Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [109]
After the operation, she does everything left-handed. She has learned to extend her right arm and raise it slightly. Next, the doctors have told her, she will gradually reach higher and higher—an idea that thrills her, as though there were something tangible above her to reach for. It surprises her, too, to learn what her left hand has been missing. She feels like a newly blind person discovering the subtleties of sound.
Trying to sympathize with her, the women on her bowling team offer their confessions. Nancy has such severe monthly cramps that even the new miracle pills on the market don’t work. Linda had a miscarriage when she was in high school. Betty admits her secret, something Ruby suspected anyway: Betty shaves her face every morning with a Lady Sunbeam. Her birth-control pills had stimulated facial hair. She stopped taking the pills years ago but still has the beard.
Ruby’s mother calls these problems “female trouble.” It is Mom’s theory that Ruby injured her breasts by lifting too many heavy boxes in her job with a wholesale grocer. Several of her friends have tipped or fallen wombs caused by lifting heavy objects, Mom says.
“I don’t see the connection,” says Ruby. It hurts her chest when she laughs, and her mother looks offended. Mom, who has been keeping Ruby company in the afternoons since she came home from the hospital, today is making Ruby some curtains to match the new bedspread on her double bed.
“When you have a weakness, disease can take hold,” Mom explains. “When you abuse the body, it shows up in all kinds of ways. And women just weren’t built to do man’s work. You were always so independent you ended up doing man’s work and woman’s work both.”
“Let’s not get into why I never married,” says Ruby.
Mom’s sewing is meticulous and definite, work that would burn about two calories an hour. She creases a hem with her thumb and folds the curtain neatly. Then she stands up and embraces Ruby carefully, favoring her daughter’s right side. She says, “Honey, if there was such of a thing as a transplant, I’d give you one of mine.”
“That’s O.K., Mom. Your big hooters wouldn’t fit me.”
—
At the bowling alley, Ruby watches while her team, Garrison Life Insurance, bowls against Thomas & Sons Plumbing. Her team is getting smacked.
“We’re pitiful without you and Linda,” Betty tells her. “Linda’s got too big to bowl. I told her to come anyway and watch, but she wouldn’t listen. I think maybe she is embarrassed to be seen in public, despite what she said.”
“She doesn’t give a damn what people think,” says Ruby, as eight pins crash for Thomas & Sons. “Me neither,” she adds, tilting her can of Coke.
“Did you hear she’s getting a heavy-duty washer? She says a heavy-duty holds forty-five diapers.”
Ruby lets a giggle escape. “She’s not going to any more laundromats and get knocked up again.”
“Are you still going with that guy you met at Third Monday?”
“I’ll see him Monday. He’s supposed to take me home with him to Tennessee, but the doctor said I can’t go yet.”
“I heard he didn’t know about your operation,” says Betty, giving her bowling ball a little hug.
Ruby takes a drink of Coke and belches. “He’ll find out soon enough.”
“Well, you stand your ground, Ruby Jane. If he can’t love you for yourself, then to heck with him.”
“But people always love each other for the wrong reasons!” Ruby says. “Don’t you know that?”
Betty stands up, ignoring Ruby. It’s her turn to bowl. She says, “Just be thankful, Ruby. I like the way you get out and go. Later on, bowling will be just the right thing to build back your strength.”
“I can already reach to here,” says Ruby, lifting her right hand to touch Betty’s arm. Ruby smiles. Betty has five-o’clock shadow.
—
The familiar crying of the dogs at Third Monday makes