Bitter in the Mouth

Linda read about the Wright brothers’ first flight in her book on North Carolina history. She notes two important things: first, that although Orville was the first to fly, Wilbur’s flight was the longest; second, that “their true achievement wasn’t flight but flight accompanied by a safe landing” (61). Linda notes that she always liked Wilbur better. Until eighth grade, Linda and Wade share a bus stop in front of his house. His mother would send out cups of hot cocoa on cold winter mornings, and when it was really cold, she would drive them to school; Linda kept this secret from her parents, who would have disapproved, albeit for different reasons.

Although they shared a bus stop for years prior, Wade and Linda didn’t have a conversation until sixth grade, the summer after Kelly decided she had a crush on him; Linda asks what Wade and his mother laugh about on his way out the door, and Wade tells Linda that he tells his mother jokes. When the bus arrives, Wade goes to the back while Linda sits in the front, joined a few stops later by Kelly. That summer, Kelly’s obsession had developed, and she had written a weekly “Wade Report” to inform Linda of his activities, unbeknownst to him. On the bus, Kelly whispers “Cute” to Linda; Linda surprises Kelly by replying “Mine,” although Kelly believes Linda is referring to her new purse.

At 10 days old, Virginia Dare disappeared; according to legend, she was subsequently raised by Native Americans. Linda’s book never addressed how she became an orphan, as “That sort of information would have given her character too much psychological depth and nuance” (68). As a young woman, Virginia attracted the attention of a young Native American man whom she called “O!” and the two were happy together. However, she also attracted the attention of an evil magician named Wanchese, who turned her into a white doe; she could only be freed if shot through the heart by an arrow made of oyster pearl. On the day of a hunt, both O! and Wanchese shoot her through the heart simultaneously, the first arrow freeing her, only for her to be killed by the second one.

Kelly and Linda began using “I Virginia Dare you” to pressure themselves into doing something. They were both fascinated by the tale; however, their interpretation was that “being too beautiful could get [them] killed” (69). As a result, their first dare was not to brush their teeth for a week because commercials had linked white teeth and fresh breath with beauty. Their last one came after Kelly explained the true meaning of the story to Linda: “Be careful of a man’s arrow” (71). Kelly dares Linda for them to lose their virginity by the end of their first year of high school.

When Linda was 11, she learned how to manipulate language to produce tastes she enjoyed. She begins doing this to suffer through her mother’s cooking, then continues the practice as she grows older. While growing up, Linda knew pancakes only as the instant kind, made by Harper; it isn’t until she’s older that she tastes pancakes made from scratch, made by her then-boyfriend Leo. She insists on calling them something else, but they must go through several names before she settles on “griddle cakes” because the two words are “voids,” words with no taste. Linda falls in love with Leo in part because his name has a beautiful taste, of parsnip. They spend eight years together, but Linda never tells him about her incomings out of fear that he, as a psychiatry medical student, would react poorly.

Wade and Linda talked at the bus stop before school from sixth until eighth grade. Linda enjoys the conversations because “there was always a known and dependable endpoint to [their] talks” (81), and she was able to stave off the incomings for the few minutes the conversation took place. The rest of the day, Wade and Linda are “indifferent” to one another, “living through the last days of our gender segregation” (81).

The summer after seventh grade, Wade and his mother spend the summer in Tampa, with her mother. The pair admit in coded language that they will miss one another and that they are looking forward to seeing one another in the fall. By this point, Kelly’s “newsletter” has become both a daily occurrence and “a good and early lesson on why we shouldn’t believe all that we read,” as Kelly’s infatuation with Wade was entirely one-sided and imaginative (82). That fall, when Wade returns, he is more grown-up and more confident: “Travel had made Wade worldly” (84). Others in their eight-grade class had likewise developed. The girls “immediately began to exclude and oppress” (85); some of the boys had grown as tall as Wade, but “had achieved it in awkward ways” and, thus, deferred to Wade (86).

Wade had given Linda a note upon his return telling her that he missed her. However, when he asks her about it, she turns and runs, then spends the next week cajoling a ride out of her father in order to avoid him under the guise of menstrual cramps. After a week, though, she is no longer able to use that excuse, but instead gives him a note that returns the sentiment. The two begin dating, though secretly—she writes in her notebook L+OSB, for “orange sherbet boy” after the incomings she associates with him, in order to hide the relationship from Kelly.

In Linda’s family, “[t]ouch was a sense not explored or celebrated” (89). For a long time, Linda believed this was also why her family didn’t show skin, didn’t drink, and didn’t dance, except for Baby Harper, who loved to dance. Linda never even saw her parents or grandparents kiss one another. One day that year, Wade kisses Linda, breaking “an invisible seal around our bodies. A thin covering of skin had peeled away from us, and we were new underneath and tender as a bruise” (90). Linda asks Wade not to tell anyone, and Wade agrees. He believes, however, that it is because it’s their business; Linda knows that Kelly can never know that they kissed, though.

As the year progresses, as Wade’s mom is rarely home, Wade and Linda further progress and explore one another. However, one day he tells her that he had kissed another girl while in Tampa that summer. Linda freezes and asks what her name was; Wade tells her it didn’t mean anything, but for Linda, this is beside the point, as her “first kiss was Wade’s second (or third or fourth). […] The kissed-girl’s existence, now revealed, was a threat, a possibility, a likelihood that she could again be first. Her existence was useful to Wade, though he had only a vague idea why” (93).

As summer approaches, Wade tells Linda that he’ll be spending the summer in Tampa again. He asks her to be his first sexual experience, saying “Please, Linda.” Linda tells Wade that she’s not ready, then dresses and leaves. However, she overhears Wade practicing the same line for the other girl: “The last word of the plea was apparently interchangeable” (95). Wade’s mother leaves their family before it’s time to go to Tampa. As it turned out, Wade’s mother had met someone while on a trip to Myrtle Beach and had decided to leave her husband for him. Wade instead flies to Tampa alone; he promises to call once there, but he does not speak to Linda all summer.

When Wade returns, he has transformed from “a disheveled James Dean” into a “Ken Doll” (98). He quickly becomes one of the popular kids and begins getting a ride to school from “three other Ken dolls who were juniors and already had their driver’s licenses” (98). Kelly, too, has transformed, and is reluctant to accept Linda’s criticisms of Wade (although she is also unaware of Wade’s history with Linda). Linda becomes an invisible, diligent student during her time in high school: “If it hadn’t been for the smoke from my cigarettes or the smell of it in my hair, it would have been difficult to find me” (100).