Leaving Eden

by Anne Leclaire

  I watched while Martha Lee carried Mama outside and got her settled in the pickup. Martha Lee had the radio cranking. Bobby McFerrin was singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which was about the dumbest song in the universe, as if it were possible for a person to decide not to worry.

  “We’ll bring you back a milk shake,” Mama promised.

  Okay, Mama, I should have said, have fun, or anything nice, but all I could say was, “Don’t want one,” in my coolest voice, knowing she’d bring one anyway. And when she smiled and asked for a kiss, I pretended not to hear. Everything inside me loved Mama, loved her to distraction, but since she’d gotten sick there were days when I couldn’t help being mean-hearted. Once, I told her I was planning on going to Florida and moving in with Goody, but Mama just grinned wickedly and said to go ahead if that’s what I wanted. One day Martha Lee found me crying out by the willow ’cause of something mean I’d said to Mama. I felt like a baby, but she told me to go on and cry all I wanted. She said salt cured everything, whether it came from tears or sweat. She said I wasn’t mean, just hurting, and that’s why I said the things I did. She said my mama understood. I wanted to believe her.

  When the two of them headed off, Mama waved. I didn’t wave back. A pair of Spring Azures the size of small moths fluttered around my ankles. Bugs with birds’ souls, according to Mama. October was late to be seeing butterflies, even in Virginia. In science, Mr. Brown told us they flew thousands of miles each year. Thousands. I thought that was as close to a miracle as it was possible to conceive. If you smudged the dust off their wings, butterflies couldn’t fly, yet they migrated through thunderstorms and windstorms on those translucent wings, flying till they reached Mexico and places like that, flying all that distance for no apparent reason except to end up where they started in the first place. How was it that something so delicate could stand so much, and someone like my mama, who used to be able to swim more than a mile and boogie all through the night and still be ready for more, got sick? Why was that so?

  Once, Mama told me in Mexico or Africa or someplace like that there were women who made pictures out of pieces of butterfly wings. Imagine. The Spring Azures were circling my feet, and I could see how their wings would make a beautiful painting. Without thinking about it or planning it, still mad because Mama and Martha Lee had left me behind, I stomped on them. Right away I lifted my foot, but it was too late to take it back. Was that how it felt to be God? Did he ever regret making someone die? And who was he, anyway, to be sitting up there deciding things like who got to live and who got the shaft?

  Thinking about the butterflies and Mama and all the times I’d been mean to her made me too sad to stay in the creek, no matter how good the water felt against my skin. I waded to the bank and padded ashore. That was when I realized I’d left my towel hanging on the line at home. I was reaching for my T-shirt, figuring I’d use that to dry off, when I got this creepy feeling, this knowing I was being watched. Someone was standing off in the trees. For a second, I was scared. Goody was always warning me about men lurking about looking for girls like me, men involved in white slavery, though when I asked her to name one girl who’d ever been kidnapped, she couldn’t. I was remembering Goody’s warnings when I suddenly knew who was watching me. Like overnight I had developed special radar, the kind of radar Daddy used to have for my mama that let him know where she was without anybody having to tell him. Or like I’d developed Etta Bird’s ability for revelations. Spy. It was Spy hiding in the trees. Spy watching me for sure.

  My heart contracted under my ribs. Course, I should have yelled at him or held the T-shirt tight around me, but I didn’t. I stood up straight—back to him—and shook my hair out, just like I was home alone in my room. I could feel his eyes on me, his gaze heating my legs, shoulders, hips, and ass, warming all the places the creek had just cooled. I shook my hair again. Then I turned full to him. Cheap, cheap, cheap, Goody shouted in my head, but I didn’t feel one bit of shame. The skin on my belly and tits grew tight, like my body was growing beneath its skin, swelling up like I’d been stung by bees. I was heating in secret places. Goody’d say I was turning into trash. No better than Bitty Weatherspoon, she’d say. Like she’d predicted all along. I didn’t care. I was heating up and could have stood by Bald Creek forever, stood there and taken in the peculiar feeling that was a cross between ache and pleasure. I was turning into a wild girl, all right. I moved like a motion picture in slow motion, letting Spy have a real good look. Then I thought of Mama and imagined her watching me. Heat scalded my face, and pleasure flowed clean off my body. Too late, I turned and covered myself. I was the most shameless girl in all Virginia and I didn’t need Goody to tell me that.

