Rhoda

by Ellen Gilchrist

  The plane brought them to Nashville by noon the next day, and they got into the Packard and started driving home.

  He had made a bed for her in the back seat with pillows for her head and his raincoat for a cover and she rode along that way, sleeping and reading her book. The wad of gauze in her vagina was beginning to bother her. It felt like a thick hand inside her body. The doctor had said she could remove it in twenty-four hours, but she was afraid to do it yet.

  Well, at least that’s over, she thought. At least I don’t have to have any more babies this year.

  All I have to do is have one more and they’ll give me a tubal ligation. Doctor Greer promised me that. On the third cesarean section you get to have your tubes cut. It’s a law. They have to do it. It would be worth having another baby for that. Oh, well, she thought. At least I don’t have to worry about it anymore for now. She opened her book.

  “You are not that kind of soldier and I am not that kind of girl,” Renata was saying to Colonel Cantrell. “But sometime give me something lasting that I can wear and be happy each time I wear it.”

  “I see,” the Colonel said. “And I will.”

  “You learn fast about things you do not know,” the girl said.

  “And you make lovely quick decisions. I would like you to have the emeralds and you could keep them in your pocket like a lucky piece, and feel them if you were lonely.”

  Rhoda fell asleep, dreaming she was leaning across a table staring into Ernest Hemingway’s eyes as he lit her cigarette.

  When they got to the edge of town he woke her. “How are you feeling, honey,” he said. “Do you feel all right?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I feel great, really I do.”

  “I want to go by the house on Manley Island if you feel like it,” he said. “Everyone’s out there.”

  It’s the Fourth of July, she thought. I had forgotten all about it. Every year her father’s large Scotch family gathered for the fourth on a little peninsula that jutted out into the Tennessee River a few miles from town.

  “Will Jamie be there?” she asked. Jamie was everyone’s favorite. He was going to be a doctor like his father.

  “I think so. Do you feel like going by there?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Stop and let me get into the front seat with you.”

  They drove up into a yard full of automobiles. The old summer house was full of cousins and aunts and uncles, all carrying drinks and plates of fried chicken and all talking at the same time.

  Rhoda got out of the car feeling strange and foreign and important, as if she were a visitor from another world, arriving among her kinfolk carrying an enormous secret that they could not imagine, not even in their dreams.

  She began to feel terribly elated, moving among her cousins, hugging and kissing them.

  Then her Uncle James came and found her. He was an eye surgeon. Her father had paid his tuition to medical school when there was barely enough money to feed Rhoda and her brothers.

  “Let’s go for a walk and see if any of Cammie’s goats are still loose in the woods,” he said, taking hold of her arm.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m perfectly all right, Uncle James.”

  “Well, just come walk with me and tell me about it,” he said. They walked down the little path that led away from the house to the wild gardens and orchards at the back of the property. He had his hand on her arm. Rhoda loved his hands, which were always unbelievably clean and smelled wonderful when they came near you.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “There isn’t anything to tell,” she said. “They put me up on an examining table and first they gave me some pills and they made me sleepy and they said it might hurt a little but it didn’t hurt and I slept a long time afterwards. Well, first we went down in an elevator and then we went back to the hotel and I slept until this morning. I can’t believe that was only yesterday.”

  “Have you been bleeding?”

  “Not a lot. Do you think I need some penicillin? He was a real doctor, Uncle James. There were diplomas on the wall and a picture of his family. What about the penicillin? Should I take it just in case?”

  “No, I think you’re going to be fine. I’m going to stay around for a week just in case.”

  “I’m glad you came. I wanted to see Jamie. He’s my favorite cousin. He’s getting to be so handsome. I’ll bet the girls are crazy about him.”

  “Tell me this,” he said. “Did the doctor do any tests to see if you were pregnant?”

  “I know I was pregnant,” she said. “I was throwing up every morning. Besides, I’ve been pregnant for two years. I guess I know when I’m pregnant by now.”

