Tilda’s Babyshower Blues

The day I went to my mother’s babyshower was the worst day of my week.  Chaotic things were always happening at our house. but that babyshower was the worst!  It was not the actual babyshower that was the problem, but my getting to the babyshower, gift and all.  Let me explain.  My  mother, Anna-marie, has had about five babyshowers so far, but after we use the things people give us, my mother gives them away.  That is why we were having yet another babyshower.  Our friends, the Millers, were hosting it for us.

I had begun preparing for the babyshower the night before.  I had had no idea what to  get for our new arrival, so I went to ask my brothers, which wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if they hadn’t been, well, boys.  I was only about six at the time, and always took their word on things.  So when they suggested a whoopie cushion for the baby, I was all for the idea.  My second-oldest brother, Harry, agreed to take me to the store.  He wasn’t old enough to drive a car, and he thought it was to far to walk, so he somehow convinced our next door neighbor to lend us his horse for the night.  It was a massive amount of horse that we rode, (bareback, I might add), to the grocery store.  With about two of his ginormous strides, he stopped infront of our local grocery store.  Harry tied him to the post outside the store with a very lame knot that fell apart immediately, and then took me inside.  Nearly skipping down the one isle of the store, we stopped infront of the toy shelf.  It was lined with toys of all different shapes and sizes.Harry pulled a round, squishy-looking thing from the shelf.  Then he pulled all the other items of that kind off the shelf, too, knocking over a tin box that looked like it had lived in a junkheap all it’s life, along with a babydoll.  In both directions, the toys fell like a line of dominoes.

“Oops,” Harry whispered.  “We’d better hurry.”  He held up the odd toys in his hand.  “Red or blue?”

“Pink,” I said decidedly.  I had bee thinking about it all evening.  Whatever I got the baby, it had to be pink.

“Come on, Tilly.”  He rolled hi eyes.  “It’s for a boy.  And that wasn’t one of the-”  He paused for a moment, thinking.  “Hey, that’s the best idea I’ve heard all week!”   He put all the whoopie cushions back on the shelf in a scattered heap, and pulled a hot pink one from the mix.  “C’mon, now, let’s go.”

We hurried down the long isle-and I mean long!  It was about twelve times the distance between our house and the store.  “Why can’t we bring the big horsey in?” I asked him.

“There’s a no-pet sign on the door, Tilda, didn’t you see it?”  He looked back at me, straggling along behind him.  “Hurry up!” he ordered.

“I saw the sign,” I panted.  “It only has a picture of a dog with a line going through it, not a horse,” I pointed out.
He turned to gawk at me.  “Brilliant!” he cried.  “Only, not today.  If I had him with us, we’d be getting a speeding ticket right now!”

We dashed toward the check-out counter.  We stood behind a little, old man, with spectacle lenses the width of Colorado!  As we waited in line, Harry pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.  I’ve always wondered why people put their wallets in their back pockets.  It must feel uncomfortable to be sitting on a lump all the time.

I was deep in thought when  Harry spoke.  “Tilly, I don’t have any money.”

This I considered for a moment.  “Go and get some, then,” I suggested.

“Will you?” Harry pleaded.  I didn’t realize it then, but Harry was afraid to ride the big horse on his own.

“Okay,” I agreed, and headed toward the door.

The first problem, one of many that presented itself, was getting on the horse.  I tried jumping-that didn’t work.  So then I tried out a pair of stilts, one of the pairs on display infront of the store.  That worked.  As soon as Ihad gotten up to the horsey’s level, I realized i would have to drop one of my stilts onto the ground, swing my free leg over the horse’s side, balancing on my other stilt, and wiggle my foot out of the stilt, and somehow ride back home.  My brothers could help me dismount, and then remount, with the money.  But that only happens in books.  One thing at a time, though, I reminded myself.  First things first.  I stiffly stilt-walked over to the horse’s left side.  Slipping my right foot out of my stilt, I tried to balance on one stilt, which didn’t work so well.  Also, I realized I had pulled the wrong foot out of the stilt.  I was going to have to ride backwards!  But too late to change anything now, I realized.  But I had more pressing matters to think about right then.  Wobbling all over the place, I grabbed desperately at the reins, swinging my right leg toward the horse’s back.  At the last moment, I grasped the reins, and held on for dear life!  Apparently I had not aimed my leg high enough, so my foot kicked the horse’s side, sending the horse in a counter-clockwise spin.  Somehow I got my leg over the horse’s back, and freed my other leg just in time for a wild ride.

