Quiet-Crazy (24 page)

It's good she's decided that, because I'm not planning to pluck anyway. Mary Jane Payne had tried that once on me, and it hurt too much. I can't see going through so much pain to get rid of something that you can't see anyway. And all that liquid stuff, yeah, it's fun for every now and then, but not every day. It's just too messy putting it on and taking it off, putting it on and taking it off. So, finally I end up with a little eyebrow pencil and a smidgin of blush and some lipstick. No powder, for it feels like chalk on my cheeks. But what I end up with looks right, I think, for me. It isn't
right for Miss Hansom, but then I'm not Miss Hansom. I am Elizabeth. I am who I am.

That, I decide is what I will tell Mama when she starts into ranting and raving about my makeup: “I am who I am, Mama. Just like God.” But the only problem with that is: Mama is who she is, too.

I
t's the first letter from Mama in about a week—she usually writes at least twice a week reminding me to be good and to not forget about that all-seeing eye upon me. And she is in top form.

“Elizabeth,” she wrote, after she told me about Eunice frying her hair too done and fussing on about that, “when are you planning on coming home from down there? Don't you know it looks bad on your daddy and me for you to keep on staying down there? A poor reflection on us, that's what it is. Besides, we need you here to do things for us, we're not getting any younger, you know. And Mr. Palmer, bless his heart, is doing the best he can at the piano on Sunday mornings, but that ain't much. Anyway, everybody's saying how much better the worship service is when you're here to play, and asking when you're coming back, so can't you tell
me something, Elizabeth, and stop keeping us in the dark about what's going on?”

I squeeze the letter into a little ball when I finish reading it because that's just about how my stomach feels—squeezed into a little ball at the thought of going back to Littleton. Yet, I know I can't stay here forever. And I know it's time to mention the idea to Mama and Daddy about me going off to college. But an awful thought comes to me. Am I wanting to go to school just to get away from Mama and Daddy, or am I wanting to go to truly try and make something better of my real self, so that I can learn all about how to get people to finding out about their real selves. And the awful answer is I think it's a little of both. I want to leave home, yes; but more than that is this newfound longing, strong longing, I mean, to learn all about what's in people's minds and why it's there and what makes them do and think what they do. And, too, I'd like to learn how I should have talked with Hemp. Never again, if it is within my power, will I not talk with someone, really and truly, about what they are feeling.

As for how Mama will take it, me going off to college and leaving home, well, it will be sad. For Mama. And I, Elizabeth, will just have to try to help Mama all I can help, all she wants to be helped, anyway. Daddy, I'm not too worried about, other than Mama may make it hard on him. She could put all her misery on him, without me around. So, I, Elizabeth,
will help Daddy, too, as much as I can. But, and this may sound selfish, but I know now I have to help Elizabeth first. Anyway, people are supposed to leave home eventually. At least normal people are. If things go according to nature, they are.

I was out in our backyard one time sitting at the old oak tree watching a mama bird nudging her babies one at a time off the limb, so they'd fly on out into the world and make the world their home. And I often wanted so bad for Mama to nudge me to try my wings, just to see if I could fly out in the world to see, you know, what it was like. But Mama wouldn't hardly even let me out of the nest, much less walk out on the limb and flap my wings to see what would happen, if I were given half a chance.

Since I am measuring nearly everything I do by Miss Hansom these days, I wonder how it would sound to her if I said, “Miss Hansom, I can't go off to college, because my mama needs me at home.” Well, I know how it would sound. It'd sound like a child leaving home to go into first grade, thinking it can't leave its mama behind. Why, I'll bet those little birds didn't give a second thought to their mama once they got out in the big world. And I don't mean I want to forget Mama completely, but, well, what am I supposed to do? I've determined I've got to be Elizabeth from now on, but what do I do with Mama all this time I'm being Elizabeth? And
what about Mama's feelings toward me, will she even own up that I'm her child anymore, if I leave her and go off to the state university?

