“So?”
“Oh, honey, I’ve never heard such good news. Sister Claire was chock-full of all kinds of information. I just hope I can remember it all so I can write it down. She said I’m an eagle.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Absolutely. I’m regal and self-possessed and all that. But of course, tell me something I didn’t already know for fifteen bucks. How about you?”
“Mama and Joe came to me.”
“What did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything. But it’s okay. They showed up; that’s all I needed.”
Iva Lou puts her arm around me as we head back into the lights and the noise, but I don’t see them or hear it. My mind is in that house with many rooms.
After helping Etta scrub the last of the blue veil of cotton candy off her face, I tuck her into bed. She wants to read one more chapter of Harriet the Spy, but she’s exhausted, so I convince her to go to sleep. Etta is fascinated with the story of Harriet, an eleven-year-old girl who doesn’t play with dolls but has a notebook and goes around the elegant Upper East Side of Manhattan spying on her neighbors and recording their activities. Etta checks it out of the library so often, I wonder if anyone else in her class has read it.
“Mama, someday can we go to New York City?”
“Sure.” I look down at my daughter, who is still a girl but is starting to look like a young woman in subtle ways. As I tuck the blanket around her, I know that soon this ritual will end, and that fills me with sadness.
“I think I’d like it.”
“The big city? All that noise and confusion?” I kiss Etta and walk to the door.
“It would be fun and different, Ma,” she says, rolling onto her side.
I turn the light out. I’m already in the hallway when I hear her voice softly call out to me. “Mama?”
“Yes?” I turn back and lean against the doorframe.
“Am I pretty?”
“Yes, you are.”
“How do they decide who’s pretty?”
“Who?”
“People. You know, it’s like the group knows who’s pretty, and then they treat that person like they’re the prettiest, and that person always knows it.”
“I don’t know, Etta. I’ve never figured it out.”
“I mean, sometimes I can see it. But sometimes I don’t think the prettiest girl is the pretty one.”
“You’re pretty,” I tell her plainly and sincerely.
“Okay.” Etta says this in a tone that says, You’ve got to be kidding. I wait for her to say something else, but she doesn’t, so I head downstairs.
Jack is in the kitchen making coffee to have with the cherry pie we bought at the fair.
“That was weird,” I say.
“What?”
“Etta asked me if I thought she was pretty. Doesn’t she know I think she’s pretty?”
“Maybe not.”
“Don’t I tell her?”
“You tell her she’s smart and a good reader, and capable and all that, but you don’t heap a lot of compliments on her in other ways,” Jack says matter-of-factly.
“God, isn’t it more important to be smart?”
“Sure. But she’s a girl, Ave.”
“I’m well aware she’s a girl.”
“Well, I’ve been married to one for thirteen years, and been raising one about that long, and it seems to me that girls can’t hear they’re pretty often enough, even when they have other things going for them.” Jack smiles.
“I’ll compliment her more often.” I can tell I sound defensive.
“I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. I just think Etta’s entering a new phase. She’s going to be a teenager. Misty Lassiter told them all about sex tonight.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She decided to drop the bomb.”
“Oh God. Where did Misty get her information?”
“She’s two years ahead of Etta in school, and you know, she’s like her mother. Let’s say she’s slightly advanced.”
Misty Lassiter is the daughter of Tayloe Slagle Lassiter, Big Stone Gap’s most beautiful homegrown girl. I see Misty when I pick up Etta at school. She’s the Willowy One, taller than her classmates, the leader, with blond hair in perfect yellow ropes tied with ribbons that look sophisticated, not cutesy. Back when I directed the Outdoor Drama, I cast Tayloe in the lead when she was just fifteen. She wasn’t a great actress, but it didn’t matter; you wanted to watch her, her delicate features, long limbs, and those eyes, so clear, blue, and heavy-lidded. She was so beautiful, you thought she knew the secret to something, some ancient truth born in her and obvious in her every movement. Tayloe has taught her daughter well. Misty is every bit as popular and perfect as she was. Quite a feat when you live in a small town, particularly if Bo Lassiter (of the low-forehead Lassiters of East Stone Gap) is your daddy.
