“Bethany, why don’t you go upstairs and help Reana Mae get settled in,” she said, picking up a dish towel and wringing it absently.
As I left the room, I heard her say, “Tracy, if I hear you talk about your cousin that way again, I will ground you for a month.”
Upstairs, Reana Mae was curled up in a tiny ball on her bed, Essie’s lumpy little body cradled in her uninjured arm.
“You okay?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at me.
I sat down on the bed beside her.
“I’m sorry, Reana Mae.”
It was the only thing I could think of to say. I wasn’t even sure what I was sorry about—Jolene’s beating her, Bobby Lee’s continued absence, her disastrous love for Caleb … there were just so many things to be sorry for.
“They can’t keep him away from me,” she said, speaking so quietly I had to lean down to hear her.
“He’ll come for me, and they can’t keep him away.”
She cried then, softly at first, then big, gulping sobs. I sat on the bed, holding her hand, and watched her cry until finally she cried herself out and drifted off to sleep. Even then, I sat beside her, as if somehow I could protect her just by being there.
But I couldn’t protect Reana Mae. Not then, not later.
I couldn’t protect her from Tracy, or from the hurtful things people said about her. I couldn’t protect her from the pain of waiting day after long day for a lover who was never going to come. I couldn’t protect her from her loneliness or her anger.
I could only love her, like I always had, and hope it was enough.
22
New Beginnings and Old Baggage
Christmas morning came quietly. We’d opened most of our gifts days before, though Mother had held back a few. I had a new record player and several albums. Reana and I spent long hours in the attic room listening to Three Dog Night and the Temptations. Sometimes Cindy joined us, though she didn’t quite know how to talk to Reana Mae. Mostly, she stared as if Reana were from another planet, listening carefully to everything Reana Mae said, watching for some sign that Reana was joking when she talked about life on the river.
Tracy whined to Mother daily, but we had already laid claim to the room. Tracy had been effectively moved out, and until Nancy went back to college, she couldn’t move downstairs. So she slept on the couch in the living room and complained bitterly.
Reana Mae had a new camera from Mother and Daddy, and we took dozens of pictures during winter break. Years later, I looked through those photos often, searching the faces of the two little girls on the brink of adolescence, looking for signs of things to come. Reana’s face stared back, her lip swollen fat, her eye dark and puffy, her grin snaggletoothed. Except for the bruises and the cast on her arm, she looked like any other twelve-year-old. But of course, she wasn’t. She knew things most twelve-year-olds hadn’t even dreamed about. Things I certainly didn’t know.
Three days before school started, Mother took Reana Mae to the dentist to get a cap put on her broken tooth.
“See,” she grinned at me afterward, “you can’t even tell it’s broke.”
So at least when she started middle school in Indianapolis, her teeth were okay, though she still looked like she’d been in a car wreck. The swelling had receded, but her upper lip still showed cut marks from the garnet in Jolene’s wedding ring, and her eye was ringed in a faint greenish-yellow.
We stood at the bus stop, bundled against the blowing snow, and I tried to tell her everything I could think of that she might need to know about school.
“Miss Hancock is nice, but she gives lots of homework. Just don’t talk in her class. And Mr. Burke … well, he’s just gross. He always has spit on his mouth and his breath stinks! And he paddles, so be careful with him.”
Reana Mae stroked the fur of her parka hood, seemingly un-fazed by this information.
“And if Mr. McCormack calls on you and you don’t know the answer, just ask him a question about another problem. That always gets him off the subject. He’s pretty easy, as long as you do the homework.”
Still, she said nothing.
“Aren’t you nervous?” I asked finally. My stomach had been churning all morning.
She smiled at me in that smug-adult way she had sometimes.
“Naw, I ain’t scared,” she said airily. “I figure I ain’t gonna be here long enough to worry about it.”
I didn’t reply.
She still expected Caleb to show up and whisk her away to her fairy-tale life, in a big house with air-conditioning and lace curtains. No matter what Mother or Daddy or I said, she refused to believe that he wasn’t coming.