  Still, for those moments when Spy was taking in my body, I felt—I felt almost beautiful.

  Tallie’s Book

  Raspberry tea soothes cramps.

  Sour milk is better than sweet for cake batter.

  Nylon panties cause yeast infections.

  Salt cures everything.

  It isn’t always necessary to follow directions—for cooking or for life.

  A boy’s gaze can make a girl feel almost beautiful. Truly.

  seven

  I figured by the morning, if Spy was like most Eden boys, it’d be public knowledge in five counties he’d seen me strutting around buck naked. For sure everybody’d be commenting on what a slut that Tallie Brock was and wasn’t it a blessing her mama wasn’t there to see it. Goody’d have said I should have thought of that before I’d displayed myself so openly. I dreaded facing Raylene. I figured the best thing was to march straight into the Kurl and deny-deny-deny the whole thing.

  When I got there, Raylene was pissing quarters. “Don’t let me near a gun,” she said. I could tell it was going to be one of those days. Aubrey Boles had showed up late and that set the whole damn schedule off. Aubrey made a regular habit of waltzing in a half hour past her appointment time, then she’d make excuses and ask for extras. A manicure. A cut in addition to color. She’d make this giant point that she only wanted a trim, just a little off the top or a half inch off the ends, hoping a trim would be cheaper than a cut, though Raylene’d told her a zillion times that one costs the same as the other. Then Ashley Wheeler came in asking for a bikini wax. Everyone knew Raylene never did below the neck. Brows, mustache, and chin, that’s all. Anything else you had to go to Lynchburg.

  “You’d look ten years younger if you’d let me cut your hair,” Raylene said to Ellie Sue Rucker. She was wielding her blow dryer like a pistol, and I knew enough to stay clear.

  “Hell,” Ellie Sue said. “I’d look ten years younger if I put on makeup.”

  Raylene was always telling customers what they should do, not that anyone paid the least attention. Everyone thought they knew what fit them best, like Effie Webb who insisted on bangs, no matter what Raylene told her. “If you have a fat face, I don’t care what you do,” Raylene said. “Bangs ain’t going to look good.” But the fatter the face, the more they wanted bangs. Just like short women wanted big hair. “Rat it up good,” Mrs. Gilbert would say. “So I’ll look tall.” And Raylene would grumble that she’d just end up looking like a short woman with tall hair. Raylene said all kinds of things, but the customers never took offense. She maintained she never said anything about anyone she wouldn’t say to her face. And she never did.

  The radio was blaring, driving me bughouse. It was set on 88.9, all Christian preaching and church music instead of the oldies or the hot stomping guitar I was wanting. As if the women in the shop needed gospel. Probably no one in there had tasted sin in two decades. They probably wouldn’t be up to it if sin came knocking on their front door with a fistful of lupine. Unlike me, who was developing a personal acquaintance. Wasn’t it sinful to stand shameless and let a man lay his eyes on anything he wanted?

  No matter how busy I got that morning, or how much I tried to forget, I couldn’t stop recalling how it felt to have Spy’s eyes fixed on my body. I’d get tight-skinned all ov
er and my body’d start to frizzle in all its secret places and I’d start to speculate about where he was at that very minute and what he might be doing. I’d picture him in his T-top Camaro and day-dream about what it would be like to be sitting next to him, his hand setting on my leg. I’d wonder what his hair smelled like up close, ’cause everyone’s got a smell that’s theirs alone and I was hungry to know the smell of him. The next thing I’d be thinking about the creek and wondering if he’d be there later that day. I’d get to daydreaming about the two of us swimming in the creek and I found myself coming to an understanding of why boys thought they could touch you when you were swimming, touch you like they wouldn’t dream of on land. It was like the water really did give a person special permission. Then my hands would fumble at whatever I was doing, which was how I happened to knock over the shampoo, the gallon size we used for refills. It was a mess to clean up and that was when I was afraid I was going to cry, even though I hadn’t shed one tear in four years. Raylene thought I was upset because of the shambles I’d made, or maybe because I was in my moon, which was what Mama’d told me to call it instead of all the dumb names the girls at school had for the monthly time. Next, Raylene turned all sweet, which is what people always did around me when I was upset, like being without a mama meant people should fix everything else for you, even dumb things like spilt shampoo, things that they’d get mad about if anyone else had done.

