What Every Girl Should Know

by J. Albert Mann

  I was so very thankful he did not say that I was a good girl, or that I was promising. A good student. This I was. As was Mary. And Nan. I shook his hand before I left his office, clenching my jaw tightly. A Higgins didn’t cry. And then I walked slowly back to my room. Very slowly. I knew down deep it was better for me to stay out in the world. To not be alone. Even if it meant I had to pass a hundred sneering students due to my speech, their glares feeling like further proof I didn’t belong here.

  Where would I go? Not Corning. I would not go back.

  I couldn’t keep the news from Amelia. And she didn’t keep it from anyone else.

  “I’d been preparing for a good-bye, but not this one,” she cried.

  “What about Frohman’s?” asked Minnie. “Maybe you can still audition?”

  I shook my head. “You need money for Frohman’s.”

  “What about a job?” asked Marianne. “That would keep you from returning home.”

  “A job?”

  “Teaching!” Minnie shouted. “Principal Flack would give you a reference. Even he said you are an excellent student. And my mother knows people in New Jersey.”

  “Teaching?”

  My friends were sprawled across the room, all their good brains whirring in unison to save me. I hid my disappointment at the prospect of teaching, knowing I had always been heading here, to becoming Miss Hayes. A job in New Jersey teaching elementary school was far from the New York stage, and even farther than Cornell Medical School. Although, it was also far from Corning.

  “Please write to your mother, Minnie. I’d love that teaching job.” But there was no air in my words . . . no passion.

  * * *

  I had the idea I would be teaching students closer to my own age. Instead, the next Monday morning I was set adrift in a sea of six-year-olds. Unlike public school in Corning, where we were all merged into a single class, in New Jersey they were separated by age. And so I now spent my days with eighty-four first graders.

  I was extremely thankful to Minerva’s mother for the job. I had room and board, and for the first time in my life, I was on my own . . . if being on one’s own also included a horde of tiny Hungarian children, for most of my students hailed from this European kingdom.

  I saw right off the reel that teaching was a job for someone who knew what she was doing, and that someone was not me. Although I made a valiant effort, setting up my classroom, gathering materials, writing out extensive lesson plans that I pressed upon my young charges day after day. But because English was not their first language, so often they had no idea what I was talking about, and worse, I had no idea what I was talking about either. They were, however, astoundingly respectful for such small beings, and I was amazed by their patience in me as I floundered about trying to teach them something. I had a newfound respect for Miss Hayes.

  Every morning I was greeted by a swell of heads bobbing around my waist, each of them struggling for my attention—aching to show me a craft, share a secret, or relay a discovery. I could barely take any of it in, there were so many of them. I was constrained to a single body, a single mind, a single pair of eyes, and I knew I was wildly disappointing them, though it was the very last thing I wanted to do. Strangely, it was at these moments that my mother often emerged in my thoughts. It was a position I believed she might be familiar with.

  The lone spot in the day that both my young students and I looked forward to was our lunch together. It was the only time we spent in one another’s company where they were in charge, and consequently, the only successful part of the day. We had all sorts of fun. They taught me the sounds of farm animals in Hungarian and performed folk dances from their home country in which they slapped their boots and danced in tight circles. They were, the lot of them, amazing, delighting us all with their joyful feats. Lunch was a time where words didn’t matter and I allowed myself to be one of them.

  But it was also the time of day when I was most aware of how wrong I was in this profession. These children needed an education, not a teenage girl’s attention, and I didn’t know how to give it to them.

  On top of this, New Jersey was lonely. I wrote often to Mary and Nan but never letting them know how badly I was doing. I didn’t want to further burden them, or worse, cause them guilt for not being able to keep me at school. I never mentioned Claverack in my letters. But there was a fantasy I harbored deep down, that they were somehow pulling together enough money to send me back, and that in the near future, I would return to school.

