WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) by Fowler Robertson Page A

jumped up, “This must be yours ” and I skated away.  Evidently, a group of boys were speed skating where they shouldn’t have been and careened into the table of women gossipers, and knocking the partition off its stand. 
    That’s okay, gossip fest or not, I had all the information I needed for now.  I skated around the rink and pondered it.  Every family has a pink elephant, imagine that?  It’s a secret that’s not really a secret, per say. A secret behind the secret but everyone refuses to talk about the secret because the secret is in plain sight for everybody to see but no one wants to talk about it, so it’s really not a secret but a pink elephant. It’s confusing but made total sense to me. I couldn’t wait to start searching. Would our pink elephant be big as Texas, as big as Baptist churches, as big as Texas hairdo’s ? 
    Lena picked us up from the skating and I didn’t hesitate.  As soon as the door slammed I asked her where I should start looking for our pink elephant. She almost had a wreck pulling out on the highway. I grinned and took this as a sign I was on the right track. 
    “Where on earth did you hear such a thing?” Lena said in a snippy tone. “Have you been hanging around that  girl again?” I rolled my eyes.  Not again.  That girl is part of a white trash family who lived down the road. I learned real quick-like growing up in a small southern town that families are labeled and white trash is only one of the nicer ones.  Lena forbid us to have anything to do with the likes of white trash.  That girl she referred to is Bonnie McAdam's.  Bonnie is Mag’s age and a freckled redhead with matted hair and impetigo from top to bottom, a skin conditio n that came from being unclean, so sayeth Lena.  Bonnie’s mother reminded me of Natasha, a cartoon character on Rocky and Bullwinkle, pale skin, toothpick figure and oily black hair.  Her name fit her perfect too.  Lucinda Pearl’s paper skin contrast with her black eye liner and it made her look like a vampire.  Lucinda was having an affair with a married man which didn’t seem to bother folks in Pine Log, it was more his skin color that drove folks nuts. His coal black skin matched her coal black hair and that made women nervous and bite their nails and made men load their sh otguns and hide their daughters.  Oh, but worse than that is the offspring the affair produced.  Which according to town gossip is an abomination.  The child was a little boy name Nathaniel, a half breed which is another label.  We just called him Nat for short.  He was two years old with tanned skin and olive green eyes.  Looking at him was like staring into a miniature God, the way his eyes just sparkled with an intensity that stilled me. 
    Lucinda Pearl and her family get the same reaction all over town. Stares, back talk and hushes. People scatter when they walk in, afraid they’ll have to speak or talk or address the elephant in the room.  I never understood the way people acted towards them.  It actually made me angry.  Why are people scared of pink elephants?  Mag and I ignored our parent’s warning and did what kids do.  We interacted.  We played.  We laughed.  Our parents weren’t home half the time, anyway.  Mag and I had free reign to come and go as we pleased. About the only time, we got uncomfortable was when the brown Cadil lac pulled up in the driveway.  When the engine shut off you could have heard the dead speak.  He was tall and big boned, the whites of his almond eyes stood out like two chalk drawn circles.  He walked with a certain swag to one side, a hitch every step and when he seen us, he upturned his chin as if to speak without speaking.  No one said a word.  No one barely breathed.  He would stay a few hours or so.  When s trange noises made their way out the open windows of the bedroom Bonnie became embarrassed and would always start to sing real loud.  I knew what she was doing.  We all did.