  “You didn’t have tests made?”

  “How could I? I would have had to tell somebody. Then they might have stopped me.”

  “I doubt if you were really pregnant,” he said. “I told your father I think it’s highly unlikely that you were really pregnant.”

  “I know I was pregnant.”

  “Rhoda, listen to me. You don’t have any way of knowing that. The only way you can be sure is to have the tests and it would be doing your father a big favor if you told him you weren’t sure of it. I think you imagined you were pregnant because you dread it so much.”

  Rhoda looked at his sweet impassive face trying to figure out what he wanted from her, but the face kept all its secrets.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter to me whether I was or not,” she said. “All I care about is that it’s over. Are you sure I don’t need any penicillin? I don’t want to get blood poisoning.”

  (Rhoda was growing tired of the conversation. It isn’t any of his business what I do, she thought, even if he is a doctor.)

  She left him then and walked back to the house, glancing down every now and then at her flat stomach, running her hand across it, wondering if Jamie would like to take the boat up to Guntersville Dam to go through the locks.

  Her mother had arrived from town with the maid and her babies and she went in and hugged them and played with them for a minute, then she went into the bathroom and gingerly removed the wad of bloody gauze and put in a tampon.

  She washed her legs and rubbed hand lotion on them and then she put on the new black bathing suit. It fit better than ever.

  “I’m beautiful,” she thought, running her hands over her body. “I’m skinny and I’m beautiful and no one is ever going to cut me open. I’m skinny and I’m beautiful and no one can make me do anything.”

  She began to laugh. She raised her hand to her lips and great peals of clear abandoned laughter poured out between her fingers, filling the tiny room, laughing back at the wild excited face in the bright mirror.

  Love of My Life

  An afternoon in August. I am in my kitchen in the little frame house on Colonial Drive in Jackson, Mississippi. I am separated from the father of my children. They are six and five and two years old. I am five feet four inches tall. I am muscular and strong. I have strong bones and red hair and straight legs. I am very, very tan. I am wearing sandals, a pair of blue cotton shorts, a tight blue-and-white-striped blouse. I have been taking Dexedrine. I take it three or four days a week. I take Dexedrine and diuretics. I never eat. Food is the enemy of what I want. I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it. If I am beautiful, the thing I want will show up. I’ve been waiting since I was fourteen years old for the thing I want. Once I thought it was the father of my children. Once I thought it was a federal judge my father’s age. I never thought it was the children. They are the price I have to pay for looking for it. I don’t have to pay anymore. I had a tubal ligation. I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant anymore but still I worry.

  I am getting closer to what I want. I can feel it in the hot August air, in the sunlight beating down upon the sidewalk and the two-car garage and the heads of the children. I can taste it in the gin I drink. Can hear it in the music on the phonograph. My daddy is a rich man. My husband worked for him. I have a new
house, a new car. I’m at home. No one can hurt me now. My father will not let them. My brothers will not let them. I am safe now. I am almost where I want to be.

  Outside, in the fenced-in yard, the five- and six-year-old are playing in the water. They have a plastic pool filled with water and a hose and a Slip-and-Slide. They are happy. They’ve been playing for a long time without having a fight. In a few minutes my mother will come and get them and take them off to spend the night. The maid left at four and Mother’s coming at five to pick them up. The only one I have to take care of is Teddy and he’s asleep. I walk around my kitchen cutting up vegetables and cooking things. It is safe to cook. I took a Dexedrine this morning. You couldn’t push food in my mouth.

  I have a new record on the record player. Johnny Cash singing about his Indian blood. I’m into Indians today. I feel their pain, know their sorrow, ride the plains with the braves, wait for them to come to me at night. I’ve had the record for two days. I play it over and over. It has become me. I know the words by heart.

