Mother, who often told me how she sacrificed to give me piano lessons, gave up when we moved from Hancock Street; so once again I had school music to dread. That had not changed. We were still expected to sing alone.
The goals of our new art class were conformity and following directions, not creativity. The teacher passed out squared paper. She instructed us to set our pencil points on an intersection ten squares down and four squares from the left-hand edge. Her directions droned on. “Draw a line two squares over, one square down, two squares over…” on and on. Grimly we labored to keep up with the instructions, to pay her the attention she demanded. When she finished, those of us who had kept up had identical outlines of a rooster. We were then told which crayons to use “without scrubbing” on which squares; others, those who did not pay attention or, in the case of the terrible boys, did not want to, had something surreal. Perhaps, without knowing it, they had captured the spirit of a rooster, if not the approval of the art teacher.
Auditorium was taught by Miss Viola Harrington, who stood at the rear of the auditorium while we took turns standing up straight, walking up the steps to the center of the stage, facing her, and whispering, “Can you hear me whisper?”
“Louder,” said Miss Harrington. “I can’t hear you.”
We took deep breaths and even deeper breaths until we thought our lungs would burst, until Miss Harrington could hear us at the back of the auditorium.
From that stage, speaking distinctly, we recited memorized poetry, reported on current events, and gave talks on assigned subjects. When Miss Harrington assigned me a report on “Guano,” Mother said, “The idea! What a thing to talk about in public.” The terrible boys whispered a different word for fertilizer supplied by birds on islands off the coast of South America. I was embarrassed to stand on the stage talking about bird droppings, no matter how rich in nitrate and phosphate. Such stuff, to me, was not valuable but something to avoid stepping in. Miss Harrington obviously had never walked across a barnyard full of chickens.
The most unusual change in curriculum was nature study, taught by Miss Lydia Crawford, an aloof eccentric with long, glossy brown hair wound around her head and with the high color and glowing complexion of an outdoor woman. She always wore plain dark dresses that stopped just below her knees; she wore high brown shoes, much higher than those I had finally been allowed to abandon, which laced all the way to her knees. We were all intimidated by Miss Crawford.
Miss Crawford believed that if we were to study nature, we should have nature around us. She brought, and encouraged us to bring, exhibits to be placed on a ledge beneath the window. Plants bloomed; lichen, mosses, and minerals were displayed; chipmunks raced on wheels; and a two-headed garter snake and I stared at each other through the glass walls of its prison.
Miss Crawford told us that when she was a little girl, she was taught to recite “From the stable to the table, dirty flies!” She said women ruined their skins with face powder, which was made from talc. “See, children, this is what foolish women rub on their faces,” she said, holding up a piece of the greenish mineral while her own face shone from soap and water. She told us we must always rotate our crops and never, never perjure ourselves.
The curriculum required Miss Crawford to lead us through a book with a dark blue cover entitled Healthy Living. We stared listlessly at drawings of correct and incorrect posture and of properly balanced meals before we began a relentless journey of a meal through the alimentary canal, beginning with food thoroughly chewed. I endured what went on in our mouths and esophagi, but I began to have doubts about the whole thing down around our stomachs, and when we reached the liver and gallbladder, the whole messy business became disgusting and, beyond those organs, too embarrassing to mention. I did not want to think of all that going on inside of me. Ugh.
Miss Crawford, radiating health, was apparently as bored with Healthy Living as her class. One day she suddenly closed the sensible text, laid it aside, and with her fingertips resting on the front desk in the center row, began to tell us a story about a man named Jean Valjean, who lived in France a long time ago and who had spent nineteen years as a galley slave for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry nieces and nephews. We all perked up. We knew about galley slaves from pirate movies.
Miss Crawford’s cheeks grew redder, and her face became incandescent with excitement, as she went on and on, telling us the story in great detail. Nothing this moving had ever happened in school before. We groaned when the bell rang.
“Children,” said Miss Crawford, “I shall continue the story in our next class.”
