Girl in Summer

This is from a book that Elizabeth Hynes wrote fifty years ago—partly to see if she could (she was that sort of woman) and partly to put into words her memories of her Alabama girlhood. We (her husband and her daughter, Jo) have prepared the manuscript for publication, but we have not altered it; the words are here as she wrote them. The typescript we worked from is clearly a working draft, full of interlinear revisions and cancellations. We believe that a final version must have existed—as we remember, she showed it to an editor friend—but that text has disappeared. Readers who knew Liz will hear her soft southern voice in these pages, as we do, and will see the folks she lived with and loved. That, surely, is worth preserving.

—Samuel Hynes and Joanna Hynes

It was the hottest summer anyone could remember. Though Mama had kept the fan in my room going all night, my batiste nightgown was wet through, its flowers pasted to my back, and my brown hair—which was streaked blonde by the sun—hung so heavily on my shoulders that I bent my head to lift my hair and let the cool air blow on my neck. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, I bent my head to the side and saw through the white organdy curtains the three-fingered fig leaves of the tree that grew outside my window. I could see a drop of dew shining on the purple skin of a fig. I loved the heat filling our garden with rich smells, browning my skin and bleaching my hair.

I stood on the bed and flung off my nightgown so I could see myself full-length in the glass. I looked like an ordinary, thin, big-eyed girl of eleven, but I could tell by the new warmth that was in the center of my body and seemed to ray out that I was on my way to being a woman. I jumped off the bed and was about to pull on my old shorts when I remembered that Henry Rountree was coming today, so I got out my white piqué dress with the Irish lace on the sleeves. I dressed quickly and was combing back my hair when Rosa came in to make the bed.

"You, Sally, get done with your primpin', cause we got a heap of work this mornin' 'fore Henry Rountree comes. Here, lemme tie back this mop. You wearin' this pretty dress Mrs. Simmons made you; you doan want your hair scraggly."

I watched her brown arms reflected in the mirror as she pulled the comb through my hair, suddenly jerking my head—"Lord, Rosa, you'll gouge out my brains. Wonder if he'll bring presents from Virginia?"

"Hold still, now, so's I can tie this ribbon. How come presents? He jus' comin' to drive us down to Point Clear. Reckon he'll stay with us till he go to his mama's cottage next door." She turned my head round to face her and inspected me.

"You want me to go to the creamery with you after breakfast, Rosa?" But she had seen I was trying to take her attention away from the Tangee lipstick that I had bought at Kress's and smeared on my lips. She gave me a stern look and reached across for a tissue from the dresser and rubbed hard across my mouth.

"Time enough to paint when you get some bigger than a gimlet tail and get you somethin' out in front. Go get your breakfast and doan spill nothin' on that pretty dress."

"You'll be real surprised to walk in on me some morning and find me struggling to get a bra round my enormous bosoms." As I crossed the hall to the dining room I heard her laughing, but I never minded Rosa laughing at me. When she laughed I felt just like I did when Mr. Langely gave the benediction at St. Mary's.

Even before I reached the dining room I could hear Mama going on about her economic theories...