  “Oh, honey,” Raylene said. “Don’t you fret. Everything will be all right.”

  Everything will be all right. That’s what everyone said when Mama was sick. Once news of her illness got out, half of Eden came to see her. Even The Flowers stopped by, toting their famous burnt-sugar cake. Women would fuss around the kitchen or have Mama move to a chair while they spread fresh linens on her bed. Men, the same ones who’d envied my daddy ’cause he was married to Mama, stood back by the door and found the floor an object of great fascination. If Martha Lee was there when they came, she’d stomp out and drive off in her pickup. “Jesus,” she’d say when they’d cleared out and it was safe to return, “why don’t you tell them to leave you alone.” “They mean well,” Mama’d say. And I suppose they did, but they drove Martha Lee crazy and me, too. When they were leaving—man, woman, didn’t matter which—they’d take me aside. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” they’d say. “Your mama’s going to be just fine.” I knew they said things like that because they thought it was a consolation, but it wasn’t. It scared me. Like my eyes were lying and I couldn’t trust the truth of what was playing out right in front of me. For sure if I knew a girl whose mama was sick like that I wouldn’t tell her things were going to be goddamned-fine. I’d say straight out that I was sorry to hear her mama was sick and maybe I’d offer to take her for pizza some night. Or the movies. Or, if I knew her well and thought she’d let me, I’d just give her a hug, like the ladies at Elijah Baptist hugged me. For sure I’d keep my fat mouth shut. The truth was there was a lot to worry about. And things weren’t fine, not by a long shot. Mama was fading right before our eyes and there wasn’t a blessed thing we could do about it.

  I liked it best when no one was there, not even Daddy or Martha Lee, just me alone with Mama. I’d make her mint tea and if her feet were cold I’d put her socks on, which was harder than you might think. They always went on crooked, and it took me a while to get them right. Sometimes I’d sit on the floor by her mechanical bed and do the homework she was so insistent I keep up with. She’d ask me what I was learning about in school. She’d tell me that even if it made the teachers mad I should always ask questions in class if I didn’t understand something or, even more important, if I disagreed. “The only dumb questions are the ones you don’t ask,” she’d say, which was definitely not the opinion held by the majority of teachers at Eden High, who pretty much liked us to keep our traps shut.

  Sometimes, especially before it got too hard for her to talk much or she got using the morphine drip, she’d talk about the importance of having dreams. Once, she asked if I understood about her going off to L.A. for the Natalie Wood movie. I told her I guessed I did, but recalling the months she’d been gone, I could feel the ugliness start to come on me and I’d had to tighten my jaw to keep from saying something full of spite.

  “Come here, sugar baby,” she said, and made me lie next to her. I pretended like I didn’t want to, but she’d move over, patting the place by her side until I gave in. “I’m sorry I had to leave, sugar—I know it was hard, hard on you and hard on your daddy—but I’m not sorry I went. I’d be lying if I said I was.”

  “Even if you never got to make the movie?” I asked.

  “Sugar,” she said, “it wasn’t the movie that was important. It was the dream.” Mama believed in the possibility of achieving a champagne dream even if you only had a Budweiser budget. She told me what counted was conceiving of possibilities that stretched beyond us. It was knowing the sky was the limit, of having aspirations in spite of your geography or circumstance, and then reaching for them with all your might. That’s what mattered, she said. That and not letting fear of anything or anyone else stop you. If your dreams were true and your heart was big enough, Mama said, you could make them happen. You just couldn’t wait too long.

  I didn’t believe her. How could failing to grab on to the dream you’d believed in and reached for with all your heart, even if it meant deserting a girl and her daddy, how could that not matter? I thought inside she must have been real sad that she didn’t get to be Natalie. At that time I thought I believed I knew everything that had ever happened to my mama.

