“She knows I live in the trailer park.”
“Knowing and seeing are two different things. Now, let’s change the subject, shall we? I don’t intend to argue about it. When I say no, I mean no.”
That had been a while back, when she was in fifth grade. Then, Hélène had been sulky. She thought her mother was being stupid. Now, as she dragged up the dirt path and the trailer park came into view, she wondered.
Two of the old trailers were empty now. They’d been empty for years. No one else had moved in, and the trailers had just been left to rot. One had a great gaping hole in the roof. Their windows had been smashed by the younger Tanner kids. Old May still lived in one of the others, but her husband was dead now, and everyone said old May was crazy. She was fat and dirty, and she never set foot outside the trailer, or if she did, Hélène never saw her. There was a young couple in the next, and they’d made an effort when they first moved in. They’d put in boxes full of plastic flowers round the window, and the husband had painted the trailer sunshine yellow. But they had two kids now, and a third on the way, the yellow paint was all peeling off, and the sun had bleached the color from the flowers. The wife was sitting on the step, the way she always seemed to do, her hair in curlers, two half-naked little kids playing in the dirt with a couple of the Tanner children. She lifted her head lazily as Hélène trudged past.
“Hi, Hélène. Hot, ain’t it?”
“Yes. Very.” Hélène gave her a polite little smile, and then looked the other way. The woman took a last drag on the cigarette in her mouth, then tossed the butt end in among the plastic flowers. Hélène felt as if she suddenly wanted to scream: Don’t do that—don’t do it. It’s dirty and ugly and horrible—horrible.
Her mother wasn’t home, but that was nothing unusual these days. She’d come back with a couple of packages around six, and say she’d been to the market, that she’d just realized they’d run out of bread, or sugar, or tea. Hélène used to mind, once. Not now. Now she wouldn’t have to account for being late, which was a relief.
The trailer felt like an oven. She opened all the windows and the door, but it hardly made any difference. There was no breeze, and all the flies came in, that was all. She dumped the bag of books down on the table and poured herself a tall glass of cold milk. She was just so hot. And dirty. What she’d like right now was just to stand under a shower, a proper shower, and let the cold water run and run and run. Or go down to the pool, maybe, with Billy, and swim. But she hardly ever did that anymore. All the hours God made, it seemed, Billy worked. And when he wasn’t working, it seemed to her that he avoided her. She couldn’t understand it. She thought he liked her still. He seemed to like her, but every time she mentioned swimming, or even just going for a walk, Billy’s gaze slid away, and he turned red, and made an excuse. She could go on her own, of course—nothing to stop her. But she was a little afraid. It was so quiet down by the pool. She’d done it once, and she hadn’t enjoyed it—not the way she did with Billy. All the time she swam she felt as if someone were watching her, in behind the cottonwood trees. And in the end she’d just clambered out fast, and run through the bushes all the way home.
She kicked off her shoes, went into the bedroom, and flung herself down on her bed. Her mother’s bed wasn’t made, and the room smelled slightly sour, like unwashed linen. Hélène closed her eyes. Sometimes she thought her mother didn’t care so much—not anymore.
She thought of Priscilla-Anne’s bedroom, with its pink frills. She thought of the new bathroom Merv Peters had had installed, which Priscilla-Anne had showed her on the way out: all gleaming tiles, and the bathroom suite pink, not white. She’d never even seen a pink one before, didn’t know they made them.
“Don’t you just love pink?” Priscilla-Anne had sighed. “I guess it’s just about my favorite color.”
Hélène opened her eyes again. A fat bluebottle buzzed. The walls were stained with rust; it came through the paint no matter what you did. There was practically no color left in the thin little cotton draperies: they hung at the window like rags. One of the legs on her bed was half broken, and the screw her mother had put in was coming out, so the bed tilted crazily to one side every time you moved. The old yellow chest seemed to Hélène to get yellower and yellower and uglier and uglier by the day.
