I tidied my desk and turned out the lights before exiting. It had been an uneventful day, free of accidents or mistakes, yet strangely troubling also. In past years, Vonnie Lee had filled up time and space with constant motion and with a swift, endless flow of words. Today had seemed quiet in comparison, almost leisurely, although I felt sure that the women had accomplished a great deal of cleaning. It was as though I had lifted the phonograph needle from the “1812 Overture” and set it down on “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”
Driving home that day, I saw Birdie’s homely face before me, and I knew for a certainty that her many gentle words of the day were but a shadow of things to come.
My fingers now ache from the labors of my pen. My spirit is heavy, and my mind divested. I shall pause for the renewal that only sleep can bring. In looking over the novel referred to earlier, A Cure for Dreams, I am struck with the fluidity of the narrator’s voice. The colloquial style, the comic insights, and the stunning appeal of finely created characters—so delightful to me when I first read the book—are somewhat discouraging upon closer inspection, for now that I have embarked upon a written narrative of my own, my confidence is shaken.
I fear that my story, so rich and solid in its reality, is but a pale, trembling phantom of itself. By the time my tale is told, I fear that I will have wrung my soul dry, dispossessing myself of the energy to repair the stylistic slackness of these early chapters. Some books are published with the notation Unabridged beneath the title. Perhaps mine shall bear the label Unrevised.
5
Tutors and Governors
When I disembarked from a Greyhound bus in Filbert, South Carolina, more than twenty years ago, I was twenty-nine years old. Though well acquainted with sorrow and exceedingly disillusioned by the people, places, and things in my life, I sought sympathy from no one. Even now I despise the person who publicizes his misfortunes and promotes himself as a victim. It is my unshakable belief that martyrs should be burned at the stake and thus permanently eliminated.
Vowing to conceal my past grief, to fold it away like stained linen and set it upon a high shelf, I prepared myself to start afresh in this small town where no one knew me. I had chosen Filbert a week earlier from a United States atlas at the public library in Marshland, New York, the day after I had overseen my grandfather’s burial, an occasion that I shall treat more fully in a later chapter.
It was an early fall day in 1973 when I emerged from the bus station, suitcase in hand, and turned right to follow wherever the sidewalk might lead. The trees in Filbert, South Carolina, had just begun to change their colors, though they would not reach their peak for several more weeks. As I passed the local fire station—a small wooden edifice that itself appeared to be a fire hazard—I avoided the eyes of the man (a fireman, I assumed) who was seated upon an unstable bench beside the gaping maw of the fire station, inside which was parked a single glossy red fire engine, and who was engaged in what appeared to be whittling. I also passed a residence bearing the shingle Notary Public and a drugstore with a sign above its door that read Health-2-U.
Beyond the drugstore, the sidewalk led me past a small grocery named The Convenient and then along streets lined with houses, all of them modest in size and varying in degrees of upkeep from immaculate to slipshod. I passed a bakery, The Rolling Pin, its window case displaying only five rather deflated doughnuts (and one fly), and a neighborhood park, deserted in the afternoon heat. Though my description of Filbert may create images in the reader’s mind of turn-of-the-century quaintness, such was not the impression in reality. Many of the buildings were indeed old, but the townspeople’s dress, the automobiles, and the common public equipage such as parking meters, stoplights, and overflowing trash receptacles modernized the overall visual effect. Moreover, there was a certain indefinable smell of fried foods and accumulated grime congruous with more recent decades.
Since my mind was filled that day with the pressing needs of employment, housing, and a car, I was alert. My purse held a sum of cash—the liquidation of my grandfather’s assets—and in the suitcase were a few personal possessions.
Presently the sidewalk led past Emma Weldy Elementary School, a low construction of yellow brick, where I viewed a host of children at play. They paid me no heed, for I was beyond the periphery of their fenced playground. Had I been a child, perhaps I would have gained their notice, but, being an adult, I was as a tree or post. I halted and gazed at the seething mass, listening to their childish shouts and noting the vivid patchwork of the many colors of their clothing. Colors affect me to such an extent that I have often wondered whether, with training, I might have succeeded as an artist.
