A Thousand Acres (1992 Pulitzer Prize)

by Jane Smiley

  Didn't matter how we punished you or whipped you, pretty soon, you'd be crossing the road and pushing bits of stuff down the holes!

  It was like a moth to the flame. Your mama would say, now do you understand, and you'd look her right in the eye and say yes, Mommy, and then off you'd go. I tightened down all the bolts. I knew the grates could hold three men, but it made me so nervous anyway, I got some U-bolts and went around and bolted 'em all down a second time. Then all I could think about was you crossing the road."

  They laughed.

  I felt a kind of rushing pressure in my head, and the white walls of the booth changed color.

  Caroline said, "We've got to go talk to Ginny and Rose today, Daddy."

  He didn't say anything.

  "We need to talk to them. I want to talk to them. I want to tell them-" He mumbled, wheedling, "We don't need them."

  "We don't need them, Daddy, I know, but-" "All we need is this."

  I leaned my forehead against the nubby cool wallboard.

  "But I think-" His voice was warm and low. "They'll be jealous. You know how they are. You're enough for me. Let's go back to Harold's, now.

  There's Loren."

  "We didn't get-" "Take that stuff. Those things are okay." Their chairs scraped, and Loren's voice said, "Ready?"

  Daddy said, "Now he's a good boy."

  Ten minutes later, I was in my car heading east. My head was throbbing, and I barely knew where I was going. The air seemed intensely hot, though I remembered that it had been cool enough before.

  Even so. I had to keep my window rolled up so that I could lean my head against it from time to time. I saw Loren and his truck in Harold's farmyard. The others must have gone inside. I sped up as I passed, and he did not wave.

  Rose was sewing on her machine. The girls were not in evidence, but even if they had been, I would have burst through the door with my question: "Rose, what color was your coat when you were live or so?"

  Rose, never startled, finished her seam, lifted her foot off the pedal, raised the presser foot, and cut the threads. Then she said, "The only nice coat I ever had was that brown velveteen thing Mommy got from some cousin in Rochester. Little billed cap, too. I hated that thing."

  "What color of a coat did you want?"

  "Oh, pink, probably. I adored pink for years.

  "Did Caroline get that coat?"

  "No. Mommy cut it up for glass polishing rags because I threw up something on it and she could never get the stain out." She looked at me. She said, "Ginny, you look terrible."

  I fell into an armchair. I said, "I was in Roberta's and Daddy and Caroline came in. I can't tell you the tone of voice he used to her.

  All soft and affectionate, but with something underneath that I can't describe. I thought I was going to faint."

  She set down her sewing and stood up. There was a fan sitting on the television, and each time it turned toward me and blew in my face, I felt calmer. Rose gazed down at me with utter seriouslless, her eyes deep and dark, her mouth carved from marble. She said, "Say it."

  "Say what?"

  "Say it."

  "It happened like you said. I realized it when I was making the bed for Jess Clark in my old room. I lay down on the bed, and I remembered.

  She went back to the sewing machine. She didn't speak, but the methodical way she assembled her pieces, transformed them into a pair of tan slacks, was reassuring enough.

  WHEN I WAS THREE AND A HALF YEARS OLD, Ruthie Ericson fed me twenty-seven baby aspirin while I was sitting on the toilet.

  I know that they were cube-shaped and yellow and sweet, and I know I lay on my back and was rolled under circular lights, which must have been at the hospital in Mason City. What I think of as a distinct part of this memory is that I suspected that eating the pills was forbidden, and somehow this was related to my sitting on the toilet. It must have been summer; I remember the yellow of my halter top, my pink stomach beneath that, the V ofmy thighs splitting above the dark basin of the toilet and the white semicircle of the Seat running between them. I was wearing dark blue sneakers.

  Their rounded, rubber toes dangled above mottled gray linoleum.

  My shorts lay on the floor beneath my feet. I wonder if vivid selfconsciousness was my normal state, or if the forbidden pills carried it into me, and thus imprinted my memory.

  When I contemplate this memory, I feel on the verge of remembering what childhood felt like, that its hallmark was the immediacy of one's every physical sensation, and also the familiar strangeness of one's parts-feet and hands, especially, but also chest, knees, stomach. I think I remember meditating on these attached objects, looking at them, touching them, feeling them from the outside and from the inside, wondering about them because there was wondering to be done, not because there were answers to be found.

  There must have been some component of anxiety in this wondering because it was borne in upon me daily that I was "getting out of hand."

  That was the phrase my parents used. Daddy would tell Mommy that I was getting out of hand, or Mommy would tell me that. I knew, too, whose hand I was getting out of just as I knew what it meant to be in her hands. If Mommy wasn't around, the hands were Daddy's. We were told, when we had been "naughty"disobedient, careless, destructive, disorderly, hurtful to others, defiant-that we had to learn, and I think that my selfconsciousness might have grown out of that necessity.

  I think I must have been trying to keep tabs on those wayward parts of me that kept wandering into naughtiness.

