Enduring (31 page)

She ran downstairs, avoiding the look the desk clerk gave her. Outside the hotel she did not know which way to turn so simply by instinct she turned to her left and began walking as fast as her feet would carry her. She had not gone far before she had to stop and study her shoes. They were much too big for her. Had she mistakenly put on the shoes of the man she had sold herself to? And speaking of selling, she had no money on her. Where was her purse? She decided she’d better go back to the hotel and search for it. But she couldn’t face that desk clerk again. Or the man. And speaking of the man, what had happened to him? Stepped out for breakfast? She hadn’t even thought to check the bathroom to see if he might be in there. She retraced her steps only a short way, less than a block, before she determined that the best course of action was to continue on, so she turned again and walked faster, although the shoes hurt her. She scanned the buildings on both sides of the street, looking for anything familiar. This must have been a part of Little Rock she’d never seen before. But she hoped it wasn’t Little Rock, because if it was, they were probably looking for her, if she had escaped from the insane asylum. How had she done that? She ransacked her memory, but the last thing she could recall was at Christmastime when her sister Mandy had come to visit. The weather was warm now, so that must’ve been quite a few months back. How had she got out of the nuthouse? Had they dismissed her? And how had she sunk into prostitution? She was hungry for breakfast, or even dinner, if it was time for it, but what had happened to the money she’d earned with her body?

These thoughts pestered her like flies pestering a milk cow, but she had no tail to drive the flies away. She walked on. And on. And on. She was reminded of the time she’d walked away from Mandy’s house, trying to run away, but failing. Her belly had been swollen then. What had ever become of that baby? She saw a policeman and wanted to ask him how to get to Vaughn and Mandy’s house, or at least tell her which way was West Nineteenth Street so she could find it herself. But maybe the police were looking for her if she had escaped from the asylum, so she walked on past him with her face averted. Even if she found Vaughn and Mandy, they would probably try to send her back to the nuthouse.

She came in time to a Nineteenth, but it said Avenue, not Street, and it also said South, not West. Just the thought that it might be near her baby made her walk along it for a good ways before she determined that it bore no resemblance to West Nineteenth in Little Rock. She passed a shop that had a sign, “Nashville Roofing,” and not long after that she saw another sign, “Nashville Tire Co.” She had memorized all the state capitals when she was in school, and she knew that Nashville was the capital of Tennessee. She also knew that Tennessee was a good distance from Arkansas. She walked on, but she was perishing with hunger. And thirst. She came to a place that sold gasoline for automobiles, and they had a spigot for water. She put her head under the spigot and filled her mouth with water. It was the best water she’d ever had. The owner came out and said, “Hey, lady, where’s your car?”

“I don’t have one,” she said. “I just wanted a drink of water.”

He looked her up and down. “Can I give you a lift anywheres?”

She wasn’t too certain what he meant by “lift.” But she said, “No, thank you kindly.” And looked down at her shoes. She studied those shoes in which her feet flopped around so loosely, and she decided to see if she couldn’t sell them. Most of her life, including at the asylum, she had not worn shoes. She looked at the owner’s feet. “Would you care to buy a pair of shoes?” she asked him.

“What size are they?” he asked. She took one off, and handed it to him. He studied it and read the size on the interior label. “They’re tens,” he said. “That’s me. How much do you want for ’em?”

“Whatever you think they’re worth,” she said.

“They’re practically new,” he said. “I could give you three dollars for them.”

She took off the other shoe and handed it to him, and he reached into his pocket and took out a roll of money and peeled off three ones and gave them to her. “But what will you wear?” he asked.

“I’ve gone barefooted all my life,” she said.

“Your feet are just about as cute as you are,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Is there any place hereabouts where I could buy some food?”

“You mean a restaurant or a grocery store?”

“I reckon a grocery would be all I could afford.”

“Well, there’s Burdell’s, about a half mile on up the road there. I could give you a lift.”

She pointed the other way. “How far is it to Nashville?”

“Sweetheart, you’re still in Nashville. City limits are a good two miles thataway.” He pointed the direction she was heading, and she walked on. “Suit yourself,” he called after her. “But I could really show you a good time, if you wanted one.”