We bolted down the street at such a speed that it would make even light look like a slowpoke compared to it.  Within seconds, we had arrived infront of our next door neighbor’s barn, where it promptly bucked me off.  Then it turned around, and pulled it’s top lip up in a sort of horse laugh.  despite it all, I laughed.  as soon as my little horsey friend had been put into a comfortable stall by it’s owner, I walked to my house to get the money so that my brother could buy the gift for me  for the babyshower.  When I got home, my brothers gave me a twenty dollar bill.  Bayer, my oldest brother, drove me to the store, all the time complaining of how silly  it was to go through all this work just for a whoopie cushion.  He waited for me at the curb while I went in with the money.  The old man was still at the check-out counter whenI hurried in.  I handed Harry the money.

“What does a whoopie cusion do?” I asked curiously.

“It-”  Harry paused a moment.  “It makes it extra soft for the baby to sit down.  It’s a great toy, too.  The boy’ll love it!”

“I thought it was for our mother!”

“It is for our mother, and the baby,” he tried to explain.  “It-it’s-like a birthday party for the baby, and the presents can be neccessties, along with fun stuff.  That helps the mother, to0.”

I shrugged.  “If you say so.”

When we returned to our house, seven-year-old Dan was sitting on the couch, our mother at his side.  “Oh, dan, why did you do it?” she cried.

Harry and Bayer hurried to stand beside their mother.  “What’s wrong?” Harry exclaimed.

“It was awful!” our mother, Anna-marie wailed.  “Awful!”

“Oh boy!”  Eleven-year-old Reed bounded into the room.  “What did I miss?”  Grass stained and muddy, Reed looked like he had just crawled out of a ditch!

Bayer was more serious.  “Is Dan okay?” he asked worriedly.

“I’m fine,” Dan exclaimed, “she’s just making a big fuss over nothing!”  Dan pointed an accusing finger at Anna-marie.

“You stuck your finger in the electrical socket, after everyone has told you not to!” Anna-marie said sternly.  Seeing Reed’s dirty jeans, she roled her eyes.  “Reed, you look worse than one of farmer McGregor’s old pigs!” she scolded.  “Go hop in the bathtub!  Bayer, Harry, why didn’t you tell me you were going out with Tilly?”

I had kept the whoopie cushion behind my back the whole time we had been in the house, and I wasn’t about to let her see it now.  I stuffed it up the back of my shirt.  “We went to the store,” I explained, “for a crib decoration for the baby.”

Anna-marie smiled.

Bayer glared.

Harry laughed out loud.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Anna-marie said sweetly.  “What is it?”

Silence filled the room.  Finally I could stand it no longer.  “I got you the whoopie cushion,” I told her.

Now Harry was glaring at me, too.  Bayer was double-glaring at me.  But Anna-marie was laughing as I handed the whoopie cushion to her.

“It’s the thought that counts,” she said to me as she squeezed the whoopie cushion between the palms of her hand.

Phooooow!  The whoopie cushion let out a noise that sounded plain disgusting!  Was this what I had gotten for my little baby brother?  Would he like it?  I sure hoped so, ’cause it looked like he was gonna be stuck with it.

The morning of the babyshower I accidentally slept in too late.  And no one came to get me because of the chaos that occured downstairs.  Turns out, Reed had tried to make a zuchinni egg bake for us, but unintentionally cut off most of his his finger-at least I don’t think he did it intentionally.  You’d have to ask him.  Later on Bayer told me that he had screamed so loud his ears were still ringing.  But I can sleep through anything.  Everyone was at the ER and had forgotten about me.  By the time I’d climbed out of bed, they were long gone.  I realized something not very good had occured the moment I was awake-there was no noise in the house.  Than I realized that my mother might not be able to make it to the babyshower.  What would everyone think?  We would have nothing at all for the baby if everyone turned around and left because my mother was not there to great them!  I have to do something!  I decided.  Quickly, a plan formed in my head.

