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I started out intending to write about Miss Betty Jean in the last blog but got sidetracked by "Specimen." Across the road ftom the clinic I noticed Miss Betty Jean's house abandoned and overgrown with weeds. This gave me a pang. I used to like to drive by her neat white house with the neat fence around it, flowers planted in the yard, a swing on the front porch.
Miss Betty Jean was the postmaster for years in our town. She never learned to drive, and walked to work, which wasn't far. She was a spinster, an "old maid" who took care of her mother until she died. There were rumors no one dared speak aloud, sotto voce, that Miss Betty Jean was illigitmate, and that she had a trace of colored blood. She was always aloof, not a friendly sort of person; probably pride and fear of hurt feelings made her that way. She kept her own counsel, and lived an impeccable life.
She was tall and lanky and had a long thin nose, and kept her hair and person neat and clean. She stayed active long after she retired, and kept her house and yard pretty to look at. I don't know who inheirited her place, no one has lived there since she died, but it's a shame to see mulberry bushes as tall as the house in her flower beds, and the house beginning to get that saggy look unloved houses have.
She would be distressed if she could see the fence falling down and the yard obscured with overgrown bushes and weeds. I could still see the swing on the porch, gently swaying in the wind, as if her spirit still hung around her house, loving something her physical form could no longer inhabit.
Susil
one wonders why it is left to rot.