Billie Standish Was Here

by Nancy Crocker

  Outside, Miss Lydia stepped to the curb and raised her hand to hail a cab, and it took work not to fall over in shock.

  I guess I had pictured everyplace we were going—hotel, restaurants, theater, department store, whatever—all on the same block. I was conditioned to what you might call condensed geography. But if I had thought about transportation, I would have bet we’d be riding the bus.

  “The Muehlbach Hotel,” Miss Lydia pronounced once we were seated behind the driver in the bright yellow cab, and something caught in my throat. There were commercials for the Muehlbach on the evening news back home and it looked like the fanciest place in the world.

  I had brought ten dollars with me from the Lydia wages I’d saved, and I began to wish I’d brought all I had. “Miss Lydia, just so you know,” I whispered, “I’d be fine someplace cheaper.”

  She answered in full voice, “Well, I wouldn’t.” She turned to me and her eyes sparkled. “Just so you know.”

  Some sort of wordless ceremony took place when we pulled up in front of the Muehlbach. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you find yourself on stage but you haven’t learned the dance steps. Our bags were out and on the sidewalk, money changed hands, a uniformed man materialized and took our luggage inside. A man dressed like a military officer opened a brass-trimmed door next to the revolving door spinning with folks hurrying around and around and Miss Lydia inclined her chin when the doorman tipped his hat. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to fall down.

  The lobby was everything it looked like on TV and more. Chandeliers twinkled like stars, the colors were richer, the huge tropical plants greener. I had seen it so many times it felt like I’d been there before.

  Miss Lydia, head high, looked neither left nor right. She marched to the front desk where the man who had taken our bags was standing at attention. She slipped something from her glove into his palm. He nodded and smiled before striding away.

  She pulled off her gloves, finger by finger, and arranged them on the marble counter. She turned to me and winked.

  “Yes, ma’am, how can I help you?” The man behind the desk had hair the color of gunmetal and sounded like he enjoyed listening to his own voice.

  “Mrs. Avery Jenkins,” Miss Lydia replied, “and her granddaughter. You will find we have reservations.” Miss Lydia hadn’t been talking like herself ever since we left Milton. Now she sounded like an old-time movie star.

  The man did a double take too. “Mrs. Jenkins,” he said. His tone was twenty degrees warmer than before. “Of course. It’s been too long since you’ve graced us with your presence.”

  “I’ve not been back since I lost Mr. Jenkins. That’s just over seven years now.”

  The man bowed his head for a couple of seconds. He would have made a good preacher. They usually like the sound of their own voices too, and he had the sympathetic look down pat. But maybe he reminded me of church just because I could smell the carnation in his lapel and it reminded me of funerals.

  “Our sincere condolences,” the man intoned. Their nods to one another were so deep it was almost a bow. “Let us see what we can do to make your stay with us as pleasant as possible.”

  Another dance took place with me trying not to make any stupid steps, and we were in an elevator with mirrors on all the walls. Then we were getting out on the twelfth floor and stopping before a door marked 1214. The man carrying our suitcases put a key in the knob and ushered us in with a grand sweeping motion.

  It was a beautiful room, and two king-sized beds looked small in all that space. But the Muehlbach showed their rooms on TV, too, so I had the weird feeling of it seeming familiar.

  After the door closed Miss Lydia walked to the window and threw open the drapes. “Our favorite room,” she said.

  I went and stood beside her. We had a clear view of the buildings in downtown Kansas City and could see beyond them all the way to the river. It was the farthest I had ever been from the ground and it took my breath away.

  After some minutes I remembered, though. “Uh, Miss Lydia?”

  “Mmm-mm?” She tore herself away like she was lost in a dream.

  “What’s with your voice?”

  “My voice? Why, child? What’s wrong with my voice?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, ma’am.” I had never called her “ma’am” before. That’s how off-balance I was. “And it’s not your voice, really. You just don’t sound anything like you do at home. You’re not acting it, either.”

  “I’m not at home.” She gave me a strange little smile.

  “But . . .” I frowned.

  She laughed and took my hands in hers. “Do you mean because I’m saying ‘aren’t’ instead of ‘ain’t’? ‘Saying’ instead of ‘sayin’?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty much it,” I answered.

  “It doesn’t make me a different person, you know. There’s no need to look so frightened.” She laughed again.

  I hugged myself. “Are you pretending you’re from the city or something?”

  “Not really,” she said, looking out the window again. “At least no more than I pretend I’m from Cumberland when I’m there.”

  I wrestled with this and lost.

  She sighed. “Billie Marie,” she said, “I don’t feel like I’m pretending anything anytime. I just find it easier to breathe, wherever I am, as a fish in the water rather than out.”

  I stared at her like I’d never seen her before.

  “You’ve watched The Beverly Hillbillies?” Miss Lydia’s mouth was puckered.

  I nodded.

  “Why do people think that show is funny?” She cocked her head like a bird.

  Those people were so backward and ignorant, it was comical. They had absolutely no idea how life in a big city worked. And then I knew what she meant.

