“Mr. Morgan, I appreciate your advice, but I’m okay. Thank you anyway.”
“I imagine with a couple of older brothers and a father, you probably get lots of suggestions.” Mr. Morgan kept his fingers around the slats.
A ha kicked up inside of James. He drew in a deep breath, one that felt like a scream again. Suggestions weren’t real help, and they didn’t make up for how small he was. That’s why Pop never came to his games, why Pop was so angry at him all the time. He was small, he was sissy, and baseball was a waste of his time. If Mr. Morgan would go away, James would talk himself through Pop’s list, tell himself just the way Pop would why he was no good at ball, and then he’d quit and be done with it. Just like Pop wanted.
“I realize your father used to play ball, and he was pretty good. I was younger than him and never played with him, or as good as he did, either, but I still know a thing or two about it.”
Pop played baseball? James frowned. Why hadn’t he ever said so? Why hadn’t anyone said so? Maybe that was the real reason he never came to James’ games. He’d been good when he was young, and James wasn’t. Pop was old now. Too old to play or care about the game. Too old to be having little kids like James around, something he’d said more than once. He was lots older than Mama, and older than Mr. Morgan, too.
“He missed me,” James said, looking at Mr. Morgan.
“Your father? He missed you?” Mr. Morgan’s brows furrowed.
“No, I mean the pitcher. I wasn’t out. He missed me.” He saw it again in Mr. Morgan’s eyes, the near reflection of himself and the reason Mama was there telling him to fight above the hurt. Pop missed me, too. He missed my game, he missed my stupid hit, he missed seeing me lose the game for the whole team.
Mr. Morgan’s brows leveled out. “How about I show you how to choke up on a bat?”
James didn’t feel like fighting or trying harder; it was easier to just hurt. There were things sissies could do; baseball just wasn’t one of them.
“No, thank you.” James turned away and stared at the empty diamond. Pop was probably a lot like that pitcher today. Long, lanky, a hero, arms as quick as snakes. Mr. Morgan didn’t say anything, but he was still there behind the dugout. James could hear Mama in his presence. James sighed, dragged to his feet, grabbed his bat, and stepped out of the dugout.
Mr. Morgan stood back and waited until James came in front of him. “First off, that bat’s too small for you,” Mr. Morgan nodded at James’ bat. “You were right to try a bigger one, but work your way up. Try one that’s only somewhat larger next time.”
James twisted the end of his bat in the dirt, waiting for Mr. Morgan to add “because you’re so small.”
“Now take a nice, slow, even swing with that bat. Feel the drag of the weight at its far end through the air.”
James looked up. Mr. Morgan nodded at the bat. James dropped his glove and lifted the bat until it was level with his shoulders, then moved it in a semicircle.
“Now grip your hands a little higher on the handle, just above where they are now, and swing again.”
James did as Mr. Morgan said. He felt the difference.
“I get it!” James wobbled the bat in the air with his hands near the end and then farther up. “I see what you mean.”
“Come on, James!”
James glanced toward the bleachers. His oldest sister, Magdalena, stood next to their mother. She was seventeen, wearing too much makeup, and drawing on a cigarette.
“Pop will kill her if he sees her that way,” James said, more to himself than Mr. Morgan, as he lowered the bat. Maybe it was good Pop hadn’t shown up for the game, for Magdalena’s sake. James shuddered as he thought what Pop would have said right there in front of everyone. Mr. Morgan moved alongside him. He wasn’t big, but he felt steady, steady enough to absorb James’ shudders. “Pop never lets Mama or my sisters wear makeup. He says makeup’s for ugly hags, and cigarettes are for men and whores.” He looked up at Mr. Morgan, wondering if he understood what Pop meant.
Mr. Morgan didn’t say anything. Just like Mama never did. No one ever explained, nor did Mama ever complain at her oldest daughter or tattle to Pop how Magdalena looked or behaved in public. Mama protected her, just like she watched out for James. It was the way she loved them, her special way.
Mama said something to Magdalena. Magdalena looked straight at James. Whatever Mama said made Magdalena draw on her cigarette until the end flared bright orange.
