s mother would ever work up the courage to deal with the problem. Alice obviously ruled that household. What would she be like when she was a teenager?

  Chita didn’t want to know.

  Alice and Zuzu made their exit, followed by the last couple of girls. Enrico returned home, and Chita popped him in the tub. Then she and her daughter had a heart-to-heart about their family history—and about mean girls. By nine, both children were tucked in and Chita was ready for bed, too.

  She took a shower and climbed in between the sheets with her book club selection. Prejudice. That was something Muriel hadn’t addressed in her book, probably because she’d never experienced it. Chita sighed. Life would be so much simpler if people were nice to one another.

  Stacy’s observation regarding Chita’s involvement as a leader for this little troop of vipers came back to her. It’s a lot of work to keep kids in your daughter’s life who may not be the best friends for her. Maybe it was time to say goodbye to the Girls of America.

  The next morning, her daughter confirmed it. They were going through the usual morning rush of breakfast, lunch-making, gathering up homework and feeding Hidalgo. Normally during all this activity Anna was chatty and happy. This morning she was quiet and solemn and it broke Chita’s heart. She’d always been able to shrug off her children’s minor injuries like skinned knees or elbows. “You’ll be fine,” she’d say, and, of course, they always were. There was no shrugging off this kind of hurt.

  “You need to be brave today,” she told Anna, and kissed her forehead. How she wished she could attend school alongside her daughter and loom threateningly over any little bully who tormented her. Or let her stay home. But to keep her away from mean girls they’d have to become hermits. “I know it’s hard, but you’re a strong girl. And you have your good friends, your true friends, and they’ll play with you at recess. You can do this, can’t you?”

  Anna nodded somberly, then bit her lip. She was on the verge of saying something.

  “What is it, bambina?” Chita asked.

  “I don’t want to be a Girl of America anymore,” Anna blurted.

  So what did she do, tell her daughter to tough it out with kids who didn’t like her? The teasing the night before hadn’t been the first time her daughter had been unhappy with the Girls of America group. There’d been minor slights and misunderstandings, but Chita had figured it was important for the girls to work out their differences. The situation had gone well beyond that.

  Anna’s eyes were fearful and pleading. “Please don’t make me.”

  This was supposed to be fun, a wonderful extracurricular activity for her child. It was not turning out to be fun. For either of them. Chita held out her arms and Anna rushed to her side and began to cry.

  “Of course I won’t make you,” Chita said.

  Her daughter looked up at her and, with tears still running down her cheeks, smiled. “Thank you, Mama!”

  Chita hugged her. No. Thank you. You set us both free.

  That evening Chita called Nancy Norgaard, the district supervisor for Girls of America and tendered her resignation, effective immediately.

  “But, Chita, you’ve been doing such a fabulous job,” Nancy protested.

  “Thank you,” Chita said, “but I’m afraid I just don’t have time for it anymore.” No time for brats and bullies. “And Anna’s ready to move on.”

  “Oh.” Nancy sounded shocked. “Are you sure you won’t both reconsider?” she begged. “I don’t know who we’ll get to take over that group.”

  Chita felt guilty—for a millisecond. “Well, good luck,” she said.

  She set her cell phone back on the counter and realized that, for the first time in ages, she didn’t feel so tired. She rounded up all her Girls of America leadership material and put it in a
box to mail back to Nancy. And now she felt lighter. She should have resigned months ago.

  That night her mother called, trying to guilt her into attending a baby shower for her second cousin Juanita on Friday night.

  “I can’t. I already have plans.”

  “What plans?” her mother demanded suspiciously.

  “Important plans,” she said. They involved a bubble bath and a book. Oh, yes, she could get into this simple life stuff.

  * * *

  Stacy had spent the past couple of days going through her house, taking stock of everything she had that she didn’t use. Was she a hoarder in the making? That was a creepy idea. She picked up Muriel Sterling’s book and went back to the chapter she’d found hardest to finish, the one titled “Less Is More.”

  It’s so easy to let our possessions multiply. And over time that’s exactly what they do. I was shocked when I moved at how much I had to pack—dishes, clothes, kitchen appliances and gadgets, linens, bedding, decorations, many of which I hadn’t put out in years. I thought of people in poorer countries who are happy with so much less. I thought of how much time and energy it took to maintain all my things. They owned me as much as I owned them. I went through all of them and reassessed their value. Anything I hadn’t used in the past three years I got rid of. There was no space for them in my new house and no room in my new life. I got rid of a lot and I can honestly say I never regretted it.

  Stacy shut the book and mulled over what she’d just read. Never regretted it. Really? What did she have kicking around that she hadn’t used in the past three years?

  The drawer full of kitchen gadgets came to mind. She could start there.

  She went to the kitchen and opened the drawer. Okay, did she really need that nutcracker? When was the last time she’d purchased nuts that needed to be cracked? Hmm. Ten years ago. The whipped-cream whipper that didn’t whip—that could go to some other sucker. The little umbrellas she was going to use to make girlie drinks someday—she’d never gotten around to it, and she’d had them for three years. She’d used that pastry sheet once and didn’t like it. She always rolled out cookies and pie crust right on her countertop. And how many latte pitchers did one woman need? How many little glass jiggers? How many kitchen sponge holders? Oh, Lord, she was a hoarder.