All the Finest Girls

by Alexandra Styron

  “So Papa got religion,” Philip said, laughing, as we drew up to the footpath I’d taken down the hill.

  In the twenty minutes since we’d begun our walk, a canopy of clouds had draped the sky, portly and gray.

  “Mumma, I’m told, did her best to ignore him. She was living down with my uncle Michael and studying to be a teacher. Going to be the first in the family to go to college. In Jamaica. My grandmother had it all planned. But Papa followed her home. Every night for two weeks, professing his love. Mumma just smiled at him, barely said a word, ducking inside quicklike when they made it to the door. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Until he started studying the Bible. He got the spirit, you could say, quoting scripture to her, preaching the virtues of humility, the works. I suspect he was hard to resist, even for someone serious as my mumma. She finally invited him in for tea and introduced him to Michael. After that, Papa asked her and Michael to come to Foxy’s and hear him sing. That’s when Michael decided for Mumma. I think my uncle Michael had plans for Papa from the very beginning.”

  With rain threatening, Philip picked up the pace, moving ahead of me as we wound uphill. Listening carefully to his story, I took my eyes off the steep path and several times stumbled on rocks and old roots. At one point, Philip reached back to help me over a particularly steep embankment. I thrilled at the warmth of his hand, surprised by my reluctance to let go. I was entranced, by him, by the story, so much so that we were a good way up the hill before I realized how difficult a hike it was for me. I stopped, sweating and out of breath.

  “You ain’t much of an athlete, are you?” asked Philip jovially.

  “What makes you say that?” I responded, bent over, hands braced on my knees. We probably hadn’t climbed more than fifty yards.

  “A hunch is all.”

  “I’m not a billy goat. But I get by. What did Michael think?”

  “Michael thought he’d caught himself a big fish. My uncle was agitating for independence. Needed a front man, someone to sponsor for Parliament. Soon as he saw the way everyone fell all over Errol, he figured he’d found his man.”

  I was still working for breath.

  “You need stamina,” Philip said, touching his chest. “You got kids?”

  The question jarred, and returned me to a self I’d momentarily left behind.

  “Why does everyone ask that around here?” I snapped.

  “Don’t know,” he replied. “Everybody’s got someone.”

  “It’s rude, I think.”

  “Sorry. I just figured.”

  “Figured what?”

  “I don’t know. That you did. Sorry.”

  “No. I don’t. OK?”

  Philip stopped and let me catch up, then touched my arm.

  “Christ,” he said, his voice soft. “Lighten up, will you? Your pretty face gettin’ all pruney.”

  I felt myself blush violently.

  “Hmm. Lighten up?” I replied. “OK. Yeah.”

  Feeling dumb, out of line and awkward too, I tried to be funny. Flapping my arms, putting on a face. We rose to the top of the hill and, though I was still short of breath, I took his hand and did a goofy kind of jig. I’m not sure what had gotten into me. Philip appraised my moves.

  “Now you’re in business. Look out, don’t give yourself a heart attack!”

  I was aware suddenly of my body and how shapeless it appeared in the oversized clothes and hat I was wearing. Philip caught me looking down at myself.

  “Did you meet Floria?” he asked, gesturing toward the Alfreds’. “She’s big as a house and she’s still foxy as hell.”

  “Floria?”

  “My wife. Due in two weeks.” He held out his arms from his stomach. “Now that girl’s got stamina!”

  The rain, which had been out over the water, edged closer to us. I watched the fast-moving clouds while Philip kept talking, about what I’m not sure. The sound of my own voice inside my head was too loud. Just before we got to the Alfreds’ backyard, Philip asked me a question, bringing me around.

  “Hey, Connecticut. Let me ask you something. Is it true you were … sort of crazy? When you were little?”

  His words stabbed the woolly fuzz of my thoughts, but I couldn’t focus on them. I wanted to be alone.

  “Yeah,” I answered vaguely. “Sort of, I guess.”

  “’Cause I was expecting, well, sorry, but a real cuckoo kind of girl.”

  I pretended to laugh as, just then, the skies broke open with fat, slow drops of rain. Philip pulled on my sleeve, but I stopped by the back door and told him I’d be right in. The downpour began in earnest, and I took shelter under the house’s metal eaves, sitting down to rest on Lou’s rattan chair. Way out on the horizon, it was again a fair day, the setting sun fanning out in a citrusy pool.