  I remember what I looked like because I looked different from Mommy and especially Daddy. Daddy was never without his work clothes, usually overalls, and Mommy always wore a dress. In the privacy of my bed, under the covers, looking down the waist of my pajamas or unbuttoning the top, I saw that I was naked inside my clothes, and another thing I distinctly remember about being a child is that awareness of oneself inside one's clothes. Pinching shoes, a prickling slip, a dress that is tight across the shoulders or around the wrists, ankle socks bunching in the heels of my shoes. Mommy and Daddy never complained of their clothes, but mine seemed a constant torment. On the first day of school, first grade, a dress that MomnIy had made me was too high and too tight in the waist. Every time I lifted an arm or leaned forward, the waist rode up against my lower ribs. At the last recess, when one of the boys wouldn't vacate the swing, I bit him on the arm and drew blood. He had to go to the doctor and have a tetanus shot. At home, I was spanked and told to sit in a chair for an hour without moving. The dress had made me mad with irritation. I remember feeling my skin all over my body, feeling its exact surface against the world.

  Ty and I spent our wedding night at the Savery Hotel in Des Moines. I was nineteen. I had never touched my breasts except to position them in my brassiere or to wash them with a washcloth.

  As far as I knew then, my hands and my body had never met without an intermediary washcloth. Certainly much time was spent scrubbing; washcloths in our house were rough and soaps were heavy duty. Just as you didn't want to let the farm into the house, you didn't want to wear it, either, especially into town. That was a matter of pride. But the scrubbing went beyond that. In and behind the ears, around the neck, all over the face, the knuckles, the fingernails, the armpits, the back where you could reach, then all below. I suppose what I was afraid of was some sort of stench. It did not bear actually thinking about. I scrubbed just like that before my wedding, knowing that when we got to Des Moines and my going-away dress came off Ty would be repelled if I wasn't perfectly clean and odorfree.

  He wasn't repelled, but he tried not to be overly curious, which meant that we disrobed with the lights out and confined ourselves, that first time, to hugging, kissing, and an insertion that seemed, more than anything, practical and hygienic. While we were doing it, I made a little prayer that my period wouldn't suddenly come, mid-cycle, in response to defloration. There would be drops ofblood, I had heard, so I kept one of the hotel washcloths beside the bed, and put it between
my legs as soon as he pulled out. There were no drops of blood, only the wetness of our combined fluids, but I succeeded in preserving the sheet from it. The next day, I threw the washcloth in the trash chute at the end of the corridor. I remember that washcloth, obvious evidence that my midnight experiences with Daddy had lifted off me, leaving no trace in my memory.

  But sex did make me touchy. It was full of contradictory little rituals. There had to be some light in the room, if only from the hall. Daytime was better than nighttime, and no surprises. I always wore a nightgown. When he pushed it up, I closed my eyes. When he entered me, though, my eyes were wide open, staring at his face.

  I hated for him to turn away or look down. I didn't like it if either of us spoke. He made the best of it, and I never refused him.

  I didn't want to see my body.

  I assumed that all of this was normal, the way it was for everyone.

  It went without saying that bodies fell permanently into the category of the unmentionable. I don't know that there would have been much more communication had our mother lived-though she did tell me never to wear "pointy bras"; they were "too suggestive." She also advised against nylon underpants, because they were "slippery" and "made you feel funny."

  One thing Daddy took from me when he came to me in my room at night was the memory of my body.

  I have only one memory of my teenaged body. I was fourteen, in ninth grade, and it was a Saturday night. I was going to bed. I sat down to take off my long underwear, and as I pushed the dimpled cotton down my right leg, I realized that my leg was slim and looked the way magazines said it was supposed to look. Recently, during physical education, Rita Benton had lamented her own legs, calling them tree trunks. I had noted her disappointment, but not related it to myself. Now I saw that I had had better luck than Rita-my leg was slim from heel to crotch. I pulled off the lonohns, put my legs under the covers thankfully. I promised never to be vain about them.

  I didn't even look at the other leg; I looked away from it, and made myself concentrate on some math problems to put myself to sleep.

  And so my father came to me and had intercourse with me in the middle of the night. I could remember pretending to be asleep, but knowing he was in the doorway and moving closer. I could remember him saying, "Quiet, now, girl. You don't need to light me." I didn't remember lighting him, ever, but in all circumstances he was ready to detect resistance, anyway. I remembered his weight, the feeling of his knee pressing between my legs, while I tried to make my legs heavy without seeming to defy him. I remembered that he wore night shirts that were pale in the dim light, and socks. I remembered that his hands were heavily callused, and snagged on the sheets. I remembered that he carried a lot of smells-whiskey, cigarette smoke, the sweeter and sourer smells of the farm work. I remembered, over and over again, what the top of his head looked like. But I never remembered penetration or pain, or even his hands on my body, and I never sorted out how many times there were. I remembered my strategy, which had been desperate limp inertia.

