by Beca Lewis
That night, the tears didn’t mean the end of the world for her. It was the beginning. The women told her a secret they had been keeping from the day her mother had disappeared.
Not only had they squirreled away money for getting out of the trailer park and paying her babysitting wages, but they had also saved money for her.
Every week, for sixteen years, they had each put a bit of money into an account in her name. And never told her. They waited until they were sure that she would choose to escape the life she had been born into and become someone. They couldn’t replace her mother, but they could help give her a future.
The money that they saved was enough for the first year of school if she wanted to go. She did. So for her last few years of high school, she had worked even harder.
She would make Mama Woo and the women proud of her, no matter what it took.
Two years later, and she was ready. Her clothes were packed and waiting for her in Mama Woo’s trailer. Another woman was driving her to the college. It wasn’t far. But what it looked like and how she would live was like going to another universe. Connie figured that once there, she would figure out how to get around. She would get jobs to make sure she could eat and pay the next year’s tuition when it came due.
A life full of possibilities stretched before her. If she did it right, she could come back and help these women who had been her mother. They had told her “no,” never come back. Ever. They needed to know she had escaped. They would find her if they needed her.
But she had returned, and instead of bringing help, she had gone to them because she was in trouble.
So many wonderful things had happened to her by then, Connie had almost forgotten where she had come from. Almost.
Four
For Connie, going to college had delivered a one-two punch to the gut. Although it was less than a hundred miles from home, it was as if she had moved to another planet.
She thought she would feel free. Instead, she felt exposed. She was a fraud. She didn’t belong there. Everyone moved through the classes, the dorm, and the town as if it was second nature. Groups of people walked together, chatting, laughing, wearing clothes that she could never afford. What had made her think she would fit in?
And she was homesick. How that was possible shocked her. She had no idea that she would miss the children she had taken care of for years and the women of King’s Row with such intensity. How much a part of her life they had become had not occurred to her until she realized she might never see them again since they told her never to come back.
She didn’t miss her father. And she hoped she never saw him again. He didn’t know where she had gone. She left a note saying goodbye, but nothing else. It had to be a secret so he couldn’t find her. If she ever returned home, it would be when she was successful enough to help the women, but never for him.
But her heart yearned for the love and acceptance she had felt when she was with the women and children who had been her family.
It was only for them that she kept going, dragging herself through each day like it was mud. Knowing that they had scrimped and saved so she could leave home and become somebody was her motivation.
The money they saved not only paid the first year’s tuition, but also for her dorm room. They hadn’t given her the money directly. They sent it to the college.
Only then did Connie fully realize how wise they were. If she had the cash in hand, she would probably have run away. No. Not probably. She would have. As it was, the college was the only roof she had over her head, and she owed the women to try, so she stayed.
It took a few weeks, but she finally found a part-time job at a tiny hamburger place near the middle of town. She got a free meal every day, which helped her budget.
She tried to get people she met at school and the restaurant to call her Constance instead of Connie, but within the first week, someone used the nickname, and she was back to the name she had heard all her life.
By then, she had realized that she couldn’t escape where she came from, even if she changed her name. So she gave up on the idea of Constance and settled into making herself as Connie fit into this new life.
The first thing she did was to cut her hair. It was the first time she had ever been in a beauty shop, and the feeling of being pampered both soothed her and made her anxious.
But when she walked out of the shop up the stairs to the sidewalk, her bob bouncing with every step, she knew it had been the best money she had ever spent.
People turned and looked at her, even a few boys. But she remembered what the women told her. No boys, even if they thought they were men, for now. School first.
It took months, but by the time Thanksgiving and chilly weather arrived, she had begun to feel as if she belonged in that simultaneously strange, exciting, and scary place.
Watching the other students, she had adjusted her looks and her speech to fit in better. And that brought her more attention. Some of it good. Having mirrors and makeup helped. And she began to understand that she had life experiences that would serve her no matter where she went—even college.
It was her roommate’s invitation to go home with her for Thanksgiving that changed everything.
She and Edith had not gotten along at first. Connie had to admit it had been entirely her fault. Edith had been friendly from the start. When Connie arrived at the dorm, sweaty and exhausted, Edith Warren was sitting on the bed she had chosen, looking as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
As Connie struggled through the door with her one suitcase, Edith had unfolded her legs from the yoga pose she had been sitting in and came to help. Her shiny ebony hair swung like a curtain over her face as she bent down to pick up the bag that Connie had set down to open the door.
“I’ll get it!” Connie had snapped at her, and Edith had pulled back, startled at Connie’s tone of voice. But instead of reacting, Edith started gaily chatting about how happy she was to meet Connie and bombarding her with questions. Where was she from, what was her major, did she want to go out to lunch?
