Six Miles From Nashville (3 page)

“I can tell you I was scared when I heard that!
Then they told about the hospital in Springfield that let girls leave their babies there with no questions and no arrests.”

Miss Sweetie fr
owned and put her hand over Betty’s. Her voice was hoarse sounding like a smoker, “Why didn’t you go to your family?”

Betty
started bawling like a newborn calf separated from its mama. She could hardly catch her breath. “I never did nothin’ wrong in my life. I walked the line. I never thought something like this would happen to me. I had a steady boyfriend for awhile, and I was still a ‘good girl’. We went to church together and stuff.

“
When we broke up, I didn’t date anybody at all. I didn’t tell anybody that I wasn’t going steady. I was ashamed to be rejected. I didn’t drink or smoke. I didn’t even go to very many movies. I stayed at home and watched TV with my folks. I never rebelled or back talked much.”

“How old are you?”

“I will turn eighteen next month.”

“How old is the baby’s father?”

She didn’t know for sure. “He is younger. I think he is almost seventeen.”

“How did you...I mean, you were obedient to your parents. I still don’t know why you don’t go home to them.”

“It’s just the way it is. Someday, maybe I will go back.”

Sweetie rose and crossed the short distance to the door. “Please stay in bed and rest until Monday. I will see to it that you get three squares a day, but you have to see to it
that you rest.”

“Thank you, Miss Sweetie.” The girl was relieved that the visit was over. The woman was being good to her, but her questions dragged up bad memories.

The door clicked closed and Betty was left with her thoughts. She repented of  her first reaction of wishing that she would be alone. Her mind replayed her first attempts at living life as a grown up.

Chapter 4

Maybe she could figure out where she
went wrong. Betty had always been a ‘fixer’. If anyone had a problem, she figured out how they got into their mess. Surely, if she thought hard enough, she could get her life back on track.

Betty
was always careful and never caused any trouble. Everyone except her closest friends thought that she was boring. She was a homebody. She had a fear that she would always live in that little house with her parents watching TV until she was an old woman, but she liked being with them.

One of her
friends from the youth group told her about a Bible college that let students pay tuition, room and board by the month. The payments were low enough that Betty could pay the first semester out with the money she made from working at her daddy’s grocery store. She sent off the paperwork and they accepted her application. She moved four hundred miles away from her folk’s living room.

She was one of those girls who were committed to Jesus. Her devotion put some of the other students at her small high school at a distance. They never asked her to join them in a beer bust or a house party.  When she got to Bible school, she felt that she would be with like-minded people who were striving to get to know God better. She thought it would be like heaven on earth.

She had friends at home in the youth group, but was afraid of meeting new people. She was so nervous that
she and her mama had sewed many stylish clothes so that she would fit in with the other girls. They looked at the Sears Roebuck catalogue and chose the clothes they thought were best for her new life. Her mama got out the old newspaper and cut patterns to make the outfits herself. She was good at that.

The clothes were done so well that the girls at high school that ordered from the catalogue thought that they had been cheated in the quality of the
fabric. Her mama always watched for sales on pretty and strong yard goods.

Betty opened the windows of her ’73 Buick Century Luxus to smell the fresh crisp autumn air. She wanted to get a close look at the huge maple trees. They wore their brilliant leaf coats for her to admire.

She found the address for the large Bible school and wandered up and down the streets of the campus trying to get her bearings. Tall buildings loomed over her as she searched for the main building where registrations were to take place.

Finally, she found it in the center of the campus and
parked in the street across from it. Students milled around in and out of the building. She entered the large room with cold marble floors and stood in line next to a poster board sign reading ‘freshman’.

Her mouth was dry and h
er heart pounded at the thought of meeting so many new people.
This is my chance to reinvent myself. I don’t have to be the shy, stupid girl I was in high school.

When her turn came
, a middle-aged woman with auburn hair sprinkled with gray asked in a bored voice, “Name?”

“Betty Barnes”

She fingered the folders within the ‘b’ section of the box before her. “Here it is. You will find your class schedule in here as well as your dorm building, floor number, and room number. There is a notation on the outside of your file that you are to be employed in the cafeteria to take care of part of your tuition. Read the forms and fill them out and return them to the cafeteria as soon as possible. Do not return them here. They are staffed to take care of those matters.”

“Thank you.”

“Next!”

Betty moved aside to give the next student time with the emotionless woman. She was uneasy as she looked in the
faces of the others in the freshman line.

The girl who had stood behind her passed her and walked with confidence to a large map of the campus that hung in a prominent spot on the wall. Betty watched her with interest as she took her schedule and traced  her finger on the map legend on the lower right and found a spot on the map. After she left, Betty searched her schedule for the name of her dorm building and then found it and the cafeteria on the map.

She decided to go to the cafeteria first. It was closer to the main administration building and on her way to her dorm building.

As she approached her car, a campus policeman placed a yellow ticket under her wiper blade.

“Sir, what did I do?”

“You freshmen are all alike. Just because you are ignorant, you think you can park anywhere you want, even if there are signs warning you not to park here.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t get all riled up. We are only allowed to give warnings today. Now, tomorra is another thing. Don’t let me catch
you parking in a no parking zone again or it will cost you.”

“Yes
, sir.”

