I resisted the urge to scratch at my feet—a symptom, I’d learn later, of the glue stretching in the cracks—and took in another burning sip of Kentucky. “You were always smarter than me, Rhodie, or maybe I was just more stubborn, but either way I’m finally doing it—I’m getting married. And I promise you I’ll do my best not to live a life of comparison. Like you told me before you left, ‘You can’t live in two places at one time without getting motion sick.’”
× × ×
The Warden and I had a short engagement, which is to say that we had a short time of dating before we tied the knot—a saying that the Warden told me was from the fancy way a man tied his tie on his wedding day, while I had always thought it was a play on the hangman’s noose. The Warden had proposed on March 4, 1933 and on June 25 of the same year, we took a carriage ride over to the courthouse—my delicate, itchy feet thanking the Warden for that thoughtful gesture. He held my hands in his as we looked out the carriage window together, weathering the bumps and creaks of the road.
“Today’s the day,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
Sugar Land was still a very small town then, with only five streets connecting to create downtown. It had one carriage available on call, the one we were riding in. You knew when it came through that someone was getting married, so when we drove by, several women—almost all with children—stopped, shaded their eyes, and gave us a smile and a nod. One woman in a long blue dress even waved.
When we arrived at the courthouse, the Warden walked around to my side, unlatched my door, and helped me out of the carriage. He didn’t seem to notice the disparity between my frame and the tiny black steps I was expected to navigate down. He only waited with his hand holding mine up as I steadied my footing and gingerly made my way to the solid sidewalk.
“New shoes?” he asked.
“Well, this is my wedding day!”
The Sugar Land Municipal Courthouse, a sign in the lobby told us, was founded in 1908. Ten years later, in 1918—just a few years before I first came to Sugar Land, the town had its first school, followed by a huge oil well at Blue Ridge that produced more than 450 barrels of oil. Oil—the blood of the South.
The Warden tugged at the tight white collar of his dress shirt. His auburn and white hair was combed so precisely it looked sprayed in place, like a doll’s. His sideburns were trimmed and he’d had the barber shave up the back of his neck. With his black suit and all his proper grooming, I couldn’t help but think he looked like a waiter in a fine restaurant.
I asked, “You ready to join the ranks of the imprisoned?”
He pulled at his collar again. “As long as married life comes with the promise of never having to wear this shirt again.”
“We’ll burn it on the same fire that takes my dress.”
He kissed my cheek while we walked. “You look wonderful.”
My dress was absurd. It had taken me two hours in Dresses for the Day, down near the wholesale book dealer, to find one that wasn’t too fussy, wasn’t too white, and wasn’t too revealing. One that, as the lady helping me had said, “accentuated the positives” of my large frame.
The only one that hit all the criteria was a beige—“nearly bone”—dress with a lace triangle down the chest that went up to my neck and matching lace around the wrists. My dress helper thought “nearly bone” was my best bet given my “matron” status. In plain English, she was referring to the assumption that I was a widow or at least deflowered, given that I had just passed thirty. Neither one was, of course, true—not in the male-female sense of the word.
At any rate, there we were—me in an absurd dress with ridiculously long sleeves in the middle of the summer, standing by the Warden, whose face was getting redder by the minute.
The ceremony lasted six minutes from start to finish, including the signing of the documents. We took the waiting carriage to the Warden’s house.
His house, I knew, maintained a sense of military life—thrown back from his youth no doubt. The walls were all white, except the living room, which was paneled in a red wood. All of his furniture was either mustard yellow or olive green. The look wavered somewhere between “natural” and “camouflage”—a lot more colorful than my shanty had been, I realized.
I then saw how folks would have seen my old shanty: a boring shell to house someone who was getting by, but not really living. How could I have just gotten by? How could I have not made some kind of effort into my surroundings? I vowed from that point on to live a more colorful life.
The Warden skillfully uncorked the champagne and took off his tie. He brought out a plate of fruit he’d prepared ahead of time and suggested I change to get more comfortable.
“Well, all right then,” I said, like this was all perfectly natural.
The Warden kissed me gently on the lips. “I’m going to get this suit off, too,” he told me.
“You first,” I said. “I insist.”
I watched him head to the bedroom, then turned back around in my chair, wondering if I should get truly comfortable in my loose denim pants and old T-shirt or what. Perhaps “honeymoon” comfortable was a certain kind of comfortable? Of course, I chastised myself, of course it must be. But what?
I did own one nightshirt. It was sleeveless with an orange ribbon that tied in the front. It had been on sale, so I bought it—thank God, I’d bought it!
I grabbed my glass of champagne and took a healthy sip. My hands were so damp that I had to clutch the glass so I wouldn’t drop it.
The Warden cleared his throat behind me, and I jumped. Flashes of him in satin pajamas with a cigar flashed through my mind. I sniffed the air, checking for cologne. I smelled something—not cologne, too sweet.
As curious as any feline, I did an about-face to find out what the smell was. And there was the Warden, in a short sleeve white cotton shirt and ironed khakis, rubbing his hands together.