  I put a tray of biscuits in the oven. I turn the water on to boil beneath a pan of new potatoes. I have been separated from my husband for a week. It’s wonderful. I am free, and I cannot have another baby no matter what I do. I can fall in love with anyone. I can have a lover, or two lovers, or maybe three. My brothers and my daddy will let me do anything I want to do.

  I stop. A dark thought has entered me. I might not get into the Casual Club, the luncheon club my mother wants me to get into. I am waiting for an invitation. Well, surely they will want me. I am so pretty. My daddy is so rich.

  A car drives up. It is my mother. We round up the boys and pack their bags and put them in her car. “I wish you’d come out too,” my mother says. “When the baby wakes up get dressed and come to dinner.” She stands at the door. She is wearing her suspicious look. She doesn’t like the way I look. She wants to know what I’m up to.

  “I might. I don’t think I can. Avery might come over.” It’s a lie. Avery is the daughter of her best friend who is married to the mayor. Avery is the president of the Casual Club. Mother wants me to be friends with Avery.

  “Oh, that’s nice. Well, call in a while. Call and let us know what you’re doing.” She is smiling, almost smiling. The boys are fighting in the backseat of the car. “Well, I’d better go on and take them. Call us, Rhoda. Call and let me know where you are.”

  She drives off, Malcolm and Jimmy are fighting away. It is nineteen sixty-three. There are no seat belts. It has barely begun to dawn on us that we need them. Children fall against dashboards, cut their heads, we tell them not to stand up on the seats.

  I think I am barefooted now. The baby is still asleep. As soon as Mother leaves I go out onto the patio to clean up the mess the children made. I open the drain on the plastic pool. Water spills out on the patio. I walk around in it. I pull the ugly plastic Slip-and-Slide over behind the air-conditioning unit so I won’t have to look at it. I have a photograph of myself at this time, in this place. I am very very thin. My half-wet shirt sticks to my ribs and breasts; beneath my shorts my tanned legs are straight and shapely. I am so young. I am twenty-six years old. My hair is cut in a chin-length bob with a part on the side. I wear a barrette in my hair. If I am wearing blue, the barrette is blue. On this day, the day I met my one true love, the Indian man, the man who was my equal, who was good enough for me, on this day I think the barrette was blue. It must have been blue because my shorts were blue.

  I walked back into the kitchen from the patio, making wet footprints on the waxed floor, singing along to the music. I started the record over. I strummed the air. It was my blue guitar.

  Dudley’s black Pontiac pulled up into the driveway behind my new black station wagon. I saw him get out, laughing and talking to his passenger. His passenger got out and they came into the kitchen through the screen door. “Come listen to Johnny Cash,” I said. “God, it’s so good. I just adore it. What are you doing here?”

  “We’re playing in a tournament at the club. This is Raine Matasick, Rhoda. My sister, Raine. He’s my partner.” I shook his hand. I took him in. Too ugly. Too foreign. Too dark-skinned. Not fat, but big, so big. Too big. He kept on smiling. He waited with his smile. He stood back while Dudley and I talked.

  “What are you doing later?” Dudley asked. “There’s a party at the club. They’re going to raffle off the players. It’s a Calcutta. You want to go with us? Sally’s going.”

  “You can buy us,” Raine suggested. “Dudley and me’ll come cheap.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Dudley said. “He won the state tournament last year.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I was getting interested. Not in Raine, but in the Calcutta, whatever that turned out to be. A party at the club. I could wear my new mauve linen dress. “God, my hair’s a mess. You want a drink?”

  “Not now,” Dudley said. He put his hand on Raine’s arm. “You ought to go with us, Sister. Everyone in the state’s there. This is a big tournament.”

  “I’ll have a glass of water,” Raine said. He followed me to the sink and stood beside me while I filled the glass. I had a sense of the immensity of the man. Not that he was that tall or big. He was six foot three or four. It wasn’t that. It was something else, a sense of mass or power. A smell that didn’t belong in the same world with the Casual Club. Too dark, too big, too foreign. I looked up at him while I filled the glass. His eyes were dark, like mine. Dark sweet eyes. I would take him for an admirer. I wanted plenty of admirers. “I wish you’d sit down and listen to this music,” I said. “I’m just crazy about it. I don’t listen to another thing.”

