Rhoda

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “He might have to.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, and went on into her room and shut it out. She had gone to four grade schools. She was never going to move again. She was going to live right here in this room forever and wait for Bob Rosen to take his pin back and marry her. “He’s crazy,” she said to herself and pulled her new pink wool dress off the hanger and began to dress for dinner. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Monday was a big day at Harrisburg High School. They were taking achievement tests. Rhoda liked to take tests. She would sharpen three pencils and take the papers they handed her and sit down at a desk and cover the papers with answers that were twice as complicated as the questions and then she would turn the tests in before anyone else and go outside and sit in the sun. Rhoda considered achievement test day to be a sort of school holiday. She went out of the study hall and past the administrative offices and out the main door.

  She sat in the sun, feeling the October morning on her legs and arms and face, watching the sunlight move around the concrete volumes of the lions that guarded the entrance to Harrisburg Township High School. The Purple Cougars, Harrisburg called its teams. It should be the marble lions, Rhoda thought. I ought to write an editorial about that. He told me to write editorials whenever I formed an opinion. She imagined it, the lead editorial. Not signed, of course, but her mark would be all over it. Her high imagination. He still got the paper up in Champaign-Urbana, since he had been its greatest editor.

  She picked up her books and hurried into the school and up the broad wooden stairs to the Purple Clarion office. She sat down at a table and pulled out a tablet and began to write.

  I was out in the October sun getting tanned around my anklets when it occurred to me that we have been calling our teams the wrong name. Purple Cougars, what does that mean? There aren’t any cougars in Harrisburg. No one even knows what one is. When we try to make a homecoming float no one knows what one looks like. Everyone is always running around with encyclopedias in the middle of the night trying to make a papier-mâché cougar.

  WE SHOULD BE THE MARBLE LIONS. Look at what is out in front of the school. JUST GO AND LOOK . . .

  “What you doing, Scoop? I was just looking for you.” It was Philip Holloman.

  “Oh, God, I’ve got this great idea for an editorial. Leta said I could write one whenever I got in the mood. You want to hear it?”

  “I have a letter for you.” He was wearing his blue windbreaker. He looked just like Bob Rosen. They had matching windbreakers, only Bob’s was beige. She had been in the arms of Bob Rosen’s beige windbreaker and here was Philip’s blue one, not two feet away. He was holding out a letter to her. A small white envelope. She knew what it was. At her house there were three of them wrapped in blue silk in the bottom of her underwear drawer.

  “Why did he write me here?”

  “I don’t know. Look at the address. Isn’t that a kick? God, I miss him. I miss him every day.” She took the letter. To, Miss Scoop Cheetah, R.K. Manning, Ltd., The Purple Clarion, Harrisburg Township High School, Harrisburg, Illinois.

  In the left-hand corner it said: Rosen, Box 413, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

  Rhoda took the letter and held it in her hand, getting it wet from her palms, and left her notebook on the table with her editorial half-finished and excused herself, breathing, still breathing, barely breathing, and went out into the hall. Philip watched her from the vantage point of eighteen years old. He liked Rhoda Manning. Everyone that knew her liked her. People that understood her liked her and people that thought she was crazy did too. Rosen was going to direct her career and someday marry her. That was clear. Anybody could see what was going to happen. She was on her way. She was going to set Harrisburg Township High School on its ear. Rosen had decreed it.

  “Dear Cheetah,” the letter began. Rhoda had found a quiet place in the abandoned lunchroom.

  I am going to be home this coming weekend. November 1, 2, and 3. If you will be waiting for me wearing a black sweater and skirt and brown shoes and get that hair cut into a pageboy I’ll be over about 6:30 to take you to the ball game in Benton. If you have to wear your cheerleading things (Is there a freshman-sophomore game that night?) you can bring the black skirt and sweater and change at my cousin Shelton’s house.

  If you show up in that pink dress looking like Shirley Temple you will have to find someone else to violate the Mann Act with. I have been thinking about you more than seems intelligent.