Now, Daddy will be glad, I'm sure he will, to know his daughter is thinking about going to college, because he knows education is a good thing. And well, Mama, deep down, I really think does too. For other people's children. If it doesn't make them stop going to church. Poor Mama. Why can't she see that it's people themselves, and what they see and hear at church that makes them want to go or not want to go. It's not that they're turning against God, Himself. What if she had more schooling than seventh grade. Would she be so afraid at letting me go to get some more? I finally figure out, I think, why she is so afraid of me coming to Nathan. I think she might have been wondering, afraid, maybe, that I might talk about what she used to do. Okay, so I can understand that now. But will she be afraid for me to go off to college for the same reason? I don't know.

Anyway, I don't see any way of putting off mentioning it to them, so that's what I do in my next letter. I mention it after I ask how they are doing and how the flowers are coming along, and if the frizz in Mama's hair has come out. That's when I go into what all I had been thinking about.

Mama and Daddy, I want you all to know that I have missed you a lot while I've been here,
(and I
have, really and truly)
and I have come to realize just how important you have been to me. As you probably know, the main reason for me coming here was to try to get some help in getting myself straightened out. I know y'all have probably been tired of seeing me going around so droopy for so long, and I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I'm feeling much better about myself. And I think one reason I'm feeling so much better is that I've decided, I think, that I don't want to work in the pants factory for the rest of my life. I think there's more to life than fooling around with men's pants zippers all day long, and I just want to see what else there is in this world. That's why I've been talking with the people here about the chance of me going on to college, even at my age. Everybody here says it's never too late to go, and that I should do fine in college, and although I know it will be hard, maybe really hard, I've decided that to get into the kind of work I'd rather be doing, which is maybe being a counselor, so I can get people to talking, so they don't kill themselves, I'm going to have to go to college. They say here that the state university will probably cost less. And Dr. Adams says I can try for scholarship money, plus I can also get a job working at the college to help pay for things. And, too, part of the savings in the bank is mine, so I don't think it would be
a burden on y'all. And I sure don't want to be a burden on you any longer, that's one thing I've learned here.

I start writing “what do you think?” but then I scratch that out, since I know I am going to hear what Mama thinks anyway. So I put the letter in the mail and wait and wait to hear what they think, but no letter comes, not for days. Maybe I just nudged myself out into the big world all by myself. Maybe they'll have nothing more to do with me. It's like the song “Some glad morning when this life is over, I'll fly away, oh, glory, I'll fly away, in the morning,” except it isn't to a home on God's celestial shore, I don't know where I'll fly to, somewhere maybe, between Nathan and home and the university. Right at the moment I don't quite fit in any one of the places, and that is a free, flying-floating feeling, and at the same time a scary feeling, not feeling a real part of anywhere.

But I have to take responsibility for my feelings from here on and not put them on doctors, nor Miss Hansom, nor Aunt Lona nor Mama, even, and not even the Lord. I put my trust in the Lord for twenty years, now, ever since I got baptized when I was eight years old, and that's okay to trust in Him, but I see now that's not enough. I've also got to put some trust in myself, no matter what Preacher Edwards says about bringing all your burdens to the Lord and leaving them there.
Well, I carried Angela to Him a thousand times, but I never left her there, and maybe that has been my fault. Maybe I did the first part of what Preacher Edwards was saying, I carried her there, but I sure didn't leave her. But how could I with Mama bringing her back out all the time?

Mama. Could I do that with Mama, too? Take Mama to the Lord and leave her there? And let the Lord decide what to do with her? Good luck, Lord. That's all I can say. But down deep in my heart I have to say God bless Mama, too. I wish my blessing could help her see that I've got to get away. I wish I could reach into her own heart and soul and take away her suffering and pain; but I can't do that, not take someone else's hurt away. All I can do is just be more understanding. Just try to get them to talk, while I listen. That, and be as kind as possible to Mama when she lashes out at me. And maybe I can do that now, knowing that she's hurting, and that no matter how many bottles of magnesia she drinks up, she's still going to be hurting. Probably.

