Filed to story: Love on the Sidelines (Natalie & Karl)
When Miss Sams moved away to work on Mooney, I gazed up at Karl with my one good eye, tears streaming down and filling my ear. If there were tears coming from my other eye, the bag of ice currently resting on it froze them.
“You saved my life,” I sobbed.
Karl squatted beside me, awkwardly patting my shoulder. “Hey, you didn’t think I was gonna let you get out of marrying me that easy, did you?”
“Oh, Karl!” I sat up and wrapped my arms around him. The bag of ice dropped to my lap, and my lip started bleeding again, but I didn’t care. “I thought I was gonna die.”
And that’s how Mama, the Judge, and Mr. Viders found us. Me crying and bleeding all over Karl, him trying to soothe me without much success.
“My baby!” Mama wailed when she saw my face. She yanked me away from Karl and rocked me, so I cried and bled all over her until Mr. Viders took control of the situation. The Judge simply clenched his jaw and glared daggers at Mooney.
They made me tell them the whole story, even though I didn’t want to. Karl and I were praised and fussed over; me for maintaining my honor under cruel and unusual circumstances, him for coming to my rescue. Mooney was towed out of the building, his mother’s hand twisting his ear, presumably on the way to see the doctor. From then on, he was banished to a seat all by himself at the back of the class. I guess he learned his lesson ’cause he never bothered me again.
Frank Hayes never showed up at the school, but then, no one had really expected him to. Karl went home with us, and after I was tucked into bed Mama allowed him to come up and sit with me.
By this time, my eye was swelled shut and he touched it gently, looking mad all over again. “You should have told me. I’ll never let nobody hurt you again, Natalie, I swear.”
But there are more kinds of hurt than physical ones, hurts that run ever deeper and leave bigger scars, and not even Karl could protect me from himself.
When I was twelve, my normally unflappable mother stuttered and stammered her way through a rather muddled explanation of the facts of life, then shoved a book called
Becoming a Woman into my hand and ran. By then, of course, Jenna and I had pretty much figured out the basics, thanks to a couple of dogs and a lot of gossip from the other girls in school.
My family kept a close eye on me for a few days after Mama gave me “the talk”, waiting to see if I’d been traumatized beyond repair. Personally, I think the only one traumatized was Mama. Every time I’d look at her she’d turn beet-red.
Sex was a four-letter word in our family. When its use was required, it was always spelled, as if actually saying it would bring down the fiery wrath of God on our heads.
The age of free love might have come and gone in the rest of the world, but in Morganville girls who got pregnant without the benefit of matrimony were still talked about in whispers, behind shielding hands.
Even the women’s liberation movement was viewed as a rather puzzling oddity by our female population. They had always thought they were partners, not slaves, and to them a glass ceiling was just something that was apt to break in a hailstorm. It was the combined goal of all our women to see their daughters happily married to a Good Man, raising a houseful of kids. A career to them was working as a volunteer at the library or hospital, or at the local five-and-dime in the makeup department for minimum wage.
And because no one around me paid much attention to those things, I didn’t either.
My main concern was my body. As usual, Jenna had beaten me to the punch yet again, starting her periods when we were twelve. I had to wait another whole year and I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me. With every twinge or unusual sensation I’d run to the bathroom, hope warring with anxiety.
The year I turned thirteen was a momentous one for me in more ways than one. My body finally started to change, hard painful knots forming on my chest, and hair sprouting in places it had never been before. Mama took me shopping for my first training bras, and my monthlies started, which thrilled me for all of two months, and then I was sick of them. My hairstyle went from pigtails in fourth grade, to a ponytail in fifth, then to a braid in sixth. By ninth grade I was leaving it loose to hang down my back.
Mama wasn’t Mama anymore, she was Mother, usually followed by a “pallease!” when she wanted me to do something I considered beneath me. Like wear a frilly dress instead of my strategically torn, stone-washed, designer blue jeans.
