High School started the next day and Magdalena and I were at the Mayberry Mall doing some last minute school supply shopping with my mom and Nana. My mom and Nana Gail were down at Kmart where they were having a going out of business sale. They were buying up early Christmas presents Kmart was practically giving away, according to Nana. Magdalena and I were getting ice cream at CF Jones and talking.
We were both traumatized by what happened to my mom and her dad and Darrell, but I found an outlet to vent - writing in my diary journal. Magdalena still needed some counseling. The counselor was in and listening and advising and and eating a cookie dough ice cream cone. The patient was in and was slurping a black cherry milkshake with black cherries that kept getting stuck in the straw.
Magdalena asked me, "Is it bad that all I could think about when my dad was dying was - what's gonna happen to me and my mom and sisters?"
"No," I said, "That's not bad. That's not bad at all. It's normal thinking."
"You know, before you got down there, you remember I told you he said some crazy things? Well, I didn't tell you it all." She slurped. "He talked about a woman in a red dress, so beautiful, he said she made his eyes water to look at her. Do you think it was my mom? I never heard him talk about her that way."
"Your mama is pretty, and we know red is her favorite color."
We ate our ice cream and watched people walking by.
"There was something else he said that was strange. Very weird. He talked about people living underground. Sort of like a basement, but more like in a cave. He met these people and talked to them."
"Blood loss," I speculated. "Not enough oxygen getting to his brain?"
"It was so detailed. He even named the people. There was Jane, and Wilma, and a teacher he called The Professor. There was a maid or a servant who waited on them. They were all trapped underground."
"A movie memory, maybe? Saw? Silence of the Lambs? Kiss the Girls? The professor? Oh yeah, the professor, maybe, Gilligan's Island?"
"Yeah, that does kind of make more sense." And then with a statement so true it did not need to be said out loud, but it was, "He was a mean man."
"The meanest man on earth, " I said and then I added, "Sorry."
"No need. He was the meanest man on earth. And we wished him dead. Wished him gone."
"Yeah, we did, and we are not going to feel bad about it either. It was not our fault."
"You know, he was a lot better to us, to me and mama and my sisters, at the end. Maybe, he was trying to change."
"Maybe, but he was so mean, I just don't know," I said.
"Do you think I am like him? He said so. He said I was like him."
"That's crazy Magdalena. You are nothing like him. He was mean. You are an angel. A beautiful angel."
"Do you think I killed him?" she asked. "By pulling the knife out?"
I thought about it. "No, You didn't kill him. You saved him. It was over. He knew it. He was like an outlaw. He was not going to be taken alive."
Magdalena, of all people, would get my reference to an old west outlaw going out in a blaze of glory.
"I'm sorry about your dad," she said.
"He wasn't my real dad, and he wasn't so great a guy either."
"Well, he didn't deserve to die that way. Wonder why he was at your house?"
"Guess, we'll never know."
Magdalena changed the subject slightly. "I'm worried about school. You seen the way people looked at me today, What if people blame me for what he did? What if people are mean and don't like me? What if they don't like you either?"
I said, "Well, you know what Miss Lacey always says - We don't care what people say about us. We are practically perfect."
"Yes," Magdalena smiled. "We don't care. We are perfect."
"And besides, how bad can high school be after all this " I added, " It is only uphill from here. The worst is over."
Or, so I thought. But, as it turned out, the worst was just beginning.
If we only knew what was ahead. If we could see the future, know the truth, could a person go forward ? Maybe, we could because we are human beings and being human beings we want to know the truth, even when it is too ugly to look at or makes no sense.