The Education of Bet (12 page)

Back at Grangefield Hall a year ago, when I'd experienced my first bleeding, it was one of the maids, Sara, who'd done what my mother would have done had she still been alive: explained to me the regularity of the monthly flow, how it related to the making of babies, and what to do about the bleeding. She'd given me special pieces of cotton fabric, about two feet by one foot in measure, the central foot or so composed of a thicker terry-cloth material. Sara had folded it into thirds and shown me how to wear it.

Of course, no specially designed pieces of cloth would be available to me here unless I stole them from Mrs. Smithers's rooms—and such a theft might look suspicious—so I had to make do as best I could with what was available.

Once that was in place, I dressed quickly, collected the sheets, and made straight for Mrs. Smithers's rooms, feeling it best to deal with her as directly as possible while recognizing that in the future I'd need to anticipate my monthly flow so as not to repeat the occurrence.

Mrs. Smithers was about forty years of age and rotund (she didn't seem to mind the food that most of us hated); her graying hair poked out from under her bonnet.

She eyed me suspiciously as I explained about the sheets.

"Impetigo," I said with a nervous laugh, naming a disease I'd read about. "It causes unpredictable bleeding sometimes, but it can also be a bit contagious." Another nervous laugh. "So you might just want to burn those."

"Will this be happening often?"

"Oh, no!" I reassured her.

"But I thought you just said it was unpredictable?"

"Yes, well, but I have been getting a lot better in recent years. You should have seen me when I was just a little tyke!" I held out my hand, illustrating the height of this imaginary little tyke. "I used to bleed like a geyser regularly! But now?" I shrugged. "Almost nothing."

The way Mrs. Smithers was eyeing me, I realized I was talking too much, too fast.

"Yes, well ... sorry to have been a bother! Thank you!" I said, rushing from her presence.

Back in my own room, I grabbed the soiled nightshirt and hid it beneath my jacket; the location of the bloodstain on it might have been too suspicious if I'd given it with the sheets to Mrs. Smithers. Outside, I hurried to the wooded area behind one of the less-used playing fields and scrabbled in the dirt until the evidence was buried. It was only then that it occurred to me that once a month I would need to find a way to steal several cloths from Mrs. Smithers's supply, and all of those would need to be buried out here as well. And then of course I would need to find excuses to explain to James why sometimes the supply was short. Perhaps I would need to invent a strong wine habit for her?

It was so much to think about, so much to do—and to address one little item!

One little item that I had foolishly not considered, despite all my planning.

My eyes filled with tears at the frustration of it all. Will had been right, I thought, angrily wiping away the tears: my harebrained scheme indeed.

As I slid into my seat a few minutes later, just in time for second lesson, James glanced over at me.

"You said you'd be well again by second lesson, and now I see that you are," he said. "I guess you were right. You do know your own body."

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

***

I survived several days of my own inconvenient bleeding, but I was still miffed at James for saying Will's letter was a pack of lies. Just because he appeared to have forgiven me for my exasperating behavior, returning to his usual state of unflappable calm, did not mean I had to be equally forgiving. Now that I was reassured that we were still some form of friends, I'd taken to spending more time with Little.

Sundays were always peculiar days at the Betterman Academy, everything feeling slightly off from the strict routine of the other six days. Those who didn't have to hurry out of bed early to dress before their roommates saw them had the luxury of lying in bed late. Then there was often an informal cricket match on the playing fields, or perhaps a round of boxing, or even a walk into town for kidney pie and muffins or sausages and scones before the prayer bell rang for chapel at eleven. After chapel, where the headmaster, Dr. Hunter, did have a tendency to go on, there was more free time at our disposal. It was on one such Sunday that I accepted an offer from Little to go fishing.

There was a small river that ran beyond the wooded area on the far side of the playing fields, and supposedly the fishing there was good. Fishing was not something I'd ever done before, but I knew that a lot of the other boys did and I figured it was safe enough for my first time out to go with Little. I'd noticed that Little could be somewhat oblivious to what went on around him, so occupied was he all the time with simply keeping himself as safe as he could from Hamish and Mercy. Little would never notice that I had no clue as to what to do with my fishing gear, that for once someone was watching him in order to learn something.

Though I didn't want to be uncharitable, as we sat on the bank side by side, waiting for something to happen, I could see where Little did present something of a problem. He was certainly kind, compared with most of the other boys, but there was also a vacancy to him. Old Man Peters hadn't much patience with Little's inability to grasp whatever subject was under discussion, and Little earned frequent raps on the knuckles or even a cane over the head. And while I could not condone Old Man Peters's chosen method of showing his displeasure, I could understand his exasperation.

With the possible exception of James, the students at the Betterman Academy were divided into two categories: despots—or bullies—and slaves, the latter category made up of the nervous and the sensitive, the small and the feminine.

I could not bring myself to pursue what was obviously the most lofty goal in the school: to be feared by everybody, as Hamish clearly was, though again with the possible exception of James. But while Little seemed resigned to his lot in the category of the nervous and the sensitive, the small and the feminine, I was determined not to be perceived as any of those things.

"Do you have anything else we might try as bait?" Little asked me.

"Such as what?" I asked. We'd been using worms we'd found on the banks.

"I don't know. I thought maybe you'd thought to bring some bread along or something."

I set aside my fishing gear and rose, turning my trouser pockets inside out. The key to my wardrobe fell to the ground. With a blush and a hasty move, I scooped it up and put it away without a word.

