Miss Jane

Grace in the Wilderness

Anyone could tell something was up with Grace, these days. It was her last year of school. She seemed distracted, more than usual, and even more silent. Jane spied on her when she wasn’t aware of it. She was distracted and strange, like one of the chickens when it got what her mother called “broody” and wouldn’t leave the roost or just wandered about if her mother shut it out of the pen and henhouse, like it didn’t know what to do with itself and was ornery.

Finally Jane said, “Grace, you have a secret,” and Grace surprised her by seeming to snap out of it: “Yes, I do, and that’s the reason it’s none of your business.”

That didn’t stop Jane from pestering her, whispering when they were alone, “Tell me.”

“I’m working on my ticket out of here, that’s all I’ll say.”

Several times, she’d been late coming home from school, and when their father and mother questioned her about it, she tried to ignore them. But one afternoon she came down their drive toward the house, a bit of a spring in her step, and found them waiting on her. Jane was spying from inside the screen door. Her parents, like two still and silent buzzards on a limb, watched Grace approach.

“Where you been, then?” her father said, his voice and eyes level.

“With friends,” she said.

“Which?”

“Just some of the dumb girls at school, is all.”

He looked at her long and steady and said, “Better be the truth, girl.” Then he said, “I want you here right after school’s out, every day, to help your mother and your little sister with chores around the house. Like you’re supposed to.” He got up and walked over toward the hog pen. Her mother sat in her chair and continued to give her the glare.

“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” Grace said to her.

“That is one thing I know for sure,” her mother said before rising and going on inside. She saw Jane squatting there, in her spying position, and pulled up briefly, gave her a look, and went on.

At supper there was silence. Jane watched Grace furtively, and watched for any telling looks between her mother and father, or between one of them and Grace, till her mother told her to eat her supper and stop dawdling. In the quiet after that, a sound seemed to arise in a small but regular way with Grace’s movements, like occasional hard grains of rice dropped into an empty gourd. No one said anything. But when their father finished eating, ahead of the others, he stood up without a word, walked around the table, took out his pocketknife, and opened it. He lifted the thread from Grace’s neck, to which she had attached the rattlesnake rattle, held the rattle in his palm for a moment, then cut the thread and removed the rattle from it and took it into the other room. When Jane peered around through the doorway she saw him throw both thread and rattle into the coals there, and then stoke them with a small handful of kindling on top of which, after a moment, he placed a solid chunk of dry oak. And then he went out.

That Friday, Grace came home from school on time, helped her mother put on pots of greens and peas to slow-boil, scrubbed the kitchen floor, then quickly cleaned up after throwing out the scouring water at the edge of the yard. Jane followed her at a safe distance, pretending to work but mostly watching. Something was up. Grace put some lotion on her hands, arms, neck, and face, and, after wandering with Jane awhile to let the scent of it dissipate, told her mother she had forgotten her homework at school and needed to go back so she could do it over the weekend.

Her mother stopped cutting slices from the ham she’d taken from the smokehouse and looked at her, the carving knife in her hand.

“I’ll take Jane with me,” Grace said. “The walk will help her sleep tonight.”

“She sleeps fine,” their mother said. Then after a moment she nodded and said, “Don’t dawdle. We’ll eat in a couple of hours.”

They walked slowly, as Jane tended to dawdle. Grace grew impatient enough to grab her by the hand and pull her along faster.

“Why’re you in such a durn hurry?” Jane said.

Grace looked at her, then stopped. She leaned down to put her face at Jane’s level. The seriousness in her look made Jane back away.

“What?” she said.

“We’re not going to the school,” Grace said.

“But you said we were.”

“And if Mama or Papa asks you if that’s where we went, you just nod and say, ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and nothing else, you hear me?”

Jane looked at her, not comprehending.

“Why?” she said.

“Because I said so,” Grace said. “This is real important.”

She went over to the side of the road, reached behind a tree there, and came out with her school satchel.

“So, see? We went to school and I got my homework.” Jane looked at the satchel, then at her sister.

“See?”

Jane nodded. They went on. A little farther, they cut off onto a trail. When Jane lagged behind, distracted, Grace caught her up again. When they reached a little clearing, Grace took her by the hand and guided her to a spot about thirty feet away just behind a thick dewberry bush.

