The School of Beauty and Charm (22 page)

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told shall be;

For the gentle wind does move

silently, invisibly.

My light did not shine as well in prealgebra, which I had taken for three years in a row. Mr. Rutherford said not to worry about it—algebra wasn't part of our religion.

At the same time I discovered my intellectual powers, I reached the disturbing conclusion that Henry and Florida were
feebleminded. They both had college degrees, but apparently college was easier in those days. Florida's only memory of the experience seemed to be running out in the snow in a bathing suit and high heels with her roommate, at which point she realized Henry loved her because he was afraid she'd get a cold. Henry recalled that when he moved to the front row of the classroom to sit next to Florida, he got better grades.

It was hard to believe that these two could produce a Bridgewater intellectual, but there I was: black turtlenecks, baggy army pants, a tight ponytail, and small, round tortoise-shell glasses. I was an atheist and a communist. Although I never actually read the
Tao Te Ching
, I toted it around with me, which made Florida suspicious. She couldn't get past the first page, but something about it smacked of
Looking Out for Number One
. Luckily, I had friends. My friends, atheists and communists in black turtlenecks, ponytails, and funny glasses were also burdened with dim-witted parents. We discussed them the way people discuss their mentally ill relatives, but without sympathy. Mostly, we tried to escape them. We passed around a copy of Solzhenitsyn's
First Circle
and fancied ourselves imprisoned in Russia. We drank a lot.

I tried to get Henry and Florida to drink—tried to introduce red wine with spaghetti, cognac in coffee, and champagne at New Year's—but they were low-brow and Baptist to boot. So I left on the weekends, carrying the lunch bag Florida had packed with my first and last name written on the paper bag, to the radio tower on top of Mount Zion, or the lock and dam, or a field—someplace where I could get drunk with my friends and be somebody else.

When I announced my acceptance to the Ringling Clown
College in Sarasota, Florida, Henry decided to keep me home for a year.

“Why, that's the same price as a real school!” he exclaimed. “They're just taking your money! Why do you want to associate with riffraff?”

“Gypsies,” said Florida.

“They've never had an opportunity in life,” explained Henry. “It's not their fault. Most of them aren't even Americans. My goodness. You've been to one of the finest college preparatory schools in the country. I would think you'd want to do better than the circus.”

“Maybe I can be a snob. The world needs more snobs.”

“Here she goes,” said Florida. “That mouth.”

Florida, who had grown up without a flush toilet, was appalled that a girl would stick her hand out for that sum of money and smart off at the same time. Although she was not a political person, she had won her mother an electric refrigerator, the first one in Red Cavern, by writing an essay entitled “Why I Am Proud to Be an American.” She couldn't put her finger on the connection between communism and clowning, but she smelled a rat. Furthermore, without her there to drag me out of bed on Sunday mornings, I would never go to church.

I argued. Didn't Lao-tzu say

When taxes are too high,

people go hungry.

When the government is too intrusive,

people lose their spirit.

Act for the people's benefit.

Trust them; leave them alone.

They listened, nodded. True, I was not a joy to live with—not by a long shot, but these were the sacrifices one made for one's children. Yes, they agreed, I needed one more year of home training before they set me loose. After that, all they could do was pray.

It was decided that I should stay in Counterpoint for a year and attend the Maude Wilson College for Women, if I got in. One day an application in a lavender envelope printed with magnolias arrived at Owl Aerie. When Ebbie, the postman, tossed it to me from the window of the mail truck, I caught it in midair like a bride's bouquet.

Henry took it to Southern Board and had his secretary, Heather, make four copies of it so I could practice filling it out before I typed it. Florida was not allowed to type it because I didn't want her to read my essay.

“That suits me just fine,” she said. “I'm tired of staying up all night typing your papers. Last time I was up until 4:00
A.M.
I don't know how you're going to get by in college.”

“I can get through Maude Wilson in my sleep.”

