Writer's Block Challenge #32 - No Better Life

 

Writer's Block Challenge #32

 

No Better Life

It was the summer of my sixteenth year. In just four months and three days I would be 17. I came to the city to fulfill my dreams. No more will I get up before dawn and help momma make the biscuits for the farmhands. I was going to be somebody. I stole away all the money I had made selling honey at the county fair for the past three years, ever since I heard my daddy talking to Harold Maynard’s pa. I heard that conversation. I was supposed to be shucking bushels of corn on the porch, but the porch made me sticky with sweat under my new tits, (Lordamighty I hated when them things busted out of my chest. Momma said it was normal, but at the time I didn’t believe her) so I took to the barn where it was cool, writing secrets in my notepad. "They’d make a handsome couple." "My Harold will treat her right good", then my daddy’s voice of reason, "When she turns 17. I want her growd up a’fore a man takes her". I know I should have stayed but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to marry Harold Maynard. Being Mrs. Harold Maynard was not who I wanted to be. I wanted to taste something more than this farm's dirt had to offer me. I was scared, sure I was. The trembling showed in the letter I left on my pillow for momma. I would miss her most.

I had rode on that bus for nearly three days, eating out of the basket I had packed and cleaning up in the ladies room at the stations and diners along the way. I wrote in my notebook about the times I would have in the city. I struck up a conversation with a really nice lady with a baby in her arms. She was taking her little baby home to visit her mother. Her mother lived in the big city, and this lady was born and raised right here in this big city. Come to find out she had moved out to the bleak place I was running from. She had married a farmer and was loving being a farmer’s wife, and raising farmer’s kids. I looked at her hands. They looked just like mine. Calloused and cracked from hard work and more hard work. Odd that we would come together on the bus ride. Two souls with contradicting dreams. I wanted what she had, she wanted what I had. It was inconceivable to me that anyone would want that life.

The bus rolled into town at 7:50 in the morning. I had never seen the city before ‘cept for in the magazines at the dime store in our dusty little town. It made the night look like day. Lights twinkling in the morning mist. Cars and busses lining the streets. Buildings taller than old man Lyman’s silo. His silo was the tallest in nine counties, but these building touched the sky. My word, I thought, wait till I write momma about the buildings. The bus driver pulled to a curb and stood up, stretching his back and scratching his head. The smell of a bus is unmistakable. To me it was a smell that filled me with excitement. I collected my suitcases from where he put them at the curb and headed to the diner I saw as we pulled into town. My face lifted high, my spirts lifted higher, I was ready to make my mark in life.

I opened my pocketbook and put a couple of quarters on the counter to pay for my pie and coffee. The waitress directed me to the boarding house for women. I was taking in the sights. I collected a newspaper on my walk. Fourteen city bocks sounded like a long walk, but in reality it weren’t no further that where the cows hang out at the back fence. Miss Mitzi’s Boarding house was a small yellow house with bright red flowers flanking the windows. My first thought as I looked at it was, sunshine. I took a deep breath and knocked at the door. Miss Mitzi answered. She had a quick smile and after I told her about the waitress sending me to her she showed me the room. All through the walk and tour of the house I heard the rules. "No men. Ever. Rent due on Wednesday. Not Thursday. No rent paid, no room no board. Period. Bathroom is shared, be quick. Roster for cooking and cleaning is posted in the kitchen. Everyone pitches in. No exceptions." I sorta stopped listening. I wanted to take a bath, put on my Sunday dress and shoes and go get me a job. Miss Mitzi looked at me and gave me an odd little smile. I wasn’t really sure what she wanted to say, but she shrugged her shoulders and with a quick laugh she said, "You might last out the month before you run home to momma."

I found the Tribune Building just where Joanie said it would be. She was a dear at the diner. I had tuna sandwich on rye bread for lunch with a Vanilla Coke. I wanted to splurge and celebrate. I never ate Tuna on Rye, even though we had a diner in our town nearby, daddy said it was sinful to waste our money buying food in a diner when we had all we needed on the farm. I felt rebellious and a little naughty as I ate the last crumbs of my sandwich. I paid for my meal and waved as Joanie wished me luck. I had to be very careful with the money I had left. I had paid Miss Mitzi for two weeks and bought 2 meals at the diner and a newspaper, all in one day. I only had half of the money from my honey stash left. I prayed I could find work at the Tribune.

There wasn’t. No matter that I could write. There was nothing I could do to convince that woman to let me talk to Mr. Harmon. He hired everyone Joanie told me. I couldn’t get past the woman who answered the phones. I told her I would do anything they had for me to do. Nothing. She just stared at my hands. I tried to hide the callouses behind my pocketbook, but she knew I was just the daughter of a farmer, raised on a farm. She told me I belonged down at the 'chicken farm'. I was humiliated and embarrassed. Now what?

I went into everyone of the buildings on that street. No one was interested in a little ol' cowpoke of a girl working for them. It was heading toward dark when I turned the corner by the diner. I didn’t expect to see Joanie, her shift would be long over by now. I walked back to the boarding house taking my time to think the situation over. I climbed in bed on my first night away from home, away from momma and cried myself to sleep. I was alone in the big city. Just where I wanted to be. I was scared. I wanted to look out my window and see the tree that had my old tire swing on it being pushed by the breeze. Instead there were cars honking and people walking the streets making noises all night long. Once I woke up to a siren rushing by. Was there a dream here for me? I slept a fitful night that first night.

I finally found work in a factory. I’m disgraced beyond words to say what my job was. I plucked chickens in a cannery. At the furthest reaches of the city there were factories. Joanie had mentioned them to me telling me to steer clear of them. After three weeks of no luck, I was out of money and nearly out of options. I just knew I would be one of the fine ladies that I saw walking into the shops uptown. I would wear high heels and lipstick to work everyday. Instead I trudged myself down to the chicken farm as it’s was called round the city and I pulled out the feathers from hot wet dead birds. I got paid enough to pay Miss Mitzi every Wednesday, and had enough left over to buy notebooks and an occasional piece of pie and coffee at the diner.

On my seventeenth birthday I bought a bus ticket. It took me nearly three days, but I walked up past the barn and smelled the dirt. Ain’t nothing in this world that smells like that. It smelled like home. Daddy saw me. He walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, he looked me up and down, and then looked me in the eye. He said, "You’re home." I said, "I’m home." I walked up the back steps and opened the screen door. Momma was lifting a ham out of the oven and after she put it on the table she turned and looked at me. I put my suitcases down and waited for her to say something to me. She came over to me and hugged me. I hugged her fierce. When she let go of me she looked me up and down. She said, "I knew you’d come home." I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "I’m home." I put my suit cases on my bed and walked back into the kitchen tying an apron on as I went. There were farmhands to feed.

It’s hard for me to look at those old notebooks and recognize me in them anymore. I think sometimes that I wrote about someone else all those years ago. My husband and I have taken over farming daddy’s land. Momma helps me out in the kitchen with the cooking. Daddy is outside with my kids. He loves to tell them stories of how he used to farm this land before all the newfangled equipment came along. Never once have we ever spoke of the time I left to find a better life. What I found in that excursion of my lifetime was there is no better life than farming this land, raising these children with love, being a good daughter to my parents and loving wife to my husband. I have to run now, I hear Harold Jr. slamming that old screen door ... his daddy ain’t far behind him, and I know they’re hungry. . .

tjs© March 4, 2008