Stuart Rd, Yarrow BC, Aug 1, 8 p.m.
My feet hurt and I was desperately, dismally sick all over York Farms
this morning but I made over seven beautiful dollars today.
Aug 11, 6 a.m.
Dear-but-so-neglected-due-to-lack-of-time-journal,
After he took me home on Sunday night, I had a mad dream about him. He
was walking me to the truck. I was just clambering in. His voice suddenly
became agonized and broke when he said, "Oh, Ellie, why do you have
to walk that way?" My stunned face collapsed, and I burst into hysterical
tears. He found his way to me and held me, and then we were whirled into
a wild frantic kiss that was a reassurance and a consolation.
Meanwhile he was dreaming too. The first part was unimportant; I can't
even remember what it was. "I won't tell you the rest," he said.
My chair gave a leap and nearly folded as I moved closer, widened my
eyes, and demanded to be told.
"I guess I could tell you," he said. "I kissed you."
"Hey, you've been eavesdropping in my dreams!" I accused.
"You know, they say you dream what you suppress," he hinted.
As he held me lingeringly before he said goodbye to me (we were beside
the tall, lean cedar that grows beside the red steps, and it was dark and
beautiful, our shadows were swaying and melty, and he wouldn't let me go
so they looked like a two-headed monster) he said, "I'll kiss you yet
before you go home."
"That's what you think."
"I will."
"Immediately before, or as soon as possible?"
"Um ... immediately before, I think."
"How about not at all?" He looked meditatingly at the sky.
I had to laugh at his expression.
"Maybe you're right. It does make it more special.
"So you aren't going to?" He looked back up at the sky. After
a long time he said, "It's a deal."
"On one condition" - he amended. "You're going to have
to help me."
"Haven't I been?"
"Yes, but you'll have to keep on. I'm only human."
"How did you do it?" he burst out just before he left, "getting
me to make a promise like that." He laughed. "Wait'll I tell Judy
about this!" he said.
We had an argument about whether he's going to go out with other girls.
"I mean it. I want you to," I said. He demurred. He said he didn't
want to. I said, "Just think how awful I'll feel if I know you're wrecking
your social life because of me."
"How much social life do you think this boy wants?"
"Oh, about twice a week."
"Twice a week with you."
"Let's just leave it at twice a week." We argued it back and
forth, in an almost tender way, me accusing him (tenderly?) of being silly;
it's so unnecessary! This went on for a long time while we held hands over
the checker board. Then I thought we'd dropped it. But suddenly, while he
had his arms around me, he said, "Do you think I can hold you like
this and then take somebody else out?" So what can you say.
I think I'm afraid. Frank loves me too much. He loves me so violently
and compulsively that I am afraid this won't be only a summer romance. I'm
afraid he'll want to marry me someday, and I don't want to marry him.
I love him. He's a wonderful guy. But this is young, this is an outgrowth
of youth and summer. It would never last a lifetime. I want to be with people
and motion and culture. I don't understand his feeling for the earth. I
won't marry a farmer. It would make me old and tired and meek like Mom.
Perhaps not, though, because I have more liquid steel in my blood than she
ever had.
Still, I'm afraid that a time will come when I'll have to choose between
hurting him (and oh, I don't want to hurt him!) and messing up my beautiful
future. If he loves me too much, if he believes in me too blindly, he'll
be more than hurt if I dropped him, and I'd have to, sooner or later. He'd
lose faith in people, he'd be bitter. I don't ever want to be responsible
for doing that to a man.
I have to be careful now. Maybe this isn't anything, really, to be worried
about. Maybe he just loves hard and then forgets quickly. But I don't think
so. I don't know what I can do.
I came out and stood in the doorway while he came toward me. It was a
dramatic entrance, at least I felt like an actress making a dramatic entrance,
because I know I looked vivid. I was wearing an electric blue sweater, knit
and curvy over my new bra, and under it, an electric pinky-peach tight skirt.
I posed on the warm red steps with my hands on the door posts. He walked
up with his hands behind his back. When he was on the step below me, he
put out his hand and showed me - a flower, pink and ruffly on a waxy dark
green stem.
"It's a silly gesture, but ..." he said. I could have hugged
him. I did, later, but that's another story.
"I want you to wear it," he said. So I did. I pinned it on
lovingly and stuck my chin into it often. It was the first flower I've ever
gotten from a boy.
"You must have had a premonition of what I was going to wear. These
colors just couldn't go together better."
And they couldn't have - a mauvy delicate pink and the bright blue. It
made me glow.
