Big Cherry Holler (36 page)

“Well, honey-o, since we’re here, maybe I’ll get a reading too.” Iva Lou turns to Sister Claire and points to her with her pinkie finger. “But I’m warnin’ you, Sis, don’t tell me when I’m gonna die, even if you know. Okay, I amend that. You can tell me when I’m gonna die if it’s at a hundred-and-one with all my faculties and a young man up in the bed next to me that thinks I’m better than pepper jelly.”

“You got a deal.” Sister laughs.

They go inside the tent and I can hear quiet muttering. I sit down, stretching my legs and leaning back in the chair. From this angle, I can see the spotlight at the beauty contest make a tunnel of light against the black mountain. It is a smoky beam, barely visible as it competes with the Ferris wheel spinning streaks of light like pink glitter. The mountains funnel the sound of the applause, and the wolf whistles up into the night sky; the pageant could be a thousand miles from here, the way the sound carries in these hills. How easy it is to get lost in the noise of this world, to find yourself leading a life of acceptance and resignation. I wonder if I have anything new ahead of me. What does Sister Claire mean when she tells me I have to invent myself all over again? To be what? And how?

After what seems like a much longer time than my reading took, Iva Lou emerges from the tent, fishing in her purse for a cigarette.

“So?”

“Oh, honey, I’ve never heard such good news. Sister Claire was
chock-full of all kinds of information, I just hope I can remember it all so I can write it down.”

“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.”

“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.