Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  The Martin Memorial Library of East Market and Queen contained some lovely volumes with colored pictures of great paintings. The Impressionists intrigued me. Not that I knew what they were or their relationship to art history. The colors were pretty. I also discovered Stubbs and Munnings, sporting artists. Since they painted horses I liked them better than anything, and I loved Corot.

  I thought I would grow up and paint country scenes and horses and make enough money to buy my own horses. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out to be a financial wizard, but Dad didn’t pop my bubble by telling me artists starved.

  I set up my paints in the basement. The coal furnace was the only other thing down there. I had the entire basement for my province.

  I painted whatever I saw for one whole day. I showed my creations to Mother, who evidenced no enthusiasm. She usually praised my efforts no matter how puny. I decided I was really awful and needed to apply myself.

  Suddenly Mother lost her temper, marched down to the basement and threw my paints everywhere. She yelled that I was a spoiled brat—I’d better get these ideas out of my head and learn something useful.

  Mother’s rage put wings to my feet. I raced out of there. She usually cooled off after an hour or two.

  I was devastated that she had destroyed my paint set. I was also bullshit mad.

  From my perch in the enormous black walnut in the back, I watched her hang up the wash. I jumped down, ran inside, emptied out my piggy bank and packed my loom and materials in a small red cardboard suitcase. I walked to the top of Queen Street Hill and caught the bus heading southeast.

  When the bus came to the end of its route, near the Mason-Dixon line, I got of and started walking. I knew where the Maryland border was. I intended to walk through Maryland into Virginia. The sun set. It grew cooler. I forgot about getting to Virginia.

  As luck would have it, friends of Mom and Dad’s lived in a neat brick house across from a wayside ice cream parlor. I hoped they would help me.

  I knocked on the door. Mrs. Rau let me in. I told her that if she’d let me spend the night, I’d make her a hotpad. I explained everything. She ordered one hotpad from me in red and white. I set up my loom in her kitchen and got to work. She disappeared but I was intent on my task and didn’t notice.

  A half hour later Dad appeared. He thanked Mrs. Rau. I gave her the hotpad. She paid me a quarter because I hadn’t spent the night and therefore, she said, I’d earned the money.

  I wanted to be with Daddy but I didn’t want to go home. I asked him if I could live at the store. Mickey could come too and catch mice, and I’d sweep the floors, put the parsley on the shaved dry ice in the meat case and even help with inventory. I wanted to work. In retrospect I understand that the desire to work was one of my strongest drives. I didn’t just want to ride horses, I wanted to work with them. I wanted to paint and I was willing to meet people, sell them my idea and paint their horses. No matter how unrealistic these schemes might have been, they were connected by the drive to be useful and independent.

  Dad pretended to consider this. I told him what had happened. I think Mother had already told him, and probably more than she told me. He took me to a little restaurant and the two of us ate like grown-ups. I should add as an aside that children could not eat with adults until they displayed the ability to handle utensils, chew with their mouth closed and listen to the adults. No interruptions were allowed. When Kenny was invited to eat Sunday dinner with the grown-ups I had nearly perished from envy.

  Eating with Dad was a big deal. I had passed the test.

  He said, “You know that painting of the windmill by the front door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your Aunt Jule painted that when she was fourteen and she lived with us.”

  “So?”

  “Mom is afraid you will like Aunt Jule better than you like her.”

  He tried to explain that since Mom couldn’t have children, she was worried that someday I’d love Jule more than I loved her. The fact that I displayed a proclivity identical to Juliann’s scared her.

  Both Daddy and I knew that was silly, but Mother was radical about it.

  “What about my natural father? What if I turn out like him? Is that going to upset her, too?”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  “Will you be cross with me if I turn out different than Mom wants?”

  He put my hand in his huge one. “You’re my girl.”

  I decided to go home. When we walked through the door Mother’s eyes were red and she wasn’t even smoking. Aunt Mimi and Uncle Mearl were there, too. Mother said she was sorry. I said that was all right and I went to bed, happy to be with Mickey.

