“I’m scared, Mother,” I said suddenly. “About leaving. Maybe it’s all wrong. Maybe I should stay right here in Russell County where I belong.”
Mother didn’t speak for a long moment, but just stared up at the moon, a placid look on her face.
Just as I was beginning to think she was lost in her own thoughts and hadn’t even heard me, she said softly, “How do you know where home is, child, if you never left it?”
My brows furrowed. “I don’t understand.” I wanted to go on to say that that didn’t make one bit of sense, but I respected my mother too much to sass her.
Art Credit: Jim Miller
She turned and looked at me. “You know how old I was when I married your daddy? 13. One day I was wearing pig-tails and playing Cowboys-and-Injuns with my brothers, and the next day, I was wearin’ a weddin’ dress and going home with a man I barely knew. I never had no chance to go out and see the world. I was born right here in Russell County, and this is where they’ll bury me when my time comes.
I ain’t complainin’…I’m just statin’ the truth. But you, Lily Rae…” To my surprise, Mother reached out and placed a hand on my knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You have a chance to get out there and make somethin’ of yourself. Why, you can learn to drive a car.” She shook her head wistfully. “I always thought I’d enjoy drivin’ a car,” she added softly.
Well, why don’t you learn, I started to say. But I didn’t get the chance as Mother went on, “You can go to a job every day and bring home your very own pay check. Imagine that! Why, wouldn’t that be a sight? A check made out to Lillian Rae Foster? And who knows? If you get yourself a nice secretarial job up there in Louieville, you might even get to go on a business trip someday to some fancy place like New York City. You might get to ride on one of them airplanes, wouldn’t that be somethin’?”
I stared at my mother, amazed. Maybe it was a trick of the moonlight but she looked almost like a teenager sitting there with her feet in the water and her eyes dancing with what could only be excitement. Why, I’d never imagined in a million years that Mother thought about such things! She’d always seemed like she was perfectly happy with her life here in Opal Springs.
“Maybe you do have the second sight,” I finally said. “I had a dream tonight about the Empire State Building.” I looked down into the pond, sending the water rippling with my feet. “But I just don’t know about going up to Louieville, Mother. I’ve never been away from ya’all before…not more than a night, and…well, I’m just gonna miss everybody.”
“Of course you’re gonna miss us,” Mother snapped. Then she added in a softer tone, “I reckon we’ll miss you, too, child. But that’s no reason not to spread your wings and fly.” She looked up and fastened her gaze on the moon. “You see that there moon? That’s what my great-grandmother called a shepherd moon. You see how that dark shadow looks like a shepherd? See the hook he carries to grab his lost sheep? There’s some folks that believe the scriptures got it wrong when they said the wise men were led to the baby Jesus by a star. In my family, story was that it wasn’t a star a’tall, but a big old yeller moon like that’un. And that shepherd moon led them home to Jesus.”
Mother fell silent again, and I didn’t know if that meant she was done with her story, or just thinking about what she wanted to say next. An owl hooted in the night, its lonesome call echoing down from the ridge. It brought tears to my eyes.
Lord, I was going to miss this place.
“Trust in the shepherd moon, Lily Rae,” Mother said. “Nobody gets out of this life without pain, but if you trust in the shepherd moon, it’ll always lead you home. Maybe not to this home where we’re sittin’ right now, but your real home. The one that’s inside your heart.”
I still didn’t understand what Mother was trying to tell me, but I felt comforted, anyway. How odd, I thought, that although she’d always been kind and patient and even loving in her reserved way, we’d never had a good conversation like this before. One that seemed so…woman-to-woman. It made my heart ache with love, but with sadness, too, because we’d waited until my last night at home to have such a talk.
“So…you really think I’m doing the right thing in leaving?” I asked.
Mother stared out over the pond. “I reckon if you don’t get out there and try something new, you might just regret it the rest of your life.”
But what about Jake, I thought. What if I lose Jake?
