Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  While we girls were hammered into fine gold, the boys were being beaten into precious social metal, too. I think it’s harder to be a gentleman. For one thing, a gentleman must always find subtle ways to bolster a lady. She can be a dead ringer for a warthog, but he has to savor her charm. You will never find a southern gentleman who publicly deplores a lady’s looks. It just isn’t done. What they say to one another in the bathroom is any woman’s guess, but in public every single woman, regardless of age or nature’s blessing, must be treated as a treasure.

  No lady is allowed to sit alone. No lady is allowed to fetch her own refreshment. And no lady is allowed to walk back to her place at the table unescorted.

  The poor fellows were run ragged tending to the women. Yankees often laugh at how important it is to southerners to have either an equal number of men and women at a party or more men than women. It’s survival. We’d kill our men if the women outnumbered them.

  At my first ball, my date, two years older than myself, signed my dance card, then ditched me as he dashed around signing other girls’ dance cards. He was learning the ropes, too, even if he was older.

  A boy from ninth grade, Mr. Slide Rule, approached me. He smiled. I grimaced. I couldn’t endure the pomade on his hair.

  He asked for the second dance and his pencil was at the ready.

  I refused. This was wrong on my part, because if the boys had to make us feel special, we had to return the favor and act as though a request for a dance were heaven itself.

  “Bug off.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that. It’s the Christmas Ball.”

  “Pizza face.”

  Anita Milsap, standing next to me, heard this insult and turned to me.

  “Desist.” She actually said “desist.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Some of the manners were returning.

  “Refrain from insulting this gentleman in such a crude manner.”

  “You can bug off, too. Turdball.” At least I didn’t repeat myself.

  Face red, she tottered off in her low heels to report me to Mrs. T., the Queen of Quite a Lot.

  Jerry Pfeiffer, my erstwhile date, thin as a blade, remained ignorant of the growing drama. He wouldn’t have cared because he was signing Nancy Meadows’s dance card and she was one of the prettiest girls there. It looked like a convention where Nancy stood. A few of the grown men probably wanted to sign her card, too. Fortunately, she hadn’t an ounce of conceit over her beauty, and her sense of humor was sharp, even in her early teens.

  Mrs. T., trailed by Anita, inquired as to the vulgar nature of my insults.

  A picture of Mother flashed before me. Juts would kill me.

  “I did use foul language. I was wrong and I am sorry.” I smiled weakly.

  “Mistress Brown”—yes, it really was Mistress and Master—“I will forgive you this one time, but if you lapse again into such common behavior, I will expunge you from cotillion.”

  The end of social life.

  I groveled and trooped through two more years of cotillion until I passed the course. I apologized to Anita, too, who took these things more seriously than I did. She had a lovely singing voice and was in demand at parties.

  Jerry Pfeiffer trooped through more than cotillion with me. I was twelve and he was fourteen when we met. I loved him on sight. I must have been blind or a prophet. This skinny boy with the raucous laugh actually grew into a tall, masculine fellow who was as close to me as a second skin.

  Our first date, inauspicious, provided me with the spectacle of Jerry straddling the ice reindeer at the end of the party. It was the only time his crotch was ever cold.

  Twelve, thirteen and fourteen not only try the patience of adults, they try the patience of the changeling. Your voice changes; girls’ voices don’t change as dramatically as boys’, but they do change. You pack on pounds, then shoot up like a weed. Your face breaks out. You have to use deodorant or everyone around you holds her nose. (Fortunately, Mother, the harpy of hygiene, never gave me the chance to make a mistake.) You change hairstyles hoping to look older. Nothing quite fits right. Your breasts grow and they hurt, too. You look in the mirror and wonder what is going on. Will you ever be good-looking?

  Awkward and silly as that time is for every one of us, I enjoyed myself. For one thing. Grandma Brown was no longer on the duty roster. I didn’t have to go there on Sundays.

