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Now I stand on wobbly legs and whimper like a hurt puppy cause I can’t help it. Today was beating number three since I got legal. I figure Roy don’t need a reason no more. I close the trailer door against the chill, then shuffle to the bathroom to wash off the dried blood. The face in the cracked mirror shows another loose tooth, a split lip, and a eye turning purple. I don’t see me no more in that slice of looking glass. It’s a strange feeling thinking the face in the mirror is somebody else. I half think to see her lips move to talk and mine stay closed, or the other way round.
Wonder what Miss Shaw, that teacher with her pile of books and globe that whirls, would say now if she saw the fix I’m in. What would she think if she saw my life so different from hers? When I go see her next, I’ll cover the bruises best I can. Don’t need her pity.
Truth is, I been a sorry fool like Granny called me when Roy Tupkin, all charm and light, showed up every once in a while in early springtime. I’d be leaving Mooney’s place with a sack of supplies or walking to see Birdie or Aunt Marris. Roy would come like fog or a wish with that sassy grin of his. One time he jumped from behind a tree to block my way and made my heart flip. Another time he sneaked up behind me and pulled my hair, him with his lanky frame and eyes locked on nothing but me for a spell. At the start he made me smile and my heart flutter. He made me hide behind my long hair so he don’t see me turn twenty shades of pink.
Once, when the creek was high water, that man give me his rough hand to help me cross over, and don’t let go of mine right away. When he did, I wanted to grab back his hand cause mine felt safe in his. That’s how stupid I was.
Another time he carried my paper poke of supplies, and another time blackberries I picked. He walked me to the edge of Granny’s yard but don’t come close to the house cause he won’t welcome. Granny give him the hard eye and pointed her shotgun at him from her porch and said, “I know how to use this here gun. It ain’t for show. Now don’t you step your sorry ass on my land.”
Roy Tupkin backed away with his hands up, laughing at a big ole woman with stockings knotted at her knees and her cheek bulging with chew. When he left, I cried and run up the stairs to my room and slammed the door. Granny give me a strong talking-to outside my closed door, but that don’t change things cause I was young and dumb. I was pulled by the raw scent of that man, not knowing the stink below the skim of sweet.
Granny said, back then, through pinched lips and squinty eyes and hissy voice, “You knock them fake stars outta your blind eyes, Sadie Blue, or you gonna lay with the devil and live in hell. When that happens, I can’t help you.”
I thought she was jealous cause I was happy. I thought I was smart and loved a bad man turned good. I’ve been on a losing streak a long time.
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What was funny in the mix was the man Billy Barnhill, back bent, face pocked, hair greasy. When I’d see Roy, there’d be Billy a ways off, hands shoved deep in his pockets, mostly looking at his feet, waiting. I asked Roy what Billy was to him, and he said, “Nobody.”
The first time I give myself to Roy, I was weak-willed after meeting up just three times. We sat close in the front seat of his truck on the shoulder of Good Luck Pass. One of his hands rooted up under my skirt, and the other pinched a nipple through my blouse to make it rise. Out the corner of my eye, through the rear window, I see Billy in the back bed with the canvas tarps and cement blocks and gas can. He leaned against the tailgate, legs out straight, one hand working inside the slit of his overalls. His mouth was loose and lips wet, him looking at me weird.
I told Roy that Billy was a creep and I wanted him gone for now. Roy laughed that day and said, “Let him have a little fun,” and pulled me to him. When I pushed back, nervous, the cool coming off my skin, me sliding over to my side of the seat, pulling down my skirt, Roy’s eyes dulled over. He waved for Billy to leave, and Billy jumped out the truck bed, lickety-split, and crossed the ditch. I scooted back into Roy’s arms, but I could still feel Billy’s eyes crawl over me.
The thing what got me married by summer’s end was the baby growing inside me through four cycles and me still living with Granny. She got meaner every day when she knew I carried Roy’s baby. She found new ways to hurt me and say I was a vile sinner—when she won’t even a Bible reader. She don’t answer when I talk. I walk in a room and she walked out. I step out on the porch, she goes inside. She cooked supper just enough for her and left me starting from scratch if I was to eat.
I hear ugly talk. Wherever two righteous souls meet up at the Rusty Nickel, God-fearing women standing at the counter with babies on their hips and a ring on their fingers, they whispered loud enough for me to hear, “She was a promisin girl who got ruint by a trashy man.”
Prudence Perkins said in a hard whisper outside church, “The hellfires of damnation won’t be good enough for you and that bastard you carry.”
I flushed shameful at such hateful words, cheeks hot, heart bruised and breaking for my innocent child. Preacher Perkins and Mooney tried to stop the ugly when they was in earshot cause they are good men, but tongues let loose rattled on for spite.
I cried at night back then. Roy don’t come round much, me carrying his flesh and blood, and I yearned for him in the summer dark. I was blind and dumb and slow to learn.
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In the heart of the summer heat, it was going on day twenty-six since Roy been by. I was pining and not eating, wanting to up and die from the want of him, when his truck showed up in front of the house. He hit his horn for me to come outside, and I run to him. Without a hello or howdy-do, he said, “Get in,” and I did, but I had to move tools to the floor so I had room to sit. Billy won’t with him this time and I was glad.
Roy drove a short piece down the road, pulled into the woods, and turned off the motor. I let him have his way with me cause it won’t nothing new. It was over quick, and after, with the truck windows down, and the smell of wildflowers on the air, and his wide hand on my white belly growing big, that teeny foot kicked my innards for the first time and made Roy and me jump.
Right then, with one baby kick, that man with the dark soul grinned, and it turned his face into something beautiful I never seen before. A light shined in his face on this cloudy day and wiped away shadows that lived behind his eyes. I brushed back the dark hair on his forehead and kissed it tender, over and over, cause Roy let me.
He looked up and said, “Let’s get hitched.”