  I also wrote often to Amelia, Esther, and Minnie. But again, I didn’t inform them I was wasting the time of a very large group of earnest children. Instead, I wrote them stories of the new dances my students were teaching me, and some of the truly funny things they said. I added in snippets of life in New Jersey, although I needed to use my power of imagination to embellish these into actual snippets since I did not live much of a life here. I was in the classroom six days a week, and mostly slept through the seventh. There were times where I arrived back at my room after work and laid down, only to wake up in the morning still dressed, and therefore, with a pat or two at my hair, ready to return to the classroom.

  Even if there had been time for snippet making, the rules for female teachers were a large deterrent. After ten hours in the classroom, I was allowed to spend my evenings reading the Bible, or other “good books” chosen by the women’s boarding house—and none of them were good. I was also barred from marriage, or keeping company with men. And truly, didn’t the second part of the rule keep the first part from being necessary? There were so many rules. I was not allowed to wear bright colors; my dull dresses were required to reach no higher than two inches above my ankle, and under them I was also required to wear two petticoats “at all times.” I always had a snicker when I removed them before bed, thrilled to be breaking a rule. The final rule was both the funniest and the harshest: I was not allowed to loiter in ice-cream stores. This rule would eventually prove to be the most difficult to keep come spring. Thankfully it was the middle of winter, so all I did was laugh when I read it. Although it was much harder to laugh at the weather.

  February had seen nothing but freezing rain and snow, adding considerably to my feelings of loneliness and confinement. The climate of southern New Jersey could not compete with Corning in the heights of their snowdrifts or the dips in their thermometer, but it was cold and wet enough that traveling out to discover the world beyond reading primers and arithmetic figuring was nearly impossible.

  There was only one saving grace to this place . . . it was not Corning, New York.

  I stumbled through each day, waiting for what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe for myself to admit that this was the end of the line. Here I was and here I’d stay, until—and I shivered at the thought—I found someone to marry me. The only happiness in this idea was I’d get to break another rule.

  I wrote to Corey, although I hated myself for it. I knew he still loved me, and I knew I didn’t love him back. But he was a decent boy, a kind boy, a smart boy. Wasn’t that what I’d been trained to look for? So I wrote to him, knowing perfectly well I was holding up his happiness by doing it.

  One would think my desperation would be the result of years of enduring this new life I’d been handed. Instead, I had been here in New Jersey for just three weeks! Three weeks and I was feeling as though someone had stuffed me in a box I needed to claw my way out of. Thankfully I was sleeping well at night due to the fact that I spent my days with eighty-four six-year-olds, and therefore I didn’t have too much time to lament my situation before I was returned to it.

  Returning to my situation was by far the most difficult part of my day. The sixteen-block walk along flat, well-tended sidewalks felt much longer than the five miles uphill in Corning ever did. It was on this walk that I found it hardest of all to ignore that my dreams were going nowhere. I was going nowhere. And this seemed to be a recurring theme in my life.

  I can withstand anything, I told myself on the Friday of my third
week walking home from work, against a cold wind struggling mightily to rip the hat straight from my head. Anything . . . but continuing on in this way.

  But when I returned to my room to find my father’s letter calling me home, I realized just how wrong I was.

  March 1, 1899

  It’s late and I’m tired, but I put on the kettle for tea. The boys must have tuckered themselves out because there’s no bumping about overhead. Joe and Clio have long since gone to bed. My father is sleeping soundly in his chair. Even Thomas has stumbled home, grunted his good night, and is most likely irritatingly snoring away in his bed with his boots still on.

  I fix a cup of tea for my mother hoping she will finally be awake. When she is, it takes me by complete surprise, and all I manage to say by way of greeting is, “Tea?”

  I can tell she’s just as startled to see me, yet she breaks out in a glad smile, her expression instantly bringing me back to that long-ago day when Ethel laid curled beside her and Mary was the one holding the tea. How I had ached for a moment just like this.