Connie had answered all of Edith’s questions with a grunt, or a “no” until Edith had given up and left Connie in the room alone with the realization that she didn’t fit in and had no idea what was she going to do about it.
She had smacked her pillow in frustration at being stuck with this bubbly girl who probably was off talking with her friends about the hick from the sticks who was wearing the wrong clothes and was ugly to boot.
But Edith never gave up. She was relentlessly cheerful. Her blue eyes, startling against her pale skin and dark hair, would sparkle and snap as she talked and talked about college, where she came from, people she met, teachers, and what they wanted, until finally Connie started to respond.
Later, Connie realized that Edith had been telling her what she needed to know to succeed. Doing it as if she was a chatterbox, but really she was a teacher. After Connie started talking and sharing, Edith stopped the constant chatter and became a listener instead. It was mostly because of Edith that Connie didn’t give up, or go crazy, but instead started to feel at home.
So when Edith asked her to come home for Thanksgiving with her, Connie, having nowhere else to go, said yes with only the briefest moment of hesitation.
And in that way, she met the family that would not replace the women of King’s Row but would become her new home. Until she ruined it.
But then, that day, sitting around the table with Edith, her parents, Ralph and Lorraine, and Edith’s brother, Bill, she felt as if the world had finally opened its heart to her, and she was ready to say yes to living life with the same light heart as her friend Edith.
Five
After meeting Edith’s family for the first time, Connie’s desire to be someone important kicked into high gear. That drive to achieve was what had kept her sane growing up. It had stopped her from falling into the trap of her
father’s life.
Now that she had found her footing, she felt ready to conquer the world. And the place to start was where she was, in college.
She decided that every class she took was equally essential. Because each one would take her one step further away from the poverty she had known growing up. It didn’t matter what the subject of the class was. She tackled it as if her life depended on it, which, to Connie, it did.
She had no time for a social life. She had never been a fan of what seemed to her to be silly games or talking about things that didn’t matter. Now she had even less time for what she saw as wasting time. Her life revolved around work, going to classes, studying, and eating when she remembered to or when Edith brought her food.
One exception was the late-night talks she had with Edith about what they wanted to achieve in life. Alone in their dorm room, their hair in curlers, sitting cross-legged on their beds, walls covered with posters, clutter everywhere, and wearing college t-shirts that hung to their knees, they talked about what they would do after graduation.
They often disagreed. For Connie, going to college was the stepping off point to doing anything she wanted to do, and although she hadn’t decided exactly what that would be yet, she knew she would be the best at it.
Connie couldn’t understand why Edith wanted so little and would ask her why she was at college, anyway. Edith would laugh and say it was fun and gay, and something to remember when she got married and had kids.
“Oh my God,” Connie would scream at her, “That’s all you want? What about being somebody? Making money?”
“No,” Edith would answer, shaking her head so hard that her shiny dark hair would swing side to side, “That’s not what is important to me.”
Connie would huff, roll her eyes, and flop back on her bed in exasperation. She had not yet realized that she was the one out of step with the times. Edith was following the rules and social norms expected of them. Connie was not.
But she was too busy making her way through school to notice. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. She had bigger plans than marriage and children.
In fact, she had no plans for them at all. She had seen what marriage and children did to the women of the trailer park. It was not what they wanted for her, and it was not what she wanted for herself.
But it was their differences that made life better for both of them. Edith’s ability to meet people and her cheerfulness kept Connie from falling into pits of depression over not being the best in the class, or by the mind-numbness of work.
In return, Connie helped Edith study for tests and raise her grades enough that her parents had stopped worrying that their daughter would never make it through school. Edith was grateful. She could stay in college and get what she wanted. She had her eye on some of the boys in her class.
Edith was determined to marry someone like her father. Someone who would be an excellent family provider, and adore his wife, the same way her father adored her mother.
Edith never told Connie all of that, though. She knew that Connie would think that was stupid and rant and rail at her to change her mind. Instead, Edith thanked Connie in every way she could think of for helping her through school.
She was grateful that although Connie was her friend, she wasn’t like her, because Connie’s intense need to be someone and be the best was sometimes exhausting to be around.
Besides, she knew that none of the boys she had her eye on would like a woman like Connie. They were looking for women just like her. Ready and willing to be wives and mothers.
On the weekends, Edith could sometimes get Connie to take a walk through town with her. They would stroll in and out of the stores that lined the downtown streets. Many of the stores catered primarily to the college students and anyone who wanted to get gear that said “Penn State.”
It was where they had picked up their man-sized Penn State t-shirts for nightwear, and when there were clearance sales, they added sweatshirts and t-shirts to wear during the day. Connie almost always said no to buying things. She had to save her money. But one time got a baseball cap with a lion on the front and she wore it all the time to remind herself that she was a lion at heart.