She liked her new clothes, of course, and her new coat. She liked the bed and dresser Mother had bought, and our room in the attic. She liked Mother’s cooking, and she had pitched in with housework cheerfully. She seemed to look on the entire episode as a vacation, a lark away from her mother and the disapproval of her kinfolk on the river.
I didn’t see Reana all day. Sixth graders were in a separate part of the school building. When the bell rang, I ran to the bus, anxious to hear how her first day had been. But she wasn’t on the bus. Ten minutes later, when the bus pulled away from the school, she still wasn’t on it. I tried to convince Mr. Gonzalez, the driver, to wait, but he just told me to sit back down.
I ran home from the bus stop. I had to tell Mother that Reana Mae had missed the bus. But when I opened the door, Reana was already there, sitting bolt upright on the couch, her cheeks red and her eyes bright.
Mother turned away from her when she heard me.
“Bethany, go upstairs and get started on your homework.”
I looked from her face to Reana’s. Neither looked happy.
“But, Mother …” I began.
“Don’t argue with me, now. You go on up to your room.”
Upstairs, I lay on my bed, straining to catch any sound from downstairs. But Mother’s voice didn’t carry up the stairs.
After a while, Reana Mae came up. She didn’t look at me or say anything, just flopped down on her unmade bed with a huge sigh.
“What happened?”
“I ain’t never goin’ back to that school,” she hissed.
“But, Reana Mae.” I walked over to sit on her bed. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t my fault, Bethany.” She rolled over, punched her pillow hard, and flopped back down. “Those stuck-up girls just kept doggin’ me and doggin’ me till I couldn’t stand it no more.”
“What girls?”
“I don’t know their names,” she said, staring at me as if I were stupid. “These three girls that are in all my classes … they started in first thing, and they kept at it all damned day.”
“What did they do?”
“Called me a hillbilly, first off. Made fun of the way I talk. Said I was a goddamned charity case, ’cause Aunt Helen and Uncle Jimmy brought me up here.”
She blinked furiously, trying to hold back tears.
“Then in gym class, they told everyone I was a whore. Said I had sex with my uncle, and probably lots of other men. Said that’s what hillbillies do … have sex with their own kinfolk.”
I stared at her, openmouthed. How had they known about Caleb?
Then I realized, it had to be Tracy.
“Those girls,” I said, “was one of them short, with blond hair about down to here?” I gestured at my waist.
Reana Mae nodded. “That’s the worst one. She said I was trash and belonged in a reform school.”
“That’s Jenny Spangler,” I said. “And the others were probably Amy Adams and Patty O’Hearn.”
Reana didn’t answer. She just stared at me.
“How’d they know, Bethany?” she asked, not taking her eyes from mine.
“Oh, God, Reana, I didn’t tell them!” I couldn’t believe she would even think that. “Jenny’s big sister is Lynette. That’s Tracy’s best friend.”
Reana Mae
nodded solemnly. “That’s what I figured,” she said. “No one else could be so goddamn mean.”
“So, what happened then? When they kept teasing you, I mean.”
“Well, I ignored them for a while, you know. But at lunchtime one of them—the one with real short hair—she dumped her whole tray of food on me! Got macaroni and cheese all over my new sweater. And then they all just laughed, like it was so goddamned funny.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching for her hand.
“Well, you don’t have to be sorry for me, Bethany Marie. No one has to be sorry for me! I can take care of myself.”
“What did you do?”
“I knocked her flat on her ass.”
“Oh, Reana, no! You didn’t!”
“Oh yes, I did.” She smiled grimly. “I got her with one to the chin. Hit her so hard she went right down. Then I hit the blond one, too.”
“Oh my God! You hit Jenny Spangler?”
“I guess she’s got a shiner worse than this one.” Reana Mae smiled again, pointing to her own eye.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every once in a while, boys got in a fight in the lunchroom or in gym. But girls never fought—never! What would everyone think? God, what did Mother think?
