by Julia Watts
Dear Miss Pickett,
The East Tennessee district of the Society of American Clubwomen is pleased to announce that your essay, “A Spirit of Sacrifice,” was selected as the first-prize winner in our annual essay contest. Your winning essay has been entered in the state contest representing the East Tennessee district. As the author of the winning entry, you will be awarded a certificate of achievement and a $10 savings bond to be presented at a special awards luncheon held at the Wemberley Hotel in Knoxville at 12:00 noon on Saturday, April 21. Please accept our most sincere congratulations.
Cordially,
Mrs. Louella Dobson
President, Society of American Clubwomen,
East Tennessee District
Who I really wanted standing by me was Miss Connor. I would’ve hugged her then and there, but I couldn’t very well put my arms around a man teacher like Mr. Masters. Not that I’d want to anyway—he’s so skinny I would have had to wrap my arms around him twice.
But I had to hug somebody, and I had to jump up and down and squeal even though nothing had ever made me jump up and down and squeal before. Lucky for me, Virgie walked in right then, so I hugged her and jumped up and down and squealed, and so did she, even though she didn’t know what she was jumping up and down and squealing about.
After a minute, Mr. Masters cleared his throat and said, “Students, the cause of the jubilation you are now witnessing is that Miss Ruby Pickett was just informed that she won the East Tennessee district of the the Society of American Clubwomen’s annual essay contest. Perhaps we should give Miss Pickett a round of applause before she takes her seat.”
Everybody clapped—most of them softly, but Virgie, standing beside me, clapped extra loud and yelled, “Woo-hoo!”
I sat back down at my desk, glowing with a strange mixture of happiness and embarrassment. Most people, I reckon, would’ve been thinking, I can’t wait to tell my folks. But I was thinking I couldn’t wait to tell Iris.
As soon as the final bell rang, I was out of the building. I ran all the way to Iris’s house with the letter in my hand. As soon as she opened the door, worry flashed across her face. “Ruby, what’s the matter? You’re all flushed…”
“Look,” I said, holding the letter out to her.
She took it, and as she read, I watched the clouds of her worry part to make way for a radiant smile. And then her arms were around me in a hug. “I knew you’d win,” she said.
“Really? Why?”
“Because you’re brilliant. That’s why.”
I had said thank you so many times to Iris, and it was never enough, so we just kept on hugging each other, right there in the doorway. It was a long hug, like neither of us wanted to be the first to let go.
March 23, 1945
I waited a whole day before I told anybody in my family about winning the contest. Sometimes when you’re real excited about something and you tell somebody who doesn’t think it’s exciting at all, it kind of takes away some of your excitement. It’s like thinking a joke is absolutely hilarious, and then when you try to tell it to somebody, they say “I don’t get it,” and suddenly the joke’s not funny anymore.
I didn’t want to lose any of my excitement yet. I wanted to keep it for a little while as my secret—mine and Iris’s—and so I said nothing, but every once in a while I’d sneak off to read the letter again.
I finally spilled the beans when we were eating our beans on Wednesday evening. “You’uns remember that essay contest I entered back in the winter?” I said. “I got a letter saying I won it.”
“That’s good, honey,” Mama said, but her expression didn’t change, and her voice wasn’t any more excited than if she was talking about the weather report.
“That is good, Ruby,” Daddy said. “Would you pass me that dish of sweet onions, honey?”
“Here’s the letter saying I won.” I placed it on the table. Nobody made a move to look at it.
“Did you win any money?” Opal asked.
“A ten-dollar savings bond,” I said.
“Whatcha gonna spend it on?” Garnet asked.
“Nothing yet,” I said. “I’ve got to wait till it matures.”
“Oh,” Garnet said. She and Opal turned their attention back to their supper, now that it was obvious I wasn’t going to have any wealth to spread around any time soon.
“There’s a luncheon,” I said, “on April twenty-first at the Wemberley Hotel in Knoxville. That’s where they’ll give me my certificate and savings bond. I thought maybe you and me could go, Mama.”