Nature study became the best part of school. Chipmunks still raced, a home of a trapdoor spider was added to the nature display; but all that mattered to us was Les Misérables. On and on we traveled with Jean Valjean, hounded by Inspector Javert all the way. Fantine, her little daughter, Cosette, and the wicked Thénardiers all became as real as, perhaps more real than, our neighbors. We gasped when Fantine sold her beautiful hair to pay the Thénardiers for the care of Cosette. Even the most terrible boys sat still, fascinated. Unaware of social injustice in our own country, we were gripped by Victor Hugo’s story of social injustice in nineteenth-century France.
Some parents—but not mine—listening to us retell at the supper table the marvelous story Miss Crawford was bringing to our imaginations, began to object. Storytelling in school was improper. We were there to learn, not to be entertained. Telephone calls and visits were made to Mr. Dorman, who was a very wise man. Of course we should be studying Healthy Living, and so we did. However, at least once a week Miss Crawford came to our auditorium class to continue the story.
June came, summer vacation was about to begin, and she had not finished Les Misérables.
“Don’t worry, children,” she said. “I’ll be here when you return in September.”
True to her word, Miss Crawford was waiting when school started, and took up where she had left off. Well into the eighth grade, the story of Jean Valjean came to an end. Miss Crawford began another novel by Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea.
By coincidence, the next year one of Mother’s cousins, Verna, who had become a librarian, sent me a copy of Les Misérables, which she inscribed in her beautiful vertical handwriting: “A book that you may enjoy someday, if not now, Beverly.” I had already lived the book and did not read it for many years. Then, as I read, Miss Crawford was before me on every page. She seemed not to have missed a single word.
I often wonder why this particular book meant so much to an eccentric Oregon teacher. Had someone in her family suffered a terrible injustice? Had her repeated warning about perjury come from some experience in her own life? Or had she perhaps spent her childhood in isolation on a farm where the works of Victor Hugo were the only books available? And why did she suddenly feel compelled to share this novel with a class of seventh-graders? Whatever her reasons, I am profoundly grateful to her—and to the wisdom of Mr. Dorman for circumventing unimaginative parents and allowing her to tell the entire book in such detail. My copy has 1,222 pages.
Uncle Joe
Aunt Dora and Uncle Joe, because of her health, moved from sagebrush country to a farm near Molalla, about thirty miles from Portland. Aunt Dora invited us out to see a rodeo, the annual Molalla Roundup. I found this invitation exciting, something to brag about to Ralph.
When we arrived in Molalla on a hot summer day, Uncle Joe said he had been unable to buy five seats together. He offered to sit with me so my parents and Aunt Dora could sit together and visit. Uncle Joe and I climbed to the top of the bleachers while the others sat down in front.
The heat was unusual for Oregon. Cowboys riding bucking broncos and roping steers churned up clouds of dust. The spectacle was sweaty, dirty, and, at first, fascinating. Gradually it grew monotonous and the heat and dust stifling.
Uncle Joe bought me a bottle of Orange Crush, which I held in one hand as I drank through a straw. Uncle Joe took my other hand in his. Having my hand held di
d not seem unusual. In Yamhill, I had often walked down the street with an uncle holding me by the hand. However, because of the heat, I wiggled my hand free of his. I could not make conversation with this uncle and was glad when the rodeo ended.
On the ride home, Mother remarked, “It does seem odd that Joe could not get five seats together.”
Dad said, “I thought so, too.”
I did not bother to mention Uncle Joe’s trying to hold my hand. The incident was dropped. It seemed of no importance.
That winter, Aunt Dora invited us to come out to Molalla for Saturday dinner, a midday meal on the farm. We could spend the night and drive home on Sunday. Mother, tired of cooking, accepted with pleasure. Dad looked forward to exploring the farm. I took a book with me.
Saturday night, after I went upstairs to bed in the cold farmhouse and lay shivering, weighed down by heavy woolen quilts while my body warmed the sheets, Uncle Joe burst into the room, thrust a folded sheet of paper into my hand, planted an urgent tobacco-smelling kiss on my cheek, and said, “For God’s sake, don’t show this to anyone!” and left. I was terrified.