  One other thing she said that day. I was lying on the floor arguing with algebra when she whispered something. “What, Mama?” I said, hardly listening. I was thinking that of everything we were supposed to be learning, the one subject I could pretty much be certain of never using in my natural life was anything to do with finding out the value of x and z.

  “You’re beautiful,” Mama said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “If I’m lying, I’m dying,” she said, ignoring the obvious. “You’re beautiful, Tallie Brock, and don’t let no one ever tell you different.”

  I didn’t believe it, any more than I believed her when she said it was having the dream that mattered, not attaining it.

  Finally I finished cleaning up the shampoo. I put in a load of towels and wiped out the sinks. Pearl Summers was sitting in the styling chair and Raylene was applying color and they were both listening to Easter Davis go on about the birthday party she was planning for herself.

  “Same as last year?” Raylene shouted. Like half of Raylene’s customers, Easter was getting hard-of-hearing.

  “Yep,” Easter said. “Ain’t inviting nothing but men.” If Easter wasn’t edging into ninety, I’d eat her shoes.

  “Do they bring you presents?” Pearl said.

  “Well, last year one of them took me to bed.”

  Everyone laughed, but this didn’t seem funny to me. It seemed pure amazing. I tried to imagine a man who would find this chicken-necked old woman worthy of desire. I didn’t want to even consider the image of them actually doing it. Desire— the heat of it, like Scarlett wanting Rhett, or Mama falling ass over bandbox for my daddy, or how I felt about Spy—that kind of burning want seemed to rightly belong to the young. I finished cleaning the sink and started on the mirror. I made sure no one was looking and stared full at myself. I wondered if it was me, Tallie Brock, who Spy desired when he’d watched me at the creek, or if he’d have enjoyed the sight of any girl’s naked body. I wasn’t beautiful. Or even pretty. Not like Elizabeth Talmadge. Or the blonde on the Glamour Day poster. Still, I had to admit that in spite of all proof to the contrary staring straight at me from the mirror, the nearest I’d ever come to believing there might be more to Mama’s words than the wishful thinking of a mama looking at her daughter, the closest I’d come to believing I was beautiful, was when I’d been standing tall and buck naked in the late-day sun with Spy Reynolds looking on.<
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  The rest of the day we ran late and it was nearly six by the time the last customer left and we’d cleaned up. Raylene told me I could leave at five, but I stayed on. I was feeling good because Easter Davis had surprised me with a whole dollar. At last I had the full twenty I’d be needing for Glamour Day. Besides, there was nothing for me to hurry home to except the possibility of getting myself into trouble again. I figured if I stayed busy, there was less chance I’d take myself over to the creek.

  Well, surprise, surprise, surprise, when I got home, Daddy was there. He was standing in the kitchen, cooking up greens and pork. Far as I could tell he hadn’t been drinking. The only explanation I could figure was that someone had told him about me and Spy, and he’d decided to act like a daddy for once and keep his eye on me. I decided I’d stick with the tactic I’d set out with that morning and deny, deny, deny. Still, I was so nervous, I couldn’t sit quiet and got chattering on, trying to make him laugh by telling him about Easter Davis and her men-only birthday party. After a while, when he didn’t mention a word about Spy Reynolds, I began to relax. It was almost like it used to be.

  My daddy wasn’t always the disappearing man. When I was a little girl, he’d take me to Halley’s Mill, set me on the counter, and tell everyone I was his little girl. Like I said, he’d explain about the different grains. In early spring, he’d let me go in the room where they kept the chickens. There were hundreds of them, shipped one day old from McMurray Hatchery in Iowa. They arrived at the mill in March and by the end of a month, every one of them would be sold. When they were only days old, Daddy’d lift one out and place it in my hands. It would still be warm from the heat lamp and so soft and light, it was possible to believe it didn’t yet have bones. Then Daddy’d take it back and put it in with the others, handling it gentle, like he was afraid it might break. My daddy was probably the only man in all of Amherst County who didn’t hunt. Not for sport and not for food, though he’d eat three bowls of venison stew if you put it in front of him.