Rhoda

by Ellen Gilchrist

  But the Broad Jump Pit would not go away. It loomed in my dreams. If I walked to the store I had to pass the pasture. If I stood on the porch or looked out my grandmother’s window, there it was, shimmering in the sunlight, constantly guarded by one of the Olympians.

  Things went from bad to worse between me and Dudley. If we so much as passed each other in the hall a fight began. He would hold up his fists and dance around, trying to look like a fighter. When I came flailing at him he would reach underneath my arms and punch me in the stomach.

  I considered poisoning him. There was a box of white powder in the toolshed with a skull and crossbones above the label. Several times I took it down and held it in my hands, shuddering at the power it gave me. Only the thought of the electric chair kept me from using it.

  Every day Dudley gathered his troops and headed out for the pasture. Every day my hatred grew and festered. Then, just about the time I could stand it no longer, a diversion occurred.

  One afternoon about four o’clock an official-looking sedan clattered across the bridge and came roaring down the road to the house.

  It was my cousin, Lauralee Manning, wearing her WAVE uniform and smoking Camels in an ivory holder. Lauralee had been widowed at the beginning of the war when her young husband crashed his Navy training plane into the Pacific.

  Lauralee dried her tears, joined the WAVES, and went off to avenge his death. I had not seen this paragon since I was a small child, but I had memorized the photograph Miss Onnie Maud, who was Lauralee’s mother, kept on her dresser. It was a photograph of Lauralee leaning against the rail of a destroyer.

  Not that Lauralee ever went to sea on a destroyer. She was spending the war in Pensacola, Florida, being secretary to an admiral.

  Now, out of a clear blue sky, here was Lauralee, home on leave with a two-carat diamond ring and the news that she was getting married.

  “You might have called and given some warning,” Miss Onnie Maud said, turning Lauralee into a mass of wrinkles with her embraces. “You could have softened the blow with a letter.”

  “Who’s the groom,” my grandmother said. “I only hope he’s not a pilot.”

  “Is he an admiral?” I said, “or a colonel or a major or a commander?”

  “My fiancé’s not in uniform, honey,” Lauralee said. “He’s in real estate. He runs the war-bond effort for the whole state of Florida. Last year he collected half a million dollars.”

  “In real estate!” Miss Onnie Maud said, gasping. “What religion is he?”

  “He’s Unitarian,” she said. “His name is Donald Marcus. He’s best friends with Admiral Semmes, that’s how I met him. And he’s coming a week from Saturday, and that’s all the time we have to get ready for the wedding.”

  “Unitarian!” Miss Onnie Maud said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a Unitarian.”

  “Why isn’t he in uniform?” I insisted.

  “He has flat feet,” Lauralee said gaily. “But you’ll love him when you see him.”

  Later that afternoon Lauralee took me off by myself for a ride in the sedan.

  “Your mother is my favorite cousin,” she said, touching my face with gentle fingers. “You’ll look just like her when you grow up and get your figure.”

  I moved closer, admiring the brass buttons on her starched uniform and the brisk way she shifted and braked and put in the clutch and accelerated.

  We drove down the river road and out to the bootlegger’s shack where Lauralee bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s and two Cokes. She poured out half of her Coke, filled it with whiskey, and we roared off down the road with the radio playing.

  We drove along in the lengthening day. Lauralee was chain-smoking, lighting one Camel after another, tossing the butts out the window, taking sips from her bourbon and Coke. I sat beside her, pretending to smoke a piece of rolled-up paper, making little noises into the mouth of my Coke bottle.

  We drove up to a picnic spot on the levee and sat under a tree to look out at the river.

  “I miss this old river,” she said. “When I’m sad I dream about it licking the tops of the levees.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. To tell the truth I was afraid to say much of anything to Lauralee. She seemed so splendid. It was enough to be allowed to sit by her on the levee.

  “Now, Rhoda,” she said, “your mother was matron of honor in my wedding to Buddy, and I want you, her own little daughter, to be maid of honor in my second wedding.”