My idea of dealing with Mama seems a likely solution until I finally get the next letter. It's no different than I'd expected, with Mama talking about church first, then Eunice again, still mad at her for not timing her hair right, then at the very end of the letter, saying, “Elizabeth, I don't know how you can think of going off to school and leaving your poor old daddy and me here to look out for ourselves. I
don't know what we'd do. Besides, you know what Preacher Edwards says about people who go off and get that high-falutin' education, what it does to them, poisons their mind.” And that was it.

First off, Mama and Daddy have been getting along fine without me for all these weeks now, for more than two months, and besides, that's not Daddy's thinking anyway, I know it's not. But I would like to know what he said when he heard about my idea.

I decide to talk with Miss Hansom about it. Dr. Shaver doesn't come around and talk with me nearly as much as Dr. Adams did. For one reason he sees for himself that Mama isn't coming down to talk, and he sees that I meant what I said, that I want to put all that behind me, all that I'd told him, and anyway, he seems to be talking with Belinda a lot more than he talks with anyone, and good for Belinda, because she needs talking with if any of us do, so I figure he thought I didn't need so much talking now.

For the first time ever Miss Hansom talks real serious with me, almost like she, herself, is a counselor. “Elizabeth,” she says, lighting up a long, slim cigarette, and turning her lips up to one side to blow the smoke away from us. “Most parents have a hard time when their children leave home. Mine did. I had a hard time, myself, too. It's scary out there.”

“But did they get mad at you for doing it and try to make you stay home so that you felt all guilty, no matter what you
do, guilty to them if you left and guilty to yourself if you didn't go?”

“No,” she says, “they didn't get mad. But one thing I've learned. Getting ‘mad,' anger, is what they call a cover-up feeling, Elizabeth. There's really something deeper that a person is feeling when they have a lot of anger inside them, so you have to try and find out what the deeper feeling is, then it will help you understand your mother a little better.”

“Help me, yeah, but it won't do a blasted thing for her.”

“But if you understand what she's truly feeling under all that anger, then at least you won't feel so guilty. You know I used to get angry driving in traffic. I'd get so mad every little time someone crossed over in front of me or pulled out in front of me making me screech on my brakes. So I started watching myself and looking out for the feelings that came with the anger or after the anger, and you know I found out that I got nervous when they did that, so it was not so much anger that was bothering me as the fear underneath all that, fear that I was not the one in control, that someone else was in control, and that someone was going to cause me to have a wreck. And it helped me deal with all that anger, so that now I recognize that I am really deep down fearful or nervous when people drive in such a way that endangers my life, and the anger has calmed down quite a bit.”

I sit there at the card table watching Miss Hansom take long draws on her cigarette, and I let it soak in real good
what she told me, because it makes a lot of sense to me. Dr. Adams said something like that way back, and to hear it again makes a deeper imprint on me this time. So I decide there must be something to it.

“Besides, Elizabeth,” she says, “most parents end up by themselves one day anyway. That's the way it is. What if your mother had stayed with her parents all her life? Now, can she ask you to do what she didn't do?”

“Be an example to your children. That's another thing Preacher Edwards is all the time saying,” I tell Miss Hansom. “So, I could say to Mama, when the time comes, ‘Mama, you were a good example to me, when you decided to leave home and get married, because just think, if you had never decided that, I wouldn't be here today. So, I'm going to follow your example and leave home and go off to college.'”

Miss Hansom laughs. Laughs with me, in the way that Dr. Adams laughs. “Elizabeth,” she says, snuffing out her cigarette, “you're going to be okay, you know that?” And the way she says it, so sure of herself, makes me feel even more that way, too, and I feel better about everything than I have in a long while.