  Things aren’t going well up here now. I have had to miss a lot of classes and will have to go to Saint Louis on the 4th for some more surgery. Mother is coming from Chicago. Tell Philip. I left it out of his letter.

  Did you read that style book I sent you? You must study that or no one will ever take your pieces seriously. Leave the feature section to the idiots. We are after news.

  Love,

  Bob

  She went home that afternoon and took the other letters out of their drawer and got up on her bed and read them very slowly, over and over again.

  Dear Cheetah,

  I made it to Champaign-Urbana in the midst of the worst winter storm in history. They want me. They took me over and showed me the Journalism Department. You wouldn’t believe how many typewriters they have. It must be twenty.

  Coleman Hawkins is going to play here next week. Stay away from those Nabs. See you soon. In a hurry.

  Love,

  Bob

  Dear Cheetah,

  My roommate brought a cake from home and a cute habit of picking his nose when he studies. The classes look like a snap except for Biology which is going to require “thought and memory.” This Williard guy teaching it has decided that science will save the world and I am going to sit on the front row and keep him from finding out I’m a History major. If at all possible.

  Mother cursed out the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois at a street corner. Where in the hell do you think you’re going, she was muttering and I looked at the license plate and it said 2.

  Remember what I told you about those tryouts. Team up with Letitia and don’t think about anything but the routine. And remember what I told you about talking to Harold about writing the play. You can do it if I did.

  Big kisses,

  Bob

  Dear Cheetah,

  I was sick in bed for two days and still can’t go to class. I’ve memorized everything in the room including the nosepicker’s daily Bible study guide. Here’s his program for the day.

  FOR SEPTEMBER 29

  Do’s and Don’ts

  Do decide that those in power are there to take care of you.

  Do listen when they speak for they are there by the will of the Lord for your benefit. Honor the ones the Lord has put over you to help you on the way to your recovery from the sickness and disease of ignorance of the Lord.

  Don’t be one of those that question the wisdom of older people. Sit at the feet of your parents and teachers. Let love be on our face and shine unto them the light of the Lord.

  Don’t let vice call out to you. The devil is everywhere. Be on the lookout for his messengers. Do not be fooled by smiles and flattery.

  The nosepicker suspects me of being in the legions of the devil. He has asked to be transferred to another room. If the devil is on my side that will happen soon. I cough as much as possible and ask him what the Bible is and try to get into as many conversations as possible tidbits about my mother’s notoriously filthy mouth. I can’t wait till you meet her. She is coming to Harrisburg this summer to stay with grandmother and me.

  I’m tired a lot but it’s better. Write me. I love your letters and get some good laughs.

  What is happening about the play? What did Harold say?

  Love,

  Bob

  Dear Cheetah,

  Back in class. Your letter came Monday. That’s great about the play. I think you should call it Harrisburg Folly’s, not Follies. Or something better. We’ll work on it when I
’m home Christmas.

  Why skits? How many? Too busy to make this good. Hope you can read it. Out the door.

  Bob

  That was it. The entire collection. Rhoda folded them neatly back into their creases and put them in their envelopes and wrapped them in the silk scarf and put them beside the bed on the table. Then she rolled the pillow under her head. He’s coming home, she said to herself as she cuddled down into the comforter and fell asleep. He is coming home. He’s coming over here and get me and take me to Benton to the game. I’m not eating a bite until Friday. I will eat one egg a day until he gets here. I’ll be so beautiful. He will love me. He’ll do it to me. He doesn’t even know I started. I might tell him. Yes, I’ll tell him. I can tell him anything. I love him. I love him so much I could die.

  Then it was Tuesday, then it was Wednesday, then it was an interminable Thursday and Rhoda was starving by the time she dragged herself home from school and went into the kitchen and boiled her daily egg.

  “You are going to eat some supper, young lady,” her mother said. “This starvation routine is going to stop.”

