Hannah, Divided

by Adele Griffin

  “Oh, boy! Silly me!” she would exclaim, touching her fingertips to Hannah’s shoulder. “Ruth Ann, Bethany, Lillian. This is Hannah Bendel. Don’t you remember? Miss Jordan gave us a lecture about her last week?”

  “Bennett,” Hannah corrected, as the girls smiled and looked at her in the charitable way that one might regard a child’s painting.

  “Pleased to meet you, Hannah,” they would chorus, then return to whatever they were doing. Pleased to meet her and pleased to leave her utterly alone.

  By lunchtime, Hannah felt her smile start to hurt, as if she had borrowed it from somebody else and it did not fit.

  “Miss Jordan told us you live on a dairy farm,” said chubby, blond Lillian Shay, when the girls had gathered at the long table for a lunch of cold chicken and fruit.

  “That’s right,” Hannah answered.

  “Do you have to touch smelly cows?” asked Helene. She wrinkled her nose as if a terrible smell had been placed under it.

  “How else are they going to be milked?” Hannah scoffed.

  “Eww,” squealed Lillian with a shiver. “I could never!”

  “You seem to enjoy the butter and cream,” said Hannah. She made a show of looking Lillian up and down. “Maybe a cow wouldn’t want to touch you, either!”

  “Oh, so rude!” sniffed Lillian, a blush blotting her cheeks. “Manners must be in short supply on your farm.”

  “Hannah, why do you keep tapping your fingers under the table?” Helene’s friend Ruth Ann pointed accusingly. “You were tapping this morning, during Chapel. It’s really quite distracting.”

  “Don’t sit next to me, then,” Hannah snapped. She did not mean to say it. Her mouth was going its own way, blurting things in a terrible fashion.

  “Why, I wouldn’t sit next to you on a dare.” Bethany shook her pageboy flip so that a lock of hair fell over her eye. “You rude thing.”

  “Stop it, girls,” said Helene. “It’s not Hannah’s fault who she is, rough and uneducated.” She smiled frostily at Hannah. “Some ladies are bred, others need to be taught.”

  Hannah clenched her fists and willed herself to silence as she finished her lunch. Tru had warned her well enough that these girls wouldn’t know what to think of her. It was up to Hannah to fix her peculiarities.

  Starting with a new hemline and a haircut, before the end of the week.

  15. PROOFS OF OLD CODGERS

  MR. COLE DID NOT arrive at Ottley Friends until late afternoon, when Miss Jordan had despaired that he would appear at all. According to Miss Jordan, he was punctual only when the mood took him. By then, she and Hannah had settled into Miss Jordan’s office to read Nursery Rhymes for Boys and Girls. A baby book, Hannah fumed.

  Miss Cascade had tried a similar tactic last year, but the tales of Jack Horner and Georgie Porgy hardly seemed worth reading once, let alone mucking through for hours. Also, Hannah was terrified that Helene Lyon might flounce in. Wouldn’t Helene throw a giggle fit if she saw what Hannah was reading!

  When the door finally did fling open, Hannah sprang from her chair like a rabbit from a trap. The nursery book thudded to the floor.

  “My goodness, Hannah!” exclaimed Miss Jordan as she bent to retrieve it. Hannah forgot to apologize as she turned her attention to her new math teacher.

  On a first glance, Mr. Cole reminded Hannah of the scarecrow in Ma’s backyard garden patch. His graying hair poked up from his head like Homer’s raggedy feathers, and his clothes seemed not to be dressing a body so much as shaping a collection of chicken-wire joints and straw parts beneath. His bushy mustache, skewed bow tie, and the blob of coffee stain down the front of his vest gave him a look of someone who had decided on an academic appearance, but then forgot to maintain it.

  “Pythagorean theorem?” he asked, swiveling to stare oddly at Hannah. His right eye darted like a silvery green fish, while the left one seemed to fix onto a nonplace just past her. “Glass,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sometime I’ll pop it out and show you. We begin with Pythagoras. Have you got to him yet?”

  When Hannah shook her head, puzzled, a smile lifted Mr. Cole’s mustache. “Oh, beautiful. Proofs, proofs, proofs are beautiful! I’ll show you. Come along, come along.”

