Weeping Willow

by Ruth White

  Rage suddenly blinded me. He was taking Vern’s part! But before I could explode, Mama rose up so fast and furiously her chair went crashing against the wall.

  “Needs!” she cried, and that one word was like a gun going off. “Needs, you say!”

  Never had I heard that tone of voice from Mama.

  “And what about the needs of my young girls?”

  I’ll declare Mama grew a foot taller as she faced that preacher where he stood.

  “They have needs, too! And they don’t need no filthy old man forcing his lust on them!”

  She stood there glaring and panting at that sleazy preacher, and that silly smile melted off his face at last.

  “I just meant, Mrs. Mullins …”

  “Don’t say no more!” Mama yelled at him. “Just get your holy ass out of my kitchen before I get mad!”

  The rest of us were rendered speechless. This was a new person we were seeing. Without another word the preacher left, and we were left sitting there with Mama towering over the room like the Statue of Liberty.

  “And you!” She turned to Vern, and he seemed to shrivel up. “You have thirty minutes to get your clothes together and get out of this house, or I’ll have you locked up so fast it’ll make your head spin!”

  “This is my house,” Vern said lamely, but he was moving as he said it.

  “No, it’s my house and my children’s house,” Mama said. “Give us any trouble and you’ll find yourself in jail.”

  Vern stood there, looking small. I was almost tempted to feel sorry for him, but I resisted.

  “I love my girls,” he said sadly. “That’s the only reason I done it. I love them so much I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Love!” Mama sputtered. “You make me sick! You hurt my girls worse than anybody ever did and you have the nerve to call it love!”

  Suddenly she clutched the handle of a skillet there on the stove like she was aiming to clobber him. Vern backed toward the door, and I laid my hand on Mama’s arm.

  “Mama …”

  She looked at me, let go of the skillet, and put her arm around me.

  “I’m going to sue you for divorce,” she said to Vern, “and get enough out of you to raise my young’uns by myself. Now git out of my sight!”

  “What about my boys?” Vern whined. “I’m going to keep my boys.”

  “You bring ‘em home to me! You ain’t fit to raise ’em!”

  Vern shuffled out of the room. Mama pulled Phyllis against her with her other arm and the three of us stood there together holding each other.

  “How will I ever ever make it up to you?” she said with deep feeling.

  “Oh, Mama,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Things are going to be different around here,” she went on. “I promise. We’re going to be a real family. I’m going to be a real mother.”

  “You’re the best mother in the world,” I said.

  “My precious girls …”

  Words failed her.

  We sat down at the table.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” she said. “And I will never again let you down when you need me.”

  She was no longer crying, her head was up high, and there was a new air about her. I was very proud of her.

  “I could have him locked up,” she said. “But I don’t think you would want everybody to know. You would be shamed before the world. You know how people talk, and you have suffered enough.”

  “That’s true, Mama,” I said. “It’s the main reason I didn’t tell anybody for so long.”

  We heard Vern leaving. Mama fixed a light supper for us, and we sat in the kitchen talking for hours. We started making plans for the future, and I felt this great flood of relief, exhilaration. My terrible secret was out, and Mama had defended me. I had protected my sister, I didn’t have to live in fear anymore, and Nessie slept peacefully at my feet.

  The very next day, Mama got a job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital. She would ride to work with Dixie.

  The same day, Mama got legal separation papers. She asked for the house and twenty dollars a week child support. They would have to be separated for a year before she could file for divorce.

  I was amazed at the turn of events. Our whole lives had changed in three days, and it had all clicked into place like it was meant to be.

  The boys came home, but they were sullen. It’s no telling what Vern said to them. Tuesday I found Luther alone in the kitchen reading a Superman comic. He was almost twelve, but small for his age. He was still a poor reader and a champion checkers player.

  “Wanna play checkers, Luther?” I said to him. “Maybe I can beat you now.”