“Etta’s got so much more going for her than Misty. What did Misty say about sex?”
“Everything.” Jack pours our coffee. He sits down and slices the pie with his fork.
“Well, what exactly is everything?”
Jack does his best to do an impression of Misty giving the girls the goods. “ ‘Now, first, there’s a man. And the man has a different part from the woman.’ ”
“Oh no.” I don’t want to hear this, but I indicate to Jack that he should continue.
“ ‘And the man takes his part and lets the woman know he has one. Then she decides if she wants his part or not. Now, if she does, it’s called sex. If she doesn’t want no part of it, she’s a virgin.’ ”
“Great.” I rest my head, which feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, on my hands.
“I thought it was funny.”
“Etta told you this?”
“I overheard them when they were waiting for their cotton candy. The line was long.”
I wish I had been there. Why was Jack with her when she heard the facts of life the first time, and I was off in a tent getting my cards read? That is not how I planned this. “I am going to talk to Tayloe.”
“What for?”
“She needs to tell her daughter not to be scaring the kids.”
“Etta’s not scared.”
“What do you mean she’s not scared? Who isn’t scared of sex—” I stop myself. Jack looks at me. I open my mouth wide and yet no words come out. Jack is well aware of my so-late-I-almost-missed-it blooming. I honestly thought it didn’t matter anymore, but thanks to Misty’s sex talk, those old feelings of separation and alienation just went from a trickle to a roaring river within me. Once the town spinster, always the town spinster. “No wonder.” I cut another piece of pie.
“No wonder what?”
“She doesn’t talk to me about it. She can tell I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You got that right.” My husband looks at me and smiles.
“She should be able to come to me about anything. I just didn’t see the signs. She’s still coloring with crayons, for Godsakes. This is happening too fast.”
“Well, fix it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talk to her.” Jack shrugs like it’s as simple as teaching her how to play checkers.
I take a long sip of the hot coffee (Jack always puts in just the right amount of cream). Then I slip off my loafers and put my feet in my husband’s lap. “I wish she would stay a girl forever.”
“That’s not an option, honey.” Jack squeezes my foot. And he’s right. This is like a tire race down Stone Mountain—once you let it loose, it’s gone.
We’re having a sidewalk sale at the Mutual Pharmacy. It isn’t a big deal, just a couple of folding tables borrowed from the First Baptist Church and loaded with stuff that hasn’t sold—pale orange lipstick, strawberry hand cream, and shoe boxes filled with greeting cards neatly arranged by holiday. We start the sale with everything 50 percent off, but by Friday, we’ll be giving the stuff away. Folks know this, so they wait a few days, linger after lu
nch in the Soda Fountain, and then hit Fleeta up for a freebie. Fleeta, in her smock and tight black leggings, is leaning against the building to light a cigarette. Once it’s lit, she stands up straight and lightly touches her blue-black upsweep (she’s tried the new Loving Care line that just came in) to make sure it’s in place. I wave to her as I pull into my parking spot.
“Pearl’s pregnant,” Fleeta barks.
Before I can ask her to repeat the news, Pearl comes out to the sidewalk. “Fleeta!”
“I know it’s supposed to be a secret, but you know I can’t keep one. You shouldn’t never have told me,” Fleeta says to Pearl, taking a long drag off her cigarette. “Besides, when you upchuck three times in one morning, I ain’t gonna be the only one ’round here that’s suspicious.”
“Is it true?” I ask Pearl, whose smile tells me it is. “How’s your husband?”
“Thrilled.”
I hug her. “How far along are you?”
“About two months.”
“Fantastic.”
“I just didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure.”