James picked up his glove and slid its strap over the bat’s end and rested the bat on his shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan. I need to go. Magdalena’s here to walk home with us. We gotta get there before Pop does so Magdalena can wash that stuff off her face.”
Mr. Morgan glanced at James’ glove, touched it, and looked it over. “That yours?” he asked.
“My brothers, Harold and Alex, used it before me. It’s mine now.”
Mr. Morgan nodded, let go of the glove, and looked James in the eye. “Your pop was a good ballplayer, so when he gives you advice how to play better, take it. And you can tell your sister that what your pop really means about her is that beautiful women don’t need makeup. Hags have nothing to do with her.”
“You think Magdalena’s beautiful?” James frowned at Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan placed a hand on James’ shoulder. “She’s your sister, so you probably don’t think so. But I can tell you one thing, she’s your mama’s daughter, and your mama sure doesn’t need any makeup. I know.”
James looked for his mama again in Mr. Morgan’s dark eyes. Did Mr. Morgan see her the same way Pop did, and that’s why makeup was forbidden? Mama would probably laugh at all this talk about beauty, she with her faded dresses and unpinned hair. James wanted to laugh like she would, but something in Mr. Morgan’s eyes stopped him.
“Your mama’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” Mr. Morgan said. That was different from saying she wasn’t an old hag. Just like saying choke up on the bat was different from saying James was small and sissy.
Cigarette smoke broke into their conversation. James turned and saw Magdalena near his side. He hadn’t heard her approach, hadn’t even noticed she’d moved. When he looked toward the bleachers, Mama was gone. Probably out near the road, waiting.
“Time to go, James.” Magdalena seemed a little less brazen as she blew smoke into the air. She dropped the cigarette and rubbed it out in the dirt.
“Goodbye, Mr. Morgan,” James said. “And thanks.” There were chores waiting for him at home, and if they weren’t done, he’d get a thrashing. Magdalena had to scrub her face, and Mama had to get a meal on the table. They’d all be hurrying, getting everything in place before Pop got there.
“Goodbye, Glen.” Magdalena’s familiarity shocked James. He looked up at Mr. Morgan, wondering if the man was as surprised as he was. Mr. Morgan nodded. There was a question in his eyes, something he chose not to ask. Mr. Morgan turned and walked away.
“Let’s go,” Magdalena said, and James ran ahead of her to the road, where Mama was waiting. Beautiful Mama. He glanced back over his shoulder. Mr. Morgan was far away, but he was watching them. There was something in his stance like there had been in his eyes. James waved, then turned and walked with his sister and mother. They had to hurry. They had to get home.
Chapter 2
Lana 1929
“Lana, get back over here!” The way Grandma chopped her words, the way she barked rather than spoke, finally drew Lana away from the window. She left a smudge where she’d rubbed it all morning, watching, waiting for her parents to come. The window was clean enough, but she wanted to see her father when she looked out, see him coming up to the door and smiling, waving the way she’d imagined he would. He’d written…well, her mother had…promising they’d come…he’d come. Lana’d rubbed the window, over and over, trying to make him appear. “Get over here and stay put. We have to hurry,” Grandma called again. She was impatient, her bark getting worse.
Lana moved near th
e cots she and Grandma slept on. Grandma lowered herself to the floor beside her, one bony knee at a time, grimacing as she knelt.
“He said he’d be here. Well, Mom said they would.” Lana looked down at her grandma. She was too thin, not enough meat on her to be comfortable down there, too old to be crouching that way.
Grandma snorted, hanging onto the straight pins clenched between her lips. Lana watched her bunch the dress’ extra fabric in her weathered fist and pin it at Lana’s waist so she could baste it in place. It was Grandma’s best dress, the one she wore to church, and it was a little too loose for Lana, a little too straight, and a little too long. That’s the way Grandma wore her dresses, especially her best dress, best but still old like the rest of them.