  I could hardly believe my ears! While I was trying to think of something to say to this wonderful news I saw that Lauralee was crying, great tears were forming in her blue eyes.

  “Under this very tree is where Buddy and I got engaged,” she said. Now the tears were really starting to roll, falling all over the front of her uniform. “He gave me my ring right where we’re sitting.”

  “The maid of honor?” I said, patting her on the shoulder, trying to be of some comfort. “You really mean the maid of honor?”

  “Now he’s gone from the world,” she continued, “and I’m marrying a wonderful man, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Oh, Rhoda, they never even found his body, never even found his body.”

  I was patting her on the head now, afraid she would forget her offer in the midst of her sorrow.

  “You mean I get to be the real maid of honor?”

  “Oh, yes, Rhoda, honey,” she said. “The maid of honor, my only attendant.” She blew her nose on a lace-trimmed handkerchief and sat up straighter, taking a drink from the Coke bottle.

  “Not only that, but I have decided to let you pick out your own dress. We’ll go to Greenville and you can try on every dress at Nell’s and Blum’s and you can have the one you like the most.”

  I threw my arms around her, burning with happiness, smelling her whiskey and Camels and the dark Tabu perfume that was her signature. Over her shoulder and through the low branches of the trees the afternoon sun was going down in an orgy of reds and blues and purples and violets, falling from sight, going all the way to China.

  Let them keep their nasty Broad Jump Pit I thought. Wait till they hear about this. Wait till they find out I’m maid of honor in a military wedding.

  Finding the dress was another matter. Early the next morning Miss Onnie Maud and my grandmother and Lauralee and I set out for Greenville.

  As we passed the pasture I hung out the back window making faces at the athletes. This time they only pretended to ignore me. They couldn’t ignore this wedding. It was going to be in the parlor instead of the church so they wouldn’t even get to be altar boys. They wouldn’t get to light a candle.

  “I don’t know why you care what’s going on in that pasture,” my grandmother said. “Even if they let you play with them all it would do is make you a lot of ugly muscles.”

  “Then you’d have big old ugly arms like Weegie Toler,” Miss Onnie Maud said. “Lauralee, you remember Weegie Toler, that was a swimmer. Her arms got so big no one would take her to a dance, much less marry her.”

  “Well, I don’t want to get married anyway,” I said. “I’m never getting married. I’m going to New York City and be a lawyer.”

  “Where does she get those ideas?” Miss Onnie Maud said.

  “When you get older you’ll want to get married,” Lauralee said. “Look at how much fun you’re having being in my wedding.”

  “Well, I’m never getting married,” I said. “And I’m never having any children. I’m going to New York and be a lawyer and save people from the electric chair.”

  “It’s the movies,” Miss Onnie Maud said. “They let her watch anything she likes in Indiana.”

  We walked into Nell’s and Blum’s Department Store and took up the largest dressing room. My grandmother and Miss Onnie Maud were seated on brocade chairs and every saleslady in the store came crowding around trying to get in on the wedding.

  I refused to even consider the dresses they brought from the “girls’” department.

  “I told her she could w
ear whatever she wanted,” Lauralee said, “and I’m keeping my promise.”

  “Well, she’s not wearing green satin or I’m not coming,” my grandmother said, indicating the dress I had found on a rack and was clutching against me.

  “At least let her try it on,” Lauralee said. “Let her see for herself.” She zipped me into the green satin. It came down to my ankles and fit around my midsection like a girdle, making my waist seem smaller than my stomach. I admired myself in the mirror. It was almost perfect. I looked exactly like a nightclub singer.

  “This one’s fine,” I said. “This is the one I want.”

  “It looks marvelous, Rhoda,” Lauralee said, “but it’s the wrong color for the wedding. Remember I’m wearing blue.”

  “I believe the child’s color-blind,” Miss Onnie Maud said. “It runs in her father’s family.”

  “I am not color-blind,” I said, reaching behind me and unzipping the dress. “I have twenty-twenty vision.”

  “Let her try on some more,” Lauralee said. “Let her try on everything in the store.”

