The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  I watch him and his eyes are so ice-ish a color and his hair is wet and his mostly brown-black beard is stiff like Cherish, my beautiful Scottie. “I’m HUNGRY!!!” I scream. “I’m HUNGREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” I shake the table, and the big jar of black jelly stuff falls over into a dish, and papers and books and crayons and stuff start a slide. Things go on the floor.

  He pats the disgusting beige bread sandwich in my plate, which I do not want.

  “Make me some eggs,” I say, with just my teeth, and on him I make my expression steady and official. “There are some eggs here in the refrigerator. There are seven eggs. Plenty of eggs.”

  “You didn’t like eggs this morning,” he says.

  “I did too!”

  “No. I was here. Remember, Jane? The scene with the oatmeal? Four pans of oatmeal this time. Then the eggs. And then the toast. How many toasts? Let’s see . . . half a loaf? And then the graham snacks Tante Lucienne made special for you. Even the muffins. They were shaped funny or something. You must be pretty hungry by now. And as I recall, you didn’t really eat anything of your supper last night . . . or your dinner.”

  I scream, “EHHHHHHHHHGGGGGs!!!!!” Then I do just a regular no-word scream like a person who is trapped by a robber or a killer. It is a long scream with little breaths in the middle, kind of painful to my neck, but I make it louder and louder anyway and I don’t faint because of the little breaths.

  He ignores me for a while, but he has stopped eating. He has finally stopped his pig noises. He is just sitting there, looking out the window.

  I feel sleepy and faintish and there are shivers around my head, but my scream is still going good, going on for miles, little breaths in the middles. My head goes flappity floppy. My secret agent glasses fly. Where are they? He is standing up out of his seat. He grabs me. He shoves me, squeezing my arms, and he says, “Nap time, dear!” He drags me to the hall and up the stairs. One of my ankle bones smashes a stair thing. He pulls me into my room. He throws me on my bed. I jump up and run ahead of him, screaming, screaming, everything ripping in my neck, everything popping in my eyes. He runs up behind me, grabs me by one arm this time, JUST ONE ARM, all squeezing on one piece of my arm. He shoves me into my room and slams the door hard. I try to get it open. Him on the outside. Me on the inside. I scream. I scream. I scream. “MUMMA! MUMMA! MAHHHHH-MAHHHHH! I want MUMMA! Let me out!!” He is holding the door. I kick the door. But the door is a horridable rock. I will scream till my throat turns to jelly. Until I am blind. If he gets me the sugar bread, maybe my throat will be too ruined to swallow it. But I will HAVE the sugar bread. And my blood inside me will be happy, not exploding in flames. Mumma isn’t ever mean like this. Mumma would give me sugar. Mumma is sugar. My sweet Mumma.

  Claire recollects.

  That year’s quilt show was breathtaking. They had the traditional and they had a lot of the new artsy types. Ruth York’s star-and-wolf pattern of her own design, done in purples, grays, and oranges, got third place in that category. We all had a grand time.

  Jane strays (reports to the outside world).

  I am at the top of the stairs, where I can hear them talking. The man’s voice is not as deepish as Gordie’s. But he is as old as Gordie. I am trying to figure a way to plan my escape. I get my secret book and pen marker for my pocket and my secret glasses, which somebody—Gordie, of course—folded on the little table at the top of the stairs. My face is a mess and my hair is a mess and my nose is stuffish from so much suffering. The phone rings. I go down the stairs wicked slow, listen at the door, and Gordie is talking. I open the door. I do not look at Gordie or the other man. I just walk OUT.

  Out in the yard there is, yes, bugs. Bugs start to eat me and then more bugs and more. I go out on the tar road and walk fast and more bugs land on me, but I squish them and walk faster and suck some of the snot up my nose, the sad suffering snot. It is pretty hot out. I have had it with Gordie and the horridable people. I am never going back. Somebody has to help me. I see a tiny edge of a house way way way up on the hill after the other hill after this hill. I walk faster. Bugs do not give up. They fly up hills so easy. Right now, trees hang over the road in green pretty shade, but then after that it is bright pure sun. Then in some trees on the next hill is the skinny road that is the way you go to the Settlement if you are in a car. It is a very secret-looking road.

