Page 1 of The Do-Over

ONE

“Know your worth.

Then add tax.”

—MIMI

There was a rumor my grandmother, Mona Raye Perkins, bashed my grandfather in the head with a frying pan. A cast iron one that still sat on her stove where it had lived for as long as I could remember.

“Mimi,” I asked one day as a child, when curiosity got the best of me, “did you really put him in the hospital?”

She smirked and took a long pull on the cigarette that might as well have been surgically grafted to her fingers. The smoke clung to her clothes, mingled with the flowery undertones of White Shoulders and the faint, yet permanent smell of canned green beans from her years working as a school lunch lady.

“I sure did. That lying, no-good rat bastard deserved it too,” she said before eyeing me through the cigarette smoke. “How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“Well, that’s a story for when you’re older.” She winked and pointed at the chipped coffee table taking up prime real estate in the cramped living area of her single wide. “Now, hand me the remote. Days of Our Lives is on.”

I knew she wasn’t lying or putting me off in the hope I’d forget. Mimi differed from every other adult I knew. She always told me the truth, and she never softened it. “Shit by any other name is still shit,” she’d say. “Why call it anything else?”

Mimi had a million of these sayings—Mimi-isms, I called them. My mother forbade me to repeat them, but that didn’t stop me from memorizing each one and writing them in the Lisa Frank journal I kept in my nightstand.

Then again, my mother disapproved of everything about Mimi—from the tiny green trailer she lived in at the Forest Lake Mobile Park in the small border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, to the garden gnomes she let the neighbor boys arrange in compromising positions in her yard. Mother hated that Mimi laughed too loud, never watched what she ate, and didn’t care one bit what anyone thought.

On the list of People I Wanted to Be Like When I Grew Up, Mimi was number one.

I wanted to wear loud clothes, heavy on the animal prints, and tight pants and prance around in sky-high heels. I wanted to brush off my mother’s impatient disapproval. I wanted to be unafraid to just be me.

Even now, at twenty-seven, I spent most of my life being a square peg my mother tried to cram in a round hole. The look of utter exasperation—lips pursed, fists stuck on her hips, all accompanied by a heavy sigh—it was always for me, never my sister.

When I was very young, I’d crawl into Mimi’s lap and inspect the dangly earrings she favored. She’d whisper tongue-twisters in my ear until I giggled and wrapped my arms around her neck, melting into the softness of her. That was another thing I loved about Mimi. She embraced her curves; the way her cheeks rounded when she smiled, how her entire body shook when she laughed. Confidence oozed out of her, and I prayed some would transfer to me.

Although three years younger, my sister Phee was on her way to being skyscraper tall, like our daddy, with curly blonde hair and huge blue “take-care-of-me” eyes. Nothing like me. The Perkins side of the family gave me my dark hair and eyes, and short, curvy stature.

My mother disapproved, of course.

When I complained about my shape, compared myself to my sister or the women in Mimi’s soap operas, a knowing little smile settled on my grandmother’s face. She tugged her cigarette from her mouth and leaned toward me, dropping her voice so only I could hear her say, “Perci, darling, a man wants a spoon, not a ladle. Remember that.”

I did. I wrote it down even though I had no idea what it meant.

When I was thirteen, she finally told me the story of my grandfather’s run-in with the frying pan. The evening before, Mom dumped me off at Mimi’s on her way to Laredo. Phee was competing in the Little Miss Outrageously Adorable Cowgirl Beauty Pageant, or some contest with an equally lame name, and the very last thing I’d wanted to do was watch.

Now, I huddled around the tiny built-in kitchen table while Mimi whipped up sausage hash in the very same pan in question.

“Me and your grandfather, we got married real young because we were stupid and fixin’ to have a baby.” She paused and stabbed a finger in my direction. “Listen up, do not get yourself in the family way before he puts a ring on it. A minute of pleasure is not worth the hassle.”

Seeing as how boys didn’t realize I was alive, I figured that wouldn’t be hard advice to follow. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I was nineteen when your mama came along. Her daddy never could keep a job for longer than a flea’s hair, so I worked two just to keep us in food and diapers.” She dumped a bowl of chopped peppers and onions in the pan where the sausage was browning. My stomach rumbled in response. Sausage hash was my favorite.

“I’d work at the school cafeteria and then head off to the grocery store for a shift. Sometimes I’d run home in between and freshen up and such.” The potatoes followed, a little salt and pepper, a few stirs with a spatula, then she lowered the heat and plopped down at the table across from me.

I waited impatiently while she dug out a Virginia Slim, lit it, and took a long drag.

“Well, I saw a car I didn’t recognize in front of the trailer, and I had a suspicion. Marched right up to the door and burst in. Do you know what I found?” She waved her cigarette in the air, dark eyes blazing in remembered anger. “There he was with some blonde floozy in my bed while our baby napped in the next room.”

Gnawing on a fingernail, a nasty habit per my mother, I leaned closer. “What happened?”