1940
Sylvia
I open the closet door and hang n1y wedding dress next to the dress I wore
to n1y 1nama's funeral, and then 1ny daddy's, not two weeks later.Its
blue softness slips through n1y fingers. I count the tiny pearl buttons at
the neckline, dyed to n1atch the dress. There are ten. I pick up the box
that holds n1y wedding shoes, my first high heels. I look down at n1y
feet and wiggle n1y toes encased in saddle oxfords - a school girl's shoes.
I sit on 1ny bed and place the shoebox beside me. My hand rests
on
the faded log cabin quilt and I ren1ember it on Mama's bed. When
she
and Daddy died, I put the quilt on my bed, and sleeping under it
comforts
1ne. I open the box, lift a shoe out of the tissue paper, and hold it
up to a spot of sunlight hovering over the bed. A giggle escapes my lips
as I kick off n1y shoes and slip on n1y high heels. I sashay out of the roon1,
adn1iring the tap, tap, tap rising off the floorboards.
"Sylvia, do you want to be a young n1an's slave or an old man's
darling?"
Gaines Richardson said when he proposed to n1e. I know
everybody
thinks he's too old for n1e and that l'n11narrying hin1 because I
have no fa1nily left. But that's not true. I may just be six teen, but life in
these 1nountains has brought me up hard and fast. I could get on the
bus tomorrow and head to Seattle, Washington and live with Aunt H
at, but l'n1 going to n1arry Gaines and live happily ever after just like
a fairy tale.
I am not like the won1.en in Coal Valley, content to live in the
hollers
and raise a bunch of young'uns until life wears 1ne out and I
beco1ne
old and wrinkled before I'm thirty. And Gaines is not like the
1nen
in Coal Valley he has a1nbition.
Scratching out a living in the coaln1.ines will not do for Gaines
Richardson
. Together, we are going to travel across the United States
until
vve reach the ocean. Tonight I will sleep on R ock House Mountain
for
the last tin1.e. To1norrow, I start n1.y new life.
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