Ширли Мерфи - The Grass Tower

And Aunt Bett said nothing more that would help. “This Zagdesha business has upset you more than you care to admit, Bethany. It’s a harmful thing, and not something to play with as Jack seems to think. You must do your best to keep your mind off of it.”

My mind off it! she screamed silently. How could she keep her mind off of it! She drew herself tight, trying to control her emotions, trying to keep from screaming at Aunt Bett. “I’ll try,” she said at last. “I’ll try, really I will.”

To her own surprise, she did try. Maybe it was because of Aunt Bett’s concern, or perhaps because of her own increasing fear, but she began to discipline herself rigidly. It’s no different from mannering Danny, she thought. When he’s stubborn, I can’t give in or I’ll spoil him. I can’t give in to this either. Aunt Bett’s concern and strange secrecy had truly alarmed her; but it had also set her on a surer course. She found she could will herself to be strong and disciplined, could will herself to pay attention to what she was supposed to do and do it properly. She finished her back homework and handed in two term papers, and knew that her grades would be all right, that she could pass her final tests. She did her stable work without stupid mistakes and forgetting things, and she tried, really tried, to be cheerful; or at least not to be glum. She tried very hard not to think about her shiftings and falls into that other world, not to think of them once they had happened. But they came often, a scene flickering briefly across her consciousness. Almost, though, she could pretend they hadn’t.

But then suddenly she was shaken again, the calm she had built around herself quite destroyed. It was the morning of the last day of school. She was standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth when she began to wonder if she could do something with her limp hair. It was such a mop, it blew and tangled when she rode, and it did nothing for her long, homely face. She tried piling it on top her head, but that only made her forehead seem taller and more prominent. She tried parting it in the center and letting it droop over both sides of her forehead, held loosely back, but that was terrible. Then she pulled a handful down over her forehead, making bangs.

She studied her face with growing excitement.

Under the bangs her dark eyes did not seem to stare so. Her whole face seemed to shorten, and the long cheekbones took on a proper proportion, looked almost interesting. She hardly knew herself. Quickly, eagerly, she wet her hair to keep it in place, found Aunt Bett’s scissors, and began to cut bangs straight across her forehead.

When she was finished, the reflection that looked back at her was completely new. For the first time in her life she liked the way she looked. She stood staring at herself, then she began to cut the back, making a curving line at mid-neck. Her hair fell away to the basin… .

… but it was not the basin. It was a dresser, her hair lay in rusty hanks across a red dresser scarf. She was in the red bedroom staring at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror, and the scissors in her hand were not Aunt Bett’s big shears but a small, delicate pair, filigreed with gold. She laid them down and stared at them with horror. To have cut her hair with something —something—the scissors lay across the lengths of her hair, and there were lengths of hair on the oriental carpet. She was not wearing her old blue robe, but white silk pajamas. She stared at her reflection; she examined her hands, felt the dresser and the texture of the scarf, and turned to study the room. Why was this time so unlike the others? She turned back to the mirror and saw the panic in her face… .

… then pounding on the bathroom door made her jump. She was back in the bathroom, opening the door to let Marylou come in. Her hair lay scattered across the bathroom rug, and in the basin.

“You could be neater,” Marylou said, brushing past her. “You could have put a paper down. Let me look.” She stared at Bethany with what was real surprise. “I like it,” she said slowly. “Why you’re—you’re almost a different person.”

Chapter 6

Colin’s hands were black from polishing silver, and there was a black streak across his chin; he stood gazing remotely out the kitchen window, then sighed. “If we had hamburgers in the yard,” he said absently, “I wouldn’t have to polish all this stuff. Why do we have to for Justin anyway?”

“Aunt Justin,” Aunt Bett said. “When you’re done, wash those forks and dry them real well. And,” she flung back, her head in the refrigerator, “get the platter down from the top shelf.”

Bethany laid the white linen cloth on the table and began to unfold it one section at a time, thinking of last night, of her first date with Reid, a date so casually asked for, as if he had asked her to hand him a bridle from the tackroom; and it had been as casually accepted, her heart thudding underneath. She turned the last section of the cloth, making it fall down over the edges of the table, and began to smooth out the creases with her hands, thinking of walking with Reid under the yellow street lights with the smell of crushed eucalyptus leaves all around them, stopping to watch a little cat leap at moths under the last street light, coming back on the other side of the street to have a soda. She had tried, during the movie, to get some thought from him but she could not, and had sat in the darkness wondering if he would kiss her good night. It would be her first kiss, and she knew she wanted him to, she had been dizzy with it really, she could think of nothing else. Did he feel it too? He must feel something, how could he not? And yet she couldn’t tell. Did he look at her differently? He was very solemn, but Reid was always solemn, when he did smile it made her weak and happy. And when at last he kissed her, in the darkness of Aunt Bett’s front porch, she felt as unattached to the world as she did when she was flung between two worlds, unattached and confused with the feelings that rose in her.

She had gone to sleep in a delicious haze. How come she had known Reid all her life and had just now discovered him? Did cutting her hair make him think of her differently? Even Jack had noticed, raising an eyebrow and whistling softly when she met him on the street. And her reflection in the store windows, and in her own mirror, made her tingle with pleasure.

She laid the silver out, and the good china, and the special glasses for water, and wished there were flowers, blue flowers to match the willow patterned china. But there were flowers, for when Justin arrived she had a handful of batchelor buttons gathered along the fields, their stems wrapped in her wet handkerchief. They were as blue as Justin’s eyes. It was good to see Justin, very good. Bethany took the flowers, and Justin’s jacket, glancing, puzzled, at the red patch pockets with their appliques of birds. She felt as if she recognized them. Well, maybe she had seen Justin wear it before. She looked back at Justin herself, Justin who looked so much like Mama. Really, it was not that they looked alike, but that they were alike somehow, light-boned, with a simple grace of movement that was the same. Where Mama’s hair had been brown and her skin tanned, Justin’s hair was blond and her skin always seemed transparent, with tiny peach-colored veins that, seen from a little distance, made a peach-colored glow, very scrubbed looking. And yet, beneath Justin’s brightness you could often sense something withdrawn, something kept apart. That was not like Mama.

Bethany tried to imagine Justin and Mama as children, two little girls running on the shore. They had been so much younger than Aunt Bett and Aunt Selma, and Justin’s sister Kathleen. “Two muddy, disgraceful little girls,” Aunt Bett said at dinner. “You and Marjory, dirty-faced tomboys. You never did like to wear dresses.