by Ruth White
The next day, Mr. Gillespie told me about the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
“You can borrow the money from the government —some of it anyway—and pay it back at a low rate of interest.”
He helped me send for an application for that loan, and that night we put GOVERNMENT LOAN on a slip of paper and into the box.
“They also have work scholarships,” Mr. Gillespie told me later. “That means you earn part of your keep by helping out there at the college. My wife worked there in the dining room.”
That went into the box, too. My spirits rose higher and higher. The application arrived. I filled it out and sent it in, and waited. Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I dreamed a lot and talked incessantly about college.
“I think I’ll ask Aunt Evie to come in and stay with us when you are gone,” Mama said one night.
“That’s a great idea!” I said. “She can cook and take care of the house and at the same time get out of that shack!”
“Yeah,” Mama said. “We can be a lot of help to each other.”
So it seemed to be working out for everybody.
“I’m going to miss you, Tiny,” Phyllis said to me as she snuggled up to me on the couch, and put her cold, dirty feet on me just like always.
“I won’t be gone forever,” I said, placing an arm around her. “Promise me you will take good care of Nessie.”
“Oh, I will!” she said. “Will you write letters to us?”
“You bet!”
We were all three accepted at M-R, but my spirits took another plunge. Even if I managed to scrape together nine hundred dollars, it seemed that was only the beginning. There were clothes and books, lab fees and recreation fees, travel expenses, car upkeep, extra fees for private lessons, spending money, and on and on.
“And what about next year?” I said to Mama. “And the year after that?”
“We’ll worry about one year at a time!” Mama said. “Now, you stop that fretting!”
Then one day in March I got the surprise of my life. Mr. Norse, our principal, announced that the valedictorian for the class of 1960 was Cecil Hess! We were at an assembly and Cecil was sitting right beside me, and I about fainted. He turned and looked at me and smiled before he stood up to the applause.
Cecil! Valedictorian! Now, wasn’t that just like him? I never knew his grades were that good. Never even suspected. Nobody did.
“So what are your plans?” I asked him that evening as we took a walk up the road. “Going to college?”
“Sure. I was accepted at the University of Virginia long ago. A full scholarship comes with the valedictorian honor.”
“Cecil! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
But I knew. I never asked him. I was never interested enough in Cecil to ask him much of anything, and he was never one to talk about himself. Look how I had taken him for granted! Sweet, dependable, agreeable Cecil, always there like a rock, a silent rock.
“What else don’t I know about you, Cecil?” I said.
“There is one thing,” he said and smiled mysteriously. “Maybe I’ll tell you before we go away to college.”
“What! Tell me now!”
He laughed.
“Okay, I’m really a prince in disguise. My father was the King of Somewhere-or-Other, and he wanted me to have a normal childhood, so …”
“So he sent you to live up a holler with a coal miner. Quite a sense of humor, that king!”
“Quite so!” he said, laughing.
“Really, tell me, Cecil.”
“Someday, Tiny. Be patient.”
I felt a strange flutter in the pit of my stomach.
The hills turned the brightest green and white and pink you can possibly imagine when spring arrived that year. I couldn’t wait to get up in the mornings to look out the window. There was something new and fresh and magic coming into my heart along with the spring. The future looked brighter and more beautiful than ever it had before. For the first time in my life I could dream of myself doing something more than getting married and having babies. Maybe those things would be important someday, I told myself, but for now my own self mattered more to me than anything else, and it felt right. Then it occurred to me that sometimes I went whole days without thinking about Jesse. My wounds were healing.
All the windows were open and the fresh smells of spring were wafting through the house one morning in early April as I dressed for school.
“Local merchants have donated almost three hundred dollars in cash for the winner of the Fourth Annual Black Gap High School Talent Show,” the radio announcer was saying. “It’s the biggest jackpot ever for this event.”
