Nana Belle Wins The Lottery - Teter Keyes

Nana Belle Wins The Lottery by Teter Keyes

Book excerpt

Mom is pinching the skin between her eyebrows. It’s a totally familiar thing. What normally follows is, “Henry, to your room. Now.” When that happens, I claim innocence, but I usually know the reason she’s angry. This time I am innocent and whoever is on the other end of their phone conversation is the one in deep doo-doo.

“Are you sure?” she is saying. Pinch, pinch. “Calm down. Just tell me what happened.”

The caller is one of my grandmothers. I know this because she said, “Hi, Mom,” when she answered. What I don’t know is whether it is Nana Belle, her mother, or Grandma Grace, Dad’s mom.

“What, what?” I ask her, bouncing on my toes.

Mom waves me away and turns her back to me, listening. Pond scum, I’m ten years old and still being treated like a baby.

“Okay, okay,” Mom is saying. “Did you talk to anyone about this yet?”

Silently, she listens.

“No, I don’t mean Rita and Mary Beth. I mean someone at their office. At least talk to a lawyer before you–” She stops talking, listens again.

Rita and Mary Beth are my aunts, Mom’s sisters, so I now know it must be Nana Belle on the phone.

Bounce, bounce.

Mom turns back around and points at my feet. I try to stop bouncing. It’s hard.

My grandpa, John McNally, died before I was born, and Mom asked Nana if she has already talked to my aunts, so that means no one has died. That leaves someone is sick, there’s been a fire, or a sinkhole opened up under Nana Belle’s old Nebraska house. Dad says I have a calculating mind. He claims credit for that since he writes complicated software and says it requires serious machinations. Mom says I’m just a Curious George, like in the book she used to read to me, and that all my curiosity will get me in trouble one day, just like George.

I’d like to watch a big sinkhole swallow a house. Not with Nana Belle inside, of course. I picture a deep, round hole gobbling up Nana’s home. I imagine the panicked squeal of her squeaky screen door as the old porch is sucked down.

Mom pushes the button to end the call and drops onto a chair. She pulls her hair back with both hands like she’s trying to keep the top of her head from popping off.

“What, what?” I ask again, bouncing on my feet.

“I gotta call your dad,” she says and stands up.

“Mom!” I shout. “Did Nana Belle’s house fall into a sinkhole?”

“A what?”

Oops, imagination overflow.

She looks at me, puzzled. I take a big breath and ask as calmly as I can, “What did Nana say?”

She put her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes are all shiny. “Henry, your nana just won the lottery.”

My turn to ask, “What?”

“The Powerball. The big one. Nana won it.” She twirls around the room, singing, “Momma won it. One hundred and nine million smackers. She won, she won. One hundred and nine million. I can’t believe it.”

She stops mid-twirl and puts a hand over her mouth. Around it, she says, “I gotta call your dad.” Then she picks up her phone and goes outside.

The lottery? This is better than watching Nana’s house flush down a hole.

I didn’t think all the twirling was just happiness for my nana. I’m guessing Mom believes some of that money will come to her and my aunties.

And aren’t I the only child of loving parents? Snap, I am. Visions of new gaming systems and the upcoming new video game I saw on TV dance in my head.

The next two days are busy. Mom acts all weird. She made a jillion, million calls to my nana and aunties. She takes my old clothes out of drawers and closets, the ones I already grew out of, but then she gets all distracted and the piles sit on my floor for a couple of days. Once she was fixing supper, and the chicken almost burned because she kept on staring out the window. She and Dad have conversations in their room with the door shut. Hello, did you forget you had a kid?

“Mom?” I keep asking, but she just pats me on the back and says things will all work out. Zombieville.

Mom gets tickets so we can fly out to visit Nana Belle. I want Dad to come with us. Mom does too, but he tells Mom he loves her, but there was no way he is going to spend time with her family.

They talk in whispers in the kitchen while I’m a room away with my earphones on. I don’t have music playing, but they don’t know that. Curious George I am, but how else can I know what’s going on? Dad says “dysfunctional” in a loud whisper. I peek around the edge of my door and see Mom turning to him with the knife she had been using to chop tomatoes and she asks him if he wants to say that again. Apparently, Dad does not because he leaves.

“What’re you listening to, Henry?” he asks when he walks past and pats my head.

“Just some music,” I tell him. “Why don’t you want to come with us?”

We had gone to Nebraska where Nana Belle lives two Christmases ago. What I remember is that everything was brown and dead-looking, and when I stood outside all I saw was sky in every direction. That is if anyone wanted to stay outside long enough in the cold and wind. It’s totally different from Seattle where we live. I’m not even mentioning having to see my bratty girl cousins. No, I’m not looking forward to Nebraska.

“Mom,” I ask over dinner, “Why can’t I stay with Dad, and you go? It’s cold at Nana’s and Heather’s a brat.”

“Don’t call Heather a brat,” Mom said. “Plus, it’s summer now.”

Then what she says changes everything. “We’re not going to Nebraska, anyway, honey. Nana rented a beach cottage on one of the islands off the South Carolina coast.”

“Island? You mean with an ocean and boats and swimming and everything?” This is good news.

“That’s right.” Mom beams me a smile. “It’s on the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific like Seattle. There’ll be sandy beaches, and you can swim. But, young man,” she continues, pointing a fork at me, “you will not swim without an adult present.”

“Will Heather and Sarah Beth be there?”

“I think it’s just going to be us, your aunts, and Nana, at least for now.”

This is even better news.

She looks at me for a long time as if seeing how much I have grown. I straighten in the chair to make myself look taller. Then she tells my dad, “I hate to admit it, but you’re right, my family is not a normal, healthy one.”

Dad snorts.

“Things were, I’d guess you could say, difficult growing up, especially for Rita and Mary Beth. They’re older than me. My dad, your Grandpa John, had problems.”

“He was a drunk,” Dad says.

“Hush, Peter. My dad was in the war, and he didn’t come back the same. Now, he would have been diagnosed with PTSD, that’s post-traumatic stress disorder,” she explains to me. “Back then it was different; people didn’t understand the condition. Plus, the vets coming back were criticized, some were even spat on.”

She points a fork at my dad.

What is it with her today with the sharp stuff?

“He was still a successful man. He operated his pharmacy and provided for Mom and us. It’s just that—”

“He drank,” Dad says. “To excess. Often.”

“Hello, I was there. I know he did, and it made home life difficult. Especially when my mother was—”

“An enabler,” finishes my dad.

“Well, he had cut back a lot by the time I was in junior high. Life was easier then.”

“Because he had cirrhosis of the liver. Not that it stopped him.”

“Enough!”

“Anyway,” she goes on, looking at me, “Your Nana Belle wants to get us girls together for a couple of weeks, see if we can talk things over, and find a way to come closer. We all suffered as kids, then we scattered across the country, and no one discussed it. Now with the money, there’s an opportunity to get together, talk, and heal.”