  I proceeded to do just that, with the salesladies getting grumpier and grumpier. I tried on a gold gabardine dress with a rhinestone-studded cumberbund. I tried on a pink ballerina-length formal and a lavender voile tea dress and several silk suits. Somehow nothing looked right.

  “Maybe we’ll have to make her something,” my grandmother said.

  “But there’s no time,” Miss Onnie Maud said. “Besides first we’d have to find out what she wants. Rhoda, please tell us what you’re looking for.”

  Their faces all turned to mine, waiting for an answer. But I didn’t know the answer.

  The dress I wanted was a secret. The dress I wanted was dark and tall and thin as a reed. There was a word for what I wanted, a word I had seen in magazines. But what was that word? I could not remember.

  “I want something dark,” I said at last. “Something dark and silky.”

  “Wait right there,” the saleslady said. “Wait just a minute.” Then, from out of a prewar storage closet she brought a black-watch plaid recital dress with spaghetti straps and a white piqué jacket. It was made of taffeta and rustled when I touched it. There was a label sewn into the collar of the jacket. Little Miss Sophisticate, it said. Sophisticate, that was the word I was seeking.

  I put on the dress and stood triumphant in a sea of ladies and dresses and hangers.

  “This is the dress,” I said. “This is the dress I’m wearing.”

  “It’s perfect,” Lauralee said. “Start hemming it up. She’ll be the prettiest maid of honor in the whole world.”

  All the way home I held the box on my lap thinking about how I would look in the dress. Wait till they see me like this, I was thinking. Wait till they see what I really look like.

  I fell in love with the groom. The moment I laid eyes on him I forgot he was flat-footed. He arrived bearing gifts of music and perfume and candy, a warm dark-skinned man with eyes the color of walnuts.

  He laughed out loud when he saw me, standing on the porch with my hands on my hips.

  “This must be Rhoda,” he exclaimed, “the famous red-haired maid of honor.” He came running up the steps, gave me a slow, exciting hug, and presented me with a whole album of Xavier Cugat records. I had never owned a record of my own, much less an album.

  Before the evening was over I put on a red formal I found in a trunk and did a South American dance for him to Xavier Cugat’s “Poinciana.” He said he had never seen anything like it in his whole life.

  The wedding itself was a disappointment. No one came but the immediate family and there was no aisle to march down and the only music was Onnie Maud playing “Liebestraum.”

  Dudley and Philip and Saint John and Oliver and Bunky were dressed in long pants and white shirts and ties. They had fresh military crew cuts and looked like a nest of new birds, huddled together on the blue velvet sofa, trying to keep their hands to themselves, trying to figure out how to act at a wedding.

  The elderly Episcopal priest read out the ceremony in a gravelly smoker’s voice, ruining all the good parts by coughing. He was in a bad mood because Lauralee and Mr. Marcus hadn’t found time to come to him for marriage instruction.

  Still, I got to hold the bride’s flowers while he gave her the ring and stood so close to her during the ceremony I could hear her breathing.

  The reception was better. People came from all over the Delta. There were tables with candles set up around the porches and sprays of greenery in every corner. There were gentlemen sweating in linen suits and the record player playing every minute. In the back hall Calvin had set up a real professional bar with tall, permanently frosted glasses and ice and mint and lemons and every kind of whiskey and liqueur in the world.

  I stood in the receiving line getting compliments on my dress, then wandered around the rooms eating cake and letting people hug me. After a while I got bored with that and went out to the back hall and began to fix myself a drink at the bar.

  I took one of the frosted glasses and began filling it from different bottles, tasting as I went along. I used plenty of crème de menthe and soon had something that tasted heavenly. I filled the glass with crushed ice, added three straws, and went out to sit on the back steps and cool off.

  I was feeling wonderful. A full moon was caught like a kite in the pecan trees across the river. I sipped along on my drink. Then, without planning it, I did something I had never dreamed of doing. I left the porch alone at night. Usually I was in terror of the dark. My grandmother had told me that alligators come out of the bayou to eat children who wander alone at night.

