“AFTER SADE’S PROBLEM WAS SOLVED AND HER house was more or less in order, my mother could’ve ridden out the rest of the Depression keeping to herself. However, she believed it was important that she continue to stay alert and keep up with the community, as with Sade, and also keep up with herself.
My mother was determined that neither one of us would go downhill and lose all thought of appearance. She continued to roll my hair as well as her own every night and she still waxed her legs as necessary, a habit she’d secretly acquired from a ladies’ book. Her other alternative was to sit around the kitchen table all morning with holes in her stockings, drinking watered-down coffee, which was the state we found more and more women in, even Amanda Bethune, who in 1928 had been declared as having it all. Of course, my mother took one look at Amanda, yanked her up, brought her back to our house, and lent her a chintz skirt and her faux ruby barrette.
Although particular people in the community talked about my mother as being silly and viewed her high spirit in the same vein as telling jokes at a funeral, she was merely refusing to let herself wallow in the times. And this particular bunch who looked at my mother sidewise in her high colors were the same ones who lived to load up in an automobile and spend Saturdays at the pictures. My mother, however, was a walking, talking, free moving picture, and people looked and listened to see what she would wear and what she would say the same way they sat in the Centre Theatre and stared at the screen, waiting for the story to start.
I was in step with my mother, and though I was on friendly terms with young people my age, I preferred to stay right by her like a little twin. My teachers considered me smart and pretty and said as much on my reports, although they often noted that I wasn’t an outgoing mixer or mingler and joined few clubs. I had hit the first grade running and moved right on through like I was born to go to school. But still, I was well liked enough to suit me. I merely preferred my mother’s company to people in my age category, which some confused with haughtiness or lack of school spirit.
And in my teenaged years I didn’t develop the drive that drives some girls from sport to sport. Some boys spread the impression that I thought I was better than them, which wasn’t true in the main. I flirted with a few in school, though I never dreamed of marrying or even kissing any of them. I didn’t care for them, good-natured though they were. It was very hard for me to ride next to one of these boys on a Sunday afternoon pony cart outing after seeing him on Saturday afternoon, sweating and stripped to the waist, yanking along behind a one-horse plow. Other girls didn’t seem to have a problem with it, and so they all packed in for joyrides or went to the State Fair and yanked around laughing in the tilt-a-whirl. Instead, I sat beside my mother in women’s houses and laughed along with Lum and Abner while they all wondered what I saw in Bing. Affairs with young men overall, as a rule, held not a great deal of interest for me.
The only one of the pack I would’ve ever come close to loving was Luther Miracle, and I think I was first interested in him solely because of the name. If I’d married him I’d be named Betty Miracle. Luther wasn’t much to look at but he was one of a courteous few, polite as a basket of chips. When I was sixteen I told my mother about feelings I was starting to have about Luther, and she didn’t like it a bit. She poured out her distaste for Luther.
His hair’s always dirty. Locks and locks of filthy hair. It’s a sign of lax character. Have you ever seen him clean? And listen to this! His mother elbowed her way into a card game last Saturday and tried to cheat, which actually surprised nobody. I was told she stopped going to her Sunday School after she was caught putting an improper donation in the birthday box. His father lets Charles cheat him and won’t do anything to stop it. I’d do without before I’d go with Luther Miracle, though I do like the ring of Betty Miracle. But there’s always still his hair.
She had all grades of evidence against Luther Miracle. When we were at cards the next week, without Mrs. Miracle’s attendance, my mother asked the other women to back her up on the Miracle family, and they did. If I had taken Luther Miracle as my sport, I would’ve known exactly what I was in for, all my future circumstances checked off on a fairly accurate list put together by the rummy women.
Even if our mothers didn’t tell us everything outright, we had learned to read some signs about young men for ourselves. We knew what would be in store if we courted or married a boy whose father liked to drink more than a little. Or if a boy came to school every day with a beautiful lunch in his bucket, the girls knew he’d be looking to marry his mother, and girls with that kind of instinct would run to pair off with him, and they’d court with everybody’s blessings. If a boy never wanted to take off his shirt at recess, this was because of buggy whip or razor strap scars his father had left and the boy would more than likely be drawn to do the same to his own children and more than likely his wife. He was harder to mate, but nothing was impossible. It was very difficult for a young person to lie about his character on Milk Farm Road. And all this information was traded freely between women with daughters, like meringue secrets or geranium cuttings.