We had all gone down to the state fair in Appleton County on the school bus, a lot of us children from school, when I was in the eighth grade. I didn’t think I was going to get to go, because Mama sure didn’t want me going off to a place like that, but Daddy was more for it.
“It’s just a bunch of school kids, don’t you know,” Daddy told Mama, “just going down to have a little fun. What’s wrong with that?”
Well, Mama couldn’t say what was wrong with that because she had never been to a fair, I don’t think, and she didn’t have too many ideas of what all it might be like, except it’d be sinful for sure, so she couldn’t put up too much of an argument, so Daddy and me won out on that one. Anyway, she said, “Is Jan Banks going?” and I said yeah, Jan was going. So that was the key to my going, because Jan was the one person at church who, if there ever were a saint, she was it. Jan smiled a lot, and prayed real nice, and acted really more like a grown-up woman than any of us. So, if Jan did something, it was all right in Mama’s book.
Jan was going with Freddie Mangrum to the fair. Jan and Freddie were the most ideal couple, Freddie acting about the same as Jan in the saints department, and everybody figured they’d probably end up getting married and being missionaries or something they were so much into the Lord’s work.
Actually, somebody had asked me to go to the fair, too, but it was old Lacky Roach, and whoever would want to go with old Cigarette Butt. Now he couldn’t help his crossed eyes, and the big old black mole on his cheek, but that didn’t do anything for his looks either. So I told him “no” right plain and that I was going by myself to the fair.
Nevertheless, he found a place right behind me on the bus, and aggravated me to death all the way down, reaching beside the seat to tickle me under the arm and using his old comb that probably had lice in it to rake through my hair, and all the time he was blowing smoke in my face. Aggravation pure and simple—that about summed up Lacky Roach.
But I didn’t know what aggravation was until that afternoon when I had gone out to the bus to sit down and rest awhile. The fair was such a big place, and you had to walk around all the time because there was no place to sit down. The only place you could get any rest was on the bus, so I headed on out there where all the school buses were parked, and it looked like about a hundred of them out there and you could hardly tell one from the other.
When I finally found ours, I nearly about died from shock because there was Jan and Freddie sitting in the back seat kissing up a storm. If Mama had seen that, Jan wouldn’t have been my key to going anywhere else, that was for sure. Although there wasn’t exactly anything wrong with kissing, I got the idea from Mama when she saw people doing it on TV that it wasn’t exactly the most proper thing in the world to do before other folks, because she’d start wriggling around in her chair and humming and hawing and finally saying, “E-gad, get on with the story, folks.”
It always made me wonder if she and Daddy ever kissed when they were young. Surely they did. But I know they didn’t now, not ever, at least not where I could see them. No hugging, nor nothing.
But getting back to the school bus. Besides Jan and Freddie sitting in the back seat just a going at it, there were a few other people scattered about on the bus, most of them resting, like I wanted to do, some of them stretched out on the seat lying down, even. I took a seat up front as far away as I could get from the live action in the back, and I set in to drink my lemonade, about the fifth cup I’d had that day.
No sooner did I get settled in than here came Lacky Roach, first sitting down across the aisle from me, then asking if he could sit with me and when I said, “No,” then he came on over anyway, sitting down, his old rump pushing at me and sliding me on over whether I wanted him to or not. At first I was mad at him, but then when he started to putting his arm around the back of the seat, I started to grow scared. What was he going to do? I hadn’t ever before put on any show like Jan and Freddie, and I sure didn’t want to do it right here in front of other people.
From the back of the seat, Lacky’s old arm soon flopped down across my shoulder, and I slid on over into the side of the bus as hard as I could, hoping he’d get the idea I didn’t want no part of that. But he slid on over, too, and the next thing I knew he was trying to put his hand on where I peed, and I was just about to cry I was so embarrassed.
I tried getting up, but his arm across my shoulder was stronger than I was, and I couldn’t even hardly budge an inch, much less climb out over him, which I was trying to do. I thought about hollering at him and making a big fuss, but I was too scared about what was happening to me to do that. Besides, I didn’t want to get people to looking at me, if they weren’t already. I finally managed to stand up, and old Lacky pulled me back down, felt around on me down there a little while longer, then laughed at me, got up and stalked on off the bus.