Innocent of any knowledge of sex, I knew something very wrong was occurring. I was too frightened to get out of bed, fumble in the dark for the overhead light, and read what was written on the paper. Uncle Joe might burst in again if he saw a light. My stomach churned in fear, and I scrubbed my cheek with the sheet. This was not uncle behavior. All my other uncles were kindly, affectionate men, but they did not sneak into my bedroom to shove notes at me or kiss me in the dark.
When my parents came upstairs, I heard Mother say, “Why don’t we take Dora and Joe back to town with us?”
“No!” I called out in a whisper. “Please, please, don’t!”
Neither parent caught my fear. “It will make a nice change for Dora,” said Mother, who was always sympathetic to farm women.
“She works pretty hard out here,” agreed my father as they went into another bedroom and closed the door. I lay in fear of the man who had become an evil stranger.
In the morning, Uncle Joe did not take his eyes off me, but I managed to whisper to Mother, “Please don’t take them back with us. Please don’t.”
Mother merely gave me an impatient look. I could not find an opportunity, or was too frightened, to read the letter. Uncle Joe was watching every move I made.
That day I rode back to Portland in anguished silence between Mother and Aunt Dora, the letter clutched in my hand inside my pocket, while Aunt Dora and Uncle Joe made plans to take Mother and me to a movie the next day before they caught the bus back to Molalla. I spoke up. “I don’t want to go to a movie.”
Dad was beginning to be irritated by my behavior. “Of course you want to go to a movie,” he said.
Still I could not bring myself to read that letter. I am not sure why. I know it repelled me. Perhaps I was afraid of what I might find in it. That night I slept on a cot in the attic because my room was used as a guest room. Monday morning I stayed upstairs as long as I dared, listening to the sounds from below.
When Mother and Aunt Dora were in my bedroom, and Uncle Joe was in the living room, I ventured downstairs and into the kitchen, where I finally got up my courage to unfold the letter, a sheet of tablet paper filled with pencil writing. I caught the last words, “Your lover, Joe,” before the writer of the letter was beside me, his dark eyes glittering like coal.
I fled to the bedroom and sat down on the bed with the letter crushed in my fist behind my back, while Mother and Aunt Dora continued their conversation, oblivious to my distress. Uncle Joe followed and sat down on the bed beside me. Smiling at the women, he twisted my arm and pried the letter from my fingers. I shrank from him.
“Why, what’s the matter?” Mother asked at last.
Uncle Joe answered for me. “I just wanted to know what Beverly wanted for Christmas.” A lie. This branch of the family did not exchange Christmas gifts.
Aunt Dora kindly asked what I wanted for Christmas. I couldn’t think of anything. Uncle Joe announced he felt like going for a walk. The women continued their discussion of clothes. I did not want to speak out in front of my aunt.
When time came to leave for the movie, Uncle Joe returned.
For once I defied Mother. “I will not go to the movie.”
“Of course you will,” she informed me, her mouth tightening into a straight line.
“No I won’t,” I contradicted.
To avoid a scene, Mother had to give in. The three of them left, and I was alone, trying to sort out my frightened thoughts.
However, true to habit, halfway to the corner, Mother made some excuse for returning to the house. She was furious. “Beverly, I don’t know what gets into you sometimes!” she began. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be nice to your aunt and uncle. You don’t often see them, and they think a lot of you. How can you be so selfish?”
“I am not selfish,” I said, angry because no one had listened to me and upset at being accused of not being nice to my aunt, whom I loved.
I told her about the kiss, the letter, my twisted arm, the way she and Dad ignored my agitation.
Now Mother had to listen. She was appalled at what she heard. “Beverly, I am sorry. I had no idea” was all she could say as she hurried off to prevent her in-laws from returning to see what had happened to her.
That evening, Mother was heartsick and said she could hardly bear to sit through the movie beside Joe. “Poor Dora,” she said. “Married to that man.”
