Sunlight Finds You

Chapter 1

I’m named Eleanor because I was born a week after Eleanor Roosevelt came to Kansas City to campaign for her husband.

At the time, my parents were living in Rolla, Missouri, and my mother said that even if not for my imminent birth, she wouldn’t have made the trip across half the state to wait with the crowd at the airport.

But the next day, Rolla’s newspaper used a third of its front page to print a picture of Mrs. Roosevelt smiling in front of the little TWA airplane that she apparently wasn’t terrified to ride around in. My mother admired her courage.

My father liked the name Eleanor, but worried it would work against me, as many people in our part of Missouri had strong feelings about the Roosevelts, and not all those feelings were good. He suggested they call me Nora for short, and my mother was fine with that.

I didn’t know until I met Leonard that the name Eleanor comes from the name Helen, which in Greek means “shining light.” Even at seventeen, Leonard had that kind of information just rolling around in his head.

But I doubt my mother ever knew what my name means in Greek.

She would have been pleased to learn it, as she loved sunlight.

More than most people do, I mean. When she came in to wake us, before she even kissed our foreheads, it was always shades up, curtains back.

She hated the long nights of winter. Every July, we spent a weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks, and once, while my father was fishing, she had me and my brother climb a slope with her so she could take a picture of the water at sunset.

Back home, when she got the film developed, she was disappointed.

The sparkle couldn’t be captured in black and white.

Another thing I remember about her is that she didn’t tolerate lies.

She regularly reminded my brother and me that liars died twice in the Lake of Fire, and he who breathed out lies would perish.

And to her, Bobby and I both understood, a lie was a lie was a lie.

It didn’t matter if you were Hitler saying he only wanted peace (a piece of Poland, the joke went, a piece of France…) or the woman who said she’d already paid the bill for her laundry when both she and my mother knew she hadn’t.

Or, it should be said, if you were a particular daughter, tempted to deceive when asked why the bowl containing that week’s sugar ration didn’t seem as full as it should be.

Because I admired my mother and loved her, and because I didn’t want to be punished by God, and because I most certainly didn’t want to have anything in common with Hitler, I tried hard not to lie to anyone.

About anything. If a friend at school asked me if I liked her new dress and I didn’t, I’d pretend I’d forgotten something and had to run back to get it.

Or I’d change the subject to something of hers I did like, maybe a barrette or her socks. But if pressed, I’d tell the truth.

In sixth grade, however, I told a blatant lie, and though I obviously didn’t perish, I still believe what followed altered the course of my life.

My teacher that year was a Mr. Pile, and from the first day of class, I loathed him.

He was nice enough to me, as I was quick, studious, and a girl.

But he called Tom Bigby, who was the smallest in our class, “Mr. Littleby,” and he kept doing it long after even the worst of us stopped laughing.

Ronald Bell, wall-eyed and slow, was unimaginatively called “Mr. Fish.” Peter Schultz sounded as Missourian as the rest of us, but Mr. Pile would only address him as “Herr Schultz,” in the thickest of German accents, and this at a time when no American wanted to be thought of as German.

Mr. Pile lectured at us from behind a podium, and he’d made a little sign for this podium that said Mr. Pile in spread-out letters, as if he wanted to spell it for us slowly: M R.

P I L E. I’d often stare at this sign and think about what it should say, or rather, what it could say.

He’d used his fountain pen to make the letters, so nothing could be erased from the sign, only added.

One morning when we were out at recess, I fell off the monkey bars—it was winter, and when the temperature dipped below a certain degree, girls were allowed to wear pants under their skirts, so those were big monkey-bar days for us.

I wasn’t hurt when I fell, but I muddied the hem of my skirt, and I asked Mr. Pile if I could please go in and rinse off the mud.

He gave me permission, and I went in. Some of the younger grades were on a different schedule, and I remember that there were other girls in the washroom, and other students and teachers in the hall.

By the time I got the mud out, the bell had rung and the hall was quiet again, though my class had ten more minutes of recess.

