At the Far End of Nowhere

by Christine Davis Merriman

  Spence and I split up to shop for each other, while Daddy waits in the car with the engine running to keep warm. As we drive back home, I sit in the back seat and try to keep the parakeet I bought for Spence quiet in its cardboard box. Even though I pet its head through one of the holes in the box, occasionally, it lets out a chirp, which I try to disguise by coughing loudly or bursting into “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” my very favorite Christmas song. Apparently, this ruse works—or maybe Spence and Daddy are just pretending they don’t hear the bird’s cries.

  Daddy drops us off at the house and goes back out to Sweeney’s.

  “I’ll be right back,” he says. “Just need to pick up a few things.”

  Spence and I go to our separate rooms to wrap the gifts, then pile them under our Charlie Brown tree. I don’t try to wrap the parakeet. I’m afraid he might smother in there, sealed up in wrapping paper. The shape of Spence’s gift to me gives it away. Long and thin, with a hooked handle poking through the top of the wrapping, it is obviously an umbrella. We give Daddy his perennial Christmas gifts—the Hagers-Town Almanack and a package each of dried figs and dates. Daddy calls them “figs and digs.”

  When he thinks we’re not looking, Daddy stuffs each of our Christmas stockings. He puts an orange in the toe, then pours in nuts and chocolate malted milk balls (we call them “moth balls”) just the way Jimmie used to.

  Spence names his new parakeet Asimov after his favorite science fiction writer. We put Asimov in Spence’s bedroom, in an old metal cage we find in the attic. I spend the long afternoons near the cage, keeping the parakeet company and reading a library book called Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker. I begin to identify with the heroine, a farm girl growing up in the 1940s in the wheat fields of Montana.

  I count each day of Christmas vacation, marking how much time I have left to be safe, to be at home, to read and dream in peace. But then, as always, it arrives. Sooner than soon, it’s six A.M., time to get up for the first day back at school.

  I get dressed, fix breakfast, bang on Spence’s bedroom door. “Time to get up for school!” Then I pack our lunches.

  At 7:25 A.M., Spence and I put on our coats and say goodbye to Daddy, who is still eating his breakfast. Then I remember Asimov, and run to give him more birdseed and fresh water. I find him lying stiff in the bottom of his cage, yellow and green plumage still bright, even in death. I yell for Spence, who comes running. We see a large dry wound at the parakeet’s throat. His cage is littered with mouse droppings. He has been bitten to death by a vagrant mouse!

  Spence and I place Asimov gently on an old dish towel in the bottom of a shoebox, and place the box high on a back-porch shelf. No time now. We will bury Asimov later. His body will stay cool here. We have taped the shoebox lid shut so the cats can’t get to him.

  Spence and I race the seven-tenths of a mile to catch the bus at the intersection. I take my seat in the school bus, my heart still racing from the sprint. As the yellow bus crawls over narrow winding passageways between steep banks of plowed snow, I can see before me, as clear as day, the vibrant small soul of a parakeet named Asimov flying past the limits of time to meet another loved one, the soul of a baby red squirrel named Chicoree. I know surely now that animals do have souls. Is it our human love for them that has given them souls? Or is it the surrender of their own wild spirits to us that has grown our human souls?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TRYING TO FIT IN

  CHANGING clothes in the girls’ locker room is a real education for me. Here, I can see that all the other girls wear bras. I don’t really need a bra yet. I’m flat-chested, and still wear an undershirt under my slip. Also, I see the other girls using underarm deodorant on their shaved armpits, pulling on nylon stockings over shaved legs, fastening their nylons to garter belts.

  I want to fit in. It would be nice to be popular. I begin to take some steps on my own. I buy a couple of “trainer bras” (the kind with flat cups that stretch), find some old nylons and garters in Jimmie’s dresser drawer, and begin my inside-out transformation. A couple of problems: Jimmie’s stockings are way too long for me, and her garters are too big around for my skinny thighs. I get a needle and thread from Jimmie’s sewing basket, stitch gathers in the garters so they fit more snugly, pull the nylons up as far as they will stretch, and wrap the tops, roll upon roll, around the garters. When the stockings are finally on, I notice how hairy my legs look through the tight taupe fabric.

