In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  “No.”

  I thought of Farrel’s comment on marriage: “Hell’ll freeze over before I get married.”

  “In a way, that’s good. At least you won’t be saddled with a loser for the rest of your life. I have to check my other purses.”

  I put my hand on my abdomen. My baby was in there—and Farrel’s baby. It was a miracle. I sat on one of the modern couches and struggled to twist the fake wedding ring on my finger. It didn’t want to come off.

  I could hear Mama in her closet, slinging purses. What would my father say if I told him? But that was out of the question. In spite of our meeting back on Christmas Eve, he was still a stranger to me.

  Mama came back to the den, stoop shouldered.

  “Nothing but some loose tobacco in the bottom of one.”

  She sank into her chair.

  I tried to speak calmly. “I would hate teaching.”

  “With an illegitimate child, they won’t let you type and take shorthand for them either, those hotshots in their plush, two-story offices downtown. I doubt if a one of them has ever been to New York and seen a real building.”

  “The guidance counselor says a woman can do anything she wants to,” I said.

  “She gets paid four thousand dollars a year to say that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She substituted at bridge club and bragged about her salary all night.”

  “What do you make, Mama?”

  “Not nearly enough. Even with the hundred and seventy-five dollar raise that brought it up to three thousand a year, I’m constantly having to rob Peter to pay Paul. But that’s because I stash something away each month for your college tuition and . . . your wedding.”

  That last word brought her to tears, but after a few sobbing breaths, she cut them off and sat up straight.

  My gaze followed hers as it drifted through the den windows to the backyard. Outside, the chilly weather we in the South called winter draped its dismal gloom over the leafless sycamores and neglected perennial beds, blanketed with fall’s unraked leaves.

  “Just today, a traffic light caught me by the shop where I got my green dress back in December,” I said. “The day Farrel and Maylene made their date for the Christmas dance. They both betrayed me. The hurt of that feels like it will be with me forever.”

  “One thing certain and two things sure,” Mama said, “the shame and disgrace of being pregnant out of wedlock will be with you forever, and not exclusively in this town. Everywhere. That’s how women who break the rules are treated in this world.”

  I mocked her. “Out of wedlock.”

  She turned on me. “What did you say, young lady?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that you’re so old-fashioned.”

  “You’ll think old-fashioned when you’re shunned by everyone in this town. I’ll contact some homes for girls in trouble.” She yanked a fresh tissue from the box on the floor by her chair. “Oh God, everything is lost. Everything I’ve worked for, saved for all these years.”

  “Mama, I can’t bear it if you send me away.”

  “There’s no alternative, Julie. All my work to teach you the manners needed to be socially acceptable, how to set a proper table, how to make your home lovely so it will be a haven for your successful, socially prominent husband that now you’ll never have. Lost. All your work and study to make honor roll and National Honor Society is lost. Wasted. You may have even ruined your chance to get an education. Pregnant girls are not allowed to attend school, in case you didn’t know. And if, by dent and maneuver, we can keep this a secret and manage to get you through high school and into the university, what sorority will take a girl whose reputation is sullied?”

  “I don’t care about being in a sorority.”

  “You will when you realize that no decent boy will date a GDI.”

  “What’s a GDI?”

  “A goddamned independent. Someone not in a sorority or fraternity.”

  “Mama, I don’t even want to go to college.”

  “You’ll need an education to support yourself. I’ve sacrificed so you could enjoy your young years and not have to wait tables or work as a cashier at Safeway after school. And now . . .”

  I could only sit and watch as Mama covered her face with her hands and wept. I was her great disappointment. I wasn’t a bad girl. I wasn’t a slut. But I had failed my mother completely with one mistake, and that cut into my heart.

  After a moment, she wiped her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to hurt you any more than you are already hurt. It’s just that I’ve had to bear so much in my life.”

  I leaned toward her. “But you’re going to have a grandchild. Isn’t that the joyful side of this nightmare? Doesn’t that mean anything to you, Mama?”

  “Given the circumstances, it only spells shame and disgrace.” She crossed her arms over her chest and meandered to the far end of the room. Holding up a finger, she whirled around to face me. “I’ll arrange for you to go to a home for unwed mothers, and we’ll put out the story that you’re away for a while getting special treatment for an illness.”

  I scoffed. “Who in their right mind will believe that?”

  “The whole town believes Frances Latimer died of the flu.”

  “Do they? Just the other day the girls in the carpool were questioning that little fabrication.”

  Mama puckered her brows in her typical worried look.

  “Besides, it’s obvious I’m healthy. What illness would you have me come down with?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll come up with one.”

  “Stop it! Just stop it, right now! I won’t go! You can’t make me!”

  Mama came over and gathered me in her arms.

  “Now, now. I’ll protect you. We’ll work it out. You made a mistake, but it was one of those wonderful impulses of the moment? Wasn’t it?”

  It wasn’t. I’d done it deliberately, hoping to make Farrel love me. And I’d been so scared.

  “Even though it didn’t make him love me, being close to him that way was eighteen-karat gold.”

  Mama smiled her cynical smile again. “‘For a cap and bells our lives we pay.’”

