The Beggar Maid

by Alice Munro

  Another time, Rose was getting an award. So were several other people. A reception was being held, in a Toronto hotel. Flo had been sent an invitation, but Rose had never thought that she would come. She had thought she should give someone’s name, when the organizers asked about relatives, and she could hardly name Brian and Phoebe. Of course it was possible that she did, secretly, want Flo to come, wanted to show Flo, intimidate her, finally remove herself from Flo’s shade. That would be a natural thing to want to do.

  Flo came down on the train, unannounced. She got to the hotel. She was arthritic then, but still moving without a cane. She had always been decently, soberly, cheaply, dressed, but now it seemed she had spent money and asked advice. She was wearing a mauve and purple checked pants suit, and beads like strings of white and yellow popcorn. Her hair was covered by a thick gray-blue wig, pulled low on her forehead like a woollen cap. From the vee of the jacket, and its too-short sleeves, her neck and wrists stuck out brown and warty as if covered with bark. When she saw Rose she stood still. She seemed to be waiting—not just for Rose to go over to her but for her feelings about the scene in front of her to crystallize.

  Soon they did.

  “Look at the nigger!” said Flo in a loud voice, before Rose was anywhere near her. Her tone was one of simple, gratified astonishment, as if she had been peering down the Grand Canyon or seen oranges growing on a tree.

  She meant George, who was getting one of the awards. He turned around, to see if someone was feeding him a comic line. And Flo did look like a comic character, except that her bewilderment, her authenticity, were quite daunting. Did she note the stir she had caused? Possibly. After that one outburst she clammed up, would not speak again except in the most grudging monosyllables, would not eat any food or drink any drink offered her, would not sit down, but stood astonished and unflinching in the middle of that gathering of the bearded and beaded, the unisexual and the unashamedly un-Anglo-Saxon, until it was time for her to be taken to her train and sent home.

  Rose found that wig under the bed, during the horrifying cleanup that followed Flo’s removal. She took it out to the Home, along with some clothes she had washed or had dry-cleaned, and some stockings, talcum powder, cologne, that she had bought. Sometimes Flo seemed to think Rose was a doctor, and she said, “I don’t want no woman doctor, you can just clear out.” But when she saw Rose carrying the wig she said, “Rose! What is that you got in your hands, is it a dead gray squirrel?”

  “No,” said Rose, “it’s a wig.”

  “What?”

  “A wig,” said Rose, and Flo began to laugh. Rose laughed too. The wig did look like a dead cat or squirrel, even though she had washed and brushed it; it was a disturbing-looking object.

  “My God, Rose, I thought what is she doing bringing me a dead squirrel! If I put it on somebody’d be sure to take a shot at me.”

  Rose stuck it on her own head, to continue the comedy, and Flo laughed so that she rocked back and forth in her crib.

  When she got her breath Flo said, “What am I doing with these damn sides up on my bed? Are you and Brian behaving yourselves? Don’t fight, it gets on your father’s nerves. Do you know how many gallstones they took out of me? Fifteen! One as big as a pullet’s egg. I got them somewhere. I’m going to take them home.” She pulled at the sheets searching. “They were in a bottle.”

  “I’ve got them already,” said Rose. “I took them home.”

  “Did you? Did you show your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, well, that’s where they are then,” said Flo, and she lay down and closed her eyes.

  Who Do You Think You Are?

  There were some things Rose and her brother Brian could safely talk about, without running aground on principles or statements of position, and one of them was Milton Homer. They both remembered that when they had measles and there was a quarantine notice put up on the door—this was long ago, before their father died and before Brian went to school—Milton Homer came along the street and read it. They heard him coming over the bridge and as usual he was complaining loudly. His progress through town was not silent unless his mouth was full of candy; otherwise he would be yelling at dogs and bullying the trees and telephone poles, mulling over old grievances.

  “And I did not and I did not and I did not!” he yelled, and hit the bridge railing.

  Rose and Brian pulled back the quilt that was hung over the window to keep the light out, so they would not go blind.

  “Milton Homer,” said Brian appreciatively.