  “I don’t want to do nothing with you,” he said.

  “What did I do?” I said and sat down with him, hoping we could talk.

  “You told a pack of lies on my daddy.”

  “I did not lie, Luther.”

  “You’re just a lying woman,” he sneered. “Like my daddy said.”

  “Luther …”

  But he left the room.

  Beau was nearly thirteen and short and stumpy like Vern, but a whole lot smarter. He could read Shakespeare without stumbling, and he understood some of it.

  But he wasn’t speaking to me or Phyllis. He holed up in his room and came out only when he had to.

  “They don’t understand,” Mama said. “Give ’em time. They’ll come around.”

  Although Mama was real careful to save me and Phyllis from scorn—and I was proud of her for that—Phyllis was having a hard time handling everything that had happened. She felt like it was her fault that Mama ran Vern off. He was still her daddy, no matter what he did, and she still loved him. She stayed out of school that whole week with a sick headache. So I stayed with her. I read Nancy Drew to her, and fixed her good things to eat. I put an ice pack to her temples when she felt especially bad. When Mama came home in the evenings she sat with us and told us about her day at the hospital.

  And we laid plans for the future. After graduation I would get a job at the bank or the insurance company because I had a year of typing. We would combine our strawberry money this year so that Mama could buy her own car, and I would teach her how to drive it.

  By Saturday, Phyllis was better, and laughing at Snuffy Smith in the funny papers. And her cheeks were rosy again. Mama and I sat her down in the kitchen and trimmed her curly brown hair.

  “You look exactly like Brenda Lee!” I told her because I knew how much she liked Brenda Lee.

  “Oh, I don’t!” she said, grinning.

  “You do too! Don’t she, Mama?”

  “Exactly,” Mama said. “Now, come on, Phyllis, let’s go upstairs and let me worsh your hair for you and roll it.”

  They left the kitchen and I fixed myself a bowl of rice pudding, and sat down at the table to eat it.

  Cecil walked in.

  “Hey, Tiny.”

  “Hey, Cecil. Want some pudding?”

  “No thanks, Tiny. I got an important question to ask you.”

  “Okay, ask.”

  “Where’s Vern?”

  “That’s not an important question.”

  “Well, where is he anyhow? He hasn’t been home since Sunday and you haven’t been in school and suddenly your mama has a job.”

  “You’re nosy!” I said, laughing, but I knew he was concerned. Cecil thought about me a lot. “You might as well know Mama and Vern are getting a divorce, and that’s all I have to say.”

  “A divorce?”

  “Yeah, a divorce.”

  “Good!” he said matter-of-factly. “But that really wasn’t my question. My important question is this: Will you go to the prom with me?”

  “The prom? Cecil, it’s January. The prom’s not till April.”

  “I know. But I wanted to be sure nobody beat me to it.”

  “I don’t expect you’ll have a whole heap of competition. How come you to ask me? Why not Judy or Shelby or somebody like that?”

>   “You and I have been all through school together,” he said. “And we’ve always been neighbors, and I have had this vision of you and me at the prom together.”

  I laughed.

  “Cecil, you’re funny.”

  He blushed then.

  “Just for old times’ sake, you know?” he said.

  “Sure, Cecil. But remember, you’re free to change your mind if you want to.”

  “Sure, and you too! I mean you can change your mind any time you want.”

  “Okay, it’s a date.”

  Then he grinned real big, and didn’t say anything. I had a feeling he was very pleased and relieved. Cecil had on his royal-blue football sweater, and it brought out the blue in his eyes, which were sparkling at the moment. He was definitely striking, I was thinking. Our eyes met then and suddenly I found myself wondering how it would feel to kiss Cecil. My face started burning, and I looked away.

  For the first time in our lives, Cecil and I were uncomfortable together.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  There was a great silence.

  What was he thinking?

  Cecil coughed.

  “Did you know the Democrats are trying to run a Catholic for President?” he said lamely, desperately trying to pursue a conversation.

