Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

She was getting ready to marry. Sitting at the desk, the head-set on, in between all the calls that would come her way this day, she found herself thinking of the wedding, the black slipover—sleek and new—waiting for her in the bedroom closet. She would wear it at the groom’s dinner after the rehearsal. The best part of who she was and who she could be was in that house with her black slipover and her simple elegant white wedding dress hanging in the spare bedroom. Pete never went in there, but she often did, in the evenings before he came home, and she would stand before it in silence, as though it were a kind of altar, tucked away in the holy grotto of the back bedroom.

  She was Melissa there. Melissa Ann Holmeier, thirty-four years, always the bridesmaid, never the bride—until now. Melissa, tom-boy and horse woman and tease: fair skinned with strawberry-blonde hair, slim torso, long legs, an infectious laugh. She stood there in the failing light and looked at herself—at who she would be in months, weeks, and now days. Today, sitting at the desk, she found herself thinking of the two dresses and waiting. Waiting for the groom’s dinner, following rehearsal. Waiting for the simple service at the Methodist church. The wedding dance. Waiting for the grand entrance into her new life.

  Waiting—she was Melissa, not Brenda.

  Melissa was soft. She had places in her person which were inviting and spacious. Brenda, on the other hand, was tight, narrow, rigid, defined. Melissa was the one getting married, day after tomorrow, whereas Brenda was right here, waiting for the next call to be dialed up. Brenda was all business.

  “Mrs. Curtis?”

  She looked down for the name, the first name.

  “Cynthia?”

  “Yes.” The voice was strained, as though the person thought of herself as far away. Remote. Hard of hearing, perhaps.

  “Hi Cynthia. This is Brenda from Rural Life and Liability, and I am calling about your last health insurance payment.”

  “Yes, yes well…”

  “Have you gotten that out yet?”

  “Rural Life, you say.”

  “Yes Cynthia. I’m calling on behalf of Rural Life.”

  “Well, let me see now. When was that due?”

  She could hear shuffling of papers near the receiver of the telephone which the old lady has placed down on her desk with a dull thud.

  “Mrs. Curtis?”

  There was no answer, just the shuffling of papers. She waited. Meanwhile there was the account to read, coming up on the screen. The initial screen gave her only an abbreviated form. F-1 gave the full detail of the present charges while F-5 gave the payment history over the past two years including any interest charges for late payments and the number of times that the account had been in past-due in the 30-60 and 60-90 day columns. F-8 gave personal information. Brenda nee Melissa-about-to-marry went there. The screen told her that Mrs. Curtis was Cynthia Ann Curtis and that she was eighty-five years old. From Brenda’s perspective, she lived out—a street address in a small town, one of hundreds she visited each and every month; towns lifted before her on the screen—Wizard, Ohio; Sherman City, Michigan; Kasson, Minnesota—the names coming in a lurid molten light-green against a black background (happened anytime you punched one of the F keys) in a color pattern which definitely made her feel more Brenda than Melissa. Definitely.

  Strange that it wasn’t happening now. Now it was Melissa who transported her until she was right there on Harrison Street. She could see the frail form of Cynthia, the old lady standing in her small living room with the wind whipping around the corner of the house and across the front porch. She stood at her desk, hair hastily pinned, her glasses down, riding her nose, her old hands searching here and there in the pigeon holes of the old roll-top. Her hands were like birds, snowflakes. Maybe it was the wedding coming up that made her see her this way, looking with Melissa’s eyes through the monitor, past the information of Elma, Iowa, population 653; past the minimum payment information quick flashing on the far right and the new due date calculated and waiting in italics on the lower left. She saw the slender wrists, the blue veined hands which once had held children and washed clothes and set the table for Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. She saw the wrinkles gathering near the eyes as the old woman searched still. And even as she heard the voice murmuring through the headset, she saw the wedding ring and engagement ring in a gold setting surrounding the thin pale shaft of her fourth finger, the red nail polish partially chipped, the finger and the hand in an ache of arthritis shuffling through the very last of the bills drawn forth from the pigeon holes and onto the waiting lap of the desk. Husband Henry deceased said the screen. She wondered how far away the kids were, the ones she had held and changed and nursed and scolded when they got too close to the stove.

  “Mrs. Curtis?”

  Still no answer. She wondered how long it had been that she had lived alone and her eyes wandered back to the lurid screen which spoke once more: January 1998.

  “Well ma’am,” the strained voice said, crackling through the headset on Melissa Mitchell’s head, covering a part of her strawberry-blonde hair, bobbed, cut short, “I’ve looked high and low and can’t seem to find it. Would like to tell you that the cat dragged it off, if there was a cat to do the dragging. But it’s just me.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Curtis. I see that. My notes tell me that Henry died in 1998.”

  “Yes—you got all that? Yes—in the very same month as the one we’re in.”

  “And seven years is not a long time.”

  “No,” crackling on the line, “no it ain’t.”