  Milton Homer then saw the notice on the door. He turned and mounted the steps and read it. He could read. He would go along the main street reading all the signs out loud.

  Rose and Brian remembered this and they agreed that it was the side door, where Flo later stuck on the glassed-in porch; before that there was only a slanting wooden platform, and they remembered Milton Homer standing on it. If the quarantine notice was there and not on the front door, which led into Flo’s store, then the store must have been open; that seemed odd, and could only be explained by Flo’s having bullied the Health Officer. Rose couldn’t remember; she could only remember Milton Homer on the platform with his big head on one side and his fist raised to knock.

  “Measles, huh?” said Milton Homer. He didn’t knock, after all; he stuck his head close to the door and shouted, “Can’t scare me!” Then he turned around but did not leave the yard. He walked over to the swing, sat down, took hold of the ropes and began moodily, then with mounting and ferocious glee, to give himself a ride.

  “Milton Homer’s on the swing, Milton Homer’s on the swing!”

  Rose shouted. She had run from the window to the stairwell.

  Flo came from wherever she was to look out the side window.

  “He won’t hurt it,” said Flo surprisingly. Rose had thought she would chase him with the broom. Afterward she wondered: could Flo have been frightened? Not likely. It would be a matter of Milton Homer’s privileges.

  “I can’t sit on the seat after Milton Homer’s sat on it!”

  “You! You go on back to bed.”

  Rose went back into the dark smelly measles room and began to tell Brian a story she thought he wouldn’t like.

  “When you were a baby, Milton Homer came and picked you up.”

  “He did not.”

  “He came and held you and asked what your name was. I remember.”

  Brian went out to the stairwell.

  “Did Milton Homer come and pick me up and ask what my name was? Did he? When I was a baby?”

  “You tell Rose he did the same for her.”

  Rose knew that was likely, though she hadn’t been going to mention it. She didn’t really know if she remembered Milton Homer holding Brian, or had been told about it. Whenever there was a new baby in a house, in that recent past when babies were still being born at home, Milton Homer came as soon as possible and asked to see the baby, then asked its name, and delivered a set speech. The speech was to the effect that if the baby lived, it was to be hoped it would lead a Christian life, and if it died, it was to be hoped it would go straight to Heaven. The same idea as baptism, but Milton did not call on the Father or the Son or do any business with water. He did all this on his own authority. He seemed to be overcome by a stammer he did not have at other times, or else he stammered on purpose in order to give his pronouncements more weight. He opened his mouth wide and rocked back and forth, taking up each phrase with a deep grunt.

  “And if the Baby—if the Baby—if the Baby—lives—”

  Rose would do this years later, in her brother’s living room, rocking back and forth, chanting, each if coming out like an explosion, leading up to the major explosion of lives.

  “He will live a—good life—and he will—and he will—and he will—not sin. He will lead a good life—a good life—and he will not sin. He will not sin!

  “And if the baby—if the baby—if the baby—dies—”

  “Now that’s e
nough. That’s enough, Rose,” said Brian, but he laughed. He could put up with Rose’s theatrics when they were about Hanratty.

  “How can you remember?” said Brian’s wife Phoebe, hoping to stop Rose before she went on too long and roused Brian’s impatience.

  “Did you see him do it? That often?”

  “Oh no,” said Rose, with some surprise. “I didn’t see him do it. What I saw was Ralph Gillespie doing Milton Homer. He was a boy in school. Ralph.”

  Milton Homer’s other public function, as Rose and Brian remembered it, was to march in parades. There used to be plenty of parades in Hanratty. The Orange Walk, on the Twelfth of July; the High School Cadet Parade, in May; the schoolchildren’s Empire Day Parade; the Legion’s Church Parade; the Santa Claus Parade; the Lions Club Old-Timers’ Parade. One of the most derogatory things that could be said about anyone in Hanratty was that he or she was fond of parading around, but almost every soul in town—in the town proper, not West Hanratty, that goes without saying—would get a chance to march in public in some organized and approved affair. The only thing was that you must never look as if you were enjoying it; you had to give the impression of being called forth out of preferred obscurity, ready to do your duty and gravely preoccupied with whatever notions the parade celebrated.