  What I remembered of Daddy did not gel into a full ligure, but always remained fragments of sound and smell and presence. That capacity Rose had, of remembering, knowing, judging, as if continually viewing our father through the cross hairs of a bombsight, was her special talent, and didn't extend to me.

  THE LAWYER iN MASON CiTY, Jean Cartier, which most people pronounced "Carteer," had a surprisingly deluxe office. It was in one of those minimalls, beige brick with white trim and tall, narrow windows, but inside it was paneled with real wood, not Masonite, and carpeted in thick green. What looked like a real Oriental rug lay under Mr. Cartier's desk. Mr. Cartier, whom I never could call "Zhahn" or, as his secretary called him, "Gene," had come from Montreal originally.

  He was married to a woman from Mason City.

  There was a picture of her and their four children in a silver frame on his desk. Ty had taken the papers to him and asked him to handle them for us. Late in July, he called and asked the four of us to come for a consultation.

  Ty and I drove. Rose and Pete drove. The girls had been dropped at the Mason City public swimming pool.

  We positioned ourselves around the cherrywood consulting table rather like guests at a club who are conspicuously not membership material.

  Mr. Cartier introduced himself to each of us individually, making eye contact and smiling gravely. He must have estimated our relative worth, because he then addressed Pete and me once for every three times he addressed Ty and Rose.

  He asked lots of careful questions about the farm, Daddy, Ty's and Pete's farming methods, the construction, the loans, Marv Carson and Ken LaSalle, Caroline, and Frank, her husband. He explored the family rift in the deliberate way a surgeon might probe a wound, not poking or cutting, but holding one layer out of the way while inspecting deeper ones. He smiled often. He was orderly and each question only advanced a degree or two beyond the previous one.

  He seemed to leave nothing unconsidered. Compared to him, Ken LaSalle was an earnest bumbler.

  Ty sat across from Rose. For the first hour of the consultation, Ty sat forward in his chair, his legs tucked against the rungs under the seat. A couple of times he stretched, and once he must have bumped into Rose's legs, because he jumped as if he'd been scalded and curled his legs tight again. He wouldn't look at her, and when she answered a question, he held his breath, then let it out suddenly when she'd finished speaking. She cast him two or three annoyed glances, but didn't say anything. Mr. Cartier asked him twice if he had anything to add. Each time, Ty shook his head.

  It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success. Certainly, though, when we entered into the world ofJean Cartier, a lot of things began to seem different, less impossible than they had before. Nothing changed, but it all coexisted more agreeably, as if the march of time that would soon make everything crash together were suspended.

  In the second hour of our consultation, Ty stretched his legs out again, and when they bumped Rose's, he just shifted them to one side after a quick apology. Rose glanced more often toward Pete, as if deferring to his opinion, not a habit of hers. Pete hitched his chair a little closer to hers. Mr. Cartier had his secretary bring in coffee.

  I slipped off my high heels, which were tight, and ran the sole of one foot over the toes of the other. Mr. Cartier came back to the subject of Daddy. "I gather," he said with a smile, "that Mr. Cook is in the habit of doing what he wants."

  "You can say that again," said Rose.

  "And in the habit of having others do things his way?"

  "More or less," said Ty.

  Pete said, "Ha!"

  "I see from records that he was arrested for DWI in late June?"

  Rose said, "Yes, they served him with that shortly after he left our farm."

  In all the excitement, I had forgotten about this, but Rose seemed never to have forgotten a thing.

  Mr. Cartier looked at his papers, then said, "A substantial fine has apparently been paid by Ms. Cook?"

  Rose said, "That would be the way it would go." She sniffed.

  After a moment of looking at each of us, Mr. Cartier said, "In my experience, passing down the farm is always difficult. If there aren't enough sons, then there are too many. Or the daughter-inlaw isn't trustworthy. Wants to spend too much time having fun."

  He smiled again. "Every farmer remembers what an unusually sober and industrious young man he was himself."

  Rose coughed impatiently.

  "Even though these aren't precisely the problems here, it's well to remember that this transition is always always difficult." He looked directly at Rose. "And that, in most cases, once the transition has been made, and the older generation is taken care of things can go back to normal for twenty years or so.

  "God forbid," said Rose.

  Cartier's smile took on a particle of uncertainty. Pete said, rather mildly, "If you don't mind my saying so' it seems to me that the only course of action is to have all the ownership p
roblems cleared up.

  That's the basis for any future, whatever it is."

  "Oh, they'll be cleared up," said Cartier. "No two ways about that."

  I felt a tightening in my chest at this remark, as if should we get the farm, Daddy would be consigned to wander around in the rain for the rest of his life. Then I thought, what in the world are we going to do with him?

  As if in answer to my fear, Mr. Cartier said, "One thing at a time, though." He looked down at his notes. "You four do intend to farm it, however?"

  "Of course," said Ty.

  "Isn't that the point?" said Rose.

  "We'll see," said Pete. Rose looked at him in surprise.

  "I don't know," was what I said, but this doubt fell unregarded into the flow of everyone's expectations.