My Real Life

On long summer afternoons I often laid on my bed, careful not to muss the bedspread. The curtains at the window rustled slightly with a faint breeze, unusual during the daytime but ever present at night. My outfit was usually cotton shorts and some kind of sleeveless blouse or maybe a T-shirt, and I was always barefoot. My hair was in the pixie cut my mother preferred. I knew I could not grow it long until I was old enough to wash it myself and get the tangles out without pouting. I propped both pillows behind my head as I plucked my current book from the top of my bureau.

Outside the window my mother was hanging clean laundry on the line or picking sweet peas or green beans in the garden. I couldn’t hear her except when she spoke to Terrence as he crouched in the grass hunting for moles or field mice. The sound of Mr. Mollison driving his John Deere tractor in the field behind the house created a low rumble. The longer he drove, the more fragrant the air became from the clover he was threshing.

The book I took from my bureau was often a mystery, maybe Nancy Drew or the Happy Hollisters. Sometimes I read a biography of some famous woman we had studied in school that year. Clara Barton was a great favorite, although I knew already, I would never become a nurse – too squeamish and likely to exhibit every symptom of every disease. As the afternoon wore on, the sticky air became more even more dense, making it hard for me to breathe. Sometimes I spent the entire afternoon on my bed, finishing one book and starting another.

Soon enough my mother called from the kitchen, “Kathy, it’s your turn to set the table.” I reluctantly placed my bookmarker inside the book and returned it to the bureau. My other life beckoned, and I was again the youngest daughter, bound to her chores. Torn away from the real life I wanted one day to live.