  Teddy came walking into the room. He was wearing a wet diaper and carrying his bottle. He was still half asleep. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. Raine went over to him and knelt beside him and began to have a conversation. Teddy smiled. He pulled the bottle out of his mouth and hit Raine with it. They laughed together. Then Teddy came over and grabbed me around the legs. “I’ll have to get a baby-sitter,” I said. “I don’t know who I’ll find this late.”

  “Call Sally,” Dudley said. “She’s got a list. Well, listen, Sister, we’ve got to go. We have to meet some people down at the Sun and Sand and then we’ve got to go change clothes.”

  “My clubs are still in my car,” Raine said. “I need to put them in my trunk.”

  I picked up Teddy and held him while they left. I was still so uninterested in this man I could pick up a child in a wet diaper and hold him against my half-wet blue-and-white-striped cotton shirt and stand in the carport barefoot and wave as they drove away. I pulled Teddy’s diapers off and left them in the carport and took him inside and put him in the tub. While he played in the water I called a baby-sitter. I walked back into the kitchen and turned the record over and played the other side.

  It was exciting to think of going out alone. When I went out with my husband I had a horrible time. No matter how many martinis I drank it was always an awful time. Now I was separated. Now I could go out somewhere and have a good time. Even if it was only my brother and his wife and this big, dark man who was a champion golfer. Still, I had a funny feeling. I was very excited about this evening. As soon as I had a baby-sitter lined up I got Teddy out of the tub and dressed him and gave him some biscuits to eat and then I went into the bathroom and washed my hair and rolled it up. I took my new mauve dress out of the closet and laid it on the bed. I took out earrings and a gold bracelet. I gave Teddy some cold fried chicken and a bowl of cereal and some toys to play with on the kitchen floor. I started getting dressed. I put on my new perfume, Jungle Gardenia. I put on makeup. I dried my hair and combed it. As soon as the baby-sitter arrived and took Teddy off to the backyard, I put on the dress. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful. More beautiful than I had ever been in my life. They had tried to kill me with the babies. They had tried to ruin and kill me and make me ugly but it had not worked. I had outwitted them. I was separated now and I was going out to the Jackson Cou
ntry Club and find out what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted but I believed it existed. It existed and when I saw it I would know it. I took an ice-cold glass out of the freezer and filled it with vodka. I stood in the kitchen looking out toward the carport. Soon they would come to get me. They would take me to the place where my life would begin.

  After a long time he came. It was dark when he came so it must have been very late. I must have had another drink and played the Indian recording many times. The baby-sitter must have taken Teddy to his room to read to him and I must have gotten tired of waiting and finally a car drove up in the carport and I went out the screen door to yell at my brother for being late. Only it wasn’t my brother. It was Raine and he was alone.

  Many years later, after it was over, after he had come into my life and changed it, wrecked it and emblazoned it, after I had married a rich Jewish lawyer and made him miserable, after ten years, after I had divorced the lawyer and gone off to live in the Ozark mountains to write my books. After the marriages and the divorces and the beginning of the books. After the week Raine drove me to Arkansas to begin my writing life. After I left the lawyer and took up with Raine again, after so many strange and eventful years. After all of that I heard the rest of the story of that day. I heard it from Dudley on his sixtieth birthday. At his birthday party, late in the evening, beside the lake, at the borrowed river mansion. “We were driving home from the first day of the tournament,” Dudley said. “We’d been hitting so well we thought we were going to win. It was the state team tournament. You never did pay much attention to sports unless you were playing, did you, Shortie?”

  “No. Go on. So what happened then?”

  “We were going by your neighborhood and I said, ‘Raine, what would you rather do? Go down to the Sun and Sand and find some working girls or meet my sister?’