  For another thing, I didn’t hear about my brother, whom I have not met to this day, nor Juliann’s growing family; she had married. My blood family meant nothing to my friends in Florida. They began to fade for Mom and Aunt Mimi, too. Things were good.

  I could have used more money, but then, who couldn’t?

  32

  Double Clutch

  Sea salt sticks to your skin in Florida, the tangy air invigorates you. At night I’d go to sleep, Skippy on the pillow, listening to the wind in the palm fronds, inhaling the intoxicating scent of night-blooming jasmine.

  Most Sundays we’d take a drive. Belle Glade, a sugarcane town, was maybe twenty minutes away from Five Points, where my cousins lived. The whole place sits on rich muck. I’d watch young men grow old fast cutting cane.

  The heavy odor of the muck makes you drowsy. Some people wouldn’t like it, but I did because, for me, wealth comes out of the earth.

  A lot of the cane cutters wore their hair in a “big do” style that we called “gassed heads.” Seeing sweating, well-built men with rags on their heads gave me the giggles. They looked girly.

  If we drove inland from Belle Glade, we’d reach Lake Okeechobee, which is huge. Hardly anyone lived around Okeechobee. I’d stand at the edge of the lake and imagine what it was like when the great hurricane of 1928 scooped up the water, leaving only an empty basin. When the winds reversed, the water crashed back in, killing people who had run into the lakebed, curious.

  Most of all, I loved the citrus groves, mile after mile of orange trees. The symmetry pleased me. Oranges in spring bloom made me giddy; the white looked like snow.

  Sometimes Mom and I would wander around the inland areas of the state and she’d say, “You’re the only kid I know who would rather be in the groves than at the ocean.” I love agriculture. Coastal Bermuda grass, so different from red-bud clover or timothy or rich alfalfa, intrigued me. Mother would sit in the car or lean against a fence while I strolled in a field studying the grass, pulling up a blade to inspect the roots.

  As long as I kept her secrets about the track and about boleta, a Cuban numbers game she played, she indulged my farm passion. She even weakened when Uncle Kenny brought home a polo pony from Royal Palm. This old trooper, with two bowed tendons, stood calmly while I hosed his legs, brushed him and lavished attention on him. When Mom wasn’t looking I swung up. He couldn’t trot or canter with those bows but I hoped I was so light I wouldn’t break him down. We walked around with just the lead rope on the halter, no bridle or bit. What a great old fellow he was.

  I’d reached the age where people began asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I usually smiled and said, “I’m considering my prospects,” which would make them laugh.

  Older people can’t contain themselves. They see young people as dumping grounds for whatever they’ve learned about life. It’s well-meaning but I sat through many a lecture about a suitable career, a suitable mate, etc.

  Mother’s approach was, “It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one.” She echoed Aunt Mimi but I never believed her.

  She could care less what I did with my life as long as I didn’t cost her money. Her deal was she’d get me through high school and then I was on my own. If I wanted to attend college, I’d better work for it. My lawn mowing brought in some money. I spent very little. But I couldn’t imagine earning enough to pay for college. Nor could I imagine marrying some local stud who’d be wearing a toupee by the time he was forty.

  I figured I’d have to win an academic scholarship. I also figured I’d nail it. School came easy for me.

&nb
sp; But the pressure to conform increased. Outwardly I wasn’t a nonconformist. I dressed as well as we could afford. I displayed those hard-won good manners. I got along with kids my own age and with adults. On the surface I was cool. But Mom knew the underneath and so did Dad. I was a maverick. I listened to everyone but kept my own counsel. I was developing tremendous control of my emotions, which were not much on display anyway. But even those flashes of anger at the tennis courts were reined in—I had a ways to go, but I was moving on.

  What rattled Mom the most was the fact that I plain didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of me. As long as I felt I had behaved in a responsible manner, people could steer clear. I live my life; you live yours.

  This detachment challenged her. She’d needle me, and her sarcasm stung. She’d pinch and poke at me for a reaction.

