Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

peeled for supper and sitting in cold water besides. Then I went into Mrs. Peebles’ bedroom. I had been in there plenty of times, cleaning, and I always took a good look in her closet, at the clothes she had hanging there. I wouldn’t have looked in her drawers, but a closet is open to anybody. That’s a lie. I would have looked in drawers, but I would have felt worse doing it and been more scared she could tell.
    Some clothes in her closet she wore all the time, I was quite familiar with them. Others she never put on, they were pushed to the back. I was disappointed to see no wedding dress. But there was one long dress I could just see the skirt of, and I was hungering to see the rest. Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was satin, a lovely weight on my arm, light bluish-green in color, almost silvery. It had a fitted, pointed waist and a full skirt and an off-the-shoulder fold hiding the little sleeves.
    Next thing was easy. I got out of my own things and slipped it on. I was slimmer at fifteen than anybody would believe who knows me now and the fit was beautiful. I didn’t, of course, have a strapless bra on, which was what it needed, I just had to slide my straps down my arms under the material. Then I tried pinning up my hair, to get the effect. One thing led to another. I put on rouge and lipstick and eyebrow pencil from her dresser. The heat of the day and the weight of the satin and all the excitement made me thirsty, and I went out to the kitchen, got-up as I was, to get a glass of ginger ale with ice cubes from the refrigerator. The Peebles drank ginger ale, or fruit drinks, all day, like water, and I was getting so I did too. Also there was no limit on ice cubes, which I was so fond of I would even put them in a glass of milk.
    I turned from putting the ice tray back and saw a man watching me through the screen. It was the luckiest thing in the world I didn’t spill the ginger ale down the front of me then and there.
    “I never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn’t hear me.”
    I couldn’t see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn’t from around here.
    “I’m from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering was if I could use that pump.”
    There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water. Now I noticed he was carrying a pail.
    “You’re welcome,” I said. “I can get it from the tap and save you pumping.” I guess I wanted him to know we had piped water, didn’t pump ourselves.
    “I don’t mind the exercise.” He didn’t move, though, and finally he said, “Were you going to a dance?”
    Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed.
    “Or is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?”
    I didn’t know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed.
    “You live here? Are you the lady of the house?”
    “I’m the hired girl.”
    Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you and speaking to you changes, but his didn’t.
    “Well, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I looked in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful.”
    I wasn’t even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man to say something like that to a woman, or somebody he is treating like a woman. For a man to say a word like beautiful . I wasn’t old enough to realize or to say anything back, or in fact to do anything but wish he would go away. Not that I didn’t like him, but just that it upset me so, having him look at me, and me trying to think of something to say.
    He must have understood. He said good-bye, and thanked me, and went and started filling his pail from the pump. I stood behind the Venetian blinds in the dining room, watching him. When he had gone, I went into the bedroom and took the dress off and put it back in the same place. I dressed in my own clothes and took my hair down and washed my face, wiping it on Kleenex, which I threw in the wastebasket.

    The Peebles asked me what kind of man he was. Young, middle-aged, short, tall? I couldn’t say.
    “Good-looking?” Dr. Peebles teased me.
    I couldn’t think a thing but that he would be coming to get his water again, he would be talking to Dr. or Mrs.