Oh, she wanted a good time and had not had one anywhere in her memory. No longer thirsty but increasingly hungry, she walked as fast as she could, and eventually reached the store called Burdell’s, its sides covered with tin advertisements for cola drinks and tobacco and snuff and stuff. She went in, deciding not to spend all of her money, and bought two dollars worth of crackers and Vienna sausages and cheese and as a special treat a fried apple pie. She tucked the other dollar into her brassiere. She sat on the porch of the store and ate most of it. There were some men sitting on the porch, but they hushed as soon as she sat down. She avoided their eyes as they stared at her, but it was hard to eat while being watched. She kept dabbing at crumbs on the sides of her mouth.

At length, one of the men asked her, “Where you from, honeybunch?”

“Nashville,” she said.

The men talked among themselves in muted voices. At length, one of them asked, “Where you headin, sugar?”

“Nashville,” she said.

She finished her breakfast or dinner or whatever it was, got up, and moved on.

By the time she reached a sign that said “You are now leaving Nashville,” her feet were beginning to feel sore. She could tell by the position of the sun in the sky that she was heading west. It was still very hot. She wiped her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. She walked on. To amuse herself and take her mind off her feet, she concocted some sexual fantasies. She had no idea when she had become a prostitute or how many customers she had serviced, and although there was still an ache in her vagina it was a pleasant ache and it aroused her. Thus, when a truck driver slowed down alongside her and the man called, “Give you a lift anywheres, babe?” her first impulse was to get in and make a grab for his crotch. But while the wetness in her own crotch was not sweat, and while she may or may not have sold herself into prostitution, she still possessed some sense of dignity.

She shook her head. “Thank you kindly. I’m just going right up the road a piece.” And she walked on.

After a while the same truck came back, going in the opposite direction. The driver slowed and stopped and he said, “That must’ve been a fur piece. You sure I caint take you somewheres?”

The direction he was heading was the direction she had come from. “I’m not going that way,” she say. “I’m going
this
way.”

“Hon, I can take you wherever you want to go,” he declared.

“Can you take me to Stay More, Arkansas?” she asked.

“Now that is a mighty fur piece,” he said. “Naw, but I could take you halfway to Memphis. Get in.”

She was tempted, but there was something about the man that held her back. She looked around. She was out in the country now. There were no houses in sight. If she turned him down, would he try to do something to her anyway? “Thank you kindly,” she said. “But I’ve come this far on my own, and I can go the rest of the way.” He scowled at her, drove on a way, made a U-turn, and came roaring back in his original direction. As he passed her, he raised his middle finger and thrust it upwards several times.

She walked on. She was tired, and she was getting thirsty again, and there were no more filling stations. She passed a few houses. Probably she could have stopped at one and asked for a drink of water, but she did not. She had a long way to go, and wanted to see how far she could get before sundown.

But the sun was still well up in the sky when she began to tire beyond endurance. Her bare soles tried to cling to the earth, but kept misstepping. She staggered. There were mountains in the distance, and she thought of the expression, “get over the mountain,” and tried to remember when was the last time she had done that. She could not remember. She knew that for some strange reason whenever she got over the mountain she blacked out.

Maybe the glorious excitement of the moment was just too much for her. Maybe she fainted because she simply couldn’t stand the wonderful thrill of it all. Thinking of all this, she wondered if somehow an orgasm was coming on her, because she reached the mountaintop and began to go over. Then everything was black.

Chapter twenty-five

W
hen she came back out of the blackness, an elderly lady in a fancy dress was kneeling beside her, mopping her brow with the hem of her dress. Behind the lady was a man in some kind of uniform, with a black billed cap and double-breasted tunic. Latha’s first thought was he might be a policeman. They were in a ditch beside the road. Latha’s arms and knees were bruised and dirty, and she had dirt all over her dress. On the road was parked a very large automobile of a type Latha had never seen before.

“What has happened to you, child?” the woman asked her.

“I must’ve fainted or got heat stroke,” Latha said.

“Help her up, Rodney, and let’s take her to the house,” the woman said, and the uniformed man lifted her to her feet and pulled her up out of the ditch and put her in the rear seat of the big automobile. The woman sat beside her. The man sat in front and drove the car.

They drove on for some distance, the auto purring like a cat.

“Do you feel all right?” the woman asked her.

“Just tired,” she said. “I guess I must’ve passed out from trying to walk so far.”

“Where were you walking from?” the woman asked.

“Nashville,” she said.

“What was your destination?”