“You stay here at the edge of this where you can see through but not be seen. Don’t make a sound and stay real still, okay? Whatever you see going on with me and this boy, you just watch and be quiet.”

“What boy?”

“Never mind that. Don’t get scared, I know what I’m doing and you don’t have to be afraid. I just need you to watch it so you can say you’ve seen it if I ask you. I won’t have to, though, all right?”

Jane just looked at her from where she sat on her rump. She put her arms around her knees and looked off into the woods, then back at her sister.

“Okay, but why?” she said.

“Just hush and do what I say. And you listen here.” She knelt down and got her face close to Jane’s. “You don’t say a word about this to anybody unless I tell you to. Do you understand me, Jane?”

Jane was a little scared — it was really more of a thrill than a scare — but nodded.

“Don’t be scared. It’s like I said.”

“What are you going to do with the boy?”

“You’ll see. I’ll explain it to you later. Now, can you do this?”

Jane nodded.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded again. Grace’s eyes looked positively wild. It was thrilling.

Grace looked long and quietly at her, then ruffed her hair with a hand and said again, in a whisper, “Be real still and real quiet. I’ll come get you when it’s time to go.”

Grace walked away and into the clearing and stood there as if she had turned into some kind of picture of herself, and it would have or could have become just that if not for the birds that began to move again, inside the bush and from tree limb to tree limb, fluttering and alighting, hopping to the ground to peck and then flying up again to a branch in the bush or a tree. Jane could see through a little seam in the thickly leaved shrub. She knew it was a dewberry because of her mother’s teaching, and knew the root was good for an upset stomach. The berries made a good jelly, too. A couple of squirrels played a game of chase around a big pine tree nearby, their claws scrabbling on the soft bark, and chittering. It was hard for Jane not to laugh out loud at them. But she stayed still and quiet. She became part of the bush, her feet and bottom rooted down with its roots. Her hair its leaves, her eyes its berries. Then she saw something and the boy came into the clearing and she went still in her mind as well. Grace didn’t move as the boy came up to her. He was a tall boy with coal-black hair, and skin browned from the sun, and bright brown eyes. The two of them stood there like that for a little bit, looking at each other. She could see them breathing hard, their chests moving out and in, up and down. Then they took off their clothes, Grace just lifting her dress above her head and dropping it to one side and unhooking her bra and dropping that, too. She wasn’t wearing any underpants. She didn’t take off her walking shoes. The boy took off his shirt, which was just a dirty T-shirt, the same way Grace had taken off her dress, and his overalls fell to his feet. He was like a stinkhorn there. They grabbed each other and kissed for a minute, the longest kiss Jane had ever seen, as if they’d fallen asleep kissing except they were moving their hands over each other like they were looking for something in different places on their bodies. Then Grace’s hand stopped and Jane saw she had ahold of him and she thought, Don’t break it off. It didn’t break off. They knelt down to the ground and he got on top of her. She helped him put it in her and they started pushing against each other. It was a little more like the dogs than the pigs but face-to-face, and she realized, later, that she hadn’t thought people would do it differently. The boy’s black-haired head was buried into Grace’s shoulder and she saw Grace look over and make eye contact with her. She soiled her diaper, it took her so by surprise, Grace looking at her with this look on her face, her mouth just barely open, like to say, You see and you keep quiet. And then the boy raised his head and she thought he was going to look at her but he was just arching his head back and closing his eyes, and he pushed harder at Grace, who seemed to be looking over at her again but now it was like her eyes weren’t focused, and she heard the boy kind of grunt-groaning and then heard him heave a sigh. They lay there like that, him on top of her, for a little while, Grace stroking the boy’s back with her hands. Then they got up, him shiny and floppy now. They put on their clothes without saying anything. The boy looked at Grace for a second, then nodded like he was embarrassed, and trotted away from where he’d come. Grace had put her bra back on and slipped into her dress and was adjusting and smoothing it. She took a rag from her pocket and raised her dress and stood there a minute with it pressed to herself where she peed from, then rubbed with it vigorously, took the rag over to the opposite edge of the clearing, and tossed it into the woods there. She went over and picked up her satchel where she’d set it down. Then she looked back at Jane, and crooked her head as if to say, Come on, and Jane got up and went to her and together they headed back home, hurrying, Jane struggling to keep up, until they got to the bend in their driveway, where they stopped to catch their breath. Grace wiped perspiration from her face with the hem of her dress, checked herself down there for something, crooked out her thighs in a funny way like she was monkey-walking, felt of the insides of her legs, and, seeming satisfied, said, “Come on,” and together they walked up to the house. Grace tossed her satchel onto the porch and Jane followed her through the pecan grove to the barn, where Grace pulled a loose brick from a foundation post, came out with a packet of cigarettes, shook one, kind of flattened and crooked, into her hand, lit it with a match she took from a box in her dress pocket, and leaned back against the barn wall, smoking it like she was finally able to take an easy breath. She pushed her thick blond hair away from her forehead and blew out a big plume of blue smoke. “You all right now, little sister?” she said. Jane nodded. Grace kind of laughed and looked away, shook her head. “What a body will do just to get a little something she wants,” she said. She looked at Jane again. “We just went to the schoolhouse and got my books, you remember now?” Jane nodded. “But don’t you forget what you saw.” Jane nodded again. It was the most curious arrangement. But also it was simple enough. Grace smoked, in silence, and Jane watched her as if there might be some significance in that, too, somehow.