  I borrow Daddy’s razor and shaving cream, sit on the edge of the bathtub, wet and slather my legs in the tub, and run the razor up and down each leg to a couple of inches above each knee. That seems to be how far up the other girls shave.

  I know Daddy won’t approve, so I keep the bathroom door locked while I shave. I finish off by doing my armpits, and putting a Band-Aid on the nick I’ve cut into the back of one ankle. I clean up the hair and Daddy’s razor, and put everything back the way it was.

  The next day, I wear a bra and nylons for the first time at school. The bra works out fine, but as the day wears on, the nylons begin to work their way out of the garters, and start to sag down around my legs. Whenever I stand up and walk through the halls to change classes, the stockings work their way a bit more out of the garters, farther and farther down my legs, bagging and settling in ever-thickening coils around my ankles. Every chance I get, I duck into the girls’ room to tug them back up and reroll them in the garters, but the elastic in Jimmie’s garters is worn out, and just won’t hold those stockings up for more than a few steps.

  Some of the girls begin to titter at me. Paloma pulls me aside and tells me I need a garter belt and smaller stockings.

  When I get home, Daddy greets me in the kitchen, razor in hand.

  “Lissa, have you been using my razor? Spence says it wasn’t him. He’s got his own razor.”

  I have to think fast. “I borrowed it for Home Economics, for my sewing project. I use it to cut fabric.”

  “You shouldn’t use my razor on fabric, Lissa. It makes the razor dull, and I’ll wind up cutting myself.”

  The next day, Paloma hands me a Hutzler’s bag. “Here. My mom got these for you. I think they’ll fit.” In the bag, I find two pairs of nylons and a pink garter belt.

  Another day, Paloma pulls me aside and tells me, “Your hair is dirty. It’s greasy. You should shampoo every night when you take your shower.” The next day, she brings me a tube of concentrated green shampoo and a small portable hair dryer that has a plastic hood and a hose that attaches the hood to the dryer. I tote them home in my book bag and, feeling like a criminal, smuggle them into the house.

  Well, we don’t have a shower at home, just the bathroom sink and the tub. So that afternoon, as soon as I get home, I lock myself in the bathroom and shampoo my hair in the bathroom sink. The shampoo from Paloma smells really good. Afterward, I lock myself in my bedroom and dry my hair. The plastic hood balloons out around my head. The dryer is kind of loud, but Daddy is out working in his woodshop. He won’t hear it running.

  About an hour later, I emerge from my room and start to fix supper. Daddy comes in and stares at me. I glance in the kitchen mirror. My face is bright pink from the heat of the hair dryer, and there is a line on my forehead where the plastic band of the dryer has left its mark.

  “Why is your face so red, Lissa? What have you been doing up there in your bedroom?” His voice is stern, disapproving. He continues to glare at me.

  “Have you been drinking?” Daddy’s voice is suspicious and accusing. Daddy doesn’t approve of drinking. Alcohol is forbidden in the house, except for an old, nearly empty bottle of Four Roses whiskey at the back of the dish cabinet in the pantry. I think it belonged to my grandfather. Once, Daddy poured a little bit of it into a teacup and made a hot toddy for Jimmie when she got back home from walking through snowdrifts to see a patient during a blizzard, half frozen to death.

  “No,” I say. I can’t look him in the eye. I just get started fixing our supper.


  The next day, Daddy has a surprise for me as soon as I get home from school. He’s made a special tool for me. “Here, Lissa. Now you won’t need to borrow my razor for your sewing projects.” The tool has a delicate silver handle and two screws at the top that clamp a razor into position so that both edges are set for cutting.

  Paloma tells me I should bathe every day so I won’t stink. I start getting up very early in the morning, while Daddy is still asleep. I push the stopper down in the tub and start running the water. The tub is set in the wall right opposite the headboard of Daddy’s bed in the next room. Even though I try to be very quiet—I even put a washcloth in the tub directly under the faucet, to muffle the sound of the water—sometimes, Daddy wakes up.

  “Lissa, is that you?” Daddy calls from his bed. “Is that water I hear running?”

