Page 148 of Wilde Flame

Heads nodded. My grandmother, Nellie, had now joined us, and she sat down next to Emeline, fanning her.

“I brought over a watermelon that Mrs. Harper asked me to bring for Lilibeth. It wasn’t huge, but it was a good size and one of those round ones.”

“Oh, I’d kill for some watermelon right now,” Emeline sighed.

“Well, you can’t have any of the one I brought for Lilibeth because she ate…the entire…watermelon.”

My mother’s hand covered her mouth to hide her smile. My grandmother flat-out laughed.

Emeline gave Lilibeth a commiserating look. “I’d have done the same thing.”

“Thank you, Emeline,” Lilibeth replied.

“Get back to the story!” my mother urged.

Ensley went on. “So, Lilibeth ate the whole watermelon. I was going to stay in the guest bedroom, but we got the idea to have a movie night, so I slept in Lilibeth and Caden’s room and we watched Steel Magnolias.”

“Such a good movie,” my mother added.

Ensley waved my mother off. “Yes, yes, Mom, we all know how much you love that movie. Anyway, I made us lemonade, because Lilibeth was craving it, along with her Sno-Caps.” Gesturing to me, Ensley said, “Good job, stocking up on those, by the way.”

I tipped my cowboy hat at her.

Clearing her throat to get everyone’s attention, Ensley went on. “We watched the movie, ate our snacks, and went to bed. Around two in the morning, I feel someone poking my arm. I opened my eyes to see Lilibeth staring at me. I asked if it was morning, and she said no, but that she needed me to get up because she’d been dreaming that she had to pee. In her dream, she made it to the bathroom and began peeing.”

“Oh. No.” Now Emeline covered her mouth with her hand.

“Oh. Yes!” Ensley laughed. “She woke me up because she’d peed the bed and needed to change the sheets!”

Laughter erupted, and even Lilibeth chuckled as her cheeks turned a deep pink.

“It wasn’t my fault! Who would’ve thought you could dream you had to pee, make it to the bathroom in your dream, then really pee in real life!”

My mother took Lilibeth’s hand. “Sweetheart, that’s nothing. When I was pregnant with Gatlin, I craved Nellie’s sun-brewed tea. I filled up a gallon jug once and brought it to work with me when I was teaching. I drank so much of it one day that while I was standing in front of the room teaching, I sneezed and instantly started peeing. I peed so much, one of the kids thought my water broke and burst out of the classroom, sprinting to the office to tell them I’d gone into labor.”

“Oh no!” Lilibeth said as she giggled.

“I remember you telling us that story,” Emeline said with a wide grin. “God, I hope nothing like that happens to me.”

My grandmother smirked at Emeline and said, “I craved spicy foods the last month of my pregnancy with Ladd. I ate so much of it. I remember I was around my due date, maybe had a week left, and I was at the store here in town, and Kaylee Miller—who was Janet Miller’s mother, and a huge gossip herself—stopped to ask me how I was feeling. My stomach started to make this terrible noise, and I started to feel sick.

“I knew I needed to get to the bathroom or things were going to be bad. But I could not get Kaylee to stop talking. I tried to interrupt, but she wasn’t having it. Finally, I just shouted that I needed to use the restroom. Kaylee looked at me and must have seen it on my face. She took me by the arm, and we started toward the public bathroom, but the moment I took a step—it was all over. Lord, the sounds I made as I stood right there in the grocery store and shit my pants.”

Everyone burst into laughter. I wasn’t sure what was funnier. The vision of my grandmother shitting her pants, or hearing her swear.

My mother had tears streaming down her face as she laughed. “I’ve…never heard…that story!”

Rolling her eyes, my grandmother went on. “It gets worse. It was mostly water, running down my legs. Kaylee ran off to get something to clean it up as I stood there, frozen in place. She started screaming, ‘I’m coming, Nellie! Don’t move or poo will get everywhere!’”

I was laughing so hard, my sides hurt.

“I’m going to go into labor from laughing!” Lilibeth said, wiping tears from her face.

“Once Kaylee got back, she tore open a bag of cleaning cloths, I think it was, and then she started to gag. The smell was…let’s just say it was awful. And once she started to gag, I started to gag. I was positive I was going to throw up.”

Ensley asked, “What happened?”

“Lilith showed up out of nowhere. She tied her coat around my waist, yelled for the store to get someone to clean up the mess, and guided me out of the store. She got me home, helped me get out of the shit clothes, then threw them away while I took a bath. We never spoke of it again.”