  The next night, after work, Daddy brought me an ancient black Underwood typewriter with a book teaching you how to type.

  I never tried to paint again. I never asked for riding lessons. I continued to hop on the draft horses. I watched other kids ride. I watched the hunt go off. I kept my mouth shut. I made hotpads. I looked for any way to make money and I saved every penny. I taught myself how to type and started writing little stories.

  So great was my loyalty to my mother that I didn’t buy my first horse until I was thirty-three. I called to tell her.

  She sounded pleased. “You got what you always wanted. More power to you, kid.”

  Funny, though, I didn’t take riding lessons until the year after she died.

  15

  The Rubber Tablecloth

  Mother’s sole encounter with fiction was Gone with the Wind when it was first published. Three chapters into it she set it aside. Mom couldn’t sit still long enough to read anything except the newspapers and her daily devotional.

  My ravenous appetite for the printed word baffled her. Not that she was against it, but a love of books was so removed from her realm I could have been studying astrophysics. She’d trot into my basement workroom, examine my library books (all organized by due date), wrinkle her brow and toss another load of coal into the furnace.

  Both parents believed that if a child knocks on a door, open it. When I was five I got my library card, although not without a struggle.

  The Martin Memorial Library, a brick Federal building on the corner of Market and Queen Streets, had an interior balcony, an iron railing protecting the distracted reader from falling onto the main lobby below. This airy, open architecture, colonial in inspiration, invited me in to read and reflect. No doubt that was its purpose.

  The minute Mom took me into the building, I made a beeline for the upstairs balcony. I couldn’t reach high, so I sat on the floor pulling books from the bottom shelves. The first one I yanked out was a small, light blue volume with a black Grecian frieze on the top, Bulfinch’s Mythology. The drawings, such as Icarus falling into the sea, jumped out at me. Mother found Little Women. She liked the movie, so she thought I’d like the book. We took the two books to the graceful wooden checkout counter, polished with years of use.

  The lady behind the counter had a pen hanging on a chain around her neck. Maybe she was Mother’s age. At that time everyone was vastly older than I was. She wouldn’t write me a card and she said those books were above my level of learning.

  My head didn’t reach to the top of the checkout counter. My ears worked fine. Mother waxed impatient. She wanted to see the librarian in charge. The pen lady was the librarian in charge.

  “Come here, kid.” Mother pulled over a chair, parked it in front of the checkout counter and lifted me onto it. “Read for the lady.”

  She opened to the first page of Little Women and I read. The librarian, none too keen about the disturbance we were causing, was startled that I could read at that age. The brand-new library card, stiff cardboard in a little manila sleeve, was forked over.

  Now, I can’t pretend that I comprehended the real meaning of the myths or of Little Women, but I remembered the stories. And from then on, each Friday or Saturday (depending on the season) I would take the bus with Mom or Aunt Mimi to downtown York to exchange my libra
ry books for new ones. Five books was the checkout limit, but Mother limited me to two. That way she didn’t have to lug the books around as we shopped in the Central Market or ran errands. Two books, one for each of us to carry, was the rule.

  The Central Market and the Eastern Market, still operating today and still jammed with meats, poultry, vegetables of every variety, homemade candies and the locally famous Utz and Bon-Ton potato chips, was a kaleidoscope of sounds, smells and people.

  Browns’ Meat Market stood to the side with its gleaming white cases displaying prime cuts. Dad wouldn’t put a choice cut in his case. Prime or nothing. He selected the animals to be slaughtered. If an animal hadn’t the rich marbling he thought it should, he’d sell that meat to another butcher. Only the best for Dad’s customers. The Browns built a multigeneration reputation for quality, and I expect they had it centuries ago in Swabia, too.

  I’d tear down the aisle, put my books behind the counter and ask Dad, Papaw, Uncle Claude or Uncle Earl if there was a job for me. With gravity they’d point to the broom or a case that needed more lamb chops. Yes, they had a job for me, a big one. I’d fling myself into whatever they asked, thinking I was indispensable. Mother used to remark that I wasn’t that eager to do housework.