Lana strained to see herself in the cracked mirror that leaned against the wall near Grandma’s cot. “You think your dress works good for a bride?” Lana eyed the dress her grandmother was giving her, faded gray fabric with only a hint of white where tiny daisies had once been. Lana’s dresses were old and faded too, different colors than Grandma’s, but so washed out they looked almost the same. If she squinted, Grandma’s dress looked almost white all over. Lana knew nothing about being a bride other than what her best friend, Jeanie, had told her, and Jeanie had been firm that brides were supposed to wear white.
“You’re going to be a wife, not a bride, and you’re going to need your two dresses for everyday.” Grandma muttered around her mouthful of pins, her needle and thread weaving in and out of the gathered waist. “Get silly notions about being a bride out of your head.” Grandma knotted the thread and tugged the fabric tight, jerking Lana off balance.
Lana straightened and squared her feet on the floor. Every wife was a bride. Any woman…or girl…couldn’t be one without being the other. Lana didn’t know much about being either one beyond Jeanie’s tales of princes and princesses, and the secret things that went on between them when they were alone at night. Grandma said Jeanie’s tales were just that, stories designed to create flutters in little girls’ hearts and make their eyes grow wide with silly expectations. Lana had never worried which one was right, Jeanie or Grandma, because there hadn’t been a reason to. Not until now…now that a man had asked for her, told her grandmother he’d take her off Grandma’s hands and provide for her.
Lana stared down at her grandma. She wanted to touch her shoulder, tell her it was okay, that both of them were upset. There was just too much rush, too much hurrying, and not enough time to turn Lana into a bride…a wife…and a woman…all on such short notice.
Lana glanced toward the window and strained to listen for the sound of a vehicle or wagon, whatever her father chose to get them here today. Lana’s mother had written periodically over the years, always apologizing they were so far away, times being hard and work being so scarce and all. She described what the two of them were doing and how different each town looked that they went to, scratching out her and Lana’s father’s lives a few lines at a time on an occasional slip of paper.
Lana’s mother was Grandma’s only daughter. She’d been good about visiting on her own now and then, looking every bit as tired as she described in her letters. She looked older than she was supposed to be, too, something she tried to hide behind bright red lips and false highlights drawn around her eyes.
“Can you bring my father with you next time?” Lana begged her mother on each visit. There was always a reason he wasn’t there, always a hardship that kept him busy and away, until finally she brought him. Once. And unexpected. They appeared at Grandma’s door, and Lana stared at him, her heart racing across the room and into his arms before she could get her feet to cooperate. He looked nervous, he fidgeted, he was a little uncomfortable, and he forgot how old Lana was and where she’d been born. But she forgave him because there was still something princely about him.
She’d eased across the room a little at a time instead of in full flight like she wanted. He smelled like smoke, like a thin layer of soap over hard times, when she reached his side. She laced her fingers through his and tried not to let him see how hard she was breathing. He had nice eyes, and she could see he was thinking as he looked at her. There seemed to be questions in his gaze instead of answers, but she didn’t mind. This was the first time they’d officially met, since she’d been living her whole life with Grandma. She held onto his hand and refused to let go, looking for similarities between him and herself. She’d cried when he left. All she had of him after that was his best, sent to her in her mother’s letters, a promise he loved her, and an apology he was so busy.
But now he was coming back, coming to see her for the second time, and this time to stand with her as she married. She felt his heart beating in hers, jumping off those letters her mother had sent all these years. He was making this one last trip to be by her side while she was still a girl to help her make the step from childhood into sudden adulthood. He’d be here. Her mother said he would. She couldn’t wait.
“If Cletus had put this off a few more years, I might not have had to alter this dress so much,” Grandma muttered from below, leaning back and eyeing the gathers. “You’re still so gangly. Just a child. Not sure what he sees in you.”
Lana hadn’t met Cletus yet. He lived a few towns away, and the deal had been made while she was at school. “Someone asked for you,” was all her grandmother had said one afternoon when Lana came home. “His name’s Cletus, Cletus Paine. He’s got kin nearby, and he asked for you for his wife. He’ll give me a little something too, to help out now and then.” Grandma had refused to answer Lana’s questions that afternoon, questions about where she and Cletus would live, how often Grandma would visit, and would she have to make new friends. Grandma was gruff, gruffer than usual, and kept her back to Lana most of the evening. Lana told Jeanie the next day at school about her arranged marriage, and Jeanie’s eyes grew wide as she described men in greater detail for Lana, what they looked like all over, what they smelled like, and how they acted. Those details were frightening. They didn’t sound princely at all, but Jeanie assured Lana they were.
