Voodoo Shack

- 1 -

I spent near five minutes running my finger up and down the page in my American College Dictionary, looking for the word that Alice Pruitt had spat out at me like a bad peanut. I found the word on the same page as a lot of other words starting with "ill": illegal, ill-fated, ill-gotten, illicit. When I sounded out the word, illegitimate, there was no question that it was the same word that Alice had used.

I had told Alice that I would eat worms and die before I'd tell her where the Voodoo Shack was hidden deep in Hazard Swamp. That was our club pact. We had all sworn to eat worms and die if we broke any of the club rules. Luckily, the only rule so far was to keep the whereabouts of the Voodoo Shack secret, and none of us was just dying to tell Alice Pruitt how to find it.

When I had recited this pact, Alice put her hands on her hips and stuck her nose in the air so high she liked to give herself a nosebleed.

"Who wants to join your ol' club anyway?" she had said in a voice that reminded me of chalk taking a bad turn on the blackboard. "Besides, I'm thinking of forming a club of my own, and it won't include.your kind."

What did she mean, my kind?

"The membership of my club will be restricted to those who can trace their lineage back several generations. Mother is helping me with a list. It certainly won't include any kids from trashy families, or-"

"Who are you calling trashy!" I yelled, giving Alice a small shove.

"And it won't help to resort to violence, Iris Weston-I guess that name will just have to do, since you don't have a father. Well, that's not exactly true. Everyone has a father, it's just that those who will be in my club will know who theirs is."

"That so?" I snorted.

"Yes, Iris, that's so. Mother says that you're illegitimate and should therefore be disqualified from my membership roster."

I knew it was a name-calling word-illegitimate. Alice was not about to call me something nice, and just the sound of it had a bad ring to it. Course, she was just ticked off because I wouldn't tell her where the Voodoo Shack was. But I didn't like the notion that Alice Pruitt's mother was discussing my-what was that word?-lineage.

"And you're a sissy-pants," I had zinged back at her. I couldn't think up any great comebacks.

I hadn't given Alice's hissy fit much thought until I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to do my homework. Usually I had better things to do than hunt up words in the dictionary, but I happened to have it right with me to help decipher Silas Marner, the book my sixth-grade class had been assigned to read. Besides, I figured I might be able to store up the word for use at a later time.

The definition said it meant not legitimate. Well, that's like saying unhappy is "not happy." But it went on to say some other pretty harsh things. Unlawful. I knew what that meant. Crossing the street against the traffic light is unlawful. I admit to it, but I always look both ways. Illegal. More of the same against-the-law-type stuff. Maybe Alice Pruitt saw me jaywalking. My finger came to an abrupt halt at the next part of the definition. Born out of wedlock; an illegitimate child. I strongly suspected that this is what Alice meant, or at least what her mother meant, when she'd told Alice this word.

But what did it mean, born out of wedlock? What was a wedlock? Maybe I wasn't born in a hospital. Maybe they forgot to lock something. I turned the pages of the dictionary to the W section. Wedlock: state of marriage; matrimony. Born out of-Momma and my father not married? I slammed the dictionary closed with such a bang that my pencil jumped right off the kitchen table onto the floor and rolled under the refrigerator.

It was a big fat lie. Alice Pruitt's mother was spreading lies, like everybody says she does. I wish Deputy Skinner could arrest folks for telling lies.

I was sure my momma was married to my father. I never knew him, my father. Whenever I asked questions about him, Momma's lower lip would start to tremble and Gran would give me a harsh look, like I was asking something bad. Gramps had told me that my father was killed in the Korean War, where Momma had met him when she was over there as a nurse.

"What was that racket?"

I near jumped out of my skin. Gran has a way of just appearing out of nowhere and scaring the daylights out of folks.

"I asked you a question, Young Lady."

I bought a little time by going over to the refrigerator and crawling around to fetch my pencil that had settled next to the drip pan. I could see Gran out of the corner of my eye, her foot tapping. She was holding a newspaper and wearing her reading glasses. She reached up and pushed a strand of loose hair back into her bun. If that hair knew what was good for it, it would stay put.

"Humpf," she said as she squinted at the front page of the newspaper. "Now that fool President wants put a man on the moon! First they send John Glenn into orbit-how they ever got him back is a miracle-and now a man on the moon? Pure foolishness."

I slid back into my chair and wiped the lint off my pencil before I commenced to chew on it. Gran looked over the top of her newspaper. "For the last time, Iris, what was that commotion I heard?"

"Commotion?" I said. "I'm just sitting here doing my homework. I dropped my pencil is all."

She walked up to me and got close enough so's I could smell the lemon Pledge on her. I knew she wasn't buying it, doing my homework, since the sheet of paper in front of me was blank, except for a doodle in the corner. I was supposed to be working on my book report for Silas Marner. I hadn't really read the book and had been planning to skim it and crank out the assigned four pages just as soon as I finished looking up illegitimate.

"Sounded like a gunshot, way you're slamming things around here. You know your momma worked the late shift at the hospital. She's got to get her rest. How's she supposed to do that with you throwing books around?"

I shrugged my shoulders. I had learned not to argue with Gran, from the day Momma and I came to live with her and Gramps on the farm. That had been when I was just seven years old. Momma had pulled me right out of my second-grade class one day. She was a nurse in the emergency room of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, where folks came in all shot up and stabbed or sick from drugs or liquor. Momma said it was worse than the war sometimes. She finally got just plain fed up, said the city was no place to raise a child. I remember her sitting at the table, scribbling on a pad of paper, then wadding up the pages and throwing them away. I found out she was trying to write to Gran and Gramps but was having an awful time getting the words down. I guess Momma and Gran had had harsh words when I was just a baby, and things had been bad ever since. I had smoothed out one of the crumpled sheets and read it. Momma was asking Gran and Gramps if they could patch things up and for us to go live with them on their farm.

It was driving me crazy, watching Momma try again and again to write that letter, then throw it away. So, when I was writing my thank-you note for my birthday money-Gran and Gramps always sent me a real nice card with money tucked inside-I put it down plain and simple. Momma thought that we should go live with them, and that was that. About a week later, Momma yanked me out of school, already had the station wagon packed, and off we headed for Scottsburg, Michigan. I remember her hands shook so bad I was afraid she couldn't hang onto the steering wheel. "We're going home, baby," she said, her voice all quivery.

So that's how I came to find myself sitting at the kitchen table with Gran looking over me like a prison warden. I figured I'd keep my mouth shut for the time being about this illegitimate business, just like I didn't ask anything about the pictures that I had taken a peek at in Momma's nursing books. My favorite section was Human Reproduction. There was some interesting stuff there. I was trying to work up the nerve to sneak the book out and take it to the clubhouse for review at one of the meetings.

"Don't sass me," said Gran as she moved over to the kitchen counter and pulled open a cupboard.

You couldn't win with Gran. Even a shoulder shrug was considered sass.

"I'll fix you a can of Franco-American spaghetti for lunch, then I want to see some words written on that school paper," she said as she began twisting the can opener with her crooked fingers.

"Want me to open that for you, Gran?"

"No, child, I'm not a cripple. I guess I can open a can of spaghetti."

"Why don't you get an electric can opener?"

"Why don't you start writing about that book. You read it, didn't you?"

I began to work on the eraser with my teeth. I tried to think of an answer that wouldn't be a lie and wouldn't incriminate me. I finally mumbled some nonsense into my pencil eraser. Even though I...