The Truest Pleasure

by Robert Morgan

  I would get so excited I walked in the pasture without a coat just to feel the sweet wind, and newness of the air. I was so happy the holidays was over and we could return to ordinary days, the opportunity of day following day, that I glided over the grass. The ground looked washed clean by rain or snow, and the broomsedge and pines looked waxed and polished.

  I can remember shivering with the mystery of space around me. It was too good to dream of that there was so much space to move through and breathe and use. That’s when I felt closest to God, when the air was towering above and curving around me. I looked up the river valley to the far mountains, and I pondered the warm nest of myself in the whipping breeze.

  Sometimes I run through the pasture and into the pine woods beyond the hill, then along the river where winter pools was low and clear. I run on the trail above the barn and through the orchard and along the ridge above the spring. And then I would go inside and set in the dim bedroom to calm myself. It took several minutes before I could look at things up close again.

  But I would also calm myself thinking about the future. I thought how I didn’t have to do anything to make the future arrive. It just come to me, as if floating on a long river.

  But when I was about fifteen the strangest thing happened. I was a tall awkward girl with these big feet and big hands and everybody kept saying, “Ginny’s growing up to be a pretty girl” and “Ginny’s going to be a tall woman.” But they kept saying it year after year, and I come to see they meant I was ugly now but I might look better later on.

  Except as the years passed I kept looking the same. I knowed things was supposed to happen to a girl to make her grow into a woman, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. Mama had died when I was nine, and all I had was Pa and Florrie to tell me about things. Pa never did like to talk about female things, and Florrie was already courting and ignored me as much as she could.

  But I felt something was wrong, though I didn’t know exactly what. And I certainly didn’t know what to do about it. Florrie liked to say things like “Ginny ain’t never going to grow up as long as she keeps her nose in a book.” I knowed that Florrie had her monthlies and she kept rags which got soaked with blood and which she washed on the back porch and hung to dry. And she talked about how awful she felt sometimes, and the pain she had. And she liked to take powders or a drink at times for the pain. I figured it would happen to me in time and I was scared.

  Nothing angered Florrie like when she thought some blood had soaked through her dress and she had to run to her room and change. Sometimes she throwed things then and banged pots together, and talked about “the curse.”

  For a long time I feared what was going to happen to me, and then I feared nothing was going to happen. I waited month after month and I was still awkward and gangly and my chest flat and my hips narrow. I could tell Pa worried too, though he never said anything. He didn’t know what to say to a girl about her body.

  “How are you feeling?” Pa would ask from time to time.

  “I’m fine,” I would say. He asked so many times I finally said, “Do you want me to be sick?” He turned red a little bit. But when I snapped at Pa he never answered back. And then I felt worse for flying off.

  In the end I guess he asked Florrie to talk to me. She come into the bedroom and said, “Ginny, there’s something I have to know, that Pa wants to know.”

  I turned to face her, already angry. It was like she was accusing me of some fault. “What have I done this time?” I said.

  “It’s what you ain’t,” she said. “Have you had any bleeding?”

  “I bleed when I am cut,” I said.

  “I mean bleeding in your . . . you know what I mean,” she said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because it’s time. Because you are old enough,” Florrie said.

  “And what if I don’t?” I said.

  “Then you won’t have children. Only a woman that has monthlies can have children.”

  It was like she was accusing me yet again of being wrong. I run out of the room and out of the house. I run all the way to the springhouse and stood under the hemlocks there and cried.

  Florrie didn’t say anything more for a few days, and of course Pa didn’t say anything either. But after about a week Mama’s brother, Dr. Johns, come by and said he wanted to talk to me. Everybody disappeared and left me alone with him. He smelled like whiskey, as he always did when making his rounds. Whiskey was the medicine he mostly prescribed, and he always took a little hisself. But he was my favorite uncle. He liked to tease me. He said if I kept reading books I would be a doctor myself some day. He said my black hair made me look like an Indian or a gypsy. When I was little he brought horehound candy in his doctor’s bag. I imagined the candy smelled like the whiskey on his breath. I even wondered if horehound candy might make you drunk.

  “Ginny,” he said to me. He made me set on the sofa in the living room, and he set down beside me. He was no bigger than I was, and seemed like a little boy hisself except for his gray beard. He had a gold watch chain that flashed in the firelight. “Ginny,” he said, “do you ever feel sluggish, or heavy, or a little crazy from time to time?”

  “Only when I have work to do,” I said.

  Dr. Johns laughed, and looked me right in the eyes. “Do you ever feel pains in your belly?” he said. “Deep in your belly?”

  “Only when I eat too many apples,” I said.

  “You’re too smart for me,” he said.

  “You can give me one of your tonics,” I said.

  “I am going to give you a tonic,” the doctor said. “I want you to take a tablespoon three times a day, before each meal.”