Dad was furious when he heard the story. “I always knew Joe was no good,” he stormed. Sometime after he had calmed down, he must have told my aunt what had happened, for after my experience, none of my girl cousins was ever left alone in a room with Uncle Joe, and he was watched whenever he was near.
I never saw my lovely aunt again, but when I was married, she sent me an antique quilt made with tiny, tiny stitches; and once after Joe’s death, when she was very old, she wrote me a letter in exquisite penmanship answering some questions about family history Mother had passed on to her.
The most puzzling part of this unpleasant episode of my girlhood was Mother’s failure to give me any information about sex. My understanding of the word “lover” came from fairy tales read when I was younger, and yet I sensed from Uncle Joe’s behavior, from his glittering dark eyes, that the word had a meaning I did not understand and that the meaning held evil for me.
Badly frightened, without understanding exactly what I was frightened of, I did not know how to ask.
Eighth Grade
Our class was changing. A quiet boy who sat in front of me had so much trouble with arithmetic that he began to cry during an important test. The tears of a boy thirteen years old distressed me so much that, for the second and last time, I cheated in school. I slipped him some answers.
A bitter, scowling boy across the aisle from me spent his days drawing, in elaborate detail, guns and battleships. He made me uneasy, and perhaps made Mrs. Drake, our eighth-grade teacher, uneasy, too, for she left him alone. Teachers were there to teach, not to solve, or even discuss, personal problems.
The boys who were so awful in the sixth grade and terrible in the seventh grade became really horrible in the eighth grade. They belched; they farted; they dropped garter snakes through the basement windows into the girls’ lavatory. In the days before zippers, a boy could, with one swipe of his hand, unbutton the fly of another boy’s corduroy knickers—always in front of girls who, of course, nearly died of embarrassment while the red-faced victim turned his back to button up. Mrs. Drake said, “Something has been going on, and you know what I am talking about, that has to stop.” When Mrs. Drake was not looking, “something” went right on.
The horrible boys, whose favorite epithet was “horse collars!” shouted “Hubba-hubba!” at any girl whose developing breasts were beginning to push out her blouse.
Some girls changed, too, and were considered “fast” because they took to wearing lipstick and passing around two boo
ks, The Sheik and Honey Lou: The Love Wrecker, books I scorned. These they ostentatiously read on “those certain days” when they sat on a bench in the gymnasium while the rest of us twirled the Indian clubs or marched while Claudine pounded away at “Napoleon’s Last Charge” on the battered piano.
I was engrossed in Jane Eyre, but Claudine peeked into The Sheik and reported, “Gee, kid, there was this sheik who kidnapped this girl and carried her off to his tent in the desert. He laid her on a bed, and when she woke up in the morning, he was gone, and then she discovered a dent on the pillow next to her, and she knew he had slept in the same bed with her. Wow!’ Our innocent imaginations were incapable of filling in the crux of this scene. A dent in the pillow was shocking enough. Yipes!
The horrible boys refused to accept the lessons in conformity the art teacher was struggling to teach. This time we were taught to letter, first on squared paper and then in cut-out letters. We cut out, all in blue-green and pale orange paper, the silhouette of the entrance to the Oregon Caves and the words “Oregon Caves,” which we pasted to the front of manila folders to hold our essays for open house. However, some of the boys rebelled by rubbing their rulers hard and fast against the edge of the table in the art room. They did not set the tables on fire, but they did produce smoke, which impressed me. As a Camp Fire Girl, I had been unable to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Our teacher refused to give in and send the boys to the principal’s office.
Boys were worst of all on the days girls had cooking lessons. We brought most of our ingredients from home in our cooking baskets, neatly covered with clean napkins. Whatever we cooked we took home—if we could get it there. As soon as school was out, hordes of ravening boys, who had spent their double period of manual training working up appetites while sniffing cooking odors, descended on the girls. I tried to make a quick getaway, pedaling furiously on my bicycle with wooden wheel rims warped by sun and rain, while horrible boys grabbed at the basket swinging from the handlebars. Sometimes I succeeded.
A Girl from Yamhill Page 11