Suddenly I wanted desperately to tell Mother about Jake, about how much I loved him. I almost believed she’d understand. If she’d felt the same about Daddy, if she’d grown to love him like I loved Jake--which, surely she had, because, after all, she’d had five children with him—surely, she’d understand. Would she remember what young love felt like? That beautiful, giddy feeling that made your head spin, your heart race and that, sometimes brought you to tears for no reason at all?
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to begin. At that moment, a ghostlike cloud slipped in front of the moon, darkening the summer night.
Mother heaved a sigh and drew her feet out of the water. “It’s late. I reckon you and me better hit the hay. Got to get up with the sun tomorrow.”
And the moment was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
September 1952
Louisville, Kentucky
The clacking of typewriters sounded like a bunch of lovesick cicadas ratcheting up for a long night of courting. I kept my eyes on the hand-out clipped to the stand at the side of my Royal typewriter, and cautiously pecked on the keys.
“Now is the time for all good men to…”
Around me, the other typewriters sounded like they were going a thousand times faster than mine. All the other girls were experts already, I thought, chewing on my bottom lip. My typewriter dinged as it approached the margin, and I slammed the carriage to the left, then continued to type. I reached the end of the paragraph and rolled up the paper so I could read what I’d typed.
Now os rhe rme gor a;gii ,et t’k;
I slumped in my chair. Darn! I’d done it again. Why couldn’t I keep my dratted fingers on the right dadburned keys? Oh, this was impossible!
I clenched my teeth, trying to hold back a frustrated groan. Dadgummit, I was just awful at this! Whatever had made me think I could be a secretary, anyhow? It wasn’t turning out at all the way I’d imagined.
I furtively glanced around at the other girls. They all seemed to be doing just fine. Their long, slender fingers were tapping on the keys, so elegantly, so effortlessly, like they were already professional secretaries instead of students.
I sighed, and my thoughts drifted to home. What was Mother doing right now? It was almost ten o’clock on a Thursday morning. Maybe she’d be putting up apple butter for the winter, which meant she’d probably be frying up some of her scrumptious apple turnover pies. My mouth watered, and I swallowed hard, wincing at the scratchiness in my throat that had been with me since I’d got up this morning. I sure hoped I wasn’t coming down with a cold. That would be just perfect! Trying to type, and having to stop every few minutes to blow my dratted nose.
My mind strayed back to Mother’s fried apple pies. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a bite of one of them right now. Aunt Jenny was a good cook, but she didn’t make down home recipes like Mother did.
Home.
To my horror, tears blurred my vision as the ache of homesickness surged through my chest, as it had almost every day since I’d left Russell County. I might as well just face it; I didn’t belong up here in the city. And I’d known it from the very beginning.
Oh, the first few days had been exciting, with Aunt Jenny driving me all around Louieville, going to lunch in restaurants as fancy as the ones in the movies, and shopping at big department stores like JC Penney’s and Grant’s. It had been an adventure at first. But as soon as school started, everything changed.
The other girls were so different from me. They were mostly city girls and they wore nice clothes and perf
ect hairdos and seemed so worldly and…sophisticated!
From the very beginning, I’d felt like an outsider, and that hadn’t changed now that we were in our second week of training. During the breaks, the other girls clustered together as if they’d been friends forever, chatting about the same kind of things my friends in high school had talked about—boyfriends, movie idols, nail color shades. But not one of them had approached me. And I, who’d always been so popular and outgoing back at Russell County High School, had found myself too shy to make the first move. So, I’d spent the breaks alone, sipping stale coffee from a paper cup and pretending to be interested in the latest copy of Life Magazine in the break room.
I inserted a new sheet of paper into the typewriter, and placing my fingers carefully on the correct keys, began to type slowly. Once I fell into a rhythm, my mind began to wander again. This time, to Jake.
My heart twinged. Was he working at the gas station this morning? Or was he still home in bed after a night of drinking with his buddies? My fingers froze on the keys. Maybe drinking wasn’t all he was doing at night. Had he found some other girl to take my place? Look how quickly Chad had replaced me with Pat-Peaches. Mightn’t Jake do the same thing?