  Chapter 4

  I GOT STUNG

  I needed a friend, a girl friend I could talk to. The only person I could think of was Carmen, of all people. She couldn’t have been more surprised than I was when she opened the door of her grandmother’s little house on East Third Street where she and her mother lived. Every time I laid eyes on her and saw a replica of myself, I felt the same shock.

  “Come on in. Take a load off. Coffee?”

  “Is your mother here?”

  “At work.”

  “Then yes, please. I would like a cup. That is, if you’re not busy watching after your grandmother.”

  Her face paled. “My grandmother died.”

  “Oh no! When?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I. I’ll miss her.”

  In the kitchen, I sat at the small table and watched Carmen set up the percolator and plug it in.

  “So, to what do I owe the honor of your presence?” she asked in a sarcastic tone as she sat in the chair next to mine.

  “I need to tell you something.” I toyed with a stray spoon left on the table.

  “Nothing bad, I hope?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  For a long minute, I couldn’t go on.

  She leaned in toward me. “Yesss?”

  I took a stunted breath. “That time in the girls’ room at school.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “It wasn’t cramps.”

  Instant comprehension flashed on her face. “You’re not telling me you have Frances’s non-existent flu?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. It was morning sickness.”

  “In the afternoo
n?”

  I struggled to hold back tears. “I threw up that morning too. The doctor said it can happen anytime.”

  “Oh my God, the doctor. Then you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  It got so quiet in the kitchen, I could hear the faint ticking of a clock from another room off somewhere in the house. She chewed her lower lip.

  “Don’t take this wrong, but it is Farrel’s, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. Only one guy. Only one time.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Boy, that’s a real bite. Pregnant the first time out. You must really love him. I don’t see you as the type who’d do IT with just anybody.”

  “I thought it would make him love me, but it didn’t. And you’re right, I did love him, but I don’t anymore.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Over him, just like that, huh?”

  “After he betrayed me with Maylene? Yes, just like that.”

  Carmen shook her head and got up to pour the coffee. I looked around the cluttered room. There were no cabinets, just an old hutch crammed with mismatched dishes, haphazardly stacked. On the table, an ashtray of Woolworths red glass variety held a mound of cigarettes smoked down to the last centimeter. The leftover smoke from the dead butts clung to the walls and seeped into my clothes, making it hard to breathe.

  She opened the hutch and, after a few moments of surveying the crammed-in dishes, took out two mugs whose flowered patterns made them similar enough to pass as part of a set.

  “We got these on a trip to Memphis,” she said, holding them up. “They’re my favorite. There used to be two more but . . . Mother threw one at my stepfather one night, and he threw the other one back at her.”

  I shuddered at the thought of living with such explosive people.

  Returning to the table with the two steaming coffees, she added, “Mind you, my folks don’t hurt each other. They just enjoy smashing things up. Oops, forgot the cream.”

  I took the glass bottle she brought back to the table and poured a creamy splash into my mug while she reached for the Pall Malls next to the ashtray.

  “Shit. Empty.” She crushed the pack in her fist. “I don’t know if I can handle this visit without a weed.”

  “Coffee’s good,” I said.

  “Deep breath, deep breath.” She inhaled stale kitchen air and broke into a cough. “I sound like Mother. Now’s a good time to quit, I guess. One positive thing about your whole mess.”

  “What could that possibly be?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

  “At least now you know what a tallywacker looks like.”

  “A what?”

  “A boy’s ding-a-ling. I’ve never seen one. I’m a virgin, if you can believe it.”

  “That’s the irony of it all,” I said, taking a sip of coffee. “Farrel and I did it in the backseat of his car, and it was dark. I didn’t get to see it.”

  “Shucks.” Carmen made a face. “Here I was all ready to get a bona-fide description of one. No pun intended.”

  I giggled. “I remember the only time in my life I did get to see one.”

  Her eyes danced. She leaned forward. “Tell.”

  “I was down in New Orleans visiting Aunt Hattie.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mama’s aunt. Anyway, I was only about nine years old, and she took me to visit a cousin who had just had a baby—a little boy. While we were there, his mother changed his diapers, and I got to watch. You have to remember, I’d never seen anyone naked but girls. I about dropped dead when I got a load of his thing. The thought ran through my head that all babies must be born that way, myself included, then after a few months that part ‘down there’ must change somehow so they look like I look now. You realize Mama had never told me a thing. Still hasn’t. Oh, she has plenty to say about most everything else, but she’s always mute about important things, like the birds and the bees.”

  Carmen hooted.

  “On the way home, I said to Aunt Hattie, ‘He’ll change, won’t he, Aunt Hattie? It’ll fall off, and he’ll look normal.’ Her mouth twisted all out of shape, and I could tell she was fighting tooth and toenail to keep from laughing. She said, ‘No, honey, nothing’s going to fall off. That’s how you tell whether the baby is a boy or a girl.’

  “‘Oh,’ I said to her. ‘I thought you had to wait until they were old enough to grow hair on their bald little heads, and if it grew long, the baby was a girl, and if it stayed short, it was a boy.’”

  “Stop, stop,” Carmen begged, holding her sides as tears rolled down her face.

