why I ran off
by heather newton

Here’s why.

There was one good part of my life, when my youth bloomed, my skin was buttermilk-smooth, and the curve of my rump and breasts and calves drew wanting looks from every man in the county. My hair curled soft in the 1940s perm Willoby County girls were still wearing a decade later. I dressed myself up in ribbons and nylons bought at a discount at the five and dime where I worked in Lenoir, my money all my own. I shared a room with two other working girls, and we rubbed each others feet at night, complaining about our bosses but as happy as we could be to be free of parents and answerable to nobody but ourselves, a precious selfishness. We spoke aloud daydreams of moving on to Winston or Raleigh, of meeting handsome, wealthy men, of brick homes in Cameron Park, and maids to stroll our children.

I thought the blooming was forever, a hard-won reward I’d earned for living through a childhood of hunger and violence. Nobody told me it would pass in a blinking like the blush of a morning glory.
I chose James because he was handsome and good, and didn’t drink, and came from a God-fearing family different from my own. And because, if I squinted my mind’s eye, I could fit James into the daydreams I clutched at the way a child does her blanket.

My looks weren’t the type that survive into the thirties, that require fine bones to hold skin in place. Jowls sagged and eyes sank in, the deepness of the lines at the corners surprising me anew every morning. It happened so fast. One day, one minute, even, I was getting the up-and-down from the boys at Ferguson’s General Store. The next, no one was looking at me anymore. I had to give up the daydreams I’d carried into my marriage, because I couldn’t play the parts any longer. I was too heavy-hipped and old for my fantasy heroes to love. Birthing two big-headed babies had made it so I leaked urine when I laughed or picked up something heavy. When I should have been enjoying my husband and children, I instead watched my life burn like a wad of newspaper thrown on a fire, one last grand flame passing into gray ash, with me hollering after it, “Wait! Wait!”

I did it to bring myself back.

All it took was one appreciating look from a rascal who didn’t care what anybody thought. He had a convertible, a Ford Fairlane, and riding along with him I felt how beautifuly my hair blew along my neck. Everything I said seemed clever, sexy. Afterward, the rumor spread that we’d stayed at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Really we spent one night in his car and one night in a Motor Court near Asheville. The motor court wasn’t the Peabody, but somebody else cleaned up after us, and when I stretched out on my side on the sheets I found again the lovely curve my pelvic bone made, a smooth ridge that disappeared into extra pounds when I lay any other way. I let the Peabody rumor stand.

He had a camera with him, a fancy one. He showed me how to load the film. I didn’t care about that, but I liked the way his fingers looked when they pressed the film in, matching up the little holes along the edges of the film with the line of bumps that held it in place. I liked it, too, when he looked down into the top of the camera to see me through the lens, and then cut his eyes up to look at me for real. He liked what he saw, both places. I posed for him, there on the bed, in a white button down shirt that belonged to him, and shorts borrowed from the landlady. I tied the tails of the shirt in a knot over my naval and arched my back to make my rib cage show, like the girls in McCall’s. I stuck my legs up and pointed my toes, pretending I was a pinup girl. We went a little crazy with the camera, using up the whole roll of film.

For two nights and two nights only I had it all again. Then the third morning I woke up and saw an ordinary man. Bad breath. Snoring. Course black hair growing ugly all over him, except for on a scar that marked his chest like a scythe. I felt my recovered self slip out the window and into the courtyard of the little motel. He was as embarrassed as me. We moved around each other, packing up our meager things, and I heard him toss the film canister into the motel trash can. Later that day, he took me to the bus station and gave me twenty dollars for the ticket home.

James came and got me at the station. He cried himself into hiccoughs and I just held his head. I saw that time had folded the corners of his eyes as well, but a man doesn’t disappear when sun creases his face or his hair grays or thins. As deep as his hurt went, it couldn’t touch what I myself had lost.

James’s mouth shook the whole drive home, he couldn’t get control over it. We reached the trailer at dusk. My peonies had blossomed while I was gone, and lines of ants followed their sweet smell, swarming my beds. At my mama’s house up the hill the screen door banged, and my oldest girl, Sue, came running down the hill to hug me. Dacey toddled along behind her, already not quite sure who I was. I tried to feel joy but all I felt was despair. It would have been better if James had wrote me off then, instead of taking it upon himself to make things right for me. I’ve stole his life as I’ve wasted mine, never feeling anything good inside, and worse, not able to pretend for him.

I have wondered sometimes what I would have looked like in those photographs. Would they have shown me to be as beautiful as I felt those two days, or would it just have been one more disappointment.

 

Heather Newton is an attorney and mediator in Asheville. Her short stories have appeared in Crucible, Encore Magazine, Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, O! Georgia, and Wellspring.