Although I felt relieved at him being gone, I didn’t feel relieved at what I was thinking. Besides being scared at what he had done to me, I was a little bit excited on the pleasant side, and that was confusing. Too, I was thinking about what I had just seen earlier, some grown women standing up on a stage with nothing on them but red and blue bras and panties like, with glitter all over them and silver and gold shoes with heels high as the sky and glitter all over them too, three women dressed just about alike, with all that slinky stuff on, and that was what I was thinking about, wondering what it would be like to be up there on the stage like that, and wondering what went on inside the tent where you couldn’t see in unless you paid five dollars to go in, and it was mostly men going in anyway. But still that’s what I was thinking about, and it was all so puzzling to me, why I was thinking so much on that, while I was mad and scared at Lacky Roach at the same time. So mad I didn’t want to see him ever again, when I hadn’t even wanted to see him in the first place.
It sure helps getting all this out of me to Dr. Adams, because stuff like this can grind on you and make you heartsick, so I feel a ton of relief at getting Lacky Roach out of myself. Not that it made me feel any the better or anxious to run out and get married so I could have sex with someone.
“Elizabeth, how did it make you feel to be excited about seeing the women on the stage?”
“Like I said, kind of scared.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I say right quick. Then everything got real quiet. Like he is waiting for me to say more. But what more is there to say.
“Can you tell me more about that feeling?”
“No,” I say, again real quick.
“You feel uncomfortable talking about that?”
“I guess.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I said.” Actually, maybe I do know. Maybe it’s the kind of scary feeling I felt with Mama when she did all that. But no way will I tell Dr. Adams.
When he sees I’m not saying anything more about the women, he says, “Elizabeth, how did you first come to know about sexual intercourse? Who told you?”
“Nobody came right out and told me,” I say. “With Mary Jane Payne’s help, I just put two and two together, sort of, you know seeing animals doing it like dogs and cows. But I remember the first time I saw some dogs doing it in our yard, and I asked Mama what they were up to, and she said, ’Hush up, Sarah Elizabeth, now you know what they’re up to.’ But I didn’t. Not then. I was only about six or seven years old, and nobody had told me, but then later on I figured nobody told the dogs and cows how to do it, either, did they, and they sure found out. So, does that mean humans have to be told and animals they automatically know what to do? And if humans weren’t told, would we automatically know, when the time comes, what to do, too?”
Dr. Adams laughs. “You’re a lot of fun, Elizabeth, the way you express yourself.”
I’m almost embarrassed, but then I know Dr. Adams isn’t laughing at me. He was laughing for me, because he truly likes me, I know he does. People know when someone likes them, I’ve found that out. You can tell it sure as the sun rising up over the trees in the morning and beaming its warmness over every little thing—that’s how it feels when someone likes you, like the sun radiating over and about you, making you feel warm and snug with yourself at the same time.
“But I have to give the Worry Column a lot of credit in helping me figure things out about sex,” I say, “because when I got old enough to read the newspaper, I read a lot of things in there about marriage and sex and all that. Why, if it weren’t for the Worry Column, I’d still probably be trying to figure out what ’futch’ is, you know?”
Dr. Adams laughs again, and he seems this morning so easy to laugh, that I know something is different. And sure enough something awful is different. Dr. Adams has spent eight weeks on this floor, and it’s time for him to rotate on to another floor, pediatrics, he says. That is what he’s going to be, he says, a pediatrician, although he has to get some experience on all the different kinds of patients.
Dr. Adams gone? I can’t imagine it, especially when he tells me that someone else, another intern, will be coming along now to talk with me. I don’t want to talk with anyone else. How can they do this to me, get me to where I’m in love with Dr. Adams, and then go and switch him on me, to a stranger, whom I might not even like at all. But in a way I feel some kind of relief, like he’s getting too close to what I can’t tell him or nobody. And if he keeps on pressing the issue, it might come out, whether I want it to or not. Because he does have a way, you know, of getting me to say things that need to come out.
The only thing that could even halfway make up for losing Dr. Adams is Miss Hansom. She is almost as wonderful as Dr. Adams, but the only thing is I don’t get to go in and talk with her for long periods of time. But even so, she and I have come to be real good friends, you know like the light is shining on us. Now, I like thinking about Miss Hansom. And although she is exciting, she isn’t scary exciting. She is just like someone I’d like to be like. That’s all.