The thought filled me with despair, and for a moment, I wanted to shove the typewriter to the floor, jump up and run out of this place as fast as my feet could carry me. This secretarial training wasn’t worth losing Jake for, that was for sure.
But it’s only for a few weeks, the logical part of my brain reminded me. And you’re going to need a good job if you and Jake end up getting married, with him working at the gas station and all.
Not that Jake had ever said anything about marriage. It was only a matter of time before that happened, of course. All summer long we’d been doing the things married couples do, and Jake knew I’d only do that with the man I’d marry someday. So, it would happen, and once we were married, we’d both have to work if we wanted to live in a place of our own. Why, I’d just die if me and Jake had to live with my parents…or even worse, his parents.
With that horrible thought spurring me on, I began to type a little faster, casting a glance down to make sure my fingers were still on the right keys. A sudden rapping of a ruler against a desk drew my gaze to the black-haired woman in the front of the class.
“Okay, Ladies,” called out Miss Lenora Fines, the typing instructor, a tall, sharp-boned woman with Joan Crawford eyebrows and a slash of crimson lipstick on her too-wide mouth. “Let’s take a ten-minute break.”
The ultimate Old Maid, I thought, every time I looked at her. I’d bet a dime to a donut the poor old thing was still a virgin.
The other girls were all getting up from their desks, smoothing manicured hands down fashionable pleated wool skirts and chattering to each other as they filed out of the room on stiletto heels. I moved slower, wishing I had the self-confidence the other girls had. Why couldn’t I be the Lily I’d been in high school—the vivacious, fun-loving girl that everyone adored? Why did these girls make me feel so inadequate?
When I walked into the break room, all the other girls had formed into their own little groups and were already engrossed in conversations. I wandered over to the big stainless steel urn of coffee, not really wanting any, but feeling like I needed to find something to do with my hands so I wouldn’t look like a total idiot. Besides, maybe the hot liquid would feel good on my increasingly sore throat.
Someone had brought in doughnuts, I noticed, as the dispenser gurgled black, military-strength coffee into my paper cup. They were big and greasy-looking, but I decided to try one, anyway. Maybe a doughnut would get the taste of Mother’s fried apple pies out of my brain. I grabbed one in a napkin and headed over to my favorite spot by the window that looked out over the Ohio River. Munching on the doughnut, I stared at the river, half-listening to the conversation of the nearest group of girls discussing the movies they’d seen the past weekend.
“You’ve got to go see ‘Monkey Business,’ Susie. Marilyn’s hairstyle is just crazy! I’ve already made an appointment with my beautician, and I’m taking in her picture from the latest Photoplay. Do you think I should go blonder?”
I took a sip of bitter coffee. Now, here was the perfect opportunity to go over to those girls and get to know them. Aunt Jenny had taken me to the matinee on Saturday, and we’d seen that very movie. I hadn’t particularly thought Marilyn’s shorter hairstyle was all that attractive, but I could pretend I’d liked it. Making friends here would be worth one little white lie.
I swallowed the bite of doughnut I’d just taken, resolving to do just that. But just as I took a step toward the girls--all of them beautiful, three of them blonde, one, a redhead--the room began to tilt and shrink in size. My blood pounded in my ears and an unnatural heat ignited deep within my body like a wood stove fired up for a cold winter’s night. My Peter Pan collar suddenly felt like it was shrinking around my neck, making it difficult to breathe; my vision swam.
It’s like a dream, I thought, like I was looking through one of those telescopes in astronomy class back in high school. I saw the four girls turn as if in slow motion to look at me. I opened my mouth and tried to say something but couldn’t quite form the words. The room was spinning now, like the colorful top Santa Claus had brought me one Christmas when I was little. I felt like I was riding on it. Through the shrinking hole of my vision, I saw the pretty redhead’s ruby lips move, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. Her brown eyes were full of concern.
I stumbled toward her, reaching out for help. That was the last thing I remembered before everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I awoke to a blissful coolness on my forehead and gentle fingers brushing damp hair away from my hot face. For a moment, I lay still, my eyes closed, giving myself up to the comfort of familiar, loving hands, so glad to be back home where I belonged, where I was loved, where I was special. I smiled and whispered, “Oh, Mother, I’ve missed you so much.”
