Asked For (3 page)

“You’re going to be a wife, not a bride, and you’re going to need your two dresses for everyday.” Grandma muttered around her mouthful of pins, her needle and thread weaving in and out of the gathered waist. “Get silly notions about being a bride out of your head.” Grandma knotted the thread and tugged the fabric tight, jerking Lana off balance.

Lana straightened and squared her feet on the floor. Every wife was a bride. Any woman…or girl…couldn’t be one without being the other. Lana didn’t know much about being either one beyond Jeanie’s tales of princes and princesses, and the secret things that went on between them when they were alone at night. Grandma said Jeanie’s tales were just that, stories designed to create flutters in little girls’ hearts and make their eyes grow wide with silly expectations. Lana had never worried which one was right, Jeanie or Grandma, because there hadn’t been a reason to. Not until now…now that a man had asked for her, told her grandmother he’d take her off Grandma’s hands and provide for her.

Lana stared down at her grandma. She wanted to touch her shoulder, tell her it was okay, that both of them were upset. There was just too much rush, too much hurrying, and not enough time to turn Lana into a bride…a wife…and a woman…all on such short notice.

Lana glanced toward the window and strained to listen for the sound of a vehicle or wagon, whatever her father chose to get them here today. Lana’s mother had written periodically over the years, always apologizing they were so far away, times being hard and work being so scarce and all. She described what the two of them were doing and how different each town looked that they went to, scratching out her and Lana’s father’s lives a few lines at a time on an occasional slip of paper.

Lana’s mother was Grandma’s only daughter. She’d been good about visiting on her own now and then, looking every bit as tired as she described in her letters. She looked older than she was supposed to be, too, something she tried to hide behind bright red lips and false highlights drawn around her eyes.

“Can you bring my father with you next time?” Lana begged her mother on each visit. There was always a reason he wasn’t there, always a hardship that kept him busy and away, until finally she brought him. Once. And unexpected. They appeared at Grandma’s door, and Lana stared at him, her heart racing across the room and into his arms before she could get her feet to cooperate. He looked nervous, he fidgeted, he was a little uncomfortable, and he forgot how old Lana was and where she’d been born. But she forgave him because there was still something princely about him.

She’d eased across the room a little at a time instead of in full flight like she wanted. He smelled like smoke, like a thin layer of soap over hard times, when she reached his side. She laced her fingers through his and tried not to let him see how hard she was breathing. He had nice eyes, and she could see he was thinking as he looked at her. There seemed to be questions in his gaze instead of answers, but she didn’t mind. This was the first time they’d officially met, since she’d been living her whole life with Grandma. She held onto his hand and refused to let go, looking for similarities between him and herself. She’d cried when he left. All she had of him after that was his best, sent to her in her mother’s letters, a promise he loved her, and an apology he was so busy.

But now he was coming back, coming to see her for the second time, and this time to stand with her as she married. She felt his heart beating in hers, jumping off those letters her mother had sent all these years. He was making this one last trip to be by her side while she was still a girl to help her make the step from childhood into sudden adulthood. He’d be here. Her mother said he would. She couldn’t wait.

“If Cletus had put this off a few more years, I might not have had to alter this dress so much,” Grandma muttered from below, leaning back and eyeing the gathers. “You’re still so gangly. Just a child. Not sure what he sees in you.”

Lana hadn’t met Cletus yet. He lived a few towns away, and the deal had been made while she was at school. “Someone asked for you,” was all her grandmother had said one afternoon when Lana came home. “His name’s Cletus, Cletus Paine. He’s got kin nearby, and he asked for you for his wife. He’ll give me a little something too, to help out now and then.” Grandma had refused to answer Lana’s questions that afternoon, questions about where she and Cletus would live, how often Grandma would visit, and would she have to make new friends. Grandma was gruff, gruffer than usual, and kept her back to Lana most of the evening. Lana told Jeanie the next day at school about her arranged marriage, and Jeanie’s eyes grew wide as she described men in greater detail for Lana, what they looked like all over, what they smelled like, and how they acted. Those details were frightening. They didn’t sound princely at all, but Jeanie assured Lana they were.

“Will my husband want me to finish eighth grade?”