She didn’t go to church, never had, though her mother wrote “Episcopalian” with a flourish on the school forms, in the section headed religion. Nationality: English. Age: twelve. Religion: Episcopalian. Hélène shut her eyes again. She didn’t even know what it meant, not really. But she did pray sometimes; lately, she did. Always the same prayer. She said it now, silently, screwing up her eyes. God. Jesus. Dear God. Sweet Jesus. Get me out of here.
After a bit, feeling better, she added, And Mother. Then she swung her long legs off the bed. She rummaged around under her mother’s bed. There was a real litter of stuff there—her mother was a real magpie, a hoarder. Hélène pulled some of the stuff out and looked at it in disgust. Why did she keep all this junk?
Bits of cheap lace off petticoats long thrown away. A box of old buttons and glass beads. A pair of dirty white cotton gloves gone yellow now, and with holes in the fingers. Her mother used to wear white gloves—when? Centuries ago. A lady always wears gloves. Leather, not fabric…had her mother said that? Well, these were fabric all right, dime-store stuff. Horrible. Hélène tossed them aside.
There was a great stack of magazines too. Years old, some of them. Her mother brought them back from Cassie Wyatt’s. They were thumbed and stained, and smelled acrid from hair lacquer. Hélène flicked the pages. Smart bright women: bright red smiles, and crisp hair, shiny shoes with high heels and neat, tailored suits. These women didn’t live in dirty old trailers. You only had to look at them to know: they lived in smart new houses, with a car in the driveway, and dinner in the oven. They had husbands, and the husbands wore suits, and came home at six every day. They had a barbecue in the backyard, and they all went to the beach for vacations. They had TVs and electric ovens, and big iceboxes. They had showers, too, just like Priscilla-Anne’s, so they could wash anytime they felt like it. She flicked a page.
They used something called Tampax, too, because they were women who led an active life, and there were photographs of them doing so—on a beach, or horseback riding even. She knew what Tampax was, but you couldn’t use it if you were a girl—Susie Marshall said so. It wouldn’t go up; you weren’t big enough. She thought they sounded dangerous—what if they got stuck? But they had to be better than what she had to wear: that horrible pink elastic belt, and those thick napkins. Napkins! Her mother called them “towels”: napkins were what you put on your lap at dinner. But whatever you called them, they were horrible. If you were stupid enough to wear pants then, they stuck out, and all the boys nudged one another and smirked. They made her feel dirty; they made her feel ashamed. But maybe that was just her mother. Once she’d really wanted to start. The older girls made such a drama of it: clutching their stomachs and saying the pain was real bad, and bringing in notes from their mothers saying they couldn’t do gym or go swimming. She didn’t care then how painful it was, she just wanted to start. And then when she did, her mother wouldn’t talk about it, not at all. She made it quite clear that what had happened was something that was never, ever discussed. She went out and bought the belt and a blue packet of the things and hid them in back of one of the drawers. “They’re in there,” she said. “When you need them.”
So she talked to Priscilla-Anne about it, and then she felt a whole lot better. She could talk to Priscilla-Anne, and she couldn’t talk to her mother. Not the way they used to talk. Not often, anyhow. Sometimes it was like her mother didn’t want her to grow up, didn’t want her to become a woman. All that stuff about not needing a bra, for instance. Sometimes she thought it made her mother angry, angry in a funny hopeless kind of way, her growing-up. Other times she thought it was just that her mother was too tired, or too busy. She often looked tired now. In the m
ornings, she was puffy under the eyes, and there were thin little lines now around her mouth that weren’t there before. Evenings, sometimes, she looked really exhausted and worried. She’d fall asleep sometimes right there in the chair.
She was still beautiful, Hélène thought. But not quite as beautiful as she used to be. And sometimes when Hélène met her in town, she felt embarrassed. Her mother was so old-fashioned! She still wore her hair the same way, all those careful waves and a side part. She didn’t have a perm like most of the mothers, or bangs over the forehead. Out in the sunlight, her makeup could look funny too. That pale powder she wore, and the way she still painted her lips in that bow: no one else did that anymore. And then, the way she talked! So English, still. Using fifteen words when she could have used three. “Do you think I could possibly have…How do you do…” when everybody else just said “Hi!” and had done with it. Hélène had seen people stare; seen the sideways glances, the smirks. In Cassie Wyatt’s; in the market.
