Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe

Turns out, it’s easier than you might think to sneak out of town smuggling a live cricket, three pocketfuls of jerky, and two bags of half-paid-for merchandise from Thelma’s Cash ’n’ Carry grocery store.
 
The hard part was getting up the guts to go.
 
It happened like this: There I was in Thelma’s produce section, running my fingers up and down a bundle of collards. Collards never did make for good eating, but I was wondering if maybe they were some kind of sign that it was time for me to skedaddle. Collards always reminded me of Mama. She used to make me drawing paper out of collards, sumac seeds, dryer lint, and newspaper Daddy chopped up in his wood chipper. She plunked things in her paper the way other people stuck things in scrapbooks. Thread from the hem of her wedding dress, a four-leaf clover, Daddy’s first gray hair. Mama’s paper held so much life, it made my drawings pop right off the page.
 
That was the kind of mama and daddy I used to have.
 
I was ruffling up those collards, mourning my daddy and scheming on how to sneak away to win back Mama. Not that I had much time for scheming. Aunt Belinda, Little Quinn, Jackson, and Clay were the next aisle over. My cousins were working hard at plowing down every last tower of cans in that store. Aunt Belinda, she was working hard at keeping some distance between her cart and those crashes.
 
Me, I was supposed to be finding Aunt Belinda some hot sauce. She hadn’t even started her potato salad or her red velvet cake, and already folks were busy unsnapping folding chairs, setting up for the fry. As in the February Firehouse Jubilee Fish Fry and Red Velvet Cake Cook-Off--the place where Aunt Belinda said she was finally going to land herself a new husband to take the place of Daddy’s no-account brother. She already had her sights set on the new fireman, the one with the king-cab truck.
 
“Get your head out of the clouds, Cricket.” Aunt Belinda knocked my hand off the collards. So much for signs. “Make yourself useful. I need that hot sauce. And call Aunt Fig and find out whether her cake recipe calls for buttermilk or sweet milk.” She handed me her cell phone.
 
It came alive with the sound of “Love Me Like You Mean It.”
 
Aunt Belinda grabbed back the phone. “WOKT Country is my favorite radio station,” she chirped.
 
I rolled my eyes. Soon as Aunt Belinda got named a finalist for the Dollywood Trivia Trip of a Lifetime, she’d started answering her phone that way so she’d win if WOKT called.
 
Aunt Belinda ducked her chin and shuffled two steps back. “Can’t talk now. This coming Wednesday. Got it.”
 
She rambled through her purse, found the Post-it note with her to-do list, and scratched down two lines. Slapping the note on top of her purse, she looked at my bangs, not meeting my eyes. “Pecans are your favorite, right?” She threw a big bag in her cart, the expensive kind, not store brand.
 
My neck hairs went prickly.
 
With money too tight even for dollar-store art supplies, why was Aunt Belinda buying me things all of a sudden? Did she want me to do some more blind-date babysitting? I poked at the bag. “Who was that on the phone?”
 
Aunt Belinda just stared at the rutabagas, sucking her cheeks in like she was working on a mint. Finally, she yanked a tube of Wanda’s Classy Lady Peach Passion lipstick out of her purse and jerked it across her lips. “Never you mind. Now get me that hot sauce. Pronto.”
 
My cousins swarmed up and started prying the bottom okra can out of the pyramid display.
 
Aunt Belinda spun her cart around, and the sticky note flew off her purse.
 
“Hey, you dropped . . . ,” I yelled after her, but she was already speeding toward the meat section.
 
I left the note right where it was. The sooner I found the hot sauce, the sooner we could all get out of the store.
 
But before I even got past the Duke’s mayonnaise, I spotted her--a little brown cricket stuck in a spiderweb on the baseboard.
 
The poor thing was trapped even worse than me. She was trying to wiggle out and was tangling herself up worse. The spider skittered close.
 
I snatched that cricket loose.
 
Not fast enough.
 
I saved her from the spider, but Little Quinn swooped in like a duck on a June bug. “Look, Clay, Cricket’s done found herself a cricket. Maybe they’re related.”
 
Twisting away, I studied the bug in my hand. It was probably her and her kin who’d been making music in our backyard all last summer.
 
After a minute, she figured out I wasn’t going to hurt her none. Her antennae relaxed, and she took a tiny step on legs as thin as embroidery thread. She looked like she was listening for something. Was she hoping for the sound of someone out there calling, calling, calling, and waiting for her to answer back?
 
Maybe I did have more in common with that bug than just a name.
 
The cricket turned her warm brown eyes on me and cocked her head. I swear she saw inside me and asked the same exact question I’d been asking myself for days: Just how far will you go to get your mama back?
 
Before I could even think about answering, Little Quinn pulled a firecracker out of his pocket and dug for the matches. “Hand her over.” He sounded bored. It was just another blowing-things-up Saturday.
 
I kicked him in the shin, not hard enough to leave a bruise he could point at, just enough to get him out of the way. Pulling the cricket in tight, I shot for the door.
 
But Aunt Belinda wheeled up and pointed at me with a Trans Am–red fingernail. “Put that nasty thing down and find me that hot sauce.” She plopped a loaf of white bread in her cart and cut her eyes toward the store clock, its hands almost at noon. “You know they’re shutting up early for the fry.”
 
“Just a minute. I need to . . .”
 
Aunt Belinda tilted her face toward the greasy ceiling tiles. “Lord, please save me from selfish children.” Then her voice turned into the one she used when she was trying to get her boys to bed. “Just help me out this one time, Cricket. For the fry. Will you do that much?”
 
“Yes, ma’am,” I sighed, trying to get out of hearing, for the umpteenth time, all the things Aunt Belinda used to do to help out her family when she was twelve.
 
My cousins swaggered closer, blocking the way to the door. I had to get the cricket out if she was going to make it.
 
“Gotta go.” I swerved toward the bathroom.
 
The back lights were already off, and I fumbled for the bathroom switch. One tiny window glowed on the rear wall, the glass painted in the same overcooked butter-bean color as the rest of the store. A slice of light showed through the bottom, though, where the window was pushed out. Just big enough for the cricket.
 
That was the good news. The bad news was, the window was too high to reach. A tall trash can stood next to the door. I waltzed it side to side over to the window, holding my breath against the smell of dirty diapers, Comet, and wet brown paper towels.
 
“Cricket, I hope you’re grateful,” I whispered.
 
She wasn’t.
 
Soon as I opened my fingers to check on her, she sprang onto the lightbulb over the mirror.
 
I wriggled my way onto a sink, prayed the whole thing wouldn’t fall off the wall, and tried to coax her loose before she got burned.
 
Instead, she catapulted onto the top of a stall. Balancing on a lopsided toilet seat, I lunged after her. Aunt Belinda was going to kill me for taking so long.
 
By the time I finally caught her, we’d visited all four toilets once and some two times.
 
I was out of breath and really, really needed to wash my hands.
 
But I’ll say one thing for that cricket—she had a mind of her own. “Names carry a power,” Daddy always said. Right then and there, I picked out a good one for her--Charlene. Mama’s middle name.
 
Hoisting myself onto the trash can rim, I pushed the window open wider and started to let Charlene out. But instead of clean air, I got slapped with the smell of fresh-poured asphalt from the side parking lot. Charlene would get stuck in the tar. I’d have to take her out the front. I eased the bathroom door open.
 
The store was dark, too dark.
 
It was too quiet.
 
It was too empty.
 
It took me about a minute to figure out that the only living creatures in the store were me and that cricket.
 
She stared at me with those question eyes of hers, waiting on me to make the next move.