Miss Jane

Do You Like What You See, Who You Are?

The farm next to theirs on the west side was owned by a family named Key. One of them was a boy about her age, maybe a bit older, slim, with fair skin, sandy hair, and oddly beautiful pale blue eyes, not the deep dark blue of her own. And though she remembered him from her brief time in school as just another boy, not someone who’d made any more impression then than anyone else, now he set off a blushing, tingling feeling in her when they looked at one another in the store, the boy silent as his father gathered their few supplies and she totted them up. He looked back at her when they left and gave her a little wave that, when he’d shut the door, she thought might send her heart into a flutter-flump.

On her wandering one day she came up next to the boundary between their two farms, and saw one of the family hoeing weeds in the cornfield there. She thought it was him, that boy. He wore a broad straw hat, so she couldn’t quite see his sandy blond hair. She knew he had brothers. But when he got closer she could make out his features, and she stepped from the undergrowth and up to the barbed-wire fence at the edge of the field. In a minute he seemed to see her, stood up straight, turned away for a moment, then turned back and waved. She waved back. He set down his hoe and made his way through the dozen or so rows between them over to her, walking carefully. He wore a loose white work blouse, worn denim overalls, and a pair of old ankle boots that he stopped to shuck off before he reached her. He wiggled his bare white toes and looked over at her as if he may have embarrassed her, doing that, for some reason. And the look gave her that flushed feeling so suddenly that she felt herself having an accident, and so the feeling turned to shock, her face burning, and she called out, “I’ll come back here tomorrow sorry I have to run I forgot something important,” and she dashed back into the woods and ran all the way home, nearly in tears from embarrassment.

She didn’t stop at the house but went straight to the creek in the woods down the hill behind it. She was so overfull with emotion she couldn’t sort out, didn’t sort out in the course of her running so hard she could hardly breathe. When she got to the creek she immediately pulled up her dress, unpinned her diaper, wiped herself with a clean part of it, and plunged it into the creek. The bottom was sand, so she scrubbed it against the grit, then took wet handfuls of it and scrubbed straight into the soiled cloth until there was nothing but a dim stain that would take strong soap and baking soda to get out. She wrung it as dry as she could, fastened the pins into a part of it, sniffed her hands, took off her shoes, lifted her dress again, and lowered her bottom into the creek for a minute, the cool water running over her skin, a shock and then a pleasure. She stood up, calmer now, and walked back up the hill to the house.

She got soap and baking soda from the basin on the back porch, made a paste of the soda and water, but then she thought, What if he is still there? Then, What if he isn’t there tomorrow? She hastily washed her hands and, not even bothering to dry herself, began running down the drive and then through the pasture, still barefoot, dodging sharp sticks and fallen pine cones, one eye out for snakes, toward the narrow ridge of woods between their properties.

She came out of the brush and stopped, out of breath. He was not in the field. She could not see the hoe where he must have laid it down. She felt tears coming up again, this time from anger, then heard his voice call out to her. She looked to her right and he was sitting beneath an oak tree not a stone’s throw away, his feet still bare, a jar of what looked like tea beside him, and eating a sandwich. Probably ham or bacon with fresh tomato slices or just the tomatoes. And then she was impressed that he was eating a light bread sandwich in the middle of the week. Her family ever only had light bread on the weekends, on Sundays, and would finish it easily by the evening meal. She called out to him, and waved, feeling awkward.

“Come on over,” he called back. “You hungry?”

She walked toward him, staying on her side of the fence. And, nearing him, was suddenly mortified realizing she hadn’t put on a fresh undergarment and was naked beneath her dress. She stopped still, feeling the blood rush to her face, but luckily it caused no accident, and when he looked at her curiously, grinning in a questioning way, she tried to put the thought of her near-nakedness out of her mind and went on toward him. She was just a girl, after all, with no big hips to poke a dress out, no big bush of hair down there to pooch obscenely against the dress like she’d seen it do on Grace when Grace sat on the porch after a bath wearing nothing but a summer skirt herself, to cool down, the wet spot on the front of her dress gradually drying in the heat. Until her mother came and saw that and sent her inside with harsh words about the nature of her character. Grace said, “Well, who in Hades is going to be watching me sitting on a porch here in the middle of nowhere, I might ask?”

“God sees you,” her mother had said once, in as cool a tone as Jane had ever heard her use with anyone. Like you couldn’t be sure if she really believed God cared about such a thing or not but it was something she could use on you if she wanted.