  The Orange Walk was the most splendid of all the parades. King Billy at the head of it rode a horse as near pure white as could be found, and the Black Knights at the rear, the noblest rank of Orangemen—usually thin, and poor, and proud and fanatical old farmers—rode dark horses and wore the ancient father-to-son top hats and swallowtail coats. The banners were all gorgeous silks and embroideries, blue and gold, orange and white, scenes of Protestant triumph, lilies and open Bibles, mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry. The ladies came beneath their sunshades, Orangemen’s wives and daughters all wearing white for purity. Then the bands, the fifes and drums, and gifted step-dancers performing on a clean hay wagon as a movable stage.

  Also, there came Milton Homer. He could show up anywhere in the parade and he varied his place in it from time to time, stepping out behind King Billy or the Black Knights or the step-dancers or the shy orange-sashed children who carried the banners. Behind the Black Knights he would pull a dour face, and hold his head as if a top hat was riding on it; behind the ladies he wiggled his hips and diddled an imaginary sunshade. He was a mimic of ferocious gifts and terrible energy. He could take the step-dancers’ tidy show and turn it into an idiot’s prance, and still keep the beat.

  The Orange Walk was his best opportunity, in parades, but he was conspicuous in all of them. Head in the air, arms whipping out, snootily in step, he marched behind the commanding officer of the Legion. On Empire Day he provided himself with a Red Ensign and a Union Jack, and kept them going like whirligigs above his head. In the Santa Claus parade he snatched candy meant for children; he did not do it for a joke.

  You would think that somebody in authority in Hanratty would have put an end to this. Milton Homer’s contribution to any parade was wholly negative, designed, if Milton Homer could have designed anything, just to make the parade look foolish. Why didn’t the organizers and the paraders make an effort to keep him out? They must have decided that was easier said than done. Milton lived with his two old-maid aunts, his parents being dead, and nobody would have liked to ask the two old ladies to keep him home. It must have seemed as if they had enough on their hands already. How could they keep him in, once he had heard the band? They would have to lock him up, tie him down. And nobody wanted to haul him out and drag him away once things began. His protests would have ruined everything. There wasn’t any doubt that he would protest. He had a strong, deep voice and he was a strong man, though not very tall. He was about the size of Napoleon. He had kicked through gates and fences when people tried to shut him out of their yards. Once he had smashed a child’s wagon on the sidewalk, simply because it was in his way. Letting him participate must have seemed the best choice, under the circumstances.

  Not that it was done as the best of bad choices. Nobody looked askance at Milton in a parade; everybody was used to him. Even the Commanding Officer would let himself be mocked, and the Black Knights with their old black grievances took no notice. People just said, “Oh, there’s Milton,” from the sidewalk. There wasn’t much laughing at him, though strangers in town, city relatives invited to watch the parade, might point him out and laugh themselves silly, thinking he was there officially and for purposes of comic relief, like the clowns who were actually young businessmen, unsuccessfully turning cartwheels.

  “Who is that?” the visitors said, and were answered with nonchalance and a particularly obscure sort of pride.

  “That’s just Milton Homer. It wouldn’t be a parade without Milton Homer.”

  The village idiot,” said Phoebe, trying to comprehend these things, with her inexhaustible unappreciated politeness, and both Rose and Brian said that they had never heard him described that way. They had never thought of Hanratty as a village. A village was a cluster of picturesque houses around a steepled church on a Christmas card. Villagers were the costumed chorus in the high school operetta. If it was necessary to describe Milton Homer to an outsider, people would say that he was “not all there.” Rose had wondered, even at that time, what was the part that wasn’t there? She still wondered. Brains, would be the easiest answer. Milton Homer must surely have had a low I.Q. Yes; but so did plenty of people, in Hanratty and out of it, and they did not distinguish themselves as he did. He could read without difficulty, as shown in the case of the quarantine sign; he knew how to count his change, as evidenced in many stories about how people had tried to cheat him. What was missing was a sense of precaution, Rose thought now. Social inhibition, though there was no such name for it at that time. Whatever it is that ordinary people lose when they are drunk, Milton Homer never had, or might have chosen not to have—and this is what interests Rose—at some point early in life. Even his expressions, his everyday looks, were those that drunks wear in theatrical extremity—goggling, leering, drooping looks that seemed boldly calculated, and at the same time helpless, involuntary; is such a thing possible?

