The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (83 page)

“Well, there goes another one,” she said to Miriam. “Pretty ones always go first. I reckon one day there won’t be any pretty ones here, and then I’ll go.” She shook out her yarn. “This is my fortieth sweater.” Not understanding, Miriam shrank away from the ugly girl. “I’d even be glad for old Fats there,” she was saying. She pointed to a lewd-eyed old man hovering near. “Trouble is, even old Fats goes for the pretty ones. Heh! You ought to see it, when he goes up to one of them high school queens. Heh! Law says they can’t say no!” Choking with curiosity, stiff, trembling, Miriam edged up to the girl.

“Where … where do they go?”

The harelip looked at her suspiciously. Her white dress, tattered and white no longer, stank. “Why, you really don’t know, do you?” She pointed to a place near them, where the bushes swayed. “To lay with them. It’s the law.”

“Momma! Mommamommamomma!” With her dress whipping at her legs, Miriam ran into the square. It was well before the time when the sick were taken to sleep in the hall of the courthouse.

“Why, dear, how pretty you look!” the mother said. Then, archly, “They always say, wear white when you want a man to propose.”

“Momma, we’ve got to get out of here.” Miriam was crying for breath.

“I thought we went over all that.”

“Momma, you always said you wanted me to be a good girl. Not ever to let any man take advan”—

“Why, dear, of course I did.”

“Momma, don’t you see! You’ve got to help me—we’ve got to get out of here, or somebody
I don’t even know
… Oh, Momma, please. I’ll help you walk. I saw you practicing the other day, with Mrs. Pinckney helping you.”

“Now, dear, you just sit down here and explain to me. Be calm.”

“Momma,
listen!
There’s something every girl here has to do when she’s eighteen. You know how they don’t use doctors here, for anything?” Embarrassed, she hesitated. “Well, you remember when Violet got married, and she went to Dr. Dix for a checkup?”

“Yes, dear—now calm down, and tell Momma.”

“Well, it’s sort of a
checkup
, don’t you see, only it’s like graduating from high school too, and it’s how they … see whether you’re any good.”

“What on earth are you trying to tell me?”

“Momma, you have to go to this field, and sit there, and sit there until a man throws money in your lap.
Then you have to go into the bushes and lie with a stranger!
” Hysterical, Miriam got to her feet, started tugging at the mattress.

“You just calm down. Calm down!”

“But Mother, I want to do like you told me. I want to be good!”

Vaguely, her mother started talking. “You said you were dating that nice Clark boy? His father is a real-estate salesman. Good business, dear. Just think, you might not even have to work”—

“Oh, Momma!”

“And when I get well I could come live with you. They’re very good to me here—it’s the first time I’ve found people who really
cared
what was wrong with me. And if you were married to that nice, solid boy, who seems to have such a
good
job with his father, why we could have a lovely house together, the three of us.”

“Momma, we’ve got to get
out
of here. I can’t do it. I just
can’t
.” The girl had thrown herself on the grass again.

Furious, her mother lashed out at her. “Miriam. Miriam Elise Holland. I’ve fed you and dressed you and paid for you and taken care of you ever since your father died. And you’ve always been selfish, selfish, selfish. Can’t you ever do anything for me? First I want you to go to secretarial school, to get a nice opening, and meet nice people, and you don’t want to do that. Then you get a chance to settle in a good town, with a
nice
family, but you don’t even want that. You only think about yourself. Here I have a chance to get well at last, and settle down in a really nice town, where good families live, and see you married to the right kind of boy.” Rising on her elbows, she glared at the girl. “Can’t you ever do anything for
me?
”

“Momma, Momma, you don’t
understand!
”

“I’ve known about the Wait since the first week we came here.” The woman leaned back on her pillow. “Now pour me a glass of water and go back and do whatever Mrs. Clark tells you.”

“Mother!”

Sobbing, stumbling, Miriam ran out of the square. First she started toward the edge of town, running. She got to the edge of the highway, where the road signs were, and saw the two shabby, shambling men, apparently in quiet evening conversation by the street post. She doubled back and started across a
neatly plowed field. Behind her, she saw the Pinckney boys. In front of her, the Campbells and the Dodges started across the field. When she turned toward town, trembling, they walked past her, ignoring her, on some business of their own. It was getting dark.

She wandered the fields for most of the night. Each one was blocked by a Campbell or a Smythe or a Pinckney; the big men carried rifles and flashlights, and called out cheerfully to each other when they met, and talked about a wild fox hunt. She crept into the Clarks’ place when it was just beginning to get light out, and locked herself in her room. No one in the family paid attention to her storming and crying as she paced the length and width of the room.

That night, still in the bedraggled, torn white dress, Miriam came out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She stopped in front of the hall mirror to put on lipstick and repair her hair. She tugged at the raveled sleeves of the white chiffon top. She started for the place where the virgins Wait. At the field’s edge Miriam stopped, shuddered as she saw the man called old Fats watching her. A few yards away she saw another man, young, lithe, with bright hair, waiting. She sighed as she watched one woman, with a tall, loose boy in jeans, leave the field and start for the woods.

She tied her string to a stake at the edge of the great domed field. Threading her way among the many bright-colored strings, past waiting girls in white, she came to a stop in a likely-looking place and took her seat.

—
F&SF
, 1958

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kit Reed’s most recent novel is
Enclave;
her next,
Son of Destruction
, is coming out this year. Other novels include
J. Eden
,
Catholic Girls
, and
Thinner Than Thou
, which won an ALA Alex Award. Often anthologized, her short stories appear in venues ranging from
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF
, and
Omni
to
The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review
, and
The Norton Anthology of American Literature
. Her short story collections include
Thief of Lives
;
Dogs of Truth;
and
Weird Women, Wired Women
, which, along with
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse
,
made the short list for the Tiptree Award. Her 2011 collection,
What Wolves Know
, was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. A Guggenheim Fellow and the first American recipient of a five-year literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation, she is Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.