  To some people we would be the hillbillies. I had never thought of that and my face got warm. “But, then,” I asked her, “why talk the way you do back home? Shouldn’t you just be yourself all the time so people know who you really are?”

  “That is who I am. So is this. I know who I am, and that’s all that really matters.” She turned to make sure her words got through to me. “Listen to me. If I spoke like this in Cumberland, what would—your mother, for example—think?”

  “Well . . .” It took a moment to get Mama’s voice in my head. “She’d think you were uppity. That you thought you were better than everybody else around.”

  Miss Lydia nodded. “But when I ‘land o’ Goshen’ her . . .”

  “She just thinks you’re . . . an old lady.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “And that I am. That I am. An old lady who learned a long time ago that fish have an easier time of it in the water than out.” She patted my shoulder. “Well, lovely girl, I’m hungry. What say we go find some lunch?”

  I nodded, ready to follow her. But my head was trying to put together a puzzle somewhere about eighty miles to the northeast. I still couldn’t quite reconcile the Miss Lydia I knew in Cumberland with the one standing in front of me.

  We walked a couple of blocks to Putsch’s Cafeteria. It felt funny to stand in a herd at the corner waiting for an electric signal to change color and give us our “mother, may I” to cross the street. Miss Lydia kept one hand on my elbow. Whether it was for my sake or hers, I was glad of it.

  The only cafeteria I had ever seen was at school, so this one stopped me short. There was a glass case a mile long and the whole distance was paved with single servings on saucers. It was like every Sunday dinner in history all at once. I stepped back to let Miss Lydia go first.

  As she got her tray and silverware she told me, “Get whatever you want, Billie Marie. I don’t whoop it up very often anymore, so there’s no need to be shy this weekend.”

  I was so overwhelmed with choices I ended up watching and taking what she did—roast beef with gravy, some kind of cheesy potato dish, peas and carrots cooked together, and a slice of banana-cream pie. At the cash register she saw
it and laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want another pass at it?” she said.

  “No thank you, ma’am.” I knew I was blushing.

  We settled into a booth and Miss Lydia put a cloth napkin in her lap. I followed suit, monkey see. She took a sip of iced tea and cleared her throat. She looked at her plate and said, “I hate to bring this up right now, but we have to decide. What is your name going to be?”

  “Huh?” She had turned into someone else on this trip. Was I expected to change, too?

  “At the doctor’s office. They’re going to want to make a chart on you, and I think it might be best if it were not in your true name. Don’t you think?”

  I hadn’t, but I did then. “Sure.”

  “Since you’re to be my granddaughter, we can keep it simple and make your last name same as mine. What first name would you take, given a choice?”

  Well, it wouldn’t be William. I thought for a minute and said, “Lucy.”

  Hearing the name of her childhood friend moistened her eyes. “I do love you, child,” she said.

  “I love you too.” I felt as much sadness in my smile as I could see in hers.

  The doctor’s office was in the Country Club Plaza and we had to take another cab to get there. Out the window the view changed from the gritty downtown district to streets paved with brick and elaborate fountains everywhere you looked. Buildings sat lower, no more than three or four stories high. The atmosphere felt like the ritzy aunt of the neighborhood we had just left.

  At five minutes to three we walked up to the desk in Dr. Matassa’s office and Miss Lydia announced us. She was handed a clipboard and we were finishing up the forms when a nurse called, “Lucy Jenkins.” Miss Lydia stood up, but it took me a second to remember they meant me.

  We were shown to an examining room and the nurse handed me a paper gown. “Everything off,” she said, “and this ties in front.” She frowned at Miss Lydia and looked back to me. “Are you sure you want your grandmother here for the examination?”

  “Yes!” we answered. She nodded and left. Miss Lydia turned her back and pretended to be interested in an anatomical chart on the wall while I changed.

  Dr. Matassa was the youngest doctor I had ever seen. He was not much taller than me and slight of build, with black hair in tight curls and eyes so dark you couldn’t see the pupils. He introduced himself and started reading through my chart. He frowned.

  He looked at Miss Lydia. “You sent me the letter?”

  She nodded.

  He turned to me. “You were raped.” Miss Lydia and I had never used that word. It felt like a kick in the stomach.

  “Yes,” I whispered. Miss Lydia nodded some more.

  Then he asked. Of course he would. “Who did this?”

  Miss Lydia and I whipped our heads around to search one another for an answer. “Why does that matter?” she croaked.

  Dr. Matassa looked perturbed. “There are laws in this country against having intercourse with a girl—” he flipped a page on my chart and read “—eleven years old. For good reason. Part of caring for this patient means seeing that the proper authorities are notified.”

  Miss Lydia looked as horrified as I was. We had gotten this far holding ourselves together around the secret between us. And now—because she had wanted to do what was best for me—everything was threatening to come crashing down.

  The mind is a funny thing. Sometimes it takes forever to process one thought. Other times it runs through a whole day’s worth in a matter of seconds.

  First thought: If either of us answered the doctor truthfully, Miss Lydia was going to jail. Because if anybody learned anything, everybody would figure out everything.

