Who is Anita from Friend of My Youth: Stories and what is their importance?

Anita grew up on a farm near a small town. It was a difficult childhood in a poor house with lots of siblings, in cold, harsh weather. She walked to school through the biting cold with her friend Margot. Both of them enjoyed school for the escape it brought from their farms, but both dreaded it for the fear of humiliation, rejection and gossip. Both longed to escape their small-town life. Anita held secret feelings for Reuel, the man who drove the school bus, but did not know that Margot also liked him. When Margot began an affair with him, Anita was shocked and felt betrayed in a way. She felt that Margot had managed to escape whereas she was left in the same life. She trained to be a nurse and managed to leave that way, but felt like it was second-best. She would secretly have liked the romance of being swept away by Reuel.