  “It’s raining,” I say. I don’t dare keep the water running too long, for fear Daddy will get out of bed and come to the bathroom to see what’s up. When the water rises to just a few inches, I turn off the faucet, sit in the tub, and take a very quick and shallow bath. Jimmie used to take what she called “sponge baths” standing at the sink, but I like the idea of immersing myself as much as I can. I feel cleaner that way.

  In ninth grade, I begin to notice the makeup the other girls wear at school. Jimmie never wore makeup, and I’ve heard Daddy say bad things about what he calls “painted women.”

  “They’re just trying to get men to fight over them,” he says.

  But I really do want to fit in and be attractive, so I use some of the birthday money I’ve been saving. I buy foundation, eyeliner, and mascara at the drugstore. Locked in the bathroom, I put on the makeup last thing before I leave the house to catch the school bus.

  Transformed, I rush out the door before Daddy can get a good look at my “painted” face. I soon learn that Daddy’s eyesight is so bad, he doesn’t notice the makeup.

  Daddy trusts Paloma’s mom so much that he lets her take me along with Paloma to our class dance, the Eight Ball. Paloma’s mom buys me a blue and white (our class colors) dress for the dance, and I have fun watching the other kids do the twist. A bunch of us learn to do the Freddie together. It’s easy to do. All you have to do is stand there and move with the music. It’s like you’re doing jumping jacks. First, you stick out your left leg and raise your arms. Then you stick out your right leg and raise both arms again. You just keep doing this until the song is over. It’s so much fun!

  When I’m near the end of the ninth grade, Spence tells me, “Hey, Lissa, my friend Mark says I have a good-looking sister.” Spence seems proud of me, the way he was a long time ago when I won that bubblegum bubble-blowing contest. It makes me feel good about myself, but it’s a revelation to me. No one—other than Daddy—has ever told me I’m pretty.

  Men are starting to act differently toward me. A girl at church pulls me aside and tells me her dad says I’m one of the prettiest girls he’s ever seen. “And he should know,” she says, “because he travels for his business, and he sees lots of women.”

  Another man at church, the greeter who welcomes people when they enter the sanctuary, has started to pinch me on the butt whenever he shakes my hand. Right hand, handshake; left hand, butt pinch. I’m too confused to know what to think about this, and too embarrassed to say anything. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

  One day, the greeter’s nephew, who is about my age, pulls me aside after he sees his uncle pinch me and says, “Why do you let him do that to you?” I don’t have an answer for him. I guess this pinching must be a bad thing. Spence doesn’t seem to notice or have an opinion about it. Daddy doesn’t know anything about it; he doesn’t go to our Methodist church.

  This growing up seems to be a pretty mixed-up thing. On the one hand, I do like boys to think I’m pretty. And most girls I know seem to be intent on dating and eventually getting married and having kids. But I’m not sure what I really want to do with my life.

  Paloma fills me in on what’s going on at the weekend parties at the other kids’ houses. Who is dating, and who is breaking up. Who is drinking, and who is taking drugs. Nobody invites me to these parties. I guess it’s just as well. I’m pretty sure Daddy wouldn’t let me go. Paloma tells me I’m not really missing anything.

  I like to get good grades. English and French are my favorite subjects. Jimmie always seemed to want me to be a nurse, but I think I’m smart enough to be a doctor. So why just be a nurse? I admire some of my women teachers. I guess they are my role models, now that Jimmie is dead. I think I’d like to go to college after high school, but Daddy seems to expect me to stay around and take care of him.

  In the summer when I’m fourteen, going on fifteen, I see an ad on our church bulletin board about summer jobs as counselors for inner-city kids at a Methodist summer camp. I tell Daddy I’d like to sign up for this. I explain to him that it’s a voluntary position, but it does pay a stipend for expenses, and it would be good work experience.

  “Who’s going to fix my meals and make my bed while you’re away?”

  “Spence can help you with those things while I’m gone. It’s just for two weeks.”

  Spence seems okay with the idea, and Daddy reluctantly agrees to let me go. It helps that it’s a camp that the church sent Spence to when he was twelve—not as a counselor, but as a kid.

  I get a work permit and pack my clothes. Daddy drives me about a mile to the nearest bus stop. I kiss him on the cheek goodbye, and promise to call him as soon as I can to let him know I’m okay.