  Suddenly she looked away. Why was she talking this way? She felt a pang of anxiety. Perhaps this was the one call of the day or the week that they would be recording. They would hear her words. Worse, they would hear her Melissa voice, her private voice. They would hear the softness of its tone, its texture like honey in chamomile tea. They would frown, come out of the office at the far end of the operations room where the window blinds always were drawn closed. And they would look down the serried rows of cubicles until their eyes met hers, until their cupped hands reached towards her, motioning her to come away from the headset and the screen of the CRT, asking her to come into the blank, rectangular space where they worked, monitoring this or that. And she would walk, head high, looking for courage and for the right words to oppose the set of their jaws and their minds.

  But not this time. That had been last week. And they had chided her only briefly, because they liked her Brenda ways—curt, efficient, probing, controlled, persistent. She worked. She produced payments—even on accounts in the 90-120 day column. She worked out agreements for post-dated checks, the fifteenth of each month, and the payments actually arrived. That she was about to be married, that she was in love, that she had a black dress hanging in the closet for tomorrow night’s groom’s dinner and a white one encased in clear plastic hanging in that guest bedroom where Pete never went—ever—these things they did not know, or even care about. They were men surrounded by the silica of files, by numbers and words in light green. And past them there were other men: men she had never met nor would ever want to; men whose voices came into the little rectangular room through a speaker phone; men with voices which were clipped, their words like stones peppering the air, like gravel thrown up by a passing truck.

  “I’ve searched everywhere and can’t—who did you say you are?”

  “I’m Brenda, Mrs. Curtis.” And as soon as she said it, she wondered. Out there somewhere beyond the window in the full light of late morning, she could see cars moving down Main Street: this was not the first time that she had wondered about another life. Brenda was under attack. The dress was part of it. But the other part was here—on the phone—pondering her reply.

  “And you say it’s Rural Life that we’re dealing with?”

  “Yes, Cynthia, you have a health insurance policy with Rural Life…”

  “That I do.

  “And your account is past due.” The Brenda in her voice was coming bac
k. “We are going to need a good-faith payment to get us moving in the right direction or your health insurance coverage will have to be terminated. And we don’t want that, do we?”

  She knew the words by heart. But they were new words to Mrs. Cynthia Curtis, wife of Henry from Elma, Iowa, listening to them on a snowy morning in January, sitting in the front room by the roll top desk, one hand in her lap, one on the phone, trembling.

  “No. No ma’am, we don’t want that” came the voice, seemingly drained of energy. “Not that.”

  This was the signal. Brenda would know what to do. There was a separate screen for notations (F-6). She punched it in and got a split screen with the file information on the left and a text frame on the right for brief notes. The cursor waited, blinking. This was her moment: take charge.

  She was about to launch into a minimal payment discussion and to pry, get bank information, check information, information which would foster some sort of feeling of control, of commitment. That was the next step, and it was natural. But she couldn’t take it. It was there, but strangely beyond her. She felt paralyzed, restrained. Locked in the grip of conflicting emotions, she felt incapable of exerting her will.

  Instead she was back in Iowa, with its snow whipped by the wind across the stubble of corn fields, its snow piled deep in the ditches. She imagined pickups with snow-plows driving down the side streets of Elma, with its bank, feed store, hardware, quick stop, old corner clothing store turned into Emily’s Whimsical Nothings. Across the street she could see an old abandoned storefront with its tall narrow windows now graced with a sign proclaiming used books old and rare. Imagined or not, this was the stuff of her Elma, and she wanted to be there. Was this crazy or what? she thought. She wanted to be there, past the main street offerings until down some side street she would find 856 Harrison and Mrs. Curtis. Cynthia in a night gown at ten-thirty in the morning, a cup of cold coffee on the kitchen table. Cynthia with her gray-white hair drawn up and her blue slippers and her trembling hands. That Cynthia—one that the men in the far room did not know or understand; one that the voices coming brusquely into the room would reduce to a simple number, a number flashing on the screen.

  And indeed it was. It was waiting for her to take charge, to come back from Iowa and to go back there quickly in the firm, set, almost-strident tone of Brenda, Collections Department, representing (today) Rural Life and Liability.

  “Are you still there?” The voice brought her to her senses, back into her business self.

  “Yes, I am, Cynthia. Could you send me $50 this month on the fifteenth as a sign of good faith? We need to get this account squared away, before you lose all of your coverage.”

  “Fifty, you say?” She could see the lady opening the worn, dog-earred pages of her check book, flipping to the check register and looking down the columns. Her social security payment, the small annuity from Henry’s life insurance, sometimes a gift check from a niece in Chicago. Fifty dollars. Where was fifty dollars?

  “I’m thinking Miss Brenda,” she said to the voice. And then Brenda became once more Melissa seeing her there with her checkbook open and she did something that she never ever did. She revised downward.

  “Well, let’s start then with thirty-five.”

  “Thirty-five! I can do thirty-five.”

  “And fifty in two months?” Brenda again was returning.

  “In two months, yes.”

  Snow was melting in Iowa; the winter wind subsiding. Trembling was easing at the blue-veined wrist.

