L: Alice #3

My children don't know it but I have a college degree. It wasn't
easy, that degree, but I got it because at the time it was the only
thing I wanted. For years I traveled back and forth to the campus, my
book bag snagging my skirt while I held my hair with one hand. Lechers,
those professors, though I did learn from them.

After my last test, when I felt that freedom of being done with
absolutely no prospects, I sat on a concrete bench and counted the
money in my wallet. I had three dollars and the change in my purse. I
had my blouse and three identical blouses at home. My skirt had exactly
three tears along its hem. It was a day of threes, which means - young
ladies, please take note - absolutely nothing. If you are sitting on a
concrete bench in the middle of the Texas sun, contemplating numbers,
get up and run to the nearest bus.

I did not run. My eyes dropped automatically when the sun was blocked
by a man in white, a man with black hair and crooked teeth and short
legs. A man who would say hello and offer me a cigarette, which I would
decline. A man whose who would stand before me with a noticeable bulge
in his white crotch while I tried to do anything but keep my gaze at
eyelevel. The paint flecks on his fly were my only recourse. How
interesting, that speckling.

I forgot everything I had learned. I leaned over my desk at night
writing letters in my careful script, licking the envelopes slowly
while my baby sister snored behind me. He lived fifty miles away, thus
the letters, and thus my stupidity.

A baby kicked at my waist. There was no doubt. I wrote more letters. He
wrote back. He showed up one night, his beer breath on my neck and his
hand on my stomach. "Let's do it," he said. And I did.

Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Though not really a girl, and that
was worth something. When I walked away from my house, I could hear my
grandmother nailing the windows shut, making sure my baby sister did
not make the same mistake. I didn't know it was a mistake, of course.
And isn't that just the way?