The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas Page 3

  Bernadette tries. She does try. To please both Gloria and Gallina Roja, and not to mention she works hard to show herself as savvy enough to make her ever-ambitious father proud. All the while staying sweet enough to get along with everyone at church, who in many ways represent the extended family she had never had. That should have been enough, right?

  Not if you grow up in a family where everybody wants to be in charge. Of everything. Everywhere. All the time.

  Gloria has dominated the real-estate market throughout the county for years, and has served so long on the town council they say she can’t be pried out with a crowbar. Mr. Alvarez, a deacon in their church and a successful local businessman, used to be a state senator. And Gallina Roja? Her grandmother topped them all.

  Her grandmother thought she could direct the action of the Lord Himself.

  Bernadette says she couldn’t count the number of times she has seen her grandmother clasp her hands together, raise her gaze heavenward and cry out, “Please, Father, please, send this girl a good man to marry her and take care of her.”

  Or “Please open her eyes so she can see there is more to life than work, work, work and letting people push her into every chore at her church that no one else wants to do.”

  And when all else fails, “Father, I beg You, do something with this girl!”

  Do something? Where had that grandmamma been? That’s Bernadette’s whole life—doing things, usually for everybody but herself.

  At Your Service. She’d intended it as a play on words about the goods she sold being used mostly in wedding services, not a description of how she remained ever at her family’s beck and call. Or how, what with her being single and over thirty, the whole church had begun to assume that she had nothing better to do than be at everyone’s disposal. Because she worked out of her home and lived alone, they assumed she should serve on every refreshment committee. Because she had a strong, pure voice and had sung in the choir for more than half her life, they figured she was more than qualified to serve on choir fund-raising and hymnal oversight committees. Because she knew what it was like to live alone and be starved for company, they expected her to serve lunches to shut-ins. And because she wasn’t exactly a petite thing, they even counted on her to serve on the business end of a shovel every spring, when they remulched the flower beds around the church.

  No wonder she finally decided to open a booth weekends here in the lot of the long-closed Satellite Vista Drive-In. For two-and-a-half days—she only worked a few hours on Sundays, after church and fellowship hour, and before she had to get back to teach the junior high youth group in the evening—she remained blessedly unavailable to everyone who thought they knew better than her how to run her life.

  It was the kind of plan I wish I had thought of years ago, as a young minister’s wife. But I didn’t, and even if I had, I doubt I’d have had the gumption to try it. So, you see, I both envied and empathized with Bernadette. And I couldn’t help wanting to, you know, encourage her in any way I could.

  “So, Bernadette, when does the new minister arrive?” I called as I paid for some of Jan’s donated brownies at the church booth across the aisle from Bernadette’s.

  Before she could answer, Maxine leaned in, whispered in my ear and reminded me of something she’d mentioned in more detail earlier. It made me gasp. Big and dramatic-like.

  Of course, I tend to do a lot of things big and dramatic-like, but this bit of news actually warranted it. “I’m sorry, Bernadette, sugar. What I meant to ask was, when does the new single minister arrive?”

  Bernadette rolled her eyes and shook her head. Her long black hair fell softly over her shoulders as they rose and fell when she gave a kind of low-key sigh. Inhale. Hold. Then exhale, slowly. You know, nothing spectacular or overdone, the way some people—okay, me—the way I would have played it. I suspect Bernadette does most things low-key and unspectacular, just to keep herself below the radar of people who might want to get all up in her business.

  I mean like her grandmother, of course. Not me. I wouldn’t dream of telling that sweet girl what to do with her life. Even though I have some really good ideas swirling around my head, starting with getting a look—and maybe something more—at that new single minister.

  Single.

  The good folks at the Castlerock Church of Christian Fellowship had called to shepherd their small but faithful flock that rarest and most sought-after of all creatures around here, the SIPYCM. The Still-in-Play, Young Christian Male.

  At least young to a church that tended toward retirees and whatever children or grandchildren they could drag in on Sunday mornings. This thirty-something fellow would be arriving any day now. And by all accounts, he was seeking his very own SIPYCF for friendship, possibly marriage.