  “And what about my coverage? My doctor tells me that I have to come in for another examination and my arthritis medicine is running low. This will keep things going for a while?”

  “You’re good as long as you keep these payments coming on in.”

  “Oh, well that’s good.”

  On the brink of marriage, she wondered how it was that she could imagine being at the other brink, life mostly lived and some pieces of it entirely gone. Perhaps it was that with Pete she sensed a solid future. Her dreams seemed real and not fanciful. Her way ahead seemed to be shaped and defined by the love which she felt for him. Perhaps it was that she could stop merely thinking of herself and have some part of her free to think about or feel with someone else. Someone outside her family or her circle of friends. Someone who merely entered her life in lurid yellow-green. Cynthia brought her home, put her in the grounded spot where she would have to stay put, love, care for, age, and move inexorbly towards the other brink.

  “Are you going to have enough money for food, Mrs. Curtis with the thirty-five-dollar payment?”

  “Well, I’ll have to.” She wondered what ever possessed her to ask such a personal question, as Cynthia Curtis continued. “No, Miss Brenda, I canned up my garden this year, just like usual. And we had good rain, so the corn and the beans came up good. And that neighbor of mine, Hank Akers, he came by just yesterday with another full load of pickup wood. No, I’ll get by this month.”

  “I imagine it gets cold out there.”

  “Oh, yes. But why do you ask? I suppose you’re living in the big city far away from this place are you not?”

  She wondered with the old lady about her sympathetic tone and half-worried that they would be listening now. Time was getting on.

  “Well, it’s not as big as you may think. They want you to think I’m from a big populated place, but actually it’s a county seat. About 150 miles away from your place. A town of ten thousand at the last count.”

  “And you like what you do?”

  She imagined the old woman sitting down, the roll top folded, staring absently out at the swirling snow, her mind stretching east towards her caller.

  “Oh, now you’re asking the big questions.”

  “Fifty dollars a month questions are big questions for me, you know, Miss Brenda. Is what I ask you such a big one?”

  She was caught off guard. There was a persistent ring of steel in the words and in the soft-hard tone of her client.

  “I’m not sure what to say. I don’t know.”

  “Yes. Life sometimes twists us, puts us in places where we don’t know. But finally, at last, the big ones demand answers, too. If you don’t know, you’re nevertheless in the midst of an answer are you not?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you’re making me think.”

  “Just like you made me. You know, Miss Brenda, I was worried about all of the dollar stuff. My bank account is getting low this time of month. And then you called and made me think hard.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, yes you did! And now I am just trying to get you to think about what it is that is out there waiting for you. Something ahead, I sense.?”

  “Yes. Two days from now, I am getting married.”

  “Oh joy! Blessings on you and who is it?”

  “Pete.”

  “Blesssings on you and Pete.”

  “Thank you Mrs. Curtis.”

  “You’re welcome, girl.”

  The screen was flashing. She had reached the limit. The limit was first signalled by this sort of flashing. The whole screen moved. She did not often trigger this reaction, which they measured. In fact, it had been a full thirty days earlier when she had won, for the sixth straight month, the low-flash award at the month’s end.

  But that was then and this was now. It was flashing. Thirty seconds from now, if she did not close the call, the line would be cut off and a call would automatically be made to the men in the far room. No one liked that one. It was defended as a way to keep down private conversations, the kind which would lag on and on and cut into the work day. But in reality, it was a screw in a metal halo being worked slowly into the brain. The screw kept turning. Keep at it. Get to work. Focus.

  “Mrs Curtis?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “I have to go now.”

  “I understand.Duty calls. You call back, catch me up, tell me about you
r new life?”

  “I will.”

  “And I will be waiting. No place to go, as you understand.”

  She did not say goodbye. It took too much time and was too difficult. Did a collector ever really say goodbye, with feeling? She cut the call and hoped that the screen had not triggered that other call. It had not.

  She was sitting there with the screen blank, waiting for the next call to come up, wondering what she would say when it did—if what she said ever would come out of the depths of her or simply from the script, the one she had been taught, the one she had adapted into her own effective style, the one which was part of an outer layer of who she truly was.

  The door to the room opened. Two figures emerged, unsmiling faces in white shirts with dark ties, dark trousers, the usual uniform. And they were both looking her way. They did not seem anxious to find her eyes and wave her in, but their carriage, their demeanor seemed menacing to Melissa. They seemed to already have decided something, something which might play a key role in her life.

  And now she sensed she would be tested. Who they were and who she was would collide soon. She walked towards them. It no longer was a matter of courage, of trying to find the right words. She walked with a sense of something deeper stirring inside of her. She could do this job, it was true. But the job also could do her—in.

  She did not worry about what she would say or do or how she might feel. As she walked past the last of the cubicles towards the two men in disreputable white, all Melissa knew was that the opening she was about to enter was a narrow gate—and that freedom waited on the other side.

  THE CODE

  Oh, how bright the path grows from day to day,

  Leaning on the ever-lasting arms.

  —-Elisha A. Hoffman