Mrs. Barber couldn’t come to the cash register because she was waiting on somebody else. And then suddenly I felt something touch my skirt.
“This is really beautiful.”
When I turned around the woman was sliding the hem of my skirt through her fingers and smiling at me.
“Thanks,” I said.
Now I could study her without looking as though I were staring. Her hair reached halfway down her back and was the color of brownish red that reminded me of pennies. It was a color so rich and rare, it sang. My mother’s was almost like that, but hers came out of a bottle, while nothing about this woman seemed unnatural or planned. Her hair hung mostly straight and thick with a few waves. I doubted that she had ever even rolled it up. Whenever mine had been long my mother had twisted it up on rags so when she combed it out, I had long curls like corkscrews. And always the humidity undid my mother’s handiwork. Frequently I heard my mother tell her friends that the good Lord had given her a little girl so that she could play with her hair. But somewhere along the way my mother got frustrated and gave up.
“I’ve never tried that vanilla. Is it good?” She didn’t talk like anyone around Coldwater. She sounded Southern, but her voice was low, raspy. She didn’t have a whine to it. Instead, her words seemed coated, held low in her throat before they were let go.
“Yeah. It’s right good.” I didn’t seem to feel the need to say “ma’am” to her. She looked so young. And, too, there was something about her that didn’t seem to require it. She looked at me. “You visiting someone in town?”
“Yeah. My grandparents—the Mauldens.”
She laughed—that same laugh I’d heard while lying in the Man-from-Shiloh’s bed. She took her hand away from her throat. The stone she’d been twirling was blue. “So you’re Dr. Maulden’s granddaughter. I’ll bet you’re going to be surprised to hear this.” She leaned toward me, smiling. “I’m living in your house.” She waited a second, watching my face, and laughed again. “I’m renting it. Your grandparents gave me a lease until your family comes back or … whatever.” She smiled again.
Her face was so beautiful that I had trouble thinking about what she’d said. Strangely, none of her features were fine or perfect. By themselves her eyes were too small, her nose was big, her mouth was usual and plain until she smiled. But together all her features worked to make her beautiful, almost exotic. And there wasn’t a freckle or bump on her whole face. Even though she was more of a redhead than anything else, she didn’t have the complexion that usually comes with one. My mother and I weren’t even true redheads; and yet when the sun came out we looked like Howdy Doody. I forgot myself and stared.
Her eyes were a grayish blue like the stone she wore, and she had a full skirt with pockets. It fell loosely around her legs, and her blouse was a simple white sleeveless one. But best of all, when I glanced down out of the embarrassment of her catching me staring at her, I saw she had on black single-strap shoes like dancers wore.
The strangest thing about her face was that her front tooth was chipped. It was crazy—on anybody else it would have looked awful. But on her, it made her look like a tomboy who’d grown up and gotten appealing. In fact, as I categorized her quickly, I knew that she was somebody who did it, and liked it.
“You going to be here for a while?” She was opening her purse and taking out money.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You’ll have to come over. I didn’t move anything in your room. I didn’t have any furniture for it anyway. But it’s such a pretty room. Your mother must have spent a lot of time on it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She likes dressing me up—even my room.” I laughed a little. She was smiling at me.
“I’m Betty Jane Norris,” she said, placing her hand across her shoulders as though claiming herself. Then she smiled again. “Most people call me B.J. And isn’t your name Sally?”
I shook my head. “I guess everybody in Coldwater knows everybody else—even before they meet.”
“Well,” she laughed, “everybody knows your grandfather. Anyway, I lived outside of town on the other side of the Soybean Plant for a while, so I knew something about Coldwater even before I moved in. There aren’t many places to rent around here. Nothing nice anyway.”
“I guess not,” I said.
Mrs. Barber came to the cash register and punched a key that made the drawer fly open. “Will that be all?”
“Yes.” B.J. handed Mrs. Barber a dollar.
“Well, thank you and come back.” Mrs. Barber handed B.J. her change. Before she turned, B.J. looked back at me. “It was nice to meet you.” As she walked away, I stared at her shoes. In them she barely made a sound.
