Favorite Whine - Bonnie Smetts

Summer wore on and there’s one thing that Sissy kept saying to me, “Ain’t no boys around here.” She’d say ain’t like she’s from here and I’d laugh. But she must have kept that up with her grandma and granddaddy because before you know it, she’d come get me on her red bike and then one of the grand’s would be dropping us off in town for a few hours. The longer I’d known the Baptists, the more surprised I’d get with them. Sissy and me loved going to the diner. Who’d have guessed I’d be working there a few years on. So one of the grand’s would drop us off with just enough money for a Coke or something. The diner had set up tables out to the side of the place and that way they could say no kids could sit in the diner. You bought your Cokes and then you’d go sit outside with who’d ever come by.

Now having Sissy with me changed things in Nordeen, but not all at once. “Who’s that?” Sissy would point out the cutest boy she could find. I knew too much about each of them, remembering every single bad thing they’d said to me, but I tell her who’s who.

“OK, that guy, the one with the striped shirt, that’s Jackson. He’s real popular and he’s a jerk.” I had to be honest but sometimes I tried not to tell her too much.

And at first, Jackson and Judd and the rest of them laughed at me, at us. But then they took a little bitty interest in Sissy. Even with those teeth of hers, she was an attraction. Not that anybody new in Nordeen wouldn’t be an attraction. But she was a genuine attraction, new and a pretty girl. And so one day after not too many trips to town for drinking Cokes, and one of the boys comes over to our table.

“Rawling, who’s your friend.” That was as original as it got. And like I did the first time Sissy came to our church when I was going to church with the Baptists, I’d introduced Sissy to the class.

“This is my friend, Sissy. She’s here from Chicago.” I’d always add that because it seemed then that I knew where Chicago was, and this big city was some part of me.

Now Sissy’s a light as a butterfly but she’s no dummy. She’d flirt with Jackson, and then the next time we’d be there, she’d ignore him. I don’t where she learned all this. I gotta say I was a little worried when I saw this side of her. It’d suited me more if we’d just gone back down to the creek to eat our oranges. But Sissy told me that it was time for me to grow up. But I’d been grown up for a while and I’d seen more than enough about what it was like to be grown, and I just wanted to stay down there by the creek.