  She reaches out for the mug, but before she can take it, pulls her hand back to her chest as her body is wracked by coughing. I clutch the tea tightly, waiting—as I’ve done countless times—for the horrific fit to end. She hacks and hacks and hacks as if her lungs are filled with broken glass, each inhalation shredding her insides. When she finally drops her hand into her lap, I see her rag is covered in bright foamy blood.

  This is the third time my mother has attempted to die. And for the first time, I realize she might succeed.

  Locked Out

  As March wears on, I become my mother’s replacement. I manage the finances, prepare and cook and clean up after the meals, pay the debts, wash the laundry—hill and our own—as well as the hundred other things my mother did, the most tiresome of which is the mending, done late in the evening through strained eyes.

  Mend. Patch. Sew. There is a limit to the endurance of trousers.

  Ethel is my constant companion, when she isn’t in school. We sweat over the boiling laundry, and freeze while pinning it up, taking it down, pinning it up, taking it down. We stand elbow to elbow at the sink every morning and every evening, as well as a few times in between. We scrub hands and feet and pots and floors. Nan and Mary stop by when they can and do what they can.

  Father and I don’t speak much, but between us, we attempt to make my mother comfortable in small ways. Father carries her from room to room to give her new prospects while I turn and plump her mattress. We keep the doors and windows tightly shut to prevent any breath of the raw spring air from reaching her ragged lungs. And I spend my nights reading medical books on consumption borrowed from the Free Library.

  The books tell me nothing I don’t already know. Either bleed and purge, or rest and feed. Since she is as white as a summer cloud and weighs about as much, there’s nothing to bleed or purge. Rest she takes care of on her own—all she does is sleep, and cough. Although I do manage to pour a cup of tea and a tin of broth down her every day, her bedpan is the lightest of my sick duties.

  Ethel, Clio, and Richard go to school. Joseph, Thomas, and Father go to the factory. Arlington and I stay home with her.

  Sometimes I allow him to play at the end of her bed to create an illusion of daytime activity. The constant chatter he keeps up with his toys is awfully sweet. I can see she enjoys listening to him. If I’m going to sit and read, or write a letter to Amelia or Esther, I do it in her room so she feels a part of the living. Because she is living. If barely. Although most days it is obvious this attack is worse than the others, I can’t help but hold out hope she will recover. Amelia does too, and keeps me up to date with everything happening inside our Claverack classrooms. We have decided this will help me when I return, a fantasy both of us have decided to support.

  I also receive kind letters from Minerva and Edna. I’m happy not to be forgotten. I read all these letters to my mother when she looks well enough to hear them, leaving out the parts where my friends beg to know if I’m ever coming back. It’s been almost two months since I left Claverack, and when I close my eyes, I have trouble imagining myself there. In contrast, I never conjure up images of my time in New Jersey, except maybe when my little brothers refuse to listen to me.

  * * *

  “To bed,” I holler.

  Everyone is asleep but me, Father, and my two ill-behaved brothers. And I plan to be in bed as soon as I finish emptying the ashpan—my most dreaded duty and the reason I always put it off until the last. I’m easing each of the tiny piles of ash out of the pan and into the bucket as if they were fragile eggs so as not to drop one fine speck of it on my clean kitchen floor when I hear their little feet on the stairs again.

  “I’ll not tell you a fifth time,” I warn.

  “We’re not tired,” Richard boldly shouts.

  Although the two of them must think better of it because I hear receding footsteps followed by giggles.

  Father is reading, and I assume from his lack of involvement, hears nothing. He has replaced his old favorite, Mr. Henry George, with a Mr. Eugene Debs, a union leader who’s been very successful in riling up the railway men. Everyone is against Debs . . . the railway owners, the government, the church. Therefore, my father knows he’s to be championed. Out of old habit, he sometimes can’t stop himself from reading the man’s thoughts out loud to no one but Toss, who lies at his feet and is the only one of us left listening.