“Will my husband want me to finish eighth grade?”
Grandma snorted and took a pin from between her lips. She tugged the bottom edge of the dress taut, the place where the hem had come loose, and she rolled the ragged edge up and pinned it. Grandma struggled to her feet. She was weathered from too many years of hard work, slightly stooped at the shoulders, but still stubbornly mulish in her frown. “I swear, I don’t know where you get all these silly notions. From Jeanie, no doubt. When a man asks for you, he’s just looking for a wife, and wives don’t need to be educated for what they have to do. You don’t need any smarts at all other than to cook, keep his house clean, and don’t sass him. And whatever he wants to do, you let him do it.” Grandma paused. She looked Lana in the eye, then stepped back to study the dress. The creases of her frown deepened.
Grandma had been a wife once, but Grandpa was long gone, and Grandma said he was dead. There were no reminders of him anywhere, just like there were no reminders of Lana’s father other than the letters her mother had written that Lana kept. Grandma had been the only real family Lana had ever known, and Grandma took care of her with a grumbling determination to keep food in Lana’s belly and a scrap of a dress on her long, gangly limbs.
Lana glanced around the house she’d grown up in, barely more than one room, barely enough furnishings to say she and Grandma did anything but survive. Grandma said things would be better for Lana this way. This man would make sure both of them had more—Grandma a little care sent her way once in awhile and Lana a home of her own.
Grandma stepped close. She lifted the hem where she could reach it and sewed around the pin, her hands working a little faster, a little rougher than before. Then she moved back again, still frowning. Lana watched her. She never knew for sure what color Grandma’s eyes were. They were dark, but it wasn’t their color that made them that way, it was depth, it was worry, it was frustration and hard work.
“Maybe it needs a belt,” Lana suggested.
Grandma hobbled toward the front door, and Lana could hear her grunt and pant over their rag box. She came back with a long strand of yellow fabric. It was a remnant salvaged from some broken-down garment of long ago, longer ago than Lana could remember. “We’ll try this,” Grandma said. She bent around Lana and looped the yellow fabric like a belt about her waist. She drew it tight and tied it, letting the loose ends hang down. Grandma smelled like earth and sweat, the scent of her years of struggle to gather food enough for the two of them and keep their single-room home from caving in. Grandma straightened to survey the belt, a memory of some invisible happier time softening her face for a moment before it disappeared. “It’ll have to do, I guess. He ain’t gonna care much how you look anyway. He’s too old for that. Probably why he doesn’t mind you looking more like a scrawny boy than a girl.”
Lana stared at her grandma. “Too old? How old? Won’t he still care a little bit? Want me to be sort of pretty? Surely he wants his bride, I mean his wife, to at least look nice.”
“You ask too many questions.” Grandma let out a little grunt. She hated it when Lana was pesky, but more than that, she hated talk about beauty. She was worn and gray. Maybe she’d never been pretty at all. Whenever Lana stood too long in front of the mirror, trying different-colored rag scraps against her auburn hair, Grandma always snatched them away and told Lana to be content with what she had, which, Grandma always added, wasn’t much. “And don’t be setting any store by looks, young lady. Cletus didn’t pick you for looks. He picked you to work hard and make babies.”
Jeanie had said something about making babies. She had lots of brothers and sisters, some of them married, so Jeanie claimed to know a lot about husbands and families and being a wife. She said some people called it making love, not just making babies, and it was supposed to be deeply satisfying. According to Grandma it really wasn’t; it only made babies and that was it. Lana couldn’t imagine the act that Jeanie’d whispered as being something someone did for love, but it intrigued her. Grandma had snorted when Lana asked her about the act. “Ain’t you ever seen what a bull does to a cow? Or one dog to another?” Lana hadn’t. Or if she had, she hadn’t thought anything of it.
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