by Gail Godwin
Flora took these corrections with good grace. “If my fifth or sixth graders are as smart as you, honey, I will have my work cut out for me.”
I was teaching Flora how to play advanced jacks when my father phoned from Oak Ridge.
“Not much happening here on a Sunday night. Harker and I walked down to where they’re building some more houses for workers with families. Harker is my roommate. I’d say it was like being back at college, except Harker wouldn’t have been at college. But he suits me. He’s a master welder, deaf as a post, and laughs at everything I say. What have you girls got to report?”
“Brian Beale and a little girl have come down with polio. She’s in an iron lung and he may be a cripple for life.”
I had flung down this dramatic offering to get the attention of the parent I had not spoken to since he left me with the Huffs, but I soon regretted it.
“Where is Flora?” he asked.
“On the floor. We were playing jacks.”
“Let me speak to her.”
After she had imparted the information he wanted (the lake, the hospital, the little girl, Father McFall says we’ll have to take it a step at a time with Brian), she was reduced to monosyllabic yips in response to my father’s instructions. Then she passed the receiver back to me.
“Okay, Helen, here’s the deal,” he said curtly. “You’re staying on top of that mountain. I’ve been where I forbid you to go. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As of right now you’re quarantined. Worse things than having to stay at home can happen to little girls. Like iron lungs, or death, or shriveled legs. I was luckier than most with the leg. At sixteen I had my full growth. You are only ten—okay, going on eleven—and I forbid you to risk becoming a woman with the shrunken limbs of a child. Flora has her orders, and I depend on you to help her carry them out. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Flora went straight to pieces after talking to my father. She was indulging in the kind of panic adults were supposed to hide so as not to worry children. She stumbled around blindly, tripping over our abandoned jacks, wailing a litany of her many failings, which I tried not to hear word for word because it was too upsetting: she should never have taken this job, she was not good enough, smart enough, she could never fulfill my father’s expectations, she should never have agreed to take care of me.
How could I put her together again? What would Nonie do? First she would make you sit down. She would say something soothing and reasonable, though always retaining her edge of authority, and convince you that the crisis, whatever it was, could be managed. I told Flora we should go sit on the sofa in the living room so she could relay my father’s instructions while they were still fresh in her mind. He had said he depended on me to help her carry them out, but to do that I was going to need a list of what we were supposed to do and not do. While everything was still fresh in her mind.
We sank together onto the faded yellow silk cushions that held so many associations of “talks” it was like sitting down on my past, and I coaxed my father’s injunctions out of Flora. We were not to go into the shops, not even the ones in our immediate neighborhood, or take the bus to town to go to the movies or to any place where people gathered, not even to church. I was not to go to my friends’ houses or have them to mine, and I was not to visit Brian in the hospital.
“We might as well curl up and die!” I would have screamed if there had been a guaranteed adult there to talk me down. But Flora was the one who needed to be talked down, and it was gratifying to see the influence I could wield on a person twice my age. My father had gone overboard because of his own history, I explained, but he would come around, she would see, next time he called he would loosen the restrictions; meantime we had to keep him calm so he could do his job and bring home some much needed funds at the end of the summer. As she could see from the state of the place, we could use some repair money. The pay was fabulous at Oak Ridge, especially when it was someone valuable like my father who was used to keeping order and knew about blueprints and building things. I told her if he chose to work there year-round he’d get double his salary as high school principal. And then, saving my clincher for last—or so I thought—I revealed to her that my father himself had been a victim of polio.
At this Flora perked up. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Anstruther wrote about it in the letters. Suddenly she had the two of them to care for, the doctor with his stroke and her son with polio and everyone else running out on them. But she rose to it, your grandmother did. She cooked the meals and cared for her dying husband and massaged Harry’s legs. Your mother called your father’s limp endearing in the note she sent with the wedding announcement.”
“You must mean the engagement announcement,” I corrected.
“No, honey. We didn’t even know she was dating someone till we got the wedding announcement with her note. And then I’m afraid we thought—well, never mind what we thought—but later on, Daddy figured that Lisbeth hadn’t asked us because we wouldn’t have done credit to her. Lisbeth was very proud—well, she had every right to be, she was so superior.”
Thanks to my efforts Flora had regained charge of herself. Now I was the one floundering among misgivings. I couldn’t have said exactly what in her version of things unsettled me. I knew my parents had been married quietly in our church because, as Nonie said, Lisbeth didn’t want to put her uncles to the expense of an Alabama wedding. There was an elegant reception afterward at our house, after which my father and mother took a short wedding trip to Blowing Rock in Nonie’s car, which was brand-new then, and returned to their school jobs the following week.