I realized I had time to do something I very much wanted to do. Throughout my life, I’ve seized such opportunities. Sometimes this seizing has very much worked to my advantage. Sometimes it has not.

I ducked into our classroom and closed the door behind me.

I found Mr. Pile’s fountain pen in his top desk drawer.

With a few strokes, I changed the sign to read M R.

R U D E, then capped the pen and returned it.

When I went back outside, I showed Mr. Pile I’d gotten out the mud, and thanked him for letting me go in.

“You’re quite welcome, Miss Nora. You did a good job getting that stain out.”

I smiled back, not feeling bad one bit. I hadn’t lied. I’d made the sign on the podium more honest.

Once we were back at our desks, it didn’t take long for my classmates to start smiling and looking at one another.

But Mr. Pile, standing behind the podium, had no idea what was so funny.

I must say, I was pleased to witness how scared he looked, realizing he was being laughed at.

Shoe, meet your new foot. The good time went on until Wilma Cooper raised her hand.

Wilma believed that because of her faith in Jesus, she had to be nice to everyone, and when Mr. Pile called on her, she sorrowfully pointed to the sign.

He came around to look for himself. By then, no one was laughing.

We could hear him breathing through his teeth.

When he turned to face us, he raised one finger, and it trembled.

“Whoever did this,” he said, “will be discovered.”

I wasn’t worried. Everyone in our class had been outside with him, except, briefly, for me.

And Mr. Pile only knew me as a good girl, well-mannered and compliant, with no reason to dislike him.

I have a picture of myself from that era, and I look irritating and prim—my mother used to wrap my hair in rags Sunday nights so I’d have curls like Shirley Temple through the week.

In this picture I’m smiling, resting my chin on folded hands, and I have an enormous bow in my hair that looks gray in the picture, though I remember the bow was yellow.

I believe I wore that yellow bow in my hair the day I changed Mr. Pile’s sign.

He was still breathing like a bull when he gave us a page of math problems and told us to work quietly at our desks.

He went out into the hall, and though he left the door open, some of the boys started to turn around and whisper to one another, trying to guess who might have done it.

No one thought of me. Mary Pank turned around, waited for me to look up, then whispered, “Mr. Rude!” I smiled just enough to show I agreed it was funny, then went back to work.

Good thing, because Mr. Pile came back in quickly, and when I looked up, he was staring right at me.

“Miss Chesnow,” he said.

Terror bloomed, unhelpful. I put my pencil down. “Sir?”

He took a step toward my desk, and then another. Behind me, the radiator hissed.

“When you came inside during recess, did you see anyone coming or going from this room?”

“No sir,” I said. It was true. I hadn’t seen myself. But I was aware of my classmates watching, and of their fear on my behalf. Mr. Pile seemed mostly bewildered, as if he’d set something down and turned around, then turned back to find the thing missing.

“Miss Chesnow.” A vein on his forehead bulged. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Do you know who altered the sign?”

Now the choice was clear. I would confess, or I would lie. For just a moment, I considered revealing myself. It was like standing at the edge of a dock, your body already leaning forward, and deciding almost too late not to jump.

I recently read a book by C. S. Lewis in which he says that you don’t really know what you believe until the truth of it becomes a matter of life and death.

It’s one thing to have faith that a rope is strong when it’s coiled in a box.

But would you dangle from that rope over a precipice?

In those moments that Mr. Pile stared down at me, waiting for an answer, I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life.

And C. S. Lewis was exactly right. I discovered that I didn’t truly believe my mother’s warnings of eternal punishment.

Or rather, I was willing to bet against them in the face of Mr. Pile’s certain, and imminent, wrath.

“No sir.” I managed to sound indignant. Unpracticed as I was, fear pushed me to excel.

“I see.” Shame filled his eyes. “Forgive me.”

My heartbeat steadied. I nodded once, an insulted but merciful queen. Mr. Pile retreated from my desk, dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief, and with a shaky voice, resumed class.

What C. S. Lewis didn’t say: After the danger passes, you might go back to not knowing what you believe and start to worry that you chose wrong.