The cool, motherly hand adjusted the wet cloth on my forehead, and then gently stroked my cheek. “It’s Jenny, hon. How are you feeling?”
I opened my eyes and saw my aunt’s pretty, oval face. Her blue eyes—the most beautiful color of blue I’d ever seen—were filled with worry. As I realized I wasn’t home at all, but still here in Louieville with my aunt and uncle, I had to bite my lip to hold back tears.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t cry,” said Aunt Jenny, fussing with the blanket, tucking it up around my shoulders. “You’ve just got an old flu bug, Dr. Sullivan says. A little bed rest and lots of liquids, you’ll be up and about before you know it.”
So, that explained the sore throat. I moistened my dry lips with my tongue then rasped, “If it’s just the flu, then why do you look so worried?”
Two splashes of color appeared on my aunt’s English porcelain cheeks, and she averted her gaze, giving my arm a pat. “We’ll talk later. Right now I’m going to go make you some chicken soup. It’ll help you get your strength back.”
She bustled out of the room.
I looked around, still half-dazed. When had we come back to Aunt Jenny’s house? I vaguely remembered lying on a sofa in the office of the Simpson School. And then Aunt Jenny had arrived. We’d driven somewhere in her car…not back to her house. Not at first. I remembered a kind-eyed old man with white hair and a white coat. Of course! Aunt Jenny had said we’d been to the doctor.
I closed my eyes and gave a relieved sigh. Well, that was it, then. If I was down with the flu, I’d never be able to make up the lost time at the Simpson’s. There was nothing to do now but go on back home. Right back to where I belonged.
I smiled, thinking of Mother’s story of the shepherd moon. Well, I’d followed her advice. I’d gone out into the world and tried it out. Given it a chance. But that old shepherd moon was leading me right back home.
Right back to Jake―just where I wanted to be.
***
Aunt Jenny had been acting strange all week. It wasn
’t anything I could put my finger on exactly. Like a few minutes ago when she’d brought in a steaming bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and placed it on the TV tray where I’d been having my lunch since I’d felt well enough to move from the bedroom to the living room sofa. Aunt Jenny’s face had looked a million miles away. I’d had to ask her twice for an RC Cola before she’d even responded with a distracted “I’ll get it directly,” and then hurried out of the room, gnawing on her bottom lip.
It was a dark, rainy Tuesday afternoon, five days after I’d come down with the flu. I was feeling much better, thanks to my aunt’s gentle pampering. Glancing out at the rain pelting against the window, I shivered, glad to be snuggled up in a warm blanket on the sofa, and not out in the dank weather like Uncle Virgil, who worked at an insurance agency downtown, but spent a lot of his time driving to appointments around town.
I looked back at the television screen where a box of laundry detergent with legs and high heels danced across the screen. Lordy, I was going to miss TV when I got back home. Not even Katydid’s rich parents had one of these new-fangled boxes that broadcasted entertainment right into the living room. In a few minutes, “Search for Tomorrow,” would be on. It was a serial I’d got caught up in during my recuperation, and Lord, it was a good show. Just full of twists and turns and handsome doctors and nurses, and best of all, forbidden love. They sure knew how to tell a good story! Wouldn’t it be just the greatest thing in the world to be able to write stories like that? And to think, people got paid for doing it. Now, that would be a fine way to make money, a million times better than being a secretary.
The idea flickered across my mind, and I paused with my soup spoon halfway to my mouth. I could do it! Why, I’d been writing stories since I was in primary school. Not many of late, of course. Life had been too busy these past four years, what with high school being so much fun and all. But that’s what I could do now that I was laid up with this flu. I’d write a book—my own soap opera, but unlike “Search for Tomorrow,” mine would have an ending—a happy ending. I grinned and began to eat my soup faster. Aunt Jenny stepped into the room, a bright gold-metallic aluminum tumbler in her hand. I looked up and smiled. “Guess what, Aunt Jenny?”
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