  Second thought: I could say, “That’s okay. We don’t really need an examination. We’ll just go now.” But we had put Miss Lydia’s real address on the forms. He could call the county sheriff’s office and describe us.

  I thought about grabbing the chart and my clothes and just running. But he might have Miss Lydia’s letter somewhere in a file. Her address again.

  And besides, she wasn’t going to outrun him.

  I saw her expression settle into sad acceptance and wanted to scream.

  “It was—” she said.

  “It was my brother!” I yelled.

  They both jumped.

  “Well, my stepbrother, anyway. That’s why I was sent to live with Grandma Jenkins here. My . . . stepmother, she took his side against me when he told her nothing happened. She talked my father into sending me away. Said I was a troublemaker.”

  I sounded like I had just run a mile. “So it wouldn’t do any good to call anybody and besides, they live all the way over in Springfield, Illinois.” I sat blinking, trying to get my breath under control.

  Miss Lydia held my hand during the examination and made small talk while I told myself it was no more embarrassing than a trip to the dentist. It’s a pretty personal thing when someone looks around in your mouth, too. Everybody goes through that. I tried to pretend this was nothing more.

  Dr. Matassa “hmmmed” a lot and told me he was taking a swab from inside me to send to the lab. I saw him wipe something onto a little square piece of glass and put it on the counter just before he snapped off his gloves. Then he told me to get dressed and he’d be right back.

  As soon as the door closed, Miss Lydia and I collapsed into a hug. She rocked me back and forth, saying what a good girl I was, telling me “thank you” over and over. Like the lies hadn’t been for my own sake as well as hers.

  The doctor came back and said there didn’t seem to be any injury. We nodded like we were encouraging him. He said they would need a urine sample for a pregnancy test. Then they’d draw blood for some other tests and we’d be done.

  Miss Lydia spoke up before I could find my voice. “When will you have the results?” she asked.

  “You can call my nurse Tuesday morning.” And he was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Y  ou know those big tests that you spend more time dreading than studying for? How you walk out ready to burst into song before you even know if you flunked, you’re so glad to have them over with? That’s how Miss Lydia and I were when we hit the sidewalk of the Country Club Plaza. We laughed and talked at the same time and hugged some more. Then she suggested ice cream sundaes and we were off to find some.

  That night, after a matinee showing of Charly at the Midland Theater—which looked like I imagine the inside of a castle—and after steak and lobster at the Savoy Grille, and after we had taken turns in the bathroom and come out in nightgowns, and after Miss Lydia had started snoring, I climbed out of bed and cracked the drapes open far enough to peek out.

  It was a fairyland of lights. There was so much movement in the streets and the skies it made me dizzy. I wondered what all those people were doing that time of night other than wanting to be somewhere they weren’t.

  I looked at Miss Lydia in the dim light. She was flat on her back, her skin smoothed out so that it looked like wax. It hit like a bullet to the heart—I would most likely stand at her coffin one day and see her just like that.

  And I realized in that moment that no matter what else happened, when Miss Lydia died the hurt that we shared was all going to belong to me.

  I prayed. “Not yet, God, please. Please let me have her as long as you can.”

  We went to Mass the next morning at a cathedral worthy of the pope. It started at ten, same as back home. Strange to know those words were being spoken in the exact same ceremony in churches all around the world.

  In the taxi on the way to the train station, Miss Lydia told me she had enjoyed the music. I asked what church she belonged to.

  “Hmmm. Well, I was raised Lutheran,” she said, “but I wouldn’t say I’m affiliated with any one religion now.” She looked the way you’re supposed to after church. Pleasant and serene.

  “Why not?” I thought she didn’t go just because she didn’t drive.

  “Well, it got so it seemed that my
church, all churches for that matter, had a lot more to do with raising money and enforcing silly man-made rules than they had to do with God. I guess you could say I cut out the middleman.”

  I’d been taught that even people who belonged to a religion other than mine were headed for hell when they died. Being religious without any church at all was so foreign a thought that I put it aside to ponder later.

  Miss Lydia was so quiet on the train I was almost glad to be going home. I hoped she was just tired. We had taken cabs everywhere, but I knew she had still done more walking in two days than she had in the month before.

  I didn’t mind not talking. I was busy enough anyway, back on track trying to protect my fate with all-out attention. I started making bargains with the Virgin Mary. I’d say the rosary every day. I’d use every last dollar Miss Lydia had paid me to light candles to her in church. Please just let me not be pregnant.

  I talked some to God, too, but it seemed easier to pray to a woman just then.

  I did trouble Miss Lydia once. A few miles out of Milton I laid my hand on her arm and waited. She turned with a question in her eyes.

  “Miss Lydia?” I said. “When we’re home, do you have to talk to me like I’m one of the hillbillies?”

  She smiled every so slightly and patted my hand. “No, child, I suppose I don’t,” she said. “Just don’t be surprised if you have to remind me once and again.”

  Mama was waiting for us on the platform. “Land o’ Goshen, Miriam!” was how Miss Lydia greeted her, and I saw the least little wink aimed my way. “Take pity on a couple of stragglers and haul our poor, worn-out carcasses home!” And so she did.

  Chapter Seventeen