How Far She Went by Mary Hood

Author:Mary Hood
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-8203-4019-7
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

How Far She Went

They had quarreled all morning, squalled all summer about the incidentals: how tight the girl’s cut-off jeans were, the “Every Inch a Woman” T-shirt, her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look. Her granny wrung out the last boiled dishcloth, pinched it to the line, giving the basin a sling and a slap, the water flying out in a scalding arc onto the Queen Anne’s lace by the path, never mind if it bloomed, that didn’t make it worth anything except to chiggers, but the girl would cut it by the everlasting armload and cherish it in the old churn, going to that much trouble for a weed but not bending once—unbegged—to pick the nearest bean; she was sulking now. Bored. Displaced.

“And what do you think happens to a chigger if nobody ever walks by his weed?” her granny asked, heading for the house with that sidelong uneager unanswered glance, hoping for what? The surprise gift of a smile? Nothing. The woman shook her head and said it. “Nothing.” The door slammed behind her. Let it.

“I hate it here!” the girl yelled then. She picked up a stick and broke it and threw the pieces—one from each hand—at the laundry drying in the noon. Missed. Missed.

Then she turned on her bare, haughty heel and set off high-shouldered into the heat, quick but not far, not far enough—no road was that long—only as far as she dared. At the gate, a rusty chain swinging between two lichened posts, she stopped, then backed up the raw drive to make a run at the barrier, lofting, clearing it clean, her long hair wild in the sun. Triumphant, she looked back at the house where she caught at the dark window her granny’s face in its perpetual eclipse of disappointment, old at fifty. She stepped back, but the girl saw her.

“You don’t know me!” the girl shouted, chin high, and ran till her ribs ached.

As she rested in the rattling shade of the willows, the little dog found her. He could be counted on. He barked all the way, and squealed when she pulled the burr from his ear. They started back to the house for lunch. By then the mailman had long come and gone in the old ruts, leaving the one letter folded now to fit the woman’s apron pocket.

If bad news darkened her granny’s face, the girl ignored it. Didn’t talk at all, another of her distancings, her defiances. So it was as they ate that the woman summarized, “Your daddy wants you to cash in the plane ticket and buy you something. School clothes. For here.”

Pale, the girl stared, defenseless only an instant before blurting out, “You’re lying.”

The woman had to stretch across the table to leave her handprint on that blank cheek. She said, not caring if it stung or not, “He’s been planning it since he sent you here.”

“I could turn this whole house over, dump it!

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