Chapter 12
Running Away to Florida

Leaves scrape and bone-hard stalks crunch as my boyfriend steers off the road, crashes down a ditch, and bounces up into a farmer’s field.

          “No! Stop!” I screech.

He switches off the engine. Cornstalks snap back, stiff and erect. It’s silent, eerily quiet except for cricket chirps. It’s as dark as the inside of a closet.

          “Why not?” he says. “There’s no one here to stop me.”

          “Why? Because it’s all wrong, farmers never drive cars out on the fields.”

He laughs, white teeth gleaming in the darkness. Tall, dry stalks break off as he opens the door. Crisp, cold air rushes in. Stalks grate and snap as he rustles through the field to find quick privacy. Since morning, I’ve daydreamed about our future. I’ve pictured myself a year from now, celebrating our first wedding anniversary. I saw myself in a beautiful black print sundress, lighting candles in a darkened dining room. I’ve finally learned to cook, and I’ve made a luscious dinner for two.

Now that my joyride is over, I’m restless, mortified, worried out of my skull. What have I done? What seemed like a good idea last night in Minnesota is not a good idea tonight in Iowa .

          Stalks break and tear as he gets back in the car. He leans over and grabs me, holds me tight.

          “Now you’re mine, all mine.”

          I don’t say anything.

          “You love me. Tomorrow we’ll get married.”

I love his looks—he’s slim, strong, handsome. I get butterflies in my stomach every time I see him. I love his confidence—he’s got a perfect smile. I love his attention—no one has ever shown this much interest in me, he follows me everywhere I go.

I slump in my seat, conflicted. I’ve heard him tell a lot of lies in our six months together, but he’s only a kid. I’ve seen him drive lawlessly, but he’s only a kid. I don’t think he knows the difference between right and wrong, but he’s only a kid. He charms his way out of trouble with his direct blue gaze and wide, white smile. When we ate supper tonight at a roadside café, I asked him how much money he had. He was paid the same as a regular mechanic all summer. His father helped him make the down payment on his station wagon and cosigned for the monthly payments. I still had some money left from my two jobs.

“I’ve got three hundred dollars,” he says. “Ma is gonna be mad. She got paid today. I took it out of her purse. I took her address book with Aunt Faye’s address in Florida , too.” He laughs.

Over this long day, he tells me what he knows about Aunt Faye. She’s widowed. She’s childless. She’s rich. She’ll help us get settled. During our conversation at the café, I ask when he’s last seen Aunt Faye. He stumbles around for an answer, shoots out some numbers and I deduct he was no more than ten years old. They met only once.

Last night was the final one of the season at the Starlite outdoor theater. One of my jobs was to drive a little train around the big screen for the children before the show. Then I went back to the entrance to sell tickets.

The week before we closed, I was surprised at an announcement when the lights went up. “A wedding is about to take place on the roof of the concession building.” The bride was a cousin my age from the Mausolf side. When the groom kissed the bride, everyone honked their horns. Why did she get married so young, I wondered, and why here of all places? I wanted to talk to her, but the lights went down, and she and her groom melted into the darkness. When I saw my cousin a year later, they had separated. She held in her arms a beautiful baby girl with honey-gold hair, asleep on her mother’s shoulder, as my cousin told me how her husband beat her on their wedding night and that he never stopped until she hatched a plan to leave him.

Marriage is the last thing on my mind; I love my job and I’m sorry to see it end, regardless of how tired I am before school the next day. The managers appreciate us kids and throw a surprise party for us in the concession stand. They want us to come back in spring.

After the party, Arthur kisses me a lot and proposes to me. “I want you to marry me.”

          “You’re crazy. We’re too young to get married.”

I don’t own a watch. I lose track of time. I love being in love. When I get home, Phyllis is awake and furious. It’s after midnight . “You’re late.” Déjà vu. She doesn’t let me explain why. Without putting it into words, she natters about, convincing herself that I did more than kiss. What does she mean, exactly? I still don’t know how her “birds and bees” story works. She hustles into her bedroom, wakes Daddy, mutters accusations of some nameless thing. She says she’s beside herself. Says I’m rebellious. Says I make her crazy. Says he should do something about it. He stays put.

While she’s blabbering, I start up the stairs to the attic bedroom. She shouts from the bottom, “I’m sending you to a foster home.” She gets my attention. I turn around. “They’ll work you to death,” she says, rubbing her hands with relish. “Don’t bother getting ready for school. I’m calling them to come and get you tomorrow morning.”