  That’s what the secretary at Maxine’s church said, and she got it directly from the director of Little Lambs Christian Day Care, who heard it from the wife of the chairperson of the selection committee at Bernadette’s church.

  “All I can say—” Maxine peered around me to nail Bernadette with a stern look, as if to let on that this was an important thing to consider “—is some church ladies someplace have certainly fallen down on their jobs. But that cannot last long. A single minister? I didn’t know they allowed such a creature to exist.”

  Bernadette smiled.

  “Here, these are for you.” I slid the box of baked goods across the tabletop toward Bernadette. “Yes, I know—I bought them, why shouldn’t I enjoy them?”

  “Well, I, uh, I…” Bernadette stammered.

  I held up my hand. I had chosen to ask that question, not the one that was obviously playing across her mind, because I did not expect a real answer to the real one. At least not an answer from her. I had my own answer, thank you very much, and I wasn’t one bit shy about sharing it. “Only kind of person who would ask why I don’t help myself to a plate of brownies is the kind of person who hasn’t seen me in my, uh, full glory…from the back…in the bathroom mirror after all the steam has dissipated. Steam from the shower, that is, not me.”

  She smiled.

  “Me, I haven’t run out of steam yet!” I laughed.

  No, I still had plenty of steam in me. Full speed ahead and all. That’s why I had to buy the brownies. I saw it as the right thing to do, and I determined to charge right ahead with it. The way I see it, the church needs my money. Churches always need money. And Jan—who reportedly stays up all night making things to donate to the booth to assuage her guilt over never volunteering in it—needed the self-esteem boost of having everyone tell her that her contributions sell out every time. And overworked, underappreciated Bernadette needs the comfort of chocolate and the kindness of someone who isn’t trying to make a contest of wills out of every simple gesture.

  So when I checked my watch, I knew Jan Bishop Belmont would be back any minute—because she always expects her goodies to by gone by noon—to collect her plastic containers. Well, I just had to stuff some money into the donation jar and nab the last batch of brownies languishing there. This way, everyone benefits.

  Maxine got it, of course.

  “And don’t start with us with all that nonsense about losing weight, now,” Maxine warned as she pushed the delicious-smelling dark chocolate squares toward Bernadette. “You have a darling figure,”

  Darling might be a bit generous a word for Bernadette’s figure.

  “My mother says I’m chunky.”

  “Chunky?” Maxine shook her head, her expression sour. “That word doesn’t describe you at all.”

  “Chunky?” I repeated, with my nose crinkled up. “Sounds weighed down. Cumbersome. Like a block broken off from the whole.”

  “Not a thing like our Bernadette.”

  “Zaftig!” I love that word, and it fits when you’re talking about someone still young enough that none of her curves have gone completely ’round the bend. “Now, there’s a word for our girl.”

  “Curvaceous.” Maxine waved her hands in the air, as gr
acefully as she could with a plastic bag over one wrist and those bracelets clacking on the other.

  “Zaftig and curvaceous,” I said, as if it was a queenly decree. “Chunky, that’s a word best saved for women like me and Maxine.”

  “You got that right. If we are what we eat, then Odessa and I are fast, cheap and—”

  “Dangerous to the hearts of middle-aged men everywhere,” I hastened to add. I may not be much to see in that bathroom mirror, but I do have my pride, after all.

  “Shh. You shouldn’t talk that way in front of our little health-food friend over there.” Bernadette nodded toward the young girl dressed—on purpose—in things I’d have been ashamed to give to the church clothes closet for the needy. “If she hears you touting the goodness of food that’s bad for you, she might try to force you to take a sample of that wheat grass smoothie she’s peddling today.”

  “What’s she promising the stuff does for you? Give you a thick, healthy mane?” Maxine sucked in her cheeks. “I sure wouldn’t feed anything she gave me to a dog.”

  “Meow,” Bernadette teased.

