“People certainly are being nice. Why, two of the ladies brought me some broth this morning.”
Miriam felt like grabbing her mother and shaking her until she was willing to pick up her bedclothes and run. with her. She kissed her goodby and went back to the dime store. Over their lunch, two of the counter girls were talking.
“I go next week. I want to marry Harry Phibbs soon, so I sure hope I won’t be there too long. Sometimes it’s three years.”
“Oh, you’re pretty, Donna. You won’t have too long to Wait.”
“I’m kind of scared. Wonder what it’ll be like.”
“Yeah, wonder what it’s like. I envy you.”
Chilled for some reason, Miriam hurried past them to her counter, and began carefully rearranging marshmallow candies in the counter display.
That night, she walked to the edge of the town, along the road she and her mother had come in on. Ahead in the road, she saw two gaunt men standing, just where the dusty sign marked the city limits. She was afraid to go near them, and almost ran back to town, frightened, thinking. She loitered outside the bus station for some time, wondering how much a ticket out of the place would cost her. But of course she couldn’t desert her mother. She was investigating the family car, still parked by the square, when Tommy Clark came up to her. “Time to go home, isn’t it?” he asked, and they walked together back to his father’s house.
~ * ~
“Momma, did you know it’s almost impossible to get out of this town?” Miriam was at her mother’s side, a week later.
“Don’t get upset, sweetie. I know it’s tough on you, having to work in the dime store, but that won’t be forever. Why don’t you look around for a little nicer job, dear?”
“Momma, I don’t mean that. I want to go home! Look, I’ve got an idea. I’ll get the car keys from your bag here, and tonight, just before they move you all into the courthouse to sleep, we’ll run for the car and get away.”
“Dear,” her mother sighed gently. “You know I can’t move.”
“Oh, Mother, can’t you try?”
“When I’m a little stronger, dear, then maybe we’ll try. The Pinckney woman is coming tomorrow with her daughter’s herb tea. That should pep me up a lot. Listen, why don’t you arrange to be down here? She has the best-looking son!— Miriam, you come right back here and kiss me goodby.”
Tommy Clark had started meeting Miriam for lunch. They’d taken in one movie together, walking home hand in hand in an incredible pink dusk. On the second date, Tommy had tried to kiss her, but she’d said, “Oh, Tommy, I don’t know the Babylon rules,” because she knew it wasn’t good to kiss a boy she didn’t know very well. Handing Tommy half her peanut-butter sandwich, Miriam said, “Can we go to the ball game tonight? The American Legion’s playing.”
“Not tonight, kid. It’s Margy’s turn to go.”
“What do you mean, turn to go?”
“Oh.” Tommy blushed. “You know.”
That afternoon, right after she finished work, Tommy picked her up and they went to the party given for Herman Clark’s oldest daughter. Radiant, Margy was dressed in white. It was her eighteenth birthday. At the end of the party, just when it began to get dark, Margy and her mother left the house. “I’ll bring some stuff out in the truck tomorrow morning, honey,” Clark said. “Take care of yourself.” “Goodby.” “G”by.” “Happy Waitin’, Margy!”
“Tommy, where is Margy going?” Something about the party and something in Margy’s eyes frightened Miriam.
“Oh, you know. Where they all go. But don’t worry.” Tommy took her hand. “She’ll be back soon. She’s pretty.”
In the park the next day, Miriam whispered in her mother’s ear, “Momma, it’s been almost a month now. Please, please, we have to go! Won’t you please try to go with me?” She knelt next to her, talking urgently. “The car’s been taken. I went back to check it over last night, and it was gone. But I sort of think, if we could get out on the highway, we could get a ride. Momma, we’ve got to get out of here.” Her mother sighed a little, and stretched. “You always said you never wanted me to be a bad girl, didn’t you, Momma?”
The older woman’s eyes narrowed.
“You aren’t letting that Clark boy take advantage—”
“No, Momma. No. That’s not it at all. I just think I’ve heard something horrible. I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s some sort of law. Oh, Momma, please. I’m scared.”
“Now, sweetie, you know there’s nothing to worry about. Pour me a little water, won’t you, dear? You know, I think they’re going to cure me yet. Helva Smythe and Margaret Box have been coming in to see me every day, and they’ve brought some penicillin pills in hot milk that I think are really doing me some good.”
“But Momma, I’m scared.”
“Now, dear, I’ve seen you going past with that nice Clark boy. The Clarks are a good family, and you’re lucky to be staying with them. You just play your cards right, and remember: be a good girl.”
“Momma, we’ve got to get out.”
“You just calm down, young lady. Now go back and be nice to that Tommy Clark. Helva Smythe says he’s going to own his daddy’s business some day. You might bring him out here to see me tomorrow.”
“Momma!”
“I’ve decided. They’re making me better, and we’re going to stay here until I’m well. People may not pay you much attention in a big city, but you’re really somebody in a small town.” She smoothed her blankets complacently, and settled down to sleep.