  The Methodist minister who runs Operation Open Air meets me at the terminal. He’s easy to spot—clerical collar, typical clergyman’s wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Hi, I’m Pastor Dan. You must be Lissa. Welcome.” He greets me with a strong handshake and an easy grin. He must be in his sixties; his hair is mostly gray. But he is tanned, fit, and relaxed.

  The waiting room is roiling with noisy, restless midsummer travelers. Most of the folks here don’t own cars and can’t afford more expensive means of transport, so they take buses.

  Pastor Dan grabs my suitcase, and with supreme confidence and long strides, parts the sea of agitated voyagers and shepherds me across to his Jeep in the parking lot. Something about him puts me immediately at ease as we drive through the downtown traffic.

  I’m signed up for two weeks as a camp counselor. I’ll be spending weekends with the other counselors at the former Norwegian Seaman’s Home in Baltimore—a rambling old house that now serves special mission groups like Operation Open Air and Head Start.

  As soon as I’ve deposited my suitcase in the dorm room I’m to share with one other counselor, I call Daddy from the roomy wooden phone booth that’s built in beneath the wide front staircase.

  “Hello, Daddy. I got here safely.”

  “You take care of yourself, Lissa. Come back to me safe and sound.”

  “Yes. Everything’s fine. I’ll call you next weekend.”

  Pastor Dan holds the first meeting on Friday evening. I meet the nine other counselors I’ll be working with. Apparently, I’m the youngest, and probably the least experienced among them. I learn that the first week, I’ll be overseeing six elementary-school age girls in my cabin. The second week, with more experience, I’ll be bumped up to working with six kids in junior high.

  After the meeting, we gather around a grand piano, sing some Methodist hymns, and receive a prayer and blessings from Pastor Dan. Then we’re free to spend the rest of the evening as we choose. I head up to my room with my roommate, Toni. She’s just finished her freshman year at college, and plans to major in psychology. Toni has been doing an internship, working with some of the girls who’ll be staying at camp with us.

  “Pastor Dan’s philosophy,” Toni says, “is to get kids out of the inner city, away from the brick and mortar and asphalt, out into a more natural setting. Most of these kids have never been close to nature.

  “I’m doing a paper on one of your girls. Her name’s Wanda. She’s nine years
old and has a twin sister, Anna. Wanda is very bright. She tests much higher than her sister, but she gets worse grades than Anna. I’m trying to understand what’s going on here. I’d be interested to hear what you think of Wanda.”

  Toni goes on to give me the lowdown on the other counselors. Michael is a nice guy. David is a playboy. Sally always wears cheap clothes and carries a battered suitcase to disguise the fact that she’s from a wealthy Baltimore family.

  “She’s almost ashamed to have so much money,” Toni says.

  On Sunday afternoon, the day before the first group of kids arrive, Pastor Dan takes his colleague Pastor Bob, Toni, and me out for a sail on West River. The boat is just about big enough to seat the four of us. Pastor Dan calls it a daysailer.

  This is my first time in a sailboat. Pastor Dan shows Toni how to operate the tiller. The wind catches; the sail billows; the boat leans over the water and picks up speed. I am on the low side of the boat, so close to the water I can trace my fingers in it. Surprisingly cold, it sends an unfamiliar tingle up my arm. An overwhelming sense of exhilaration and untamed freedom flows over me.

  As the wind speeds us along the river, the two ministers begin to discuss theology. They debate concepts I’ve always assumed preachers agree on: the virgin birth, the Trinity, the existence of heaven and hell, the meaning of sin.

  At one point, Pastor Dan says, “You don’t still believe in all that original sin, passed down from Adam and Eve, do you, Bob?”

  “Well, I do believe that story is a wonderful allegory of man’s disobedience and his subsequent loss of innocence. The snake and the apple resonate as universal symbols of evil and its temptation,” says Pastor Bob.

  “Well, Bob, have you ever wondered why God would want to deny man the knowledge of good and evil, that crucial ability to discern right from wrong? Do you really think He wants us to remain ignorant, gullible, clinging children? That doesn’t sound to me like a very loving Heavenly Father. Have you ever considered that sin is purely the separation of an individual soul from the universal oneness of all beings?”