  There is a bang, as if the boys have hit the backboard of the bed against the wall. My father must be choosing to ignore it, because it would be impossible not to hear his two youngest clomping about upstairs like unshod horses. I choose to ignore it as well.

  But then there is a tremendous crash, and I fumble my full ladle of ash, sending it up into the air where it spins before clattering to the floor, dusting everything within five feet, including me.

  Growling like a dog, I stomp toward the stairs trailing ash.

  “Get to bed!”

  “No!”

  “Richard. Arly. To bed!”

  “No!”

  “ ‘Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization,’ ” my father quotes from his reading. He is laughing. Laughing. And this is not funny at all.

  Exasperated, I fly back into the kitchen, take one look at the ash all over everything, and grab my overcoat.

  “I’m going out.”

  “No,” he says, without looking up from his page. “It’s late.”

  “No?” I ask. “No, as in you won’t allow it? My free-thinking father says no to his daughter opening the door and walking outside? Well, in the spirit of furthering civilization, I’m leaving.”

  He looks up from his book. “No, as in no,” he says. “Don’t I always say what I mean?”

  “I see how it is,” I snarl. “How it’s always been. You are a man of words, words, words. You may say what you mean, but none of your words mean anything. Because you don’t mean anything.” Without a moment’s hesitation, I swing the door open and walk out, leaving it gaping—knowing I’ve cut him deeply, hoping like hell I’ve cut him deeply.

  I’m through the front gate when I hear him slam the door and lock it. The snap of the bolt echoes somewhere deep inside me. I don’t stop, or turn around, but stomp off down the street toward Market because this is the direction my feet are used to and my head is not thinking . . . it’s steaming.

  He has betrayed me. All his words, his freedoms . . . I thought he was giving them to me. I thought they were mine. But he wasn’t giving me anything. In fact, he was taking it away, like he took Henry and Emma and this town, and even her.

  My anger requires six long blocks to cool from white hot to red. And another three before I can stop gnashing my teeth.

  My sisters, my brothers, they’ve always seen him for who he is. But I believed him. Even after Henry, I believed him.

  I still believe him.

  This last thought blows out the rest of my anger, leaving me empty and col
d. I stop and look around. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own head that for a moment, nothing looks familiar. I’ve walked far enough west that I’ve actually left town, wandering out into a very dark world.

  “Where am I?”

  The question hangs in the air, making me acutely aware of both my aching feet and my aching heart.

  I establish my bearings and start toward home, each tap of my boot against hard earth reminding me of the snap of the bolt in the door. Surely, he unlocked it before he went up to bed. Surely, he wouldn’t leave me outside all night . . . in March, no less. The more I consider it, the less I worry. He wouldn’t.

  But he would. And he did. The door is locked.

  I knock lightly. I know he’s in his chair. Waiting. He will open it and lecture me.

  But he doesn’t.

  I knock harder, the sound churning up fear from the bottom of my stomach like a whisk stirring up gravy drippings.

  Still nothing. Has he gone mad?

  I sit down on the steps and hold my head in my hands to stop it from feeling so strange. He has locked me out. Locked me out. For what? For taking a walk? For not listening to him? I’ve spent my entire life listening to him. I’m the only one who ever did. I listened and I repeated and I learned and I worshipped. I worshipped him.

  How dare he.

  I will the anger back again. But it doesn’t come. And I’m left shivering on the steps.

  My choices are limited. The only room I could possibly climb into is my mother’s, but I will not wake her from her sickbed sneaking through her window. The Abbotts are less than two miles. All uphill. Mary’s room is in the servant’s wing off the back of the house. She’ll be awake reading. And if not, she’s a light sleeper.

  By the time I reach the Abbotts I’m stiff with cold. The warm night is still a March night. I use a branch I found on the way up the hill to scratch at Mary’s pane.

  She looks out, and when she sees me in the yard her eyes go wide.