  Miss Jordan waved an encouraging good-bye as Hannah stumbled after Mr. Cole, who was walking at a clip.

  “Coffee?” he asked over his shoulder. Students jumped out of his way, giggling, though Mr. Cole himself never broke stride.

  “Um, no, thank you.”

  “Coming through, coming through!” sang Mr. Cole. “Keep up with me, Hannah! Mathematics is changing all the time.”

  He led Hannah up three flights of stairs, down a narrow corridor, and into a tiny classroom that seemed to be all his—judging from the clutter on the desk and in the bookshelves. He motioned for her to sit at a front desk, then he spun on his heel twice before he located a piece of chalk, which he used to draw a square on the board.

  Inside the square he drew a triangle.

  Beneath the triangle, he wrote the equation a2 + b2 = c2.

  “I don’t care if you ever learn how to spell Pythagoras or Bhaskara or Chang Tshang, Miss Bennett,” said Mr. Cole. Aligned, both his real and glass eye regarded Hannah with equal seriousness. “And if any of those old codgers were alive today, I’d bet they wouldn’t give a hoot, either. They’d rather have you master their proofs. You’ll have questions, but try to follow along. We’ll take coffee in forty minutes. I can’t go too long without it. We’ll start with our friend Mr. P. From this single theorem, one can devise an infinite number of algebraic proofs. For example. Let a equal six point two five.”

  6.25. The numbers appeared in Hannah’s head as if inked there. She drew the first easy breath of her day. Mr. Cole’s face was a study in enchantment as he prepared to dive headlong into the Pythagorean theorem, and soon Hannah could see nothing but numbers as she slipped through the door of her mind and lost herself inside.

  16. SATURDAY WITH MAE

  JOE SAID NOTHING ABOUT his pomade-greased doorknob, but when Hannah came home from Ottley Friends that afternoon, she found that every ruler-ordered object in her room had been set askew.

  What a nuisance Joe Elway was turning out to be!

  But he was not a tattletale. When Mrs. Sweet returned from Boston at the end of the week, Joe pretended that he and Hannah had made cordial introductions.

  “I showed her around town, just as you asked, ma’am,” Hannah overheard him say. “I think she’s settled in fine.”

  Mrs. Sweet, after checking in on Hannah and asking her some questions about how she had settled into her school, left promptly for a night at the opera.

  “You’ll find Sweet hardly takes a blind bit of notice to us,” Beverly explained to Hannah during dinner. “If you haven’t figured out already, all she wants is for us to win scholarships so that her photograph will appear in the Inquirer alongside the city bigwigs, and Mayor Moore’ll grant her a goodwill ambassadorship or something. What she doesn’t want is for us to be pesky.”

  “Her sons are grown and scat, one to England and the other to California,” added Joe. “I’da moved across the country, too, to get away from all that bossing.”

  Hannah soon determined, however, that Mrs. Sweet’s presence was not so bossy as akin to a mild haunting. She was a patter of footsteps, a rattle of the tea tray, a faint burst of laughter through the air ducts of her bedroom down into the kitchen. Mostly, however, Mrs. Sweet was out. Out at ladies’ lunches, or out to meet friends at the Wanamaker’s eagle for a day of shopping. She often returned with purchases for Joe, Beverly, or Hannah, dropping the packages of galoshes or gloves on the table in the foyer.

  “Though she never troubles to ask beforehand what any of us might need,” said Beverly as she handed out new toothbrushes and socks, the spoils of one of Mrs. Sweet’s excursions. “With Mrs. Sweet, you get what you get.”

  “Like coffee or tobacco,” said Hannah.

  Beverly laughed. “I gues
s so.”

  On the first Saturday after her return, Mrs. Sweet did supervise Hannah’s haircut, telephoning the appointment herself and walking Hannah to her own personal beauty parlor.

  “Very up-to-the-minute, Hannah,” Mrs. Sweet said as she jotted the check to the hairdresser. “And here’s fifty cents for lunch and a matinee. The cinema’s just ‘round the corner. I’m meeting some of my friends for bridge in Willow Grove. Ta!”

  “Oh.” Hannah had hoped this Saturday Mrs. Sweet might show her some of the city’s sights—maybe even the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel with its harp-playing angel. But it seemed that Beverly was right; Mrs. Sweet was not prepared to take a blind bit of notice.

