grandiose. “You were so upset.”
“I’m always like that right afterward and then it passes. For God’s sake, Fanny, you’re like gully-fluff. Just leave,” she said. “I can’t look at you right now.”
I wasn’t familiar with the word
gully-fluff,
but I certainly understood its context.
*
I went to Rosalie’s house the next afternoon, ready to apologize. She was right. It was not my place to tell or not tell. I was planning to beg her forgiveness. I had even brought her a sticky bun, which I knew she liked. I knocked on the door, and when no one answered I pounded on it. Finally Rosalie opened it. I could sense rather than see her mother behind her.
“I can’t see you anymore,” she said.
“What?”
“I said, we can’t be friends anymore.”
“Because…”
“Because we can’t.” She was cold, all business, pale.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. I was too stunned even to feel hurt.
“Goodbye, Frances.” She closed the door in my face.
*
Each day before work I went by Rosalie’s house. It was early, and her household wasn’t yet stirring. But I made a little pyramid of stones where she would surely see them from her window when she looked out in the morning to judge the weather. By the next morning they were gone, whether by Rosalie’s hand or by someone else’s I didn’t know.
After a week, I stood outside the window and waited for Rosalie’s face to appear. When it did, she didn’t seem surprised to see me there. She looked paler than before and thinner. She had rouged her cheeks in a way that made her look exaggerated, like an acrobat in the circus. I waved. She dropped the curtain back into place.
After waiting for her for three days, during which her curtain never moved, I stopped going to Rosalie’s house. I wasn’t sure what her silence meant, but it cut me, to stand there in the dawn looking vainly as if for a lover. I began to plan my own solo escape. When I had $100, I told myself, I would catch a train east. I decided on Hartford, a city enough like Duluth. I would be sixteen by then, and I could easily pass for eighteen and take a room in a boardinghouse somewhere. I could get a job in the evenings washing dishes or caring for children or even taking in laundry. And then I could enroll in high school. Hopefully I wouldn’t be too far behind; I’d been keeping up with my studies through Rosalie until recently. I could pretend to be an orphan. The fantasy was romantic enough to sustain me as I added two dollars, now three, to my savings, walking with my head down looking for fallen pennies, buying no books or sweets, just saving for the day when I’d catch the train.
Each day I ate lunch on the bench where we once shared sticky buns, hoping Rosalie would come and see me. It was late May now, and the weather wasn’t too cool. I ate my sandwich while scanning the crowd for Rosalie’s form among the fishmongers, the roasted-nut salesgirls, the inevitable port girls for rent.
If I wasn’t allowed to see her, how could I convince Rosalie that running away was not only her only option but my only option too? In imagining our life together, I began to find my own situation completely untenable, crying at work on a regular basis when the boss criticized me, whereas before his criticism fell around me as though I had a protective umbrella. My file grew thick with demerits. I knew that I would soon be fired.
At home I so exasperated my mother that she hit my arm with the laundry brush, the first time she’d ever taken her hand to me. She was more upset than I was, begging my forgiveness and kissing the spot repeatedly, her tears wetting the skin. I forgave her. I wanted to hit someone too, to kick and lash out.
I told her they had reduced my hours at work and docked my pay accordingly. I began to save the extra money instead of putting it in the jar above the icebox. I kept it in a small pouch I’d sewn one night and which I pinned into the waistband of my
“I’m always like that right afterward and then it passes. For God’s sake, Fanny, you’re like gully-fluff. Just leave,” she said. “I can’t look at you right now.”
I wasn’t familiar with the word
gully-fluff,
but I certainly understood its context.
*
I went to Rosalie’s house the next afternoon, ready to apologize. She was right. It was not my place to tell or not tell. I was planning to beg her forgiveness. I had even brought her a sticky bun, which I knew she liked. I knocked on the door, and when no one answered I pounded on it. Finally Rosalie opened it. I could sense rather than see her mother behind her.
“I can’t see you anymore,” she said.
“What?”
“I said, we can’t be friends anymore.”
“Because…”
“Because we can’t.” She was cold, all business, pale.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. I was too stunned even to feel hurt.
“Goodbye, Frances.” She closed the door in my face.
*
Each day before work I went by Rosalie’s house. It was early, and her household wasn’t yet stirring. But I made a little pyramid of stones where she would surely see them from her window when she looked out in the morning to judge the weather. By the next morning they were gone, whether by Rosalie’s hand or by someone else’s I didn’t know.
After a week, I stood outside the window and waited for Rosalie’s face to appear. When it did, she didn’t seem surprised to see me there. She looked paler than before and thinner. She had rouged her cheeks in a way that made her look exaggerated, like an acrobat in the circus. I waved. She dropped the curtain back into place.
After waiting for her for three days, during which her curtain never moved, I stopped going to Rosalie’s house. I wasn’t sure what her silence meant, but it cut me, to stand there in the dawn looking vainly as if for a lover. I began to plan my own solo escape. When I had $100, I told myself, I would catch a train east. I decided on Hartford, a city enough like Duluth. I would be sixteen by then, and I could easily pass for eighteen and take a room in a boardinghouse somewhere. I could get a job in the evenings washing dishes or caring for children or even taking in laundry. And then I could enroll in high school. Hopefully I wouldn’t be too far behind; I’d been keeping up with my studies through Rosalie until recently. I could pretend to be an orphan. The fantasy was romantic enough to sustain me as I added two dollars, now three, to my savings, walking with my head down looking for fallen pennies, buying no books or sweets, just saving for the day when I’d catch the train.
Each day I ate lunch on the bench where we once shared sticky buns, hoping Rosalie would come and see me. It was late May now, and the weather wasn’t too cool. I ate my sandwich while scanning the crowd for Rosalie’s form among the fishmongers, the roasted-nut salesgirls, the inevitable port girls for rent.
If I wasn’t allowed to see her, how could I convince Rosalie that running away was not only her only option but my only option too? In imagining our life together, I began to find my own situation completely untenable, crying at work on a regular basis when the boss criticized me, whereas before his criticism fell around me as though I had a protective umbrella. My file grew thick with demerits. I knew that I would soon be fired.
At home I so exasperated my mother that she hit my arm with the laundry brush, the first time she’d ever taken her hand to me. She was more upset than I was, begging my forgiveness and kissing the spot repeatedly, her tears wetting the skin. I forgave her. I wanted to hit someone too, to kick and lash out.
I told her they had reduced my hours at work and docked my pay accordingly. I began to save the extra money instead of putting it in the jar above the icebox. I kept it in a small pouch I’d sewn one night and which I pinned into the waistband of my
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