Sweet Eyes of Pie! - A Kyrgyz Kidnapping
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Collette woke up as a carrot-top that sunny morning in May. Tuesday afternoon, Carrie-Bri had whipped out her brushes and colors and had transformed her hair into a cinnamon red and copper blast.
“Oh, it’s so cool!” Carrie gushed, looking into the mirror. “Come here; let me see what I’d look like with this color.”
She pulled some of Collette’s hair over her forehead, and decided that her skin was too yellow to make it work correctly. But Collette was pleased with the job Carrie had done, and enjoyed the unique color. It was rather fun to experiment from time to time. But the fun didn’t last long. There was soon a shopping trip to be made to the mall, and Carrie was in a foul mood.
Work was not going as she had hoped, despite the good meeting on Monday. Something was terribly awry, and her temper flared magnificently whenever she thought about it. Collette imagined she likely saw flames bursting from her eyes from time to time as they marched through the mall with Mom. What made things worse, was that her outfit for graduation was not going to work after all. And Collette had carefully planned out the whole thing – the black sandals with silver studs on the straps, a floaty red top, and a jean skirt. The skirt was needing to be replaced, however, and Carrie fumed through each shop.
“What about something like this?” Mom suggested, pointing to a red skirt with large flowers.
“Mom,” Carrie sputtered in wrath, “my shoes are the biker-look. You’re trying to pair biker with floral.”
Collette tried not to laugh. She only hoped that Carrie would come across something before graduation, or she would have to wear her robe through the reception as well. It was a bear of an evening, and they found nothing. There were only three days remaining, and Collette hoped that Wednesday they might find something.
Tuesday evening, Collette heard of the struggle in Iran – Iran, who was trying to build nuclear projects despite U.N. policies. Collette began to become irritated.
“Idiots!” She exclaimed finally, tossing aside her dinner fork, as PBS rolled the tape. “They’re one of the poorest countries on the face of the planet. What in the world do they care about nuclear energy? They should be trying to feed their people instead.”
And then there was a brief documentary on bride-kidnappings in Kyrgyzstan – an age-old custom, though illegal. A young Kyrgyz man, wishing to find a bride, would scout one out (even in one day), and snatch her without warning, marrying her within hours. If the bride accepted (rather, was forced) and allowed the women of her future husband’s family to tie the bridal scarves around her head, she would marry the fiend. One young man (19) in particular from the mountains, was asked what he liked about the woman he had chosen.
“She’ll milk cows.”
Upon being unable to find her in the marketplace, he dropped by a vodka stand with his friends, to ask one of her acquaintances. They received no information from the young woman attending the stand, 17 years old. The men gave up as night fell and decided that the young man should marry the girl at the vodka stand.
“I couldn’t get close,” he said. “She looked suspicious. I liked her looks.”
“Do you know her name?” He was asked.
He did not. The next scene showed the poor woman being dragged into the young man’s house, crying and protesting.
“I won’t live with him,” she cried.
“You will. You’ll never go,” a beast of a woman yelled back at her – the young man’s mother.
She was interested only in finding another woman to help her tend the sheep.
A short time later, the young woman was released. Collette could not believe the idiocy of such a custom. Tradition got people into so much trouble.
At home, Rose showed Collette her latest experiment. A large brown recluse dangled from the bathroom ceiling in the basement.
“Guess what killed it,” Rose asked Collette, ” – Lysol, body spray, or hair spray.”
“Uh, hair spray.”
“Nope. Body Spray,” Rose exclaimed triumphantly. “And then I sprayed it with the other things after it was dead, as a warning to the others spiders.”
“Genius, Rose,” Collette congratulated her.
Collette ran upstairs and called out:
“Mom, you should probably have Linnea clean up the Playmobile on the stairs before the boys trample them.”
“Alright,” Mom answered from the back room where the cats were fighting. “Ladies!” She yelled at them, lady-like, as they sped through the house.
Meanwhile, the Coca-Cola boys were coming over for another weekly work-out. And Carrie-Bri was already designing her picture board for her senior table, Saturday. It was a black foam board which she etched with red paint and gold glitter, a rather art-deco look. Minutes ago, she was groaning on the bunk in her bedroom.
“What happened to you?” Collette ducked her head inside the room.
“I was running on the treadmill downstairs. I ran too hard, too fast.” She moaned. “I was running nine miles per hour… Could you get me some raisins? I need protein.”
Collette brought back the box as the cats continued to race.
“Cut it out you two,” she yelled back. “Here – they’re golden.”
She handed Carrie the box.
Soon, Carrie was in the kitchen with her board, sorting through pictures.
“Too bad I didn’t get one of Anthony. That was one of the worst mistakes I ever made,” she said in reference to the young Uruguayan royal. “To think, I could have been a Jewish princess…”
There were photos of drive-by “shootings” from Ernest’s house and Scout camp shoots.
“Is Linnea riding her bike by herself again?” Collette interrupted.
“Mom!” Carrie exclaimed. “You can’t let her do that. There’s an insane asylum out there you know.”
Truly, there were stories they told around the campfire and on dark windy nights about that place…
Meanwhile, Collette put barbecued chicken in the oven for lunch. And Carrie began thinking through plans for Shakespeare.
“Mom, we need some champagne too,” she wiggled her eyebrows at Mom.
“Yeah right,” Mom snorted a laugh.
Joe came careening through the kitchen shortly later as lunch was served. A pan of piping hot chicken emerged, golden and brown.
“Sweet eyes of pie!” Joe exclaimed. “That looks good!”
Collette quickly gathered the math materials shortly later, and attempted to reach Rose, nestled snuggly in her new chair in her room.
“Rose! Math!” She called from the top of the stairs.
“No!”
Several minutes later…
“Rose! Get your buns up here!”
“I don’t have any buns!”
Several minutes later…
“Rose! Now!”
“I’m printing something out!”
Several minutes later…
“Rose!!”
“Wait!!”
Meanwhile, as Collette practically gave up on the situation, Carrie-Bri was much distressed to discover that Ewan McGregor was already happily married and had two lovely daughters.
During the actual math session a short time later, Collette began a new set of graphs, saying to them both that in most jobs, the knowledge of graphs was helpful.
“What about a cook?” Rose asked.
Collette rolled her eyes.
“Or an eyeball painter? A fish tank cleaner?”
Rose was ignored. Although Joe tried not to laugh, he watched Collette first to see if she thought it was funny or not. It wasn’t wise to upset the teacher.
But all in good time, the session was finished, and Collette hitched a ride with Mom and Carrie to the mall, where Carrie finally found a well-fitted black skirt that would hopefully work for graduation. Then Kendra soon met up with them as they took a break for strawberry smoothies and pretzel bites served up by a young dude wearing a black hat with the words: Jesus – don’t leave Earth without Him” written across the front.
Carrie went off shortly later to see “Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” with Clover, Oreo, and Clover’s sister that evening. Then Mom, Carrie, and Collette prepared a fourth-week-in-a-row salad for Mrs. Pretzel with cucumbers and sun-dried tomatoes at the apartment, and Mom took the other girls back to the house.
OLeif was soon off to an Irish punk concert down in the city with the younger Coca-Cola boy. It had been a semi-full day, and Collette decided it was about time to call it quits and make dinner, hitting the hay before nine.