  “I ate at school. Please leave me alone, Mother. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You look terrible, Rhoda. Your cheeks are gaunt and you aren’t sleeping well. I heard you last night. And I know what it’s about.”

  “What’s it about? What do you know?”

  “It’s about that Jewish boy, that Rosen boy you’re going to go to Benton with. I don’t know about your driving over there with him all alone, Rhoda. Your father’s coming home tomorrow night. I don’t know what he’s going to say.”

  “Philip Holloman and Letitia’s sister, Emily, are driving over with us. I mean, he’s the editor of the paper. That ought to be enough chaperones. Emily’s going. You call her mother and see.” If her mother did call, Rhoda would have to try something else. “Call Emily’s mother and see. We’re going together. The ex-editor of my newspaper I happen to write for and the editor this year and Letitia’s sister. I guess that’s enough for anybody. I am so lucky to get to go with them, with some people that have some sense instead of those idiots in my grade.”

  “Well, if Emily’s going.”

  “She’s going.”

  “Please eat some supper.”

  “I can’t eat supper. I can barely fit in my cheerleader skirt. Did you finish the black one? I have to have it. Is it done yet?”

  “It’s on the worktable. We’ll try it on after dinner. I don’t know why they want you to have black. I think it’s very unflattering on young girls.”

  “It’s just what they want.” Rhoda kissed her mother on the cheek and went back to scrambling her egg. She scrambled it in several pats of butter. At the last minute she added an extra egg. If she didn’t eat anything else until tomorrow night it would be all right. Already she could feel her rib cage coming out. She would be so beautiful. So thin. Surely he would love her.

  “That’s really all you’re going to eat?”

  “That’s all. I ate a huge lunch.” She dumped the scrambled eggs onto a plate and went out of the kitchen and through the living room and sat in the alcove of the stairs, with the phone sitting about three feet away. Soon it would be tomorrow. It would ring and his voice would be on the line and he would call her Cheetah and then he would be there and she would be in his arms and life would begin.

  Then death will come, she remembered. Then you will die and be inside a coffin in a grave. Forever and ever and ever, world without end, amen. Rhoda shivered. It was true. Death was true. And she was included. She ate the eggs.

  Then it was Friday, then Friday night. Then he was there, standing in her living room, with his wide brow and his wide smile and his terrible self-confidence, not the least bit bothered by her mother’s lukewarm welcome or that her father didn’t come out of the dining room to say hello. Then they were out the door and into his car and it was just as she had dreamed it would be. The quality of his skin when she touched his arm, the texture, was so pure, so white, even in the dark his skin was so white. He was sick and his body was fighting off the sickness and the sickness was in the texture of his skin but something else was there too. Power, will, something like his music was there, something going forward, driving, something that was not going to let him die. She wanted to ask him about the sickness, about Saint Louis, about the operations, but she did not dare. The forward thing, the music, would not allow it. Even Rhoda, as much as she always talked of everything, knew not to talk of that. So she was quiet, and kept her hand on his arm as he drove the car. She waited.

  “I’m so goddamn proud of you,” he said. “You’re doing it. You’re going to do it, just like I said you would.”

  “It’s just because of you,” she answered. “It’s just to make you like me. Oh, hell, now I’m going to cry. I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry.” He stopped the car on the side of the road and pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her. There was a part of her rib cage in the back that was still sort of fat but not too fat. If I was standing up I’d be skinny, she decided. It’s not fair to kiss sitting down.

  “You don’t ever wait for anything, do you?” he said. “I had meant to make you wait for this.” He handed it to her. Put it in her hand. The metal cut into her palm, the ruby in the center embedded in her palm. “You’ll have to wear it on the inside of your bra. We aren’t supposed to give them to children.”

  “I’m not a child. You know I’m not a child.”

  “Yeah, well Tau chapter of ZBT doesn’t know anything except you’re a freshman in high school. Don’t get me thinking about it.”