“The tall one, the one with the long nose, she ran off and told a teacher. So here came this big old fat bastard, no hair on his head, looking fit to be tied.”
“Mr. Burke,” I breathed. “Oh, God!”
“And he grabbed my arm so hard I like to died. So I told him to get his goddamn hands off me, or I’d kill him.
“So he hauled me off to the principal’s office, and she came in and hollered for a while and then she called Aunt Helen, and she came in and cried, and then she brought me home and cried some more and gave me what-for.
“Poor Aunt Helen.” Reana shook her head. “I figure she got more than she bargained for with me. Maybe she won’t want me here no more.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “She’s just mad.”
“That’s just it, Bethany. She didn’t act mad at all. She just cried and told me she was sorry. What does she have to be sorry about? She didn’t tell them girls about me and Caleb.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of Mother’s reaction. If one of us had punched someone at school, I was dead certain Mother would have raised the roof before turning the culprit over to Daddy for a spanking.
“Well,” I said uncertainly. “Probably she’s sorry you had such a bad first day. But I’m sure tomorrow will be lots better,” I added hopefully.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Reana said. “If they make me go back to that school, I surely will kill someone.”
“But, Reana Mae, you have to go to school.”
“I don’t know why,” she said, her chin raised slightly. “Caleb didn’t finish school, and he done just fine workin’ at Granpa’s store.”
The stubborn chin began to tremble then.
“I wish I knew where he’s gone to,” she whispered. “Why don’t he come?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he can’t.”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes. “That’s probably right. He’s probably gettin’ hisself set up with a job and an apartment first, so we’ll have us a place to live.”
“Mother and Daddy will never let you go away with him, though.”
“They can’t stop me!” She said it loudly, defiantly. “I ain’t theirs to boss around. When Caleb comes, I’m goin’ with him, and there ain’t a damned thing they can do about it!”
Downstairs, we heard the front door slam. Then Mother’s voice calling Tracy to her room.
“She’s gonna get it now,” I said to Reana Mae.
“She ain’t gonna get nothin’ from Aunt Helen, compared to what I’m gonna give her.”
I stared at my cousin, watching her fist clench tightly.
“She’s gonna pay for what she done to me, Bethany. That’s for certain.”
Reana Mae did go back to school the next day. She and her tor-menters were called into Mrs. Watson’s office and made to apolo-gize—Jenny and her cohorts for tormenting Reana Mae, Reana for hitting Jenny and Amy. None of them meant a word they uttered, but they all went through the motions.
Reana Mae’s burst of furious temper had earned her a good bit of notoriety at school … and several admirers. She hadn’t, after all, been Jenny Spangler’s first or only victim. Lots of other sixth graders hated Jenny and her crew. Most were delighted to see them knocked down. Within a week, Reana Mae had a new set of friends—not the cheerleaders and prep girls, of course, but an assortment of loners, stoners, nerds, and other outcasts for whom she had become a kind of instant hero.
Tracy had earned herself a monthlong grounding for telling people about Reana’s background. This, coupled with Reana Mae’s newly elevated status, infuriated her as I’d never seen before. She sulked in her basement room, listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath on her stereo and talking on the phone to Lynette and her new boyfriend, a dark-haired basketball player named Mark. When she emerged for dinner or school, she stared balefully at Reana and me, snarled at Mother and Daddy, and muttered under her breath a lot.
One morning, just before she left the house for school, I saw her hiss something at Reana Mae as she walked past. After she had gone, I asked Reana what she’d said.
“Just the usual.” Reana grinned. “That I’m gonna pay for what I done to her. What I done to her!”
She shook her head, and her hair swung around her face. Mother had bobbed her hair, so that what had been a long, tangled mane was now a sleek, shiny curtain framing her face.
“I reckon she’s dead crazy, Bethany,” she continued. “She don’t even know how mean she is, she’s so crazy.”
I nodded.
“Anyways,” she continued, “I ain’t worried about what Tracy’s gonna do. She can’t hurt me none.”