It was the boys I sought most earnestly, their strong, wiry legs pumping in games of tag, their untiring arms in ceaseless motion. I saw a group of older ones in a far corner of the play yard engaged in a game of kickball. The sidewalk led me in that direction, and as I approached I heard a slim, well-built boy positioned near third base shout, “Here, Skeet! Throw it! He’s goin’ home!” A stocky outfielder hurled the ball to the speaker, who caught it cleanly, then smoothly whirled and launched it toward the runner.
I marveled at the boy. He wore green denim jeans, I recall, and his hair was a shock of dark auburn. He could not have been more than ten or eleven, yet he had the graceful coordination and power of a natural athlete. The ball hit the runner squarely behind the knees a few feet from home plate, and the entire outfield erupted into cheers of triumph. The boy who had thrown the ball received the congratulatory thumps of his teammates appreciatively but, it seemed to me, without self-importance. I heard them call him Bennet. Whether his first or last name, I could not tell, but it further endeared the boy to me, for it called to mind the main characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the Bennet family.
Jane Austen is perhaps the author whose works I love best, although I personally favor Emma over Pride and Prejudice. I have long admired Austen’s unmatched genius for transforming the small business of everyday life into memorable scenes for her readers, painting detailed character cameos with her fine brush of words. As a young woman, I had entered the world of the Woodhouses, the Dashwoods, the Bennets, and the Elliots as a means of escaping my grandfather, and for the periodic sanctuary they afforded, I remain grateful. Austen’s orderly world was a balm, the temporary domestic troubles of her characters a respite.
But I must return to the boys on the playground at Emma Weldy Elementary School. There is little else in my opinion as completely satisfying and fascinating as a boy—not a man, but a boy. The potential for tenderness balanced against the unfolding of physical might, the unflinching frankness, the lightness of emotional baggage, the unerring instinct for fairness and truth—in sum, when he reaches adulthood, a man is well past his peak, for this was reached between the ages of three and twelve.
I watched the boys at play until the shriek of a whistle marked the end of their liberation and they were herded inside. The auburn-haired boy, Bennet, loped along ahead of the others as if eager now for other challenges inside the yellow brick building.
Instead of continuing on my way through town as I had intended, I turned in at the school gate and found my way to the principal’s office to inquire concerning staff employment. Until the moment that I had seen Bennet and the other boys at play, it had never occurred to me to seek employment at this or any other school. My brief experience with schools had left me no fond sentiments.
On my way into the office, a harried young woman in a white uniform almost bowled me over as she stormed through the doorway, pushed past me, and ran down the corridor in the direction from which I had come. The secretary, who was occupied on the telephone, cast a quizzical glance toward the momentary hubbub at the doorway but continued nodding into the receiver. I set my suitcase down beside a potted plant, and running my hand down the buttons of my dark suit jacket, which was too warm for a September day in South Carolina, I walked directly into the principal’s office to state my business.
“I have come to ask about a position of employment at your school,” I said.
The principal of Emma Weldy at that time was a portly woman in her late forties named Mrs. Edgecombe, who stood up from behind her large oak desk and tilted her head backward until her spectacles had apparently brought me into focus. She wore an expression of impatience, though taking time to study me thoroughly from head to toe. I would have been only mildly surprised had she requested me to turn around slowly or to open my mouth so she could examine my teeth.
“One of my third-grade teachers just this minute went home with chills and a fever,” she said, “and my librarian is lying in the teachers’ lounge with a migraine headache. And besides all this, one of our lunchroom workers just now flounced in and quit without a word of explanation.” The combination of her deep, resonant voice and her unique, delicate southern inflections (teachers was pronounced “teach-uhs,” for example, lounge was “lou-wunge,” and librarian was “luh-BRAIR-yun”) struck me as comedic, though I made no outward show of such.