When I left him, I had half-convinced him to write me a letter when he
got home.
"Can I say anything I want to? Everything I feel?"
"Anything. And nothing you say will be held against you."
We played checkers for a while, but never did finish the game. We started
to hold hands above the board and then, well, the chair with the board on
it was moved out, and then my chair was moved forward and his was, and he
found even this too distant so he moved over beside me, and then I sat half-facing
him, so he was still foiled. I don't understand him, partly because he's
male and I'm not, but also because he's an adult and I'm only half-way there.
But he's driven by the peculiar things that drive men. Still, understood
or not, he's the wonderfullest thing and I like him.
Once, while he was being amorous and I was being "coy" I suddenly
sat back and looked at the little porch window behind us.
"You know, I've been nervous about that window behind us,"
I said, "but I just noticed something - it's only a porch window and
there is a tree in front of the door." And I did a most amazing thing.
I leaned forward and gave him a hug.
"If I were you I'd be very shocked. That was very unbashful and
unladylike."
"You'd be more shocked if I let myself go - the things I'd do."
That sounded interesting. I wanted him to go on but he wouldn't.
When the last radio program had ended, he knew this was time for aloha.
I started walking toward the door. He reached up and pulled me back toward
him. I could see the shadow tossed onto the wall by a street lamp. It was
a boy and a girl being romantic. A chugging sound. "Listen to the frogs,"
I said. He laughed. "You have quite an imagination - that's an electric
motor."
"No, listen to it - it's .... It is an electric motor."
But even without the frogs it was nice. A thin darkness, cool air, a
beautiful blue sweater with a crushed pink flower pinned to it, freshness
and youngness and a sort of love.
That was when I convinced him about the kissing part. I almost think
he was a little disgruntled, but he understood, which, for a boy, is marvelous.
But that was the evening he and I played checkers.
And then there was Sunday. Judy and he came to get me from work. They
waited in the living room while I changed, and I choked a chortle while
I listened to Grandma's voice going on and on about the "Kinder."
(This breathless listening to a family history paid off tho' - she told
me later that she thought Judy and Frank were very "gescheit.")
Then I made another entrance in my new heels and some petticoats. And
then we drove to Mission, stopping at Abbotsford at the Dairy Queen for
a big chocolate-dipped soft ice cream. The Mission trip was in honour of
my half-birthday.
While we were there we had a Chinese dinner - sweet and sour, fried onions,
and fried rice au something or a la something. I discovered that having
Judy along is great fun - she's a person, a womanly and intelligent and
intriguing person.
They were talking about a painting called "The Man with the Hoe."
"It's a picture of a man all bent over, leaning on his hoe," Frank
explained. "That isn't my idea of a man with a hoe," he went on.
"He should be standing very straight and holding his hoe high."
"But your idea of farming is different than theirs was, Frank,"
Judy put in. "Your idea is conquest but theirs was subjection."
Judy is wistful about love - she's looking for it, and she asks me, indirectly,
if it is what she thinks it would be. She thinks of her brother as having
this certain "it" that she wants. She knows him better than I
do; I wonder
There was an album cover we stopped to look at twice in one of the shop
windows. It was an Oriental looking girl done beautifully in oils with a
certain eye-catching verve to the artistry.
"She looks sensual," Judy said. "That's a word a boy isn't
even allowed to use," Frank put in. "Even that hand, all alone,
would be sensual," she continued. "And the whole effect is much
more sensuous than this other one - in spite of the nightgown and the rose."
When we drove home there was a gorgeous view of the river at the bridge;
a wash of deep silvery mauve over the smudgy hills and the gold-dusted sky
reflected on the ice-like surface of the river (little rough choppy places
among the polished patches) and held up against it in a deep solid black
silhoette, four old wharf poles.
Then we went home and he almost kissed me but I was slippery. And we
drove home. Comfortably and serenely romantic. That was it.
I never did finish about my shopping trip to Chilliwack:
I went to the library after dinner, dug around art books, read snatches
of a torchered book called "I Shall Not Serve" by a young French
girl who committed suicide, and thought about an article I'd read in a dingy
café where I had a Coke for dinner. It was called "Anyone can
neck, but there are dangers you should know about," and was wedged
between the lurid sob stories in a True Love magazine, of all places. It
went through the usual "soiled goods" story and bothered me a
bit. I even made a few resolves.
That evening when Frank came we sat primly in the living room and I wouldn't
even hold hands with him.
"She's icy tonight," he said.
"She has to be, and besides, she's been reading pep talks. You know
what I mean."