“Orange lotion. The woman at the shop told me it was a good choice for a wedding night foot massage. How’s your champagne?”
My eyes popped open. “I—Warden, it’s just that—I, what I mean to say is that—Warden, I—I can’t do a foot rub and your penis on the same night! It’s just too much!”
I must have looked on the verge, because the Warden put down his lotioned hands faster than a pan on fire. He smiled. “Do I get to choose which one then?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, despite the sweat stains under my arms and the throbbing glue spots on my feet.
“Either way might end in mortal embarrassment for me,” I confessed.
“Well, speaking a bit candidly, Miss Dara, in either case you just need to sit back and relax. Let me do all the work.”
I actually blushed. “OK then. How about I get dressed? You bring the champagne—with a little whiskey to give it some zing, will you?” My thought was to approach this like tearing off a band-aid. I gulped, visibly. “Meet me in the bedroom.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Warden walked over and collected the fruit and the champagne. It was then I noticed that he had bought me red roses and white carnations. I saw the details—the thoughtful flowers and the ironed arm covers on the mustard-yellow couch and the immaculate sink.
I walked down the dark green carpet of his short hallway and up to the plywood door to the bedroom. To push it open felt like leaving my past behind and stepping into a future with nightshirts and children and champagne. It meant being what was considered by most folks as ordinary. For the first time the idea of being somewhat ordinary didn’t feel like a lie—maybe a small compromise for a stubborn lady such as myself, but not an all-out lie.
I turned the cold gold doorknob and pushed the door open.
He’d laid my suitcases on my side of the bed. The bed was covered with a white comforter that had small roses stitched onto it. At the bottom was a hand-knitted white, yellow, and green zigzag quilt. He’d opened the four drawers of a new white dresser he’d clearly bought for me, and already closed the white c
urtains of our one window for privacy, since the Guardtown houses had been built a bit close together.
I moved my three raggedy suitcases to the floor after I got out my nightshirt, grateful that I’d also picked up some matching socks so I wouldn’t scratch the Warden with my feet while we slept.
A few minutes later, with me socked and standing by the bed—like a crazy Revivalist lady in my long nightshirt and early graying hair—the Warden came in. He was carrying our champagne glasses in one hand and the fruit in the other.
“Why don’t you lay down on your belly and I’ll give you a backrub to relax the situation,” he said.
“If by situation you mean me, then that is a good idea.” I clenched my fists in and out to try to warm them up and dry them off.
He noticed my socks. “And we can leave the feet alone for now.”
“That mean you’ve made your choice between the two?”
He smiled.
The white comforter was cold and the room was so quiet with the curtains drawn. The only light came from the lamp on my side table, which looked like a giraffe with its long, skinny bronze neck and mustard-colored shade. I heard him rub his lotion-free hands together.
“You tell me if I am going too firm.”
I almost said “All right, Daniel”—his given name—but felt that calling him by his name would be living a caricature of “marriage.” To me, he would always be the Warden. Anything else felt forced and fake.
The Warden started with my neck, telling me that I was holding a lot of tension there. I nodded in agreement.
He asked, “Can I use some oil?”
“That’d be nice.”
The oil filled the room with the scent of orange peels and lemons.
He moved my nightshirt down off my shoulders. I tried to relax, but not relax too much—or else I felt I would seem easy. He rubbed my back with his hands, then his knuckles.
“Your hands tired?” I asked.
“Relax now. I’m just changing it up.”
It was hard to relax though, wondering if my large back and tight muscles were hurting his hands.
To my immense relief, he skipped my buttocks and my thighs, and moved down to my calves, which were exposed. Since the muscle of my calves was more pliable than my neck, the movements felt a great deal more intimate. He pinched the muscle up in big chunks then rolled it back down again—the oil making everything move as easily as the tides.
“You know, it’s been quite a while, Miss Dara,” he said when he got to my ankles and my socks. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve—since there’s been a lady in my room. And before my wife there’d only been two others. Those two were during my military days, so I’m not even sure if they count fully. But I want you to know, I’ll do my best.”
He was as nervous as me. Seeing that was both a relief and a burden.
“Warden, you seem like a man who always does his best. I’m not worried. Now”—I made myself brave—“I’m going to roll on my back and get under the sheet, so close your eyes, please.”
He stood back up from my massage and let me wiggle out of my nightshirt and under the white sheets.
“Oh good Lord,” I said, “will this oil ruin the sheets?”
I could hear the smile in his voice even though I wasn’t looking at him. “No, ma’am.”
I folded the white comforter down just under my collarbone. It smelled the way sheets do when they are line dried in the heat of day. “OK, you can open your eyes now.”
He looked down at me with such open happiness that I felt beautiful, and I was excited for him to see even more of me. I liked this spotlight. I liked this strange sensation of feeling pretty.
“Now you close your eyes,” he said, his sideburns looking darker in the dim light.
With my eyes closed, I tried to keep my breath even so I wouldn’t get too nervous and sweat on the sheets. I hoped he didn’t mind that I kept my socks on. I wondered if his girls, Edna and Debbie, would be upset with me here in their mama’s bed.