I also knew what Flora had stopped herself from saying, having been apprised by Nonie of the facts of life through her resourceful use of the “Social Hygiene for Girls” pamphlet that had brought my father and mother together. She doled out supplements to this story as I grew into an age to handle them: what exactly the pamphlet had said, which parts had struck Nonie and my father as amusing or outdated when they read it aloud to each other over cocktails. (“It was a sad little production, full of unintended slipups. One I particularly remember was the misprint impotent when important was meant. And parts of it were insulting. It claimed that though a few well-brought-up young women were trained to safeguard their morals by the age of sixteen, most were not. I bristled at that. What was ‘well-brought-up’ but a code for privileged? I don’t claim to be more than a farmer’s daughter, but I was perfectly capable of safeguarding my morals at age sixteen.”)
The uncles in Alabama had thought Lisbeth and Harry had started a baby and had to get married fast. But when I didn’t come along until a full year and a month later they had to find another reason they hadn’t been invited to the wedding.
It was a short courtship for my parents because from the very first evening, when they were playing cards, Lisbeth had felt she was part of our family. It was understandable, Nonie said. Lisbeth had lost her mother when she was eight, and the nearest thing she’d had to a female to care for her after that was the Negro woman who lived with the uncles.
“Well, I lost my mother when I was three,” I would remind Nonie.
“Yes, darling, but after that you had me.”
“I think Lisbeth returned my love first,” Nonie would muse. “You know how your father often strikes new acquaintances as somewhat acerbic. I was the one who brought her out, made her feel at home. She liked me, she liked my style, and she liked the way we lived. Why, that first evening, she said she’d bring her poker chips next time she came—and then blushed to high heaven because she had invited herself back—it just showed how comfortable she already felt with us. We settled into our weekly threesome—I want you to know I became an excellent blackjack player—and it wasn’t long before Harry looked across the card table and realized this was the woman he’d been waiting for all along.”
I had been considering telling Flora how my father had caught polio when he ran away with Wi
llow Fanning, but she had preempted my story with this information about my parents’ marriage, which I now had to find a place for.
That night I went to bed in my old room. The garage voice had said I should move on Tuesday, when Mrs. Jones came to clean. I was to tell her what “the dream” had said and that she should make up Nonie’s room because I would be moving into it permanently. She was a great respecter of the supernatural, Mrs. Jones was. Her little dead daughter had spoken to her at the cemetery. “Momma, you don’t need to take the bus out here anymore, I’m not under this stone, I am at home with you.” The spirit of her uncle Al had begged Mrs. Jones’s forgiveness for wrongs he had done her as a child. “Say you forgive me, sweetheart,” he had said, “then open that window and let my spirit fly free.” Mrs. Jones had said aloud to him in her kitchen: “If you say so, I forgive you, Uncle Al, but you were always kind to me.” Then she had opened the window, and felt a great whoosh of air, and the next morning there was a big crow on the branch outside fixing her with its yellow eye. Mrs. Jones threw bread crusts out to it for several days, remembering how Uncle Al always brought her treats, and then one morning it made a strange triple caw that sounded exactly like “Bye, sweetheart,” looked her straight in the eye, and flew off for good.
Tonight and tomorrow would be my last nights in this room of my childhood, and the room seemed to feel this because it wasn’t being unfriendly anymore. Its wistful sadness was like that of a friend who knows you’ve outgrown the friendship and need to move on.
VIII.
After breakfast Monday morning Flora checked over our list for Grove Market.
“Would you like to call it in, Helen?”
“Not really.”
I wished I’d said yes as soon as she began speaking to the person on the other end, who could not have been grouchy Mr. Crump because he would never have put up with such dalliance. Why couldn’t she just coolly read off the list, with pauses to let the other person write things down?
“What, no fresh corn? We would have corn by now in Alabama. But then we planted our garden very early down there: corn, okra, spinach, peas, runner beans. I guess you wouldn’t have any okra this early either. No, I thought not. Too bad, we’ll have to do with canned corn, then. And does your meat market have something called chipped beef? Oh, in jars. How big are the jars? Maybe two jars then. And remember now, this all goes on Mr. Anstruther’s tab, he’s away doing important war work over in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We’re going to be ordering whenever we need something, is that all right? He doesn’t want my little cousin to go into public places because of this polio outbreak. Oh, and two quarts of milk for my cousin, she’s still growing—wait, let me see if she wants anything else. Helen, can you think of anything else?”
I had gone beyond embarrassment. “Maybe some candy.”
“What kind?”
“Clark bars.”
“How many?”
“Five,” I risked.
“Five Clark bars,” Flora relayed without batting an eye. “And can you tell us approximately when your delivery person will be coming? Not that we expect to be going anywhere! And you ought to know our driveway is a tiny bit rough.”
Our big event of the morning was the walk down our tiny-bit-rough driveway to fetch the mail. Flora had two letters, I had nothing. She kissed the handwritten envelope (“Dear Juliet, at least somebody loves me!”) but ripped open the typewritten one first, scanned the contents, and began to cry.
“What?” I said.
“I expected it. But still—”
“What?”
“They said no, and it was my first choice.” Bravely she replaced the letter in its envelope and scrubbed her eyes with her fists like a child. “They say it’s because I don’t drive. The thing is, someone offered to drive me to that interview, but it would have been in a truck and I thought I’d make a better impression if I arrived alone on the bus. It was this darling little school in the middle of a field. Fifteen sixth graders. I could have handled it real well.”