That night, Miriam sat with Tommy Clark in his front porch swing. They’d started talking a lot to each other, about everything. “... so I guess I’ll have to go into the business,” Tommy was saying. “I’d kind of like to go to Wesleyan or Clemson or something, but Dad says I’ll be better off right here, in business with him. Why won’t they ever let us do what we want to do?”
“I don’t know, Tommy. Mine wants me to go to Katharine Gibbs— that’s a secretarial school in New York—and get a typing job this fall.”
“You won’t like that much, will you?”
“Uh-uh. Except now, I’m kind of anxious to get back up there—you know, get out of this town.”
“You don’t like it here?” Tommy’s face clouded. “You don’t like me?”
“Oh, Tommy, I like you fine. But I’m pretty grown up now, and I’d like to get back to New York and start in on a job. Why, I got out of high school last month.”
“No kidding. You only look about fifteen.”
“Aw, I do not. I’ll be eighteen next week—Oh, I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t want your folks to have to do anything about my birthday. Promise you won’t tell them.”
“You’ll be eighteen, huh. Ready for the Wait yourself. Boy, I sure wish I didn’t know you!”
“Tommy! What do you mean? Don’t you like me?”
“That’s just the point I do like you. A lot. If I were a stranger, I could break your Wait.”
“Wait? What kind of wait?”
“Oh”—he blushed—”you know.”
~ * ~
A week later, after a frustrating visit with her mother in the park, Miriam came home to the Clarks’ and dragged herself up to her room. Even her mother had forgotten her birthday. She wanted to fling herself on her pillow and sob until supper. She dropped on the bed, got up uneasily. A white, filmy, full-skirted dress hung on the closet door. She was frightened. Herman Clark and his wife bustled into the room, wishing her happy birthday. “The dress is for you.” “You shouldn’t have,” she cried. Clark’s wife shooed him out, and helped Miriam dress. She started downstairs, with the yards of white chiffon whispering and billowing about her ankles.
Nobody else at her birthday party was particularly dressed up. Some of the older women in the neighborhood watched Tommy help Miriam cut the cake, moist-eyed. “She hardly seems old enough—” “Doubt if she’ll have long to Wait.” “Pretty little thing, wonder if Tommy likes her?” “Bet Herman C
lark’s son wished he didn’t know her,” they said. Uneasily, Miriam talked to them all, tried to laugh, choked down a little ice cream and cake.
“G’by, kid,” Tommy said, and squeezed her hand. It was just beginning to get dark out.
“Where are you going, Tommy?”
“Nowhere, silly. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. May want to talk to you about something, if things turn out.”
The men had slipped, one by one, from the room. Shadows were getting longer, but nobody in the birthday-party room had thought to turn on the lights. The women gathered around Miriam. Mrs. Clark, eyes shining, came close to her. “And here’s the best birthday present of all,” she said, holding out a big ball of brilliant blue string. Miriam looked at her, not understanding. She tried to stammer a thank-you. “Now, dear, come with me,” Clark’s wife said. Frightened, Miriam tried to bolt from the room. Clark’s wife and Helva Smythe caught her by the arms, and gently led her out of the house, down the gray street. “I’m going to see if we can get you staked out near Margy,” she said. They started off into the August twilight.
~ * ~
When they came to the field, Miriam first thought the women were still busy at a late harvest, but she saw that the maidens, scores of them, were just sitting on little boxes at intervals in the seemingly endless field. There were people in the bushes at the field’s edge— Miriam saw them. Every once in a while one of the men would start off, following one of the brilliantly colored strings toward the woman who sat at the end of it, in a white dress, waiting. Frightened, Miriam turned to Mrs. Clark. “Why am I here? Why? Mrs. Clark, explain!”
“Poor child’s a little nervous. I guess we all were, when it happened to us,” Clark’s wife said to Helva Smythe. “It’s all right, dear, you just stand here at the edge and watch for a little while, until you get used to the idea. Remember, the man must be a stranger. We’ll be out with the truck with food for you and Margy during visitors’ time Sunday. That’s right. And when you go out there, try to stake out near Margy. It’ll make the Wait nicer for you.”
“What wait?”
“The Wait of the Virgins, dear. Goodby.”
Dazed, Miriam stood at the edge of the great, domed field, watching the little world criss-crossed by hundreds of colored cords. She moved a little closer, trying to hide her cord under her skirts, trying not to look like one of them. Two men started toward her, one handsome, one unshaven and hideous, but when they saw she had not yet entered the field, they dropped back, waiting. Sitting near her, she saw one of the dime-store clerks, who had quit her job two weeks back and had suddenly disappeared. She was fidgeting nervously, casting hot eyes at a young man ranging the edge of the field. As Miriam watched, the young man strode up her cord, without speaking, threw money into her lap. Smiling, the dime-store girl stood up, and the two went off into the bushes. The girl nearest Miriam, a harelip with incredibly ugly skin, looked up from the half-finished sweater she was knitting.
