Bewitched, Bewildered & Somewhere In Between.....Again
an excerpt

Aunt Helen is singing again. The years have ruined her voice entirely, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Something about the devil and the deep blue sea.

Madison squints at her Trigonometry book and tries to ignore it. But it’s just about impossible to ignore anything outside of a Trig book when she needs to keep her brain glued to the formulas inside. Any bee buzzing, music playing, wind blowing or little old lady singing steals the brains right out of her head. She works her fingers into her hair and tries tugging to get her brain to focus. No luck. The numbers and letters just slither and slide away into nonsense and gobbledy gook.

“If she leads me to the altar then I’m sunk. Sunk, sunk, sunk. Cause I can’t tell the preacher I was drunk. Drunk, drunk, drunk.”

“Aunt Helen?”

“What’s new Pussycat?” Bright cornflower blue eyes smile at Madison. Do they look a little less focused than they did just yesterday? Maddie pushes the thought away.

“Do you think you can stop singing for a while.” She feels her shoulders flinch in involuntary readiness for anger. But Aunt Helen’s smile doesn’t waver one bit.

“Does my old rusty voice sound that bad to your young ears?”

“No, no….no way. You have a very pretty voice.” Madison hates the thought of hurting Aunt Helen’s feelings. Even a wee little bit. “It’s just that the singing is making it really, really hard to focus on my Trig homework.”

“Trig homework? What in Heaven’s name is that?”

“Math. It’s really hard math.”

Aunt Helen’s wrinkled face scrunches up into more wrinkles. “Oh, I HATE math homework!”

She says it the same way Maddie would say it. Like it’s something that is currently plaguing her life. Not something she left behind over sixty years ago.

“Me too,” Maddie sighs and turns away to hide the fear and sadness in her own eyes. Aunt Helen’s mind is getting more and more fuddled. That’s what she calls it. Fuddled, muddled or befuddled.

She always says, “My mind just isn’t what it used to be.” Usually when she sees someone she should know, someone she’s known for years and can’t quite place. Or when she finds the scissors in the freezer. Or the fine china in the oven.

“Maybe you should take the homework to the library. Your mother always did her homework at the big mahogany desk in the library.”

It’s not Maddie’s mother Helen is talking about. It’s Helen’s older sister Hester. Maddie is Hester’s great grandchild. Maddie’s real mother dropped out of high school and headed to Hollywood to become a star. Where she discovered her main talent involved partying until dawn and acting like the she didn’t mind when the old men groped her.

But Maddie doesn’t correct Helen. She’s found that the more you correct her elderly guardian, the more the little old soul gets befuddled.

Instead Maddie says, “It’s autumn Aunt Helen. I can’t concentrate in the library with the echoes and all.”

“Ahhhhh,” Helen nods wisely with a hint of mischief in her eyes, “of course not. How silly of me. I forget you can hear them too. Your mother never seemed to notice.”

She’s talking about great grandmother Hester again.

“I’ll try to stay quiet dear.” She turns back to the silver teaspoon she is polishing. They always eat on fine china and expensive flatware. What they eat is generally frozen food or take out. Helen pretends she has cooked it just for Maddie. And Maddie plays along because the memory of Aunt Helen’s cooking is still fresh and gruesome in her mind.

How much time do they have before Helen’s mind disintegrates entirely? The hollow tick tock of the old grandfather clock seems to mock Maddie in the silence. Time is slipping away. In two years and ten months, Maddie will be eighteen. But that is an eternity away when Helen’s mind keeps slipping more and more each day.

There is the contest. Britt’s idea. And it has to work. It just has to work. Because if Helen is incompetent, where will Maddie go? There’s no one left. No father to claim her. The thought of foster care sends a convulsion of dread through her whole body. No way. No how. Never again. The contest has got to work. It has to.

And if it doesn’t work this time, she’s got a safe guard. A back up plan. Maddie has not lived this long and survived her mother’s lifestyle without knowing the value of a back up plan. They can try again.

The smell of Stouffer’s vegetable lasagna softens the bitter taste of fear in Maddie’s throat. She pushes away the Trig homework and goes to the library to see if there’s been any more entries today.