"Gary No Yes?" Mrs. Latham said. "Well. I bet you'll do quite well on true-false tests."
And that was it for me. No one ever called me Gary Noyes again. I took shit from that point on until my comrades started having sex, started telling me about how their dates kind of yelled out part of my name during intercourse—either "No, no, no, no," or "Yes, yes, yes, yes." Some of them—debutantes-to-be—went ahead and said my name in full, over and over.
It didn't matter that all of my other teachers pronounced my last name correctly from eighth grade onward, that even some of my philosophy, religion, and literature professors in college up in Chapel Hill had studied up on, and written about, my great-great-great-great whatever. Every one of my classmates called me Gary No Yes for the remainder of my time in Gruel. In French class they called me Non Oui. I changed over to Spanish and became No Si. Gruel Normal didn't teach Greek or Latin or German. These days I blame my lack of globe-trotting on the fact that I only took two first-year introductory courses in separate foreign languages.
Right after the original incident I came home and said to my mother, "There's a new teacher at Gruel Normal and she may or may not be stupid, Mom. She can't say our last name. She calls me No Yes. She thinks my name's Gary No Yes."
My mother's maiden name was Godshell, but that's another story.
"You must take farts and turn them into rafts to float away on, Gary," my mother said. "Your father will tell you the same thing. He once told me that your great-great-great-grandfather—or maybe your aunt—underwent a similar problem because of his ancestry. It makes us all stronger people. You must take shit and turn it into hits."
My mother never said anything about turning lemons into lemonade, oddly. I could count on her to stay away from the cliches, and always wanted her to turn dirty words into aphorisms. After I became No Yes I would come home sometimes and say, "Patty Goforth said to me, 'Eat me now,'" only so I could see my mother drop her vacuum cleaner and rewire her brain to figure out what Eat me now could turn into.
"Meant woe!" she would yell. "Patty Goforth is in some pain, Gary. What she's saying is, she's hurting. Probably from her home life. You need to be a lot nicer to her, what with the situation she's in."
My father said, more often than not, "I wish someone had called me No Yes when I was a kid. That's all right. No Yes. Ha! I think you're lucky to have Mrs. Latham for a teacher." Then he made us hold hands at the dinner table while he prayed for something like eighty minutes. My father had trickled down from being an Oneida plate maker into a man who sold specialized Venetian blinds to people living in mobile homes. My mother—a Godshell—hailed from people in eastern Kentucky who thought anyone without a toolbox might as well be standing next to Satan.
Should anyone come up to me now and ask—let's reach way out and pretend, a psychologist—"Do you think you come from a fine, fine, hardworking and moral family?" I'd say, without thinking twice, "No, Yes."
Mrs. Latham confused me daily. She claimed to use the Socratic method of teaching—which none of us figured out, seeing as she never explained anything about Socrates—and later on I realized that she kind of misrepresented, or stretched, pedagogical terms. Maybe my memory's off, but I remember her saying more than once a week, "If Sparky walked ten miles north at five miles an hour, and Rufus walked five miles south at ten miles an hour, would they meet halfway in between?"
Lookit: My name might've been No Yes, but I fucking knew that it mattered where they started. Let's say if little Sparky began his wayward and unlikely hike in the Yukon Territory, and Rufus started in Pensacola, then Sparky'd be frozen and Rufus would drown. Who were Sparky and Rufus, anyway? I thought. Was this the beginning of some kind of off-color, racist joke? Sometimes my father came home from a highly productive day of selling six-inch-wide Venetian blinds and tell my sister and me a joke about little Johnny ingesting BBs and later shooting the pet dog. "No? Yes?" Mrs. Latham would prompt.
I wouldn't even raise my hand, thinking she called on me. I said "Maybe" every time, without divulging my keen geographic knowledge.
"Miz Latham, I have a dog named Sparky," Alan Farley always said. "He's fast. He can go a lot faster than ten miles an hour, I know. He can chase a car all the way down to Old Old Greenville Road. My daddy dropped him off in Forty-Five one time and he found his way home in less than an hour. Forty-Five's something like twenty miles away."
"No? Yes?"