  The two ladies Milton Homer lived with were his mother’s sisters. They were twins; their names were Hattie and Mattie Milton, and they were usually called Miss Hattie and Miss Mattie, perhaps to detract from any silly sound their names might have had otherwise. Milton had been named after his mother’s family. That was a common practice, and there was probably no thought of linking together the names of two great poets. That coincidence was never mentioned and was perhaps not noticed. Rose did not notice it until one day in high school when the boy who sat behind her tapped her on the shoulder and showed her what he had written in his English book. He had stroked out the word Chapman’s in the title of a poem and inked in the word Milton, so that the title now read: On First Looking into Milton Homer.

  Any mention of Milton Homer was a joke, but this changed title was also a joke because it referred, rather weakly, to Milton Homer’s more scandalous behavior. The story was that when he got behind somebody in a line-up at the Post Office or a movie theater, he would open his coat and present himself, then lunge and commence rubbing. Though of course he wouldn’t get that far; the object of his passion would have ducked out of his way. Boys were said to dare each other to get him into position, and stay close ahead of him until the very last moment, then jump aside and reveal him in dire importunity.

  It was in honor of this story—whether it was true or not, had happened once under provocation, or kept happening all the time—that ladies crossed the street when they saw Milton coming, that children were warned to stay clear of him. Just don’t let him monkey around was what Flo said. He was allowed into houses on those ritual occasions when there was a new baby—with hospital births getting commoner, those occasions diminished—but at other times the doors were locked against him. He would come and knock, and kick the door panels, and go away. But he was let hav
e his way in yards, because he didn’t take things, and could do so much damage if offended.

  Of course, it was another story altogether when he appeared with one of his aunts. At those times he was hangdog-looking, well-behaved; his powers and his passions, whatever they were, all banked and hidden. He would be eating candy the aunt had bought him, out of a paper bag. He offered it when told to, though nobody but the most greedy person alive would touch what might have been touched by Milton Homer’s fingers or blessed by his spittle. The aunts saw that he got his hair cut; they did their best to keep him presentable. They washed and ironed and mended his clothes, sent him out in his raincoat and rubbers, or knitted cap and muffler, as the weather indicated. Did they know how he conducted himself when out of their sight? They must have heard, and if they heard they must have suffered, being people of pride and Methodist morals. It was their grandfather who had started the flax mill in Hanratty and compelled all his employees to spend their Saturday nights at a Bible Class he himself conducted. The Homers, too, were decent people. Some of the Homers were supposed to be in favor of putting Milton away but the Milton ladies wouldn’t do it. Nobody suggested they refused out of tender-heartedness.

  “They won’t put him in the Asylum, they’re too proud.”

  Miss Hattie Milton taught at the high school. She had been teaching there longer than all the other teachers combined and was more important than the Principal. She taught English—the alteration in the poem was the more daring and satisfying because it occurred under her nose—and the thing she was famous for was keeping order. She did this without apparent effort, through the force of her large-bosomed, talcumed, spectacled, innocent and powerful presence, and her refusal to see that there was any difference between teenagers (she did not use the word) and students in Grade Four. She assigned a lot of memory work. One day she wrote a long poem on the board and said that everyone was to copy it out, then learn it off by heart, and the next day recite it. This was when Rose was in her third or fourth year at high school and she did not believe these instructions were to be taken literally. She learned poetry with ease; it seemed reasonable to her to skip the first step. She read the poem and learned it, verse by verse, then said it over a couple of times in her head. While she was doing this Miss Hattie asked her why she wasn’t copying.