  One time she said, “You’ll never catch a man by beating him at tennis.”

  I replied, “Mother, I don’t want a man I can beat at tennis.”

  So she tried another tack. I guess it was one of those days when she missed fencing with her sister, so I was her opponent. “You need to build a man up.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re weak. They need it.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “And what will you be doing, Miss High and Mighty?”

  “Whatever I please, and I won’t be doing it with you.”

  “Who asked you?” she fired back.

  I walked away, which burned her up. She came after me and clamped her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you turn your back on me when I’m talking to you. You think you’re better than I am, don’t you? You think you’re better than all of us. When you start putting on airs, kid, you would do well to remember you’re Jule Young’s bastard.”

  I’d eaten that crow for fourteen years. “If I thought I was your daughter, I’d puke.”

  She burst into tears, ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

  I suppose I should have felt guilty or sorry for her, or any number of things that would mark me off as a sensitive and refined soul. I didn’t. I was glad I hurt her, and if she pushed me again, I’d hurt her again. I was fourteen years old and I knew I was fourteen. I couldn’t have the wisdom of an older person, but I could at least know what my own life was like, and I was sick to death of being told I didn’t belong. I didn’t want to belong.

  My deepest instinct is to go about my business without intruding on anyone else. (It may be one of the reasons I became a writer. Talent alone does not make an artist.) But if you are stupid enough to mess with me, sooner or later I’ll put a stop to it.

  I had just put a stop to it with Mom.

  When Dad came home she cried some more. He asked me to ride with him, so we drove over to the Intracoastal Waterway, the brand-new Seventeenth Street Bridge, to watch the boats.

  “Dad, I’m getting out of here the day I graduate from high school.”

  “You’ve got some time.”

  “Yes, sir, but I mean it. And I’m going to college.”

  A high-masted sailboat approached. We walked back down the bridge and sat on the seawall.

  “Daddy, are you mad at me?”

  “No.” He waited. “Ignore her when she gets like that. She wants to pick a fight.”

  “Yes, sir,” I sighed. It was hard to ignore her when she stood nose to nose with me.

  “Honey, you’ve got a big brain in that head, more brains than I have. Learn to back off and let the other guy win. Sometimes you win when you lose.”

  I hated this advice even as I knew it to be true. “That like leaving a little money on the table for the other guy?”

  “Yep.”

  Dad used to tell me never to go for the other guy’s throat in a business deal. Always leave a little money on the table for him and never, never tell anyone else you got the better of him. It comes back to haunt you.

  “Daddy?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Is life always this hard?”

  He laughed and put his arm around me. “Think of this as strategy. This isn’t really hard. It’s maneuvering. When Virginia died—that’s hard.”

  I followed Dad’s advice, though I slipped occasionally, especially with Mom. My self-confidence enraged her at times. I didn’t think I was arrogant, but she did. I knew what I wanted and I knew I’d get it. I’d do whatever it took to get up and get over.

  I wanted to either write or be president. I dreamed of attending West Point, but girls couldn’t go. Not being able to study at a service academy upset me. For one thing, the state paid for it. Given our situation, that was a huge attraction. For another thing, I believed combat experience was necessary for a presidential candidate. Truman fought in World War I. Eisenhower was overlord. All I knew were soldiers and I couldn’t imagine a person being elected without a war record.

  What’s sad is that I assumed we’d be at war again soon.

  The Korean War was over, but something else was bound to happen. I didn’t believe that nuclear war was possible. This was ignorance, of course, but at my age I couldn’t fathom the horror of nuclear war no matter how many times I saw footage of Hiroshima. Also, I didn’t believe any nation would be dumb enough to drop the bomb.

  By fourteen I knew West Point was not going to make an exception for me. A scholarship was a necessity, a scholarship to a good school.