Three hundred dollars? Yes, three hundred dollars! That much money could go a long way toward solving my problems. And the talent show was still two weeks away. I trembled and sat down on the edge of my bed, and for the first time I allowed myself to remember completely last year’s disgrace. It was so painful I had forced it out of my mind, vowing never again to subject myself to such humiliation.
But now, was God teasing me? I thought. Was he saying, “Get back up on that horse”? Did I dare try again? Suppose I failed again? Would I ever live it down?
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was the biggest weekend of our senior year with the talent show on Friday night and the prom on Saturday night, and it was my week to drive the Henry J.
The prize money had grown to $375.00, and of course I had to go after that much money, so once again I entered the contest. The big night found me backstage with Bobby Lynn. I was wearing the blue dress from last year and my hair was done up in a French twist with little curls dangling around my face and neck. Everybody told me I looked pretty, which gave me confidence.
Cecil, Mama, Phyllis, Roy, and Rosemary were sitting out there on the front row. The boys hadn’t wanted to come. Behind them were a bunch of hillbillies from up Loggy Bottom whistling and hooting at everybody who came onstage. One of their own, a lanky ninth grader, was a contestant picking the banjo. Maybe they figured if they made fun of everybody else, their boy would look better.
And there were babies all over the place that night, every single one of them crying or squealing. You never heard such a noisy audience. And coughing! You would think the lot of them had the whooping cough. Besides all that, I knew they remembered me from last year, and were all wondering if I would freeze up again. Yes, I was pacing and nervous, but so far not petrified. I simply could not stay out of the rest room. I had to go again and again. That’s where I was ten minutes before my act, in a private stall, when I heard two other girls talking as they entered the rest room.
“Did you hear about Tiny Lambert?”
“Yeah, about her stepfather raping her?”
“Yeah, everybody was talking about it in gym today.”
“He really raped her?”
“Yeah, can you imagine getting raped?”
“I bet it hurts.”
“I bet she feels awful.”
In a daze, I walked back to the wings where Bobby Lynn was waiting.
Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
“Bobby Lynn, what have you heard about me?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but she didn’t look me in the eye.
“Does Cecil know, Bobby Lynn?”
“Know what? Now, listen, Tiny, don’t get yourself all worked up before you go on.”
My mind was racing. Who told? Was it Beau or Luther? No, they would never tell something like that about their daddy. And Mama sure wouldn’t tell anybody. Then it had to have been Vern or that grubby preacher. It must have been Reverend Altizer. It was a piece of gossip he just had to repeat. That slimy worm!
“Oh, God, Bobby Lynn, this is awful.”
I buried my face in my hands.
“Everybody knows,” I said.
“Nobody knows anything,” Bobby Lynn said and she put an arm around me.
I couldn’t help myself. I looked out the
curtains at the audience. The auditorium was overflowing. Hundreds and hundreds of people. And every single one of them knew what Vern did to me.
The hillbillies were heckling somebody onstage again, and I saw Mr. Norse trying to quiet them, but he was getting nowhere. What if they heckled me? What if all the babies started crying while I was singing?
My knees began to tremble. What if I get out there and collapse? What if I forget the words to my songs? What if I open my mouth to sing, and belch instead right into the microphone?
“Shut up!” I said to myself.
But myself would not shut up.
What if my bra strap slipped and showed? Or my half slip fell off? What if … ?
My God, it was Jesse! Jesse Compton was sitting out there in his air force uniform ! He didn’t even tell me he was coming home. He was so handsome, and he was with Connie Collins. I could have died.
“Oh, Bobby Lynn, Jesse is out there!”
“What! Where?”
Bobby Lynn peeped out.
“He’s with Connie,” I said.
“That weasel!” she said. “Don’t you dare let him upset you, Tiny. He’s not worth it.”
Jesse must know by now, I thought. And Connie. Everybody.
My mouth went dry.
“I wish I could help you, Tiny,” Bobby Lynn said sweetly.