I raced down the street to the grocery store, and bought a pair of stilts.  I payed for them with the money left over from the last night’s purchase.  I hurried down the street as fast as I could, only to arrive at my house and realize I had locked myself out!  No key around me within reach.  I ended up climbing through the second floor window with the help of those ever-so-helpful stilts.  Once inside, I rushed into my mother’s room.  With the assistance of my stilts, I got into the top of her closet.  There was a rack in the top, so I sat on it, right in the the middle of a pile of boxes.  I wriggled around, trying to see into one of the many boxes.  But then the rack came out of the wall, and made such a tremendous crash, I thought for sure everyone in a twenty mile radius must have heard it!  But I was still in one piece, even if the closet wasn’t.

The box I’d been looking at had fallen open, the majority of its contents spilling out across the bedroom floor.  But inside was what I needed; an old wig, a hair extension, thirty containers of powdery makeup, and about fifty bottles of nail polish, and face paints.  A dress of my mother’s was needed also, for what I was about to do.  since the dresser was more at my level, I was able to easily pull out several articles of clothing.  The dress looked prehistoric, and was really short.  shorter than most ankle-length dresses.  But for me, it dragged the floor.  No big deal, I told myself.  The gown was pink, with purple polka-dots.  I didn’t realize it then, but it was my mother’s old pajamas.  I really liked it, though.

Next I found a good, long pair of blue jeans to go with the PJ dress.  Once I had changed into my mother’s dress and jeans, I waddled over to the full length mirror, tripping every step of the way.  looking into the mirror, I felt I looked beautiful, just like my mother.  You see, I was trying to dress up as her for the babyshower, to take her place until she came.

I put on my mother’s black wig.  it matched her hair perfectly.  She had used it when all her hair fell out.  Now she has her own hair, again.  My hair is reddish-brown, so to dress up like her, I needed it.  The hair was all tangled, so I finger-combed it.  It ended up looking even worse than before, so after putting it on, I covered it with my mother’s white hat.  I put it on inside-out.  I would need something to tie it on with to keep it from falling off my head.  So I found some skin-colored gauze, and wrapped it tightly around my hat  and chin ten times.  I clipped the hair extensions  to the ruffles on the inside of my inside-out hat.  That way no one would see that my eyes were not black like my mother’s.  But just incase someone did see, I took the black face paint, and dabbed a bit around my eyes.  I looked through all the makeup containers, and found that the navy blue powder was the closest I had to black.  I put the powder over the face paint.  I looked like I had two bruises for eyes by the time I was finished.  I hoped no one would notice.

I played around with the makeup until my whole face was red, like I had gotten burnt real bad.  But that was okay with me.  I had five minutes before the babyshower began.  I decided to paint my nails.  The carpet ended up getting more paint than my nails.  By the time I had some paint on my nails, the babyshower had already started.  I tied some Mary Jane’s to the ends of my stilts, with some more gauze, and took them downstairs.  I wiggled my feet into the proper positions, and stood up, draping my dress over the tops.  I had to put another pair of jeans over the stilts so that it would look more like my mother’s legs, and less like stilts.  So to save time, I cut a pair of old, ratty jeans into long strips, and wrapped them around the stilts.  Then I was on my way.

After walking stiffly down the street, I stopped infront of a house with red shutters, and a green door.  Very Christmasy, I observed to myself, and rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by Mrs. Miller, the lady in charge of the babyshower.  “Oh, hello, Anna-marie!” Mrs. Miller cried.  her eyes opened wide.  “We thought you weren’t going to be able to come because you had to take Reed to the ER.  I’m so sorry about him!  We received your call, but by then, almost everyone had arrived.  The only person who has not arrived is Amy.”

‘Amy?” I asked, confused.

“Anna, she’s your best friend!  Remember, she volunteers at Heather’s Horse Haven, the animal rescue.”

I remembered seeing her one time when I went to the rescue.  It contained a barn, a pasture, and a house – and lots of animals too, ofcourse, mainly horses.  I nodded, and stepped into the house.  The living room was crowded with many people, and a stack of presents was piled up on the floor in a heap, four feet high!  It seemed everyone was talking when I entered, but within seconds, the room was as quiet as a tomb.

