If you spend your whole life aching, you'll eventually get used to the yearning in your bones.
Her mother called them 'growing pains'.
An agony that would come and go, around the elbows and in the knees, as Betty would run over scrub-grass and as Betty would knock down tall weeds with her eager feet. She'd rub her dirty fingers over the skin, push deep into the muscle, and shakily exhale in that moment of release.
And then she'd run some more; always chasing down the sun, always trying to escape twilight.
Her mother, patience worn as thin as the apron across her chest, would sigh so heavily at the sight of Betty standing there – mud everywhere it shouldn't be and hair a mess to behold.
Just as Betty pressed until the pain would pass, her mother stared until things made sense again.
"Go clean up, Betty."
Water running over her face, washing away the make-up of her youth, and stripping her right back down to just another girl; just another girl in a dress that did not fit and just another girl in a body that liked to ache all the time.
Cute little blonde Betty was back in the McRae kitchen and her mother, smile as quiet as a winter's dawn, would kiss the top of Betty's freshened-up head.
And that other girl was left out there on the prairie, running 'til her legs gave out.
/
She wasn't the oldest and she wasn't the youngest. But being the only girl meant she was treated like glass sometimes – like she was breakable, like she was see-through, too.
Still, when the summer heat would creep up too high, Betty was the first to jump into that cold lake. It was her brothers who had to follow after, trailing behind like always as she would tug sweat-stained clothes from her skin.
In that lake, she would lose the stickiness of hard labor; lose the smell of cluttered coops and sacks of feed.
And so much more would fall away if she allowed it to.
Kicking away from the splashing of those boys she knew and loved and envied, Betty would float on her back for minutes at a time. She'd watch the clouds collect and then break apart again. She'd be blinded by bursts of sunlight and then blink until she could see once more.
And when Betty's eyes would reopen, there'd be some new girl was looking back – a new girl with her face, with her eyes, with her sure-fire smirk upon familiar lips, and with a terrible new ache beating wild in her heart.
And Betty hoped with all her might that this new ache would go away.
If she dug down deep enough, if she pressed a little harder, if she held her breath, if she squeezed her eyes shut and just waited.
/
Just like she didn't know a lake from an ocean, Betty didn't know tenderness from a sock to the eye.
The world wasn't made for women like Betty anyway, for women who lean too easily against the wall, for women who don't fall into a faint whenever some boy whispers into her ear…
No, the world wasn't made for Betty.
Just like that dress she hated wearing back home wasn't made for her either – a tight fit of cotton and lace, an uncomfortable reminder of the daughter she'd never really be.
This world was made for every girl that Betty left behind in her hometown.
This world was made for the girls who are married now and missing husbands who are fighting in some other land, for the girls with babies on their hips and flour on their fingertips.
Even here, in some crowded boarding house, Betty doesn't see another woman like herself.
They all lift the bombs, they all work until they want to drop, they all believe in this cause, in this war – but dim the lights and those women become sweet girls again, with strands of tucked-up hair falling down like a waterfall.
No, this world isn't kind to a woman like Betty so she doesn't see any reason for being charitable in return.
But there's an invisible shade widening out around her hard gaze, a purple bloom that smarts something awful when she tries to touch it.
And it's Kate Andrews, with tears trailing down her unbearably beautiful face, that puts another kind of hurt all over Betty's timid soul.
/
Somewhere, out on that prairie, that other girl finally falls down to the ground.
/
end