  I walked out across the yard, the huge moon giving so much light I almost cast a shadow. When I was nearly to the water’s edge I turned and looked back toward the house. It shimmered in the moonlight like a jukebox alive in a meadow, seemed to pulsate with music and laughter and people, beautiful and foreign, not a part of me.

  I looked out at the water, then down the road to the pasture. The Broad Jump Pit! There it was, perfect and unguarded. Why had I never thought of doing this before?

  I began to run toward the road. I ran as fast as my Mary Jane pumps would allow me. I pulled my dress up around my waist and climbed the fence in one motion, dropping lightly down on the other side. I was sweating heavily, alone with the moon and my wonderful courage.

  I knew exactly what to do first. I picked up the pole and hoisted it over my head. It felt solid and balanced and alive. I hoisted it up and down a few times as I had seen Dudley do, getting the feel of it.

  Then I laid it ceremoniously down on the ground, reached behind me and unhooked the plaid formal. I left it lying in a heap on the ground. There I stood, in my cotton underpants, ready to take up pole-vaulting.

  I lifted the pole and carried it back to the end of the cinder path. I ran slowly down the path, stuck the pole in the wooden cup, and attempted throwing my body into the air, using it as a lever.

  Something was wrong. It was more difficult than it appeared from a distance. I tried again. Nothing happened. I sat down with the pole across my legs to think things over.

  Then I remembered something I had watched Dudley doing through the binoculars. He measured down from the end of the pole with his fingers spread wide. That was it, I had to hold it closer to the end.

  I tried it again. This time the pole lifted me several feet off the ground. My body sailed across the grass in a neat arc and I landed on my toes. I was a natural!

  I do not know how long I was out there, running up and down the cinder path, thrusting my body farther and farther through space, tossing myself into the pit like a mussel shell thrown across the bayou.

  At last I decided I was ready for the real test. I had to vault over a cane barrier. I examined the pegs on the wooden poles and chose one that came up to my shoulder.

  I put the barrier pole in place, spit over my left shoulder, and marched back to the end of the path. Suck up your guts, I told myself. It’s only a
pole. It won’t get stuck in your stomach and tear out your insides. It won’t kill you.

  I stood at the end of the path eyeballing the barrier. Then, above the incessant racket of the crickets, I heard my name being called. Rhoda . . . the voices were calling. Rhoda . . . Rhoda . . . Rhoda . . . Rhoda.

  I turned toward the house and saw them coming. Mr. Marcus and Dudley and Bunky and Calvin and Lauralee and what looked like half the wedding. They were climbing the fence, calling my name, and coming to get me. Rhoda . . . they called out. Where on earth have you been? What on earth are you doing?

  I hoisted the pole up to my shoulders and began to run down the path, running into the light from the moon. I picked up speed, thrust the pole into the cup, and threw myself into the sky, into the still Delta night. I sailed up and was clear and over the barrier.

  I let go of the pole and began my fall, which seemed to last a long, long time. It was like falling through clear water. I dropped into the sawdust and lay very still, waiting for them to reach me.

  Sometimes I think whatever has happened since has been of no real interest to me.

  Nineteen Forty-one

  Rhoda was sitting on the front sidewalk trying to set some paper on fire with a magnifying glass. She was very worried at that time about what she would do if she was lost in the woods. It would be she and Dudley alone in the woods. Dudley would have the compass but he would not tell her what it said. He would sneak off while she was sleeping and leave her there to rot. She would not panic. She would not wander deeper into the woods. She would stay where she was until help came. She would find water. She would build a fire. But how to do it? Striking rocks on flint didn’t work. How many times had she tried that? Rubbing sticks together didn’t work. No, the best thing to do was carry a magnifying glass at all times.

  Rhoda trained the glass on an ant crossing the sidewalk. There were clouds in the sky. That was lucky for the ant.

  “Get your things on,” Dudley said, coming around the corner of the house, accompanied by his friend, Fat Tunney.

  Fat Tunney hung back. Dudley squatted down by Rhoda. He was wearing his jodhpurs and his English riding hat. His leather riding crop was in his hand. You would never have believed he lived in Mound City, Illinois.