“Stay More, Arkansas,” she said.

“Good heavens,” the woman said. “Is that anywhere near Little Rock?”

“No, ma’am. It’s up in the Ozark mountains a long ways from Little Rock.”

“And you were just planning to
walk
there?”

Latha realized that it would be foolish to admit that was her intention. But she didn’t know how else to get there. It was dark, and Latha realized the woman could not see her nodding her head. So she spoke and said, “I reckon so, ma’am.”

They turned off the highway and drove for quite a spell along a road flanked by tall, columnar trees, evenly spaced. They came to the house. It was a mansion like Latha had never seen, except possibly the Albert Pike house in Little Rock, only much larger. There were Greek columns all along the front and sides, supporting the roof and a verandah for the second floor. The car stopped at the front door and the driver jumped out and opened the door for Latha and the woman, who led her up the steps and into the grand hall, where there was a huge chandelier and fancy furniture everywhere. In a tall mirror surrounded by an elaborate gold frame Latha caught sight of herself: her dirty face and arms and legs and her short messy hair. She looked like an escapee from the crazy house.

“You have no shoes,” the woman observed. “Nor any handbag, nor luggage of any sort, nor a hat. What is your name?”

She had not spoken her name in a good long while, but she remembered it. “Latha Bourne,” she said.

The woman eyed her carefully and then said, “Well, I am Mildred Cardwell, and I welcome you to the Cardwell’s Lombardy Alley. It was built by a Cardwell before the War Between the States, but there are no Cardwells left. Hope!”

“Ma’am?” Latha said, wondering just what she was supposed to hope for.

The woman put a finger to her lips. “I’m calling that stupid maid,” she said. Soon another woman, younger than Latha, showed up, in a starched dress and a little bonnet. “Hope, this is Miss Latha Bourne. Get her bathed and properly dressed and then give her some supper.”

“Yes’m,” said Hope, and led Latha up a long staircase to the second floor, and to a bathroom which contained a bathtub made of marble. She began filling it with water. “Where’d you get in a cat-fight?” she asked Latha.

“I fell in a ditch,” Latha said.

Latha soaked for as long as she dared in the bath, enjoying it. She washed her hair. Hope gave her a hairbrush and some lipstick and rouge. Hope said, “I don’t reckon you know beans about housework but the Ma’am likes your looks and that’s why I’m out of a job.” She gave Latha a starched dress like her own to put on.

“I’m not looking for a job,” Latha said.

“Well, you’ve got one,” Hope said. “And I don’t. But she’s been threatening to get rid of me for months. I can go into town and make more money as a waitress.”

When Latha was dressed in her maid’s uniform and her hair was dried and brushed, they went back downstairs to the kitchen, where another woman had set out a plate for Latha, and was getting ready to serve up a fine supper of roast pork, greens and some kind of soufflé. Hope said “Sadie, this here is my replacement, Latha Bourne. Aint she an adornment?”

“Oh, my, yes,” said Sadie. Then asked, “What would you like to drink with that?”

“Water’s fine,” Latha said.

After she had finished the supper, and a nice dessert of fresh strawberry shortcake, Latha was escorted back to the “sitting room” by Hope, where Mrs. Cardwell was sitting. The woman studied Latha and said, “There now. You look much better.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t want Hope’s job,” Latha said.

“Let
me
make that decision,” Mrs. Cardwell said. “Now let me show you around the house.” She took Latha into the dining room, which would seat two dozen people. She showed Latha the library, where there were books from floor to ceiling on four walls. She showed Latha the sunroom, the parlor, the billiard room, and the various closets and storerooms. Then she pointed toward the second floor and said, “I don’t like to climb those stairs. You run up there and look around. Your room is the last one at the end of the hall.” Latha went up and began opening doors. There must have been half a dozen bedrooms, the largest one obviously Mrs. Cardwell’s. The room at the end of the hall was much smaller, and had some of Hope’s things and clothes in it. But it had a nice chest of drawers and a pretty dresser, and a washstand. Latha caught a mental image of her room at home in Stay More and her room at Mandy’s, and both of those rooms were bare and squalid compared with this. She might never again have a chance to live in a room like this or a mansion like this. The precariousness of her position in life rose up and intimidated her. She had no money, no clothes, nothing. Maybe she could just live here and work long enough to earn enough money to buy a bus ticket home.