She frowned. Her mother didn’t belong. And Hélène felt as if she didn’t belong either. She wasn’t English, and she wasn’t American. She could talk like the other girls when she wanted. She had a quick ear; she knew it. Oh, she could mimic them all right. She did it now, quietly, to herself, listening carefully. Just like Priscilla-Anne, that slow, lazy drawl. But still, she didn’t do it. Not unless she was alone. Because she wasn’t sure in her own mind if she did want to be like the other girls. She didn’t. Not altogether. They’d jeered when she first went to school; she used to cry about it every night. And she’d never forgiven them—never. Take no notice, darling, her mother had said then. They’re rude and ignorant. They don’t know any better…
She’d believed her mother then. Her mother did know better. Her mother knew about England, and big houses and green lawns and balls and ladies and wearing gloves and not cutting bread with a knife at the dinner table.
But sometimes, now, she wasn’t so sure. Sometimes that whole world—the world her mother had once talked about all the time, and now mentioned more and more rarely—sometimes that whole world seemed unreal. It existed, she supposed, but maybe not quite the way her mother described. And even if it did—did she care for it? Why should she, when she was stuck here in the trailer park? And if God didn’t do something soon, she’d be stuck here forever.
Hélène Craig, she whispered to herself quietly. Hélène Fortescue. But even that didn’t help anymore, not the way it used to. The names sounded hollow. Sometimes she felt as if she didn’t exist at all, as if she were nobody.
And sometimes she wondered if colored people felt like that, belonging and not belonging, all at once. She pushed the pile of magazines away angrily. That was stupid. Better not say that. Not ever. Not to anyone.
The tin box was right at the back of the bed, all covered in dust and fluff. When had that last been opened? Hélène opened it now, and looked inside. There were the two dark blue English passports, her mother’s and her own, because she had been born in England. And there was the money—quite a lot of it. Crumpled dollar bills, a few fives, lots and lots of quarters and dimes. Once upon a time she and Mother used to do the arithmetic. If they saved so much, every week—not that much really, no more than the price of a packet of soap powder, or a box of cornflakes—if they did that every week without fail, and never raided the box, not even at Christmas, then in so many weeks, and so many years…Hélène sighed. How much did it cost for two people to go to Europe, to England?
Five hundred dollars, her mother had said once, and then laughed. It was a nice round figure anyway, she said. But that had been a few years back. Would five hundred still be enough?
Hélène wasn’t sure. There wasn’t five hundred in here, anyway, nowhere near. She frowned, trying to concentrate. The last time they had counted it, yes, she was pretty sure, had been her eleventh birthday. She remembered, because it was not long after she’d first started her period, and the birthday had begun all right, but ended badly. Her mother had started crying—for no reason Hélène could see. But she’d cried a lot, and said Hélène was growing up so fast, and then she’d gotten the box out and counted the money, and there had been…two hundred and thirty dollars. Yes, she was sure, because it sounded like so much. A few odd nickels and dimes as well, but basically, two hundred and thirty dollars.
Slowly and carefully, she reached into the box and began to count the money. She put it in neat stacks, fives in one pile, ones in another. After a while she sat back on her heels. Then recounted, to make sure.
But she was right. It had gone down, not up. There was a little over a hundred and fifty dollars in the box. No way would a hundred and fifty dollars get two people to England.
She stared at the money for a while, till her head felt tight and hot, and she knew if she looked at it any longer, she would start to cry. Then she gathered it all up, stuffed it back into the box, and stuffed the box under the bed again. Where had it gone? She couldn’t imagine. On schoolbooks? Clothes? It might be clothes. Her mother did have new dresses sometimes, and she never said where they came from, except that she had got them cheaply, they were a bargain. And she was growing so fast; her mother bought material and made her new clothes. It might be that.
Hélène stood up and stared out the window. God, she thought. Please God. If I don’t stop growing out of things, then we’re just never going to get to England.