I watch Pearl walk back to the Soda Fountain, and now that I know, I can see the pregnancy. I figured she had put on a couple of pounds, as we all do from time to time, but this is different. Pearl is changing. Her waist is beginning to fill out; she’s walking more slowly, feeling the burden of the new weight on her knees. I remember the stages of pregnancy, all right. It’s true that the suffering is worth it in the end, but for every moment of those nine months, I felt as though I had rented my body out to a tenant who had no respect for the property. The morning sickness, which is really daylong seasickness, the bloated breasts, swollen ankles, and for me, painful big toes from having to walk in a whole new way—I remember every one of these details as though it were yesterday.
Pearl turns around and says to me, “I’ll be counting on you for advice.”
“Oh, I have plenty of it.”
“What about me?” Fleeta asks. “I done blowed out three babies, and Pavis—he was a back birth—snapped my tailbone like a cracker on his way out. I got me a lot of advice to give, ’specially about the birthing itself.”
“I’ll need your advice too, Fleets.” Pearl goes into the kitchen.
“Pavis really broke your tailbone?”
“Yeah, and that was a goddamn omen. That boy never give me nothin’ but trouble and heartache and pain, of both the physical and the mental variety. First he stepped on my tailbone, then on my feet—you know, when he was a-crawlin’—and then when he went to prison, he done stepped on my heart.”
“You ever hear from him?” Pavis has been in prison in Kentucky for as long as I can remember.
“When he gets a phone day.” Fleeta pulls another box of greeting cards out from under the folding table. “This here sidewalk sale is already a bust,” she tells me, sorting through the cards like they’re junk.
“You have a bad attitude.”
“If it was a good idea, every vendor on the street’d have one. You don’t see Mike’s Department Store hauling out the Agg-ner leather goods, or Zackie putting out the Wranglers. But we have to make a show peddling crap nobody bought all year.” Usually when Fleeta gripes, you can see that she’s just having a little fun, but today it sounds entirely serious.
“Is something the matter? You’re not your sweet self,” I tell her.
“Doc Daugherty told me I have to quit smoking.”
“Did he find something?”
“He saw a spot on an X ray, said it weren’t nothin’ now, but if I didn’t quit the smokes, it would turn to the emphysema. And I’m mighty pissed about it.”
“Fleeta. It’s simple. You have to stop smoking.”
“I can’t,” she says simply and sincerely.
“You have to.”
“Don’t you understand how bad my mood would be without my smokes? I’d kill three people by breakfast if I couldn’t light up.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t? Ave, my nerves is so bad that I shake most days. I need ’em, and I told Doc that.”
“What did he say?”
“He tole me he understood but he didn’t want me gittin’ the emphysema neither. He tole me to quit gradual. Keep cuttin’ back till I’m down to one a day. One smoke a day. Can you beat that?”
“You can do it. I know you can.”
“I’m not gonna be easy to be around,” Fleeta promises.
Spec Broadwater, Otto, and Worley are sitting at the counter in the Soda Fountain eating the lunch special: beef stew and biscuits, with a side of fried apples. Spec’s cigarette smolders on his saucer. I put out the cigarette on my way to the coffeepot.
“Hey, what’d you do that fer?” Spec bellows. He adjusts the name tag on his pressed khaki shirt. His legs, too long for the stools, are slung to the side like railroad ties. Spec has taken to putting gel in his thick white hair. The sides are so shiny and close to his head that he reminds me of the great George Jones, who is as famous for his coiffure as for his singing.
“You’re not supposed to smoke. Remember your bypass?”
“Quintuple. Don’t worry, Ave. I’m cutting back.”
“While you’re cutting back, you need to set an example for Fleeta. She needs to quit.”
“Since when is Fleeta Mullins my problem?”
“Since she went to the doctor and he told her to stop smoking.”
“Jesus, Ave. I got enough on my plate. Don’t make me surgeon general of Wise County on top of everything else.” Spec adjusts his glasses and fishes for his pack of cigarettes.
I stop him. “You’re in here every day for lunch. She needs your support.” I pour myself a cup of coffee and freshen Otto’s while I’m at it.
“I can stand up for my own damn self,” Fleeta announces from the floor. “I don’t need the support of any of y’all.”
“Aw, Fleeta, relax.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Otto Olinger. Just ’cause you is president of the Where’s My Ass Club that convenes up in here every day for lunch don’t mean I got to take any bull off of ye.”
