Little Town, Great Big Life. Curtiss Matlock Ann

she won’t choke on.”

      As Corrine headed away with her baby cousin, Aunt Marilee said, “I tell you, Belinda, I am fixin’ to spontaneously combust with these hot flashes, or else slap somebody, and the doctor I saw today was no more help than the man in the moon….”

      The current bane of Aunt Marilee’s existence was menopause, with doctors coming in a close second.

      Between her mother, who Corrine had more or less taken care of instead of the other way around, and then living with Aunt Marilee and helping with her mentally handicapped cousin, Willie Lee, and then with the babies, and adding in Aunt Vella and Miss Belinda, Corrine knew far more than the average teenage girl about the intimate details of womanhood. She was able to assist in instruction in health class at school. Many times the girls at school, even those in senior class, sought her out for answers that their mothers were too embarrassed to tell them about boyfriends and sex. With Aunt Marilee’s latest trials, Corrine knew more about menopause than any other young woman of her age should be burdened with knowing.

      And that she was in love with a young man of twenty-four would be considered surprising? What could be considered surprising was that she had loved Larry Joe since the age of thirteen and knew that she always would.

      Corrine thought all of this as she made herself a Coca-Cola vanilla float, at the same time keeping Emily’s quick hands out of everything within her one-year-old reach. While she was going about this, a man came in and wanted a sweet tea and an order of nachos to go.

      Corrine instantly seized the opportunity. “I’ll get it, Miss Belinda,” she called out.

      Miss Belinda’s hand came up above the shelves, waving. “Okay, sugar. Thanks. We’ll be there in a minute.”

      Corrine made the man his order and even took the money, which she placed at the cash register.

      When she sat down at a table with her float and Emily, she thought about the sign in the window.

      Help Wanted.

      It was time she quit working for free.

      Corrine caught sight of her own and Aunt Marilee’s reflections in the dark dining room windows as they got supper on the table. Gathering courage, she told her aunt about her idea to work at the drugstore.

      Aunt Marilee looked at her with wide eyes. “You want to go to work?”

      You would have thought she had said she wanted to fly to Mars.

      “Yes.” She had all the arguments ready. “You have Rosalba to help you now. I need to be responsible and earn my own car insurance. And Blaine’s will be perfect for me. I already know how to do everything. And Miss Belinda is your cousin. And she could use my help with Aunt Vella away.”

      “You want to go to work?” Aunt Marilee repeated and dropped into a chair.

      “I’m sixteen. Lots of the girls are already workin’. Paris has worked since she was fourteen.”

      Papa Tate walked in and snitched tomatoes out of the salad.

      Aunt Marilee said, “She wants to go to work.”

      “I heard.” His eyes met Corrine’s. He was caught in a tight spot.

      Later that evening, Aunt Marilee came into Corrine’s bedroom and put her arms around her and said, “You are growin’ up,” and cried a little, as if Corrine had caught some rare disease.

      Corrine, patting her aunt, wondered which one of them was growing up. Or if, indeed, anyone ever really did grow up.

      CHAPTER 6

      Ahead of Her Time

      WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG, BELINDA WAS curled on the end of her couch, half a glass of wine at hand, fire in the fireplace and Rod Stewart on the stereo. She was reading about menopause in Prescription for Nutritional Healing. It was the same book that she had consulted to help Marilee that afternoon. The book was continually kept open on a stand at the pharmacy for the convenience of customers. After reading in it and talking with Marilee, Belinda had about convinced herself that she was not pregnant but into early menopause. She had experienced hot flashes for two years. This was not at all surprising to her. She always had been a woman ahead of her time.

      “Hello, Belinda? This is Corrine.”

      “Well, hello, sugar. How are you this evenin’?”

      “Fine.”

      Belinda stopped in the middle of a sip of wine. Oh, Lord, don’t let the girl be in trouble.

      Her mother had for years taken many an after-hours call from teenage girls, and a couple of boys, wanting to know how to get rid of some nasty infection or a surprise pregnancy. It was amazing how young women today were as ignorant of their bodies as young women had been some hundred or even fifty years ago. Parents, supposedly modern in thought and accepting of all manner of “alternate lifestyles,” still did not speak plainly to their children at an early age about normal sexual behavior. They let their children learn the way everyone had learned for generations: from movies, television and the stupid kid up the block—and none of it accurate, healthy information. Basically, modern young women were not modern in regard to any of it. They could smoke weed and get a tattoo and let a boy do all sorts of things to them, but by heaven, they didn’t want to know about their own vaginas and uteruses. They were too busy paying attention to boys during health class to pay attention to what they needed to learn, until they got a crash course. It was said that experience was the best teacher.

      In cases of pregnancy, Vella Blaine had a rule about referring the girl to a good counselor that she knew, who would help navigate the decision-making process. (Belinda had the urge to jump up and look for the woman’s card, which her mother had given her for this express purpose.) For any nasty infections, Vella gave private instructions for remedies, or a referral to a good physician.

      Three times in the past few years, Belinda had received similar inquiries. She had referred them to her mother, but now, with her mother’s absence, she saw plainly that she would be the one to have to step up to the plate. She did not care for the idea. It was all just awkward and annoying. She had the wild thought to give out the phone number of her mother in France.

      Thankfully Corrine ended Belinda’s worry in the next instant with, “I was callin’ about the help wanted sign I saw in the drugstore window.”

      “Oh.” Belinda brightened and took a fresh breath.

      “Is that for full-time or part-time?”

      “Well, sugar, at this point I will take any good help I can get. Are you interested?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Honey, you are hired!” Belinda raised her glass with joy.

      “Well, I first need to know the hours and what you are payin’.” Politely but firmly said.

      “Of course you do,” replied Belinda instantly. She’d always liked Corrine, and the girl’s statement just increased her opinion, which was that the girl was highly intelligent and a go-getter.

      On the spot, Belinda quoted a salary twenty-five cents an hour more than she had planned to offer.

      The headlights of Lyle’s patrol car pulled in the drive right at 8:55 p.m.

      When on night duty, Lyle liked to take a break around nine and come home for a snack, either a health drink or for a more intimate snack of a different sort. Any of his nightly stopping in, however, had to come before Belinda settled herself in her beautiful bed, with her reading, everything from the Bible and Bible commentary to the Wall Street Journal and the day’s financial reports printed from the computer to the biography of some highly successful person, either current or from history. Sometimes Belinda had all of that in the bed with her. One thing was certain—she disliked, for any reason, to be disturbed from what she called her nightly reading, meditating and consciousness raising.

      She