The Edge
By Karen Douglass
How wide is the edge of the world? The horizon is not real. We make it up as we go along. All these years I’ve been doing this stutter step because I was afraid of going over the edge, and there is none.
The first time I read Whitman, I thought I was falling over the edge of something. I wanted to run around the room and yell, but I kept my place in my chair. I lived in a big house, on a military base where officers’ wives made as little original noise as possible without withering away in their nicely decorated living rooms. So I sat there very quietly, even though I wanted to scream with excitement. But that would have caused talk, pitched me irrevocably over the edge of niceness. Do you believe that Air Force fliers can be jerked right out of their quick-donning flight boots and made to sit behind a desk if their wives make too much of the wrong kind of noise? I did.
* * *
The men hang together at the O Club like blood brothers with jet fuel in their veins and drinks in their hands. They play liar’s dice while their wives raise kids and practice arts and crafts. On command the wives curl their hair and call in a squad of baby sitters and march in their modest high heels into the O Club and smile. Hardly any of them admit to reading “Song of Myself.”
I can smile, and my shoes only hurt after the first hour, but I have a handicap. My hair is still back in the sixties. Then I had good hair, long and straight. Now I have the same hair but it’s awful. It won’t fluff up like it should.
But at least I’m learning to be quiet when I’m supposed to and to talk when it’s expected. I don’t try to be mysterious and I’m not stupid. I made it through grad school, but I’m not supposed to talk about that. He says it’s intimidating. Like the other wives can’t understand words of more than two syllables?
He doesn’t know that I went to Mississippi when I was still in high school. He would be embarrassed if he knew how much I liked being there. Mostly because of a waitress at a lunch counter. I was in Jackson before the marches started, and I was so naïve you would have had to point to trouble before I’d see it. Anyway, while my mother was in her office, I strolled around like there was no such thing as trouble. This was when I had good hair and one of those faces that grew up before I did, so I looked older than I was.
One of those gorgeous Southern powder-puff days, I wandered into a lunch counter, before that was a political act, and ordered coffee and a doughnut and just sat there day dreaming and liking how clean and cool that place felt. There weren’t many customers, and the waitress caught my accent. “You from up North, honey?”
“Yes, Rhode Island.”
“That’s a good place to be from. You like it here?”
“Oh, yes, very much. It’s different.”
“Well, I spose it is. You married to one of the airmen from out at the base?”
“Me? Married? Oh, sure,” I lied, thrilled that she thought I was good enough for anyone to marry and cart all the way to Mississippi. I didn’t say that I had come with my mother, who was on an extended business trip. Her question and my answer sounded like the edge of womanhood. “Gee, I better go fix his lunch. How much do I owe you?” I paid her and walked out a little taller than I’d walked in. I had no idea then that it might be low class to marry anyone but an officer. God, I was innocent. Or maybe I took courage from my outrageous white sundress with big black roses embroidered around the hem. I could not wear that dress now.
Then Mississippi exploded and I grew up and married. I don’t drink coffee in luncheonettes anymore, but I admit I liked that dress. In fact, I may just brush my hair down smooth and go tell someone I was once taken for an enlisted man’s wife and still think it was a compliment. Then I’ll fill the car with junk food and drive till I am hopelessly lost, start over, and make some joyful noise. Maybe I’ll go back to Mississippi. That would be a alternative to spray painting “Screw You” on a plane.
Excuse me, I was just leaving. Fix your own dinner. Tell them at the O Club I said goodbye. No, on the other hand, tell them I’ve slipped over the edge.
[End]
About the Author
Karen Douglass
12603 Zuni Street, #107
Broomfield, CO 80020
PH: 207-229-4763
Email: kvd1243@yahoo.com
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