  It hadn’t been much. No more than a minute of, what? The most casual flirtation? But I began to burn, sitting there, set upon by a rash of anger and embarrassment. My feelings crept up my neck like an allergic reaction, making me want to remove my own skin. Fuck you, I thought, blood throbbing in my head. I don’t need your charity. And I don’t want your friendship, either.

  Eventually my childish temper gave way to something else, more closely resembling fear. A lack of control seemed to be dogging me, overtaking my usual equilibrium with way too much frequency. I’d just barely pulled myself back together — it had been less than a month since my sickness — and here I was threatening to fall apart all over again. Was I still feverish? Or was this some bigger calamity?

  The story of Lou and Errol, of their courtship, arose again and played over my dismal concerns. I rubbed my thumb along a smooth spot on Lou’s armrest, where the same repetitive motion from her must have worn thin the veneer. I wished she were there, to calm me. Closing my eyes, I could just about feel the whisper of Lou’s skin against mine. Lickle Miss Shirley Temple, you so baaad. I sat and breathed, listening to the rain taper as the clouds moved through.

  8

  IT’S SUNDAY MORNING and Louise is taking me to church. She tells me which kind, but I can’t get the word off my tongue.

  “Apixilan,” I say while she stands above me and holds open the waist of my tights so that I can step into them. I lean back and she braces me between her arms.

  “It’s jes’ a certain kind of Christian. And yah got it here like we do at home.”

  Spring has begun to surface in the weeks since Louise arrived. Daffodils are showing their buttery bonnets out on the lawn, and the tree outside my window blossomed overnight into cotton candy. The soft petals brush against the window screen, disappearing behind a blue veil as Louise pulls a jumper over my head. My clothes are fresh and smell of morning.

  I’ve never been to church before. June told Louise that my family doesn’t practice religion. And when I asked my father what we are, he raised an eyebrow and laughed.

  “Cynics,” he said, turning back to his newspaper, in a voice that made me decide not to tell Louise the answer. The word sounded wicked and echoes grimly in my head.

  Louise keeps a Bible by her bed. Some nights after dinner she leaves me alone in front of the television while she goes upstairs to read. If I follow her she lets me stay, rubbing my back while she keeps her head bent, slowly turning the delicate pages. The book’s leather binding is soft and dark, like Louise’s hand. Its gold-edged paper catches the light. When Louise reads, I’m inside a warm hollow, like a giant’s palm, and the ceiling is raked with stars. I have had a wish, one I made and then buried, that my mother would go away.

  Two days have passed since Louise spoke with Dilly about church.

  “Dilly,” she said, drying a plate and looking out the window over the sink. Dilly had come in for a cup of coffee and was on his way back out the kitchen door. “I’m wanting yah to carry me down to de Anglican.” Louise stopped and sucked a tooth. “Hear me now, Anglican, I mean Episcopal, church on Sunday. Down by de market.”

  Whenever Louise speaks, Dilly’s face turns very serious. His eyebr
ows shoot downward and he pulls at the corner of his mustache. I watched him concentrating hard on Louise as she spoke.

  “You want me to take you to church on Sunday? Is that it?”

  “De service is at nine, for an hour. Den I’ll be ready to come home.”

  Dilly nodded slowly and walked out the door, where I could see him scratch the top of his head and adjust his cap before getting back on his mower.

  Sundays are Louise’s day off. Mom says we’re not to bother her on those days. We’re all to make do, she says. But so far, Louise has been just the same on Sundays, spending the day with me as always. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing to do in Coldbrook. Today, though, she wants to go to church, and she’s invited me to come along.

  Louise walks me into the bathroom and sits down on the lid of the toilet.

  “Commere witcha razzy head,” she says reaching for the hairbrush resting on the sink. I back up toward the door. She holds the brush high.

  “Yah not entering de house of de Lord wit yah head like dat. So if yah wanting to come wit me, let me do my work.”

  Until now, Louise hasn’t said a word about my hair. I’d thought she didn’t see the fuzzy knots, the patches that had become sticky to the touch. Or maybe I looked like a black girl now. I wanted her to notice, but now that she has, I run to the bed with a screech.