I took her statement to mean that she had no time at present to answer my inquiry. “I will wait,” I said and turned to exit her office. Outside her door there was a small alcove furnished with an unattractive brown Naugahyde sofa and two gold plaid chairs, and I meant to sit here. One of the chairs, I had noted earlier, was occupied by a young boy of a scowling and pugnacious countenance, whom I assumed to be a troublemaker awaiting his own private consultation with Mrs. Edgecombe.
Before I had taken two steps, however, Mrs. Edgecombe cried out, “Stop!” I wheeled around to see the woman advancing on me, one hand raised as if halting traffic and the other laid gently across her breast. “I can use your help for the next hour if you will be so kind,” she said, passing me at the doorway. “Please follow me.” For so large a woman, she moved with surprising lightness. The word trippingly came to mind. Her feet were quite small, I noticed, and her hands white and eloquent as they floated beside her. She wore an olive green dress, dotted with a print of white stars, and she was shaped like a small stout bureau.
She led me down a hallway, around a corner, and up a short flight of stairs, which she negotiated quite nimbly. We entered a large sunny room with many low shelves of books, toward which Mrs. Edgecombe made a wide, sweeping motion with her hands, and in a drawl as soft as velvet though paced with urgency, she said, “Choose one to read to the third-grade class. I’m going now to bring them in. They usually have a thirty-minute library time, but we’re going to stretch it to an hour today and shift the fourth-graders to tomorrow.” As she turned to leave, she fixed me with a stern look. “This is not the way we normally handle things around here, miss…now please tell me your name again.”
“Margaret Bryce,” I said.
“Yes, well, there’s only a little of the school day left, and I haven’t been able to get hold of a substitute. I’d do this myself except that I have an appointment with two parents in five minutes, and the assistant principal also needs to sit in on it. This is not a meeting we can postpone, unfortunately. You stepped into my office at just the right minute, it seems.” She shook her head briefly, as though recalling with dismay some imminent, unavoidable unpleasantness, and added, “I have no idea who you are, Miss Bryce, but I’m risking my position on your integrity. Something tells me you won’t let me down.” She wavered just a moment as if reconsidering, then turned swiftly and left. Her low black pumps made dainty, rapid echoes as she retreated down the hallway.
Thus was my introduction to Emma Weldy Elementary School. Though I had never supervised a group of children in my life, I was undaunted by the prospect. I felt completely fortified in the comfortable old library, having spent countless happy hours in such rooms during my early childhood, and I set about quickly to select a book. Almost instantly my eyes lighted on a book titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which, upon cursory inspection, seemed appropriate for reading aloud to third-graders, whom I calculated to be eight or nine years of age. I recognized the name of the author, Roald Dahl, for I had read his collection of stories titled Somebody Like You some ten years earlier.
Mrs. Edgecombe returned presently and stood beside me at the library door, both index fingers held to her lips as if to ensure a double measure of quiet, while a line of children filed into the room. The children seated themselves immediately in the metal chairs that were arranged in two semicircles around a large blue wing chair, where I assumed I was to sit. Twenty-five heads were turned in my direction and as many pairs of large eyes studied me curiously.
“You may let them browse through the shelves after you read to them awhile,” Mrs. Edgecombe whispered. “Remember,” she added, placing the palms of her hands together and tapping her fingertips lightly, “you need to keep them here for an hour. If I’m not back by two-thirty, take them back to their classroom so they can get their things ready to go home. Ask Jessica March to help you if you need to know anything. She’s a very dependable little girl. My meeting should be over by then, though.” A weary look crossed her pink face. “I certainly hope it is.”
I nodded.
Mrs. Edgecombe glanced quickly at the large clock on the wall. “Thank you, Miss Bryce. Come by my office at the end of the day.” She left, and I closed the door.
“Miz Gardner always leaves the door open,” stated a red-haired boy.
“What’s wrong with Miz Gardner?” asked a pudgy girl, who then whispered something at which several children snickered.