  I walk more past that road. Then the next hill. Up, up, up through green shade parts, through sun. I think it has been a mile. I am tired of bugs. My arms are tired of fighting off their blood tongues. Finally, here’s the house. Actually, it is two houses, one on one side, one on the other. One is nice and new. The other is an ugly mess, a trailer house and a bunch of trucks and junk, and behind that is another house, shaped like a rocket ship. A pink rocket ship. Pink is pretty. I like pink for houses. But I don’t think you are supposed to like a house that looks like that even if it is the best pink. Music is coming out of the trailer house. Not rap music. Not R&B. All around the rocket ship and trailer house are big trees with needles.

  Over across, at the nice new house, is a tall oldish lady watering giant flowers and grass. No trees. Just round ball-shaped bush things which you are supposed to like. Everything is fixed so nice and is cut nice. Her driveway is just like the road, hard nice black tar stuff. The lady looks at me and smiles and I smile back. She has very black hair with bangs. Might be a wig. She is kind of dressed up but wears sneakers. Her legs are real long. I wave to be friendly. She waves. And she brushes a bug off her ear. Bugs like everybody.

  I say, “Hi there!”

  She says, “Hello.”

  I look back over at the trailer and the rocket house. Nobody there but a squirrel. I stand there awhile and watch the squirrel, who squiggles around picking things up. Then he jumps and sticks on the side of one of the big trees. He is looking right at me. His eyes are big and shiny.

  When I look back at the lady, she was looking at me, but she looks away fast, pretending to be busy.

  I walk closer to her yard, to the very edge. I scratch my leg and arm, which have twenty puffed bug itches. Also my lip has a big bug itch. And I say, “I like your car.”

  She says, “Thank you.”

  I put my foot on her grass. I adjust my secret agent glasses for perfect vision. I say, “Your flowers are big.”

  “Those are hollyhocks,” she says. Her voice is high and loud and tweedly. “We brought them from our other home.” She scratches her neck and her arm and her chin.

  I step closer.

  We look at her flowers awhile and she tells me all about her yard in a science-ish way and how her son had to scrape the house ’cause the first new paint was the wrong color. Her voice is so tweedly and perfect, I think she might be a schoolteacher. A real schoolteacher. With these secret agent glasses, you know everything about people even before they say it. Behind the house is a scratching sound. “What’s that?”

  “That’s David. My son. He’s having trouble with the weed wacker. Looks like we need a new one.”

  “Do you like to shop?”

  She laughs loud and high and tweedly. “Not for weed wackers.”

  I look around the corner and there’s the man by a cute little red barn-shape thing, lawn mower and stuff by his foot, and he has a very long neck and a popped-out Adam thing. He isn’t hairy like Gordie, not on his face. And his hairdo is perfect. He looks so neat and good, almost plastic, which is pretty. His outfit is perfect too. No spots. He is probably a teacher also. I wiggle my secret glasses a little to work up the power.

  The lady asks if I live around here.

  I say, “Sort of.”

  “Out for your exercise?”

  I giggle. The suffering snot is gone from my nose. But my eyes are kind of sore, achy. And my throat. Screams really wreck your throat. I slap a bug on my hand and when I look he’s a squished blood mess. My blood.

  The lady finishes with her flowers and turns the nozzler to shut off the water and lays it on the grass. There are
drops of water on everything and the hollyhocks drip drip drip.

  I say, “I am really hungry. And thirsty. And tired.”

  She looks at her house for a long minute and says, “Oh, well . . . why don’t you just come in for a treat?” She walks fast for an old lady. Her legs are so long. Her steps are giant.

  “Your man-guy lives here too?” I ask as we go through the breeze-way, which is all fixed neat and smells new.

  “Yes, my son. David is his name.” Inside, she says, “Take your sunglasses off. It’s not that bright in here!” She laughs loud and bubbly.

  “I need these,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  On the fridge is a magnet thing that says BERNICE’S KITCHEN. They have such a pretty house. Full of stuff. Stuff you buy. Plants and books and statues and a huge TV . . . you know, the biggest. She has me sit at the kitchen table and pick four kinds of cookies from four cookie jars of different shapes, a lighthouse, an apple with a worm for a handle, a cowgirl, and a cowboy. All cute.

