Nobody Knows Your Secret

19

Virgie tolerated her husband's loutish behavior and drinking because that was what a good wife did. She made excuses for Cleve's laziness. She ignored his insults. There were only two loves in Cleve's life: himself and booze.

Cleve made love to his beer bottles every night, drinking himself into a stupor before going off to snore the night away. His slim waistline abandoned Cleve like a mariner deserting a sinking ship. 

He'd been a right smart handsome fellah when Virgie first saw him down at Cotton's Mercantile so many years ago. Young and tall with a thick head of shiny, black hair, Cleve turned more than a few heads then. Virgie wasn't so bad herself back then either. She had all her teeth and a luscious mane of auburn hair that cascaded over her shoulders.

Both Cleve and Virgie were from hard-scrabble, poor mountain stock. They married and set up housekeeping. 

Cleve had several jobs, but his main occupations, even then, was drinking moonshine or beer. Cleve came from a long line of hard drinkers. He grew up thinking no man was worth his salt if he couldn't hold his liquor.

Cleve was all man when judged by this measure.

Virgie tried hard to do her duty. She became pregnant three times but miscarried. On the fourth try, she carried the fetus to full term, delivering a lovely little girl that Cleve named Claire.

Virgie was secretly hoping that Cleve would allow her to name the baby because he had told her the baby's name would be Hortense Nelly, after his mother. 

After the baby was born, and the midwife said it was a girl, Cleve came into the bedroom.

"I declare if she ain't about the purtiest thang I ever laid eyes on."

From that moment on, she was Claire.

Claire was a beautiful name, and Virgie decided she'd bring the couple luck. She was a happy child. 

Virgie had two more stillborn babies after Claire. 

All those little ones, she often brooded, looking out at the little rocks marking each grave in her backyard, and one living. 

A dark cloud would come over Virgie as she wondered when she would be looking out her window at the rock that marked Claire's plot of ground.

But unlike so many children from the backwoods, Claire made it through those first few years. Virgie did not have much education, but she knew enough to know that fevers and maladies stalked the smallest and weakest.

She made sure Claire was kept warm, and she fed her the best of whatever scarce food was in the house. Cleve's erratic work habits meant that he was often fired. 

Even in the hardest times, Virgie made sure the milk cow was fed and kept in the ragged shed Cleve called a barn. Claire needed milk. Virgie's had dried up shortly after Claire was born.

And now, Virgie's beloved daughter was 15. Hard to believe so much living had been compressed in such a short time. It seemed like only yesterday that her little girl was knee-high to a grasshopper. 

She remembered that graceful tyke scampering about the yard chasing lightning bugs or making flower petal necklaces. Virgie had spent many an hour as her cracked, calloused hands fashioned corn husks into dolls for her beautiful baby girl. 

Virgie secretly savored the sound of her little baby's sparkling laugh that brightened her otherwise dull, work-filled days.

Not only was her girl pretty, she was smart, too. Claire was doing well in school. There was talk of a scholarship. Maybe even a year or two at college. Her daughter's future looked bright.