Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

  I didn’t have anything in my mouth, but I pretended to take gum out just so I could have an excuse to stop reading for a second. The thought of returning to the page made me feel as though I was going to pass out. Then a flycatcher flew into the window. Everyone got up to watch it slide down the glass.

  “They’re probably tryin’ to fly in here ’cause they think Betty is some big ugly worm to eat,” Ruthis said, laughing. “I bet her and her daddy are gonna make headdresses out of all the fallen feathers. Don’t leave Betty alone in the woods. She might turn completely savage.”

  I slowly stood from my desk. The room had finally stopped spinning.

  “Betty?”

  The teacher’s voice was behind me.

  “Are those shorts I see on your body?” she asked.

  Ruthis snickered.

  “I…I…” I was still thinking of the paragraph. “I wear them at home.” I was finally able to make a complete sentence.

  “This isn’t some tepee out in a field, young lady,” Mrs. Cross said. “This is an institution of formal education. There are rules to follow.”

  I was sent to the principal’s office. I took my time getting there. During the walk, I was able to calm down and was feeling more myself as I entered the office.

  The principal was a man who wore a bow tie and a small flag pin over the left breast pockets of his suit jackets, which were always gray. He had broad shoulders and short, thick legs.

  “Betty Carpenter, what are we gonna do with you?” he asked as I stared at the taxidermied swordfish mounted on his wall. “Betty? When I speak to you, I’d like to see your eyes.”

  I turned to him. His breath always smelled like pickles. I could smell it wafting toward me.

  “You’ve violated our school policy, you know that, don’t you?” he asked, gesturing to my shorts.

  “I don’t understand why there’s a policy,” I said.

  “We must keep separation between the sexes.”

  “Separation?” I asked.

  “Clothing should show there’s a difference between a girl and a boy. Don’t you agree, Betty?”

  “Why can’t I wear what I want?”

  “Do you know what happens when girls wear what they want, like shorts or pants?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Everyone stares at your crotch,” he said, briefly looking at mine.

  “My crotch?” I looked down toward it, too.

  “That’s right. Pants define your area. When a woman wears pants, no one sees her. They just see her crotch. Women who wear pants desire that attention. They seek it. Did you know that in places in this world where females wear pants there is more crime? Women who wear pants don’t care about the family or the home. They don’t care about instillin’ good morals and settin’ good examples.”

  “Because they wear pants?” I asked. “But men wear pants.”

  “Women cannot behave the same as men, because women and men are not the same. What if I were to put a skirt on right now and go frolicking around this office like your mother?”

  “My mother doesn’t frolic.”

  “My dear, anytime a woman walks, she frolics. She can’t help it. It’s the way her legs are shaped.”

  He stood and started walking on his toes as he swung his hands up by his chest.

  “Oh, look at me.” He tried to speak in a woman’s voice. “Look at me.”

  “That’s not how women walk,” I told him.

  “Yes, it is.” He pulled the blanket off the back of the upholstered chair in the corner. He turned the blanket into a skirt by wrapping it around his hips. As he circled the room, he continued to walk on his toes and sharply sashay his hips to either side.

  “Do you still have respect for me, Betty?” he asked. “Of course not,” he answered before I could. “I would be less of a man in a skirt.”

  I realized then that pants and skirts, like gender itself, were not seen as equal in our society. To wear pants was to be dressed for power. But to wear a skirt was to be dressed to wash the dishes.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the birds are actin’ the way they are because you’re wearin’ those shorts, Betty.” He dropped the blanket and sat at his desk as he told me wearing a skirt would preserve my purity.

  “Your fellow brothers in Christ will look at you with respect if you dress how the Bible says women and girls should,” he said.

  “But the boys keep pullin’ my skirt up,” I replied. “They’ve seen my underwear a million times.”

  “I see.” He leaned back in his leather chair. “You flirt with the boys then?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been wearin’ clothin’ that causes your fellow students to think lustful thoughts?”

  “I’m just wearin’ clothes, same as anybody,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  “Because the clothes a girl wears can be leadin’, do you understand? The way you dress says things about you. I know these boys in my school. I am friends with their families. They are good sons. They are tryin’ to keep God in their heart. You want them to be good boys, don’t you?”

  “Whether they’re good or not is up to them.”

  “No, it’s up to you. You have a great responsibility as a female, Betty. Especially now that you’re comin’ up on havin’ hips and breasts. How can us men keep God in our hearts if you pretty little things don’t help us by dressin’ modestly? Do you know what modest means, Betty?”

  “They’re just cotton dresses and skirts I wear. They’ve got little flowers on them and—and—and you don’t see me goin’ around pullin’ the boys’ pants down. It has nothin’ to do with clothin’. The boys would lift my skirt up if I was wearin’ a potato sack. You should be punishin’ the boys. Not me.”

  “Do you go to church, Betty?” He leaned farther back until his chair squeaked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you and your family there.”

  “Nature is our church.”

  “The church is your church, young lady. Anything else is blasphemy. Are you Christians, your people?”