  The weed wacker starts buzzing outside and the lady hollers, “Hallelujah!” and this cracks me up. She and I both laugh a minute.

  “Is your name Ber-nice?” I ask. Like burr and nice.

  “Yes, but you pronounce it Ber-neece. And what is your name?”

  “Jane Miranda Meserve.”

  “A lovely old-fashioned name. Jane. Feel happy your mommy didn’t name you one of those names nobody’s ever heard of.”

  “I’ve heard of Ber-NEECE before. It’s nice,” I lied. I never once heard that name, but I am trying to be nice like you are supposed to be.

  Her voice is so tweedly and bubbly and loud. “I’ll get you some milk, Jane.”

  “No thank you,” I say, very nice. “I don’t like milk. Even the good kind.”

  She says, “Would you like some lemonade?”

  “I like Coke.”

  “We have club soda.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Soda without sweetener or flavoring.”

  I frown. Sounds pretty weird. “Well, I don’t really need anything to drink. I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, just say so,” she says, so brightish.

  I say, “Are you a teacher?”

  “Why, yes!” she says. “I retired eight years ago this spring. My goodness, how did you know?”

  I shrug. I give my glasses a little wiggle to keep the power.

  She sits across from me with a cup of coffee and she says, “Well!”

  And I giggle. I look through the archway at her TV, which is not on, just quiet, smooth, grayish. “I like your TV.”

  “Yes,” she says, turning to admire it herself. “David got it. He likes to stay abreast of the news.”

  “Is he a teacher too?”

  “How did you know?!!”

  “Oh, I just know stuff.”

  She says, “You probably know because your parents told you. Where exactly do you live? Are you summering on the lake?”

  I look at the backside of a nice butter cookie. “I’m just visiting some people,” I say.

  “Oh, take off your sunglasses, Jane. I’d like to see your eyes as we chat.”

  I let her see my eyes just a little, then push the glasses back fast, to keep up the power.

  “You have striking eyes,” she says. “I don’t know why you’d want to hide them.”

  “I have my father’s eyes. You ever hear of Damon Gorely?”

  She looks into her thoughts, eyes up. “No, I guess not.”

  “Well,” I tell her, “he’s famous in rap. Well, pretty soon famous. He’s trying to get publishity . . . pub-liss-ity, I mean. He has talent, Mum says. He’s in California. Mum met him once in person and has a picture of him which we look at all the time.”

  She pats my hand.

  I nibble a cookie.

  She sips her coffee. She says, “Have you been upset? Your eyes are . . .”

  I sigh. “I’ve had a horridable day.” I hold my forehead for a moment to show her I mean it.

  The buzzing weed thing goes around and around the yard.

  I say, “Ber-NEECE. I shouldn’t call you that, should I? You shouldn’t call teachers stuff like real names. You have to say Mrs.”

  She giggles. “Here, it’s okay, dear.” She looks so pleased. She sips her coffee. “So you must be visiting some people on this road.”

  “Yuh. I have to stay with Gordie till my Mum can come home.”

  “Gordie? St. Onge?” Her face gets a wave across it. I can see the thing she is thinking. She does not like Gordie. “You mean” she jerks her thumb in THE direction—“down there, at that . . . place?”

  “Gordie’s house.”

  “I’ve heard about him,” she says, and looks at her coffee.

  “He’s mean,” I say. “He squeezed my arm and threw me on the bed. He is”—I lean forward and make my teeth real plain—“he . . . is . . . big.”

  She looks up at me. Then she says, even more loud and bubbly, “I want to fix you a treat! I can mix club soda with lemonade and make you a wacky lemon wonder!” She stands over there with her back to me, mixing mixing mixing. It is not too hot here in Ber-NEECE’s house. She has all the windows shut. And drapes across the sunshine-side window.

  Outside, the weed thing buzzes around. I look out the picture window near the TV, and the awful trailer house across the road has a little dog-sized door and I see it open up and out walks a white horridable dog with dirty fur, a black spot eye, and curled tail. I know that dog! He visits me a lot at Gordie’s.

