“In the meanwhile?”
“In the meanwhile . . .” I looked around. “Let’s do some fun things. Why don’t we stage a play? You love dramatics. You write it, and I’ll act in it, and the twins will be our audience. We certainly have enough material for costumes.” I held my breath. Would she buy into it?
“You always made fun of my interest in acting.”
“I was teasing you. Brothers tease their sisters all the time. That’s what it means to be a brother, but if anyone could succeed as an actress, it’s you. You have a flair for it.”
“Are you just saying that to shut me up?”
“No. I believe it. I’m always telling you to stop being dramatic. I just did.”
She thought a moment. “All right. I want to do ‘Gone with the Wind,’?” she said without any hesitation.
“?‘Gone with the Wind’? The whole thing?”
It didn’t surprise me. She had sat watching that with Momma more than once, and afterward, both she and Momma pretended they lived in the South and were Southern belles. Momma loved playing Scarlett O’Hara, and Cathy loved imitating her. Momma gave her a book about “Gone with the Wind,” and she would often sit and thumb through it, sometimes reciting lines she had memorized. At the time, I thought it was all foolish, but I kept my opinion to myself. I was very glad now that I had.
“No, just some scenes, but you have to do exactly as I say. Of course, I’ll be Scarlett O’Hara, and you’ll have to play Rhett Butler.”
“You’re the writer and the director,” I told her, looking as serious about it as I could, and she suddenly looked even less irritated. Her eyes widened with her thoughts. She took off immediately to sift through the old clothes and hats.
The tw
ins didn’t understand what we were doing at first, but just seeing Cathy so animated and interested captured their attention, and for a while, they weren’t moaning and groaning. Even Carrie, who hated going up to the attic, followed Cathy around, trying to do something to help whatever it was she was planning.
Seeing how my idea had captured their interest, I went ahead and built a mock stage, creating curtains with ropes and blankets. Cathy surprised me with her inventiveness. She used some of the dress mannequins as characters, finding costumes for them, giving them names, and having Cory and Carrie help her set up her scene. They thought it was fun to talk to the mannequins and call them by the names Cathy had remembered from the movie. Then she sat and scribbled lines on a pad.
I had obviously unleashed some of her stifled fantasies. Although I thought it was all quite childish to continue, I had to get into it with the same sort of energy, or they would all lose interest. She found my Rhett Butler costume, which I had to admit was creative: cream-colored trousers (I had to roll up the legs), a brown velvet jacket with pearl buttons, and a satin vest with red roses all over it. The moment I put it all on, I turned to her and, in my best Rhett Butler imitation, pleaded, “Come quickly, Scarlett. We’ve got to escape from Atlanta before Sherman reaches here and sets the city ablaze!”
The twins’ eyes were suddenly full of greater excitement. This was make-believe like they had never seen it, especially with me participating.
“There’s going to be a fire?” Cory cried.
“It’s only make-believe,” Cathy reminded him, but that didn’t change their expressions of awe.
Cathy had found her costume, too. She wore a cage under a skirt at least three sizes too large, pantaloons with lace, large shoes, and a ruffled silk blouse. She found a great Scarlett O’Hara hat, too, and we were soon at it.
She threw herself into the scene she had created. It wasn’t long, but I thought the way she used the mannequins was quite clever. Naturally, the twins didn’t have the attention span for a long, overly dramatic scene that included Cathy’s desperate pleas for love in front of a mannequin dressed to be Ashley Wilkes. Carrie was soon crying for lunch. She hated being in the attic, even for a show.
“These clothes stink, anyway,” Cathy declared, the air going out of her balloon of excitement quickly.
She looked at me with disappointment, but I promised her we’d return. We stripped off the costumes and went to eat our lunch. All through it, Cory complained about not being in the garden outside. The dreariness of our surroundings was wearing on us all. It suddenly occurred to me that another way to divert their attention from our dire situation was for us to dress up the attic.
“Let’s turn this ugly caterpillar into a butterfly,” I declared. The twins looked astonished again. “We’ll decorate it. We’ll create our own garden the way God creates a real one.”
They looked to Cathy.
“It’s too filthy,” she said.
“We’ll clean it up. We can do it,” I insisted.
That night when Momma finally appeared, I told her about my plan. She was looking despondent when she came in, but suddenly, she looked at the four of us and considered the idea.
“Why not?” she declared. “I’ll help. We’ll do it. We’ll show my mother how creative and clean we can be. She’s always saying cleanliness is next to Godliness. Well, we’ll show her we know exactly what that means.”
Cathy looked as skeptical as ever, but Momma delighted us all by bringing up mops, pails, brooms, scrub brushes, and boxes and boxes of soap powder. She said her mother knew nothing about it. She had sneaked it all to us. That seemed to be the one thing that pleased Cathy about the idea the most. Deceiving our grandmother or doing something behind her back made it more precious and fun. That seemed to be even more true for Momma. And I have to admit, it was what made it fun for me, too.
However, to be honest, I was very surprised at Momma’s enthusiasm. Suddenly, she was with us daily, scrubbing floors and washing everything in sight. She even brought insect repellent, and we cleared out gobs of dead spiders and ants. I had Cory believing that he and I were great hunters. Both twins now saw it all as a new game and argued about who was doing more and better. For a good week, we were suddenly a family again, people with a common cause and helping and loving one another constantly.