“Well, there goes another one,” she said to Miriam. “Pretty ones always go first. I reckon one day there won’t be any pretty ones here, and then I’ll go.” She shook out her yarn. “This is my fortieth sweater.” Not understanding, Miriam shrank away from the ugly girl. “I’d even be glad for old Fats there,” she was saying. She pointed to a lewd-eyed old man hovering near. “Trouble is, even old Fats goes for the pretty ones. Heh! You ought to see it, when he goes up to one of them high-school queens. Heh! Law says they can’t say no!” Choking with curiosity, stiff, trembling, Miriam edged up to the girl.
“Where . . . where do they go?”
The harelip looked at her suspiciously. Her white dress, tattered and white no longer, stank. “Why, you really don’t know, do you?” She pointed to a place near them, where the bushes swayed. “To lay with them. It’s the law.”
~ * ~
“Momma! Mommamommamomma!” With her dress whipping at her legs, Miriam ran into the square. It was just before the time when the sick were taken to sleep in the hall of the courthouse.
“Why, dear, how pretty you look!” the mother said. Then, archly, “They always say, wear white when you want a man to propose.”
“Momma, we’ve got to get out of here.” Miriam was crying for breath.
“I thought we went all over that.”
“Momma, you always said you wanted me to be a good girl. Not ever to let any man take advan—”
“Why, dear, of course I did.”
“Momma, don’t you see! You’ve got to help me—we’ve got to get out of here, or somebody I don’t even know . . . Oh, Momma, please. I’ll help you walk. I saw you practicing the other day, with Mrs. Pinckney helping you.”
“Now, dear, you just sit down here and explain to me. Be calm.”
“Momma, listen! There’s something every girl here has to do when she’s eighteen. You know how they don’t use doctors here, for anything?” Embarrassed, she hesitated. “Well, you remember when Violet got married, and she went to Dr. Dix for a checkup?”
“Yes, dear—now calm down, and tell Momma.”
“Well, it’s sort of a checkup, don’t you see, only it’s like graduating from high school too, and it’s how they . . . see whether you’re any good.”
“What on earth are you trying to tell me?”
“Momma, you have to go to this field, and sit there, and sit there until a man throws money in your lap. Then you have to go into the bushes and lie with a stranger!” Hysterical, Miriam got to her feet, started tugging at the mattress.
“You just calm down. Calm down!”
“But, Mother, I want to do like you told me. I want to be good!”
Vaguely, her mother started talking. “You said you were dating that nice Clark boy? His father is a real-estate salesman. Good business, dear. Just think, you might not even have to work—”
“Oh, Momma!”
“And when I get well, I could come live with you. They’re very good to me here—it’s the first time I’ve found people who really cared what was wrong with me. And if you were married to that nice, solid boy, who seems to have such a good job with his father, why we could have a lovely house together, the three of us.”
“Momma, we’ve got to get out of here. I can’t do it. I just cant.” The girl had thrown herself on the grass again.
Furious, her mother lashed out at her. “Miriam. Miriam Elise Holland. I’ve fed you and dressed you and paid for you and taken care of you ever since your father died. And you’ve always been selfish, selfish, selfish. Can’t you ever do anything for me? First I want you to go to secretarial school, to get a nice opening, and meet nice people, and you don’t want to do that. Then you get a chance to settle in a good town, with a nice family, but you don’t even want that. You only think about yourself. Here I have a chance to get well at last, and settle down in a really nice town, where good families live, and see you married to the right kind of boy.” Rising on her elbows, she glared at the girl. “Can’t you ever do anything for me?”
“Momma, Momma, you don’t understand!”
“I’ve known about the Wait since the first week we came here.” The woman leaned back on her pillow. “Now pour me a glass of water and go back and do whatever Mrs. Clark tells you.”
“Mother!”
Sobbing, stumbling, Miriam ran out of the square. First she started toward the edge of town, running. She got to the edge of the highway, where the road signs were, and saw the two shabby, shambling men, apparently in quiet evening conversation by the street post. She doubled back and started across a neatly plowed field. Behind her, she saw the Pinckney boys. In front of her, the Campbells and the Dodges started across the field. When she turned back toward town, trembling, they walked past her, ignoring her, on some business of their own. It was getting dark.
She wandered the fields for most of the night. Each one was blocked by a Campbell or a Smythe or a Pinckney; the big men carried rifles and flashlights, and called out cheerfully to each other when they met, and t
alked about a wild fox hunt. She crept into the Clarks’ place when it was just beginning to get light out, and locked herself in her room. No one in the family paid attention to her storming and crying as she paced the length and width of the room.
That night, still in the bedraggled, torn white dress, Miriam came out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She stopped in front of the hall mirror to put on lipstick and repair her hair. She tugged at the raveled sleeves of the white chiffon top. She started for the place where the virgins Wait. At the field’s edge, Miriam stopped, shuddered as she saw the man called old Fats watching her. A few yards away she saw another man, young, lithe, with bright hair, waiting. She sighed as she watched one woman, with a tall, loose boy in jeans, leave the field and start for the woods.
She tied her string to a stake at the edge of the great, domed field. Threading her way among the many bright-colored strings, past waiting girls in white, she came to a stop in a likely-looking place and took her seat.
The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction 8 - [Anthology] Page 5