The foster home is a new threat. She must know something. This is an emergency, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know any grown-up people to call for advice. I wait until I think she’s asleep, go downstairs to the phone, and call a boy for the first time in my life. When Art hears her threat, he immediately comes up with a plan.

          “We’ll go where they can’t find you! I’ve got an aunt in Florida . We’ll stay with her.”

          “How do you know she’ll want us?”

          “She will. She never had any kids. I know she will.”

This is the only solution. The next morning, Mother doesn’t holler upstairs, as she usually does. I take that as a sign. She’s going to carry out her threat this time. Art drives up and I carry several armloads of my new clothes out to his car. Mother is in her nightgown and robe and sits on the couch, coffee cup in hand, watching me walk back and forth. She’s silent for a change. Daddy is out of sight.

We back out of the driveway, and it’s the last time I see home for nearly a year. I’m free of her. No one knows where we’re headed. But hundreds of miles later, I feel pulled in two directions.

          “I’m scared. I want to go home. I don’t want to get married.”

          “Yes, you do. You love me. Tomorrow we’ll get married.”

He’s hyper and happy; I’m sad and scared. I’ve ruined my life forever. There’s no undoing it. I’ve given up school, friends, church, choir, my bed. Tonight I’ll sleep in a cornfield in Iowa . There’s no hope of high school graduation, spending time with kids my age, a good job after graduation. It must be around midnight , and good girls don’t stay out after ten. There’s no going back. Mother will never let me forget this. I can’t go home.

          “I don’t know how to be a wife. I don’t know how to cook or wash clothes.”

          “Don’t worry, I know how, and I’ll show you.”

          “How do you know? You’re only sixteen, like me.”

          “I know ev-ery-thing,” enunciating it as he says it. His perfect, white teeth shine in the dark.

I shake my head. If I had been smarter, I would have found a family in town to work for, instead of living at home. If I had been smarter, I would have waited a year before I went steady with Arthur. If I had been smarter, I would have bought myself an old car and learned how to drive, instead of new clothes to impress the cliques at school. It’s too late. I sink lower in my seat, utterly deflated.

Arthur is excited. “I’ve got it all figured out. I looked at the map, and tomorrow we’ll be in Holly Springs , Mississippi , and we’ll get married. That’s the Deep South , they don’t know anything, and they won’t care about our age. If they ask, we’ll say we’re eighteen.”

          “Lying is a sin. I’m not ready for this.”

I blow out a sigh. A lifetime of church, Sunday school, three years of confirmation classes, and singing in church choirs leaves me worrying about my eternal soul. I didn’t know how to handle this emergency. And I’ve broken a commandment: Honor your father and mother. Tomorrow I’m going to tell a lie on the most important day of my life. I pray God will forgive me.

Arthur gets directions to a Justice of the Peace at a gas station. Now I know what Mother means when she says, “I feel lower than a snake’s belly.” I might as well be facing a firing squad. I always pictured a beautiful wedding, with a gorgeous white dress with lace and pearls and a long, long veil with a garland of white flowers. I hate myself; I hate Art; and I hate the situation I’m in.

My brain, already numb, is trying to comprehend what my eyes are taking in. In Minnesota , I’ve seen only a few nonwhite people in my life. In Mississippi , black-skinned folks dressed like farmers are here on the streets by the hundreds, warned by signs and colors what they can and cannot do. Drinking fountains, doorways, restrooms, and benches are separated with blue paint for white-skinned folks and orange paint for dark-skinned folks. The injustice hurts me, just like it did in Minnesota when I saw an Indian reservation with shacks unfit for humans.

We park in front of a red brick building with a Justice of the Peace sign. My body is not cooperating, my batteries are depleted; I don’t have the energy to change out of my blue jeans. The Justice of the Peace is white and speaks with a southern accent, as do the two witnesses from his front office. If they’re surprised at what I’m wearing, they don’t show it.

          He looks me up and down, and says to Arthur, “You’re trembling. Why are you so nervous, boy?”

Arthur claims he’s not. I keep my eyes on the floor. I’m not the person I want to be yet; I’ve never had the chance to be a grown-up Miss Nelson in high heels. I don’t want my name changed from Nelson to Griswort. The Justice marries us in less than a minute and wipes out my family name as my parents will wipe me off their list of children. He notes our names and the date, October 3, 1950 . He says he’s doing us a favor. I ponder this all the way down to Florida.