That was also the year I discovered Boys. Or maybe I should say they discovered me. By then I knew what they wanted and I wasn’t buying it, although I will admit I 36 was flattered by the attention and not above a little flirting. After all, I was southern, and southern woman are selectively bred for their ability to flirt. How else were we going to catch us a man and raise us a brood of kids?
The bane of my existence was that Karl didn’t seem to notice all the changes I’d undergone. He still treated me the same way he had when I was eight, with casual warmth and humor. But I sure noted the changes in him.
At fifteen, he was nearly six feet tall. His voice had deepened into a rich baritone that did funny things to my stomach and made my heart race. His body, while still slim, had grown some muscular bulges that I couldn’t help but admire. And I wasn’t the only one. If boys had discovered me, girls thought they’d hit the jackpot with Karl. The fact that he was Frank Hayes’s son and a lone wolf only increased their interest, added a bit of danger to the mix. They didn’t view him as marriage material, but his looks made him desirable as a trophy.
I’d been forced to watch during the last school year while they strutted by his position on the steps, tossing their hair and sending inviting smiles his way. His expression remained stoic, but I saw the way his eyes moved over them and I wanted to yank out their hair, one fistful at a time. Strange, but I was never jealous of Lindsey, even though she’d filled out nicely, too. Maybe because I was used to seeing them together, and she was so quiet that I simply forgot she was there.
When my friends talked for hours about hunky rock stars, I smiled but didn’t participate. There was only one boy I wanted, and I lived for the times when I could be alone with him. It was simple. When I was with Karl, I was happy. When I wasn’t, I was restless and miserable. I became adept at finding excuses to touch him. A hand on his arm, innocently brushing a strand of hair away from his face, legs touching as we sat side by side.
He did nothing to encourage these feelings except be himself. For me, that was enough. But the biggest reaction I’d ever gotten out of him was a puzzled frown directed at the boys flirting with me, like he couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.
That was also the year my Uncle Vern moved back, looking tired and old, the traumatized survivor of a messy divorce, and brought his twin sons, Casey and Cody, with him. There were only two weeks of school left when I came home one afternoon and found these three strangers in our living room. I smiled politely while I was introduced and tried not to notice that my newly found, seventeen-year-old cousins were staring at me like I was some species of alien that had suddenly appeared in their garden. Sort of shocked, curious, and eager, all at the same time.
Both boys had a more masculine version of our family looks. Dark hair, blue-green eyes, medium height. Their northern accents sounded funny to my ears, sharp and staccato, and I felt a bit overwhelmed by so many males in my predominantly female household. But my family was ecstatic to have them back. Even Aunt Darla was excited now that my uncle had come to his senses and rid himself of “that woman”. The noise level in the house was giving me a headache and I’d smiled until the muscles around 37 my mouth hurt by the time we’d finished supper. At the first opportunity I slipped out the back door into the warm spring night.
I was surprised to see a light in the shed since I hadn’t been expecting Karl that night. He and the Judge had long since finished restoring the Chevy. It sat in the garage, covered by a tarp which protected the beige and brick-colored paint job. The Judge only drove it on special occasions, like the day he’d taken Karl to get his learner’s permit.
He’d been offered a small fortune for the car, but he always refused to sell.
Thrilled that I was going to see Karl tonight, I stopped in the shed door, my gaze going from him to the mangled Ford pickup that occupied the spot where the Chevy had once sat.
Karl grinned when he saw me. “What do you think of my truck?”
“I think you need to jack it up and run another one under it.” The truck was in horrible shape, one door completely gone and the other bashed in. Jagged pieces of metal curled up around the fenders. It was impossible to tell what color it had once been. Now it was just rusty.
“Where did you get it?” I leaned beside him and peered under the hood, making sure my arm rested against his.
“Someone brought it to the salvage yard last week. It’s not as bad as it looks. The motor is in pretty good condition and the body can be fixed. The Judge said if I’d bring it over, he’d help me work on it. I’d like to get it finished before I get my license.”