Fair and Tender Ladies (20 page)

Lonnie has just been waiting to see if Louis Judds Army was on the up and up as he says. Beulah I confess it, I will miss him so much, and yet I am glad he is going. I feel both these ways at exactly the same time, I know it is awful! It is why I cannot mary him ether. I would end up acting like Emma Bovary which was awful, but I can see why she did it, I know I would do it too. I have said as much to Miss Maynard in fact who said Well Ivy you are an impossible girl, I guess this is true too.

However I do NOT believe that if you make your bed, you have to sleep in it for ever. Do you? Anyway they are leaving, Lonnie is leaving. This is the big news for now.

I remain your devoted but compromised sister,

 

IVY ROWE.

Dear Silvaney,

 

Lonnie is gone.

He joined up with the Army just before they left. I walked with him all through town to the river, down to the bridge. Lonnie was walking very stiff-like with everything he owns in his old cloth bag that was his daddys, the one he came to the bordinghouse with. He does not own much, Lonnie, he is twenty years old today. He turned and grinned at me, You are so pretty Ivy, he said, and I smiled but inside I was screaming at him. Dont leave, dont leave, I dont even know you yet oh God I never took the time but what a nice looking stiff-legged boy you are, oh Lord I hate to see you go. I will miss your hands on my titties and how you can make me laugh. I will miss you, I will miss you I thought. It all came over me in a rush as we walked along, for I thought, May be this is the last time I will see you Lonnie Rash, this is it. When you come back from the war you will be all different, you will be a man. I just smiled at him.

The sun was real bright but skittish, sliding in and out of the fast-moving clouds. The sky was so blue. I thought, It was almost exactly a year ago, in March, that we came here. So many things have happened, it seems longer. It seems years. I have grown up I guess, although Miss Mabel Maynard would tell you I am no lady. Nevermind. In fact we passed Miss Maynard as we walked through town to the river, we passed right by the open door of the Methodist School just as Miss Maynard stepped outside to beat her erasers. She made an awful cloud of dust in the air and started coughing, then she turned and saw me and Lonnie Rash and stopped beating her erasers together and stood for a minute in the white cloud of dust with her hands raised up, not moving.

She looked at me and I looked at her.

Then I put my arm around Lonnie and we walked along like that together, out of sight.

You be good while Im gone now girl, Lonnie said. He squeezed me. We will get maried first thing when I get back. Oh Silvaney, I did not have the heart to tell him, I did not! For Lonnie is an orphan like Jane Eyre. Even though I remember so well what Mister Brown taught me and Molly so long ago, that truth is more precious than rubies, more dear than gold. But since that time I have learned a lot, believe you me, and now I wonder if Mrs. Brown had not been so honnest herself, if she had not told Mister Brown that she was pregnant with Revels baby, would he ever of found out that it wasnt his? For I can not see how. And I wonder, Must we always tell the truth, even if it hurts another very much? So I bit my tonge. For I thought, Lonnie is going to war, he does not need to feel bad. I can tell him when he gets back, that will be plenty of time. Silvaney, do you think this is awful? It is either awful or grown up, I am not sure which.

We walked through the town of Majestic which used to be mine, past stores and houses and the Methodist Church, gray stone, its steeple gray in the blue-blue sky. Everywhere, people were running in the street and yelling, and down by the lumberyard you could hear the whine of the circular saw. The new spring air was wet and clean. We got to the bridge. Lonnie set his cloth bag down. Then he put his arms around me, those arms which have been around me so much before. The river was up and the water went rushing past, it was hard to hear anything. Or see anything either—the sun came jumping out of a cloud right then and shone in my eyes, I couldnt see Lonnies face. I couldnt see his face, I dont know him, I never knew Lonnie really which seems so sad. He kissed me on the lips and I let him, I didnt care who happened by or what they thought. For I am compromised! I said to myself over the roar of the water, compromised! When he kissed me I felt that firey hand as always and kissed him back harder. I have always liked kissing Lonnie Rash.

Ivy,
he said in my ear.
I want you to have this. Ive got something I want you to have.
And he reached in his breast-pocket and came up with a little box.

Oh no, I thought, I can not wear a ring. What is it? I said.

Open it and see, said Lonnie, I asked my sister Bonnie to send it and she did, it came in the mail yesterday, just in time.

In time for what, I said.

For you, Lonnie said. For me to give to you.

Lonnies sister Bonnie is a whole lot older than him. You will love Bonnie, he has told me many times, and I have not had the nerve to say, I will never know her.

Lonnie opened the little box and there was a round gold locket with flowers carved all over it. It is so pretty.
Looky here,
Lonnie said. He pressed a tiny spring and the locket popped open and there in one side was a picture of a kind of flat-faced woman with her hair piled on top of her head, and on the other side, a lock of the hair, brown, like Lonnies. This is my mothers hair, he said. This is my mothers locket. Then he closed it up and unclasped the chain and put it around my neck.