Becky Herndon said, "I have an uncle named Rufus but he keeps saying he's going to change his name so no one doesn't think he's black."
I thought each day, You idiot, Becky. I said, finally, "Sparky and Rufus need to find other ways to entertain themselves, ma'am. As many times as they walk north and south, they'll hit foreheads too many times."
"Exactly! Pretty soon they'll learn to walk east to west, right?"
I didn't get it. I wanted out. Every time Mrs. Latham asked us about Sparky and Rufus—and she was supposed to be teaching us English and U.S. history, not math—I came home and told my mother. I said, "Mom, Mrs. Latham keeps asking us about two guys walking toward each other. In the real world do people walk toward each other at different speeds every day? Is this something I need to know about? Yes or no."
My mom always put down her dust mop, or can of Pledge, or Lysol, or prescription bottle of "special pills," or spatula, or can of Raid, or feather duster, or putty knife, or bottle of vodka "your father doesn't need to know about," or box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and said, "There are many, many words that you can come up with for Yes or No, son. As in, Rosy One. You can figure out the others. Right? Can't you?" Then, usually, she'd say, "Here comes your dad. Hey, don't say anything about the bottle of rubbing alcohol."
I would nod, then find my way to the push mower, even at dusk, even in winter. Usually I'd find my sister somewhere out in the backyard, either gnawing bark off a sweet gum tree or burning insects with a magnifying glass. Judith was in the fifth grade, in my old elementary school wing at Gruel Normal, when I sat in Mrs. Latham's class. Judith had a destructive streak no one in our family could trace back in the gene pool, seeing as we came from those Utopians.
Mrs. Latham must've really enjoyed her woodburning kit at home. Each year she made little personalized signs to go on her students' desks, kind of like nameplates used by CEOs, or professors who needed to remind colleagues that there was a Ph.D. at the end of their family names. Mrs. Latham handed these nameplates out on the last day before Christmas vacation—Mr. Adams, Miss Bobo, Misters Davis, Dill, and Farley, Miss Goforth, Miss James, Mr. Knox, Miss LaRue, Mr. Pendarvis, Mr. Pinson, Miss Seymour, and so on. They were perfect, on thin oak, and slid into specialized metal stand-up frames balanced at the front of our desks. Everyone else's was perfect—she didn't write out in cursive Pin son or Go forth—except for mine. There, in quarter-inch-deep brown letters, stood my name as she pronounced it.
When the three o'clock bell rang Mrs. Latham said, "Gary, I need to speak to you for a moment before you go." Everyone else ran out the door with their empty book bags, half of them thinking it was the end of the school year.
I said, "What did I do? I didn't do anything," which wasn't quite true. Earlier that day I intentionally wrote down every wrong answer on a true-false test because I knew that John B. Dill—that's what he insisted on being called—copied from my paper. At the bottom of my test I wrote "Opposites" so Mrs. Latham would get it. Because it was Christmas Mrs. Latham lobbed up some softballs, too: "Antarctica is the most populated continent," "The capital of the United States is Gruel," "Abraham Lincoln is best known for his tales of the Mississippi River."
"You let me know who's cheating on tests, and I want to thank you for it," Mrs. Latham said. "When you get your paper back after the break, I'll put a big fat zero at the top in case John B. Dill looks over your shoulder at it, but write 'Opposite' above it. That's not what I want to talk to you about, though, Mr. No Yes."
Already I knew it was a trick. I tried to think of the opposite of zero. Wa
s it one? Was it a hundred? Was it infinity? I said, "I need to get home pretty soon because my mom wants to go shopping up in Greenville," which wasn't true either.
Mrs. Latham sat down behind her desk. She shoved aside the gifts our parents had bought, wrapped, and handed over for us to give. Ten kids out of our class moaned, at eight thirty that morning, when the first present happened to be a pencil holder. Mrs. Latham got so many wooden block pencil holders she could've built a cabin, as it ended up. John B. Dill's parents gave her a tie, for some reason. My father—bless his heart—gave her a gift certificate for specialized miniblinds, should she ever move out of her regular house into a trailer.
