Diamonds

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend EXCERPT

Prologue

1996, Scarlet, age 4

Mom knocked on the door. I’ve never been to this house before. OR really any house. It smelled like all the flowers we were surrounded by. There was a kaleidoscope of flowers around the wrap around porch. I fell instantly in love with it. I wished I could go up them and smell them. I bet they smell really pretty. I must have been leaning, trying to get a whiff when my hand got tugged hard and she banged on the door harder.

“I know you’re in there mother. Your truck is parked in the driveway and I saw the curtains move.”

Mother? Mom never mentioned we had family before.

She pounded on the door one last time. Panting and huffing as if she was the big bad wolf ready to huff, and puff, and blow this pretty house down.

I heard a few clicks and the door swung open none too gently. A woman who didn’t look very old stood in front of mom with a look of apprehension. She had a few gray streaks lining her hair and she never took her eyes off my mom.

“You run away with that boy when you’re seventeen, don’t call. Don’t write and disappear for four years and when it finally suits you, you show up. Well Marybeth, I am your mother. That palsy little not saying ‘you found the love of your life and to not wait up’? I waited up for you missy. You’re my only daughter. Did you think I didn’t want more for you?”

My mom released my hand and placed her hands on her hips in the way she did when she started to get aggravated. I stepped away because I knew where that usually leads. Being punished.

“Get over it ma. I’m here now.”

The other woman still hadn’t even noticed me yet. She looked really said. As if her heart was breaking right in front of me. Tears shined bright in her eyes but I saw her jaw clinch as if she didn’t want to. I didn’t want her to cry because of my mother either.

So I said, “Don’t cwy pwease.”

That’s when her head whipped down and she gasped. Her eyes widened as they took me in. I was wearing my favorite clothes today. My ‘My Little Mermaid’ sweater (it was winter) and my legging skorts and purple jelly sandals. Mom let me dress myself for as long as I can remember.

“Marybeth, is this?”

“My daughter. Your granddaughter? Yes. We just need a place to stay for the night before we move on.”

“Yes, yes. Come in.”

The lady, who I now figured out was my grandmother, couldn’t keep her eyes away from me and I could swear there was wonder and then some sadness in her eyes.

“I never knew-

But my mother brushed her way inside, which pushed her mother back a step. I wondered why mom was being so mean. This woman, my grandmother, seemed really nice. Mom dragged into a sitting room where an old TV box sat with a VCR, and floral furniture surrounding it. And a pretty wooden coffee table.

“I see nothing has changed. Just sit down there Scarlet.”

I let go and sat at the edge of one small couch waiting for something to happen.

Although mom just said nothing had changed, my view changed. I have never sat in a house before. The only places I could remember were motels, and if we were lucky, an apartment every now and again. The cheaper, the better my mother always said. While my mother did whatever is was she did, she usually just kept me in the room by myself and told me to eat whatever we had left over. Which was pizza or Chinese food.

Yuck.

I hated Chinese food. For some reason the smell totally made me feel sick to my tummy. I don’t think my mother ever cooked or I don’t remember it. So a lot of times I didn’t eat.

The older woman came down and sat next to me, with a serene smile on her face and I felt instantly calm.

“Hi sweet girl. I’m your grandma. You can call me Nana. I hope we get to be real good friends.”

My mother stomped her way (which was normal for her) and huffed, “I don’t plan on staying here. We just need some sleep if you don’t mind.” Then she turned and clomped her way up the stairs.

⟡

My mom stayed up in her room for the rest of the night. She didn’t even come down for dinner except to grab a plate of spaghetti and went back to the room. Nana told her to stay in the kitchen and eat but mother didn’t listen.

Nana had been talking to me most of the evening about her favorite things. How much she loved her husband, my grandpa Alan. How he was a real man’s man (whatever that meant). How even though they didn’t have much, he still went out of his way to get little things for her, to show her how much he loved her. Then she started in how she loved old-timey movies. Like the ones with Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland. All the great singers and dancers of their time.

I sat there glued to the seat just in fascination to listen to her talk about it. She showed me her small collection of movies and I just looked in all the magnificent splendor. I’ve never seen anything so grand in my little life. I hope mom wanted to stay here.

Nana asked me if I wanted to watch one and I ‘yayeed’ up and down with excitement and she just laughed and told me to get comfortable on the sofa. She pushed in a movie called ‘Guy and Dolls’ and as she sat next to me, she pulled me close into her side, so I leaned in and snuggled up to her. Falling asleep for the first time with a comfort I’ve never known before.

⟡

Waking up, I felt weird. The comforter around me was snuggled and I burrowed deeper. I wished we would never leave here. I scooted myself out of the bed and went in search for mom. She wasn’t in the room she said was hers, so I thought maybe she was in the kitchen. I started walking down the stairs when I heard a clanking and shuffling coming from that direction.

I walked into the kitchen sleepily, saying, “Mom, it’s so early. What time is it?”

“Baby girl. It’s your Nana.”

I finally widened my eyes good enough to see it was Nana. “Where’s mom? She’s not in her bedroom.”

Nana walked up to me and led me to sit down on the floral sofa we sat in last night. “Scarlet, my sweet girl, your mother left.”

Left?

“Left? Did she go to the store? Do I need to start packing?”

She took my small hands into hers and I saw a tear stream down her face. “Don’t cry Nana. She’ll be right back.”

“No baby-girl. She isn’t coming back.”