mother knows best
a/n: this is the sequel to for the love of leaves. if you read that first, this probably still won't make any sense.
When things at home were at their worst, Credence sometimes found a reprieve in calling Mary Lou's mother.
It had been years since he had last seen his grandmother, but the sentiment was all the same. Sometimes she would ask how her daughter was doing, or about Chastity and Modesty, but for the most part she just let him talk.
And talk he did.
"What did you have for lunch today, Credence?" Mary Lou's mother asked him one day.
"We had pea sandwiches on dampish bread," Credence told her, the taste of this meal still in his mouth as he spoke.
"And for dinner?"
"Pea soup, most likely."
"Peas again?"
"We have peas every night."
This earned a scoff. "Really, does my daughter even know how to prepare anything other than peas?"
Credence thought for a moment. "Perhaps not. After all, she is usually busy with her leaf machine."
"A leaf machine? What is that?"
"It's a machine that makes leaves."
The last thing Credence heard before they hung up was, "I told her what would happen if I had to come over there..."
-x-
A few days later, as the Barebone family finished their breakfast of oatmeal sprinkled with peas, they heard a knock at the door. Mary Lou sent Modesty to go and answer it, and the crunch of leaves was audible as she left the room to greet the visitor.
She returned a few minutes later with her grandmother behind her, a puzzled expression on the older woman's face as Modesty pointed out some of the finer details of the Barebone residence.
"You might not want to use the bathroom," she warned. "It's usually clogged with peas, and Credence hasn't had a chance to plunge them out yet."
Mary Lou rose from the table (or, well, she tried, but she was simply too backed up with peas to get very far), but before she could greet her mother, the latter had already begun her end of the conversation. "What have I told you about forcing your peas on everyone?" she demanded.
"Excuse me?" Like anyone else in her situation, Mary Lou wasn't expecting to have her mother show up and try to regulate her pea consumption.
"I know," said Mary Lou's mother. "You don't like peas. I know that fact very well, Mary Lou. You've told me that since you were old enough to form sentences, and even before that you threw them to the floor when I tried to serve them to you."
The Barebone children shared a look. To them, the idea of Mary Lou as a disgruntled, pea-flinging toddler was both foreign and more fitting than they cared to admit.
"But that does not give you the right to subject everyone to your peas."
Mary Lou's mother looked around the room, lip curling in disgust as she took in all the peas that were scattered on the floor. "How long have these been here?" she demanded.
"As long as any of us can remember," Chastity told her, standing up and beginning to clear away some of the pea-laden dishes.
"Well, I suppose we'll just have to do something about that."
-x-
Mary Lou's mother handed each of her grandchildren a broom, telling them to sweep the peas outside. "Because peas are for eating in moderation, not throwing all over the floor," she said, eyes finding her daughter as she spoke.
This occupied everyone for a while. The children swept until the ground outside was littered with small green vegetables while Mary Lou was reprimanded by her mother. But the visitor's list of grievances didn't quite end with peas.
"Children," said Mary Lou's mother. "Come forward. Allow me a good look at you. I haven't seen you properly since I arrived."
Chastity was told that she seemed to be a proper young lady, and Modesty that she was evidently growing into one. But when she got to Credence, her examination stopped at his hands, a disapproving look making its way onto her face.
"Credence, what happened here?" she asked.
"I...uhh..." Credence trailed off. He didn't know how to explain his injuries, which were caused by him receiving the belt and then having his hands shoved into the leaf machine, without actually stating this.
Despite his silence, his grandmother figured everything out herself. She turned to Mary Lou, eyes narrowed to furious slits. "You did this, didn't you?!"
Mary Lou tried to come up with a decent excuse, but her mother just wasn't having it. She told the children to help her with one more important task: to sweep every last leaf out of the church.
-x-
It took until nightfall. Even after the visible leaves were removed, there were still all the leaves in generally leaf-free places, such as the icebox and the bathtub, and Modesty discovered her pillow was actually just a pillowcase full of leaves. Chastity found a leaf floating in the pea-clogged toilet, but her grandmother told her to leave that one alone.
"What are you doing with those?" Mary Lou fearfully asked as Credence announced that he was sure they'd found all the leaves they were going to for a while.
"Don't you remember what I always said when you were growing up, Mary Lou?" was her mother's response. "Actions have consequences."
And with that, she struck a match and tossed it into the pile of leaves.
As she did, the wind abruptly picked up and sent burning leaves sailing into the blue-grey of the night. The leaves were carried over rooftops, extinguished by the wind and landing in the first of many resting places, and as the bewildered family watched, two leaves blew through the doorway of the church and landed upon a stack of leaflets, spreading their flames to the papers below. Within a couple of minutes, the leaf pile wasn't the only thing on fire.
It was then that Credence remembered something. Chastity hadn't quite believed him when he said they seemed to have removed all of the leaves, so she'd gone back to look, and Modesty had gone with her. Now, if he didn't resolve the problem soon, his sisters would be trapped in a flaming church filled with leaves and a few leftover peas.
It was too dangerous to risk going back inside, so Credence looked in from outside as he tried to find where they might have gone. There were always leaves hiding in their clothes - maybe they had gone to look in the closets? But there didn't seem to be any movement in the bedrooms.
The sound of Modesty's voice interrupted Credence's thoughts. "Where do you think we should put these?" she asked, gesturing slightly to the armfuls of leaves she and Chastity both held.
"W-where were you?" Credence asked, ignoring his sister's question for the time being.
"In the kitchen," Chastity said. "We thought there would be leaves in there because that's where the leaf machine is, so we looked there. But we began to smell smoke, so we had to figure out how to open the window without having to put the leaves down."
Credence was too grateful for their safety to do much more than verbalize this and lead Chastity and Modesty back to the front of the church to deposit their leaves.
-x-
When they returned, plenty was going on. While Mary Lou tried to salvage her remaining leaves, her mother must have somehow contacted someone about the burning church, as a man in a uniform was trying to extinguish the blaze. In time, all that remained of the fire was the scent of smoke that would take a while to disperse.
Once all of that was over, Mary Lou's mother looked at her wide-eyed grandchildren for a while, but didn't say anything. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she turned finally to her daughter.
"You always were a disappointment," she told Mary Lou.
With that, she was gone like a burning leaf, drifting away on the night wind.
Credence took a look at the scene around him. Chastity had taken out the broom and was sweeping some of the leaves and peas away from the church. Modesty was inside, tidying up what she could. As for Mary Lou, she sat on the curb with the four leaves she had managed to retrieve. Unshed tears sparkled in her eyes at this decimation of her precious leaf collection, but she clearly wasn't about to let them fall as long as her adopted children were around.
Despite all of this, Credence felt surprisingly lighter as another realization came to him. Most likely, it wouldn't change anything, but in a strange way it soothed him to think that perhaps now Mary Lou was a little more aware of what she put them through every day.
i stopped knowing about halfway through this, so...