Chapter 19: Betty May Henderson - No prior engagements

Davy Hansen was a year ahead of me in school and he never paid me no never mind. When he grinned, those big white teeth of his were as white as a snow bank and looked like they could bite through anything. As a freshman, he was almost as big as most 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 down the street, he will turn and walk the other way. Davy hurt him real bad one day. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

I was in the sixth grade and Davy was in the seventh grade and every time I looked at him I would feel all funny inside. His bristly light brown hair with its "rooster tail" at the back of his head made him seem so heroic to my twelve-year-old mind.

Whenever he was nearby 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 just wanted him to look at me and notice me. I tried to so hard to make him notice me; but everything I tried failed.

I couldn't throw myself at him like some people I knew. I had standards. My folks were strict fundamentalist Christians who didn't hold with any sort of makeup. Oh, I so wanted to be able to spend a whole dollar of my own money and get me get me some of that lip-gloss and rouge and, yes, some mascara, even. I felt I was so mature and even slightly sinful to desire those things. I was a wanton sophisticate who had yet to be properly kissed by a boy, ever.

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. Oh, why wouldn't Davy notice me? I followed him around and looked at him, my heart aching to run up and kiss him. (Right on the lips, too.) But I was scared 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 of the giant catfish. I got soaking wet after I broke off that little willow branch and stripped it and used it to help him land that big fish. Then he did the one thing I never would have thought he or anyone else would do. He gave away that giant catfish that later we found still weighed over thirty pounds after it was cleaned and the head and tail were removed. He saw we hadn't brought much and he just gave it away and walked off. He never even tried to let people know how generous he was.

I told him that day, "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. After Daddy lost the farm we moved to town and started to go to another church. I was devastated to be taken away from the boy I loved.

I still saw him at school, but it was different now that I was a town girl myself. I had just started 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 work. When he couldn't find a proper job in town, he took to fixing things for people and accepted whatever they had to pay himwith, sometimes a chicken or fresh dug potatoes. Finally he opened his repair garage and over time became a success.

He had found where he truly belonged. But I belonged with Davy. I knew it and I prayed so hard that in time he would know it. Young girls feel so much when they are in the throes of first love. It was the most beautiful and 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." But that doesn't diminish 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?"

His face took on a serious look and he told me, "Oh no, I think you are the most pretty girl in school. Why, you have filled out in all the right places."

He blushed and continued, "There were times 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."

He looked down at the ground and wouldn't look me in the face. "Besides, you always said all those mean and spiteful things to me."

"David Hansen you are a dolt and a dunderhead. I was smiling at you because I 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. He was just so unsure of himself right then.

"Well, you start by asking me to go 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. "That's great." 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 that 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 as 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.

"Why 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 that's all right, we're going in the right direction, now." 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.

We found his parents sitting in Backus Drug Store sharing 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 be very lovely."

Now some grown up women say stuff like that and make it sound like they are patronizing you. Buy Misses Hansen 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, Pa. 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." His face began to turn red.

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

"Pa, I will tell you about it later. It's all kind of complicated. I never meant to surprise you or nothing." He took a deep breath and I said, "I would like to take Betty Mae to the movies. That is 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 that 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 looked at me as if I was a strange creature he had never seen before.

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

"How do you know that she knew what you didn't know, two years ago?" He grew 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 very loudly, "The fish!" he shouted. Other people near us looked to see what the yelling was about. "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 uncomfortably and said, "Because I thought she was laughing at me and I could never look at a girl who didn't take me seriously."

"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 in a bewildered way.

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."

He 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 that 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 that 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. Either that or in the morning."

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