  I sniff the air. Ber-NEECE has such a nice house. She gives me the glass of stuff. I don’t want to tell her it’s gross, so I drink a little. She is so nice. Her eyes are very watery and pinkish-green and her wig hair is so funny and cute. I say, “Do you want to see my secret book?”

  She says, “Oooooh. A secret book!”

  “I have it on me now.” I feel into my sundress pocket. “I am a spy and I watch them at Gordie’s all the time,” I tell her in a low voice.

  Ber-NEECE smiles thin and polite with her lips and she says, in a voice that’s different, not as high but kind of cloudish, “How nice.”

  The buzzing stops outside and in a minute the man comes in and he says, “It died. I’ll need to make a trip to town.” His voice is thin, buzzy. Like the weed wacker. And boy does his Adam thing jump! Soon as possible, I am going to draw that Adam thing and all of him and his weed thing in my secret book and Ber-NEECE with her funny wig hair.

  Ber-NEECE is acting funny. Making expressions at the man.

  He comes over and stands by the table. He looks down at my secret book open with Ber-NEECE’s fingers there.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  Ber-NEECE says, “David, this is Jane. She’s from the school. The school down the hill.”

  He looks at me, my whole face, my whole head, then down again at my secret book under Ber-NEECE’s fingers.

  Ber-NEECE says, “Dear, tell us true. You are safe here. You can tell us anything and everything. Is anyone hurting you at that place?”

  The man is staring at my mouth, waiting for words.

  I put both hands in my lap and take a deep breath, and I sigh so deep. “Gordie is very mean. Too horridable to describe. Won’t let me have food. All I want is food. But all he has is this black stuff! And cold beans. And he squeezed me!” And I burst into tears, real ones . . . which come even worser than before . . . wicked out of control, which is actually a surprise even to me.

  Out in the world.

  The people work. The people shop. The people hurry. The people wait at streetlights, grumbling. The people now talk on phones while driving—and chewing, swallowing, on their way. Work, shop, drive, talk, chew. Tinted windshields. Flashing mirrors. Automated voices and hidden cameras. The people are on their way. Credit cards. Interest. Faster money. Longer days. Lighter meals. Memories of no past. Catalogs. Packaging that crinkles. Packaging that opens faster.

 
How the Border Mountain Militia and the St. Onge Settlement come to a rough but workable junction.

  Another day. Another evening. Getting dark a little early these days.

  Down at the old St. Onge farm place, which sits close to the tar road, Gordon St. Onge and six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve are out on the screened piazza. Each is outdoing the other with fabulous stories, fictions about walking watermelons, and Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf friend who rides a Harley and wears a leather jacket, and the girl who goes to California to find fame as a rap singer and meets stars, all of them dripping in jewels and money and secrets. Both Gordon and Jane have a flair for the dramatic and far-fetched. Their stories weave one into the other, the child’s giggles and the man’s growls punctuating and underlying the most madcap moments, though a tension takes place, each pressing to give his or her values center stage, jewels versus thrift, for instance.

  A rare thing for anyone to be alone this long with Gordon, here in the almost darkness, evening time, a place usually so hubbubish with lives. But now, a humid gray night sags around them, their skin is clammy, and all surfaces have an unpleasant dew.

  The phone rings.

  “Gordie, it’s probably Mum calling.”

  Well, yes, it’s too sticky to want somebody on your lap tonight, not a dog, not a kid, not anything with a live temperature, but sometimes you do what needs to be done in spite of the wishes of your skin. Therefore, Jane is curled in Gordon’s lap, her long golden arms and legs tucked under her, which makes her seem quite small and beetlebug-shaped. She wears underpants with a pattern of fat purple dinosaurs which, in this dusky evening darkness, are just spots. And she wears one of those little girl undershirts, straps, bitty rayon bow. Her heart-shaped secret agent glasses are in an important tight grip in her hand underneath her, her head is turned to the side, cheek against Gordon’s chest, her expression alert. As the phone rings again, her rough velvety voice, the voice more of a young woman than a six-and-a-half-year-old, again speaks. “That is probably Mumma calling.”