  Disappointed, Hannah Watched Mrs. Sweet’s jaunty beret dissolve among the throng of caps and cloches. All around her, the city bustled, moving swiftly on its various joints and hinges. If only Granddad were here, she thought. He would know the right way to spend the afternoon. He would know where to take her.

  Hannah stared at the quarters in her palm. Fifty cents was a stupendous amount of money. All she ought to be was grateful. She clutched the coins as she made her way dutifully to the cinema, where she lined up for her ticket among the sweetheart couples and family clusters. The fingers of her one hand tapped up and down the newly exposed nape of her neck while the other gripped her two quarters.

  The new W.C. Fields film, It’s a Gift, was playing. But on a last-minute impulse, Hannah bought a ticket to see I’m No Angel, starring Mae West. With thirty-eight cents left over, she decided to spend another nickel on a packet of jelly babies.

  It was at the counter that she heard the voices.

  “See her there? Up in front. Her hair’s changed.”

  “Where? Oh, I see.”

  Helene Lyon and Lillian Shay! And they were talking about her! Hannah stopped tapping her neck and plunged her hands into her pockets, forcing herself not to turn around while her ears pricked up to eavesdrop on their prattle.

  “How odd for Miss Tippity-tap to attend the cinema by her lonesome,” remarked Helene.

  Lillian sniggered. “Well, it’s not as if she can spend the afternoon browsing in a bookshop or library!”

  “Poor thing,” said Helene lightly. “I suppose I could lend her some of my baby brother Dixie’s picture books. He’s got no need for them since he started kindergarten.”

  “Oh, reading’s only one of Miss Bennett’s afflictions,” said Lillian. “If she gets that scholarship, it’ll be nothing short of robbery.”

  Then they did know! And Hannah had thought she had kept her reading a secret. Blushing hotly, she made her request to the candy-counter girl, and squared her back against Lillian and Helene as she hurried into the theater. She chose a seat in the last row and wriggled all the way down in it so that the girls would not see her when they trotted past. Miss Tippity-tap—what a mean nickname! If only she had a couple of Elgin Winnicker’s garden slugs on hand!

  The lights darkened, and she tried to shake the girls, and their insults, from her mind. Luckily, the newsreel was brief and was followed by two childish but funny Donald Duck shorts. And Mae West was divine, like a glittery, friendly witch. It was only after the magic was over and the lights were brought back up again that Hannah remembered about Helene and Lillian.

  She watched as the pair swept out through the front exit. Good riddance, she thought as she crept out the back, although she couldn’t help but wonder where the girls were off to.

  No, I’d rather be alone than with them, she thought. Even if alone means lonely.

  As it was, the rest of Saturday afternoon loomed. No chores, no afternoon milking, no helping Ma with pitting peaches or ironing sheets or waxing floors and furniture. Hannah followed her feet to the vendor’s cart on Front Street, where she bought a soft pretzel with an extra spatula swipe of mustard. From another peddler, she bought a pickled egg. She ate with her chin tucked rather than witness the city speed along too fast. She could never find order in its patterns. If she counted a blockful of cars or people, by the next minute, the number had changed.

  It was past dinnertime when Hannah arrived at 5 Delancey Place. The house was dark. In the pantry she found a covered plate of baked apples and lamb chops. Nobody was waiting up to reprimand her, or to hear of her adventures, or to express relief that she had found her way home at all. From the parlor came the plink-plink of Beverly practicing scales. From everywhere else, silence.

  17. DINNER AT DELANCEY PLACE

  “COMMAND PERFORMANCE!” MRS. SWEET bellowed as she pushed through the kitchen door the following Friday morning, startling everyone because traditionally she took breakfast on a tray in her room. “I’ve got a dinner party tonight, and I expect you all here. Very important people will be in attendance. First, Hannah will do her numbers tricks; then Joe will recite, with Beverly’s music in the parlor to close. Yes, you, Joe!”

  Joe stared glumly into his bran mash, but he did not protest.

  “Settled? Splendid. You’ll eat in here as usual, and I’ll summon you during cheeses.”

  After Mrs. Sweet left, Joe stuck his tongue at the door. “No better than an organ grinder’s monkey,” he said. “I’m gonna ask her if I can get paid for this stint.”

