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so wanted to find a way through this. I thought and thought as I smoothed the bedspread over and over again, knowing I’d be late for school and Charles for work. And it hurt even more because I had to admit to myself that Mama was right this time. She’d told me when we were shopping for my wedding dress that Charles would never let me go on the trip. I didn’t believe her—why did he have to
let
me, anyway? I’d read the
Good Housekeeping
advice at Mrs. Gray’s house—that a good wife didn’t question her husband’s judgment because he is master of the house—but that wasn’t supposed to apply to me. Daddy had never told my mother what to do. And I felt like I could almost always get my way with him. If Daddy had nothing but a dollar left in his pocket and I wanted a steak, he’d buy it.
    I called to mind the time I was determined to have a coat my mother refused to buy. One late afternoon right before my father left for work, I’d found him in the living room flipping through one of my comic books. Dressed in his denim pants and the white work shirt Mama starched as stiff as barn wood, he smelled like diesel fuel, a smell I’d almost come to like.
    I sidled up next to him and asked him if he’d get me that coat I’d been talking about. He kept his money folded neatly in his pocket. He didn’t look up but turned the page, the palm of his hands calloused as hard as a butternut in places, the whites of his fingernails stained an indelible black from engine grease.
    “Sugar, if you want that coat, I’ll get you that coat.”
    It was August and hot as blue blazes outside, but I wore that coat every day. Mama was so mad that, for months, every time I turned around I found myself with more chores to do.
    I got up from the bed at last and opened my closet door to look for that coat. Did I have any say-so in this relationship? Feeling the thick brown wool, I knew that even though I had my own money for the trip, I wasn’t in control of my life. Our ideas about marriage, specifically what it meant to be a wife, were as diametrically opposed as two magnets facing each other the wrong way. Suddenly I felt like a fool. I should have known that our different backgrounds would come between us. Religion and the traditional values that accompanied it loomed large in Charles’s family. He often reminisced about the Sunday picnics after church when the old folks gathered to gossip while the young folks played horseshoes the whole afternoon. His sister would tell how when they’d be sitting on the porch on Sundays and the preacher came by, Charles ran around slinging all the dirty dishes into the stove and stuffing the dirty clothes into the wringer washing machine.
    Charles’s best memories centered on the church, his second home. My main memory of church was Mama complaining the few times we went about the reverend dipping into the church offerings to pay for his gas. And she had absolutely no patience for those snake-handling preachers.
    Still in my bedroom a half hour later, I just couldn’t let go of that coat. I didn’t want to see Charles, never mind ride with him all the way to school. I knew he was patiently waiting for me, probably hoping I’d accept his decision if only he gave me time. He’d been clear that it was his decision to make. As he sat at our brand-new kitchen table, Charles had flat-out insisted, “If you loved me, you’d stay home.”
    His eyes had widened in disbelief when I said, “If you loved
me
, you’d let me go.”
    As I took my treasured coat out of our closet, I knew I was going to Washington no matter what Charles said or how upset he was. It was way too hot to wear that coat on a sunny spring day, but it was my shield, as it had been with my mother many springsearlier. I put it on, ready to go to school, my blood still burning. In the car, Charles reminded me that a husband cleaves unto his wife; they become one flesh.
    Now I understood the true meaning of my wedding sermon.