“Just find me a place to be alone for five minutes?” I said.
“But your act is coming up. Calvin is going out now. You’re after him.”
“Just two minutes, Bobby Lynn, please.”
“Okay.”
Bobby Lynn looked around frantically. The only place available was the dressing room, which was hardly more than a closet, and it was full of girls.
“Please, please move out for just a minute!” I heard Bobby Lynn tell the girls while I stood there clinging to the curtain and shaking in my shoes. “Please let Tiny come in here for just a minute!”
“What for?” they grumbled.
“To pray!” Bobby Lynn said quickly. “It’s an emergency. Her act is coming up, and she has to pray.”
“Well, all right.”
So they moved out of the dressing room and I moved in.
“I’ll knock when it’s time,” Bobby Lynn said and closed the door.
With my heart flying and my breath coming in short, choppy gasps, I wasted no time. I sank to my knees and whispered, “Willa, Willa …”
On the wall facing me I read, “Kilroy was here,” and I could smell sweat and dirty hair instead of Willa’s honeysuckle. But she was there—sort of. I could see her face and part of her hair, which was floating around her almost like the air was liquid. And her face came and went in the dim, smelly room.
“Willa, help me …”
“Sing ‘I’ll See You in the Spring,’” she said softly.
“But we didn’t practice that one,” I said.
“Sing ‘I’ll See You in the Spring’ after The Wayward Wind,’” she said emphatically, and her face faded away.
“Okay, Willa … ?”
“Sing only to me,” she said as her voice went away from me toward the ceiling.
Bobby Lynn knocked.
“And, Tiny,” the fading voice went on, “remember to say nice things to yourself like Aunt Evie told you.”
Then I hurried out.
“‘The Wayward Wind,’ then ‘I’ll See You in the Spring,’” I said to Bobby Lynn as we moved toward the stage.
“‘I’ll See You in the Spring’! But, Tiny, we didn’t practice that one.”
“Please, Bobby Lynn, just do it, okay?”
“Okay, ‘I’ll See You in the Spring’ it is!”
“Tiny Lambert!” the emcee was saying.
Everybody applauded politely as I stepped out on the stage with Bobby Lynn. For the first time that night, total silence settled over the auditorium. Not a baby was crying, nor was there a cough or a jeer. I had their attention. Bobby Lynn began her introduction to “The Wayward Wind.”
“Tiny,” I said in my head, “you can outsing anyone here.”
I swallowed hard and began to sing, faltering at first, and still shaking. But as my voice picked up strength, all the tension left my body.
When I finished, the audience applauded enthusiastically.
“You’re the best, Tiny!” I said to myself as Bobby Lynn played an intro to “I’ll See You in the Spring.”
Then I sang to Willa just like she told me.
I’ll see you in the willow
Weeping in the stream.
I’ll see you in the newborn fawn
Soft as in a dream …
And as I sang I saw me and Willa picking daisies and rolling in the grass … playing on the high porch and learning to sing … Willa drying my tears as we met again during those wee hours two years ago … creating a fantasy world to ward off despair during that wet, gray summer … Willa dancing in the moonlight and Willa silhouetted in my window while I cried over Jesse.
Aromas in the April night
Will steal upon the air;
Twining round about me
Like ribbons from your hair.
I’ll hear the whisper of the wind
Like songs you used to sing.
And though you won’t be there,
I’ll see you in the spring.
The applause startled me out of Willa’s spell. It was thunderous. There was a stomping and cheering and pounding that pulsed through me like drums. It was the sweet sound of approval. They were all standing.
I smiled and bowed slightly. Bobby Lynn came up beside me grinning from ear to ear.
“You’re a hit!” she said.
We left the stage, but the applause went on and on.
“Encore?” Bobby Lynn said to Mrs. Miller, our sponsor, who was standing there smiling at me and applauding, too.
“No, no encores in a contest,” she said. “But you can take another bow, Tiny.”
