Hick - Andrea Portes [16]
Well, that’s that, I guess.
I look into the night sky, pitch black with stars so bright you wonder why you can’t just hop on one and ride away. The corn smells sweet behind me, heading off row by row into the pitch black. There are no cars. No lights for miles. Not even a telephone pole to give you comfort.
I walk myself gently into the ditch. Whenever I feel like this, I am gentle with myself, pretend like I’m someone else, someone good. I walk on eggshells around myself, like I’m some fragile piece of porcelain you have to place quietly, deliberately back on the shelf.
I put my jeans and T-shirt on the ground to make a bed, then set my bag up top for the pillow. Home sweet home. My first night out was not a stunning success. Maybe I was too thirsty for my new life. I lay my head back on my makeshift pillow and decide that tomorrow I will behave in a manner that is slow. Tomorrow I will let things happen to me, instead of trying to make things happen. Tomorrow I will try to be softer.
SEVEN
They could sure make these ditches more comfortable. Maybe hold back on the brambles part. I’m tossing and turning and all I can think is how you’re not supposed to be an all-alone girl, especially at night. If you’re an all-alone girl at night, might as well call it quits.
I keep thinking about this all-alone lady we got for a schoolteacher. She had a look like she was raised in the basement of a library. She had mousy-brown bangs and sun-scared skin the color of paper. She came here from some college back East with no men and that’s the way they want it. She got invited to two barbecues, one bake-off, and that was that cause she liked to get mad about what kind of beer you drank or don’t say sweetie, say Miss Crisp.
It wasn’t long after she got transferred that she started staring at me round the clock. I went from back left to center center to front right, like tic-tac-toe, in five days straight. She put me right up front and this is what she’d do. she’d take a long, leisurely stroll round the room and stop, oh so casual, right smack-bang behind yours truly. she’d put her eyes in my socks, in my shoes, in my hair and just stay planted there till test over. I swear to Betsy she made those tests up, pop quiz, just to take a peek. And I kept trying to hate her. I did, but then came the day she caught me red-handed.
She caught me red-handed cause there was this girl in my class, three rows up, who spent all recess mirror in hand. Kids would be running round like it was the end of the world and four- square and dodge-ball and there she’d be, smack-dab in the middle, statue still, staring in that silver vanity mirror you’re supposed to keep in a drawer.
I don’t care about that. Who’d care about that part? She could’ve stared at that mirror till her head popped off and fine with me. that’s not the point. The point is she wouldn’t eat her sandwich. that’s the point.
The point is she’d eat the apple, the pudding cup, the crackers and toss the sandwich, the whole sandwich, back in the bag and then in the trash and forget it. The point is that sandwich would get left back, all alone, and I’d feel sorry for it. I felt sorry for that sandwich, and so one day I took it upon myself to do something about it. The point is her mom sure knew how to make a sandwich.
Okay, I’ll admit it. Miss Crisp caught me, hands in the trash-can, trying to make that sandwich feel a little less lonely. She caught me and she didn’t send me to the principal or tell my folks or nothing. Instead, she invited me over for Friday dinner, nothing special, in case I didn’t have plans. It wasn’t a holiday, just Friday dinner, don’t get worked up about it.
Or so I thought.
But then, guess what, I show up Friday and it’s like Jesus, Mary and Joseph are expected at eight. she’s got mashed potatoes and salad with Dorothy Lynch and Jell-O with marshmallows in it. she’s got rump roast with gravy and two different pies, pecan or pumpkin,