Mama pushed her plate away. “Now, you know that ain’t the kind of thing country folks like us do. I probably couldn’t even find my way to that hotel, and even if I could, I wouldn’t know what to wear or how to act or what to say. And neither would you.”
I stood up and grabbed my letter. “Mama, that’s not true, and you know it. I could wear the blue dress I wore to the dance, and when it comes to how to act, I can read Emily Post as well as the next person. And as for what to say, well, I reckon some people think I’ve got some pretty interesting stuff to say, or else I wouldn’t have won this contest.”
My sisters were all staring at me with their mouths hanging open. They had never seen me mad like this before. Shoot, I had never been mad like this before.
“Now don’t go getting the big head just ’cause you won something,” Mama said. She looked at me with narrowed eyes, like I was somebody she didn’t know and didn’t quite trust.
“I’m not getting the big head. I just want to go get my award. If they’re having a luncheon on account of me, then I should go to it.”
“Well, I ain’t taking you,” Mama said.
“Then I’ll take the bus and go by myself.”
“No, you won’t,” Daddy said. “A girl your age can’t be going to the city by herself.”
Hot tears of frustration flooded my eyes. “Then what should I do?”
“What you should do right now,” Daddy said, “is go sit in your room and think about the way girls is supposed to talk to their mamas. I never have to call you down, Ruby. I don’t know what’s got into you.”
As I turned to go, I heard Mama say, “Town’s got into her.”
But Mama’s wrong. I’m the same person I’ve always been. It’s just that Mama and Daddy are seeing me for the first time. I want what they see to make them proud, but it just makes them confused and scared.
March 27, 1945
I spent the whole weekend sulking about not getting to go to the awards luncheon. I went to the library and checked out Jane Eyre and read it again because like Jane, I felt misunderstood and ill-treated. Maybe I should’ve read Pollyanna instead. Pollyanna would’ve played the Glad Game and would’ve been glad about winning the contest instead of sad about not getting to claim her award. But Pollyanna always did get on my nerves. I’m definitely more of a Jane than a Pollyanna.
If I was a Pollyanna, though, I probably would’ve been optimistic enough to see that there was a solution to my problem instead of just moping about it. Instead, the solution had to hit me over the head before I noticed it.
Today at Iris’s, I was on the floor, playing blocks with Baby Sharon, when Iris said, “So are you going to wear your Eleanor blue dress to the awards luncheon?”
I don’t know what got into me, but I started to cry. Baby Sharon looked at me in alarm, like she was thinking, hey, I’m the baby here; I’m the one who’s supposed to cry, not you.
Iris sat down on the floor next to me. “My goodness, what’s wrong?”
Between big, hiccuping sobs I told her about Mama’s refusal to go the awards luncheon, about how she said things like that weren’t for people like us.
Iris gave me a hanky. “Did she forbid you to go?”
“No. She just said she wouldn’t take me, and Daddy won’t let me go by myself.”
“Well, then, that’s easy to fix,” Iris said. “I’ll ask Hannah or Eva to watch Sharon that Saturday, and I’ll take you.
”
It was obvious, it was perfect, but it hadn’t occurred to me. “You’d do that?”
“Of course I would. In my heart I may not be the proper club lady type, but I know how to fake it. I can make chit-chat and delicately pick at each course of a meal with the appropriate utensil. I’ll even stick out my pinkie when I drink my coffee if you like.”
I laughed. “Don’t stick out your pinkie on my account.” I took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. It’ll be nice to get out of town for a couple of hours and go to what passes for a city in this part of the world—”
The front door swung open, and a voice trilled, “Helloooo?” It was Eva Lynch, decked out in a blue dotted dress with white gloves and a funny little hat perched on top of her head. She looked at us for a second. I’m sure we looked strange, both of us sitting so close together on the floor with the baby. Then she said, “Oh, good, your sitter’s here. Are you ready to go to the Woman’s Club meeting?”