“We'll see.” She touched her hair. “You need to grow up. You've made some poor decisions in the past. Goofed off. Gone wild. I'll type your papers this year. I don't mind. I'd just appreciate some advance notice.”

“Your mother works her fingers to the bone for this family,” said Henry guiltily. “You ought to hug her neck.”

Florida had nothing against Heather, but she couldn't help noticing that Henry's secretaries had always had blonde hair, while she herself was a brunette. Henry claimed this was a coincidence. Florida wondered aloud why Heather had to dress like a showgirl; Henry said it was good for Southern Board's
image. Florida didn't reply, but her face clearly suggested that Henry thought he was running a casino instead of a corrugated board plant. Finally, she said, “I don't see how anyone can type with nails that long, but I guess Heather has learned to manage.”

Henry said, “I vacuumed your car out this morning.” He opened his handkerchief and produced the plastic monkeys that the Kirby had twisted into a gross embrace.

“Throw them away,” she said. “You didn't say anything about my hair. I had it done this morning.”

“I noticed it,” he said, searching for a word. “It looks . . . nice.”

She turned her back. Her turquoise MacMe jogging suit had once said i am free across the back, in gold stitching studded with rhinestones and sequins, but over time the message had unraveled. Now it said
I AM
.

I
WAS WRITING
suicide notes in chemistry lab at school when Drew, who had received early admission to Harvard, took charge of my educational dilemma.

“I don't envy you, Louise,” she said, looking gravely at me through the Coke-bottle lenses of her glasses. “This sucks the big one.” She considered various solutions while she typed up our lab reports. Finally, she said, “Fill out the application. Be honest. Tell them who you really are. Reveal your penchant for rednecks and your banana-peel smoking habit. Mention that you were one of Dr. Frommlecker's patients. Suggest that you have a drinking problem.” Then Drew did something she had never done in the thirteen years we had been best friends: she hugged me.

That night, lying on my bedroom floor, sucking a White Russian through a straw, I answered the last question on the Maude Wilson application: Who Are You? (in five hundred words or less).

I'm a tough broad living on the dock. I know how to start a car with a paper clip, open a door with a credit card, and roll a joint in the dark. I can find my way through a strange room in the middle of the night better than most house cats, and I know how to run. In a fight, I keep my back to the wall, and if I'm losing, I lick the bitch's ear, as a surprise, then go for her face. Now that I'm staying with my two-ton sugar daddy, Max, I know all there is to know about men. A lot of tough broads on the dock wear makeup and try to look professional, but my girl Dewana says, “Who wants a tired ole ho with brains?”

I went on to elaborate on my sugar daddy and my girl Dewana, and made a few poignant references to my sordid experiences as a foster child. Using the phone book as a reference point, I did a condensed travelogue of the jails and halfway houses in a hundred-mile radius of Counterpoint. Finally, I edited my work using Mr. Rutherford's bible,
The Elements of Style
. Then I took the final copy to Drew. After she made sure I had checked the black race on the application, she gave it her enthusiastic approval.

“They will never let you in,” she assured me. “You have next year off.”

Maude Wilson's reply came five days before Christmas.
“Yoo-hoo!” called Florida, striking her heels along the tiled hall. At my bedroom door, she knocked while turning the doorknob with her free hand. When the door opened a crack, she stuck a thin lavender envelope through it. “News for you!” I took the letter and shut the door, but Florida carried on the conversation through the wall. “I wouldn't be surprised if they offered you a scholarship. Something, if not a big one. Agnes's niece, you know Agnes—she's at Shear Heaven now—I quit her, but I might go back because this new girl flubbed my permanent. What did they say?” She tried the door again. “Anyway, I was telling you—Agnes's niece, Laurin, got a scholarship. Need-based. Cute girl.” She paused to listen to the envelope rip. “What did they say? Louise, I'm talking to you. Why do you have to shut your mother out like this?”

Behind the door, my tears fell silently on the letter which accepted, with congratulations and a minority scholarship, the application of Frances Louise Peppers to the Maude Wilson College for Women.

