“What did she say?”
“That 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 gives me a quick hug 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.
I tuck Etta into bed. She wants to read one more chapter of Harriet the Spy, but I won’t let her. 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 is tired, with dark circles under her eyes. I think this is her third time reading about Harriet’s escapades.
“Mama, someday can we go to New York City?”
“Sure.”
“I think I’d like it.”
“Okay.” I kiss Etta and walk to the door. I turn out the light. I’m already in the hallway when I hear her voice softly call out to me.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“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 Etta to say something else, but she doesn’t; she rolls over to sleep.
Jack is in the kitchen making coffee to have with the cherry pie we bought at the fair.
“That was weird.”
“What?”
“Etta asked me if I thought she was pretty. Doesn’t she know I think she’s pretty?”
“I guess not.”
“Don’t I tell her?”
“I don’t think you do. 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.”
“God, isn’t it more important to be smart?”
“Sure. But she’s a girl, Ave. A girl.”
“I’ll tell her she’s pretty more often.” I hear my tone and realize I sound defensive.
“I don’t think it’s anything you’re doing wrong. I just think Etta’s entering a new phase. Misty Lassiter told her group about sex tonight.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She decided to drop the bomb.”
“Oh my God. Where did Misty get her information?”
“She’s two years ahead of Etta in school, and you know, she’s like her mother.”
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 don’t look cutesy, but sophisticated. Back when I directed the Outdoor Drama, I cast her mother, Tayloe, in the ingénue 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 blue, heavy-lidded, and clear. 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 in a small town, and quite a feat when 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.”
“Everything?”
Jack nods and pours our coffee. He sits down and slices the pie with his fork.
“Well, what exactly did she say?”
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 God.” 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.’ ”
“This is horrible.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“Did Etta tell you this?”
“I overheard them when they were waiting for their cotton candy. The line was long.”
Jack says this so matter-of-factly, but for me, this is a major turning point in Etta’s development. Why is it that my husband was with her when she heard the facts of life the first time and I’m off in a tent getting my cards read? This 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 knows all about my repression, which I thought was long-gone and buried, but thanks to Misty’s sex talk, those 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 come to me to tell 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.
“That’s awful.”
“Well, fix it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talk to her.” Jack shrugs as if it’s as simple as teaching her to drive.
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. How I wish Etta could stay a girl forever.
——
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 shoeboxes 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 lunch in the soda fountain, and then hit Fleeta up for a freebie. Fleeta, in her smock and tight black leggings, leans 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 and 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 as she takes 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 give Pearl a hug. “How far along are you?”
“Sixteen weeks.”
“My God.”
br />
“I know. I just didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure.”
“Sixteen weeks is knowing for sure.”
I watch Pearl walk back to the soda fountain, and now I can see the pregnancy. Her waist is beginning to fill out; she’s walking more slowly, feeling the burden of the new weight on her knees. I remember all the stages of pregnancy, all right. It’s true that all the suffering is worth it in the end, but for every moment of that 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 all-day sea sickness, 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. “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, both of the physical and of 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?”
“When he gets a phone day.”
Fleeta pulls out another box of greeting cards from under the folding table. “This here sidewalk sale is already a bust,” Fleeta 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.”
“What is your problem?”
At first Fleeta looks as though she may bite my head off because I dared to snap back at her, but then she softens and says quietly, “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.”
“God, Fleeta. It’s simple. You have to stop smoking.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Don’t you understand you’d have three dead customers by breakfast if I couldn’t smoke?”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t? 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 cutting back till I’m down to one a day.”
“You think you can handle that?”
“I’m not gonna be easy to be around.” Fleeta takes an envelope and goes inside to get change.
Spec, Otto, and Worley are sitting at the counter in the soda fountain eating the lunch special: soup beans and corn bread, with a side of fried apples. Spec has a lit cigarette resting on a saucer. I put out the cigarette on my way to the coffee pot.
“Hey, what’d you do that fer?” Spec bellows. He adjusts the captain’s bars on his pressed khaki shirt. His legs are too long for the stools, so he has them 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, he actually reminds me of the great George Jones, who is as famous for his coiffure as for his singing.
“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 quit.”
“Jesus, Ave. I got enough on my plate. Don’t make me Surgeon General of Wise County too.” 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. Thank you.”
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 was honest …”
The mention of Spec’s girlfriend sends Otto and Worley into a giggling fit. 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 takes a sip of coffee.
“Jesus, does she have to get personal like that?” Spec dumps cream into his coffee.
“It’s only gonna get worse, boys,” Fleeta bellows from the kitchen.
I made a run over to Johnson City to pick up some olive oil Jack Mac ordered; he’s become quite the Italian chef. Sometimes he jokes he wants to open a restaurant, and I guess I glare at him so intently, he drops the subject. 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 the like. 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 for 1989. With our local economy shot to hell, it’s a good thing Pearl is such a risk taker; the fountain did more business than the pharmacy.
As I cut through Wild Cat Holler and head back into Cracker’s Neck, I practice the opening to The Talk About Sex between Etta and me. There is so much to say on the subject, I wrestle with whether I should begin with the physical and segue into the emotions, or if I should just start out asking her about her feelings and what she knows already, or if I should make it a family meeting and invite her father into the discussion (I’m chicken to go it alone). It bothers me that I want Jack there. Why is this so hard? I want the sort of closeness I had with my mother. She was my protector and I was her defender. We never talked about sex, but I surely felt I could ask her anything if I wanted to. There weren’t any gaps in our relationship. I would have done anything for her. I didn’t test her, though, and I’m sure I saw the world as she did, so there were never any arguments.
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. This reminds me of the days when the father-son team used to come by my house down in town and repair everything that needed fixing. 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 below. 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 shoe got caught where a shingle has not been bolted. She tries to pry her shoe free, but she can’t. Her other foot hits a slick spot and she begins to slide toward the gutter. I can hear the buttons on her barn jacket catch on the shingles. Otto and Worley drop their tools and crawl toward her, but Etta’s weight against the slope of the roof makes her slide even faster.
“Ave, git the ladder! Git the ladder!”
The ladder is propped against the far side of the roof. For a moment, I’m frozen, thinking I can catch Etta if she falls. But I know this isn’t possible. The drop is almost twenty feet, time is passing, the fabric on her jacket tears away as she slides. It brings me back to the present. I heave the ladder from the side of the house to the front gutter, where her feet are dangling dangerously over the edge. Worley has thrown his body sideways across the roof and has grabbed one of Etta’s hands, which stops her from falling.
“Come up, Ave. Come up and git her.” Worley pants. Otto attempts to crawl toward Etta, but he is afraid to disrupt the precarious balance of their weight on the roof, so he stops. I dig the feet of the ladder into the soft earth and climb up quickly. I feel confident when I get to Etta’s feet and can get a grip on her legs. She feels so small in my arms, I remember what it was like when I could control everything to keep her safe. I carefully pull her toward me. Worley lets go when I have a good grip on her. Then, using Etta’s weight, I slide her onto the first step of the ladder, shielding her with my body.
“Do you think you can climb down?” I ask her. Etta barely whispers a reply, and we descend the ladder, one step at a time. I try not to look to the ground below, it seems so far away. With each step I take, and each one Etta takes, I breathe a little easier. When we reach the ground, Otto and Worley are there to help us off the ladder.
“Sorry about that, Miss Ave. We thought she was safe up ’ere with us,” Otto says quietly.
“That’s okay,” I tell him. Then I turn to my daughter, who examines the palms of her hands, streaked with a little blood, where the shingles burned them during her downward slide. I wince. I have never been able to stand it when she bleeds.