Chapter 12 #2
Most of the people in Montreat didn’t says things like that and my family didn’t either.
We didn’t have a southern accent or permute words, and we used proper grammar.
When other students and teachers talked, I was reminded of twanging banjo strings and pulling taffy.
I didn’t understand everything they said or why it took so long to do it.
“Patsy doesn’t have a father!”
“Patsy’s not from here!”
I relayed to Mr. Owl other taunts from my classmates.
“If you’re really good at something, that won’t happen,” he told me. “Especially if it’s something people want or find helpful.”
The best part of the school day was recess.
My classmates and I would file along a hallway reeking of the oily sweeping compound the janitor used on the floors.
We’d clunk down the dark-painted metal stairs, emerging in a cacophony of loud chatter on the unpaved driveway.
Across from it was the athletic field that I remember as much bigger than it likely was.
We played kickball, dodgeball, Red Rover, freeze tag.
In bad weather we’d go to the gym. My first few days in school I was the last person picked for any team.
But I thought about Mr. Owl’s advice, deciding the kids would treat me better if I was good at something besides stories and drawing pictures.
That shouldn’t be hard as I looked around at the competition.
Growing up with my rowdy brothers and their male friends, I was fast and agile out of self-defense.
A relentless competitor, I’d run the fastest and hit the softball farther than most of the boys.
I was stoic, not showing the pain I felt after stepping into an overgrown ditch on the field at school and badly spraining my ankle.
I tried not to limp when returning to my desk in Mrs. Hickey’s room.
I remember my nemesis Joey berating me for acting like a boy, and I thought how illogical that was.
Certain behaviors were okay for him but not for me?
And the answer was yes. But that didn’t stop me.
If anything, it made my competitiveness worse.
I had to beat everyone at everything. It wasn’t personal. At least not for me.
I can still hear the ping of the rubber ball after I’d hurled it, eliminating one member of the opposing team after the next. I had a hard throw, and no one was spared.
PING!
PING!
Oh, how I loved that sound when I eliminated the competition. I associated it with reward, deciding that people couldn’t ignore me if I was the best and our team won. Being a tomboy jock meant I was the top choice for athletic competitions. But it didn’t make the other kids like me any better.
In fact, it seemed that nothing about me was compatible with popularity.
I tried for perfect scores on my tests, waving my hand in the air every time Mrs. Hickey asked the class a question.
Finally, she’d suggest I give others a chance to answer.
I don’t blame my classmates for glaring and making faces.
Every morning as Jim and I headed out the door to catch the bus, Mom would give each of us a quarter for lunch money.
The food was dreadful, and I ate very little of it, some days scraping the entire plate into the big plastic garbage can.
It was a wonder I could eat at all, as stressed as I felt when the other students shunned me.
I’d try skipping the cafeteria altogether, but a teacher would command me to get in line. As soon as I’d collect my tray of inedible food, the ordeal began.
Where to sit.
Every empty wooden chair I tried suddenly was “saved.”
Where to sit!
“Saved.”
Where? As I’d look around frantically.
“Saved…”
Often, I ended up in the hinterlands with the “free lunch” kids who were very poor, eating pats of butter as if they were candy. Most were too old for the grades they were in. They may as well have been speaking a foreign language, their grammar and accent unrecognizable.
But they accepted me, especially when I let them have most of what was on my sectioned plastic plate.
Collard greens. Cornbread. Hamburgers made of “mystery meat.” Fish sticks on Friday.
One of the girls at the free lunch table was my classmate Deborah, tall and gaunt, cross-eyed with rotting teeth, and brown hair as lifeless as a doll’s.
In Mrs. Hickey’s class, she’d been held back so many times she towered over everyone.
The two of us didn’t talk much, communicating by holding hands on the playground.
When I was a team captain, I’d pick her first even though she was awkward.
When she swung the bat too late, it was in slow motion as she struck out.
She’d miss the kickball entirely, loping like a giraffe.
The other kids wouldn’t touch her in freeze tag, treating her like a pariah.
