Chapter Eighteen
Celie
The weirdest thing ever happened before school this morning. It made Celie laugh, and then it made her sad because it was the kind of thing that before everything got messy between them she would have called Meena straight away and told her and they would have laughed their heads off.
She was in the bathroom trying to cover up a really annoying spot on her chin that just wouldn’t go away—honestly, it might as well be one of those flashing lights you get above zebra crossings. She could actually feel it pulsing. She knew everyone was going to notice it, and that would probably end up being the thing they used to talk shit about her today—that she was growing an extra head or she had the plague. Celie had just put a second layer of concealer on it and sealed it with powder and was about to do her hair but Violet had nicked her good hairbrush—the one that gets out tangles without you actually screaming and wanting to die—and she was about to run into Violet’s room to tell her she was going to kill her when she heard the front door shut. There was something weird about the silence that came after the sound—and Truant didn’t even bark—so she went a few steps down the stairs to see what was going on and there was Mum, standing in the doorway, staring at something Celie couldn’t see. Her hair was all messed up at the back and had dust in it—flour or sawdust or something—and she was pale and wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday when she went out in a hurry, but she was sort of rumpled, like she’d slept in them.
Celie stared at her for a minute because, to be honest, she had assumed Mum was in the other bathroom brushing her teeth or in the garden clearing up dog poo, or something. She hadn’t actually seen Mum, but that didn’t really count for anything first thing as she could be anywhere in the house, and yet as Celie stood there she realized Mum must have been somewhere else last night.
Then she took two more steps down and peered over the banister behind her to where Mum was looking at something, her face a bit stunned, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. And there was Bill, dressed with his tie and his shiny shoes, like he always is, even at seven fifteen in the morning, holding a wooden spoon with porridge still on it. And standing beside him was Gene, in a Joni Mitchell T-shirt and a pair of really scrubby boxer shorts and clutching a packet of cigarettes. They were both facing her and staring back at her and then, just when she opened her mouth to speak, they looked at each other, then back at her, and said, at exactly the same time in this really disapproving voice, “ And where the hell do you think you’ve been? ”