  Much as politics lured me, there was something deeper. The arts, any of the arts, set my heart racing, but literature was like breathing. I can’t remember not loving the style, the structure of novels, the ideas inside them. Mark Twain was my favorite American author, Shakespeare my favorite writer overall. I read Diary of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, which wasn’t a novel, but I thought I should know about evolution from Darwin himself, especially since animals were the key to my life in many ways. Then I launched into The Origin of Species. Darwin wasn’t writing for teenage girls, but I stuck it out.

  I walked to school reciting my Latin conjugations and vocabulary. I sat through grimly boring classes with mostly grimly boring teachers. I walked to the tennis courts and I walked home. I’d do whatever chores Mom set out for me and then I’d go back to my room and read, read, read, anything and everything.

  I hid this lust from my schoolmates. Eggheads don’t have social lives. I was in the advanced class. Actually, I’d been in the advanced track since seventh grade, so my peers were bright kids. Even so, only the spazzes, as we called them, blabbed about how smart they were. Uncool. Still, I guess uncool is better than no-cool. No-cool was the vocational track. Those kids didn’t have a prayer.

  The tracking system, flawed though it may be, saved me. If I’d had to sit in class with kids who weren’t gifted, I would have turned into a juvenile delinquent.

  The hardest studies I had happened to be catechism. Pastor Golder, strict and demanding, never let me off the hook. He made it a point to push me. Church history and dogma require some application. It prepared me for Marx in college. Marx was nothing compared to those early arguments in the first three centuries after Christ’s death. I longed for Pastor Neely, who I imagined would have been a lot easier.

  Confirmation proved a marvelous day. The end of catechism!

  In Florida at that time you could get your learner’s permit at fourteen. With that permit you were allowed to drive a car as long as a licensed person eighteen or older accompanied you.

  Now that confirmation was off my mind I could concentrate on driving. Remember that age when you were obsessed with getting your driver’s license?

  Dad would take me out and we’d drive around the back roads. We all knew better than for me to go out with Mother.

  One rainy night I was driving back home when Dad told me to turn left on Eighteenth Street NE. He’d left something at the store. I turned. The rain poured down harder.

  “Turn around again. We’ll go home.”

  I stopped, put the car in reverse and backed flat into a royal palm. I stopped, got out, got soaked.
r />   “Well?” Dad was straining to see out the back window when I slid behind the wheel again.

  “The Leaning Tower of Pisa palm.” Palms have tiny root systems.

  He covered his eyes with his hand for a second. “Get out of here.”

  I paused for a moment, then did. We reached Fifteenth Street and started laughing. We laughed until we cried. It was the only time I’d ever seen my father be irresponsible. I don’t know why but it made me love him even more.

  Mother demanded to know the source of our mirth.

  “The kid knocked over a royal palm.”

  “Oh no.” Her face drained. “Is the car damaged?”

  We forgot to look. We ran out to the carport. It wasn’t.

  “Those royal palms cost a fortune.” Mother made tea. “Did you talk to the people?”

  “I left the scene of the crime.”

  “You what?” She turned to Dad. “Ralph?”

  “It’s true. I told her to go.” He started laughing. “Honey, I couldn’t help it.”

  Her hand was poised over the teapot. “That wasn’t right.” The teapot whistled. “I think I would have done the same thing.”

  This became known as the Palm Caper, a story told and retold by Dad or Mom. It ranked up there with the stolen yo-yo and Myrtle the Girdle.

  Myrtle the Girdle referred to a fun-loving lady in Mom’s old Sunday school class who wore girdles of considerable strength. Despite their compressive power, parts of Myrtle spilled over. One day at the church picnic I snapped Myrtle’s girdle (I was seven) and the whole damn thing blew apart. Thank God, Myrtle laughed. She laughed so hard she fell off the picnic bench. I was confined to quarters.

  Every family collects stories, folding them into their memory book like pressed flowers.

  I adored the stories from before World War I. My other favorites were about the flapper days. Much as I liked the stories involving me, I liked Mom and Aunt Mimi’s “running day” stories better.