  I could rise to an occasion so long as it didn’t include housework. She taught me to clean, but no matter how hard Mother tried I wouldn’t go near the kitchen. I didn’t want to know anything about washing. Under duress I could iron a hanky.

  Aunt Mimi complained loudly and to all that I would fail utterly as a wife. She was right.

  Iron-willed as I was, Mother wisely sidestepped the issue. She too was willful, but why lock horns? Or as Mom said, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  Since I was only too eager to perform outside chores, she taught me how to weed. How to tell weeds from good plants. How to identify snails, birds, good snakes and bad snakes. She taught me to respect bats because they were the farmer’s friend. She and I put up a big square trellis we’d painted white. There she planted fragrant climbing pink roses, saving the big red roses for the garden closer to the house.

  Tea roses soon covered the side of the garage. I loved irises, so we planted them in front of white hollyhocks.

  We drew closest together in the garden or walking a shedrow, but I was closer to Dad. It hurt her, but even if she hadn’t tormented me about my birth when she was angry, I still would have been closer to Dad. There are some people in life who are kindred spirits. You meet them and feel instantly close. Had Daddy not been here as my father, he would have become my best friend.

  Mother was wound tighter than a piano wire; Dad was relaxed. Mother possessed a rapier wit; Dad, good humor. Mother had to be the center of attention; Dad was content to bask in her glow. Mother owned a ferocious temper; Dad barely raised his voice. Mother was highly and combatively intelligent; Dad had only average intelligence but profound insight into people’s hearts. Mother could be cruel; Dad didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Mother planned ahead; Dad lived in the moment. Mother was fanatical about time; Dad was habitually late. Mother devoutly believed in the Lutheran Church and its dogma; Dad believed God was in the trees, in the sunrise, inside each of us. And most important for me, Mother loved the idea of a daughter, while Dad loved me.

  When I finished my “job” at the meat counter I could run through the market. One special market day stands out from all the others. I wanted to go to the Pennsylvania National Horse Show, which was the following weekend. In those days all horses showed together—hunters, jumpers, Saddlebreds, driving horses, even Western horses. Horsemen mixed with one another, swapped stories and learned, since each of the disciplines is different and demanding. A sensational Saddlebred named Wing Commander had taken the county by storm, and I hoped he would appear at the show.

  After I raced up and down every aisle, hung over the balcony (my trick to get attention) and smiled at the Amish ladies and gentlemen, I wandered back to the booth. Aunt Mimi was there. Something had changed. No one said anything.

  That night when Dad came home from work the three of us sat down in the living room and Mom and Dad tried to explain the situation to me.

  Mom’s brother George, or “Bucky,” looked like Ronald Colman with black wavy hair. This could account for his woman troubles. They chased him a lot. Seven years younger than Mother, he was the baby and thoroughly spoiled by Big Mimi and just about every other woman who came his way. He wasn’t lazy, though, as some men of that kind are.

  What I got out of the discussion that night was that Bucky’s lady friend in Baltimore was an irresponsible shit. After their relationship fizzled she had abandoned her teenage son by her first husband. Dad said the young man had been sleeping in hotel hallways, trying to work and go to school. He had no money and not much to eat. He’d been existing on coffee.

  Both Mom and Dad were calm but upset. Mother said they wanted me to think about sharing my basement workroom with this young man. I’d have to give up half the space and I’d have to share other things, too.

  I’d shared with Kenny and Wadie. Sometimes I’d be at their farm, sometimes they’d be at Aunt Mimi’s and sometimes they’d stay with us. And I’d shared with Patty even though that hadn’t lasted long. I thought I was Miss Generosity.

  Dad explained this was a little different because this would be his home, not just a stopping place. He would be a member of our family.

  Mother said, “We’ve got a rubber tablecloth. We can stretch it to feed one more.”

