Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore Page B

Gloria Jean's favorite shade of Revlon lipstick. We blew each other kisses like we were famous movie stars stopping to greet our fans.
    We walked home that night without saying a word. My body was tired but peaceful. I wasn't mad at my daddy anymore. I wasn't mad at anybody anymore.
    For the next two days, Martha Ann and I worked on our knees, picking and eating dozens of strawberries. We brought peanut butter sandwiches with us and cut up some berries and placed them between the two slices of bread. When we got tired, we would sit on the grass by the garden and eat our peanut butter and strawberry sandwiches and drink a cold bottle of Coca-Cola we had carried from home in a small plastic cooler. When we had finally filled all the baskets, Gloria Jean said we had what we needed to start making jam.
    The next morning, I was standing on Gloria Jean's front porch a few minutes before seven. “Lord, child, I haven't had my coffee or even begun to put on my face. Come on in and you can eat some breakfast with me.”
    Gloria Jean couldn't have moved any slower that morning if she had tried, and it took almost as much energy to hide my frustration as it had to pick all those strawberries. Couldn't she just once in her life throw on some clothes like Martha Ann and me and forget about putting colors on her face? I wanted to be at the Dollar General Store the very minute Mr. Tucker unlocked the doors. I even cleaned the breakfast dishes, hoping to hurry things along.
    But Gloria Jean never threw on anything, especially her makeup. And finally, at about a quarter to nine, she walked out of her bedroom, wearing high heels and a linen dress, looking more like she was headed to a party than to town to run some errands.
    “Now, honey, I am ready to go,” Gloria Jean announced, pointing to her pocketbook sitting on the table by the door. I grabbed her purse, ran ahead of her, and jumped into the front seat of her silver Buick LeSabre. By the time she got behind the wheel and started the engine, Martha Ann was running across the yard waving at us to wait for her. She climbed into the backseat with her flip-flops still in her hand.
    Gloria Jean wanted to stop at the Shop Rite first to pick up the sugar, a bottle of lemon juice, and some boxes of fruit pectin. I had no idea what we were going to do with the pectin, but Gloria Jean said we needed it. She said everything else, including the mason jars, we could get at the Dollar General Store and that we should be giving Mr. Tucker as much business as possible since we were going to be negotiating a partnership with him shortly.
    We put our groceries in the backseat of the LeSabre and walked across the parking lot to the Dollar General Store. Gloria Jean smiled when she saw Mr. Tucker and struck a pose kind of like the one in the photograph sitting on her television set.
    “Llewellyn, dear, would you be so kind as to show us girls where the canning jars are? We are going to make us some strawberry jam this afternoon,” said Gloria Jean, calling Mr. Tucker by his first name. Martha Ann and I tried not to laugh. We never thought of Mr. Tucker having a first name, let alone one like Llewellyn.
    “Sure thing, Miss Gloria Jean, right over here,” he said with an air of excitement, as if she'd agreed to go to a movie with him, not just walk to the other end of the store.
    Mr. Tucker was a small man with no distinguishing features other than his thick, white hair that he cut real short like a soldier in the army. He got married for the first time last year, but Gloria Jean said he did that only because he was afraid of dying alone.
    No man in his right mind, she said, would marry Blanche Baggett. She doesn't wear makeup, not even lipstick, and she weighs about three times as much as Mr. Tucker. Gloria Jean said it had been a miracle that she hadn't rolled over on him and smothered him to death. “Just a matter of time, girls, just a matter of time.”
    Mr. Tucker led us to the boxes of mason