The Girl

I sure was glad all the fellows had already left with Papa marched me out of that camper, his hand gripped so hard on my arm I had the bruises to show for it. Once in the clear, he herded me home like a goose. I didn’t dare look back to see his dark face; I hadn’t ever known him to be so mad. Already the muscles in my butt were quivering; I knew it was just bound to be the worst whipping I’d ever taken at his hand.

He didn’t say word one until we were home. I walked into the living room – cleaned up spick and span before I left that morning, I want you to know – and stood waiting.

“Turn around,” he said.

I turned around. He looked at me. His eyes were just furious. He kept his voice low and mean, like he didn’t dare let it get out of control.

“For better than a week, I been hearing all these fellows talking about this pretty girl who’ll do It with anybody for a quarter.” He stopped, breathing hard. “So today, when I made up my mind I could use me a little piece of nooky my own self, being a widow-man and all, what do I find? My own sweet daughter. My own and onliest daughter, taking on all comers for two bits a throw.”

He stopped talking to wipe his face with the flat of his big hand. I didn’t say anything. He took a step toward me, causing me to flinch in spite of myself.

“How long has this been going on?” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

He reached out to take hold of my arm again. “I asked you a question, girl.”

I didn’t say anything.

His face got like a thundercloud. He jerked me closer, his other hand rising to slap the tar out of me. But he didn’t hit me. Not yet.

Instead he said, “What have you done with the money? Just frittered it away, I reckon, on pretties and doodads.”

I didn’t aim for a minute to let him think that. “I ain’t,” I cried out. “I ain’t spent the first quarter. I’ve been a-saving it.”

It stopped him. Then he said, “Where is it? I want to see it.”

I figured he was trying to catch me out in a lie, and once he did, he’d just cut loose. So I marched into the bedroom, Papa following, and showed him the fruit jars. I tell you, there was a peculiar look to his face as he hefted the weighty jars filled to the brim with those fine quarters. One by one he spilled out the coins onto the bed, taking his time about it. There was a pretty pile of quarters, too, let me tell you, when he had emptied the last one.

His voice was quiet, even thoughtful. “Well. It looks like you’ve been working steady for some time.”

“Yes, sir,” I said proudly. “I ain’t the one to brag, but let a fellow come once, he’s bound to bring me another quarter every chance he can get.”

I must have said just exactly the wrong thing. It made him rear back on his hind legs, more furious than ever. With both hands, he reached down to grab up a double handful of the quarters and fling them down onto the bedspread again. One of the coins bounced to the floor and rolled all the way into a corner, where it circled three times, making a thin, ringing sound, before falling over plop on its side.

“God Almighty, girl,” he said. “If you just had the sense God give a goose, every one of them two bits might just as well be a dollar bill.”

I stared at the pile of silver, thinking how if it was dollars instead. Doubtfully I shook my head. “A dollar is right much, Papa.”

Oh, he got madder than a wet hen. “Take off your dress and look at yourself,” he roared at me.

“Papa!” I said.

“Do like I said!” he yelled. “Damn it, or I’ll . . .”

Now, I had there in the bedroom and old pier glass Papa had found once in a junkyard heap and brought home as a Christmas present. So I did like I was told, and stood looking at myself in the wavy glass.

He came up behind me. “Girl, there ain’t a man in the world wouldn’t pay a dollar for the chance to handle a pretty piece like that there,” he said. “Now, ain’t that the living truth?”

I looked upon myself, my pretty white hair and big blue eyes, that shade of blue I hadn’t ever seen on anybody except my mama – I remembered, then, that the poetry-reading fellow had told me, once, they were Delft blue, a shade of color they use in pottery over across the big ocean, he said – and then at my breasts and my belly and my legs. I was ever just a pocket-piece of a girl, so tiny, but size didn’t matter, it was all there, and all ripe. I had even got to looking better from all the fucking I had been doing, because it’s good for a girl’s looks as long as she don’t overdo It.

I had to admit it to myself; Papa was right. It was worth a dollar to have the using of a pretty girl like me. And here I had been practically giving It away. I hadn’t set my sights high enough, it was plain to see.

Papa put one hand to my shoulder, pulling me back close against him. He wasn’t mad anymore. I could tell that right away.

