Sometimes after Sunday School I walk her
to her car, Miss Hooker, my teacher. I
want to marry her one day so it’s good
practice to open the door for her and
watch her get in, but not too closely, she’s
got legs, then shut it after she’s settled
in and remind her to fasten her seat
belt. Then I take two or three steps back so
I’ll feel a little safer and she turns
her engine over, the car’s I mean, and
waves goodbye and I see her lips move but
I can’t hear her, she drives an old Chevette
and she’s going to need a muffler soon
and I’d tell her so but I’m just a kid,
ten years old, and she’s 25 or so
and my teacher as well and a grown-up
woman on top of all that so I mind
my manners just like she was my mother,
which I hate to think about because she’d
make a better wife for me when I’m old
enough, if only she’ll stay single ’til
I can ask her for a date and take her
out in my own car then even if it’s
just Father’s. Maybe I’ll quit school and work
and save enough for a down payment, then
buy my own. I’ll be too old for Sunday
School then, Miss Hooker’s third-grade class I mean,
and I’ll be shaving and have a man’s voice
and maybe I’ll learn to smoke and drink beer,
my folks do so I know how it’s done but
I need practice even though those are sins,
Miss Hooker says, so we’ll have us a talk
and if she says that she won’t go out with
a man who smokes and drinks, I guess that’s our
first argument and we’re still only pals
but I want something more, some sweet romance
that leads to courting and engagement and
marriage and honeymooning and children,
in that order. I’ve got it written down.
I don’t know just where babies come from but
I’ve got a feeling her legs are involved
because when I see them, see them up close,
my own feel frail. And there’s the honeymoon
–who knows what happens then? We’ll leave the church
all married-up and get into the back
seat of a Pontiac and I guess go
to the motel out on the highway and
I’ll carry her across the threshold, that’s
a fancy set of words for through the door,
and plop her down on one of the beds, no
single bed for us, we’ll want something nice
with a lot of space, then go back out and
carry in our bags and the extra one
I’ll bring with checkers and cards and Yahtzee
and Strat-o-Matic baseball and some snacks
and then we’ll be in business, and there’s free
cable. And when we’ve had enough Go Fish
it’s time for bed and because we’re married
we might as well lie in bed together,
the same bed because we’re also buddies,
but between then and the end of Go Fish
we’ll have to see each other naked, which
means without any clothes or damn few, so
maybe she can go into the bathroom
and take hers off and I’ll stay outside and
take mine off, I mean outside the bathroom,
not the door to our motel room, ha ha,
and we’ll meet halfway, which makes some sense
because we’re a team now, on account of
we’re husband and wife, or is that wife and
husband, or maybe both.. I’ll get in
bed first and shut my eyes and she’ll come out
when I call, Okay, Miss Hooker, I’m not
looking, the coast is clear, it’s time to sleep,
and she’ll say, Okay, no peeking, cover
your head with the blanket, please, and I’ll say
Sure thing, you can trust me, and even if
I peek it might still be too dark to see
and breaking a promise is a sin and
how many times has she said that sinning
gets you Hell? I don’t want to go to Hell,
I just got married, and not when I die,
either. Then she crawls into bed and shakes
hands and we kiss and if we’re tired we’ll fall
asleep and we will be, being married’s
hard. I might ask her just before we do
when exactly the first baby will come
and then she can lay it all out for me.
Before Sunday School last week Bill Nutt
told me that the husband and wife rub and
rub against each other while they’re lying
there and a few months later she feels it
in her belly and–whoops–there’s a baby.
That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.
When Miss Hooker drives away I just stand
and stare until she leaves the parking lot.
Then I walk the half-mile back home. Mother
and Father are reading the newspaper
on the front porch. They don’t come to church, they
already know where babies come from and
all the dope. They tell me it’s a secret
and that I have to be older to know.
How much older, I asked them. Old enough
to know better, they said. That old, I said.
~ Gale Acuff
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He is the author of three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).
He has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.