I supposed both of us were. I understood how Deborah felt.
Although I can’t be sure what registered.
Not much, it seemed, but I felt sorry for her.
One day I asked if she’d ever been to Montreat, and she shook her head no.
I invited her to come home with me, and she got a blank look on her face.
It wasn’t going to happen. She was one of the mountain folks. Or hicks, as they were unkindly called. It seemed an unwritten rule that they didn’t step foot in our neighborhood, and we didn’t visit theirs.
On occasion Mom would call G.G., and I’d beg her to come visit. We wrote letters back and forth, and she always said she was saving her quarters. A card shark, she’d promise to use her winnings for a plane ticket, and she did twice.
The first time was in the fall of 1963, and she spent a week at the Warrens’ house.
She took us shopping for sleds in Black Mountain at Western Auto.
I remember the smell of paint, the racks of tools, the barrels of nails, the fishing gear.
I was thrilled by the wooden Western Flyers that could be driven while lying down or sitting up, steering with hands or feet.
The snows began in December, and we were at it all day long flying around Montreat’s steep back roads.
While my brothers and I played and went to school, Mom started looking for a place to build our permanent home.
I remember her as more carefree then, a lightness about her.
She seemed present, her blue eyes not as sad and vacant.
Life had taken a better turn. But I missed Dad.
Now and then he’d send presents, and I didn’t understand his choices for me, wondering if his secretary or someone else did the shopping.
I saw no value in the wind-up music box with three ballerinas that twirled to the Blue Danube Waltz.
I hated the wooden zither that wasn’t a toy.
It was black and hand-painted with flowers, and it made no sense why Dad would pick out such a thing.
I had no clue how to play its too many strings that had to be tuned with what looked like a skate key.
I attempted to make sense of the musical instrument a few times, but it was light-years beyond my ability.
I wanted the same types of gifts he’d give my brothers.
No matter how often I told Dad that, he always sent things that he (or someone) thought a girl should have.
The only time he had ever smacked me was while we were driving in his Karmann Ghia with the top down one weekend, and I grabbed his Chesterfield cigarettes off the seat, tossing them out the car.
That’s what he deserved for giving Jim a toolbox and not me, I declared.
Instead, I’d gotten a talking doll that I tore limb to limb, yanking out her string.
Our first few months in Montreat, Mom and Dad were trying to be civil, occasionally talking on the phone. She was quiet and preoccupied afterward, but with a glimmer of hope. She asked him if they should get back together. She was willing to try. Assuming he still loved her.
“He choked up,” she confided in me tearily after hanging up. “His psychiatrist said we aren’t good for each other.”
We hadn’t been in the Warrens’ house long when I heard yowling outside my window during a rainstorm one night.
I was shocked to see our missing cat Sniffy up in a tree, thin and soaking wet, cringing on a branch, her eyes frantic.
We’d moved twice since she’d vanished months ago.
I don’t know how she found us. It seemed miraculous.
Around this time Mom had gotten a miniature collie she named Laddy and we’d go for walks and play in the snow.
I’d take him on adventures in the woods, sitting on a log, sharing a snack the same way Miss Craig and I had done.
I’d point out briars, poisonous creepers, and warn about snakes.
It was a dangerous world, I’d explain to the puppy.
At bedtime Mom read us stories like A. A.
Milne’s Now We Are Six and Winnie-the-Pooh.
She’d make up tales about a character she called Dickie Bird.
It was a happy moment when he’d make a surprise visit, leaving treats, usually cookies.
Jim and John would devour theirs and race off to play while I loitered by the kitchen counter.
When no one was looking, I hid my cookies in my bedroom.
I did this for weeks, never eating a single pecan sandie, wedding cookie, or Fig Newton. Every time I’d sit inside my closet to chat with Mr. Owl, I’d take the baggie with me, tying it to a coat hanger with a piece of string. I wanted to make sure he could see the cookies dangling midair.
“I brought you a snack. Eat all you want,” I’d invite him with largesse.