“Who’re you?” asked a pale boy, rising to his knees and pointing at me. The folding chair almost buckled, but he averted a spill and quickly sat back down with a loud thump. The other children laughed raucously. There was a great scraping of metal chairs as the children twisted in their seats.
I walked slowly to the blue wing chair and sat down without speaking. I set my purse on the floor beside my chair and placed both hands on top of the book in my lap. My instincts told me that silence was a powerful tool with children. Indeed, it seemed to be so, for the group soon fell quiet and observed me with a look of great wonder. Although I was but twenty-nine years old at the time, I had often observed families in public places and had by now concluded that the primary fault of parents was an excess of talk, much of it redundant, irrelevant, and lacking conviction. I believed a reserved and somber demeanor to be of great value in all interpersonal exchanges, and I still believe this to be true, although my acquaintance with Birdie Freeman has revealed to me certain benefits of open and friendly discourse.
I opened the book, raised my eyes, and moved my gaze slowly across the group, looking briefly into the eyes of each child before reading from the author’s introduction the names of the characters in the story. “‘The five children in this book are Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Mike Teavee, and Charlie Bucket, who is the hero.’” I was instantly encouraged by the thought that any writer who would bestow upon his characters such splendid names surely would not disappoint his readers in the invention of a plot.
“Aw, yeah. That’s a good book!” the red-haired boy said. There was an immediate eruption of questions and comments, which quickly subsided under my mirthless eye.
After thirty minutes I had read to the end of chapter five. “Would you like for me to stop now so that you may find your own books to read?” I asked.
As one, the children cried, “No!”
By the end of the hour, four of the five golden ticket winners in the story had come forward, and Charlie Bucket had just discovered a dollar bill in the snow beside a curb. I knew the faces of the third-graders well by this time, having watched their responses for the past hour. As a child, I had read aloud to my mother each evening, and she to me. I had always admired and tried to mimic my mother’s style of oral reading. I now discovered, happily, that I still possessed the ability to read ahead and retain lengthy phrases to speak aloud as I lifted my head to look into the eyes of my audience. Thus, I appeared to be telling the story rather than merely rea
ding it. I am not boasting, for I do not know to what extent this played a part in the children’s attentiveness. I rather think it was the story itself that captivated them.
At exactly two-thirty Mrs. Edgecombe opened the door and entered. Her round face was drained of color, as if she had been sorely tested during the previous hour. A sprig of her faded brown hair drooped over her forehead. I read, “‘Carefully, Charlie pulled it out from under the snow. It was damp and dirty but otherwise perfect.’” Then I paused and addressed the children. “Mrs. Edgecombe has come to take you back to your classroom, but perhaps she will agree to our finishing this page, which concludes chapter ten.” I held the book up toward Mrs. Edgecombe and pointed to the sentence I had just read, which was midway down the page.
The children emitted groans of disappointment and cries of supplication, to which Mrs. Edgecombe responded by stepping forward and clapping her hands lightly. “It’s almost dismissal time, children, but it won’t hurt to finish the page.” She looked at me and said, “Go ahead. I’ll wait.” And she sat in a wooden armchair near the door.
I resumed reading. Though bordering on starvation, Charlie Bucket displayed admirable self-restraint in the use of his dollar, deciding to purchase a single bar of candy and then to take the rest of the money home to his mother. I closed the book when I had read the last sentence on the page but made a mental note to resume with page fifty if by some improbable development I were asked again at a later time to take the librarian’s place with the third-graders.
Six days later, having acquired a position in the school cafeteria, I borrowed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Mrs. Gardner, who had recovered and returned to her duties in the library, and I read the remaining chapters one evening, not only because the thought of the book weighed upon me as unfinished business but also because I truly desired to know the conclusion of Mr. Roald Dahl’s clever morality tale. I recall that when I read of the glass elevator bearing Charlie’s entire family upward through the roof of the Buckets’ house and out into a clear winter sky, I felt that Mr. Dahl had hit upon a very suitable ending.
Some Wildflower In My Heart Page 6
