by Ruth White
“It’s none of his business!” I snapped.
“It most certainly is his business,” Mama said. “He don’t want another mouth to feed around here any more than I do.”
I sighed heavily and said, “Mama, give me credit for some sense. I’m not going to get in trouble.”
“No girl plans to get in trouble,” she went on. “I know I didn’t. It just happened.”
So she had done her duty.
When I wasn’t in school or with Jesse, I was with Aunt Evie. She was as eager as a girl herself to hear all about me and Jesse. I could talk about him all I wanted, and she was all ears. She giggled and dreamed with me, and helped me make plans.
Although Bobby Lynn was dating Cecil a lot, they weren’t serious. They both dated other people, but Rosemary and Roy were thick as molasses. They planned to get married the day after graduation. Roy was going to go into the mines with his daddy and brothers.
It was about that time, early in 1959, that Mama got real interested in visiting sick people in the hospital, with Dixie. They went about once or twice a week, and the kids went along to ride on the elevator. It was the only one in town, and they would ride it up and down, up and down, till somebody made them stop. When everybody was going to be gone after school I would hurry into the house, change clothes, get something to eat, and go up to Aunt Evie’s before Vern got home from work. I stayed with her until Mama came home. Then one afternoon in mid-March, when I got off the bus I saw the pickup parked in its usual spot. I knew Mama and the kids were gone, and I couldn’t figure out why Vern was home so early, but I decided to go straight up to Aunt Evie’s. I was rounding the corner of the house where the kitchen window was open a bit when I heard a voice from inside. He meant for me to hear.
“Look, Nessie, Tiny’s going up the hill to Aunt Evie’s. She don’t care if you get hurt or not.”
I stood still. Would he really hurt Nessie? I had visions of him hitting her with his belt or kicking her, or … Slowly I eased into the kitchen, but he wasn’t there anymore. For a moment I stood in silence.
Then I called, “Nessie! Come here, Nessie!”
But she did not come. I thought, He must be holding her, or she would come to me. Slowly I walked to the living-room door. Vern was watching television and clutching Nessie’s collar.
“Come on in, Tiny,” he said. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I ain’t afraid. Just let Nessie go.”
“Come on over here and sit beside me. I won’t lay a hand on you.”
“Just let Nessie go.”
“Come here and I will.”
I felt safe beside the front door. If I went farther in, I might not be able to get back to the door.
“Vern, if you’ll let Nessie go, I’ll come in and sit by you.”
“Come on, now. Come on over here and talk to me. I don’t like you being scared of me.”
“Let me stand here.”
“Come on. I won’t lay a hand on you. Word of honour.”
Slowly I walked in and sat on the edge of the couch. I could smell bourbon. Nessie started straining for me and Vern turned her loose. I started petting her and eyeing the door.
“I never meant to make you mad,” Vern said seriously, and for a minute I thought he was going to apologize. “I could have been a lot nicer.”
I didn’t say anything. I would give him a minute, then I would bolt.
“You know I love you, Tiny. That’s the only reason I done it. Don’t you believe me?”
I didn’t trust my voice, and I felt like throwing up.
Silence fell between us. I could hear him wheezing as he breathed. On television Jack Bailey was saying, “Would you like to be Queen for a Day?”
“Is it better with Jesse?” Vern said.
I stood up and took Nessie’s collar.
“Just hold on,” Vern said, grabbing my wrist.
His grip was steel.
“Vern … please.”
Panic was just beneath the surface.
And then the miracle happened. There was a knock at the front door and I heard Cecil’s voice.
“Hey, Tiny! You home?”
“Come on in, Cecil!” I hollered real loud. “I’m here in the living room.”
Vern let go of me as Cecil entered the hallway. I walked unsteadily toward the living-room door as Cecil entered the room.
“Hey, Tiny.”
“Hey, Cecil.”
He looked from me to Vern.
“Bobby Lynn just called me about the talent show … Is something wrong?”
“No. Let’s go for a walk. Come on, Nessie! Let’s go, girl.”
Vern sat in silence as we left with Cecil.
“What’s going on?” Cecil said when we were walking down the hill.
“What d’you mean?”
“You look funny.”
Cecil stopped walking and peered down at me with his brow all wrinkled up. It struck me at that moment how handsome he was silhouetted against the sky like that. When did Cecil grow up to be so good-looking?
“What’s going on?” he repeated.
“Nothing.”
He didn’t persist, and I was glad.
“Let’s just walk up the road for a piece,” I said. “Okay?”
“Sure”
We set off walking up the dirt road, kicking rocks as we went. The air smelled good, but there was a wind and I shivered. Cecil kept looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face. He was the one who should be shivering, I thought. I still had on my band jacket, but he was in his shirt sleeves.
“I’m sorry, Cecil. I didn’t even notice, but I bet you’re cold.”
“Not a bit.”
“What about the talent show?” I said.
“They moved it back to April because it’s got to be such a big thing, they don’t want it too close to the beauty contest in May.”