But before Dr. Adams leaves, he asks me one pointed question. “What are you going to do when you go back home, Elizabeth?”
He might as well ask me what makes the world spin round, for I couldn’t answer him any better. What am I going to do, indeed. Go back to the pants factory and fool around with zippers in men’s trousers for the rest of my life? Whoo-wee, what a thrill. When he sees I’m not coming up with any answers, he offers a suggestion.
“I’d like to see you go on with your schooling, Elizabeth.”
“I’ve been thinking that, too, but, well, I don’t think I’m smart enough to do that,” I say right quick. “But Aunt Lona thinks I am.”
“You’re smart enough,” he says. “Your I.Q. scores show it. You’ve been reading a lot, haven’t you, over the years in all kinds of subjects? You can do it. You might have some trouble in the beginning getting back into the swing of studying, but you can do it.”
Go to college? But where and how? I mean I know Aunt Lona will help however she can, but it takes money and going away from home, and how can I find the courage to leave Mama and Daddy, and where will I get the money to pay for college in the first place?
“There are several ways to do it,” says Dr. Adams, as if he has been looking into my mind and seeing what I’ve been thinking. “You could apply for a scholarship. Weren’t you in the top of your graduating class in high school?”
Yes, in the very top. I was one of five who got a check for two hundred dollars from the Littleton Citizens Bank, which I just stuck in savings, plus I have the little golden medal with SCHOLARSHIP written in small letters around it to prove I was in the top. If anybody needs any proving, that is. And I have my golden tassel, whereas most others were blue, except for those who had achieved “scholarly distinction.”
But all that seems so far away and in another world almost. It’s like Angela has earned all of that, not Elizabeth, and can I switch all that over from Angela to Elizabeth and make something out of Elizabeth? It’s all too scary. Just like coming to Nathan has been scary. But as it turns out, coming to Nathan is probably the very best thing that could have ever happened to me, though people in Littleton might never know it.
Go to college? What will Mama and Daddy think of such a thing? And will they take any of their money out of savings to help pay for it? I’d hate to ask Aunt Lona, but she’ll help without me even asking her, I know she will. I can help myself out, too, by working, Dr. Adams says. I could get a job at the college and they’d pay me, a job like working in the library. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to be around books all the time, feeling them, reading them, books of all kinds and subjects and people. So Mama and Daddy wouldn’t have to pay for everything, especially if I got a scholarship and worked, myself.
Go to college? Miss Hansom has been to college. I could be a little bit like Miss Hansom maybe. No, not ever as smooth and polished as Miss Hansom. Some things just come with you when you’re born, and smooth and polished didn’t come with me. But go to college and not back to the pants factory? The feeling, though frightful, seems as Miss Hansom says, “ex-QUIZ-ite.” Thinking of doing something ex-QUIZ-ite makes me feel like holding my head up a little prouder. And feeling prouder. And feeling prouder, that I am ready to do. Anyway, since I am now feeling this need to do some kind of work in talking with people to help get their problems out in the open, I will certainly have to go to college to learn how to do that. That—talking with people—is what I want more than anything, more, even, than getting away from Mama and Daddy. Because, in some strange way that I don’t understand, talking with people about their problems seems like it might be like always having Hemp around. Somehow, it will be like bringing him back to life.
But the one person who I always can count on to help is Aunt Lona. Aunt Lona, if it can be done, will be the one to help lead me out of my little boxed-up, caged-in world, if there is any leading out to be done. Aunt Lona will be the perfect one to help set me on the track to college, if that is to be. Because right now I don’t know anyone else to turn to. Dr. Adams is leaving. And Hemp is gone. And Caldwell. Everybody in my life, it seems, everybody that I can count on is either leaving or dying, here right at the time when I most need someone to hold on to for dear life. Bad as I hate to think about it, it’s looking more and more like I am going to have to start holding on to myself, me, Elizabeth. I sure can’t hold on to Angela anymore; she’s too slippery. And although Aunt Lona will help any way she can, it won’t be fair to her to depend on her for every little thing. Besides, I’ve got to start doing some things for myself, I, Elizabeth. From now on, for anything good or bad that I dream up for myself, Elizabeth will have to be the one to hold on to. She will have to make do. And what’s wrong with Elizabeth?