“But you had three interviews, so you still have two more chances.”
“I wonder if I had told a lie about the driving—I could have learned to drive later. But this was probably their way of letting me off nicely. If I had said I could drive they would have had to have come up with some other excuse for not wanting me.”
“You have to start thinking better of yourself, Flora.”
“That’s exactly what Mrs. Anstruther said in her letters.”
“Well, it’s true. Others judge you at your own estimation.”
“Her exact words! You’re so lucky to have had her, Helen. I’m such a mess. Not like your mother. Nobody had to tell Lisbeth to think better of herself. Maybe you have to be born with it. Were you born with it? I don’t know. But, being her daughter, your chances are better than mine.”
“Who cares whether you were born with it?” I asked. Yet Flora had set misgivings buzzing in my head. “You have to at least act like you have it.”
“That’s just what your grandmother would have said!” crowed Flora, almost knocking me down with a hug.
Father McFall telephoned to report that Brian was “holding his own” in the hospital and that he had conveyed my message. Annoyingly he kept skirting around my questions about Brian’s condition. “But I’m still hoping to drop by and visit with you and your cousin this week.” He offered it like a consolation prize for not telling me anything I wanted to know.
“My father said we can’t have any visitors. He said we can’t even go to church.” I was glad to be able to punish Father McFall in this small way.
The phone again. This time it was Annie Rickets, my favorite acid-tongued little friend. “Can you talk?”
“Sort of.”
“Is she around?”
“Upstairs in her room.”
“The dear old Willing Fanny room.”
“Oh, Annie, I’ve missed you.”
“You’re going to miss me a lot more.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just joking. How is it going with her?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Except for—?”
I lowered my voice: “Kind of naïve. Huge inferiority complex. Not that we’ll be going anywhere for people to notice. My father has quarantined us to the house. Did you hear about Brian?”
“I heard he was pretty bad. His acting career’s probably over, unless he does wheelchair parts. But at least he’s not in an iron lung like that little girl. So how was your week with the high-living Huffs? Did you get lots of swimming in?”
“I’d have gotten in a lot more if I’d known the summer was going to turn out like this.”
“I heard a really odd rumor about him.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Huff. Some people think he doesn’t exist.”
“That’s crazy. He’s always sending packages.”
“You can send packages to yourself.”
Though I knew Annie’s best rumors originated inside her own fiendishly inventive head, that didn’t make them any less appealing. They always had a rightness about them, like the rightness of what ought to happen next in a good story. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where you heard this rumor,” I said, and waited for her usual answer.
“Well, when you’ve got not one but two parents working for the phone company, you hear a lot. You can listen in on anything if you have the right equipment. Which brings me to my exciting news. We’re being transferred.”
“Wait a minute. Is this some more of that joke?”
“What joke?”
“What you said a few minutes ago about how I was going to miss you, but then you said you were joking.”
“It’s no joke. I just wasn’t ready to tell you yet. They’re moving us to this boring little town in the flatlands. Daddy will be regional manager and make lots more money and Mammy will stay home with us. She’ll probably die of resentment and boredom or kill us first, I haven’t decided wh
ich yet.”
“When?”
“Daddy’s already down there looking for a house. We’re supposed to move in three weeks. They’re paying for the Mayflower van and we don’t even have to pack up our own stuff. My rotten little sisters will share a bedroom in the new house and I’ll get one all to myself.”
“You sound awfully pleased.” Two out of three friends cut down in two days. I was on a losing streak, like Flora with her jobs. Only she still had two out of three left.
“You can come visit. It’s only a bus ride down the mountain. You’ll be able to stay over at my house for a change. Maybe I’ll give my room a name like the rooms at your house.”
Then she ruined everything. “But the truth is, and we’re both smart enough to know it, Helen, we’ll probably never see each other again.”
SLOWLY IT CREAKED into afternoon and I was beginning to see how the whole summer was going to be. Meals and Flora. Flora and meals. We couldn’t go anywhere and nobody could come to us. To escape Flora, who was already preparing supper, though we had hardly finished with lunch, I had gone to the garage to sit in Nonie’s car. I had been waiting very quietly, trying to summon back the voice from yesterday, when a motorcycle roar shattered the stillness. I slammed out of the garage in time to see it buck over the crowning bump of our hill. It was a three-wheeled affair with a storage trunk behind. A skinny man with pointy features and close-cropped bright orange hair dismounted, mouthing my father’s worst obscenity. But when he spotted me, he quickly socialized his face and called, “You folks have one holy terror of a driveway.” He wore khakis, the pants stuffed inside high lace-up boots.
“We’re having it seen to, now that the war is over,” I said haughtily.
“Well, it is and it isn’t.”
“What?”
“The war. We still have the Japs to beat.” He looked past me into the open garage. “Oldsmobile Tudor touring car. Nineteen thirty-three.”