A quick minute later, I felt him snuggle down next to me, careful not to touch my body with his.
Before he told me to open my eyes, he kissed me. It was a tender kiss, and it woke up some places in me that were unaccustomed to the nearness of other people.
I kissed him back and—probably as much to his surprise as mine—pulled him over on top of me. I liked the feeling that I was giving something to someone who would enjoy it so much. And, it seemed, I might just enjoy myself too.
He grinned as big as I’d ever seen and kissed my neck. “This is going to be fun, Miss Dara.”
“I think you might be right, Warden,” I said.
I had been so frightened that I wouldn’t respond the way I had with Rhodie. I assumed I’d been ruined after her—that I’d been put here on this Earth to love her and only her in the way we did.
When the Warden first entered me, I held my breath, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to get inside—that I’d be too cold or resistant to let anything happen, not because he was a man, but because he wasn’t her. But when he gently pushed, I found myself reaching up for his back and putting my hands on his shoulder blades and relaxing to let him know it was OK—more than OK, this feeling of submission and vulnerability, but also this heat and desire. Heat, desire, and soon after—pain. The Warden was not a small man, after all.
I gritted my teeth. “God dammit!”
“You doing OK?”
“I’m breathing through it!”
The official breaking of my hymen was harder than shoeing an oiled moose, to be sure. Maybe they get more solid the older you are.
I’ll spare you the details of the precise moment, but it ended with me using every swear word I knew. I’m not even sure how our first sexual encounter ended for him, to be honest, but I do know that afterwards he held me all night long with his forearm as warm as butter on my belly.
× × ×
By the third night—three days before the grandparents were scheduled to bring Edna and Debbie home—we were in a groove. The Act had stopped hurting, and the Warden even stepped up and showed me a few new twists on the old bedroom dance, as he called it. These twists involved me on my belly and me arched up with a few pillows. To my surprise, I found myself thinking about those twists all day long, while he was at Sugar Land and I was making casseroles.
By the fourth night, the second to last night of our “stay-in honeymoon”—after we went to the annual car show, and I made him liver and onions—I surprised him by grabbing hold of the wheel, so to speak, and doing a little driving myself.
He smiled the whole next day, stopping to kiss me and saying things like, “I like this side of you,” when he touched my backside.
With Rhodie, I was in the position of the admirer. Rhodie found me attractive, to be sure, but she wasn’t blown away by me on sight the way I had been with her. She’d loved me after we talked and ran through the creek and I showed her the extra sod in the meadow that we could make into forts—while I’d loved her the minute she walked into the egg store.
The Warden knew from the moment I had my first talk with him—when he warned me not to leave the meat too rare—that there was something about me he wanted to see more of. In retrospect, he said, he could see that he loved me right off. I nodded, knowing that’s how it had been for me with Rhodie—it took a while for my mind to figure out what my body already knew.
The Warden thought I was “gorgeous.” It was nice to be in the other position, to be the admired one—plus it gave me a kind of confidence in the bedroom that made my early middle age one of my most adventuresome time periods.
FIVE ROSARIES
Before the grandparents brought his girls back home, the Warden thought I should meet them someplace neutral. We’d always dated when the kids were at the grandparents’. Looking back, it seems odd that I didn’t meet them before, but those were different times—times when the likes and dislikes of children played a lesser role in the goings-on of adult
s.
“Meet your girls? Sure,” I said, thinking that I’d rather pirouette in a pink tutu.
“Mamaw and Pappy can bring them by the prison tomorrow.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Now I got to go tend to those roofing tiles.”
I took in a deep breath. “Tomorrow.”
“You’ll be fine.” He kissed the top of my head. “They’re nice girls. Got to be tomorrow since they are coming home the day after.”
He clicked the door shut. I stood there with my mouth hanging open and my guts bubbling up with panic. Tomorrow?
I needed some help here.
The dining room chair threatened to commit suicide when I lowered myself into it, but it somehow found the strength to go on. I tested it further by leaning back to grab a soft hand-sewn pouch I’d put in the drawer of the Warden’s plate cabinet. It was the pouch that my grandmother had given to my mother when she got married and my mother had given to me when I left for Sugar Land—my first marriage of sorts.
I rolled the pouch around in my fingers before pulling out the rosary. It was constructed of ten rows of white Hail Mary beads that looked like suppositories. Sitting stoically in between the groupings, were perfectly round, pink beads for the Lord’s Prayer. My mama had told me that those pink beads were genuine opals, one of the two birthstones of her mother’s mother, the woman who first owned the rosary. A delicate silver chain connected all those beads.
The rosary was cold, as if it had been kept in the ice chest, but somehow gentle. The only part that felt hard was the crucifix itself, all pointy edges, especially where the nails in Christ’s hands and feet stuck out. Even his body was pointy—his kneecaps and the crown of thorns and his thin ribs. I used to think that they made the crucifixes sharp so you’d have to hang them outside your pocket for fear of stabbing yourself, then everyone would know you had a rosary on you, like an ad for God.
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