Her mother came back around six. She was wearing a pink dress Hélène hadn’t seen before, and it suited her. Hélène could see right away that she was in a good mood. She sang to herself while she made supper, and she asked Hélène a lot of questions, about school, about homework, the way she tried to do the nights she wasn’t tired. Hélène thought she didn’t listen to the answers too carefully, because her eyes had a dreamy half-focused look. But she didn’t mind. She felt guilty now for all those things she’d thought about her mother earlier. It wasn’t her fault she talked the way she did. And she was pretty. Tonight her eyes were shining, and she looked almost beautiful again, the way she used to.
Hélène was wondering if she should ask her about Cassie Wyatt’s and that mixup over her mother working afternoons, but even though she seemed in a good mood, Hélène didn’t quite dare. Her mother hated being questioned about her movements, Hélène had learned that now: she called it prying. So instead, she decided to risk telling her about Priscilla-Anne, about stopping at the Peters’ house on the way home. And it was all right: her mother just nodded and smiled, and never said a thing.
Encouraged, Hélène went on. She told her about the soda fountain and the walkie-talkie dolls, and the frilly pink bedroom. Her mother’s eyebrows arched; a little smile played about her lips.
“It was lovely, Mother. So pretty. Oh, and they have a new bathroom too—and you know, that’s pink as well? A proper shower, with a glass door. And shiny pink tiles. And the bathtub is pink and so is the wash basin—just imagine! Even the…”
“Pink?” The eyebrows arched a little higher. “Darling. Rather vulgar.”
Hélène lowered her eyes. “I thought it was nice,” she said slowly, and again that awful uncertainty came back. She was wrong again, it seemed. She’d thought it was pretty, and it wasn’t. Her mother said it was vulgar. Just like that. She raised her eyes again, slowly, to her mother’s face. How could her mother be so certain?
There was a little silence. Her mother leaned back in her chair, “And after that?” she said at last. “What did you do after that? You weren’t waiting for me too long, I hope?”
She asked the question out of habit, Hélène thought. Once, it had truly worried her if she was late. Hélène wasn’t sure if it did so much now. She hesitated, drawing lines on the oilcloth with her fingernail, plucking up courage.
“I just mooched about. For a bit.” She shrugged. “And then—then, I started thinking…”
She swallowed. She still didn’t dare come right out with it. If her mother knew she’d counted the money in the box, she’d be angr
y. And when she was angry, she frightened Hélène. Those spots of color came into her cheeks, and the veins stood out in her temples, and the violet eyes flashed, or filled with tears, and her voice would rise, and she would start to shake.
“I was just wondering, you know. If we were still saving up to go to England.”
Her mother sat up then, at once. Her eyes grew intent, and she seemed about to say something, and then checked herself. Her face had gone hard and tight. Then, all at once, it softened again, and she smiled. A long slow odd smile, slightly secretive.
“Of course, my darling,” she said. “Of course we are. I’ve always told you that, haven’t I? I wouldn’t forget.” She paused.
Hélène’s eyes never left her face. “It’s just that…well, we’ve been here a long time now, and you’re settled in school, and sometimes I think it might be nicer to stay.”
“Stay?” Hélène felt herself go very red. “Here? In the trailer park?”
Her mother laughed. “No, darling, of course not. Stay—in this place—a moment longer than we had to? No, darling, I don’t mean that at all. It’s just that…if our circumstances changed. Changed quite considerably. Then it might be very pleasant to stay in America, even in Alabama, don’t you think?”
“Changed? Changed how?” Her voice rose uncontrollably, but her mother only smiled.
“For the better, of course, darling. If we had more money, for instance, quite a lot of money. And a nice place to live. If we had a car—all the new clothes we wanted. If we could forget about budgeting forever, and just buy almost anything we wanted…” She waved her hands a little vaguely in the air. “If that happened, then I don’t think I would mind staying here.” She looked at Hélène’s hot skeptical face. “Darling, don’t look so stubborn, it’s very unattractive. After all, parts of Alabama are very beautiful. There are some beautiful houses—lovely gardens, almost like English ones.” She smiled coaxingly. “There are lawns, and flowers, camellias in the spring. There are gardeners, and you can still get servants here—why, some people in Alabama live in a way scarcely anyone in England can afford these days, and…”
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