Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

car bounced along as if it would go forever through a perfectly black night with its lights cutting a frail path; and there was a jack rabbit on the road, leaping out of our way, but nobody cried out to notice it, nobody broke the singing, its booming tender sadness.
But I take delight in THE WATER OF THE BARLEY

    We got to church early, so that we could go and look at the graves. St. John’s was a white wooden church on the highway, with the graveyard behind it. We stopped at two stones, on which were written the words Mother and Father . Underneath in much smaller letters the names and dates of my mother’s parents. Two flat stones, not very big, lying like paving stones in the clipped grass. I went off to look at things more interesting—urns and praying hands and angels in profile.
    Soon my mother and Aunt Dodie came too.
    “Who needs all this fancy folderol?” said Aunt Dodie, waving.
    My sister, who was just learning to read, tried reading the inscriptions.
    Until the Day Break
    He is not Dead but Sleepeth
    In Pacem
    “What is pacem ?”
    “Latin,” said my mother approvingly.
    “A lot of these people put up these fancy stones and it is all show, they are still paying for them. Some of them still trying to pay for the plots and not even started on the stones. Look at that for instance.” Aunt Dodie pointed to a large cube of dark blue granite, flecked white like a cooking pot, balanced on one corner.
    “How modern,” said my mother absently.
    “That is Dave McColl’s. Look at the size of it. And I know for a fact they told her if she didn’t hurry up and pay something on the plot they were going to dig him up and pitch him out on the highway.”
    “Is that Christian?” my mother wondered.
    “Some people don’t deserve Christian.”
    I felt something slithering down from my waist and realized that the elastic of my underpants had broken. I caught my hands to my sides in time—I had no hips then to hold anything up—and said to my mother in an angry whisper, “I have to have a safety pin.”
    “What do you want a safety pin for?” said my mother, in a normal, or louder then normal, voice. She could always be relied upon to be obtuse at such moments.
    I would not answer, but glared at her beseechingly, threateningly.
    “I bet her panties bust,” Aunt Dodie laughed.
    “Did they?” said my mother sternly, still not lowering her voice.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, take them off then,” said my mother.
    “Not right here, though,” said Aunt Dodie. “There is the Ladies.”
    Behind St. John’s Church, as behind a country school, were two wooden toilets.
    “Then I wouldn’t have anything on,” I said to my mother, scandalized. I couldn’t imagine walking into church in a blue taffeta dress and no pants. Rising to sing the hymns, sitting down, in no pants . The smooth cool boards of the pew and no pants .
    Aunt Dodie was looking through her purse. “I wish I had one to give you but I haven’t. You just run and take them off and nobody’s going to know the difference. Lucky there’s no wind.”
    I didn’t move.
    “Well I do have one pin,” said my mother doubtfully. “But I can’t take it out. My slip strap broke this morning when I was getting dressed and I put a pin in to hold it. But I can’t take that out.”
    My mother was wearing a soft gray dress covered with little flowers which looked as if they had been embroidered on, and a gray slip to match, because you could see through the material. Her hat was a dull rose color, matching the color of some of the flowers. Her gloves were almost the same rose and her shoes were white, with open toes. She had brought this whole outfit with her, had assembled it, probably, especially to wear when she walked into St. John’s Church. She might have imagined a sunny morning, with St. John’s bell ringing, just as it was ringing now. She must have planned this and visualized it just as I now plan and visualize, sometimes, what I will wear to a party.
    “I can’t take it out for you or my slip will show.”
    “People going in,” Aunt Dodie said.
    “Go to the Ladies and take them off. If you won’t do that, go sit in the car.”
    I started for the car. I was halfway to the cemetery gate when my mother called my name. She marched ahead of me to the ladies’ toilet, where without a word she reached inside the neck of her dress and brought out the pin. Turning my back—and not saying thank-you, because I was too deep in my own