  “My people are Cherokee,” I said, standing taller. “And if we were still livin’ today as my ancestors did in the past before everything was taken away from us, women would be in charge and you would have to listen to me.”

  “Oh, is that so?”

  “Yes. And I could wear what I wanted because—”

  “Because why?”

  “Because it didn’t matter to the Cherokee what women wore. It mattered what they did and what they spoke and what they thought.”

  “And you see what happened.” He laughed. “Your people were conquered because women make weak leaders. I guarantee if these Cherokee of yours would have had men in charge, this would all be Indian country today. Women in pants lost your people your land.”

  “Take that back.” My hands closed into fists at my sides.

  “It isn’t befittin’ for a girl to frown so hard, Betty.”

  I thought about flattening him until he was lost in the ground. Something we could then tread over until the end of time. Better still, I wanted to put him in a hollowed log and roll him off the edge of everything. At the very least, I wanted to take his bow tie and strangle him with it until he’d taken back everything he’d said. Instead, I looked up at the swordfish.

  “You must like that,” he said. “To keep starin’ at it the way you are.”

  “Dad says men who mount dead animals on their walls are men who think they’re more important than they really are. He also says that only men with small penises kill an animal just to have a trophy.”

  “Well, your dad must have a whole wall of dead animals then,” he said with a satisfied grin.

  He released me back to class, but not before he drew a compass on a piece of paper that he then attached to the hem of my shor
ts with a safety pin.

  “Why’d you draw a crack in the glass?” I asked.

  “Because your moral compass is broken, young lady,” he said.

  As soon as I was out of his office, I grabbed hold of the piece of paper. I was about to yank it off my shorts, then I saw the arrow he’d drawn. It was not pointing back toward my classroom. It was pointing down the hall to the school’s front door.

  I followed the arrow, running toward the brightly lit doorway. Outside, the janitor was pushing a metal trash can on wheels and picking up dead sparrows from the sidewalk. I ran past him, all the way to Dandelion Dimes.

  I opened the door as quietly as I could. Still, the little bell rang. The diners turned to look at me.

  I tugged on Fraya’s apron strings as I passed her on my way to the counter. She finished taking orders before meeting me.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school, Betty?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t find my way to class.” I nodded down to the compass.

  She looked at my shorts.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you skip school today. It’ll be our little secret.”

  She fixed me a cheese and tomato sandwich. I spun on the stool as I ate, watching her carry plates back and forth from the kitchen.

  After I’d finished eating, I went upstairs to Fraya’s room. Like the diner below, her room was wallpapered in illustrations of dandelions framed by dark green vines and fancy scrollwork. The ceiling was covered in the same design. The furniture had come with the room and was painted yellow along with the wood trim and floorboards. Even the toilet, tub, and sink in the small bathroom were yellow porcelain. With so much of the same color, Fraya’s items stood out. Her mauve afghan draped across a chair. The brown spines of her books. The closet of dresses in a multitude of hues from blue to red. I took the mint-green dress off its hanger. I slipped it on over the top of my clothes. I spun until the skirt flew up, revealing my shorts.

  “Girls should wear dresses,” I mocked the principal. “Hey, principal, you like this?” I kicked my legs up in the air as I marched around the room. “What about this?” I shook my hair out and jumped around. “Is this befittin’ for a girl?”

  Still spinning, I spotted Fraya’s diary on the dresser. I carried it over to her bed, where I lay down, propping my feet up on her fancy yellow iron headboard.

  When I opened the diary, it was as though everything but Fraya’s song lyrics was written in a foreign language. I tried to make out the code she had used, but she had made her own alphabet.

  I took the paper compass off my shorts. Using the pen from the spine of Fraya’s diary, I copied her lyrics inside the compass, following the round edges until her words spiraled to the center. I placed the compass between the pages of her diary.

  It had gotten louder in the diner below. I didn’t have to check the clock to know school had let out. I took the dress off and hung it back in the closet.

  When I got downstairs, I saw the mature crowd had left, leaving room for teenagers to take over. Through the faces, I saw Flossie’s. She was at the counter, talking to Fraya.

  “I was tellin’ Fraya about the most fun game we played at school,” Flossie said to me as I approached. “You stand at a window and if a bird hits the glass in front of you, you’ll go to hell.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  “Is not.” Flossie grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the large plate-glass window.

  “Remember,” she said, “if a bird strikes the glass in front of you, you’re destined to spend eternity with the demons.”

  “You two really shouldn’t tempt damnation,” Fraya said as she walked by, carrying a slice of pie to a booth.

  “Look.” Flossie pointed to a sparrow. “It’s headed right for us.”

  We screamed and ducked just as it looked like the bird was going to crash into the glass. Last minute, the sparrow made a turn that saved her life.

  “I’m not playin’ anymore,” I said, leaving the window.

  “Scaredy-cat.” Flossie followed me out of the diner. “Meow, meow, meow.”

  Seconds later, a crow crashed into Flossie’s back, knocking her onto the ground. The bird was stunned but, after a few false starts, flew again.

  “Damn beast.” Flossie cursed as she sat up. “I’m so mad I could spit nails.”

  “You okay, miss?”