"Sure. And what kind of good book did you find 'em in?"
"Didn't find 'em in a good book. Found 'em in a magazine."
"I know." He was quiet for a while and then came up with a
rebuttle. "But we haven't done anything. We haven't even parked."
"True," I said. And from that moment felt quite philosophical
about it.
August 13, Sunday p.m.
I told Frank about the feeling I have about the Smiley episode. He was
silent, and I talked on
"... hardly anyone has ever been nice to him and then I was nasty.
When I got home I thought about it for a while and then I was so ashamed
of myself I could have cried. I still am."
He changed the subject. He told me about a muskrat he'd seen running
over the road, and how he'd swerved to avoid it; then he mentioned a man
who deliberately ran down animals on the road.
"It was like what I did. It was brutal." I told him. I looked
away and bit my lip. He tightened his arm and pulled me down, tenderly,
to his shoulder.
"You can sit up if you want to," he said.
"I don't," I said in a small voice against his white shirt.
"I shouldn't pull you around that way."
There was a strange feeling on the way home. First Frank was glum, and
then I caught it from him and it was twice as bad for me. We talked about
sad and deep things, and behind it there was always a breathless and overpowering
tenderness. I looked up from his shoulder and thought, "Oh Frank, I
love you, I love you; even tho' it's only for now, I do love you."
There was an undercurrent of insecurity too. I was unsure of what he was
thinking and I was unhappy because he was. George was singing an off-key
version of "The big iron on his hip" and "The Tennessee stud"
and "Sugartime." Sometimes I sang with him. I didn't look at Frank
because when I did, he either looked straight ahead or else turned slowly
to look back with no smile on his mouth and a sort of blankness, a sad blankness,
in his eyes. I watched him in the mirror. He drove grimly, or maybe he only
looked grim because of the set of his mouth, and after he noticed that I
wasn't looking at him anymore, he began to glance at me questioningly from
the corners of his eys. I ignored him petulantly, talked to George or not
at all.
So George and I were singing "The Tennessee stud was long and lean,
the color of the sun, and his eyes were green" both off in a different
way, and then that lapsed until we began "Sugartime" quite rousingly,
and then that died out and we drove the rest of the way to George's place
almost in silence. We let him off, and then drove very slowly between the
trees down his lane. I looked away from Frank toward the trees. The truck
stopped. Both arms went around me.
"Why so look-away?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"Did you have a good time?"
"Yes. I had a very good time."
He squeezed for a moment, and then drove on.
We took our usual winding route home. When we began to roll down a long
hill, we could see the lights of the valley through a layer of mist that
was almost like the film on cooking milk.
Oh yes - one thing I forgot. When we were driving toward George's place,
Frank was humming something under the racket George and I were making. "What
are you singing?" I asked. It was the first thing I'd said to him for
a long time.
- "My darling, if I hurt you I'm sorry.
- Forgive me, and please say
- You'll be mine - all mine.
- Return to me, oh my dear I'm so lonely,
- Hurry home, hurry home, won't you please
- Hurry home to my heart."
He began it and I finished. He is sweet. He was concerned. He was wondering
what he'd done.
Then, when we came out of the driveway, he said "Aren't you going
to say anything?" I didn't, but I enjoyed being a spoiled pouting child
for a while.
I've begun at the end - the whole day was wonderful and not all as morose
as the last part.
Frank came to church in Yarrow. I was hoping he'd wear his best suit
but he didn't. I didn't see him there, but he was coming to dinner so I
wasn't worried. I was dolled up - uh-huh! I checked and rechecked the contours
in the living room mirror.
The truck drove up onto the yard. I took my time getting to the door.
He backed out, thinking nobody was home yet. I opened the door and laughed
at him while he drove back up to the door.
He came in, sat at one end of the table facing Grandpa, didn't talk much,
except for a bit of happy gab in the living room before dinner, laughed
when a potato, pushed by Fate, fell into my plate, looked over my Medieval
History book (which is being written on now) while I dried dishes, took
off his tie and jacket and was quite "gemütlich." He told
me about Judy's employers in Vancouver, who, after Frank had been there
to see if Judy was home, had told her about "this terribly handsome
guy who was here to see you; his name was Frank. Is he your boyfriend?"
My first reaction was, what handsome guy. But he is, sometimes. I can't
make up my mind as to whether he is good looking or not.
Then we left, after reassuring G'ma about how gescheit he drives, and
got George from the dinner table he was sharing with a mob of small brothers
and sisters and cousins. We went the Deas Tunnel route. Twice George reminded
us when Frank was one-hand driving and a policeman was nearby.
