Chapter 20: Betty May Henderson

(No prior engagements)

Davy Hansen was a year ahead of me in school and he paid me no never mind. His big white teeth looked like they could bite through anything. When he grinned I would look at those white teeth and think how manly he was. When he was just a freshman he was almost as big as many of the seniors and nobody messed with him because he was so much stronger than the other boys.

He was always polite to people and nobody ever stayed mad at him outside of that bully, Elmer Davis. But to this day, when Elmer Davis sees me on the street, he turns and walks another way. Davy hurt him very bad one time. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

I was in the sixth grade and Davy was in the seventh grade and whenever I looked at him I felt all funny inside. His bristly brownish chestnut colored hair with its "rooster tail" at the back of his head made him seem so heroic to my twelve-year-old mind. I would look at him and slap my face to make my cheeks rosy. Sometimes I slapped too hard and it hurt.

I'd bite my lips to try to make them redder. I wanted him to look at me and notice me. I tried to make him notice me and see me. It seemed everything I tried failed. I couldn't throw myself at him like some people I knew. I had standards. My parents were strict fundamentalist Southern Baptists and didn't hold with any sort of makeup on girls.

We attended the UB Church because there were no Southern Baptist Church in our town, just that modernist Northern Baptist bunch. Brother Moore was a nice old man and we felt welcome there. For me, the best thing of all about that church was Davy. He went there with his folks.

Oh, I so wanted to be able to spend a whole dollar of my own money and buy some lip-gloss and rouge like many of the other girls wore; and yes, some mascara even. I felt I was so mature and ever so slightly sinful to desire those things. I was a wild sophisticate who had never even been properly kissed by a boy until I kissed Davy at the church picnic. I remember how scared I got when he tried to kiss me a second time and I ran off.

Here some of my classmates were already married and settled down with their new husbands. The Stuart girl was very pregnant when she got married and she was only six months older than me. We girls talked about what she had done and were "properly shocked" when we talked about her loose ways. Yet I believe most of us were perhaps a wee bit envious of her.

Oh, why wouldn't Davy notice me? I followed him around and looked at him, my heart ached, I wanted to run up and kiss him. right on the too. Oh how I wanted Davy Hansen. Yet I was also afraid he would laugh at me and call me a "silly girl" or something equally horrible. I had the crush to end all crushes on David Hansen.

Then, there was the day Davy hooked that monster of a catfish. I got soaking wet after I chewed off the little willow branch and stripped it and used it to help him work the big fish he had hooked ashore. Then he did the one thing I never would have thought he or anyone else would do. He gave away his giant catfish we later decided must have weighed well over twenty pounds even after it was cleaned and the head and tail were removed. When he saw how we hadn't brought much because we didn't have much to bring, he just gave it away and walked off, never even tried to let people know how generous he was.

I told him then and there, "I got my brand on you." He smiled and tried to kiss me back and I got scared. We saw each other a few more times at church and then Daddy lost the farm and we moved to town. I was devastated to be taken away from the boy I loved. I still saw him at school, but it was different now because I was a town girl myself. Also I was just starting to fill out in what the boys called "the right places" and I wanted Davy to start to notice me.

My father had always been able to make machines and things work. He couldn't find a proper job in town and took to fixing things for people. Then he opened his repair garage and became a success. He had found where he truly belonged.

However, I belonged with Davy. I knew it and I prayed so hard, somehow in time he would know it as well. Young girls feel so much when they are in the throes of first love. It was the most beautiful and yet the most painful time in my life.

Then school started and he rode the yellow school bus to town and went to junior high and then high school. I saw him at school almost every day. Also, every Saturday he came into town with his father and mother to do the weekly shopping. I always made sure he saw me. I tried to make him notice me and he would always say hurtful things back at me whenever I tried to get him to notice me and pay attention to me.

I wrote terrible, mushy poetry about my love for him. I dreamed of him and said, "Good night, Davy," every night when I laid my head on my pillow and drifted off to sleep. He said some very embarrassing things to me in my fantasies. Only grown women can know the heart of an adolescent girl. Adults laugh and call it "puppy love." Yet it doesn't make that exquisite pain any less.

Finally, when I was fourteen and (in my mind) a woman grown, I took the bull by the horns and said to him one Saturday, "Davy, I want you to tell me why you never ever asked to take me to a movie or kiss me at the school picnic or anything. Do you think I'm ugly?"

"Oh no." he told me an his face got very serious. "I think you are the most pretty girl in school. Why, you have filled out in all the right places," he blushed and continued, "and I wanted to ask you to go to the movies."

I stamped my foot in exasperation. "Well, why didn't you?"

"Well, mainly because every time I saw you, you were grinning at me like you were laughing at me and I figured you would just turn me down."

Then he looked down at the ground and wouldn't look up at me. "Besides, you was always saying all those mean and spiteful things to me."

"David Hansen you are a dolt and a dunderhead. I was smiling at you because I am in love with you and I want to marry you. And I said those other things to make you notice me and because I was afraid."

"Well, why didn't you just tell me? Why all this laughing and not saying anything nice to me?" He looked at me all bewildered.

With exaggerated patience and calm I told him, "Because, David, the boy is supposed to chase the girl. When a girl chases a boy, she has no character. I am a woman of character. So get to chasing me."

"What do I do?" He looked like a little boy, just so unsure of himself.