“She tell you she’s renting your house?” Mrs. Barber was looking at me.
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“Well, your grandmother’s not too happy with that. But I hear Miss Norris was the only one willing to sign a lease that would make her get out on a day’s notice if your parents came back.” Mrs. Barber wiped the counter in front of me. I’d let the ice cream drip all over. “I guess it’s better than leaving the house empty. Last winter the pipes froze and leaked. But you probably know about that.”
I nodded. I already had down pat the signal to say that I understood even if I didn’t. And I also knew how to keep Mrs. Barber talking. I rearranged the salt and pepper. “What’s my grandmother unhappy about?”
“Oh, …” Mrs. Barber wiped in circles. “I don’t think it’s fitting for a girl your age to know. Especially since you might move back into that house and spend the rest of your life there.”
“I don’t think I will,” I said. Obviously Mrs. Barber saw me as a potential old maid like Miss Pankhurst, who lived in her parents’ house because no one asked her to live anywhere else. “What’s wrong with Miss Norris?” I asked.
That, of course, was the right question for Mrs. Barber. Now she didn’t think about what she was telling anybody. She bore down on B.J. like a buzzard onto a starving dog. “Well …” she started. She rinsed out her rag. “She came here with Sam Best when he returned a few months ago from his orphanage in Peru. She’d supposedly been working down there. But if you ask me, no nuns would even let her near an orphan. She was probably the cook, though I doubt she can boil water. Anyhow, Sam said he hired her to run his jewelry store. Now Ellen probably thought otherwise; that might just be one reason she up and left Sam and moved her and Julie to Little Rock. Though Sam’s a good man and’s never done wrong by Ellen. But Mr. Allgood did die last winter, and we haven’t had any place to get wedding gifts. So Sam really did need someone to run the jewelry store. But someone from Peru! She doesn’t look like no Peruvian to me. Does she to you?
“Anyway, this Betty Jane Norris, or B.J. as she likes to be called, took over Mr. Allgood’s business. ‘Course Sam owned all the merchandise anyway. Then lo-and-behold if she doesn’t take up with a man working on the pipeline. So if Ellen moved out because of B.J. coming to run the jewelry store, she might as well come back. They say all sorts of things go on in that house of yours. And that girl doesn’t seem to give a hoot about anybody seeing what time a day that man comes and goes. It’s driving your grandmother nuts. And to make matters worse, the girl’s started singing and dancing—if you want to call it that—at the Silver Moon. She’s the midnight show and believe-you-me I hear she’s a good one.” Mrs. Barber pshawed on her last word, which sounded a lot like a gigged frog. I’d heard there were strippers at the Silver Moon, and I guessed that was what Mrs. Barber was talking about. She looked at me. “Now tell me how your mother is.”
“Fine.”
“She going off to cut a record?”
“I guess,” I said, thinking how ugly Mrs. Barber could make recording a song sound—like maybe it was something nice people didn’t do.
When Mrs. Barber walked her swirling rag farther down the counter, I got off my stool. I stood looking in the mirror a second. I didn’t like my face, but I stuck out my tongue more o
n general principles than anything else. What was wrong with going off to make a record, if that’s what my mama wanted to do? And what was so bad about getting rid of me so she could do it? My mother’d probably already be famous and singing on TV if she hadn’t had to stay home and make me get in the bathtub so I’d look halfway decent when I hid in the alley behind the dime store and swapped naked peeks with Bobby Watts, who my mother probably already knew would end up a loser.
I went outside and was just about to take the long way home when someone pushed my shoulder from behind.” ‘Cuse me.”
I stepped back and moved against the drugstore wall. Joel Weiss passed in front of me carrying a bundle of newspapers. He put them in his bike basket. While I’d been in Memphis, he’d obviously gotten the job of delivering the Arkansas Gazette, which was the only daily paper people in Coldwater could get. The Coldwater Gazette came out just on Fridays. So every day on a bus from Little Rock the daily paper came. But before Joel pushed his bike around the corner, he stopped and looked at me. He had on shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which showed off his biceps nice. His legs were hairy and tan and he wore short socks. He grinned sort of crooked and shook his head slowly. “Aren’t you hot in that getup?”