We got into Van. We spotted a curb to lean against while George tried
to find the Capilano Stadium.
"You find it somewhere, George," said FD. "Meanwhile,
Ellie, we're parking." So he gave me a bear-hug there in broad daylight.
Oh - why Capilano Stadium?
"Have you ever seen a big-league baseball game?" he asked me.
"No - are we going to one?" I asked delightedly.
"We are," he said, and when we finally found Capilano, on 33rd
and Main, I think, we sat in the bleachers among stamping small boys and
thirteen-year-old girls parading their new-found chest expansions for the
benefit of thirteen-year boys who couldn't care less. The Mounties were
playing Salt Lake City and won by about 10-2. Number 1 for the Mounties
was an incredibly graceful negro who played 3rd base and I admired him profusely
while watching him in Frank's field glasses. We used those for other things
too - there was a girl a few sections away, whose back was bare for a ways
before the blouse began. George looked her over in the glasses. His commments
were - see for yourself - "that backbone sticks out about an inch There's
some kind of elastic in her shorts, er ... panties. Quite stiff too Her
sister's wearing the same kind ..." I looked. "Hey, do you want
to see too?" I asked Frank. He didn't, and was embarrassed.
The game went on. Balls landed in the bleachers and small boys scrambled
for them, we consumed ice cream bars and 7-up and popcorn, we commented
and watched but the game didn't have as much appeal, altho' more skill than,
our high school teams (even tho' the diamond was manicured and raked and
spotless.) J-d's argued vulgarly behind us, everyone sang "Take me
out to the ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch, (I enjoyed
it) and I sat happily between George and Frank. Three boys, homely too,
but dressed to look a million dollars, came up and sat right behind us.
(My influence, I know for a fact) Pigskin shoes! They probably came in a
convertible, and what they were doing in the 90¢ bleachers I don't
know. But they left soon. And then there were the 4 fresh little boys in
front of us. I don't know what they said, but Frank and George both jumped
on them and threatened to throw them over the fence. ("They were only
about 150 pounds, and the fence can't be more than 15 feet high ,"
quote Frank).
When it was all over we walked out, down the ramps, and I was very aware
of the clicking of heels and the feeling of "class" coming from
the right clothes.
I had my blue sweater and and on the way home slung it over my knees.
Frank got a laugh out of it.
"Are you cold?" he said first.
"Uh-uh. I'm just covering my knees."
"Hey, smart girl. Then you don't have to tug every two minutes."
"... And if you don't tug, you're an unverschamedes madchen."
We understood even that in a mutual lightbulb popping way. Everything. It's
wonderful.
Tomorrow, another installment. Hey, I get a letter from him on Wednesday!
Then we went to Playland, which was closed, but George found an open
tramp joint so they, the two of them, worked out for fifteen minutes. Both
took off their shirts, the better to show their tans and for more freedom.
Also their shoes. (George put his money into his.) I strolled around and
took two pictures, one of George all up in the air and one of Frank taking
a nose dive into the canvas. I felt quite - good - to be in a hobble skirt
and heels. Even picking my way through loose gravel in that new way is special
to me.
George was lithe and impish on the tramp, and could turn lovely flips
Frank tried to but never managed to land on his feet even tho' he tried
hard.
When we went back to the truck George was dripping. Water was dribbling
from his young stubble-less chin, and his face was as wet as though he had
doused it. I admired the lines of his bare, glistening neck and his long
back. His hair was wet and wisping.
Then we went to Chinatown. The streets were full of old Chinese men,
walking, leaning, sitting on the museum steps. There were crowds of people
on Pender St.
After parking, we found a restaurant called the - I forget what. Somekind
of Tea Gardens with genuine squeaky music, red gold-embossed menus, a beaming
prop., and chairs instead of benches. We had chicken fried rice, mushroom
Chop Suey and somekind of Chou Mein with tea. I was teazing George about
"Chicken Foo Young," a sort of egg mixture which G claims is meaty.
I renamed it, aptly, "Chicken, Too Young." George, being more
adventurous, asked for chopsticks, so we ate the entire meal with them -
Frank spilled least, George chickened out first, and I spilled most but
held on to the last grains of rice. "Another" wizened old China-boy
across from us ate plain white rice with gusto and the round heap in his
bowl diminished to a few grains quite rapidly.
Frank shoved a borrowed dime into the juke box slot and pressed the button
beside "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Soon there was a thrumming sound
of music, and then the unexpected burst of a voice singing "Apple-Green."