  I stuff my head beneath a pillow. The truth is I hate my hair this way but can’t admit it. I keep it wrecked for my mother, because it makes her sad. Too many ideas and feelings jab at me. I’m anxious, unhappy, and I’m ashamed for disobeying Louise. But what is strangest is what I cannot find. There’s no red anger rising, no prickly skin, no sandpaper tongue of the enemy. I wait for Cat, but he doesn’t come. Louise doesn’t sit on the edge of the bed the way Mom does, doesn’t plead, doesn’t offer a leg for me to kick at, an arm to twist away from. With Louise, there is no inky darkness, no place to go. I’m at loose ends, and the air beneath the pillow quickly becomes hot and thick.

  I turn the pillow aside in search of fresh air. Beyond the open bathroom door I can see Louise at the mirror, adjusting the pins in her small round hat. In the reflection, she catches my eye.

  “Yah don’t wanna be raging against me,” she says, her voice quiet and simple. “A child’s always got the power to break her mumma’s heart. But yah cyaant break mine; not yet, Addy.”

  I lie on the bed and listen to a bird calling outside the window. Bob White, says the bird. Bob White.

  “All right den, Addy, I’ll see yah after service.”

  Before she can walk away, before I can think anymore, I walk, head bent, back into the bathroom.

  The first stroke of the brush brings tears to my eyes, and Louise must take a scissors to three impossible nests. When she’s done she fastens the top of my hair with a blue ribbon. I can’t stop a smile when Louise looks at me head-on.

  We walk down the long hall that separates our rooms from the big center of the house. I get up on my tiptoes as I pass my parents’ door and am rounding the corner to the top of the stairs when I catch the smell of frying bacon coming up the stairwell. Louise’s eyebrows are raised in surprise. Grabbing the bannister, I clatter down the stairs.

  The kitchen is a cloud of blue-brown smoke. Louise pushes past me and turns off the burner that flames beneath a cast-iron pan. Five or six tar black strips of bacon spit their last, drowning in a pool of hot grease. I look to the far end of the room, where the table is set for four, crowned at the center by a clutch of forlorn daisies in a crystal vase. Mom sits at her place with her back to us, turned to face the sliding glass doors that open to the back lawn. A half dozen sooty cigarette filters fill an ashtray at her elbow. In her lap is a script open to the last pages.

  At the sound of my hard-soled shoes on the tiled floor, Mom turns around. Her skin and lips and hair seem to disappear, papery and pale against the blushy collar of her robe. The delicate skin beneath her eyes is ashy gray.

  “Good morning!” she calls out, her voice faltering on sleep and smoke. Her face looks confused when she notices the haze between her and us.

  “Oh,” she says, frowning. “Whoopsy daisy.”

  She walks to the stove, and Louise steps out of the way. When she finds the knob already in the off position, she tugs on it anyway and then peers into the bottom of the pan.

  “Oh, well,” she says turning to us with a quick, tired smile. “My gosh, Addy.” My mother looks me up and down. “You let Louise brush your hair!”

  I feel I’ve lost something. I turn my ankles and say nothing.

  “Thank you,” Mom says to Louise, extravagantly. “Well. Hmm.” She turns back to the stove, as if she is looking for something but not sure what, then returns to us, her greenish eyes watery and bright. “Don’t you look lovely. Where are you off to?”

  “Church. Dilly’s coming to carry us dere. Addy says she’s never been.”

  My mother laughs gently.

  “Oh Louise, that’s totally unnecessary. It’s your day off. I’m going to do lots of fun things with Addy. You go on.”

  I make a squawking sound. Louise squeezes my shoulder.

  “Now baby, remember what I told you about Sundays,” my mother says, pushing a lock of hair from her eyes.

  “It’s no bother,” Louise says. “I asked she to come.”

  My mother looks from me to Louise and back again.

  “Addy. Don’t you want a yummy Sunday breakfast?” she says.

  I turn my face into the folds of Louise’s dress and begin to holler. Louise pulls me away from her and squats down.

  “Stop it, Addy. Now listen, don’t yah want stay wit yah mumma?”

  I look up at Mom, shake my head.