  And so we did.

  Eugene Byers moved in that next weekend. Even as a teenager his voice was so deep, pure and melodic that every time he opened his mouth I fell into a trance. His hair was light brown, blond in summer, his smile was wide and generous, he was skinny but was he ever handsome. He’s still handsome.

  We had little in common, for he was so much older than I. I was a pesky and sometimes truculent kid, especially if he scooted into the bathroom before I did. I admired him, though, even if we weren’t close. He would come home from William Penn High School, open his books at the kitchen table and study. He didn’t shirk on the chores either.

  Mother fell totally in love with him. He was the son she never had. Maybe it’s me but I think mothers and sons are closer than mothers and daughters. She bragged about Gene to everyone. He put on a little muscle with good food, becoming even better-looking, if that was possible. His high-school buddies—he made friends easily even though he was more quiet than boisterous—would hang around. Mom was in heaven. She was surrounded by young men. Gene saved enough from odd jobs to buy an Indian motorcycle. He took Mother for a ride. She hopped on that stunning blue machine, hugged Gene’s waist and off they went. Then he gave me a ride, too.

  The only time Mother ever fussed at him was when he wore golf spikes and ruined her new kitchen linoleum. Dad just shrugged.

  Dad loved him, too. And to my surprise I wasn’t jealous. Gene became part of the family so quickly that soon it was hard for me to remember a time without him.

  What he felt, I don’t know. If he spoke of his mother or father, I never heard it. Even if he hated them, he wouldn’t have said anything.

  As Mother would advise, “People of quality don’t wash their dirty linen in public.”

  Of course, Gene also endured the siege of manners, but his were already pretty good. I suspect he emerged from the womb a gentleman.

  The biggest surprise was Aunt Mimi. She could find fly shit in pepper, but she never found fault with Gene.

  She was certainly finding enough fault with me and Ginny’s children. Kenny wasn’t doing so hot in school. Wade could be sullen. Terry was too little to be trouble, for which she thanked the Almighty daily and within our earshot. Withering fire was reserved for me: I was too clever by half, I wouldn’t do housework, I wasn’t properly grateful, I resisted the One True Church (this was said when Mother wasn’t around), I engaged in too many fistfights. Girls don’t fight.

 
Domineering by nature, she was cranky during this time. I think she was upset because her daughter Julia Ellen, the star of the family, was seriously dating a no-’count. He may have been a no-’count, but he was a real hunk. Julia Ellen relished her rebellion. So did we.

  Each time he called on her, we’d plague him until he gave us money to leave them alone. I must have eaten more raspberry ice cream at that time than any child in America, because as soon as he’d slide a dime into my palm I’d dash to the store and buy a raspberry ice cream cone. I might vary that and buy an RC Cola, pour a bag of Planters peanuts in it, shake it up with my thumb over the mouth of the bottle and then shoot the ensuing eruption into my mouth. Sometimes I’d aim it at Kenny or Wade. If you time it right, those peanuts are lethal.

  Cheryl Shellenberger moved away at the end of the school year—not far, but when you can’t drive and the bus lines aren’t very good, any distance over two miles is far.

  Things changed constantly. Sometimes I liked the changes and sometimes I didn’t.

  One day that summer between third grade and fourth grade Mom and I were pulling weeds. A boiling black thunderstorm came up so fast we hadn’t time to run back into the house. The three of us—Mickey, old now, was with us—ran into the garage.

  Lightning hit a tree at the edge of the backyard and hayfield. The snap sizzled, then the agonizing crack of the tree as it split in two.

  As we huddled in the garage Mother said, “Thunderstorms are big shows, like vaudeville. The lightning comes when God flips the stage lights, and the thunder is the angels clapping. My mother and Ginny and people you never knew but I did are up there enjoying themselves.”

  “Mom, I’m not a baby.” I was insulted that she’d tell me such a story to soothe me. I thought the storm was exciting. Children like disasters, but then, such events are much more amusing when you don’t have to pay me bills.