Grace had said back, just as cool, “Does he like what he sees?”

And her mother had slapped Grace, not hard, but in a way that ended their exchange. Grace went inside and put on some underpants and a bra and shoes and took herself out to the barn, her brooding place.

NOW JANE WAS STANDING just a few feet away from the Key boy, though still on her side of the barbed wire, and he stood up. Remembering Grace, she glanced down in fear of seeing her own dress wet from dipping herself in the creek but somehow it was not. She looked up again. Except for his hair being smashed down on his head from sweating in his hat, and the fading flush of his skin from the heat as he sat now in the shade of the oak tree, he was the same boy she saw in the store.

“You’re Jane Chisolm.”

“I don’t know your name, except your last name,” she said.

“Elijah Key.” He stepped over with his hand held out as if to shake, like with a man. She took it and returned his grip.

“Nice grip, for a girl. Most girls just kind of, you know,” and he made a pansy-like motion with his hand.

“I don’t really hang out with any girls,” she said.

“I know,” he said, letting the words out slowly like the release of a breath. Looking at her with his head cocked just a bit back on his neck. But not unsmiling.

“I guess people must talk about me.”

He shrugged, glanced at the corn he’d have to be hoeing again in a few minutes.

“I don’t listen to rumors.”

“What kind of rumors do you not listen to?”

He looked down, suppressed a grin, and shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing true, I imagine, you think about who all it comes from, that sort of thing. I don’t put any mind to it. It’s girls that talk the most, and I don’t have much to do with the girls at school.”

“You don’t seem to like girls too much.”

“No, it’s just some girls. Mostly the popular girls.”

“What’s the matter with them?”

“Nothing. They’re just. kind of mean-spirited sometimes,” and he waggled his head, shrugged. “I don’t know. Knuckleheads.”

“I thought only boys got called knuckleheads.”

“Huh,” he said. “Maybe so.”

Then he said, “So how come you decided not to go to the school?”

Now she wished she hadn’t approached him. She said, “I’d have figured those rumors would cover that.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said then. “I don’t even remember them, really. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

She didn’t say anything, wanting to walk away now but unable to make herself do it.

“I used to hate it — school, I mean,” he said. “That’s one thing I thought about you before. That you were lucky they let you quit. Whyever they did.”

“You like it better now?”

“It’s getting a little better,” he said. “So don’t you know how to read and write?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So you learned that without even a whole year of school. Yeah, I remember you coming just that one fall, but you were just first grade and I was already in fourth. I’ve seen you at church every now and then. You must not like it much, either, no more than you go.”

She shrugged. “It’s all right.”

“What about numbers?”

“What about them?”

He laughed. “How’d you learn numbers without school?”

“Tending my papa’s store.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He looked at her for a moment with that curious smile again.

“You’ve just about grown up. You don’t have a secret boyfriend, do you?”

“I don’t have any friends at all.”

He looked almost alarmed at that. Then as if he were thinking. Then as if he couldn’t decipher his own thoughts into a reply. Then, “I guess it’s hard to have any friends out in the country, if you don’t go to school. I guess it was that way for everybody, back when they didn’t even have schools up here, and folks had big families. They just got along knowing each other.”

“That’s the way it is with me, I guess.”

“I guess they’d know some people from going to church, though.”

“I guess so.”

“But you don’t have to do that very often, either. I’m feeling a little jealous of your freedom.”

“Huh,” she said, then shut her mouth.

“Are you an atheist?” he said then.

“What’s that?”

“I thought you were smart.”

“I just never heard of it.”

“It’s somebody doesn’t believe in God.”

“No, then. Though I really haven’t thought about it. I just thought everybody believed in God.”

“Well, everybody I know says they do.”

Then they were silent and awkward for a minute. She realized she was staring at him. He squinted at her.

“Don’t do that,” she said, teasing. “I can’t see your pretty blue eyes.” Then she couldn’t believe she’d said that.

He blushed and looked down, then reached into his bib pocket and pulled out a pair of thick-lensed wire-rimmed eyeglasses, hooked the earpieces over his ears.

“I hate wearing them,” he said, with a kind of gloomy grin. “I was hiding them, didn’t want you to see.”

“I saw you take them off one time before y’all came into the store.”

“Oh. Well.” He looked at her again. “My pretty blue eyes are blind as a bat.”

“They just got bigger and bluer,” she said, and they laughed.

