This is how my mind works. Things like this are part of my psychological makeup. I don’t think you can deal with this. I don’t think you have the slightest idea who I am. You know what May Garth said when she was here at Christmas. She said, anyone who could study math could never understand a poet. She said, anyone can count. I got so mad at you for hurting me that I started thinking evil things about you, about the way you look and trashy stuff like that. I guess I’ll just go on and be a bluestocking and an old maid. If you were someone I should love I could mail this letter to you and you would know what it meant. I can’t and you can’t.

Sayonara.
Rhoda

Dear Rhoda,

We got back to school in a snowstorm. I wrote to you before Christmas and I wrote to you on January 2, 1956. Now I am writing to you on February 7, 1956. I am sorry you got mad at me and I don’t blame you. When you started that stuff about us having a grandson I felt like I was getting sick at my stomach. My parents are real old people. They were forty years old when I was born. I am afraid of getting old. I’m afraid I’ll never get out of Tech and get a job.

Please write to me. I have a lot of things on my mind right now. My brother is coming home from Europe and my mother hates his wife. They have three kids who were born over there. We have never even seen them. My brother’s wife is almost six feet tall. She was the valedictorian of Agnes Scott. She is really crazy. She drives my mother crazy. They have been letting the children run around with Greek people and send us pictures of them wearing weird clothes. It drives my mother crazy. Now they are coming home. We don’t know why Gray married her. She is really crazy. She wrote my mother and told her they put flowers in their toilets. She says anything that comes into her head.

I’m drinking beer. I was drinking it all afternoon and then it started to rain and I started thinking about you so I decided to write you. I don’t think I’m ever going to get out of this school. I have to get a degree because my father has lost all his money. He is working in a hardware store in Martinsville now. His ancestors built Martinsville and now he is working as a clerk in a hardware store. That is very hard on my mother.