“That’s good.”
“Bobby Lynn wanted me to talk to you. She thinks you have the best chance of winning. She wants to play piano for you.”
Maybe I would enter that talent show and win this year. That’s what I would do.
“Is Bobby Lynn going to yodel?”
“No, she’s not eligible to enter again. She wants you to win. So do I.”
“Thanks, Cecil.”
“The jewelry store is giving a seventeen-jewel Elgin, and the dime store if giving a gift certificate. And the Miner’s Diner is giving a free dinner for four.”
We glanced at each other.
“So if you win, you can pick out four people you don’t like and send ’em over there to eat.”
We laughed.
“Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Cecil.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“I’m going to do it, Cecil. I mean I’m going to enter the talent contest.”
“Good. Now Bobby Lynn will get off my back.”
I stayed with Cecil until Mama and the kids came home near dark, and he didn’t ask me any more questions.
Next day I entered the talent contest, and Bobby Lynn and I set about practicing in earnest. Vern said very little to me after that day, which was fine with me, and I said nothing to him at all, which was usual. Still he stared at me all the time. I could feel his eyes on me when I was watching the television or washing dishes. Sometimes when I was outside I saw him standing looking out the window. He made my skin crawl.
Every morning on the radio they announced what prizes had been added to the pool for the winner of the talent show. The A & P chipped in a big gift certificate, and the Style Shoppe gave fifty dollars’ worth of clothes. The Ford dealership gave a set of tires, the department store a set of luggage, the appliance store a radio, and on and on.
There was a piano in the band room, and that’s where Bobby Lynn and I practiced every day at lunchtime, and that’s where I finally made an impression on Mr. Gillespie. The first time he heard me singing, he stopped wh
atever it was he was doing at his desk and came around and stood by the piano and listened. He made me so nervous I forgot the words. After he told me how good I was, he had me going up and down the scales to find my range, and all kinds of technical stuff like that.
“We have to practice,” Bobby Lynn told him.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “But later, Tiny, after the talent show, I want you to come in and let me help you with your breathing.”
I was thinking I knew how to breathe just fine.
“And I’d like to talk to both of you about this school down in North Carolina.”
That again. He was always going on about that college where his wife had gone.
So Bobby Lynn and I decided on a fast song, “Lipstick on Your Collar,” and a slow one, “Over the Rainbow.” Bobby Lynn was almost as excited as I was, and when Jesse and I double-dated with her and Cecil on Saturday night, all she could talk about was the talent show and how she knew I was going to win. I started feeling like I had to win.
“If she sings anywhere near as good as she did the night I met her, she’ll win,” Jesse said. “Won’t you, Pea Blossom?”
Pea Blossom? Love has no sense.
Connie Collins looked better and better when I saw her practicing after school sometimes. Nobody could deny she was a good dancer—too good. Fear started gnawing at me. What if she beat me?
Bobby Lynn helped me pick out the prettiest dress I ever had, and it cost the most, too. It was royal blue, elbow-length sleeves, slightly off the shoulders, fitting me snugly to right below the knee.
And the next thing I knew, it was the big night. I was in the wings peeping out at the crowd through the curtains. There was Mama and Phyllis right on the front row with Roy and Rosemary, Cecil and Jesse.
As I watched Willard Newberry playing his guitar and struggling through “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” I thought it was funny I didn’t feel anything at all—no excitement or nervousness or any other emotion. Maybe I was in shock. Then Willard’s number was over and I stepped out on the stage and looked at the sea of waiting, expectant faces. Hundreds of eyes were on me, hundreds of ears tuned into my frequency, hundreds of brains clicking into the fact that Tiny Lambert was on stage and fixing to sing. Hundreds of minds were asking themselves, “Can Tiny Lambert sing?” “Is Tiny Lambert going to make a big fool of herself?”
And a great, cold monster of fear clutched me right around the middle so hard it like to have knocked the breath out of me, and it began to play my heart like a kettle drum.
The lights went down. A deathly stillness settled over the auditorium, and Bobby Lynn played a terrifyingly short introduction to “Over the Rainbow.” I was frozen. She played it again.
I opened my mouth and my lips stuck to my teeth, as the usual moisture there had totally evaporated. I heard this little bitty squeak come out of my throat.
“Some … where …”
That was all.
Bobby Lynn tried again with the introduction.
“Some … where …” the tiny voice squeaked again.
Was it hours and hours that I stood there trying to move on to the word “over”? Or was it only a minute before some kind soul mercifully rang down the curtain? I left the stage in humiliation.
Connie Collins won the talent contest that year.
TWENTY
“I think you ought to cut it about an inch,” Rosemary was saying to me about my hair.
We were lying in the daisies up on Ruby Mountain by the natural spring. It was a day … well, it was the most heavenly Sunday in spring you can imagine.
“And curl it.”
“What about the ponytail? Am I too old for a ponytail?”
“You will be in two weeks.”
In two weeks I would be seventeen.