“I’m glad I put them on, now, so I can see yours. They look like — I’ve never seen blue eyes like yours. They almost don’t seem real.”

“Well, they are. My papa and Dr. Thompson told me they haven’t changed a bit since I was born. I guess that’s a little unusual.” And thought, Like everything else about me.

“Do you know about the dances?” he said.

“What dances?”

“The ones at the community center. Damascus.”

“Oh. Right. Grace told me.” They were at a loss for a brief while, like social animals, after a greeting, gone into other distractions.

Then he said, “Are you happy with it?” Kind of soft-voiced, like he didn’t know how she’d respond.

“With what?” she said, her own voice quieter, too.

He hesitated, then shrugged again, glanced back at the corn, said, “Everything, I guess. Your life.”

She didn’t know what to say. She’d never put a word to the sadness she could sometimes feel, especially in the last couple of years, that would linger at the edge of her thoughts like the invisible ghost of someone she thought she recognized but didn’t know who it was, some kind of familiar she couldn’t quite grasp.

SHE COULD TELL he liked her. She would see him, in the store, or passing with his family on the road near their house, and other times like the first time they talked, when she would bring a little bite to eat and think of it secretly as their picnic. In her mind their encounters were episodes in a casual courtship. Yet it occurred to her that he probably didn’t think of them that way at all. And she was embarrassed and felt foolish, and worried that he may have told others — boys, if not girls — about his occasional odd visits with the mysterious girl Jane Chisolm.

She didn’t want him to think that way about her.

And so, during the autumn she turned sixteen, she began going to the community dances. Elijah Key had told her about them and, slowly, a desire to take part had grown stronger in her until it became a resolve to do so. She was tired of being alone. She realized that, aside from her occasional, innocent encounters with Elijah Key, she’d been bored for some time. Maybe the encounters weren’t so innocent, if she looked forward to them so much. And sometimes planned them, truth be told. Well, she always did. She would not eat or drink anything on the morning of a day she thought she might run into him. So she could linger with him for a while without worry.

She had been a spritely young girl, slim and a bit lank-haired but with a sweet face and good humor, but by now had grown taller and begun to take on a gaunt, dark-eyed beauty, and moved with a kind of natural grace, as a leaf will fall gracefully from a tree in barely a breeze.

When she made up her mind to attend the dances, her parents were surprised, but she seemed to want it so much they gave reluctant permission. “It’s only going to be a heartbreak one day,” her mother said.

“It’s just dances.”

“What about when you get older than the others and have to stop going or look foolish?” her mother said. “And I don’t know how you’re going to manage it, anyway, you know.”

“It’s just working against the loneliness,” her father said, “like any child living on a farm.” His wife said nothing and returned to her work.

She and her father stood there on the porch, silent, looking out at nothing. He seemed slack-jawed, not so much silent as mute. His eyes empty.

“Are you all right, Papa?”

He took his hat off and ran a hand through his hair, made a grimace, put the hat back on.

“Nothing to worry about, daughter,” he said. “You go on to those dances, try to have yourself a good time. Of course, I’ll be keeping an eye on you, if you don’t mind.”

He went on down the steps, as if there were really nothing more to say. Or nothing more he knew how to. She watched him disappear into the shadows of the work shed, head down, maybe mumbling to himself.

For an entire two days before the evening of a dance, she fasted. First thing on the first morning, she dosed herself with castor oil followed by a little buttermilk, just to have something on her stomach, and stayed in the privy until she felt herself emptied out. She spent the entire next day beneath a tree in the middle of the pecan grove, or beside the fishing pond, or lying in the middle of her favorite little clearing in the woods. She would take along a piece of bread and maybe bacon, but scattered the bread for the birds, tossed the bacon to the fish or along a trail for some fox or stray dog to surprise upon.

Not thinking. Just being, or simply being, Jane. As when she was younger. On the first day she would allow herself to sip a little water from time to time.

At some point in the second day there would be an almost hallucinatory clarity in her vision, in the presence of things around her, in the sounds, of birds and farm work and dogs barking, the sounds of the livestock, and of people talking.

Even the breezes gently rustling leaves in the trees made a sound that seemed to fill her mind in an intoxicating way, as if the very tips of the leaves were tickling her awareness, a temptation of the senses that she allowed to wash through her, to flush her with calm anticipation.

This had not just a little to do with her strange, alluring grace in those days.