“I’m ready,” Iris said. “Just let me get my hat and purse.”
The tone Iris used talking to Eva was completely different than her tone talking to me. With Mrs. Lynch she sounded deliberately cheerful, and I could tell she had no interest in the Woman’s Club at all, that Mrs. Lynch had pressured her into it, and Iris was just being a good sport. After all, Iris had just said she wasn’t a proper club lady in her heart. Somehow it made me feel good to know that Iris was real with me and fake with Eva Lynch—that Iris might let Eva burst into her house without knocking, but she would never let Eva into her heart.
March 30, 1945
Apparently it’s possible to be dating somebody without even knowing that’s what you’re doing.
Wednesday morning this boy named Bob who’s in my English class waved me over to his table at the school library. He said, “Ruby, I was wondering if you could read this paper over for me so I can fix my spelling mistakes before it’s time to turn it in.”
Since Mr. Masters had announced that I won the essay contest, a lot of people have been asking me for help with their English papers. So I sat down at the table with Bob who, I saw after one glance at his paper, couldn’t spell his way out of a wet sack.
I didn’t give helping Bob another thought. But that afternoon, Virgie hissed, “I need to talk to you,” and dragged me to the girls’ bathroom.
“Are you okay?” I asked once we were alone.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Virgie said, “which is more than I can say for my brother.”
“What’s the matter with Aaron?”
Virgie rolled her eyes as though I should’ve known good and well what was the matter with him. “What’s the matter with him is that he saw you sitting in the library with Bob Davenport and he’s fit to be tied.”
I tried in vain to make sense of what she’d just said. “Why would Aaron care if I help Bob with his English paper?”
“’Cause he didn’t know that’s what you was doing. He just saw you sitting with Bob and got mad ’cause you’re his girl.”
This was news to me. Aaron hadn’t said two words to me since the dance. “I am?”
Virgie let out a huff of breath. “I swear, Ruby, I never will figure out how a person can be so smart and so dumb at the same time.”
That afternoon, Aaron followed Virgie and me silently as we walked to the Red Cross. Finally, Virgie said, “Ruby, wasn’t there something you wanted to say to Aaron?”
It was more like something Virgie wanted me to say to Aaron, but to smooth things over, I said, “Aaron, I don’t know Bob Davenport from Adam’s housecat. The only reason I was sitting with him was I was helping him with his English paper.”
“All right,” Aaron said, without looking at me.
“Now, Aaron,” Virgie prompted, “wasn’t there something you wanted to say to Ruby?”
He blurted out, barely above a whisper, “You-wanna-go-to-the-show-with-me-this-evenin?”
“All right,” I said, without looking at him.
* * *
Going to the show with Aaron was better than going to the dance because nobody was expected to do anything but sit quietly. Virgie came, too, because she wanted to see the new picture, but she made a big deal out of not sitting with us so we could be “alone together.” Instead of sitting beside us, she sat in the row behind us, occasionally reaching over us to grab fistfuls of our popcorn.
April 1, 1945
Easter is the only Sunday my family always goes to church. Usually we girls all get new dresses, but this year Mama didn’t make me one. It was fair enough. I had my new store-bought dress to wear, and fabric is scarce. In fact, Mama could only find enough of one color to make dresses for all my sisters, so they were all decked out in yellow dotted Swiss. I was just as glad to have my Eleanor blue. Mama’s sewing is real pretty, but yellow makes me look like a poisoned dog.
“Look at all that yeller!” Daddy said when he came in from shaving. His face was red from the razor’s scraping, and he was already tugging at the collar of his dress shirt. “You’uns is my sunshine girls.”
“What am I? A storm cloud?” I said.
Daddy looked at my dress. “No, you’re my blue sky girl,” he said. “And this here,” he said, going to Mama who was wearing her best floral print dress, “is my rose.”