  “She’s just doing her job, y’all,” I said, trying not to stare at the girl’s hair, which was dyed a color I’d never seen on anything but a pair of ugly shoes. To make matters worse it was matted in the back as if she’d slept on it for weeks, and yet was meticulously gelled into place in front and clamped down with the sweetest sparkly barrettes in front.

  I felt sorry for her, too. I mean, usually she was snarly and downright ugly to people, as if she wanted us all to think she hated everything and everyone. But those sparkly barrettes told a different story.

  Or maybe I’m just such a sucker for anything that glitters that I imagined a different story.

  “Where is that child’s mother?” Maxine tsked.

  “Something about her just breaks my heart, Maxine.” I shook my head. “I think we should talk to her, give her the benefit of our years of experience.”

  Despite the fact that she couldn’t tell a red flag from a purple haze for her own self, Bernadette was very good at detecting warning signs on behalf of others. When you live to please people, that’s a given. So, obviously determined to save me and Maxine from our own good intentions, the poor misguided girl slapped her hands together and said, “So, what have you two found so far? Show me today’s treasures of the Tiara Madres.”

  “Tiara Madres!” Maxine surrendered to the distraction in a heartbeat. A sure sign she hadn’t wanted to follow my lead and get mixed up with Little Mary Deathray and her wheat-grass concoction of doom.

  “Don’t you love it when she calls us that?” I said, accepting Bernadette’s distraction and Maxine’s reluctance.

  “I’d love it more if somebody was up to acting the part a little better.” Maxine arched an eyebrow. My dear friend gave me a nudge and gazed down on the portable showcase in Bernadette’s booth—the one with the four sample tiaras glimmering up at me from a deep blue velvet backdrop.

  I sighed.

  She sighed. “Face it, Odessa, we are a couple of Queen Mamas without the proper accoutrements.”

  “One day, mark my words, ladies, you are going to break down and think of a reason to buy yourselves your very own queenly headgear.” Bernadette tapped the glass.

  “Me? Don’t be silly.” Spoken like a true minister’s wife. “What would we do with those, Maxine? Perch one on top of our heads while we ride around in a golf cart keeping the reverends company for eighteen holes on a Wednesday afternoon? Use it to catch the light and signal passing airplanes to try to divert them from the flight path over our retirement village? Wear it to the Piggly Wiggly?”

  “Why not?” Bernadette asked, you know because she was making a sales pitch.

  “Why not?” Maxine echoed because she so clearly wanted to be sold.

  “Those tiaras are for weddings, proms and quinceañeras.” I speak more than the basic awkward Spanish that everyone in Texas has mastered. So I knew exactly how to pronounce the word for the celebration that Hispanic families have for a fifteen-year-old daughter becoming a woman. “Those are three things that have no bearing whatsoever on your everyday life, Maxine. Or mine.”

  “Or mine,” Bernadette whispered, eyes averted.

  That did it. Made me feel a perfect heel. And suddenly I had yet another person who by their very presence in this place had touched my tender heart. I wanted to grab Bernadette by the hand and tell her not to give up hope. She might be long past her own quinceañera and prom, but one day she could have a daughter…especially if things worked out with that new minister. And a wedding…The new minister was single, after all, and looking. Why not allow a bit of speculation and hope? One should always hope.

  “Though, from what I’d heard, she shouldn’t hope for too much in the looks department.” This aside came from Maxine.

  The new minister wouldn’t break the camera in the wedding photos, but he wasn’t movie-star handsome. Or even reality-show-TV attractive. But he had a good sense of humor and kind eyes. That’s what Maxine’s church secretary had heard, via the child-care director, via the wife of the chair of the selection committee. The man had kind eyes.

  “Don’t forget, we need you and your sewing machine at the church every evening this week to help make costumes for the play at the end of vacation Bible school, Bernadette, honey,” shouted a woman in a red hat hauling a plaid bag in a rectangular wire-framed cart from one booth over. “Most of the volunteers can only work one night, maybe two, so we’re counting on you to be there Monday through Thursday.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Davenport. I’ll be there.”