  He handed me this bottle of black stuff. It was like a thin syrup, and you had to shake it before taking any. It was the color of Co-Cola but it didn’t fizz up when shook. I don’t know what all it was, except some herbs Dr. Johns had concocted for his female tonic and he sold it all over the county when he made his rounds. There was so much whiskey in the mixture it tasted like a cordial, except it had an aftertaste of anise or licorice. When I took it I tried to imagine it was some elixir that would make me beautiful with full breasts and voluptuous hips.

  The tonic warmed me and made me feel better. And sometimes I took two tablespoons before a meal just to make sure I got enough. It made me feel cozy and confident, and I was sure my problem would be solved. All the medicinal weeds and barks and berries Dr. Johns knowed about had been compounded in the tincture and I was certain it would help.

  But the only effect I noticed from the tonic, besides cheering me up, was it was a mild laxative. I took it every day, until the bottle was gone, and nothing happened. Pa didn’t say a thing, but he was watching. Whenever he asked how I felt I always said fine, fine. But I could tell how worried he was.

  For once it seemed the future might not come to me. I was somehow trapped and could not go ahead and become a woman. I would not have a marriage before me, or children. I hardly knowed what I had done to deserve it. But I felt guilty, especially when Florrie said it was because I read so many books that I had not growed normally. “A woman wasn’t meant to think so much, and to keep her mind on such rot,” Florrie liked to say.

  “I know what you keep your mind on,” I said.

  “Jealousness won’t help you,” Florrie said.

  One day Pa told me to get ready to drive down to South Carolina. It was early spring.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “To see a doctor,” Pa said.

  “Which doctor?”

  “An Indian doctor,” he said, “named Dr. Match, that doctors women’s problems.”

  I felt awful scared but I got ready. The truth was I was so worried I would have been willing to go anywhere if it could have helped. I saw myself soon becoming an eighteen-year-old and a nineteen-year-old that couldn’t ever have children.

  It was so early in spring the trees was mostly bare along the river. But once we crossed the line at Saluda Gap and started do
wn the Winding Stairs I saw the poplars had leaves like little green flames. The sarvis was in bloom high up and the dogwoods lower down. It was like we descended to spring, for by the time we got to Chestnut Springs the trees was covered with green and yellow leaves and the woods was a blur of tender colors.

  Pa turned to the left toward Dark Corner and we drove over Poinsett’s Bridge that my great-great-grandpa had helped build. The hollers at the foot of the mountain are deep as pits and the mountains so steep they seem to hang out of the sky. The peaks far above was blue and the woods around us almost green. We passed a waterfall and Pa turned the horse onto a smaller road, just a track, leading out through woods and over a hill.

  The road come out into this little valley, and I smelled smoke. It was a perfect nest of a valley at the foot of the mountain with new-plowed fields by a creek and houses and barns scattered here and there. First thing I noticed was a pit dug into the side of a hill with a ladder down into it. A man was climbing the ladder with a heavy bucket in his hand. He wore nothing but drawers, or maybe a cloth wrapped around his middle, the way Indians used to. And he had dark skin.

  As we passed the pit I could see down into it. Below the layer of brown dirt and red dirt, and meally yellow dirt, was clay white as cream. It looked as if they was digging into pale butter. It was white as the clay Pa dug out of the branch and eat a bite of every spring for a tonic.

  Pa stopped the wagon in front of a shed and tied the horse to a pine tree. Smoke rose from an oven that looked like a big mud beehive. In the shed two men in breech clouts was shaping clay on a turntable. I saw it was a place that made pottery, for there was pots setting all around the shed and in front of the oven. But what was astonishing was the size of the pots. Some would hold five gallons and some was big enough for a boy to hide in. I had never seen urns or jugs that big. It would take two men to lift some of them, as it was taking two men to shape one on the turning wheel. But the jugs and big jars also had faces carved on them, with jutting noses and bulging eyes big as taters.

  The path to the house was lined with pots. All had faces on them, some with bulging eyes, some with terrible grins and grimaces. Flowers filled some pots, and painted sticks was stuck in others. The yard was swept and I didn’t see any chickens.

  The man who come to the door was dressed like any doctor, in a black suit and stiff collar. He had silver hair and silver rimmed glasses. But his skin was dark, and he wore a string of beads around his neck big as pebbles of different colors. And he had several rings on his fingers, all set with red and blue stones.

  “Are you Dr. Match?” Pa said.

  “I am,” the man said. “Won’t you come in.”

  “We are here about Ginny,” Pa said. “She has this trouble . . .”

  “I see,” the doctor said, cutting Pa off. The doctor looked at me with his black eyes like he was studying a puzzle.

  “I’ll wait in the wagon,” Pa said.

  When Pa was gone the doctor guided me inside to a table. “Sit here,” he said. “I want you to talk to Madame Sparrow first.”

  The room was almost bare except for some feathers and wood carvings on the walls. There was big pots standing in the corners. The table had wonderful designs painted on it.

  A fat woman in a maroon dress come through the curtained door. Her gray hair was braided and coiled around her head. She wore earrings of colored stones like those on the doctor’s necklace. “Please hold out your hands,” she said.