Grandma snorted and took a pin from between her lips. She tugged the bottom edge of the dress taut, the place where the hem had come loose, and she rolled the ragged edge up and pinned it. Grandma struggled to her feet. She was weathered from too many years of hard work, slightly stooped at the shoulders, but still stubbornly mulish in her frown. “I swear, I don’t know where you get all these silly notions. From Jeanie, no doubt. When a man asks for you, he’s just looking for a wife, and wives don’t need to be educated for what they have to do. You don’t need any smarts at all other than to cook, keep his house clean, and don’t sass him. And whatever he wants to do, you let him do it.” Grandma paused. She looked Lana in the eye, then stepped back to study the dress. The creases of her frown deepened.

Grandma had been a wife once, but Grandpa was long gone, and Grandma said he was dead. There were no reminders of him anywhere, just like there were no reminders of Lana’s father other than the letters her mother had written that Lana kept. Grandma had been the only real family Lana had ever known, and Grandma took care of her with a grumbling determination to keep food in Lana’s belly and a scrap of a dress on her long, gangly limbs.

Lana glanced around the house she’d grown up in, barely more than one room, barely enough furnishings to say she and Grandma did anything but survive. Grandma said things would be better for Lana this way. This man would make sure both of them had more—Grandma a little care sent her way once in awhile and Lana a home of her own.

Grandma stepped close. She lifted the hem where she could reach it and sewed around the pin, her hands working a little faster, a little rougher than before. Then she moved back again, still frowning. Lana watched her. She never knew for sure what color Grandma’s eyes were. They were dark, but it wasn’t their color that made them that way, it was depth, it was worry, it was frustration and hard work.

“Maybe it needs a belt,” Lana suggested.

Grandma hobbled toward the front door, and Lana could hear her grunt and pant over their rag box. She came back with a long strand of yellow fabric. It was a remnant salvaged from some broken-down garment of long ago, longer ago than Lana could remember. “We’ll try this,” Grandma said. She bent around Lana and looped the yellow fabric like a belt about her waist. She drew it tight and tied it, letting the loose ends hang down. Grandma smelled like earth and sweat, the scent of her years of struggle to gather food enough for the two of them and keep their single-room home from caving in. Grandma straightened to survey the belt, a memory of some invisible happier time softening her face for a moment before it disappeared. “It’ll have to do, I guess. He ain’t gonna care much how you look anyway. He’s too old for that. Probably why he doesn’t mind you looking more like a scrawny boy than a girl.”

Lana stared at her grandma. “Too old? How old? Won’t he still care a little bit? Want me to be sort of pretty? Surely he wants his bride, I mean his wife, to at least look nice.”

“You ask too many questions.” Grandma let out a little grunt. She hated it when Lana was pesky, but more than that, she hated talk about beauty. She was worn and gray. Maybe she’d never been pretty at all. Whenever Lana stood too long in front of the mirror, trying different-colored rag scraps against her auburn hair, Grandma always snatched them away and told Lana to be content with what she had, which, Grandma always added, wasn’t much. “And don’t be setting any store by looks, young lady. Cletus didn’t pick you for looks. He picked you to work hard and make babies.”

Jeanie had said something about making babies. She had lots of brothers and sisters, some of them married, so Jeanie claimed to know a lot about husbands and families and being a wife. She said some people called it making love, not just making babies, and it was supposed to be deeply satisfying. According to Grandma it really wasn’t; it only made babies and that was it. Lana couldn’t imagine the act that Jeanie’d whispered as being something someone did for love, but it intrigued her. Grandma had snorted when Lana asked her about the act. “Ain’t you ever seen what a bull does to a cow? Or one dog to another?” Lana hadn’t. Or if she had, she hadn’t thought anything of it.

Lana ran her hands down the soft, worn fabric of Grandma’s dress. It was flat where she had no bosom and bunched where she had no hips. Jeanie’d said pretty mattered a lot when a man chose a bride…a wife. Jeanie’d seen things and heard things when men came courting her sisters, or when her brothers lived in her family’s house for awhile with their new wives. She said having hips and bosoms helped turn making babies into making love.

Lana dropped her hands to her thighs and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She hoped Jeanie was wrong. Grandma said Lana didn’t have what it took for love, and Cletus wasn’t looking for it anyway. But she still wanted to look good, look pretty, look like a daughter her father would be proud of when he let Cletus take Lana as his own.