  “Who is he?” I said.

  “John Kennedy from Massachusetts.”

  “They’ll never elect a Catholic for President,” I said.

  “They might.”

  “Naw, they won’t.”

  The conversation died again. In the next moment, Cecil mumbled something and headed out the door, and I sat there puzzling over what had transpired.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mr. Gillespie still talked about the college down in the mountains of North Carolina. He wanted to interest somebody in applying there, but nobody paid him any mind. The town kids were all planning to attend some university or other, and the holler kids who were going anywhere at all were going to Radford Teachers’ College or Bluefield Business College or somewhere like that. The rest of us were through with school.

  But on a rainy Tuesday in February he asked me, Rosemary, and Bobby Lynn to stay after school, and he showed us this material he had on Mountain Retreat College.

  “They have a superior music curriculum,” Mr. Gillespie said. “And they are especially supportive of the average student who doesn’t have much money.”

  I was looking out the window of the band room, watching the rain fall on the graveyard on the hill and remembering that first day I saw Mr. Gillespie. I couldn’t bring up those feelings I had for him. Where did they go?

  “My wife received a fine music education at Mountain Retreat,” he said. “She’s now teaching piano and voice lessons, and she loves it.”

  “It sounds like a dream come true,” Rosemary said, as she poured over the M-R catalogue.

  “I wish you three girls would think seriously about going there,” he said.

  “I want to,” Rosemary said. “And Mama and Daddy want me to, too.”

  “What about Roy?” I said.

  “What about him?” Rosemary said.

  “He’ll be hurt,” Bobby Lynn said.

  “Hurt because I want to better myself?” she said.

  “What about you, Bobby Lynn?” Mr. Gillespie said.

  “Mama and Daddy both want me to go to college, but I’ve never been too crazy about the idea.”

  “You have too much talent to waste!” Mr. Gillespie said. “You too, Tiny. All of you are gifted in different ways in music.”

  “Oh, it’s too late to think about college now,” Bobby Lynn said. “We’ll never be accepted now.”

  “Sure you will. A small college like Mountain Retreat will accept students right up to the last minute. They always have vacancies. What about it, Tiny?”

  “It’s out of the question,” I said. “I have to go to work the day after graduation.”

  They all looked at me. Everybody knew Vern was gone, I reckoned, but nobody ever asked me about him. As our meeting broke up, Rosemary was delirious with joy. She had made an important decision at last. And it looked like her marriage was on hold. She sent for an application to M-R that day.

  At home I found a letter from Jesse waiting for me, but there wasn’t much in it to excite me. He talked about his training and about Texas. It was signed “Sincerely, Jesse.” But I answered it right then anyway. I tried to be warm and friendly and funny, and I signed it “Affectionately, Tiny.” Then I began the endless wait for his next letter, which never came.

  Rosemary received her application in a few days, filled it out, and sent it in. At lunch time, Bobby Lynn and I went through her M-R catalogue together. As I looked at the pictures I felt this vague kind of longing, something akin to homesickness, stirring in me. There it was—this perfect little school nestled snugly into a pocket of the mountains of North Carolina. All the buildings were made of rock, and they seemed to blend into the mountains like they grew there naturally. There were bright, pretty young people singing on an outdoor stage. There was a soccer field, a mountain trail leading straight up to the sky, a lake and waterfall that looked like they should be on a picture postcard, a covered bridge, a wishing well, a prayer room in the woods, and a big stone gate that said WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN RETREAT. Oh, how I envied Rosemary suddenly! I wanted to go there!

  “I think I’ll send in an application,” Bobby Lynn said casually. “You know, just for the heck of it.”

  So she had the fever, too.

  I plunged into depression. Never before had I been jealous of my two best friends. I was always happy for whatever good things came to them. But here they were ready to set out on the most glorious adventure of them all, into an enchanted world, and I was to be left behind. I took the catalogue home and tortured myself with it all evening. I tossed and turned for hours that night before I finally slept. Then I had a nightmare.