He was puzzled, but I told him quite happily that it was a favorite song
of mine. He tried again. "Apple-Green" again. I was talking to
George, and then I noticed that Frank was remote from us, listening to the
song. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if he knows intuitively
that this is partly my song now.
- " and all the world
- Is apple-green
- When you're seventeen,
- And in love "
The voice had an intensity, a clear emotion, in it and it is perhaps
that, as much as the words, which makes it my song.
George's long legs reached all the way across to my side, and still further
under my chair. He's a romping, grinning, stretched out, oversize version
of a small boy, but still not without the mysterious "it" called
sex appeal. Touching him is not without awareness. When looking at the map
together our shoulders and hands touched, and there was that lack of unawareness.
But he is a child - carefree and naïve, even.
When we left, we walked on back to our truck. At the Marco Polo two stripling
boys in black and white were waiting to touch off a long string of firecrackers.
George perked up his ears and demanded to wait and watch. So we, all three,
leaned against a lamp pole and waited. I was in the middle. I could see
my reflection on the glass doors beyond the sign saying "Private Party."
Dark hair swinging loosely onto my shoulders, the blouse looking neat, My
body narrowing to the belt at my waistline and then curving out under the
pastel skirt, the dark legs, one tucked up, and the wonderful white shoes.
The big white purse. I looked - chic, I think. Almost Seventeen magazine.
We stepped back when they lit the crackers. Frank held my hand - in case
I was frightened. There was a sputtering, then mixed with stacatto barks,
then a roar like a battle movie's filmtrack as the street corner was filled
with flying fire and curious people. There was a pyramid of flames. In the
middle of the pandemoneum and excitement I felt Frank's arm around my shoulder
giving me a squeeze. I know because of that, that even his twenty-one year
old staidness was vanquished by small-boy fireworks excitement.
On the way home we stopped at a fruitstand to buy some grapes. We all
went in, looking and gabbing and laughing. George furtively peeled off the
end of a red banana to show me they were the same as yellow bananas inside.
We got a bag full of purple grapes, and in the truck admired the way they
hang in bunches. Frank was driving, so I picked out the lovely big ones
and held them in my hand for him. I thought he'd chide but he didn't. I
wondered if he was remembering the one time I was angry with him - when
he didn't let me help fill his carrier even with a handfull of puny berries.
(When I accused him of being selfish and he was properly repentant)
On the phone a few days ago, in reference to what I said last Thursday
about him taking oodles of other girls out as long as he liked me better,
he asked me if I'd like him best.
I hemmed and hawed and said that you just don't make promises like that,
but semi-blurted, at the end, that I like him best now.
"Good," he said, and his voice softened, "because I like
you best."
August 21
Last night he said "If somebody gave you a friendship ring, what
would you do with it - hang it up in your room, wear it on a chain, put
it away ..."
"Who'd give me a friendship ring?"
"Him."
"Him. Him? Whom?"
"The guy from Aldergrove You're free not to answer that question."
"Which question?"
"About what you'd do with it."
"Oh. In the first place I wouldn't take it." There was silence.
I wondered if it had been a slap. He didn't ask why so I told him "...
because, for one thing, it would send my mother into a fit. For another
thing, it's too tangible. For another thing, it hurts too much when you
have to give it back."
"That was answered very well," he said.
I wondered again. "Do you mind?" I asked.
"No."
While we were driving he mentioned the letter he'd sent; the letter that
said "he wants to tell you that he cares for you very much, more, perhaps,
than he wants to admit."
"After I mailed it I wished I could snatch it back out of the mails."
"Why?"
"It's unusual to say more in a letter than you would verbally."
"I always do."
"But it violated a standard I'd set up."
A long pause. I felt queer - something was tense and my mind kept saying
"it's so painful, so painful," when I leaned back casually, looked
at the ceiling, stretched my hands up to touch it, and said "Are you
going to ask me to forget it? Because you didn't mean it anyway?"
"No, Ellie. I meant it," and then there was the compulsive
moving together, and the reassurance that is so sweet after pain.
This young kind is the best kind. It is only for a while and yet it has
a temporary permanence. - you know what I mean. It is free from the pressure
of adult love. Immediately, in an adult love, there is the thought, "we
must be married. When? Soon." And in young love there's no disturbing
thought like that one.
Frank and I do love in an almost adult way and if I were older it would
be "adult love" and there would be the pressure. Yet, I am sixteen
and there is no question of marriage, and so we can love in an adult way
without adult pressures. We can say, "I hope we always remember each
other," and we can remember.
next page
|