I stared in admiration. I believed every word she said, that Tracy couldn’t hurt her anymore. I wasn’t sure how Reana Mae had come to a place where that was true, but I knew it was.
I only wished I knew how to get to that place myself.
Reana Mae was finding her way into our Indiana world. But every night at bedtime, she knelt on the rag rug beside her bed and prayed so hard her lips moved. And I could see what she was praying for—she prayed every single night that Caleb would come tomorrow and take her away.
23
Waiting for Princes, 1974
“Hey.” Reena Mae looked up from the letter she was reading. “Harley Boy’s got hisself a car!”
“He’s not old enough for a car.” I grabbed the page from her hand.
“Look.” She pointed. “Right there, it says he got a 1968 Plymouth Duster, blue.”
“He’s only fifteen,” I sputtered. “He can’t even drive yet.”
“He can back home.” She smiled. “Hell, I bet he’s been driving his granddad’s car for years.”
“So, maybe now he can take Ruthann out on dates.” I laughed.
“Get real, Bethany.” She rolled her eyes. “Harley Boy ain’t no more taken with poor Ruthann than he was back when we were kids. I reckon he won’t never be in love with her like she is with him.”
It was true. Ruthann was still in love with Harley. She wrote to me every few months, always telling me everything Harley Boy had been up to … how well he was doing at school, how tall he was getting. She never asked about Reana Mae. But I guess that was probably natural.
Harley wrote to Reana Mae every month, and she always wrote back. They both knew he still loved her. They both knew she didn’t love him. But still they wrote. I think Reana always hoped Harley would have some news about Caleb, but he never did. Caleb hadn’t come back to the river since Jolene chased him off with Bobby Lee’s gun.
But we did hear about other folks, from Harley Boy and from Ruthann and sometimes from eavesdropping when Aunt Belle called.
Jolene had finally come back home
, several weeks after she’d beat Reana Mae so bad. No one knew where she’d gone to or what she’d done while she was gone. One day, she was just back in her house. She was fatter and she’d stopped dying her hair red, so now the gray showed through. But she didn’t drink all the time anymore … at least, not so folks could tell.
She’d taken to doing jigsaw puzzles. She had one going of the Last Supper, one with twenty thousand pieces. Said by the time she finished it, she’d probably be ready to see the Lord Himself. And she went to church every Sunday and sat right up front by Aunt Belle. She’d taken to reading the Bible with a vengeance, and she quoted verses at anyone who’d stop to listen, especially the verses about hell and damnation. Belle said her eyes fairly lit up when she talked about the hellfire waiting for earthly sinners.
Of course, Jolene counted her husband and child among those sinners. She told folks that’s why she’d sent them away, Bobby Lee and Reana Mae. They were sinners, and they had kept her from finding the Lord. They had to go away, she said, so she could find her way home.
Reana Mae read every letter that Harley Boy or Ruthann sent as soon as it came. She scanned them quickly first, looking for Caleb’s name. Then she read them slowly, searching for any hint of his presence. Once I even heard her ask Aunt Belle on the phone if she knew where Caleb had gone to. But Belle said she didn’t know.
Of course, Reana assumed Belle was lying, but what could she do?
At fourteen, Reana Mae was finally what Mother always knew she’d be—beautiful. Her skin was creamy pale, with a light sprinkle of freckles. Her brilliant green eyes were fringed with dark lashes, her dark blond hair smooth and soft. She was taller than me and much curvier, her breasts and hips rounded softly under her tight T-shirts and Levi’s jeans.
I was still waiting for my own transformation. I was fifteen, after all, a sophomore in high school … and still flat as a board and skinny as a rail. Daddy called me beanpole, which I hated. And while Reana Mae said I was lucky because I didn’t have to wear a bra and no one would even notice, I envied her curves, as well as her clear complexion, blond hair, and green eyes. My own dark curls and darker eyes seemed plain by comparison.
Prayers and Lies Page 21