“MY TRIP TO KENTUCKY PACIFIED MY URGE, as my mother had hoped and predicted, but only for a while. After we returned home, whenever I mentioned wanting to go somewhere my mother would say, You just got back from somewhere and already you’re talking about going again! I was made to feel childish, like I’d just eaten a beautiful dessert and was already hungry for another one. So I was even more frustrated. Trudy, though lacking in high ideals, was realistic with her very practical nature, so I went to her for answers.
I said, Trudy, I feel so hemmed in here. I feel like I’m less and less marriageable as day after day passes.
She told me the only way I would be happy on Milk Farm Road with my mother would be to turn off the radio. This would eliminate a great deal of temptation.
Then she said I should do what I wanted to do or give up and fall into having babies, or at least for her sake stop whining. She said that before her eyes I was turning into a moping whiner.
Soon after this, sitting by my mother at cards, she reached out and took one of my hands and rubbed and played with it, as she had always done when she was trying hard to think of what card to play next. I took my hand back and announced to the group that I was thinking about moving—to where, I didn’t know.
I felt a great deal of power saying this. My mother licked her finger and tossed out a card and told me to send her a penny postcard. I was appalled at her for being so slick. I left and went home to try and figure out how to manage my happiness, which was difficult as feeling guilty and hopeful at the same time is more or less undoable.
But once I had it in my mind to leave, I worked towards this end, sending off for schools and work programs in the mail and what-have-you. I finally decided to go to Richmond and work-study through a W.P.A. commercial course that I believed would stand me in good stead for the rest of my life.
Although I’d completed all my high school plus two Gregg courses, I certainly had no prospects of working on Milk Farm Road, as there simply wasn’t a great call for typing and steno in our community. Women either received aid or worked beside their husbands, or like my mother, of all people, depended on the man for income. This was all and this was it. So, I believed that once I completed the WEA. course in Richmond I’d be more or less too educated to return home and find any sort of fulfillment on Milk Farm Road.
I managed to convince Polly Deal to move in the house with my mother while I was away. Then I walked downhill and told Trudy I was taking her advice on doing what I wanted to do and pleasing myself. But all this fell on deaf ears, as it were, as she’d already forgotten having the conversation. With all that many children, so much had happened to her between then and now. But she seemed happy for me, although I had to assure her several times that the laundry bonanza wouldn’t stop when I left. And of course the children demanded to be sent pretty things.
The day before I left I polled women at the store to see who could walk me through riding the train alone. Amanda Bethune knew the process thoroughly and told me exactly what I’d see and what to do even after I arrived in Richmond. My mother jumped in and said that everything Amanda described may’ve been rearranged or torn down since her visit.
How do you know that the canteen is still on the right side of the building through the door under the big clock? Things change. Everything changes. Suppose they fired the nice lady at the ticket counter? Suppose Richmond rearranged the bus stops? Everything changes.
She wanted me to say, Yes, I’ll probably get lost and look foolish. The risk is so great I’ll stay home. But I couldn’t, even though every night when I’d close my eyes I’d see myself lost in downtown Richmond, wandering with my mouth open and of course in danger.
My first incident away from home fairly rattled me to the point that I considered getting off the train in Roanoke Rapids and turning around and going back home to my mother. It dealt with her hatbox.
While I was packing my things, my mother had come in and given me a pair of patents that hurt her feet and her hatbox, the one she’d packed with cape jasmines for Kentucky. I told her I wasn’t going to take her good hat and I had no desire for cape jasmines, although I’d certainly be thrilled with the shoes. And then she shook her head and made her business known.
Good luck with the shoes, but I wouldn’t give you my nice hat to ruin handling by the brim. No sir. And Virginia is full of flowers. The hatbox is empty. Pack it lightly or carry it empty if you wish, but you’ll need to carry a hatbox. It’s the mark of a lady to carry a hatbox traveling. All the way to Kentucky you thought you were merely a girl riding beside her mother, but this certainly wasn’t the way others saw you. You appeared as a young lady with a hat too nice to ride with the suit satchels overhead.
I asked her how she knew this about ladies and hatboxes and trains. She told me she’d heard it. That’s it. I heard it. Then she put the hatbox on my bed and left. I looked at it a while, loving the sight of me carrying it and this time understanding everything it meant. I wouldn’t carry it empty, though. I decided to pack it with light underthings. It would be difficult otherwise, I thought, to walk about and pretend the box was weighted. The flowers had been perfect.
So there I sat on the train holding the hatbox on my lap, trying to look like a lady and to do so naturally. I’ll have to say I looked nice, well pulled together. I had very trim hips at this point and had chosen something on the clingy though sophisticated side for the trip. My hair was perfectly waved as well, clasped on the side with the faux ruby barrette, which I’d more or less stolen from my mother’s vanity cache. I tried to keep everyone’s attention off of my hands. I had sat at home debating for hours over whether or not to paint my nails, which I had just lately learned not to chew. My mother advised me that nothing looked as cheap as cheap nail polish, which was all I had, so off I went to Richmond, Virginia, with bare nails.
I could sense women inspecting me and and eyeing the hatbox and classing me a few rungs higher than I belonged. I thus felt my confidence rising. I thought about how right my mother had been, even though I hadn’t been thoroughly convinced that fooling a trainload of strangers was honorable or even necessary. But by the time we got to Weldon I was nearly squealing, realizing that striking airs might not be honorable but it would certainly attract a higher class of young man than Luther Miracle. And by the time we crossed the state line I had worked myself into such a state over my coming new life that I’d bitten off one hand of nails without thinking and was about to start on the next. I caught notice of myself and gently placed both hands back down, as ladies wouldn’t chew a nail in public, hatbox or no hatbox.
So there I was, trying to regain my poise, and a lady said, Excuse me, but I can’t help but notice the brand of hat you’re carrying. I happen to do a little millinery work when I can and I’d just love to see your hat.
I told her I’d rather not, but she continued to press me to the point that I was afraid she would come over and jerk the box from me and open the lid. I squeezed the box to me and tried to smile firmly.
I said, Listen, if I showed you this hat you’d want to buy it from me and I happen to be very attached to this one particular hat.
She said, Heavens no! I just want a little look!
Then she got up and started moving towards me and I was frightened out of my wits. I’d never seen a woman so determined to see a hat. All in the world I could see at that moment was that curious milliner coming towards me. I jumped up and more or less whizzed past her and went and sat in another compartment, and I rode the rest of the way to Richmond terrified that I’d feel a tap on my shoulder and hear, Just one little peek at your hat? However, I knew the woman was occupied with all the other women laughing at me. Even though all I could hear was rumble, rumble, rumble, I’d spent enough time around women to know what they considered funny, and it certainly included the likes of me posing as a lady for a handful of strangers on a train. And thus I arrived in Richmond as myself.