She walked about in such a dreamy, distracted state that her mother let her know that she’d checked her laudanum bottle to make sure the girl had not got into it.

The afternoon before her first dance her mother said to her, “You can’t get too friendly with these boys, Jane.”

Jane said nothing, just listening, oddly calm in a way her mother seemed to find unsettling.

So she went on, “Do you understand? You’ve long known it.”

When Jane only smiled, her mother stood up in mild exasperation to walk away. As she did she said, “You have to be careful. It might not only be you that gets hurt.”

“Dr. Thompson said he believes they’ll be able to fix me one day. I could have a regular life with a man someday.” Though he hadn’t said exactly that.

Her mother stopped and looked at her long and silently.

“Believing is a matter of faith,” she said. “Not certainty.”

Jane had never seen the look in her eyes she saw then. She almost looked empty. And for the first time Jane could remember, she saw her mother as a woman whom life had made not just hard but also exhausted and plain. Older-looking than her years.

Then, as if she could read the unspoken words in Jane’s eyes, her mother’s expression darkened again. Her own eyes glistened, about to shed tears.

“What would you know about ‘life with a man’? And what of your little experience in this world would make you think it such a fine thing?”

Jane watched her go out the back door, feeling more sad for her than abashed at being upbraided. Her mother’s words weren’t able to dispel the deeply calm pleasure she felt in these new days, this new self.

She did not wear a diaper to the dance, only a little padding as if for possible light menstruation, so there were no bulky undergarments to interrupt her slim figure or graceful movements, and she’d made herself a light, more slim-fitting dress and wore a pair of shoes her father had bought for her in town after drawing an outline figure of her foot on a sheet of school paper to show the shoe salesman there. They were hardly more than slippers with a low heel.

She attended two dances before any of the boys got up the courage or got past their bashful curiosity to ask her to dance, but that was good, since it allowed her to study their movements so she could mimic them later. And then, finally, Elijah Key did ask her. She had seen him standing against the wall in the shadows of dim light from the Japanese lanterns the organizers had hung in the hall. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and probably had no idea she was there. A little later she saw him again, spectacles on, looking at her. Maybe someone had mentioned her. Seeing her seemed to surprise him into something like shyness. Then, when she let her attention wander that second night, wander as it tended to do in her state of mind, she looked up and there he was, standing in front of her and holding out his hand. After he danced with her, some of the other boys also began asking her onto the floor. She felt something then she’d never felt before. The pleasure of flirtation, though she didn’t even know the word. The boys liked her, and she liked them. But if any one of them seemed about to like her too much, she had her way of withdrawing just enough. Like a scrap of paper the wind keeps breezing just out of reach. Her oddly calm, distracted state seemed to fascinate them into stupid muteness, and when she would fix her gaze upon her partner that boy looked dumbstruck, as if thinking he might be falling in love. But she was so obviously democratic in the dispensation of her new, strange charm that none of them was moved to any sort of foolish words.

She could see Elijah watching her when she danced with other boys, her light thin figure in her homemade dress, her straight dark hair long and loose, her darkling blue eyes. She could see the stick-thin figure of her father, too, hat held in both hands, in the moonlit doorway.

She kept a few sprigs of mint leaves in the pocket of her dress, chewed them gently, then stored them in her cheek, as a man might a small bit of chewing tobacco. The mint kept her dehydration from giving her bad breath, and drew what moisture there was in her body to her mouth and her lips, allowing some minimal conversation. She smiled and laughed with the boys who danced with her, and seemed happy. In the pale quivering candlelight their faces seemed luminous, their voices melodic, just a bit out of sync with the modest movements of their lips in speech.

She was hardly even conscious of how the other girls were now jealous, and certainly couldn’t be bothered to care. It flickered in and out of her awareness, a coruscation of whispers and glares.

When she danced with Elijah Key, she was happiest. He would speak to her softly, leaning close to her ear: “How did you decide to start coming out like this? You’re so pretty. But you seem a little strange.”

“I am strange,” she said.

So she delighted, allowed herself to be delighted, in this attention, in the public intimacy with Elijah Key, in her flirtation with other boys, in the flaunting of herself before the other girls. Even though she knew this was something with no long life ahead of it, she was able to press into the moments of pleasure in the movements of her own body. She understood somehow that she was lucky in her special way to love these events without the complicated, pressing question of physical love, to absorb life from the center and its periphery at once, so she could for a while take it all in with the sweet fullness of the entirely human and the utterly strange, without apprehension or fear.