  I woke up gasping, unable to recall what I was dreaming about. I wondered if I cried out in my sleep. The house was quiet and cold. The stoker must be out of coal.

  There were tears on my cheeks, and I turned my face into the pillow. Would the nightmares go on forever? Would I ever get over it? Beside me, Phyllis sighed softly and turned over. I wondered if she had nightmares, too.

  I reached out and found my heavy robe on a chair beside the bed. The M-R catalogue fell to the floor. I scooped it up, got out of bed, put on my robe and slippers, and went down to the kitchen, where I opened the oven door and turned it on to heat up the room. It was 2 a.m. I began to leaf through the catalogue again. Private voice lessons, it said, mixed chorus, orchestra …

  Mama came into the kitchen.

  “You okay, honey?” she said.

  I looked up, surprised.

  “Sure, why do you ask?”

  “I heard you cry out, then I heard you get up. Nightmare?”

  “Yeah, a little one.”

  She put her arm around me and I was touched.

  “I think Beau and Luther forgot to fill up the stoker,” I said. “The furnace is out.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think we’ll start it up again tonight. Want some cocoa?”

  “Sure.”

  I watched her mix cocoa, sugar, and milk in a saucepan.

  “What’re you reading?” she said.

  “Oh, just a catalogue from Mountain Retreat College.”

  “Is that the college where Rosemary is going?”

  “Yeah, and Bobby Lynn, I think.”

  She looked at me.

  “You want to go, too, don’t you?” she said.

  “I know it’s out of the question,” I said.

  “Let me see that book,” she said, and I handed it to her.

  She read snatches of it, looked at the pictures, and made cocoa all at the same time. Finally she poured the cocoa into two cups and sat down with me at the table.

  “This looks like a wonderful place,” she said. />
  “It’s almost nine hundred dollars a year,” I said.

  “That’s not much when you consider room and board,” she said.

  “But I am going to work so I can help out here,” I said.

  “There must be a way,” Mama said.

  I felt a thrill of hope when she said that.

  “You deserve to go if you want to,” Mama said.

  “Are you saying … ?”

  “I’m saying we’ll think of a way … somehow … something … I know you want to go.”

  “Oh, Mama.” I about cried.

  She patted my hand.

  “Look at this little bridge … ain’t it pretty?” she said.

  “Look at the prayer room!” I said excitedly. “On page 31. It’s even prettier!”

  So together we went through the catalogue. She was almost as excited as I was at the possibility of my going to M-R.

  “Somehow, Tiny,” she said before we went back to bed, “we will manage. I promise. You will go!”

  “Oh, Mama! Thank you!”

  And I hugged her tight. Then I went back to bed and slept soundly.

  The next day I couldn’t wait to tell Rosemary and Bobby Lynn I was going to M-R with them. We hugged each other and squealed, and ran to tell Mr. Gillespie, who was pretty proud of himself. Then I sent for an application.

  That night Mama took an old cigar box and wrote COLLEGE FUND on the top of it. Inside she dropped a ten-dollar bill and several ones from her purse. I added some ones from my own purse. Then we wrote ideas for raising money on little slips of paper and dropped them into the box. On one of them Mama wrote STRAWBERRY MONEY.

  “But you have to have a car, Mama!” I said to her.

  “No, I don’t. I can go on riding with Dixie.”

  “But there’s other places you have to go besides work.”

  “I’ll manage. I’ll get by.”

  Then my heart was heavy. I couldn’t, in good conscience, take the strawberry money from Mama—maybe next year, but not this year. She really needed a car, and she would need it more with the Henry J gone. On another slip of paper I wrote SELL RUBY MOUNTAIN TO THE COAL COMPANY.

  “No!” Mama said emphatically. “It would be like selling our souls.”