  My mother frowns, sticks her lower lip out. Like children do.

  “Okeydokey,” she says, sighing and turning away. She scouts about for a place to put the ruined frying pan. “You go with Louise. We’ll do something together later. That’s fine.”

  When we get in the car, Louise sits with me in the backseat. Dilly pulls the car out of the driveway and we head down the road toward town.

  “Yah a hardheaded lickle ting, aren’t yah?” she says, watching the Schroeders’ farm passing outside her window. I think she must be angry with me, but I don’t care. I am with her and we are driving fast away from home.

  Ten minutes later, we’re in Coldbrook center. Dilly drives around the green and onto Ford’s Hill, where the grocery store, the elementary school, and the town’s three churches are. Ford’s Hill is all of Coldbrook center. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it, Dilly says.

  We pull up to the front of an old white church next to the market. Louise looks out the window and eyes it from steeple to steps.

  “That’s it,” she says, clutching her purse in her lap. Behind her glasses, the corner of her eye twitches almost imperceptibly. “An hour’s time, Dilly.”

  Dilly drives off, leaving us on the sidewalk. Little bunches of snowy clouds sail along over the roof of the church. Lilacs bloom in purple profusion on either side of the building’s big red doors, and I hear simple chords of music float out from the darkness inside. Louise takes my hand and we walk up the rutted cement path. Off to the side in the parking lot, people are nodding, waving to one another, saying hello.

  The two Wyant boys, Kurt and Eddie, stand on the church’s stone steps. Kurt is a fat boy with a blond brush cut. His face, always flushed, looks today like a cherry red balloon squeezed by the knot of his brown tie. The buttons of his shirt strain across his soft belly. Kurt’s younger brother, Eddie, has the same yellow broom of hair and enormous eyes that roll in his face like a doll’s. When Kurt sees us, he sticks an elbow in his brother’s side and puffs out his cheeks. Eddie’s eyes jump out another inch from their sockets.

  Louise and I follow a line of people up the stairs. When we reach the top, I’m a foot from Kurt and Eddie. I look at the legs of the man ahead of me. A noise I’ve known since the beginning of second grade, like something gnawing t
hrough paper, comes from the boys’ direction.

  “Fff-fff-fff-ff,” comes the sound. “Rat Girl. Rat Girl. Fff-ff-ff.” Eddie meows like a cat.

  “Rats don’t go to church,” Kurt whispers. “Who brushed your hair, Rat Girl? Is that your new mommy?”

  The boys begin to snort and laugh. On the other side of the doors, a skinny man in a tie and cowboy boots is handing out programs. He looks over the heads of the people filing in and cuts his eyes at Kurt and Eddie. The boys quiet down, but when I glance over, they’re still looking at me. Kurt’s lips are pursed together to keep from laughing. The man in the cowboy boots hands Louise a program and nods his head in silent greeting.

  Inside the church, Louise guides me to an empty row near the back and follows behind me, directing me to sit down. The big open space hums and rustles with the settling of people in their seats. Up in the balcony Mrs. Labenski, a teacher at my school, plays the organ. Louise has gotten on her knees and is praying silently. As she does so, a man in the row in front of us turns his thick neck and peers over his glasses at her. When his eyes catch mine, he twitches his mouth and turns quickly away.

  Across the aisle ahead of us, I see Mrs. Chisolm, who owns the market, in a yellow suit and a giant green hat wreathed in fake flowers. Her daughter Amy baby-sat for me a few times before Louise arrived, but I’ve never seen Mrs. Chisolm herself outside of the store. When I go shopping with Dilly, she presses the buttons of the cash register and asks me questions about my family — how my mother is feeling, what big travel plans we have coming up — but when I’m with my mother, she sneaks glances at her over her half lenses and says nothing. Since Louise has come, Mrs. Chisolm lets her glasses dangle on their chain and leans her elbows on the worn linoleum counter.

  “She treat you good? She sure got the money to, right?” I heard her ask Louise one day, her voice low like they were sisters.

  Louise nodded just barely and began to scoop up the grocery bags.

  “God bless you,” Mrs. Chisolm said, leaning back and patting her breastbone. “Suits me fine my Amy not working up by there anymore. She says that house is a godalmighty wreck.”