  I looked at Bernadette, who had her head hung just low enough to give a glimpse of how much the demands of her life had worn away at her.

  Bernadette deserved a man with kind eyes.

  But I didn’t take her hand or try to give her comfort. I may be pushy, a bit too proud and past my prime, but I am not a fool. I know that even the most encouraging of words from a plump old lady in the flea market would not hold any value for a woman that age.

  In a lot of ways, the real reason people like me and Maxine fit right in here at the Five Acres of Fabulous Finds is that we’re yesterday’s goods ourselves. Discarded, to some degree, by people who once cherished us but now see us and quaint and perhaps cute but not really useful anymore. What could we possibly know about a modern single girl’s problems? What could we possibly have to add to help her cope with a world that we fit into about as well as June Cleaver would fit with those Desperate Housewives?

  I’m realistic enough to know that Bernadette would think that way.

  She’d be wrong. But her way of thinking would stop her from listening to what we had to say anyway, so why push more problems on her?

  “What did you find today?” she asked, quick and bright, as if maybe she suspected I was toying with the idea of foisting some advice on her and had to be stopped. “Any of those Royal Queen party plates you two love so much?”

  “Royal Service, Hostess Queen pattern. And no.” Maxine plunked the canvas bag that she used for carrying around her purchases on the counter. She had that look in her eye. The same look I’d seen the first time she and I had met. It spoke of a young bride’s dreams of owning one nice thing, just for herself, bumping up against the harsh realities of a young minister’s budget and expectations. That look was all longing and wistful, a bit sad but tinged with gracious acceptance. “We didn’t find any Hostess Queen today.”

  “Yet,” I added, emphatically. I know it’s corny but I do believe that someday Maxine and I will each own a complete set of Royal Service Hostess Queen partyware of our own. “We still have another acre and a half to explore.”

  “I got a couple vintage aprons, very cute.” Maxine pulled out a yellow piece of fabric with big red apples stitched on it.

  “And I bought a mint-condition eggbeater.” I didn’t open my bag, just pantomimed the motion of cranking the handle of a small appliance.

  Bernade
tte made the motion right back at me. “An egg—Do you need an eggbeater?”

  “You’d be surprised.” I laughed. Actually, I’d bought it out of pure sentiment. I remembered my elderly neighbor having one just like it. I grew up in a house with a Sunbeam stationary mixer myself. Anyway, the vendor said a man had almost bought it to crush flat and use in a “found object” modern-art piece, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to it, so I rescued the thing. But I didn’t confess all that to Bernadette, or else she’d never take romantic advice from me, ever, because she’d forever suspect I was just trying to save some piece of human junk from hanging in life’s gallery of bad art. I know God doesn’t make junk, but at that age, a lot of women don’t realize it yet. So I smiled and said, “Even us mild-mannered minister’s wives run across our share of bad eggs that need whipping into shape.”

  As an afterthought, I shot a glance in the direction of the health-food salesclerk with the toxic attitude.

  Bernadette shut her eyes. “I know your heart is in the right places, Mrs. Pepperdine, but you can’t whip an egg into shape once it’s already been hard-boiled.”

  “Hard-boiled? At her age? I don’t believe that. Do you, Maxine?”

  “No, I don’t. She may want everyone to think that about her. To give the idea that she is already hardened through and through. But look at the way her eyes dart around all the time. And she bites her nails, the act of someone consumed by conflict, not crammed with confidence. And even though I do not at all get what she’s going for at all with her style, she does make an effort with her hair. Those are signs that she’s scared inside and wants to be liked.”

  “Maxine’s right.”

  “That doesn’t mean we should mix in,” Maxine added.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Maxine didn’t give me a chance.

  “Not when we have Bernadette here, and the case of the perfectly marriageable new minister—”

  “Sounds like you’ve got wind of our big news, ladies.” Helen Davenport, who I know mostly from seeing her name on the interfaith committee membership rolls that she loves to sign up for but hates to actually show up for, stuck her head over Maxine’s shoulder. “A single minister! Can you believe it?”