I lifted one shoulder. I tried curling my lips real cute as if saying, So what, I can’t help it.
He turned around and rode his bike across the street. In the year I hadn’t seen him, Joel had grown as tall and good-looking as Bobby Watts had grown pimply and ridiculous.
I walked down the street, and every once in a while I’d catch my reflection in a store window. Inside my chest the knot was like a melon, swelling up to bust. I turned into the alley behind the dime store and the Mercantile, and in the indentation where Bobby Watts and I had done our sordid business I leaned over and grabbed the bottom of my skirt. I hid my face in it, catching a hint of Tide and Niagara Starch. My mother had made that dress. And that lady named B.J. had said it was beautiful. But what did she know? It was a lie. I took the hem of my shirt in each hand and tore a line straight up the middle of it.
When I got home, I told my grandmother that I’d gotten caught on a barbed wire fence running away from a bull. She had to take paregoric and go to bed. Then I sat, mean and quiet, beside my grandfather, watching “Lassie” on TV. I could have shot everybody on that show—even the dog. The ball under my ribs came back and took up its spot like I was its nest.
Pretty soon I’d probably have to hitchhike straight on out of town. It was just in my nature to ruin things.
6.
An Afternoon at the Mill Pond
Misery crawled on my skin like bedbugs. I’d gotten out of my family and had no one to mess with me but grandparents so old they ought to have been easy to outsmart. I couldn’t put my finger on one minute of fun. My grandmother even insisted on those Tara dresses for school. And now I had to walk around with my shoulders humped, making me look even more flat-chested and ugly, to hide the knot that had taken up permanent residence in the middle of my chest. The world was a greased walkway. It was not any kind of a place I could trust. I was so bad that the sidewalk might open up to swallow me whole as I walked home from school, taking the slow route down Main. Ordinarily I’d have gone on down to the Rexall’s. But everybody there was dumb and silly and didn’t know anything about real life. Maybe this was the day I ought to hitchhike on out to Hollywood. But somebody as plain as me might not get a job right off. Still, there was no doubt about it, magic was out there. Somebody as big and fat as Kate Smith could end up looking half good. At least a lot of people seemed to love her, and yet if you knew her up close, she might turn out to be a terrible person, a real bona fide asshole. But she was famous and loved.
Passing on the street in front of me was a truckload of Mexicans. I stood by the Mercantile to watch them. Every fall, they were driven across the border to towns like Coldwater, for cotton picking. Their coming had no announcement and no forewarning. I would hear about it one day in school when one of the farm kids whispered: “They’re here—done come in the night.” This meant that particular kid wouldn’t have to stay out of school anymore to spend every afternoon picking cotton himself. When the cotton was all picked, usually sometime in early November, just after Halloween, the Mexicans would be loaded onto the backs of trucks and driven out of Arkansas as quickly as they had come.
Now as I watched them riding past in the back of that truck, it seemed to me they were having a grand time. One of them was young and good-looking. And when they were halfway down Main, I stuck out my thumb for a ride. The one I’d liked was sitting near the tailgate, and he saw me and smiled. He had gorgeous teeth—so white they reminded me of the whirl of lights at a carnival. Then the truck turned.
They might come back to hunt me up looking for a good time. On Saturday they’d be back for sure. Every Saturday all the migrant workers came into town and filled the stores and went to the cafés and ate turnip greens and cornbread and the Mexicans talked the whole time in a language that no one else could understand. They stood on the streets and rode up and down Main in the backs of trucks, and some people, like my grandmother, didn’t much like the Mexicans being there. They were good for the economy, but my grandmother thought of them as something like a lower form of evolution. It’d been heard that out on Hersham’s Farm, which was the biggest in our county, that they’d relieve themselves almost anywhere. It was talked about at the bridge clubs and the Missionary Society, though not much at the Rotary Club; the men didn’t seem to care. But it was said that if you went to the fields during the day and you stayed there long enough, you were bound to see several of the cotton pickers walk to the edge of the field and proceed. Sometimes they would even use the lawn of their employer. But they always left the field; it seems they had that respect for cotton.