“What do you mean, Where’s My Ass?” Otto asks.
“Look at ye, all y’all. Not a one of ye has an ass. I don’t know how your pants stay up.”
“It’s called a belt, Fleets,” Otto says with a chuckle.
“I ain’t never gotten a single complaint about my hind end,” Spec tells her, sounding hurt.
“Somebody down in Lee County’s bein’ nice. If old Twyla Johnson was honest . . .”
The mention of Spec’s woman on the side down in Lee County sends Otto and Worley into a giggling fit. (I thought Spec had given up his girlfriend, but I guess not.) Fleeta continues, “She’d tell you the truth: it’s flat and square. Looks like somebody dropped a TV set down your drawers.” Fleeta goes into the kitchen.
“She’s on a royal tear,” Worley says, shaking his head.
“Jesus, does she have to get personal like ’at?” Spec dumps cream into his coffee.
“It’s only gonna get worse, boys,” Fleeta bellows from the kitchen.
I make a run over to Johnson City to pick up some olive oil Jack ordered. He’s become quite the chef, picky about his ingredients and accomplished in his techniques. Sometimes he dreams about opening an Italian restaurant. It never dawns on him that folks around here are not interested in sampling pesto made with fresh basil; they much prefer their own cuisine, biscuits and gravy and name-your-meat chicken-fried. Besides, the Soda Fountain at the Mutual is all the food service I can handle, and it’s strictly lunch fare. Pearl and I were surprised when we saw the profit sheets last year. With our local economy struggling as the coal industry dies out mine by mine, it’s a good thing Pearl is such a risk taker; the fountain did more business than the pharmacy.
As I cut through Wildcat Holler and head back into Cracker’s Neck, I practice my opening to the Sex Talk between Etta and me. There is so much to say on the subject that I wr
estle with whether I should begin with the physical and segue into the emotions; or if I should just start out by asking about her feelings and what she knows already; or if I should make it a family meeting and invite her father into the discussion. It bothers me that I want Jack there. This shouldn’t be so hard. I want the sort of closeness with my daughter that I had with my mother. She was my protector, and I was her defender. We never talked about sex, but I felt I could surely ask her anything if I wanted to. The truth is, I never felt comfortable asking her about sex, relationships, or intimacy. I knew she was in a less than romantic marriage, and maybe I didn’t want to remind her about what she didn’t have. I never wanted to make my mother uncomfortable, to say or do anything to cause her pain. Maybe this is the root of my repression—the feelings I could not express. I don’t blame my mother for that, though. It was my choice.
As I drive up to our house, negotiating all the pits where the stones have settled on the road, I see Otto and Worley on my roof. Jack used to tackle all home repairs, but the irony of a career in construction is that he no longer has time to fix things around here. (They say, “A shoemaker’s child goes barefoot”; well, a construction worker’s wife has holes in her roof.) I don’t mind it, though. Having Otto and Worley around reminds me of my single days, when they would come to my house down in town and take care of whatever needed fixing without my having to ask. As I jump out of the Jeep, I see a third figure on the roof: my daughter.
“Etta, what are you doing up there?”
“Helping Otto and Worley.”
“I want you to go inside.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe.”
“It’s safe,” Etta says defiantly.
“I got an eye on her, Miss Ave,” Worley says without looking up.
“Me too,” Otto says to reassure me.
“Go inside anyway, Etta.”
Etta looks so small from the ground. As she gingerly crawls across the roof toward the window, it reminds me of when she first learned to crawl, and instead of being thrilled that my baby was learning a new skill, I was terrified that she was beginning to move in the world without me.
“Etta! Watch it!”
The toe of Etta’s right shoe gets caught where a shingle has not been bolted. She tries to pry the shoe free, but she is on all fours and cannot. She tries to use her left foot for leverage, but it hits a slick spot and she begins to slide toward the gutter. Otto and Worley drop their tools and crawl over to her, but Etta’s weight against the slope of the roof makes her slide even faster.