T
HE LIVE OAK
trees lining the entrance to the Maude Wilson College for Women had been planted by Colonel Wilson's slaves. According to the engraved plaques screwed along the walls of the bell tower, Mrs. Wilson had a religious experience in which God told her to teach the slaves how to read the Holy Bible. Local legend had it that Maude fell in love with one of these tall Senegalese men, and the Sunday School for One Hundred, as it came to be called, was only an elaborate contrivance for them to meet. In any case, the Sunday School was eventually limited to children, and Maude died from an overdose of laudanum.

I sat under one of these trees on the first day of the fall semester, morosely drinking a warm Bloody Mary in a paper cup. A gaggle of girls in sundresses and espadrilles trooped by. They walked close together, talking in low voices until one of them halted, threw her head back, and screamed modestly. This happened several times. They seemed to be talking about boys.

“I did not say that! Who said that I said that?”

“All I know is that I am not partying with them again.”

“Was it Eric?”

“My dog could make a better gin and tonic.”

“Did you see Mason? God, he's cute!”

“What was he doing with that girl? I mean, she was nice and everything, but she was heavy.”

“She's a cow. She must be his sister or something.”

“If Eric said that about me, I'm going to talk to his roommate. We're very good friends. Do you know Tad?”

“Omigod! You're good friends with Tad? He's gorgeous!”

The bell in the tower rang nine times—Introduction to Shakespeare—but I didn't move. I sat under the tree, holding a gnarled root with one hand as I looked high up into the limbs webbed with Spanish moss. I thought of the seed in the black man's hand, the hand forming the brick, the espadrilles on the brick. Then I went across the street and bought a bus ticket to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the last stop on the line.

The Greyhound turned down Front Street and rattled past the drugstore, Wanda's Wig Shoppe, the howling wolf in front of the library. Out of habit, I scanned the muddy waters of the New Hope River for the scaly jaws of Earnestine. As we pulled out of town, the driver shifted into high gear, and I leaned back in my seat to think about Florida.

She didn't like me. She had more or less said so. From my backpack I removed my thermos of Bloody Marys, added a few tablespoons of paregoric, and stirred the remaining ice cubes with a stick of celery. I kicked my espadrilles off and threw my bare feet up on the seat so no one would sit next to me. Then, sipping my cocktail, I began to review the tragedy of my life. She had practically said she hated me.

“You twist my words around to suit yourself!” Florida cried. She had just come home from a Christian Women's Club luncheon, and she was still wearing her sunglasses. Her suit was black: Jones of New York, with padded shoulders, and her nails were lacquered in vermilion. Gripping the railing of the deck with both hands, she said, “You don't listen to me because you're afraid to hear the truth. The truth is that you have rejected your mother and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“The combination is too much for me,” I said without looking up from the
Tao Te Ching
. Sipping a banana daiquiri, I stretched out on my lawn chair in the yard below her. Even though Henry had cut the kudzu back, thick foliage cloaked the ground and twisted through the trees, choking off the sun save for a small patch of shimmering green sky.

“Too much for you? You haven't done a thing all day. You've been wallowing around in that chair all day, feeling sorry for yourself because we won't send you to the circus for twenty thousand dollars a year. You've got to face reality. And let me tell you, young lady, if Christianity is not part of your reality, you're in for big trouble.”

“The Constitution of the United States of America grants every citizen of this country the right to religious freedom. Do you know what Kurt Vonnegut said about religion?”

“I know that you are disrespectful to your mother. You're the most hateful child I have ever seen. Hateful, hateful, hateful.”

“‘Religion!' snorted Newt. ‘See the cat? See the cradle?'”

“Words, words, words! All you have are words. Get up and do something. Help out a little. Don't expect me to go in there and make your lunch. I won't do it! I won't!”

“I'm not hungry,” I said. “Let me read you something.”

“I don't want to hear any more of your heathen literature.”

I read aloud, “Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit—”