“Grandma?”

“What now?”

“Do you think my mom and dad will make it?”

Grandma held back whatever mean thought ran through her head, but Lana saw it, a flicker of fury that made her wince. Grandma shook her head and looked away. “No sense letting that spoil your day if they don’t.” She looked back at Lana and pursed her lips into a straight line. “I’m sure they’ll try. That’s what your mother said, anyway.”

“I want you to go to the courthouse with me—I mean with me and Cletus—whether they come or not. You raised me, so you can stand by me if my dad’s not there.”

“Child, you ain’t gonna need me no more. You’re going to be a wife now. You got to stand on your own.” Grandma’s voice was loud, louder than usual, but it didn’t hide the guttural rasp. And her tone of dismissal didn’t cover the wetness in her eyes or the worry on her face. “You’ll be fine,” she added, as she looked away. “Even if your dad don’t make it.”

Don’t make it.
Surely he would. Lana tugged at the yellow belt. No grandma, no mother there with her. And no father. She wanted them, she needed them—Grandma to tell her what to do, her mother to smile until the tired lines showed on her face, and her father… Lana needed him to be proud, to be there, to say she was special, a beautiful bride, even if she wasn’t. Lana slipped a finger between the belt and her waist. It felt tight, too tight, and she wanted to yank it off. Throw it all off, the wedding dress, the slip she’d never worn before, and the belt. She wanted to stay here. She wasn’t ready to be a bride…or a wife.

Suddenly she was swallowed in Grandma’s arms, the earth scent overpowering as Grandma pressed Lana against her bosom. The dampness of Grandma’s perspiration wetted Lana’s face, and Lana inhaled, drawing in as much of her grandmother as she could.

“You’ll be fine,” Grandma said into Lana’s ear. Lana could feel her tremble. It was slight, but it was there. “Don’t worry yourself about little things like how you look. Just work hard, don’t complain, and let Cletus be king of his castle. You got nothing here, nothing that’s yours to keep or take with you, and nothing to offer him. Be glad a settled man like that has chosen you. Just do your duty. That’s all you got, and that’s what wives do.”

Lana peeked above Grandma’s shoulder, around their house, at the sparseness of it. It had always seemed enough before, but now that Grandma said it was nothing, it looked stark instead of sufficient. Would this little home be more stark when Lana was gone, when she took with her a nightgown, the two dresses she owned, the letters her mother had written, and the picture she’d drawn of her next to her father the day after his first and only visit? Surely Cletus would make sure Grandma had enough to fill this house, make sure Lana’s absence wasn’t bigger than the new things Grandma could buy. Lana nodded into Grandma’s embrace. She’d do what it took. She put a hand on her grandma’s back and squeezed.

“Do your duty,” Grandma said, still close to Lana’s ear. “That’s all.” There were tears in Grandma’s admonition, deep tears Lana’d never heard before and she wondered who Grandma was crying for. Lana? Herself? Or maybe for Grandpa, the man Grandma’d been wife to when she’d really wanted to be a bride?

“Don’t worry, Grandma. I’ll be a good wife to Cletus. I promise I’ll work hard and make babies, just like I’m supposed to. Just like you say.”

A knock resounded throughout the house. Lana jumped, her heart kicked up like a young colt. Grandma’s hug tightened.

“It’s them,” Lana said into Grandma’s shoulder. “It’s my mom and my dad. He came, he made it!”

The soft cocoon of Grandma’s essence pulled back. It slowly peeled away, her warmth, her perspiration, and her scent, each leaving one at a time, until she let go.

Another knock, louder than the first, shook the lone picture Grandma owned, one of an angel looking down on a house.
Do I look all right?
Lana wanted to ask, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to upset Grandma.

“I’ll get it. I’ll let them in.” Lana felt bubbles inside. They danced in her heart and widened her eyes. Grandma grabbed her hand and held on for a moment, almost holding her back. “They’re waiting…” Lana laughed.

The knock came again. Lana’s heart echoed the rapid banging. She straightened her dress. Grandma watched her, not paying attention to Lana’s dress or the hair Lana quickly smoothed. Grandma’s eyes were on Lana’s, their dark color sinking into her own before Lana turned and hurried toward the door. She took a deep breath as she wrapped her fingers around the latch, kept her face in a welcome smile.