  “Are you giving me this pin or not?”

  “I’m giving it to you.” He turned her around to face him. “I’m giving it to you because I’m in love with you.” He laughed out loud, his wonderful laugh, the laugh he had been laughing the first time she laid eyes on him, when he was leaning up against the concrete block wall of the Coca-Cola bottling plant picking her out to be his protégée. “I’m in love with a girl who is fourteen years old.”

  “Say it again,” she said. “Say you love me.”

  “After the ball game.”

  “No, right now. In front of Janet Allen’s house. Right here, so I’ll always remember where it was.”

  “I love you. In this Plymouth in front of Janet Allen’s house.” Then he kissed her some more. There were a lot of long crazy kisses. Then Rhoda pinned the ZBT pin to the inside of her bra and later, every time she jumped up to cheer at the ball game she could feel it scratch against her skin and send her heart rampaging all over the Benton football field and out across the hills and pastures of Little Egypt and down the state of Illinois to the river.

  On Sunday he went back to school. Drove off down the street smiling and waving and left her standing on the sidewalk, by the nandina bushes. She walked down Bosworth Street to Cynthia’s house and sat on the swing all afternoon telling Cynthia every single thing they had said and done all weekend, every word and nuance and embrace, every bite they ate at the drive-in and what kind of gas he bought and how he cursed the gas tank and the story of his mother cursing out the lieutenant governor of Illinois. When Cynthia’s mother called her to dinner, Rhoda walked back home, trying to hold the day inside so it would never end.

  There was a meatloaf for dinner and macaroni and cheese and green peas and carrots and homemade rolls. All her favorite dishes. After dinner her father called them into the living room and told them the news. They were moving away. He had bought them a white Victorian mansion in a town called Franklin, Kentucky, and in a month they would move there so he could be nearer to the mines. “It’s too far to drive,” he said. “I can’t make these drives with all I have to do.”

  “We’re going to move again?” Rhoda said. “You are going to do this to me?”

  “I’m not doing anything to you, Sister,” he said. “You’re a little silly girl who’s still wet behind the ears. I know what’s best for all of us and this is what we’re going to
do. You’re going to love it there.”

  “I’m going to have a play,” she said. “I’ve just written the Senior Play. I have written the Senior Play for the whole school. They’re going to put it on. Are you listening to me?” No one else said a word. It was only Rhoda and her father. Her mother was on the green chair with her arms around Dudley. “I won’t leave. I don’t believe you’d do this to me. You can’t do this to me.”

  He lifted his chin. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Their eyes met. “You do what I tell you to do, Miss Priss. I’m the boss of this family.”

  “He can’t do this to me.” Rhoda turned to her mother. “You can’t let him do this. You can’t let it happen.”

  “I tried, my darling,” her mother said. “I have told him a hundred times.”

  “I won’t go,” Rhoda said. “I’ll stay here and live with Cynthia.” Then she was out the door and running down the street and was gone a long time walking the streets of Harrisburg, Illinois, trying to believe there was something she could do.

  Four weeks later the yellow moving van pulled up in front of the house on Rollston Street and the boxes and furniture and appliances were loaded on the van. Rhoda stayed down the street at Mike Ready’s house talking and listening to the radio. She didn’t feel like seeing her friends or telling them goodbye. She didn’t tell anyone goodbye, not Dixie Lee or Shirley or Naomi, not even Letitia or Cynthia Jane. She just sat at Mike Ready’s shuffling a deck of cards and talking about the basketball team. Around four o’clock she went home and helped her mother close the windows and sweep the debris on the floor into neat piles. “We can’t leave a mess for the next people,” her mother said. “I can’t stand to move into a dirty house.”

  “Where’s Dudley?” Rhoda asked. “Where’s he gone?”

  “He went with your father. They’ve gone on. You’re going to drive with me. We need to finish here, Rhoda, and get on our way. It’s going to be dark before too long. I want to drive as far as possible in the light.”