"Sorry," I said, resuming my seat. "'Fraid I didn't think of that. You?"

He shook his head, dejected by the hopelessness of it all. "No."

After a long moment, he said, "Did you know that there was a headmaster here before Dr. Hunter?"

"I assumed as much," I said, "the school being so old."

"And did you know that the previous headmaster is buried under the altar in the chapel?"

"I don't believe I had heard about that."

"It's true." He nodded vehemently, as though I'd told him it was false. "The old headmaster had no family and loved this place so much, he was buried there when he died." He shuddered. "How gruesome!"

I said that there might be worse places to be buried than somewhere one had loved.

"And do you know what's even more horrible?" Little asked as though I'd said nothing.

"No, what?"

"When no one else is around, Hamish makes me go stand near the altar. He says he's sure the old headmaster's head is right under where I'm standing." Little shuddered again. "It gives me nightmares."

Poor Little. Sometimes it was impossible to know just what to say to allay his multitude of fears—not that he didn't have good reason for many of those fears, given how often Hamish tormented him, boxed his ears or cuffed him, kicked him or twisted his arms for the mere sport of it.

Still, Little was mostly inoffensive, and in the absence of any other company, he suited me just fine. At least I knew he was never going to try to put me in a blanket and toss me.

And so we passed a pleasantly lazy Sunday afternoon; pleasant, at least, until late in the day. No fish had taken our bait, and I was just thinking it might be time to start heading back when I heard a threatening sound of rustling leaves coming from deep in the woods behind us.

It was Mercy's voice I heard first.

"I'm sure this is where Stephens said he always goes." His speech sounded slightly slurred. I knew from experience that many of the boys took advantage of the long Sundays to indulge in beer or gin punch.

Stephens often tried to get in good with Hamish and Mercy by telling them things about the other boys.

Hamish's speech sounded equally slurred as he mockingly replied, "How can this be where Stephens says he
always
goes? We're still in the bloody woods, aren't we? I don't see how even
Little
can be fishing in the bloody woods."

"Oh no," Little whispered, true anguish in his face. "They'll throw me in the river when they find me."

"Then we must run away," I said back, not worrying about being overheard by Hamish and Mercy—they were tramping around so loudly and talking at such volume, they couldn't possibly hear anything but themselves.

"There's no point," Little said. "We can never outrun them. Have you ever seen them at cricket? And besides, it's only worse in the end if you try to run."

How awful it must be, I thought, to know such constant fear. I examined my own feelings. Was I happy that at any moment Little and I might be confronted by Hamish and Mercy, with no other students or masters around to temper their behavior? I couldn't say I looked forward to the conflict, but I was not going to literally quake in fear, as Little was now doing.

I remembered thinking earlier that I never wanted to be perceived as nervous and sensitive, small and feminine, and I decided that if swagger was what it took to survive here, even mental swagger, then I would swagger with the best of them.

"Hamish! Mercy!" I shouted in a taunting voice. "Over here!"

"What are you doing?" Little squealed, looking at me as though I'd gone mad.

"You said there was no use, that they'd only catch us sooner or later." I shrugged. "Why not make it sooner, then, and get it over with?"

As the thrashing footsteps came nearer, I grabbed Little's hand and pulled him toward a young tree near the river.

"Come on." I hurried him along, then pointed at the tree and instructed: "Climb."

"But I can't—"

"Climb!"

So used to obeying the commands of others, Little grabbed the lower limbs of the tree and scurried up. As Hamish and Mercy broke through the clearing behind us, I hurried after him, doing my best to avoid the dangers presented by Little's wildly scrambling feet.

We climbed as high as we could, until the tree became too precariously thin near the top.

"Well, that's not very sporting of them." I looked down to see Mercy staring up at us dumbly. "How are we supposed to chase them up a tree?" Mercy looked at Hamish. "We can't run up a tree, can we?"

"Get down from there!" Hamish commanded.

"No," I said simply.

"No?" Hamish hiccupped. "Then I suppose we'll just have to come up."

Hamish grabbed the base of the tree.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you," I advised.

"You wouldn't—"

"No. You're too big. By the time you reach where we are, the weight of you will snap the top off. And while it's true that that might cause
us
to fall to our deaths, it's entirely possible that the dead one could turn out to be
you.
"

Despite my warning, Hamish did come a ways up, the tree bending back and forth wildly all the while. I don't know what stopped him, if it was that furious shaking—which couldn't have been much fun in his pixilated state, I was certain, having been pixilated myself once before—or if it finally sank in that he could get himself hurt. Whatever the case, he let go of the tree and dropped to earth with a thud.

"We could try to shake them out," Mercy suggested.

Which they tried to do for several long minutes, and which was no fun for Little and me as we hung on for dear life.

But when it became apparent we would not be dislodged, they got tired of that occupation.

I wondered what means they might try next.

Near the river were several stones, some small, some quite large. It occurred to me to worry that—

"Here!" Mercy cried to Hamish, catching sight of the same potential weapons I'd been looking at.

Mercy and Hamish both seized stones and took aim. Soon I felt the tree sway in concert with Little's own fearful shaking, causing me to hold on tighter—honestly, in that moment it felt as though Little presented the greater danger! But he needn't have been so scared. The two boys below us were so drunk, their shots went wide of the mark, which only made them that much more determined, that much more angry.

With each missed shot, the stones grew bigger, the anger more obvious. Then Mercy did get off a throw that might have done real damage, only it struck against a knot in the tree, ricocheted off, and went straight at Mercy's forehead.