Post-Toasties Encounter (pt. 2)

Running home to my mother, I excitedly told her of what had happened. "Didn't you say anything to Mrs. Crawford?" I shook my head as I looked at my scuffed shoes. "You mean you just stood there, not even saying 'Hello'? Did you think she was nice?" I nodded my head. "How would you like to visit her?" my mother asked in a tone that suggested I had better say anything but no.

Mamma dressed me in my Sunday best after she baked an apple pie. "Now when we get to Mrs. Crawford’s house," she instructed as we got in the car, "I want you to at least speak to her." My knees were shaking so bad that Mamma looked over at me and frowned, "Stop fidgeting. You’d think this was your funeral." Mamma stepped on the brake as she pulled off the side of the road in front of Mrs. Crawford’s house. We got out of the car, but I held back, behind my mothers cotton flowered summer dress, as we walked down the crooked sidewalk. Daffodils and Virginia Spring Beauties were sprinkled throughout the lawn. Mamma knocked on the door and we waited. I knew my doom had come. Even though she seemed perfectly harmless, I just knew she was...

"Ms. Wilson, come in." The crackled voice startled me to the present. "I saw you drive up, and heard you knock, but I'm old and it takes me longer to get up than it used to." She still looked the same, except her hair was thinning, no longer in a careless bun on her head. "Are you home from college?" she asked as she held open the wooden screen door. I stepped in, still nodding my head. "Come in and sit down. I don't get much company these days, you know."

"Hello, Mrs. Craw-ford, you're looking pretty. I was just home visiting Mamma, and decided to stop by. Mamma said you just got out of the hospital and needed an apple pie and company." She started to get up but I stopped her. "You keep still, I know where the dishes are and it's about time you let me do something around here." She didn't protest like she usually did on my previous visits. Instead, she breathed a sigh of relief and settled back into her wooden rocker. "Do you still buy Post-Toasties?” I asked from her kitchen. "Every time I go to the store and see a box, I laugh and remember the first time we met. Do you remember? I was just five years old when Mamma sent me to the grocery store..."



If you missed Part 1: Privileged Childhood