"The opposite of zero is Yes, by the way—I can tell by the look on your face that you're trying to figure it all out. But that's not what I want to talk to you about, specifically, either. I want to talk to you about the two most powerful words in the English language. You might go to church and hear that those words are Good and Evil, or Love and God, or—around here—Cotton and Gun. But the real answer happens to be Yes and No. More has happened in the history of our land because of someone answering Yes or No than any other two words, Gary. That's why I like to call you Mr. No Yes. I don't like to advertise it here in Gruel, but I took a bunch of philosophy courses in college—a load of courses about the existentialists. Yes and No were major themes in all of their treatises, which you—I hope and feel sure—will come to understand later on in life. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"
Another trick, I thought. Was I supposed to offer up one of the two most powerful words in the English language? I had no choice but to nod. I didn't want to let Mrs. Latham down, here in the holiday season, by saying, "Maybe."
"I would also like to tell you that sometimes in March or April the farmers have put their gardens in. They've planted tomatoes, beans, okra, squash, watermelon, and cucumbers to take over to the Forty-Five Farmers Market. And out of nowhere a giant frost comes in for just one night. A lot of people think that it'll kill the plants, but a good gardener knows better. His plants become what is called 'frost-hardened' and they somehow become stronger. No one knows why, but frost-hardened plants can later withstand bugs and drought and too much rain. Even hail."
I said, "Yes ma'am," like I knew where this was going. I didn't.
"And that's what I'm doing for you, Gary No Yes. I'm frost-hardening you. After you get out of my classroom, you're going to be so strong you'll be able to withstand anything that comes your way. I made a promise to someone years ago to act thusly. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"
I didn't nod this time. I said, slightly, "Yesnomaybe, uh-huh."
Mrs. Latham said, "Good." She said, "All right," and clapped her hands together. She wore a sweater with a Christmas tree on it, with two ornaments right about where her nipples would be, I thought. I tried not to look. I tried not to think about how I hadn't noticed this earlier in the day, maybe when we had to stand up and do jumping jacks beside our desks. "Now. For more important things: What's Santa Claus going to bring you? Your ma tells you all about Satan Claus, doesn't she? Oh—that's called a Freudian slip. I mean Santa Claus."
I stood up to go. "Well. I don't know. We don't make a big thing out of Christmas. Dad says we should celebrate the birth of Jesus more and the birth of Sears, Roebuck less. I'd kind of like to get a new globe, a telescope, and maybe a set of encyclopedias."
Where did that come from? I even thought right then.
In my eyes Mrs. Latham's Christmas ornaments shook up and down, though she didn't appear to laugh. She said, "I want to give you an extra credit question for your test. Yes or No: Mrs. Latham is stupid to believe in Santa Claus."
I looked behind her at the clock. Could it be that only ten minutes had passed, or had I been there for twenty-four hours and ten minutes? I thought. I imagined my friends already playing basketball down on the square—or our version of basketball, which meant hitting Colonel Dill's statue straight on the nose for two points—and my mother circling the den with a drink in one hand and a box of rat poison in the other, worrying that I had run away from home. I said, "Please don't do this to me. I can't take it anymore. I don't mean to be disrespectful, ma'am."
Mrs. Latham got up from behind her desk and clicked her way toward me standing there. Her hair stood up on end in a way that spaghetti might look infused with static electricity. She put her right hand on the crown of my head. I might be wrong here—maybe she told me to scoot on off and have a wonderful holiday—but what I heard came out, "Wait till we get to Easter, No Yes."
I ran home without looking back, scared that a life-threatening disease had happened upon me. This was seventh grade, but it was the early 1970s, understand, and I had no prior reason to ever get an erection in Gruel, South Carolina.
My father wanted to invite my seventh-grade teacher over for day-after-Christmas leftovers. He said, "We can straighten all of this out." He said, "We'll invite Mr. and Mrs. Latham over, and we can have turkey hash. We should've invited them over four months ago, as a matter of fact. Town like Gruel, we invite newcomers over. Did we bring them a pie or cake when they moved in? Hey, if there's one thing that I can understand from my ancestor John Humphrey Noyes, it's that forgiveness is next to godliness."