“Girl, it just breaks your poor old Papa’s heart,” he said. “If you don’t have a right sense of your own worth, won’t nobody else have it, either. A woman’s got to hold herself proud, to my way of thinking. Give It away for a quarter, then you ain’t nothing but a two-bit piece of tail. That’s the plain and simple truth, as I see it.”

“I’m ashamed, Papa,” I said, hanging my head. “I’m downright ashamed.”

He held me closer. “That’s what comes from going out headstrong on your own, without asking the advice of them what knows you and loves you,” he said. “I could have told you right from scratch that you were worth a lot more than any old two bits. If you had only thought to ask me.”

“I’m sorry, Papa,” I said. I was sorry, too. It could have been a pile of dollar bills there on the bed, just as easy as anything.

“Then you won’t do it no more?”

“I promise,” I said, heartfelt. “I promise, Papa. From now on, I’ll count myself at my true worth.”

“All right. I’m glad to hear it. But just to teach you a lesson you won’t forget, I aim to take charge of this change you’ve accumulated.”

“Papa!” I said despairingly.

It wasn’t no use, as I well knew; he was scooping up the money by the double handfuls and pouring it back into the fruit jars. It just broke my heart; made me mad, too, to think of all those long hot afternoons when I had been sharecropping for quarters down there at the artesian well. But there wasn’t a thing to be done about it. When Papa made up his mind about something, there wasn’t nothing else to be said. I’d never lay eyes again on one cent of all that hard-earned cash.

Done, he straightened to look at me, a different look coming into his face. I realized then that I was naked still, so upset about the money I hadn’t taken thought as yet about putting on my clothes.

His two hands went to the buckles of his overalls. He said, “Lay down there on the bed.”

I just stared. Here it was still broad open daylight, and he hadn’t had the first drink of liquor. Even so, I reckon I wouldn’t have had the nerve to deny him if I hadn’t been hurt and heartbroken and mad as a wet hen about the money.

“No,” I said.

He was still shucking off his overalls. “If any man in the county can have a the using of you, I reckon I can, too,” he said. “I told you already, I came where you was with nooky on my mind.”

I glared at him. “I don’t do It without getting paid.”

He had his answer to that. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a quarter – I reckon it was the same two bits he had saved up during the week to bring to the artesian well – and threw it on the bed. “There. Now lay your ass on George Washington’s head and let’s get on with It.”

I stood without moving. “You just got through telling me it was worth all of a dollar.”

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just that he didn’t have a dollar to his name – not counting the quarters in the fruit jars, I mean. Be that as it may, he stared for a long minute, his face showing blacker and blacker; then he turned on his heel and stalked stiff-legged out of the room. I had won.

Of course, when I got dressed and came forth to start supper, I saw that he was-sitting out on the front porch in a straight chair tilted back against the wall, staring into nothing and nipping at his jug of piney-woods rotgut. So I knew full well that, come good dark, he’d do his druthers.

Which is how it happened. He ate his supper, not saying word one, and went back to his jug. After washing up the supper dishes, I went to bed and just laid there, not able to go to sleep because I knew he was coming. Then, all of a sudden, he was there in the dark, with that awful smell of liquor on his breath, and I want you to know, he nearly used me up for good that night. It just seemed like he never would quit; every time his nasty old Thing lost it, it found it again right away and started all over, until he got to the point where he couldn’t lose it anymore, but couldn’t quit either, till I got to feeling like a hundred men had trotted their old Things through my pussy one after the other. When he finally did quit, for the first time I could remember he didn’t cry a teardrop – which only showed, I reckon, how things had changed between us. He didn’t offer to pay me a thin dime, either.

Next morning at breakfast, he still didn’t have nothing to say. Only, when he took his lunch bucket and started for work, he stopped to say, “Remember what you promised me, girl.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I won’t forget.”

I was just a little bit afraid, when I saw the fellows waiting at the artesian well, about what I had to tell them. My stomach grabbed at itself as I stood thinking: What if they all just laugh out loud and walk off? What then?

But it wouldn’t do to go home tonight and tell Papa I had been afraid to ask for a dollar bill instead of a two-bit piece. So I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could, “Fellows, before we get started, I’ve got to tell you something.