Thank you, I said.

I kissed him some more and then he left. I watched him walk across the bridge and check in with the soldier on the other side. He will look good in a uniform. He looked back once. I waved. He got smaller and smaller as he walked off into the bottom, into the bustling camp. Then he was gone.

The river roared and leaped, muddy brown but shining in the sun, about three yards below the bridge. Downstream, I knew, boys were waiting to ride the logs down to Kentucky, waiting for the great spring tide that would carry them clear to Catlettsburg, hunkered down on the riverbank watching the river and waiting to go. The water beneath the bridge spewed and whirled, it made me dizzy. Lonnie will cross the ocean and go to Europe. The water went around and around in little eddies, little whirlpools, and all of a sudden in my mind I saw Lonnie Rash walk away from me again and again and again, getting littler and littler as he went. Then he was gone. I blinked. Well, I thought, thats that, and with him gone it was like my whole self came rushing back to me again and I looked at the water and thought, Oh I
do
want to go to Boston, I do want to go after all!

And I recalled Miss Torringtons letter, how she said that there are kinds and kinds of love and that sometimes we confuse them being only mortal as we are, and how she said that she would never be other than my good true friend if I would reconsider coming.

So I will go! I will!
I thought. My mind was as rambunctious and wild as the river. All the poems I ever knew came rushing and tumbling into my head, and the thought of losing Lonnie—for I have lost him, Silvaney, I know it—this thought put me in mind of the saddest lovelyest poem I ever knew which was Rose Aylmer
whom these wakeful eyes may weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.
I thought
oh yes
for I have lost him now as surely as I have lost those others, Danny and Daddy and you, Silvaney, my lost one, my heart, and I thought

Oh yes, I decided, watching the river, I will go, I will go, and if I do not like it there I can come back, I can always do that for I am grown up now even though I am compromised and no lady, nevermind I thought, I will go. And I felt then as if I had jumped the logs and ridden them clear to Kentucky! I am glad I am no lady now.

So picture me Silvaney, if you will. I want you to see me plain. It is spring and a skittery sunshiny day, I stand on the river bridge already missing my sweetie whose gone to the war, the river spews and boils like Genevas coffee, the wind blows hard and a bugle call comes across the river from the Army camp. I wear a dead womans pretty locket, I am free to come and go as I please. I will go to Boston and see what there is to see. Yet always I will be bound to you my love and my heart and I will come back for you one day soon and take you back to the mountain. I remain your loving sister,

 

IVY ROWE.

Dear Miss Torrington,

 

I know you are surprised to hear from me but, I have changed my mind! I would like to come to Boston after all, if you will still have me. You know I do not have the fare, but I will repay you bye and bye when I am a teacher out in the world and earning my keep. So, do you still want me? And when should I come? I am too exited to write down here the steps which I have taken to arrive at this decision. Let us say instead, may be I have learned some perspective at last, and I rema

Oh Silvaney, Silvaney,

 

All is lost.

For I can
not
go to Boston, or have a new life, or do anything ever again.

This is what happened. I do not know if I said or not that I have been poorly lately from being upset I thought, what with everybody trying to mary me off, and from exitment and the war. Well right after Lonnie left, I was writing to Miss Torrington when I got to feeling sick at my stomach and when I came back from the bathroom, there was Geneva in her big blue satin robe looking serious.

Now Ivy, she said, we must have a talk. And she took my hand and led me back to the kitchen where she gave me a cup of coffee in one of my favorite cups, the white china one with the golden edges that we never use.

I sat at the table feeling puny while Geneva put sugar and cream in my coffee exactly the way I like it, looking at me. Then she got a cup of coffee for herself and made us some cinamon toast.

Thank you Geneva, I said, but then I had to get up and run out the back door and get sick again, this has been happening to me lately. When I came back in the door Geneva hugged me and sat me back down in the chair, and pulled her own chair up close so she could hold my hands.

Honey, how far along are you?
she asked.

What do you mean,
I said, for I did not know.

Oh merciful Jesus,
Geneva said. She got up then and got herself another cup of coffee and got me another piece of cinamon toast.

I dont know if I can eat that or not, I said.

Eat it, said Geneva. You need to get your strength.

Why? I said, and Geneva said,
Ivy honey, you are going to have a baby.

Her words exploded like a gunshot in my head, and then the whole kitchen whirled and then stood still. I can see it, smell it, feel it, yet—the kitchen so warm with the fires already going in the stoves, the coffee smell, the red and white checkered linolium cloth on the kitchen table, the salt and pepper shakers that look like little Dutch girls, the pale pearly light outside the kitchen window, Genevas fat kind wrinkled face above her satin gown. Oh yes, I thought, I have not bled for a long time, but I never did bleed too reglar anyway.