It seemed he was never hungry, and I saved the cookies for weeks, adding to the stash, never indulging. One day I forgot to remove the bulging baggie from the coat hanger.
“Patsy, come here!” I heard Mom call out while I was in the living room watching Bugs Bunny.
I hurried to my room to see what was going on, and she was sitting on the edge of my bed. She looked puzzled, not smiling, holding my lumpy bag of stale cookies with the string tied around it, the plastic dusty with powdered sugar.
“Patsy, why do you have these cookies hanging in the closet?”
I couldn’t mention that I was sharing them with Mr. Owl, even though he wasn’t interested. She didn’t know about him, and if I told anyone, he would fly away.
“What are you saving them in the closet for?” Mom looked worried, putting her arms around me.
“So Jimmy and Johnny won’t get them.”
That didn’t explain why I hadn’t eaten the cookies to begin with. Why was I hoarding? I answered with a shrug.
“You must have a reason, Patsy.”
“I felt like saving them for later.”
I was afraid of running out of food but didn’t mention that part. Mom told me no more cookies in my closet. This was the worst news of all. If I didn’t offer cookies to Mr. Owl anymore, he might be offended even if he didn’t want them. Like Mom often said, it’s the thought that counts.
From now on when Dickie Bird had treats waiting for us after school, I had to eat them on the spot in front of witnesses.
Otherwise, Mom would return them to their cookie bag.
I don’t know the significance of Dickie Bird or where she got the name, but he was her creation.
She’d make up stories about him, and we couldn’t wait for his next appearance.
He was her imaginary helper and friend. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Owl alighted in my thoughts around then.
After I’d earned his trust, he began sending me on secret missions.
It was part of my training. For what? I wanted to know, but he wouldn’t say.
Our relationship was serious and purposeful.
I don’t remember him laughing or smiling. I was to do as instructed.
He told me it was forbidden to venture alone outside Montreat’s stone gate.
It wasn’t safe. If I did it even once, there would be no forgiveness.
I’d be on my own alone in the universe. At first, I’d carry out his assignments on foot.
Later when my family’s belongings were moved out of storage, I’d ride my pink bicycle to some destination without knowing the reason.
I took these operations seriously. They were a test of my willingness to do as directed.
Maybe Mr. Owl was God in disguise. Or possibly an alien from a different galaxy.
Pedaling along Montreat’s hilly roads I’d make up stories about the houses I passed.
After dark, I’d hide behind shrubbery, watching neighbors through lighted windows, wondering what they were doing or having for supper.
Over time, Mr. Owl’s tasks became more demanding. I was scared when he deployed me to where the town drunk Mr. Reilly lived. I’ve changed his name to protect his guilt. His house was falling apart and looked haunted, the overgrown front yard strewn with junk and garbage.
Topping the crumbling brick chimney was a hooded metal cap that creaked as it turned in the wind, and I imagined it was an improvised periscope.
Mr. Reilly used it to spy on anyone who dared to get near his property.
If I did, he’d show up with his shotgun.
He’d grab me, and I’d never be seen again.
Mr. Owl wasn’t my only so-called imagined friend. I say so-called because I’m not sure what’s behind invisible visitors who seem to come from elsewhere. Perhaps they’re a gift when we’re the loneliest and least hopeful. Later I would have another “friend” who had no name that I recall.
I described him in one of my journals as “very wise and wonderful. He has no hair or eyes.” I drew a picture of him levitating in a short loose robe, a pyramid-shaped helmet on top of his head.
Sounds like an alien from another world, and maybe he was.
A typical theme in my poetry was the moon, stars, and distant planets.
I believed in entities like angels and demons.
Imagined or not, I had characters in my life that no one knew about, and it seemed their purpose was to make me face what I feared.
The town drunk. The frigid water of Lake Susan that took my breath away.
Soaring to the treetops on the playground’s swings with long chains.
Finding a place to sit in the school lunchroom.
As the author George MacDonald would say, I had to pass through the land of shadows to get where I was going. Somehow, I’ve been doing it all along.