  “I never told Mama about that incident. She’s a real prude.”

  “No lie!” She opened the crushed cigarette pack and felt inside again. “Not even a broken one. I can’t continue this without a cigarette.” She dug in the ashtray and chose the longest butt. “Now, if I can light this without setting my eyelashes on fire.”

  “Or burning the end of your nose.”

  She took the only drag left on the stumpy butt and crushed it out.

  “So, tell me. What about the baby?”

  I frowned. “What about it?”

  “Do you feel anything for it? I mean love or something like that?”

  I put my hand over my abdomen. “I do, yes. Funny you should think of that. Mama didn’t.”

  Carmen’s curled lip matched the cynicism of her words. “I bet she’s ready to kill you.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “All mothers sing the same song. Don’t get pregnant. You’ll disgrace the whole family if you do.”

  “She wants to send me away.”

  “Where to?”

  “A home for unwed mothers. Carmen, I don’t want to be sent off. I want to stay here and have my baby.”

  She reached for my hand again. “Honey girl, don’t cry. That won’t help a thing. What does Farrel say?”

  “I haven’t told him, and I don’t intend to.”

  “You have got to be out of your mind!”

  “I don’t want him to know.”

  “Don’t you imagine he’s bound to pick up the scent sooner or later?”

  “He’ll be away at school.”

  She shook her head. “He’s home every weekend.”

  “If Mama sends me off, there’s no way he’ll ever find out about the baby.”

  “Won’t he wonder where you’ve disappeared to?”

  “Mama says we’ll put out the story that I’ve been sent off to get treatment for some disease.”

  “Terminal! Tell her it has to be terminal. Pregnant girls who get sent away have to be on the brink of death. But whatever disease you pick, it won’t fool anybody. The whole town will titter up their sleeves and say ‘Boy or girl?’—especially when you have a miraculous cure and get back home just in time for your senior year.”

  “Oh no.”

  “You know it’s true.”

  “You’re right,” I said, loathing to look back on my own insensitive treatment of a girl in my predicament. “A girl in the class ahead of us got sent off last year with a ‘terminal illness.’ Everybody laughed and screamed about it. They had a coke party for her when she got home, to celebrate her miraculous recovery. Afterwards, when we were on the way to the car, my own mother said she could tell by the mature look of the girl’s upper arms that she’d had a baby. I laughed at her, but now I see it’s not so funny. Genevieve Hayes. Poor thing. Hasn’t lived it down yet.”

  “Never will.” Carmen lit another butt, sucked the one drag left, and crushed it out.

  “Why don’t you just tell Farrel? I bet you a dollar he’d marry you. He’s not a bad sort.”

  “He might marry me, but he wouldn’t be happy.”

  “What’s him being happy got to do with it? Are you going to be happy? That’s the question. The goal here is to keep your life from being ruined.”

  “He’d feel his life was ruined, then mine would be too. When I asked him why Don didn’t marry Frances instead of paying for the abortion that killed her, his exact
words were, ‘It would have ruined everything.’” The knot in my throat swelled, pushing tears into my eyes. “Besides, I don’t want him to be unhappy.”

  “And you don’t love him anymore,” she said in a cynical tone. “Don’t kid yourself, sis. You love him. Although, before God, I don’t know why.”

  I took a shuddering breath. “There is no fire . . .”

  “What?”

  “Something Mama always says. ‘There is no fire like that of the first love.’ I guess maybe she is right about that, but she’s not right about sending me off to a home and making me sign my baby away.”

  “You can’t be planning on keeping it, if you don’t even want to marry its father.”

  “Yes, I will keep it. I could never let my baby go.”

  “Then I guess you don’t mind being labeled a ‘bad girl’ for the rest of your life.” Carmen looked at me with sober eyes. “Face reality. You know you can’t stay here pregnant out of wedlock, and you can’t keep it either. If you don’t tell Farrel and get him to marry you, you’ll probably never get married at all. What decent man will marry a fallen woman with a child?”

  “You sound exactly like Mama.”

  “It’s how the cookie crumbles, sister-of-mine. And getting married is what a woman’s life is all about, so they say.”

  She dragged a book from the opposite end of the table and flipped it open.

  “This cookbook says it all. It’s not how smart the woman is to create and test the recipe or pass it down from Grandma, it’s how desirable she is to have caught a man and gotten him to marry her. That’s more important than the recipe any day of the week.”

  Carmen flicked a polished nail on the open page. “Look here. Does it say Betty Cade contributed this soup recipe? No. It says Mrs. Jasper Cade, Junior, with Betty in parentheses next to her married name. It’s like that all through this book, at the bottom of every recipe, except for the few who never married or who divorced, like your mother.” She jabbed a finger at one of Mama’s recipes. “Here, it includes this recipe for Crawfish Étouffée by Mrs. Elizabeth Lawrence Morgan. The Lawrence Morgan part tells everyone she’s divorced.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” I said.

  “You’re up against a wall, honey girl. If you stay here, unmarried with a baby, your recipes will never make the League of Socially Acceptable Women’s Cookbook. You better go on to the home for the unweds, have the baby, and put it up for adoption.