“Why were you doing that with him?” she said then.

“You’ll find out,” Grace said. “Maybe.”

She whispered, “Were you trying to make a baby with him?”

Grace gave her a sharp look, then ground out the cigarette with the sole of her shoe. She picked up the butt and stripped the paper from it, tossing the tobacco into the grass and rolling the paper into a little ball she flicked farther away.

“Maybe so. Maybe not.”

“Isn’t that what makes babies?”

Grace narrowed her eyes. “Now, how would you know that?”

Jane felt herself blush. She looked away, shrugged. Grace laughed then.

“I guess we do live on a farm, don’t we?” She laughed again, louder, even slapped her knee.

“What?” Peeved at being laughed at.

Grace stopped laughing, wiped her eyes. “Oh, sister. Whether I make a baby with that boy or not, I figure I’ll get what I want from him. And what he’ll want from me: gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Away.”

“But why? And why would you want to make a baby with that boy?”

“I don’t, dummy.”

Jane stomped her foot. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Grace looked at her, lips pressed together in irritation. “Look,” she said then, “I want that boy to give me some money so I can move to town.” She got close to Jane’s face, serious. “He doesn’t want a baby, he just likes doing that to me. If I tell him we made a baby, he’ll give me money to go away.” She stood up straight again. “I know his family has money.”

“But I don’t want you to move to town.”

“Grow up a little. I can’t do everything in my life just for you. This is for me.”

Jane had been about to cry, but she held herself together. Then she said, “I don’t think I’d ever want a boy to do that to me.”

Grace looked at her a long moment.

“I don’t think you’ll ever have to, hon.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t have the right ‘equipment.’ You know that, don’t you? I don’t have to tell you that.”

Jane didn’t say anything to that, though she blushed and blinked her eyes.

“You know who that boy was?” Grace said.

Jane shook her head.

“His name is Arlo Barnett. You remember that. Just remember that, and you remember what it was we were doing. Could you describe it if someone was to ask you?”

Jane nodded. Then she buried her face in her hands in mortified embarrassment.

Grace said, “You just hold on to that, in case I need it.”

Jane nodded again, face still buried in her hands, burning with self-consciousness.

“So, anyway, you can see there’s not really a whole lot to it,” Grace said. “No different from some animal, in the end. Probably do you good to remember that about it, anyway.” She shook another cigarette from the pack, lit it, blew the smoke from the corner of her mouth. “You ought to go clean yourself,” she said to Jane then. Jane got up and ran toward the creek.

Always she would be haunted by the memory of seeing the boy on top of Grace, his white butt cheeks going at her like the big churning wheel on their hay baler. And never forget Grace’s face while he was doing it, eyes locked on her own, looking straight to where she was hiding beside and just behind the dewberry bush, right through the leaves that seemed to quiver in the stillness, as if they were about to burst into white-hot flame.