The Other New Girl Page 5

  Quaker Life class turned out to be more interesting than I imagined. On the first day, Mr. Brownell asked us one question. Before any of us could answer he also asked us to meditate on it in silence for fifteen minutes—a mini Quaker Meeting right there in class. So we all sat there, wondering what the hell he expected us to be thinking about for an answer.

  “Is faith in your heart or in your head?” he’d asked.

  We had not yet been instructed in the workings of “the inner light” that The Society of Friends considered within each of us and the force that, given a chance, could move all people to a life of purpose and principle. We were to learn about this, along with the history of the Quakers, over the next five months once a week, in a class that had no tests, term papers, grades, or, in fact, any possible way to fail. What was not to like in such a class?

  While I silently doodled on a scrap of paper, awaiting the end of the fifteen minutes, Moll Grimes, with head bowed, appeared to be taking a classic class nap. At the end of the fifteen minutes, when Mr. Brownell looked up, Moll was the first to speak. She hadn’t been napping at all. She’d been thinking about the question. It was the first time I’d heard her voice, and, for all I knew, it was the first time she’d spoken to anyone since she’d arrived. I know that is hard to imagine, so I guess I should explain about Moll.

  Being a new kid arriving at boarding school was sort of like a whole bunch of individual dogs all running into a park at the same time. The dogs that had been coming to that park for a couple of years had all sniffed each other out and had come to an agreement on which ones were the alphas and which ones would roll over the fastest. The new dogs had to run the gauntlet, get sniffed, get growled at, maybe get nipped, until they learned just where they would fit in so the park could settle down again. But there were always a couple of dogs that hung around the fringes and didn’t really under-stand—or couldn’t fit neatly into—the system.

  Moll skirted the edges of two groups in that she always looked submissive but at the same time, she hung back, as if trying to remain invisible so she didn’t have to deal with any of the alphas or the groups that might pick on her or cast her out completely. Being homely in a way that teenage girls found easy pickings didn’t help so she appeared to accept the designation of outcast. Except for one thing. She was brilliant.

  I’d heard that she’d come to Foxhall because of Mrs. Doyle, who taught third, fourth, and even fifth year Latin. She also offered classical Greek to anyone who wanted to take it—there were none until Moll showed up. And Mrs. Pickery, who taught French, was a White Russian whose family had escaped the Revolution and migrated to Paris. So she also taught Russian. Again, no takers until Moll. That was on the language side. We also had Mr. Grazier, who had developed his own algebra text that was being introduced to the school curriculum in five states. He offered advanced students everything from limits to derivatives to integrals to vector calculus, none of which would be listed on my selected courses over the next three years so to this day I had no idea what those were or what they were good for but Moll did. And I found myself admiring her from that very first day in Quaker Life class, when she looked up from what I thought was a nap and told Mr. Brownell that faith borders on fantasy in that it dealt with hope when much information about the world around us defied hopefulness.

  “I think to ascribe either heart or head, or even both, is to minimize what faith can do and to leave to fanatics the ability to define faith in their own limited, and often self-serving, terms.”

  So that was when I first took a liking to Moll and after class I walked with her to the door and we just sort of fell in together as we went to our next class. Me to third-year French (we were reading Les Fleurs du Mal) she to classical Greek (they were reading Oedipus Rex . . . in Greek).

  I expected some sort of intellectual discussion of modernism or classicism or at least a description of her course work but instead she asked: “How do you get your hair to curl under like that?”

  Her voice was very low and she almost looked as if she was going to pass out. I realized later that what I had witnessed was terror but, at the time, I was surprised so I blurted out, “Oh I just blow dry it with a round-bristled brush, you know. It’s easy.”

  And that was when she really seemed to come apart because she started to tremble and her fingers got white around the knuckles where she was holding her books really hard and she just backed up against the wall. I had to get to my next class but I stood there kind of fascinated by her, the way you would be transfixed watching a speeding car you knew was going to crash just before the moment of impact.

  And then she spoke again, very softly, looking at her scuffed, brown, decidedly-uncool leather shoes all the time.

  “Easy?” she asked. “How can it be easy?”

  “Well it’s nothing special,” I told her. “Anyone can do it.”

  “Anyone?”

  “Sure. All you need is a blow dryer and a round brush.”

  She looked up at me then as if I was the one speaking Greek. And I felt as if maybe, without meaning to, I had said something awfully cruel because she looked as if she’d been stabbed and the blood was draining from her body.

  “I have Greek class,” she whispered and pushed herself away from the wall.

  “Is that why you came to Foxhall?” I think I only wanted to know if any of the school grapevine rumors about Moll were true—that she’d been in a loony bin and that she was brought up in an orphanage were two of the ones I’d heard floating around.

  “Not really.”

  She whispered as if we might be under surveillance. Then she looked around and I thought maybe she might be some sort of delusional and I wondered if I should be talking to her at all.