We went to the ten o’clock Baptist service at the Chapel on the Hill. The Methodists were just finishing up when we got there, and the Catholics had been there before them. After the Baptists left, the Presbyterians would have their service, then the Episcopalians. I had no idea how many kinds of church folks there were until we moved to Oak Ridge.
I like that all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs use the same church house, even if Virgie and her family don’t feel the same way. “Daddy says you can’t have Catholics using the same church as Christians,” Virgie told me one day when we were at the Red Cross. “They drink blood and worship Mary.”
“They don’t drink blood,” I said. “They drink wine and think it’s Jesus’s blood.”
“What difference does that make?” Virgie said. “Thinking it’s the same as drinking it. And you know on Saturdays at that place they let the Jews come in and do whatever it is they do?”
“They oughta let the Jews in,” I said. “That’s why we’re the U.S.A. and not Germany.”
“I ain’t got nothing agin the Jews,” Virgie said, “but they ain’t Christians, and you can’t argue with that.”
I couldn’t, so I did what I usually did when Virgie started spouting religion: I changed the subject to movies.
Brother Simmons, the Baptist preacher at the Chapel on the Hill, spits a lot less fire and brimstone than our preacher back home. He uses good grammar and big words and talks about his days at the seminary. He sounds more like a teacher than a preacher.
Even though the grammar was better, the content of Brother Simmons’ sermon was pretty much the same as the Easter sermons I’d heard my whole life. Most of the time was spent on Jesus’s horrible suffering—the nails driven through the hands, the mouthful of vinegar when he cried out for water, the mocking crown of thorns. Then there was the sword that pierced his side, proving he was dead, and then after three days, the discovery of the empty tomb and hallelujah, He is risen.
Here’s what I get out of the Easter story: Jesus was good and only wanted to help people, but then mean, powerful people tortured and killed him because they felt like he threatened their power. It’s a smaller version of what the Nazis are doing in Germany.
But I have a secret thought—so secret I’d never say it out loud, and my hand is shaking even as I write it here: I don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead. I don’t believe anybody can. Yes, the tomb was empty, but wasn’t there such a thing as grave robbers even back then?
I can’t even imagine how Mama and Daddy and my sisters would react if I was to say such a thing out loud. Would they be mad at me? Would they cry because they feared I’d go to hell?
Bu
t I don’t believe in heaven or hell, either one. It’s comforting to think of just floating out of your body when you die and being in heaven with all the people you’ve lost to sickness or accidents or war. It’s even comforting in another way to think of really bad people like Hitler winding up in hell. I’d like to believe in all that, but somehow I just can’t. I look at the world, and I know that the good are often punished and the evil rewarded. And I want to be good and be the kind of person Jesus would want me to be, but I don’t want to do it to win the prize of heaven or avoid the fires of hell. I just figure the best thing we can do in this life is to be good to each other, especially because this life is probably the only one we’ve got. I’d never tell anybody in my family, and I certainly wouldn’t tell anybody in Virgie’s family, but this is what I believe. Amen.
April 5, 1945
“God, I’m glad it’s spring,” Iris said. I was sitting on the front steps of Iris’s house and Iris was walking in the grass with Sharon, holding onto both of her hands as she took lurching steps forward.
“Me, too,” I said.
“Some of those long winter days cooped up in the house—I thought they’d never end. Going so stir crazy that I had to get out for a while, then having to mummify Sharon in her snowsuit and blankets to take her out in the cold.”
“Well, now it’s the season of rebirth,” I said. “Or at least that’s what the preacher said at church on Sunday.”
Iris let Baby Sharon drag her forward. “Oh, yes, this past Sunday was Easter, wasn’t it? Warren and I ignored it as usual. I don’t know what we’re going to do once Sharon’s bigger, though. I’m fine with celebrating the non-religious aspects of the holidays—Easter baskets and Christmas stockings and the like. But Warren is adamant that we shouldn’t teach her about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and things like that. He says, what kind of lesson does it teach your kids if you start lying to them right off the bat?”