  She took the tips of my middle fingers and looked at my palms. Then she looked at my face as though it was a mile away. “You have been planning for the future?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you are not ready for the future?” she said.

  “No, I guess not.”

  She looked at my palms again. “You have lost someone dear to you,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you will have a great love, in the future,” she said.

  “I will?”

  “You will have great joy, and sorrow, and then happiness again,” she said.

  “What kind of sorrow?” I said.

  “I cannot say.” She looked at my forehead and then at my hands again. She studied the palms and wrists. “You must not be afraid to change, even as the seasons change,” she said. “Only as you change will you find happiness.”

  “What kind of change?” I said.

  “You will find that out as you come to it,” she said. She did not smile. She studied me as a prospector would a pan of gravel.

  “Sniff this,” she said, and pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve. She held it to my nose and I snuffed. I don’t know what was on that cloth. It might have been some drops or powder. But it made me sneeze the awfullest sneeze, and stars shot through the top of my head. I sneezed so I felt I had sprained my spine. Tears come and the room blurred and twisted around.

  The woman, Madame Sparrow he had called her, got up and left. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, but the tears kept coming. I didn’t know why I was crying, but the water seemed to gush out of my eyes. The tears made the room dim and crooked.

  Suddenly the doctor come back and set opposite me. He had a leather pouch in one hand and a bundle of feathers in the other. He waved the feathers at me as though he was making the sign of the cross, but I don’t think that’s what he meant to do.

  “What do you think about?” he said.

  I didn’t know what he meant. “Lots of things,” I said.

  “Do you think about the future?” he said. “Do you worry about the future?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “You must not worry about the future,” he said. “What you worry about will not come.”

  “What should I think about?” I said. I sniffed and rubbed my eyes. My eyes was all hot inside.

  “Think about the past,” Dr. Match said. “Think about what has been, and think of pigeons. Imagine you are a pigeon.”

  “A pigeon?” I said.

  “Think of yourself as a pigeon high on a tree or flying over the valley. Think of flying hundreds of miles, of flying close to the sun and over rivers.” He touched the pouch to my forehead and the feathers to each of my shoulders. He looked at my eyes and past my eyes. It was as if he was trying to see behind my eyes.

  “Do not tell anyone that you are thinking of a pigeon,” he said. “It will not work if you tell. It will lose its medicine.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And you must know your secret name,” he said. “No one else can know this name.” He leaned forward and whispered the name in my ear. And to this day I have never told anyone that name. I don’t know if it matters or not, but I have never revealed to a soul the name he told me, though I have said it to myself at the hardest times ever since.

  “Now you will take this,” he said, and pulled a little jug out of his pocket. It was a jug like the big ones around the room and pottery shed, except it was no larger than an apple. But it had a face with bulging eyes on its side and a wooden stopper in the top. It was a perfect little jug, small enough to fit in my hand.

  “Take a spoon of this before each meal,” he said.

  “Is it a tonic?” I said.

  “You must not ask,” he said, “only take it as I say.”

  “I will,” I said. My eyes had quit crying and my head was beginning to cool. I could see him clear again.

  “Remember,” he said, “if you start to worry, think about the pigeon. And say the secret name to yourself, over and over.”

  The sunlight was blinding when I stepped outside. Pa stood on the steps and held out a silver dollar to the doctor. Then he tipped his hat and said goodbye. Dr. Match did not answer. He stayed on the porch and watched us walk back to the wagon.

  It felt like spring had advanced while we was in the little valley. Driving back I noticed how big and soft the leaves was on the maples and sycamores along the creek. Some trees looked a darker green and even the tender green leaves had unfolded more.r />
  Maybe it’s the way memory can fool us, but the big change for me begun on that trip back from Dark Corner. The mountains looked different, and the sunlight on the steep slopes sparkled. The horse stepped faster going home, at least on the level places, and Pa’s heart was lighter.

  But maybe that’s just the way I recall it. Sometimes I think we only recollect what we have remembered before. What we recall is having recalled something already, so our strongest and truest memories come from a chain of often recalled things, and in that chain, over the years, events get adjusted and sorted around and stretched to fit the way we see things along the way. There’s no way to prove it, but I think that’s how it works. And maybe I’ve run a lot of things together because they happened so long ago.

  “Well, what did the Indian doctor do?” Florrie said when we got home. She never could hold in her curiosity.

  “He didn’t do much,” I said.

  “That tells me a lot, Ginny.”

  I felt more grownup because I had been away. I didn’t feel like being bossed by Florrie that day.

  “Did he give you any medicine?” she said.

  “He give me something that made me sneeze,” I said.

  “I’m sure that will be a lot of help,” Florrie said. She spread the wet dishrag on the rim of the emptied pan.

  “It made me sneeze so hard I cried,” I said.

  “Did he sing any secret chants?” she said.

  “He waved a feather in my face, and a little bag,” I said.

  “And Pa took you all that way for that?” she said.