I didn’t much blame them. I’d picked cotton a few times. It must have been about when I was in the fifth grade. Walking home from school, I’d seen a couple of my friends working in the long rows in one of the town fields that came up to the back of the ball field. I’d always heard a lot of talk about how much a person could pick—forty, fifty, sixty pounds. A hundred was real good. I was curious to see what I could do, so I took one of my friend’s bags and joined in. It wasn’t a damn bit of fun. The bag was heavy; it fit over my shoulder and dragged on the ground. The rows seemed endless, the sun outright mean. Pretty soon my mouth was so dry it felt about like I’d been sucking on the damn cotton. If I’d had to go to the bathroom, I wouldn’t have walked all the way back to some bunkhouse, either.
Now, after I’d cut loose and given one of those Mexicans my most dazzling smile, he was probably going to come back looking for me. I guessed I’d just go on back to Mexico with him. Might be I’d end up with a house full of Mexican babies. I could send my grandmother Christmas cards with a picture of all of us on it. It’d be too far away for my parents to visit, which they wouldn’t mind. Or I could just go on out to Hollywood and send those Mexican babies to my grandmother to raise. I ducked into the dime store and walked up one of the aisles.
Mr. Weiss, who owned the store, was sitting on a stool behind the cash register with his sleeves rolled up and his dark oversized forearms coming out like hairy pipes. “How’re you?” he asked, looking up from a magazine at me.
“Fine.”
“You glad to be back?”
“Yessir.”
“How’re your folks?”
“Fine.”
“You heard from them lately?”
“Yessir. They write me a lot. And they call.” Which was the truth. But I wasn’t opening the letters. I was fed up with phony stuff about how they cared about me. I didn’t want to hear junk that wasn’t the truth. It was a waste of my time. I was stuffing their letters in my suitcase under the Man-from-Shiloh’s bed. “My mother’s making a record,” I said, which might be the truth. “She’s probably gonna be on the ‘Dinah Shore Show.’ ” I could even lie good.
“Well, wouldn’t th
at be fine.”
“Yessir.”
“You’ll let me know when, won’t you?”
“You’ll be the first to know.” I smiled.
Mr. Weiss was bald and the dome of his head glistened. “Anything I can help you find?”
“No sir, I’m just looking.”
“Make yourself at home then.” He looked down at a magazine again.
The floors were scuffed hardwood, and creaked. I guess he could know exactly where I was every minute. He was Jewish, and there were only two Jewish families in Coldwater. The other one was Guy Levy who owned the bank. And since there was no synagogue within two hundred miles, I wasn’t sure what arrangements they had with the Almighty Powers, or even what they believed in.
I used to see Guy Levy sitting in his walled-off cubicle whenever I went to the bank with my mother. Everyone called him Guy, but we all knew his real name: Eshek. That sounded so much like “oh shit” that for a while my friends and I used it as a substitute for swearing in public. Then I found out that Eshek was listed in one of the begot paragraphs in the Bible. My grandmother said Jewish people usually gave their sons names from the Old Testament, not only because they didn’t believe in the New Testament, but also because they thought there was the possibility their first-born son would be the Messiah. Well, Guy Levy had a son, Benjamin, who was three grades ahead of me; and he had dark curly hair and a large nose and wore glasses. I would sit in the school cafeteria, looking at him and comparing him to Jesus. Frankly, I couldn’t believe it.
My grandmother had already passed me several pearls about Jews. She said they were big eaters and were oversexed. She told me that I must not ever get into a car with one. Guy Levy was wealthy, though—very wealthy. He owned a lot of the town and most of the houses people rented. My grandmother said that if Benjamin Levy ever stopped the car for me, it would be all right to get in. In fact, she encouraged it. But Joel Weiss, Mr. Weiss’s son—now, he was a different story.
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