Edith would often treat Connie as a thank you for her tutoring. So after window shopping, they would head to Murphy’s Five and Dime and have ice cream sundaes at the lunch counter. It was one of the few times that Connie would allow herself to laugh and giggle in public.
Edith told Connie that she was the sister she always wanted, and Connie told her the same was true for her.
Connie was making that up. She had never actually wanted a sister or a sibling of any kind. She thought it was lucky that her parents hadn’t gotten around to having more children since they weren’t fit to raise a child. A drunk, abusive father and a missing mother did not speak highly of their parenting abilities.
But she didn’t want to hurt Edith’s feelings. Technically, it was true because if she had known what it was like to have a best friend and a sister, she would have wanted one growing up.
During their first year of school, Connie went home with Edith over Christmas and spring break, and when Edith invited her to come home and spend the summer with her, Connie jumped at the chance, but with the caveat that she needed to work to earn money. Edith promised her there would be plenty of jobs.
It was during that summer that two things happened that moved Connie’s life onto a path that would force her to make a decision that now, in death sitting alone in her empty house, she wondered if it had been the right one.
Six
The house was so quiet. Connie thought she would go out of her mind. What had she been thinking when she was alive, staying in the house, not being part of life for so many years? Now, not being able to talk to anyone made her crazier than she had ever felt in life.
A few prospects had come through the house in the past few days to see if they wanted to buy it. Thankfully, it was the realtor who brought them through and not her daughter.
Connie didn’t think she could handle hearing Karla describe the rooms as if nothing of any importance had ever happened in the house. Which wasn’t true at all, she was sure. But then, for the life of her—what a funny term, she thought to herself—she couldn’t remember what they might have been.
The house was familiar, but her life wasn’t. It was slipping out of her grasp. Which was terrifying, but she had no idea what to do to stop it. What would she become when she didn’t remember anything? What was she now?
The last time the realtor brought a young couple to the house, she had described it as a lovely starter home. When the couple asked what had happened to the woman who owned the house, she heard the realtor say that she had died, but the rest of her words had faded out, and Connie hadn’t heard how she had died. In her sleep? Was that it?
That was what she thought had happened. Hadn’t she gone to bed and then woke up like this? Dead?
Questions with no answers bounced around in Connie’s head like ping pong balls. If someone bought the house, would she stay? Why? Would she be stuck here forever?
At the moment, Connie couldn’t think of where else to go. If she had thought death would bring her a measure of peace, she had been wrong. She had none.
She was tired and couldn’t sleep. Hungry and couldn’t eat. She could pretend to lie down on the bed or sit on the swing on the porch, but nothing in her life was touchable. She hovered over everything. She was not gone and not present. The irony of it didn’t escape her.
As she asked herself those questions, standing at the kitchen window looking out at the backyard and garden, Connie saw something that made her think that not only was she dead, but probably she had gone crazy too.
A boy was standing in the yard, staring at the house. Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She had never allowed children in her yard. Why was he there? C
ould she scare him away? She was a ghost, after all. Maybe she could be a scary ghost and get rid of him.
Habit, she told herself.
She had developed a habit of hiding in life, and now that she was dead, she was tired of it. She was dead tired of it—no more hiding. The boy was staring at the kitchen window, which meant that possibly he could see her. She raised her hand and waved with the tips of her fingers.
The boy didn’t move. Had he seen her or not? A second later, he was gone.
“Come back,” she said to no one because even when she was speaking out loud, she didn’t think her voice sounded in the world. Having no one to test it on, she wasn’t sure. And since the boy had vanished, she couldn’t test it out on him.
The possibility that he hadn’t been there passed through her mind, but she was unwilling to accept it. She wasn’t that crazy. She wasn’t making up things just to see them, and for sure, she wouldn’t make up a boy in the yard.
Still not being used to being able to walk through the walls, she went around the kitchen cabinets and walked through the door instead. She couldn’t touch it to open it, but it felt better to walk through a door. Made her feel more human, or real, even though she knew she wasn’t anymore.
Looking around the yard, she could see no sign of the boy but noted that the garden seriously needed weeding, and the bird feeders were empty. Two things she had enjoyed doing in life, she realized. Had she noticed that she liked them when she was alive, or did she think of them as only chores to do during the day?
Thinking of gardening took her back to the summer with Edith at her family home, where she had first been introduced to gardens and birds by Edith’s mother, Lorraine.
What a glorious summer it had been. Because Edith knew that Connie needed to work to earn money for school, Edith had talked her father into hiring Connie as a part-time assistant.