“But for now?” I said.
“You’re still sweet sixteen!” she said, laughing.
It was two weeks after the disaster. I wouldn’t let anyone, including myself, speak of “that night.”
“I’ll get it cut when I am officially a senior, and not wear a ponytail anymore,” I declared.
Rosemary was the first girl of our crowd to get her driver’s license. That day she had driven her daddy’s pickup, and we couldn’t think of anyplace to go, so I decided to show her Ruby Mountain.
We were sitting by the spring and I was dipping my fingers in the cold, cold water and flicking poor Nessie in the face. She jumped up, shook her head, and lay back down again.
“Wouldn’t you think she’d move to another spot?” Rosemary said.
“You’d think so,” I agreed.
It was the first day I could remember with just me and Rosemary. There was always somebody else around us.
“She ain’t too bright,” I said, and flicked Nessie again.
That time she got up and walked away from me about ten feet, where she lay down in the sunshine. We laughed. We were wearing our shorts and halters, trying to get some sun.
“Well, how many months, weeks, hours until the wedding day, Rosemary?”
Rosemary brushed away a stray strand of dark hair from her face and mumbled, “I dunno. I lost count.”
“What’sa matter, Rosemary?”
“Nothing.”
“You still plan to marry Roy, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure! We love each other. What else would we do?”
“Yeah, what else?” I said.
“Well, there’s college,” Rosemary said.
I wasn’t sure I heard her right.
“Come again?”
“Well, Mr. Gillespie keeps talking about that school in North Carolina where they teach a lot of music. And sometimes …”
She paused and looked out at the distant hills.
“Sometimes I think maybe—just maybe, mind you—I might like to go to college—even for a year—you know, just to see what it’s like.”
“College?”
“Yeah, college. You know—where people go to get educated.”
“Sure, I know what college is. The town kids go to college.”
“Does that mean we can’t go, Tiny, because we’re not town kids?”
“No.”
Rosemary’s parents had the store and they could probably afford to send her to school if they wanted to. But her family was like mine. None of them ever went to college.
“What for?” I said.
“What d’you mean, what for? To get an education, that’s what for.”
“Then what?”
“I would marry Roy.”
“Oh.”
“I know it’s crazy.” Rosemary laughed at herself. “I really don’t want to go. I just like to think about it.” She rolled over on her back and gazed up at the sky.
College? I was thinking. Well, that’s one I never. considered before, because I knew it wasn’t one of my choices. I always knew I would finish high school and get married and have babies, because that’s what girls do. And now that I was in love with Jesse, I knew that’s what I wanted.
“What would you study?” I said.
“Music,” she replied promptly. “And if I finished, it would be nice to have a job like Mr. Gillespie’s. It would be fun.”
“Yeah, it would be. Then why don’t you do it, Rosemary?”
“Oh, I’m just talking, Tiny. I want to marry Roy. I don’t think he can wait much longer for … you know.”
We giggled.
“I want to get married, Rosemary,” I said. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just know I’m going to be happy with Jesse.”
“It’s nice here with you and without anybody else around,” she said. “I don’t know when me and Roy have spent a Sunday apart”
“Where is Roy, anyway?”
“He’s helping his daddy overhaul an engine or something. Where’s Jesse?”
“He took his mama to Honaker to see her relations.”
“Why didn’t you go, Tiny?”
I had been wondering that myself.
“He didn’t
ask me to go. That seems funny, don’t it?”
“You oughta be glad he didn’t. Nothing’s more boring than sitting around listening to relations talking about other relations, and you don’t know any of them.”
“I know. I’m glad you came by. This is fun.”
I lay back on the grass, closed my eyes, and let the sun fall on my face and throat. It was like a caress, soft and warm. I loved this place above all others.
“I wish I had me a car,” Rosemary said. “One of my very own.”
“Me too. Did you know Mrs. Clevinger is trying to sell the Henry J?”
“No, is she?”
“Yeah, she has her eye on a ’57 Plymouth Fury, two-toned burgundy and white.”
“How much does she want for the Henry J?” Rosemary said.
“Three hundred.”
“That’s not much, but Daddy would never let me have it.”
“Why don’t we … ?” I sat up quickly as an idea took root. “We could buy it together, you, me, and Bobby Lynn. I know she’d like that.”
“I don’t have a hundred, Tiny, do you?”
“Not now. But the strawberries are ready to ripen again. I’ll have at least a hundred in a few weeks.”
Rosemary lit up.
“Can I help pick?”
“Sure! There’s enough for everybody. Bobby Lynn, too. There’s our three hundred.”
“Tiny, you are a genius! Can we really make that much on strawberries?”
“We can make as much as we have time to make,” I said. “We have to go to school.”
“Then we’ll come up here every day after school and every weekend.”
Suddenly Rosemary got a funny look on her face as she turned toward the cabin.
“What’s it like in there?” she said.
“In the cabin? Oh, it’s okay. It’s small.”
“Furniture?”
