24
24 Rennie grew up in a place and at a time when how a person looked didn't matter all that much. Girls weren't encouraged to try to make themselves appealing to the opposite sex. "Pretty is as pretty does" was not just said, it was taught and observed by the young folks of that day. Even had they known about make-up they wouldn't have been allowed to use it, nor would they have had the money to buy it. Every woman and girl wore her hair long. To bob your hair was a sin and was thought of as the sign of a "woman with a bad name." Just as soon as a woman married (and they sometimes married at fourteen) she must begin dressing like her older women relatives—long dresses with long sleeves, high-necked collars. Once one of Rennie's cousins stopped and spent the night with them on her way from her father's farm to one of the coal camps. After she left, Sarah Ellen remarked how pretty her clothes were and how soft and nice her hands were. "Not rough and chapped like Rennie's." John heard what she had said and scolded her. "Yer sister 's hands are the way they are because she works hard fer you and me. The hard places are jewels in the sight of the Lord. Yer cousin needs to look nice fer the job she's chosen, but it's the devil's work." Sarah Ellen wasn't old enough to understand, but Rennie could guess at what he meant, and she blushed, not because he had praised her but because he had hinted at what her cousin did at the mining camp. Rennie had never paid any never mind to how she looked. The only place she could see her face was in the cracked looking glass tacked up over the wash bench, above the wash pan and comb case in the kitchen. She had never seen her whole reflection until she and Jane and Joan were cleaning the house for Johnnie. In one of the bedrooms was a large mirror on a dresser, and by standing far back in the room they could see all of themselves in the mirror. It had been a lot of fun for them, but there had been no pride. Some stranger would have seen Rennie as plain if it hadn't been for her beautiful chestnut brown hair, verging on red, and her sparkling bright green eyes. Her sharp nose was just a little long to match her strong chin. It was a face that spoke of strength of character more than beauty, but a face that you were not likely to forget once seen. Sarah Ellen was just the opposite. Even at the age of three she showed signs of being a beautiful person. A lovely child, full of love and strong feelings, she had curly, light yellow hair that would turn to a bright yellow as she grew into womanhood. It was so curly that it seemed to be growing on her head at both ends, and it didn't grow long as Rennie's had. Once Hank threw a handful of cuckleburs into her hair, and it took Rennie hours to get them out. Sarah Ellen had done the same to Hank's hair, but his hair was so short and straight it wasn't such a job, although he yelled just as loud. Sarah Ellen had large, round, light blue eyes and a heartshaped mouth that could spread into a bright smile or droop into a pout, depending on her mood—which could change in a second without warning. "Ye better get married before Sarah Ellen gets grown," Rennie's friends would tease her. "She's so purty she'll get all the boys." Rennie didn't mind. To her Sarah Ellen was her "heart and joy." Where Rennie, even as a child, had been quiet and thoughtful, Sarah Ellen was never still from the time she got out of bed until she returned at night so tired that she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. She never walked if she had room to run, she never whispered, and she never spoke in a quiet voice if she could yell. "Can't ye keep that child quiet so as I can read? A man can't hear himself think around here anymore," John would complain to Rennie. You...
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