I lived in a bad room on a bad street in a bad part of a fine town. Across the street, beyond a hedge that filled up every weekend with wine bottles and broken colored glass, a creek ran lazy through a narrow and shallow ditch. The creek filled, too, with glass and rubbish and if it rained hard the night before, the yard of the house where I lived filled with creek water and I had to step carefully across it to stay dry, to avoid the floating refuse which eddied crazily over the sand.
Don’t think that I was too much impressed by my surroundings. I knew where I was, and knew, too, that they fitted me. Poor bastard. But knowing that didn’t mean anything and so I lived alone in my one room, one floor removed from the hedge and the creek and the bottles and the trash.
Out my one window I could see beyond the creek, and across the train yard and into the town itself. Church steeples rose above the one and two story buildings of downtown and in the distance the haze from the iron foundry softened the horizon. I grew up in this town, though I’d lived in other towns. Somehow, I was back home. I often looked out the window and thought ‘this is a fine town.’
And the fine town cared. The sign on the way into town said, “We care!” I did not doubt they cared. I feel certain they cared, they cared for someone, and no doubt they cared for something, but I never noticed that anyone cared for me. Poor bastard. I say that a lot, but at least I’m not black. Fine Southern towns always care about them and sometimes they care too much.
Across the street lived two mutes. Sisters they claimed, but I wondered as I watched them walk toward the bus each morning. Arm in arm they strolled together, the taller, thinner sister pulling the shorter, fatter sister along. The fat sister, Dora, was short and shiny, as if when she was compressed the oil seeped through her skin in waves. She always smiled a simple smile. The taller sister, Justine, seemed glacially cool, even when pulling her sister down the street by the hand. I could not see into their room but occasionally, and whenever one appeared nude before the window it was simply-smiling Dora, and then only for a moment until Justine, her blonde hair flashing in the light, snatched the curtain across the window.
I often sat at my window, lights out, waiting for the moment Dora would betray a partially nude Justine with a flick of the switch. It was an interminable wait. The lights stayed on most of the evening, and when the curtains stayed open I watched them talk. They talked with their hands. Fingers flashing over and over more quickly than I could follow. It took a week or more before I realized Justine seldom repeated herself, while Dora seemed to play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ over and over.
Every night before bed Justine moved over to Dora, kissed her on the head and then climbed into one of the two beds in the room. Dora always sat at the window for hours afterwards hands flashing in a solitaire version: rock, paper, then scissors.
They had no friends other than themselves, and I never knew what they did for a living. I thought about following them and one day did until they split and Justine headed toward the court house and Dora toward the river. I saw them wave to each other as they parted. Justine’s hands speaking in intricate patterns and Dora saying simply ‘scissors.’ I stayed on the bus, stared after them as the bus pulled away, and rode a complete circuit back to the bad room in the bad part of town.
Little happened to upset their routine until I read in the newspaper that Dora had been arrested for public urination. That night I watched Justine through the window. She seemed restless and moved from place to place, even sitting in Dora’s chair next to the window. She talked to herself. Her hands flashed over and over, sometimes anger fast, sometimes slowly as if anguished. I wondered at her pain, wondered how it felt to be alone if you’re not used to it. I thought about Dora and her vocabulary and wondered if Justine were better off.
The next day I read that Dora had been placed in a home on the other side of the state. Her sister, the paper said, had committed her. That night I watched Justine stare out the window until I went to sleep.
The rain began sometime later and in the morning the yard was filled with milky white water and shredded paper.
Let this coming of age story of a boy named Bean take you back to a simple time. Set in a small southern town in the 1960's, encircled by a river and gleaming white cotton fields.