  “Are you really?” asked Hannah.

  “Sure I’m really!”

  Hannah could not tell if Joe Elway was joking. Day to day, she did not see or speak to him much. His school was on Girard Avenue, north of the city and a long bus ride from Delancey Place, and he was crabby most mornings, besides. In the afternoons, he stayed in his room, and when he wasn’t there, he kept the door locked and wore the key on a frayed bootstrap looped around his neck, a reminder that he treasured his privacy.

  In truth, Hannah had not worked hard for Joe’s friendship, either. After he’d played the trick of rearranging her room, she had hidden two chunks of broiled cod in each of his galoshes that he’d left to dry at the kitchen stove. The next day, she’d seen him scrubbing his boots out in the washtub, using bleach to kill the stink.

  He never said a word, but he never tattled on her, either.

  Joe Elway would have fit in at Brintons Bridge School, thought Hannah. He understood the code of pranks.

  She was reminded of this later that morning at school during morning assembly, when she opened her hymnal to find a drawing of a girl sitting astride a cow. Out of the girl’s mouth was a bubble that read: ABC and 123. Looky here, Maw, I kan reed ’n cownt togethar!

  From all around her, Hannah heard the twittering laughter of Lillian and Ruth Ann and, of course, Helene. Her fingers gripped the edge of her hymnbook so as not to start tapping. That would only make the girls giggle more. She flipped the hymnal to the correct page, stuck up her chin, and sang “In Your Glory, O God, I Take Refuge” extra loud. Instead of tapping, she blinked her eyes along with the hymn’s meter.

  That picture wasn’t funny, Hannah thought unhappily. It was mean. There was a difference.

  At lunch, Ruth Ann passed out her Halloween party invitations. Hannah pretended indifference when she did not receive one. No matter how hard she tried not to notice, she spent the rest of the afternoon spying the creamy-white envelopes. Some of the girls made it a point to keep a corner peeking out of their uniform pockets for all to see.

  Mean.

  Hannah wondered if back home, Frank Dilworth might be planning his own annual Halloween pumpkin-carving party. Frank Dilworth, who gave out his invitations simply by standing upon a chair and announcing it to the entire class.

  By the time school let out, Hannah had forgotten all about Mrs. Sweet’s dinner party. It was a surprise to return to 5 Delancey Place and find the house scented with silver polish and lemon wax and the papery freshness of cut roses, and to see Mrs. Sweet herself standing in the hall, gossiping on the telephone. “Oh, my, yes … and it didn’t help that he smashed up two flivvers in a month … Imagine, a man of his age, stepping out with that Strickland girl…. Darling, it’s unspeakable!”

  Mrs
. Sweet could hold a line forever. Hannah had never known anyone to use a telephone in such a way. Pure frippery, Pa would say.

  Without breaking the flow of her chatter, Mrs. Sweet handed Hannah a letter postmarked from home. A quick glance at the handwriting and Hannah knew it was from Betsy. Hannah grinned and raced upstairs to her bedroom to enjoy it in private. Even in Betsy’s round, easy print, the words came slow.

  Last Saturday, all bodies keen and able arrived at school and fixed that roof. ‘Bout time! Miss Cascade is getting hitched to Wendel Nutley, but she won’t come out and say. Frank’s Halloween party is this Saturday next and Tru’s got a dear new twinset in a cherry print—lucky child! I’m wearing my same navy.

  Tru had printed in the postscript.

  P.S. ‘lo, Hannah! A new one for you: Thirty-two is the F° at which water freezes. We miss you dearly! Tru!

  Hannah folded the letter and placed it in her top drawer with her various other notes, most from Ma and Pa and Granddad and Roy, and even a bulletin from Hepp that Ma had forwarded on. You’ll be home in a month, Tru had predicted. And now a month had passed, and it seemed to Hannah that home was the only place in the world where she wanted to be.

  18. THE VOICE OF ULYSSES

  SOON HANNAH HEARD CAB doors slam and shouts of greeting as guests began to arrive for Mrs. Sweet’s dinner party. By the time she had readied herself and joined Beverly and Joe in the kitchen for supper, the parlor was alive with conversation. Like Hannah, Beverly wore her Sunday best, but Joe was defiantly dressed in his regular school clothes, his precious key dangling like a charm around his neck.