She was about twelve years old when I first saw her. Her parents had just purchased the Worthington place on Carson Lane, just down the road a piece from our house on the hill, and I'd sometimes watch as she played with her dog in their front yard. She was a tiny thing, probably not weighing 70 pounds, with a small round face, pale with freckles running across a cute little nose, and medium length blond hair, always combed I could tell, by a loving mother.
On mornings when I rode the bus to school I'd feel sorry for her as she sat all alone in the big leather seat, barely taking up any space at all. At first she didn't smile, she didn't even look around too much. She was the new kid, and she was shy, too. Mostly she just stared down at her feet, or out of the window, as new passengers boarded and walked down the narrow aisle, laughing and calling out to their friends as they passed her by.
Once I heard another girl ask what her name was and her timid voice had replied "Becky Williams," before she'd realized that the girl had disappeared and was already laughing with her friends at the back of the bus. Embarrassed, she'd quickly opened a book to hide her blushing face. Often times, unless the bus was unusually crowded, she'd still be sitting all alone when it arrived at the school.
And then, one spring day, I answered a knock on our front door. Looking down I saw Becky Williams standing there on our doorstep.
"Is Judy here?" she asked politely, barely glancing up at me.
She looked so cute in her little yellow dress that I wanted to reach out a scruffle up her hair, just like I did to my little sisters. But I resisted the temptation, instead shouting up my stairwell to my sister.
"Hey Judy! That little Williams girl is here to see ya'."
From that day onward Becky was at our house quite regularly. She and Judy became close friends and spent many hours together doing their homework, playing in the yard, or swimming in the pool.
Over the next few months she was accepted into our family, soon becoming a part of it, it seemed. We all enjoyed seeing her elfish little face, with blonde ringlets bouncing as she walked, appear at our door. I began to think of her as just another little sister, and I'd pester and tease her just to hear her infectious giggle and to see her eyes sparkle.
As the years passed my brothers and sisters and I continued to grow bigger as we grew older. But it seemed that Becky just stayed the same size as she'd always been. Small. Even when she entered high school she still looked twelve years old. Often I'd hear her talking to Judy about school, and about how the other kids teased her because she was so small.
I remember feeling sorry for her again, wondering to myself why kids were so cruel. Couldn't they see that, despite her small size, Becky, the Becky my family had grown to know, was chocked full of laughter and sweetness.
Evesdropping on their conversations, I often felt like swooping in and gathering her up on my lap to tell her everything would be all right. It didn't seem fair that she should be having such a hard time in high school.
Somtimes, after I'd started driving, I'd give her and Judy rides to school, or to and from basketball and football games. Once I picked them up in a Jeep I'd been building and an oil line under the dash came loose, spraying oil all over their feet and clothing. Judy, of course, was a little irked, but Becky, who was sitting in the middle, just looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror as we drove along Tampico Road. Giving me a little smile she said she expected things like that to happen when she rode in my Jeep.
Something about her look, about seeing her eyes in the mirror, bothered me......but only for a second. I still thought of her as a kid, a little sister. I was fairly naive, too, and I just never did pick up on the signals she gave me.
After I graduated from high school I began dating. There were several girls whom I dated quite regularly, but usually they'd grow tired of me, or rarely, I of them, and we'd break up. Sometimes it'd hurt my feeling.
More often than not, however, it wouldn't matter too much to me. In those days my interests, my greatest loves, were Jeeps and fast cars. I'd spend all the money I earned while working in Dad's cabinet shop to buy parts to repair them and gasoline to drive them. It was a rare occasion when I had enough money left over to take a girl to a movie, or out to eat at Miner's Drive-In. Consequently, I just quit dating for several years, convinced that cars were a lot more fun than girls were.
Through all of those years, my car years as Mom called them, Becky still spent a lot of time at our house. Often she'd she'd show up when Judy wasn't home and play board games with us at our kitchen table, or just watch television in our living room. Sometimes she'd even come downstairs to play pool with myself or one of my brothers. I always thought she was taking a big chance then, since the downstairs belonged to us boys, and we could usually get away with a lot of pranks and shenanigans down there that Mom and Dad wouldn't tolerate upstairs. She could hold her own though, usually giving back much more than she'd recieved. My brothers and I soon learned to leave her alone, tolerating her frequent trespasses into our domain. And after a while, even though we'd never admit it out loud, we even began to enjoy her pesky little retributions and comebacks.