  “It was because of the other place.”

  Other place? I thought. Maybe I should drop this. But I didn’t know how and she went on.

  “They were really mean to me there. I almost . . .”

  Her voice trailed away and at that point I really had to know.

  “What other place?”

  “Benjamin Franklin High,” she said and glanced down the hall. “Public school.”

  “Oh,” I nodded. I had gone to public school when I was very young until my mother determined I was not being “challenged” enough and sent me to the girls’ school.

  “They locked me in the boys’ gym one time and stripped me and stole my clothes.”

  “Oh, Moll, that’s terrible.”

  “It was late on a Friday. They told me the girls cheerleading team was meeting there and wanted me to try out to replace a girl who was sick. It was pouring rain so that’s why they were meeting in the boys’ gym. That’s what they told me. And when I got in there, they said I had to change in the bathroom and they all followed me in and took my clothes and left me there. No one found me until Sunday when the janitor came in to clean. I couldn’t even find a towel. I covered myself with toilet paper.”

  There were tears in her eyes by the end of her story.

  “Didn’t anyone look for you?”

  “Everyone at my house was away until Sunday night. No one missed me. I never went back to school. I told my mother it was the stupidest place anyway and I could learn everything on my own. But she said I had to go to school so here I am.”

  As she turned to go to her next class she asked, in a haunted whisper, “Where did you find a round-bristled brush?”

  It didn’t occur to me until much later what her unfinished statement “I almost . . .” might have meant.

  SEVEN

  French Braids

  WHAT YOU ABSORB FROM CHILDHOOD COULD BE DIFFICULT to trace. There was what your parents told you and the ways they behaved and the things you picked up from them when they didn’t realize you were paying attention. Then there were the things you learned and how you reacted to the things you learned. So, while you were learning facts and picking up information and cues, you were also learning how to feel. Sometimes those feelings got in the way l
ater on in life when it could be hard to unlearn them so you didn’t get stuck in an emotional rut.

  Growing up, I had a Lutheran friend, Debra, a Baptist friend, Helen, Episcopalian relatives on my mother’s side, Jewish ones on my father’s, a Catholic friend whose name was Kandy, spelled with a “K” because her real name was Katherine, and assorted Protestants, including Jeannie whose father was an Episcopal priest, but until I went off to Foxhall, I never knew a Quaker.

  I remembered each one of those girls for a different reason. Kandy had French braids that I adored. My mother never did my hair for me. When it got too long, she chopped at it and in old photos my bangs are crooked and look like they had been chewed instead of trimmed. While she was chopping away, she always told me to “just stand still” like it was me moving around that made my bangs crooked. Her hair, on the other hand, was always professionally cut and styled by some man named Mister Seymour. I never knew if that was his last or first name. In a way, I was glad she didn’t drag me to Mr. Seymour to get my hair done because whenever she did take me anywhere it always ended in some sort of shaming incident.

  Once she took me shopping for some clothes, she had the saleslady bring them into the dressing room. When I took off my sneakers so I could get into whatever I was trying on, my mother pushed me down onto the tufted stool and said, “Susannah, your feet stink. Don’t you ever wash your sneakers? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  Now, as an adult who has raised four daughters, I think back to that scene and wonder what in hell she was trying to accomplish. The fact that she had taken me shopping meant I was way too young to be washing my own clothes, let alone my sneakers. I’m sure nobody I knew washed their sneakers. As a mother myself, I’m well aware that all kids’ sneakers stink. Actually I think they should change the name from sneakers to stinkers. But on that day, in front of that saleslady, I was ashamed. And shame could be a powerful feeling that sticks in you like a splinter, digging deep inside for years. I had no idea what clothes we were shopping for. I only remembered that my mother went on and on about how disgusting I was, while apologizing to the saleslady for the awful stink in that small dressing room.

  One day Kandy’s mother did my hair up in French braids and I went home feeling like I was suddenly beautiful. I was ten. It was maybe my worst year of all the bad years from my childhood. And it was also the best year—or at least the most peaceful at home because my mother was in a hospital for thirteen straight months. During that year, I spent a lot of time with other girls’ mothers. So I knew that some of them were sweet and kind and loving.

  One Sunday, Kandy’s mother invited me to go to Mass with them, so I went. I didn’t understand taking communion or the catechism classes Kandy took every week, even though she tried to explain what she was learning.

  Debra’s family came from generations of Scandinavians and every summer at their small farm next door to our house they had a Lutheran church supper with hundreds of people. They balanced sheets of plywood on wooden horses and set out an endless line of covered dishes made by the ladies from their church. There were lots of kids running around and everyone ate delicious, homemade food. Once upstairs in Debra’s house, she led me to the coveted bedroom where her elderly grandmother lived. Facing east, it looked out over the cow pasture and had a glassed-in porch. Debra pointed to a phonograph and told me when her grandmother died, she was going to get it. I remember there was a large, round, hooked rug in the middle of the floor. Debra’s mother made them out of strips of old clothing. I couldn’t imagine my mother doing anything like that.