“Go on now. Clear this spot for the next person who isn’t payin’ attention. I don’t know how some of you folk ever graduated.” He continued his
tirade as a muffled mumble.

She got into her car and turned the key. The motor groaned and she realized she had failed to turn her lights off.

“Please God! Let it start this time.”

It sputtered and
the engine turned over, allowing her to find her way to the next stop. The cafeteria building was abuzz with activity as she entered. There were three distinct lines. One indicated lunch plan payments/tickets, one was for teachers, and the last was for student employee forms.

It seemed to take hours before she was face to face with another middle-aged woman looking for her name. “Now Betty, you will need to fill all of these forms out along with your W-2 form. There is a hairnet in the
manila envelope and you must wear it when you are working in the cafeteria. Some of you kids think the staff will not notice, but I am telling you that you will lose your position the first time you show up without it. There will be no discussion and no explanations. If you lose the hairnet, we have a stock of them available for purchase in the cafeteria office. Your pay for employment in the cafeteria will go directly to the college to pay on your tuition and meal plan. There will be no extra pay. Only meals taken in the cafeteria are paid for by your labor. You will miss no more than ten days total per semester for illness or family emergency. You will begin working tomorrow morning at six a.m. so that the cooks can give you the tour. If that is understood, I need you to sign your full name here.”

The weight of a
dulthood hit her hard as she sat filling out the forms. She didn’t know if she should claim herself on the W-2.
Would Mama be mad if I did?
She decided to go ahead and write down zero dependants including herself just in case. The paperwork she had been given was a thick handbook on procedures and operations within the cafeteria. It seemed overwhelming.
I will have to study this tonight.

She spotted her car in the parking lot and was glad the lights were off. It started easily and she pulled out slowly looking for a dorm building by the name of  ‘Ruth’.  The dorms for women were on the east side of the campus, whereas the men’s dorms were across the campus to the west. There were many duplexes for the married students
. Finally, she saw the multilevel buildings named after women Bible characters. She found the parking lot for Ruth and Mary before she saw the building. She pulled in and stopped the car. Now was her moment of truth. She was to live among strangers. The thought sent a shudder down her back as she crossed the street with her large suitcase in her hand.

The dorm had been constructed within the past year.
She was to live on the third floor in room three seventeen. Girls stood in line for the elevator  and mashed themselves along with their possessions in the small area. Betty heard their giggles long after the doors closed. She was glad to not be in their company.

Another elevator door opened and three girls exited. Their arms were empty and they were talking animatedly about how many trips it would take to get all their stuff into their room. She entered
the elevator with two other girls and was soon on her way to her room.

Everything was new. There were three twin beds in the large room. Next to each bed was a large chest of drawers. There were three separate and ample closets.

Betty took the bed closest to the window. She gazed at the view and put her new instamatic camera to her eye to frame a quaint little home nestled among many trees. The snapshot she took would remind her of what it was like to be at Bible college. She determined to take pictures of the house as it went though the many seasons that occurred in Missouri.

She was used to changes in weather. It was the trees and vegetation that amazed her. The trees in her neighborhood were so scarce that if the leaves did turn brown or yellow in this season, the strong
prevalent and always present winds blew them away. It would be interesting to actually have to rake leaves.

She turned from the window and walked out to the sitting room where the wall phone and upright piano were
on that floor. Already, a girl was pacing the room and wrapping the curly cord around her hand. She stretched it to a nearby door. Someone opened it, revealing two brand new washers and dryers. The girl turned back to walk across the room and hung the receiver onto the hook.

There was a guest book on a small table. Betty looked at it and the phone girl nodded toward it. “You have to sign out
every time you leave campus and tell the time you leave and where you are going. You also have to sign back in when you return. This is the only phone for this floor. If your family or a teacher calls to talk to you, whoever answers the phone can check to see where you are if you aren’t on campus.”

Betty nodded. “That makes sense.”

A girl attempted to exit the elevator with a stack of moving boxes in her arms. Her smile covered her animated face. In a southern drawl that could only come from Abilene, Texas, the girl explained, “I am Trudy Miller. I think this is the dorm they told me to come to.”

“Ruth d
orm?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“Which room number?” Betty asked.

“Three fifteen
.”

“That’s two doors up from my room. I will show you. Do you want me to take one of those boxes?”

“Thanks, ah...What is your name?”

“Betty.”

“Nice to meet you, Bet.”

After the girls put the boxes on the bed
, Betty followed her to the parking lot and helped her unload more things from her cousin’s pickup truck that she had ridden from Texas. When they searched the pickup for the rest of her belongings, the cousin opened the driver’s door and called out to them, “You aren’t getting any of my stuff are you, Tru?”

Betty lifted her eyes to meet his small black ones. They twinkled like Christmas lights. “I am only a pack mule. I don’t know if all the stuff we car
ried is Trudy’s or yours, sorry,” she said.

“Hey there. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

She was mesmerized by his beaming smile.
Have I ever seen anyone with that many shining white teeth? Good grief, how deep are those dimples in his cheeks?

She couldn’t drag her eyes from his face. He removed his big black cowboy hat
, revealing many unruly brown curls. He didn’t wear his hair excessively long like the style of the day. He was what the high school guys in Oklahoma called a ‘goat roper’.