My mother, tilting in the den, said, "My dictionary has some words in between, which start with /or end with damn. But that's just me. That's just my personal dictionary. Listen. Like I said before, you can turn Latham into halt Ma. That's all I have to say. I can't believe that it didn't hit my brain earlier. That's all I need to say! That woman is damaging our son, I can tell. When have I been wrong?"
This occurred on Christmas Eve. My sister Judith huddled in the bathroom with a watercolor kit, as usual. Mom had encouraged her artwork, though only on the shower curtain where it would come off four times a day. Because I always woke up earliest, I discovered such dictums as "We shall never repent from our immoral ways!" or "It's a straight line between boredom and death!" or "May the Prince of Darkness teach us forever!" or "Roses are red / violets are blue / I've got a secret: / may the Prince of Darkness come out of nowhere in the middle of the day and select you for one of his minions." Judith wasn't right in the head, I figured out early on. This was before any of those scary movies, too. She'd get straightened out two years later, I thought, when Mrs. Latham called her Judith No Yes.
"Maybe you were wrong when we got married," I almost heard my father say. He looked up at my mother's secret cabinet, above the refrigerator. I do know that he said, "You thought I'd only be selling Venetian blinds to convicts, ex-cons, runaways, and ne'er-do-wells. Look how that ended up. I seem to be putting food on the table. I don't hear you wanting for want."
My mother stomped around a bit, between running into various pieces of furniture in our den, living room, and kitchen. She asked me for a syllabus, kind of—she said, "Hey Gary No Yes, get me that long sheet of paper that has y'all's day-to-day activities typed up on it mimeographed with the goddamn teacher's name and address on the top of it"—and found Mrs. Latham's home phone number.
And she called. Only later in life did I find it sad that Mrs. Latham answered the phone, considering. Here it was, Christmas Eve, and she should've been either visiting her folks or her in-laws, like every other American with any sense of duty. I hung out by the stolen Christmas tree my father bought from a man on the side of Highway 25, and I pretended to be enamored with a couple gifts wrapped for Judith and me that were obviously either socks or underwear. My mother said, "Hello, Mrs. Latham?"
I assumed that my teacher said something other than "Get lost, it's Christmas Eve."
"Hey, this is Gary No Yes's mother, and I would like to invite you and Mr. Latham over for some day-after-Christmas turkey hash. I have this recipe I got from my mother's mother, and she got it from my husband's father's father's father's father's mother." I looked beneath the tree and saw a box that might've actually been a set of encyclopedias. "Yes, that is odd how my family could know my husban
d's family, but that's the way it goes. Anyway, we want you and Mr. Latham to come over on December 26—it's so much trouble for people to take care of everything the day after Christmas, we understand."
I picked up a package and shook it. The card said FROM MOM/TO GARY. This is no lie: glug, glug, glug emanated beneath the box. Booze, I thought. It wasn't hard to figure out how my mother made it sound that she would bear the brunt of taking on all day-after-Christmas eaters. I listened to my mother listen to Mrs. Latham.
My mother said, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Uh-huh. Well that would be great, then," like that.
To me she said, "Well that's settled. She seems to love you, Gary No Yes." Back in the bedroom later I heard her tell my father, "She has no right to call herself Mrs. Latham. Halt Ma! She's not even married. What kind of a woman would pretend to have a husband? Most sane women walk around town with their husbands, but pretend like they're strangers who happen to walk in the same direction at the same pace."
The next thing I knew, my father got me out of bed, told me to put on some tennis shoes but stay in my pajamas, and we were off in his Dodge to place surprise Christmas gifts on the miniature porches of house trailers. He gave out extrathin feather dusters, made especially for the Galloway micro-miniblind. Somewhere halfway to Forty-Five he said to me, "Gary No Yes, it's important to make people feel like their homes are first-rate. Remember that. Even if the homeowners aren't clean, it's important for them to feel that their trailers are first-rate. Am I clear on this?"
I thought, We must turn first-rate into rat strife. We must turn first-rate into tar fister. I said, "Yes," got out of the car, wove my way through about twenty curs, and propped micro-miniblind dusters against aluminum doors. I imaged my sister inside the bathroom, painting a picture of Satan Claus with horns and fangs.
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