  Jeannie and I went to the girls’ school where we wore those drab gray uniforms. It was called Griswold–King after some wealthy industrialists named Griswold and King who’d donated the money to start a private girls’ school for their daughters. She had three older sisters and a younger brother whose name was Butler. She told me her parents kept trying until they got a boy. Every time I went over there, the waste-baskets in their house were overflowing. The kids all had chores. Butler’s chore was emptying the wastebaskets. I never went to Jeannie’s church because I never saw her on Sundays, maybe because her father was the priest and they were busy every Sunday. Her mother always seemed preoccupied, like she was looking for something and couldn’t remember where she’d put it.

  One Sunday after I’d stayed the night at Helen’s house, I went with them to their Baptist church. My father had taught me how to play poker and after Helen’s mother had said goodnight to us, Helen and I stayed up and I taught her the basics of the game. At church the next morning we sat way in the back row. Helen’s mother sat with some friends a few rows in front of us. Helen’s father had been killed in a car accident. There was a woman with him. She’d been killed, too. It was all kind of mysterious to me. Helen had brought the cards so while the preacher told us how sinful we were and how we would all burn in hell—his voice reached out to every corner of the big church on that one—if we did not repent and bring the Lord into our lives, Helen and I played stud poker on our laps and she beat me three games straight and then the sermon was over.

  My father, I guess in an effort to give me some sense of where I came from, joined a temple—reformed of course— and signed me up for Sunday school. Except being Jewish, it was held on Saturday morning. I had a hard time explaining to all my Christian friends why I couldn’t play on Saturday mornings anymore. And for that reason I hated Saturday school. I went for about six months and finally wheedled my father out of making me go anymore. He was not exactly a zealot himself so he let me off the hook. The only thing I retained from that brief inculcation was a book called Behold My Messengers that covered the highlights of old testament stories. I have to say, I didn’t remember much from that book.

  I remembered other things, though. My best friend throughout childhood was Melena. Her parents were Greek. Of course, they went to a Greek Orthodox church. I was never invited to go with them but when my friend turned thirteen she decided she was finished with church. Her mother was a sweet, gentle person who always welcomed me to their house after school. We would sit together and draw while we watched TV. Melena had a wonderful talent and all her drawings were lyrical and lovely while mine were tortured and harsh. Her mother would bring us a plate of cookies and two glasses of milk. And she would smile down at us and then silently disappear back into the kitchen, leaving us to giggle and whisper and make our drawings. I loved Melena as the sister I never had. She felt the same way about me. She was a girl who loved to sit and listen to the frogs croak in the pond her father had made, a girl with no guile or duplicity.

  One day, she was at my house and my mother stormed into where we were playing. She took Melena to the kitchen alone, sat her at the table and accused her of stealing our live-in maid’s money. I never knew how much money or when it went missing. Melena just sat there, dumbfounded. I listened at the door while my mother cajoled her, tried to get her to admit stealing the money, tried bribing her and, when that didn’t work, threatened her. My mother called the police. Afterward Melena rode her bike home without saying anything to me about the interrogation before she left. I stood watching her pedal out our long driveway. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Melena would never steal anything. She just didn’t have it in her. I knew that then and I know it to this day. Her parents never said a word to me. Never shunned me or told me I wasn’t welcome in their house. But Melena was very careful after that about coming to my house and would always leave when my mother came home. The money was never found. It was probably all of twenty dollars.

  My scorn of authority dated way back and I think religion just got lumped in with all the other types of authority. If you considered my religious education on a proportional basis, I had probably been instructed in more New Testament beliefs than Old, given the years of flitting from one church to another versus the one season of Saturday school. All of it left me with a sense of spiritual hovering. I certainly saw no compelling reason to commit.

  Then, at Foxhall,
I went to my first Quaker Meeting. After being preached to, read to, hymnal-ed, and generally admonished in a variety of ways by all the other denominations that had galloped through my life to date, the quiet of Quaker Meeting was a relief. But it took some getting used to. It wasn’t what I expected. Actually I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Up to that point what I’d come to understand about religion was something like opening a cookbook and finding a recipe you thought you might like and trying it out. I hadn’t given any one religion much attention but I had done a bit of tasting. I think I hoped Quaker Meeting would make me feel less suspicious of people in general, maybe more accepting, more tolerant of human frailty.

  I had been at Foxhall for one week when the first Meeting was announced for Sunday at ten in the morning. By that time the whole student body had arrived and settled in. Classes were to begin on Monday. In the pamphlet on daily life at Foxhall, which was an addendum to the book of rules, we learned that Quaker Meeting was held for twenty minutes after Assembly on Wednesday mornings and a full hour on Sundays, same venue. Attendance by the entire school—faculty that resided on campus included—was required at both gatherings.