So I walked out again, and the applause swelled again. This time I saw Cecil clearly with Mama, Phyllis, Roy, and Rosemary, smiling broadly, all of them. Behind them the hillbillies were clapping louder than anybody else, and behind them was Jesse. He was standing there clapping and looking at me with a very serious look on his face. Connie was hanging on to his arm, frowning. She wasn’t clapping.
Thirty minutes later the contest was over, and I heard my name called as the winner. The applause started up again. This time I saw that Mama was crying, and I started crying, too.
For some reason a cold October morning flashed into my mind. Frost was shimmering on the mountains and I was riding up a deserted street at dawn, thinking, I survived!
TWENTY-EIGHT
The next morning, Phyllis and I spread all my prizes around the living room on the couch and chairs. Besides the cash, I had won gift certificates to nearly every store in town, a set of luggage, a watch, a radio, a set of tires, jewelry, spray cologne (Emeraude by Coty), and lots of candy and flowers and makeup. Mr. Theodore Collins, who owned the liquor store, couldn’t very well offer his merchandise to high school kids, so he chipped in a paid vacation for the winner and a guest to Virginia Beach. It included bus fare, hotel room for four nights, and twelve meals.
“Take me, Tiny,” Phyllis pleaded. “Please, please take me.”
“I would, Phyllis, but think now, if it was you, who would you take?”
“Mama.”
“Right. I’m taking Mama.”
“Taking me where?” Mama walked into the room.
“To Virginia Beach.”
“Oh no!” She stopped dead still. “Not me! Why, you’ll want to take Bobby Lynn or Rosemary.”
“No, I want to take you.”
“Yeah, Mama. She wants to take you,” Phyllis said.
“Why, I wouldn’t know how to act,” she said slowly, and her eyes went out of focus.
She was seeing herself at the ocean.
“Why, I don’t even have a bathing suit.”
“Well, I have a gi
ft certificate for the Style Shoppe. You can buy one. We’ll both buy one.”
Then she smiled.
“Ain’t that something?” she said. “Me at the beach? I never have seen the ocean.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Just think, Mama, we’ll be staying in a hotel by the ocean, and we can eat breakfast in a restaurant.”
“Breakfast in a restaurant?” She grinned. “Oh, I gotta tell Dixie!”
She ran to the telephone.
“What a mess!” Beau came into the room. “You won all this loot just for singing a song?”
“She sung two songs, and she sounded like Peggy Lee, only better,” Phyllis said.
“Huh!” Beau said.
He picked up a sweetheart ring and turned it over and over in his hand.
“This worth anything?”
“About five dollars,” I said.
“Huh!”
“Beau’s jealous,” Phyllis said.
“Jealous of what?” He snorted. “What would I do with a girl’s ring?”
“Give it to Sissy Hess!” Phyllis grinned.
“Girl!” he cried. “You better shut up!”
“Does Beau like Sissy Hess?” I said.
“Yeah, he carried her books to the bus one day when it was raining,” Phyllis said, then she ducked as he took a playful swing at her head.
“Beau!” I laughed, sensing that he was reaching out to us for friendship again. “That Sissy Hess is cute as a speckled pup!”
Beau grinned, then grabbed me around the legs, and the next thing I knew, we were tumbling on the floor. He started tickling me, and he was so strong I really could not get away from him. Then Phyllis pitched in to help me, and Luther came in to square things up. We were all laughing so hard we didn’t hear Mama yelling. But finally I did hear her, and I peeped through all the arms and legs around me, and there was Mr. Gillespie and a pretty woman right there in the room looking at us. I about had a heart attack. They were both smiling.
“Omigosh!”
I pushed my way to the top of the pile.
“Stop it, Luther! That’s enough. Hey, Mr. Gillespie. No more, Beau, Phyllis!”
Finally, the young’uns got the message that someone was watching, and they rolled back and came to a dead halt.