The School of Beauty and Charm Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Sit right back down. Everything is going to be all right.” To keep me quiet, he passed over the vanilla extract.
    Regaining her composure, Florida ordered, “Everybody cool your jets. Your mother lost her mind for a minute. I’m sorry.”
    The scream subsided. In its place came more hail and the sound of a vacuum cleaner, a big one, roaring across the sky. Then the hail began to swirl up in the air, faster and faster. Things flew past the window: leaves, pine cones, a red tennis shoe that no one recognized, and finally, clinging to the frayed webbing of a lawn chair, the neighbor’s yellow cat. All around us, branches snapped, and then, with a crack like a rifle shot, the hickory tree crashed into the deck. As we stared at all this through the small window on the opposite wall, there was a sudden Pop! and the glass plane flew out into the wind. Right behind it came America the Beautiful, still in his exercise ball, a spinning wheel of fur that sailed into the whorling green sky.
    â€œMama!” cried Roderick. Florida held him fast; her face swirled between the psychedelic suns in the mirror, eyes flashing, red mouth open wide. I couldn’t get close enough to them. No matter how hard Florida squeezed me against her ribs, or how tightly I clutched Roderick’s sleeve, I felt as if I had already been sucked out the window and hurled into the cold, howling, madness of the sky.
    Then I knew what hell was. It wasn’t so bad to be in it, but it was hell for the people who loved you, who had to look at you burning in the flames, out of their reach. With cold panic, I realized that if we died in this storm, the Devil would snatch me down to hell while Florida, Henry, and Roderick wafted up to heaven. I had not been saved. They had been born again to have life everlasting. It was too late for me. Why hadn’t Florida listened to me when I told her I had to be baptized? “Wait until you get some maturity,” she’d said. I knew plenty of immature Christians. How were the Pepperses going to enjoy their mansion in heaven if I was in hell? They’d worry about me for eternity. For eternity, they’d sit around their swimming pool, licking ice creams without tasting them, smiling and waving at the angels who floated by so people wouldn’t think they were ungrateful, but the whole time they would be worried sick about me.
    Florida would probably try to sneak out to rescue me, but God has eyes in the back of His head. “Sister, you get right back here,” He’d say as she sidled up to the golden gate. She’d nag until the angels shrank back into their wings, but God would not budge, not even if she cried. He’d shake His head, unfold the ironed white handkerchief from His back pocket, hold it under her red nose, and say, “Blow.” God was all-powerful.
    Henry would get so down in the heart he’d put on a zip-up coverall and sit in a lumpy chair in the corner of a darkened room chain smoking like his brother Earl who had been hooked on Thorazine for twenty-one years, ever since his wife had his brain electrified to make him quit drinking.
    Poor old Roderick. He’d kick around in the pool by himself, wheezing, thinking about every time he’d broken into my room with a bobby pin. He’d remember the time he socked me in the stomach for no reason except to show off to a boy neither one of us liked. All those times he called me Dr. Spock. If Jesus tried to talk to him, he’d mumble something polite, then go underwater. All day long he’d mope around in the baby pool, leaving his ice-cream cones to melt. At night, sleeping alone in his star, he’d cry.
    N O ONE WAS killed in that tornado, except perhaps for America the Beautiful, who was never seen again. The neighbor’s yellow cat turned up in the dogwood tree with a broken leg, and Henry walked in the door at suppertime.
    â€œâ€”right out the window,” Florida was