One summer, as Judy was driving Dad's car around the streets of downtown Yakima, she inadvertently ran a stop sign. Becky and my brother John were riding with her and none of them noticed the oncoming car until it was too late. It was a bad accident. Dad's '66 Rambler was totaled, but luckily no one was too seriously injured. Judy had a scalp cut that required stitches and brother John had cuts and bruises. Becky's nose was broken when it hit the rear view mirror, and her leg, although not broken, was severely sprained.
When I heard about the accident my immediate concern of course was for Dad's car. But after seeing the bandaged faces, and hearing the still frightened voices telling of the accident, I realized that we were very fortunate that no one had been injured more seriously, or perhaps killed.
That was the very first time it occured to me that I cared as much about Becky as I did my own brothers and sisters. Indeed, she'd been such an active part of our family for so many years that it was hard to think of her as anything else except a little sister.
Becky and Judy graduated from high school in 1969, four years later than me. Both of them went on to college, Judy to Biola and Becky to Patricia Stevens Fashion School in Vancouver, British Columbia. By that time I had become more or less absorbed in my own life, rarely thinking of either of them. That's why I was surprised when, one autumn day, Mom buzzed the cabinet shop on Dad's homemade intercom.
"Becky's back from college," she said over the phone, "she's stopped in for a visit. I think you should come up to the house to see her."
So, a few minutes later, I took my tool belt off, muttered something about interrupting my work just to visit with my sisters friend, and walked the 50 yards or so to the house.
Mom was working in the kitchen when I walked through the door, but I didn't see Becky.
"Where's she at?" I asked.
Mom looked up and smiled a funny smile, like she knew something I didn't know.
"In the living room," she said, still smiling that funny little smile.
I glanced into the living room from where I was standing. The afternoon sun was shining brightly through the windows, backlighting the scene, causing me to squint my eyes. I saw the shape of somebody standing there, but the shape was...well, too shapely to be Becky Williams, and much too tall.
"She must of brought a friend," I thought to myself.
Walking around to where I had a better angle I stopped in mid stride as my mouth dropped open. For several seconds I was absolutely speechless. Behind me, in the quietness of the moment, I could hear Mom giggling to herself.
"Hoohhhhly Mooohhhly!" I said at last, not particularly caring that perhaps I was being rude.
The beautiful creature... Nay! This beautiful woman!....now standing before me would never again be called "little Becky Williams"! She had somehow grown up.....and out.....and in all the right places!
Smiling, her blue eyes now twinkling at my reaction, she said, "Hi Ronnie", pretendig to ignore the fact that I couldn't stop gawking at her.
I became confused, didn't know exactly how to respond, so I just said, "Glad to meet you," as though she were a perfect stranger instead of someone I'd known nearly all of my life. I felt my face getting warm, knew I was turning red, knew I was making a fool out of myself, but still, I couldn't take my eyes off of her.
This couldn't be the same little girl who had bravely knocked on our door for the first time on that day so many years ago. The little girl who had only smiled sweetly when my Jeep had sprayed her with hot oil. The little girl who had shared so much of her life with my family. Standing there, still at a loss for words, I began to look at her quite differently than I had ever looked at her before.
And suddenly, I began to understand some of the things that had puzzled me in the past. Things like those little wordless glances she'd given me. The gentle teasing. The times she'd come to our house even though she knew Judy wasn't home. And the times she'd stop whatever she was doing just to wave from her yard as I drove by.
At that moment I realized, much to my surprise, that long ago, deep in her heart, she'd known that this day would eventually come. The day I'd stop seeing her merely as a little sister, seeing her instead as my life's partner.
And with this great revelation I once more found my tongue, gathered my wits about me.....and blurted out with newfound confidence.....
"Uhhh, ummmm, uhhhh, would you like to...uhhh...go with a movie to see me tonight?"
