Red Toed Women Chapters 1

Chapter 1.

I could make many stories about life and its living. I have rewritten my own story over the years. Here, though, with all of you, I will tell the story as I know it from the inside out.

When I was small enough to fit my head easily upon my father's shoulder, I watched the world around me with eager eyes. There was the widow Mells who lived one house away from us. She wore dark colors, her hair pulled back into a bun. I wondered if her hair was pulled so tight that it made her eyes even wider than they were. Such beautiful eyes, they were an amber brown that caught the light.

Sometimes those eyes caught my father's attention until my mother nudged him with her elbow. "Francis," my mother would say, "she's not one of those and don't treat her like one."

You might think Widow Mells a mature woman. You would be wrong. She was young and Mr. Mells was, in life, a beautiful man, all chiseled. I remember that his eyes were blue, robin's egg blue rimmed in dark blue. Made me think of the sea and ice flows. He only seemed to smile when Mrs. Mells was near. One day his truck lost its brakes as he want down the curve of Franklin Street. My father said that Mr. Mells would have made it if Johnson's German Shepherd hadn't lunged into the road in front of him. Mr. Mells pulled the wheel too hard to the left and went through the chain link fence and over the high wall into Matheson School playground. My mother always said it was a miracle that no children were there are the time.

I don't think Mrs. Mells thought much about the miracle. She seemed to be looking for him, Mr. Mells.Sometimes I saw her as I looked out of the 3rd story window at Matheson School. She sat on one of the swings and looked up at the granite wall behind her.

Betty Neufel said that Mr. Mells was dead before he reached the hospital. Betty's brother worked for the ambulance in town. She knew things like that. Well, I tell you true,sometimes I think Betty made up what she didn't know. That's all right. I don't think anyone except5 Mrs. Mells knew when he died. I see her, in my mind,sitting at the table, reading. In a moment she stiffens, puts down the book. She knows in that moment that Mr. Mells is gone, that life is changed. She never picks up the book again.

The was one version of the story. That version survived the years intact within my hometown. No one dared poke at it. And why would anyone poke at the story of a young man and a young woman who marry, are happy and then - a moment changes the course of expectation for both of them.

Before she married, Mrs. Mells was a teacher. Oh, she didn't have to give up teaching. My mother said that she did because she wanted to have her own children. My mother always sighed after she said that and brushed back the whisp of hair that floated back to hang along he curve of her brow.I thought it one of her beauties, that whisp of hair that floated free. So much of my mother's life was wound and bound with family and father and duty. I wonder if at one time she sat tat the table in the evening,waiting for my father, reading a book. How different life would be if she knew in a moment that father was gone, that life was changed...

My father lived. My mother lived and faded a little more day-by-day.

The first time I bought nail polish and painted my toenails. I wanted them red. Red is a favorite color to me and I wanted my toenails to dance with the color to shout it and run in angry defiance through the green of summer. I could not, however, find the color I wanted in the drugstore.

"No red?" I asked Mrs. Wanala. She shook her head and giggled behind her hand."We don't carry that here. Let's see," she turned to the display of nail polish and picked an earthy red. It almost matched the color of the bricks outside. I shook my head. She chose mauve. All I could think of was Mrs. Starr who had her hair done once a week at Lucinda's just down the street. I often followe3d Mrs. Starr home. Her freshly washed and set hair resembled a cloud of violets,faded violets. Her hair was mauve.

I shook my head again and tentatively pointed to the last bottle on the second row - on the right. "That one?" Mrs. Wanala picked up the bottle and weighed it in her hand. Then she bent over the counter the bottle cupped within her hand beneath her breasts.

"Does your mother know about this?" she whispered as if it was a crime for me at fifteen to buy nail polish and paint my toenails.

"No, she doesn't. My mother doesn't seem very interested in this type of thing."

That made Mrs. Wanala tut tut. After all, my mother had me and there was me - the other five babies ended in miscarriages and the doctor made my mother promise - no more. That's how the story went. I often wondered in my growing years if that was why my father slept in a different room.