Glenn, I don’t know why you brought Sheila with us, Mama said again in her chilly tone. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to take our twelve-year- old daughter on this trip. Mama was sitting in her usual place in the front seat of the car in the middle next to Daddy. She had on one of her nicest summer skirts with a starched white blouse and high heels. She had spent a long time fixing her short hair which was a recently altered shade of brown. She had dressed up for this visit to a new doctor in Houston who she had been referred to by our regular family doctor, Dr. Sanders.

I told you Selma, Daddy said mildly. She’ll be good company for me while you’re in with the gynecologist. Plus if you feel like it, we can go to a movie afterwards. No harm mixing in a little fun while we’re in Houston, is there? Daddy looked very nice, although he hadn’t put on a tie. He wore a blue sports shirt and brown trousers nice enough to wear to work but no tie which was odd. He always wore a tie when he went to the school even in the summer when he was the only one working.

I guess not, she said. We do need to make a stop at the Bargain Gusher to look for school clothes, too. Neither one of us has a thing to wear to school this fall, and it starts in a few weeks. (Mama taught music in the elementary grades at the Richards public school where Daddy was the superintendent. I wished they both had different jobs.)

Oh no Mama, please, I said from the back seat. Not the Bargain Gusher today. I know you won’t feel like walking around in there when you’re so sick. Can’t we just go to the movies like Daddy says? I think it’s a western with Kirk Douglas. Please don’t make us go to that store.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s not a torture chamber, she said. What in the world is wrong with you? She looked in the mirror to add more red lipstick.

I hate that store, I said. None of the other kids go there to get their clothes. It looks like an Army Surplus store. I was going into the seventh grade in the fall and was beginning to see the clothes I wore weren’t like those the other kids wore. My grandmother Ma, on my daddy’s side of the family, made most of my school clothes. The only other clothes I owned came from the high fashion department of the Bargain Gusher. Not a flattering selection there for a girl who pictured herself as tall and thin, an almost teenage girl who was in reality short and chunky. Difficult to reconcile sizes in the Bargain Gusher, for example.

Your friends don’t have school teachers for parents either, Daddy said. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

A penny saved is a penny earned, I said. And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Pretty is as pretty does, Mama said and smiled. The tension in the car was over; we were off and running with one of our best road trip games we called reciting sayings.

Let every tub stand on its own bottom, Daddy said. We all laughed at this one. It was his favorite, and he never failed to mention it when we played the game. The countryside was beautiful as we drove the 90 miles from Richards to Houston to take Mama to the gynecologist. It was a hot, humid summer day in Texas. We kept the windows rolled down to try to keep a breeze blowing through our ‘58 Chevy, but the air blowing in was warm and sticky.

We had passed the Grimes/Montgomery County line a few miles outside Richards as we entered the Sam Houston National Forest. The pine trees got thicker on the winding two lane road. I recognized the farmhouses where some of my friends lived and thought how lucky they were to live in the country. Not that living in town was all that cosmopolitan. With a population of 440 including dogs and chickens as my granddaddy used to say, and no stoplight or even a stop sign, it wasn’t a bustling urban metropolis. But Daddy had a small ranch off this road, and I hoped someday we would build a house on it, actually move out there. I knew Daddy really wanted to, but Mama said it was bad enough to live in a town with dirt streets without moving to a cow pasture. That was pretty much the end of that.

He and I went out there a lot, though. Usually my granddaddy Pa went with us because the cows belonged to Pa and me which meant we took care of them. They were fine in the summer when they had good grass and water. Winters were hard. We had to make sure there was plenty of hay to feed them.

We played the alphabet sign game when we ran out of sayings, looking for letters for the rest of the trip to Houston. There weren’t many signs on these back roads so we’d go a long way between letters. As we got closer to Houston, the signage increased and Daddy called “Z” when he saw the zoo billboard.

Daddy, you always win, I said. I was still on “W.” Both of you were ahead of me, Mama said. I can’t keep up with y’all. How do I know y’all don’t cheat?

Selma, we wouldn’t do that. You just have your mind on other things; that’s all. A little while later he added, We should be at the doctor’s office in a few minutes. I think we take a right at the next light.

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Daddy drove up to the office and parked. The three of us got out of the car, went inside and while Mama signed in, Daddy and I sat down in the waiting room. Several other women sat reading the women’s magazines provided on a big coffee table in the middle of the room. Everyone was sitting quietly waiting for their names to be called. No one was talking, so we didn’t either.

Daddy and I each picked up a different magazine from the coffee table. He started reading The Ladies Home Journal while I selected Reader’s Digest because their stories were shorter. They were both dated a couple of months before but were not too old to be interesting. Mama was filling out paperwork because she was a new patient. When she finished, she took it back to the unsmiling nurse at the front desk. One by one the women were called to go back to see the doctor. As fast as one would go back, another one would sign in. The waiting room was always full, but remained quiet. Finally, they called Mama’s name. Daddy and I were glad because we were running out of magazines.

Mama had been gone for a few minutes when we heard this loud voice drifting down the hallway into the waiting room. Daddy and I looked at each other as we recognized the voice belonged to Mama. Her regular speaking tone was loud – she didn’t have an inside voice. When she was nervous, the volume was earsplitting. She must have been very nervous today.

Well doctor, we heard clearly. I’ve been having this problem all summer. It seems like nothing I try helps.There was a lull in the conversation as the doctor murmured some response. The ladies in the waiting room who had looked up and around when they heard Mama speak went back to their magazines.

Yes, I’ve tried the vinegar douche several times, we heard her say. The ladies around us perked up again. Daddy and I tried to look like we hadn’t heard her this time. Unfazed. Disinterested. That was us. What is a douche, I wondered, as more low undertones came from the exam rooms in the back of the office.

So you think I have a fungus in my vagina? Mama’s voice rose to the loudest level yet as every woman in the waiting room focused their attention on Daddy and me.

That’s it, Daddy said and turned to me as he threw his Ladies Home Journal on the coffee table in front of us. Whistle, sing, hum – anything you can do to make a racket in here, he ordered. I had no idea what a vagina was or how sick you had to be to have a fungus in it, but the look of panic on Daddy’s face made me realize this was no time to ask questions. I started whistling as loud as I could. Daddy was humming When the Roll is Called Up Yonder and tapping his feet. He led the music at the Richards Baptist Church, so naturally he would pick a hymn to hum.

The ladies around us in the room were now staring at us with nothing short of amazement. The unsmiling nurse at the desk was flabbergasted at the commotion in the otherwise sedate atmosphere. All hell had broken loose in the form of nervous laughter at the Houston gynecologist’s usually quiet office when my daddy started humming and I started whistling.

Well, we need to get a breath of fresh air, Daddy said to me when he finished his song. Let’s go outside to wait for your mother. We both got up and strolled nonchalantly out the door. When we got outside, we could hear the howls of laughter from the women inside in the waiting room.

Daddy smiled ruefully at me when he heard the merriment we created, told me he wasn’t in much of a mood for the movies after all, but how about we stop at Shipley’s on the way home to get us each a donut? The Bargain Gusher idea was also done for the day, thank goodness.

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This story from my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing published in 2007 by Red Letter Press still makes me laugh when I think of that day with my parents who were in their early thirties, the day we made the trip to the gynecologist in the big city of Houston. No one laughed on the ninety-mile trip home that day, but we did each get a donut from Shipley’s.