"Well, you start by taking me to the movie. And you buy me popcorn and we sit in the back of the theater and we have a nice time and maybe I will kiss you one time before the movie is over. But only once, mind you. And you don't get fresh with me." The lady with principles had spoken.

He smiled. "It would be Jake with me." Then his smile left his face. "But I'm broke. All I got is a nickel left. I bought Ma a birthday present and it broke me."

I was resourceful. "Here," I handed him a dollar bill. "Now let's go to the movie."

He had a doubtful look on his face. "Well, I have to tell my folks so they won't worry when they have to go home without me."

I grabbed his hand, "Come on. Lets go tell them." My arm was almost dislocated at the shoulder when I moved and Davy didn't. He was solid.

"Let's go this way," he said and started dragging me with him.

"Why this way," I asked him half angry, my shoulder was a little sore.

"Well mainly because this is the direction they are in." He looked at me in exasperation.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I snapped at him.

"Well, because you were giving all the orders and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. But no matter now, we're going in the right direction this time." He has always had this exasperating habit of letting me go on and on and then fall flat on my face. He does this on purpose, to tease me. I don't know if I love him because of this, or in spite of it. Yet I still love him, I do.

We found his parents sitting in Backus Drug Store drinking a malted. As we came up, his Pa looked at me in surprise. His Ma said, "Why Betty Mae. what a pleasant surprise. It is always so nice to see you. You have grown to become a very lovely young lady."

While some grown up women say stuff of this sort and make it sound like they are patronizing you. But when Misses Hansen said ir, she meant it and I could feel the welcome in her voice. She looked at me and looked at Davy and smiled. "When?"

Pa Hansen got a troubled look in his eyes and asked, "When what? When's what?" He looked at me and frowned and at Davy and frowned some more. "What's this when you're talking about?"

She slapped his arm and said, "Now you just hush up, Walter. There is no when like you're imagining. These are two very nice, very wholesome young people."

She turned to me and asked, "How long have you been seeing each other? Why hasn't either his father or I been aware of your interest in each other? Have you gotten serious about each other?"

"Well, Ma, I couldn't tell you because I didn't know myself until Betty Mae told me just a little while ago. I only knew for less than an hour." Davy's face had started to turn red.

Pa Hansen spluttered and choked as he tried to inhale his malted milk through a straw. "What. You knew what for less than an hour? Will someone tell me what in thunderation is going on here?"

Davy got a serious look on his face. "Pa, I will tell you about it later. It's all kind of complicated. I never meant to surprise you or nothin'." He took a deep breath and said, "I would like to take Betty Mae to the movies. I mean if you will do my milking for me. I would really appreciate it."

"Somehow, I seem to be in the dark here. But what perplexes me more is how not only is your Ma in the dark also, but you seem to just barely be coming out of the dark. Is my assessment a fair one?" He was looking at me as if I was a strange creature.

Then Davy stepped his foot in the cow pie for sure. "Oh, it's okay, because Betty Mae has known about us for two years. I just didn't know till today. Now do you understand?"

"How do you know she knew what you didn't know, two years ago?" He got more confused by the second.

"Well, Sir, I guess because she told me then she was goin' to marry me. She told me she had her brand on me then. I didn't pay her no never mind, but I guess I should of."

Pa Hansen started to laugh out loud, "The big fish!" he shouted. "It was at the picnic and the fish and I now understand." He looked at me and frowned," Well, if you knew then, how come Davy didn't know till just now?"

"Because I thought he was ignoring me and didn't want me."

"Why did you ignore this pretty girl, Davy?"

Davy looked uncomfortable and said, "Because I thought she was laughing at me and I could never look at a girl who didn't take me serious."

"Davy." I never ever laughed at you. If you knew what I wrote..." I stopped. I could never ever show anybody what I wrote in my diary.

"Wrote? Where?" He looked at me.

Ma Hansen looked at her not very bright sometimes son and said, "Shut up David."

Pa Hansen asked, "You need any money for the movie?"

"Well, I guess so, sir. Betty Mae gave me a dollar in case I needed it."

Pa pulled out his old coin purse and extracted three silver dollars from it. He handed them to Davy and said, "I think this is a very unusual courtship. But then your mother pursued me relentlessly for years before I permitted her..." his voice broke off as she shoved a wadded up napkin in his mouth.

"Now you just hush with those tales. You know they aren't true. You'll be giving my son a very poor impression of his mother." Her face was bright red and she was so flustered I knew there was some truth in whatever it was Davy's Pa was going to say.

"Oh no, Ma, Pa would never make light of you. I know how much he loves you and that you love him and I only hope I can be as good a husband and a father as he is. I mean that truly."

"Son, You keep talkin' like that and I'll just have to put another five dollars in your hand. He had a strange expression on his face, like he was holding back a lot of feelings.

"How much more to get to twenty dollars, Pa?" Davy asked with a straight face.

We all started laughing, his Pa the most and the loudest. "I think perhaps we should call on your parents this afternoon," he said. You come over there after the movie. I'll call John Case on the telephone and ask him to have his hired hand go over and do the milking and feed the chickens. We'll gather the eggs late."

I knew then we had his parents' blessings upon our heads. Now we came the hard part, my parents. My father expected me to marry one of the young men out of our church. I told him none of them ever caught my eye; they were just too shallow of purpose and plain empty headed. If he won't be reasonable, we'll just have to elope, I decided.