  Both me and Flossie turned to a fella by the name of Cutlass Silkworm.

  “Hope you didn’t get hurt,” he said, offering his hand.

  The Silkworm family owned a vineyard on the edge of town. Cutlass was only in his early twenties, but already had his father’s hairline. Being seventy pounds overweight and with a lisp, he was nobody Flossie would have dreamed she would end up with, but she liked how his gold watch shone in the sunlight. I could tell from the way she accepted his hand.

  “Thanks,” she said, making sure her hair fell into her eyes at the right angle.

  By summer, Cutlass and my sister were an item. It wasn’t long after, Mom called Flossie into her room and sat her down. I watched from the doorway as Mom brushed Flossie’s hair at the vanity.

  “It’s time you start thinkin’ ’bout your future,” Mom said. “You’re no longer a little girl. The vineyard does well for Cutlass and his family. If you were his wife, you wouldn’t be in want.”

  “His wife?” Flossie made a disgusted face. “I don’t wanna be his wife. I just like him havin’ a car that actually runs. Besides, I can’t stay in Breathed. What about Hollywood?”

  “You wanna be a star?” Mom began to braid Flossie’s hair.

  “More than anything.” Flossie bopped in the seat.

  “Then let me tell you what I should have told you a long time ago. You’re the type of star who only shines when there’s no other stars around.”

  Flossie looked at Mom through the mirror.

  “I can get shinier,” she said. “I can work on it. I’m only sixteen.”

  “If you go to Hollywood,” Mom said, “you’ll be surrounded by the biggest and brightest stars there are. You’ll be average there. Hollywood doesn’t put average on the screen. But here in Breathed, as a Silkworm, you’d be the brightest star as a rich man’s wife. You’ve seen how I struggle. Barely able to afford lipstick and hosiery. You want that for yourself?”

  Flossie quickly shook her head.

  “These opportunities don’t come around every day, girl,” Mom told her. “The older you get, the harder it’ll be. You’re Flossie Carpenter, right? You’re gonna get with a man anyway.”

  Flossie shot Mom a look through the mirror.

  “Might as well be one with some money,” Mom continued. “Set yourself up for an easy life. Cutlass is a good boy. His family are good folks.”

  “But I don’t love him.”

  “Even if you don’t care for him now, after a while, you’ll find he’s a lot easier to love than you ever thought possible. Especially after you carry his seed.”

  “His seed? You mean have his kid? No way.” Flossie shook her head. “I don’t want no kid.”

  “You have to want one, Flossie. Cutlass is havin’ fun is all and once he’s finished, he’ll throw you away. It happens time and time again to girls like you.”

  “Girls like me?” Flossie asked.

  “If you have his child,” Mom continued, “you’ll have a claim. It’s the only way to secure your future as a star.”

  Flossie closed her mouth as her chin started to tremble. She shot up and ran past me. I caught up to her in our room, where she stood in our closet, looking through her clothes for something to wear on her date that night with Cutlass.

  “Hey?” I grabbed her arm. “Don’t listen to Mom.”

  “When women go wrong, men go right after them.” Flossie jerked out of my grip as she slipped a navy dress off
its hanger. She held it to her body to see what it looked like in the mirror. “Mae West said that in She Done Him Wrong. I’ll just go a little wrong, Betty. Just long enough for him to go after me. If worse comes to worst, I can always take his wallet and get to Hollywood that way.”

  “You don’t need him, Flossie. You can do it on your own.”

  “Silly Betty. Don’t you know anything by now?”

  I looked at my sister. The bones had elongated in her face, giving her a stoic surface that rose and fell with each smile she did and did not give. Her eyes had grown larger, the green shade more brilliant than when she was a child. It was as if all the energy and rage were kept in her irises until they were green fire.

  “What do you think about this dress?” she asked. “I think it’s nice.”

  That night Flossie let Cutlass leave himself inside her. I imagine she flinched when it happened. The next morning, I took the dress she had worn and buried it in the yard.

  Once she knew she was pregnant, she told Cutlass, who did the fashionable thing of getting down on one knee. As a wedding present, Fraya made Flossie’s dress. A lacy pink thing that came above her knee. Flossie liked it because of the way it made her look like she was so sweet she could dissolve in a man’s mouth like candy.

  “Don’t you think, Betty?” she asked me.

  Following the wedding, Flossie said she wouldn’t be returning to school the following year.

  “Marriage is my future now,” she said, surrendering and moving into the pillared colonial house Cutlass’ parents bought them.

  “I’ll write goodnights to you, like we did to Fraya,” I told Flossie.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I ain’t got time for childish amusements no more. I’m a wife now.”

  The spring that had started out with birds flying low was now a summer ending with them flying high. They never did find a reason for the birds’ behavior. Dad said sometimes we all do stupid things.

  “Don’t I know it,” Flossie said.

  I was left alone in what had been our bedroom. It was empty without her. I didn’t realize how much space was taken up by all the things we did together. Those late hours of flipping through a magazine while sucking on fireballs or brushing each other’s hair as we talked about the way the spider in the corner made her web.