“Anna-marie, dear, what happened to your head?” an old lady cried.  I recognized her to be my grandmother.

The room erupted with noise, everyone bombarding me with questions.  after realizing they were talking about the gauze around my hat, I held up my hand for silence.  “I hit my head,” I announced solemnly.

“On the sink?” a little girl said sarcastically.  I recognized her to be one of the kids from my swimming team.

“On my way over,” I explained, “I tripped over a sidewalk crack.  The crack was rather large, and I tripped over it.”  I paused for a moment, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t say stupid.  “You – we all know that the distance between my house and this one is super-short, right?”  Heads nodded in agreement, or something like that.  “Well, a lot of things happened between those two houses.  After tripping over that sidewalk crack that was as deep as a ravine, a rocket from a jet passing by overhead came down straight at me – ”  I paused a moment for effect, then continued, ” – but it didn’t hit me!”

“You’re lying!” the little girl shouted.  “That’s impossible.”

“Who’s telling the story, you or I?” I retorted.  “Anyway, to continue.  The force with which the rocket hit the ground beside me sent me flying up into the air, so high that I ran into the telephone wires in my flight.”

“There aren’t any telephone wires above ground in this town!”  Same girl, same snotty voice.  She must’ve been out to get me!

I glared at her icily for a moment before continuing on with my story.  “I get electricuted, and have not been the same since.  After I got electricuted, I felt myself falling back to the earth.”

“You didn’t leave it,” the little girl muttered.

“There was a trash truck coming at full speed – full speed for a trash truck, anyway.  It did not hit me, but came so near that I fainted from the odiferous odor of trash truck.  I do not know how I landed on the ground without breaking any bones, nor do I remember.”

The little girl felt compelled to open her mouth again.  “Obviously!  You were fainted – or so you say.”

I ignored her.  “After the electricution, and the terrible stench, I still managed to make it here.  Can we open gifts now, please?”

Everyone just gawked at me, unbelieving.  We stood in silence.

The little girl was the first to speak.  “What’s wrong with you?”

Suddenly everyone in the room began talking at once.

“Call a doctor!” someone wailed.

“Has she gone nuts, like that squirrel in the post on the Random Thoughts blog?” another cried.

“She has gone mad!” a third declared.

Just then a cold gust of wind came blowing into the room.  All turned toward the door.  A tall lady entered into the now chilled living room.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” the lady exclaimed.  “It seems another me has sprung up!”

I recognized this lady as my mother.  And she was onto me.

“Or am I seeing double?”

No one answered her.

“Last I recall, I left my darlin’ little Tilly back home, just dun forgottened her, and now here she is!”

Really onto me.

“Tilda, did you remember to pay for those stilts?”

She could see straight through my disguise.

“And how did you get to the top of my closet?”

She even knew what I had used for my disguise, and where it was located in the house!  “I might as well admit it,” I confessed.  “I did knock over a couple of boxes.”

“Are you all right?”

I nodded.

“I hope you didn’t spill any makeup or nail paints on the carpet,” she muttered under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear it.

Could she see the guilty expression on my face?

“What did you think you were doing, anyway?” my mother asked me.

It was an interrogative sentence, I could tell.  Bayer had taught me about them, and explained how they could never be good if you were the one being interrogated.  “Uh, well, you – you see,” I managed to stammer.  But I could not think of anything to say.

“You wanted to take my place until I got here?” she guessed.

Note to self – Mothers can read thoughts.  Always be careful of what you are thinking when you are around mothers.

I nodded.

“Well, I suppose it’s the thought that counts,” she said slowly, as if she herself could hardly believe that the thought is what counts.  Looking back on it, having been a mother now, I can probably guess what she was thinking.  But back then, I was clueless.

“You said that about the whoopie cushion I got for you, too,” I said.

She nodded.

“Does that mean that you don’t like what I did?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting or hoping for, but you did it to show you care about me, right?”

I nodded.

“That is a gift in itself, knowing that you care about me enough to go through all that work to try to help me.”  My mother smiled down, or rather up at me.  “Let the babyshower go on!” she declared.

If you have enjoyed reading Tilda’s Babyshower Blues, you may also enjoy reading The Unicorn Puzzle, also by MinSullivan.  I hope you have enjoyed reading this story.