Chapter 19
THE SNOW CLEARED AND WE RETURNED TO SCHOOL MID-FEbrUARY. It was a huge relief. My teacher, Mrs. Skidmore, seemed to understand what was going on with my family.
I confided about how strict Lenore Saunders was, and that when it came to me, she turned up the volume.
I felt her intense disapproval without understanding the reason.
I suspect I wasn’t forgiven for lavishing attention on her husband.
But he wasn’t around anymore for reasons not explained at the time.
Perhaps it was the fantasy world Lenore thought I lived in because of my drawings and stories.
To her, playing make-believe was another form of lying.
She’d remind me that my creative activities were trifling and a self-indulgent waste of time.
I never touched a crayon while in her house, and Mr. Owl didn’t visit or communicate.
No longer was I summoned to secret meetings, and there was no private spot to have one.
He couldn’t send me on missions when I wasn’t allowed to leave the house.
I never heard from him again, deciding Lenore scared him off forever.
Or maybe he’d overheard the horrible things she said about me and had decided I wasn’t worthy.
Whatever his plan, he’d changed his mind, firing me of any purposeful future I might have had.
Mrs. Skidmore was my safe place, and I couldn’t wait for school each morning.
She encouraged creativity, her bright, positive energy the antithesis of what I experienced the rest of the time.
Most of all, she was kind, and I felt acknowledged for my artistic efforts.
She opened my mind to poetry and possibilities.
When she taught the class about limericks, I wrote one about an old woman named Mrs. Mish who swallowed the bone of a fish.
… When the clock struck five,
She was no longer alive…
My cartoonish illustration depicted a severe harridan with a bun on top of her head, an obvious caricature of Lenore Saunders. But I also began composing more serious poetry. I remember Mrs. Skidmore’s surprise when I wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
There was a man whose name was Abe,
He lived in a cabin when he was a babe.
He romed [sic] the land here and there.
He set slaves free everywhere…
And then one day got shot and he was dead…
Not exactly T. S. Eliot or Emily Dickinson but one might wonder why a fourth grader was thinking about such things.
I created a lot of illustrated poems while in Mrs. Skidmore’s care, and often she’d pin them on the bulletin board as examples of excellent work.
It was kind of her if for no other reason.
She made a difference in my life at a critical juncture.
Many decades later when she was in her eighties, I’d fly her and her daughter Banna first class to Los Angeles, putting them up in a Beverly Hills hotel.
They were special guests at a book event where Oscar-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis interviewed me onstage.
I asked Jean Skidmore to stand up and thanked her in front of the audience.
“I remember when she paddled me with a yardstick after I climbed out the classroom window,” I told everyone. “I mean, it was supposed to look like she paddled me, but it was for show. I barely felt it.”
“That was my mistake!” she retorted for all to hear.
I don’t know exactly when my mother was released from Appalachian Hall in 1966, but flowers were blooming.
Aunt Dolores flew from Chicago, staying a while to help her reacclimate and settle.
I remember Mom’s affect was distant and weirdly blunted, but I was overjoyed that all of us were together and home again.
I developed new routes in Montreat, doing what I could to avoid riding my bike or walking past the Saunders’ house.
On weekends, I often ended up with the Skidmores.
How lucky that my favorite teacher lived down the street.
Her three children were too young for me, but I’d play with them anyway in hopes of spending time with their mother. I felt lonelier than ever.
I missed G.G. so much that I adopted elderly people in the neighborhood, including Ruth Graham’s parents, Virginia and Nelson Bell.
I’d see them in church and asked if they minded my visiting.
They didn’t, and I started doing it regularly.
Taking a shortcut through the woods, I’d arrive at their house in fifteen minutes, helping myself to the back screen door that was never locked.
As I walked through the kitchen, Mrs. Bell would call out for me to help myself to an egg custard, a tray of them under wax paper on top of the refrigerator.
I remember the flavors of nutmeg and vanilla, the consistency reminding me of an omelet.
We’d sit in the living room, and she’d tell me about her years in China as a medical missionary.
I was shocked by stories of girl babies killed because they weren’t wanted.
Women were hobbled by bound feet, the deformed bones clenched like fists.
Mrs. Bell talked about warlords, rickshaws, and ancestor worship.
Also, strange foods like duck eggs buried and later dug up.
A delicacy, she said, probably as I was digging my spoon into the custard.
Dr. Bell would tromp upstairs from his office to say hello, always smiling and full of fun.
A gifted baseball player in his youth, he could have turned professional but decided to become a medical doctor, then a missionary.
When he’d see me, he’d ask how my throwing arm was doing.
He’d mention Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and I’d talk about the bubblegum cards I collected.
On occasion Dr. Bell would drop by the Montreat baseball field across the street from Mrs. Arnold’s house.
He’d watch the local kids playing on Saturdays, and I was the only girl.
Covering first base, sometimes I pitched.
I swung a mean bat, often sending the stitched leather ball arcing over trees and into the creek.
I held my own with the boys until one of them would stick gum in my hair that had to be cut out with scissors.
Once the Bells invited me to Sunday lunch at the fourteen-story Battery Park Hotel in Asheville.
The restaurant was on the top floor, and I felt like a bird looking at downtown, the mountains close all around.
Mindful of the fancy cloth-covered tables and formal settings, I was polite and careful the same way I’d been at Buck’s.
The pull-apart dinner rolls were inside a silver basket.
As I reached for one, it escaped, landing on the floor, resting in plain view.
Horrified, I avoided looking at it, pretending my faux pas hadn’t happened in hopes nobody noticed.
Dr. Bell went along with this for a moment.
Then he picked up the breadbasket, passing it back to me without changing the expression on his face.
“Patsy, would you like a roll to replace the one you just lost?” he deadpanned.
Usually when I’d visit Mrs. Bell, I’d give her some of my poems and drawings.
Maybe I’d include a story I’d block-printed in pencil, my handwriting and spelling horrible.
I had no idea that she was sharing my efforts with her important daughter.
It would be years before I’d find out that Ruth read some of my early stories and poems.
Often when I was at the Bells’ house, she’d appear to bring them dinner on a big tray covered with aluminum foil.
This happened one afternoon when I was sitting on the sofa in ill-fitting jeans and a shirt that were hand-me-downs from Jim.
I’d been playing outside before dropping by the Bells’ house. I was a disheveled mess.
During the visit I heard a car drive up, the back screen door wheezing open. Ruth called out a greeting from the kitchen in her cheery alto voice. She had a trace of a Virginia accent picked up from her parents, both born in the Shenandoah Valley.
“We’re in here!” Mrs. Bell chirped from her wheelchair.
Ruth walked into the living room on this occasion, beautiful as always.
Kissing her mother on the cheek, Ruth gave her the lowdown on what she’d brought for dinner.
She instructed how to warm it up while I listened spraddle-legged and slumping on the sofa.
Then she smiled at me and asked how I was doing.
“These are my brother’s hand-me-downs.” I thought it important to point that out.
“They look nice on you,” she decided after a pause.
I explained the provenance, making sure the blame was squarely on Jim for the clothing’s poor state of repair.
Holes. Threadbare knees. Stains. Nothing fit quite right either.
And I was mindful of my crooked hair. Mom would cut it by placing a plastic bowl over my head, and she wasn’t skillful with scissors. My bangs were never straight.
“Well, I think you look cute.” Ruth smiled again.
It was always a bright spot in my life when I’d encounter her while I was walking, usually to the post office, the lake, the tennis courts. The instant I saw her silver Oldsmobile 98 coming, I’d make sure both of us were headed in the same direction. If we weren’t, I’d turn around.
I’d act nonchalant as she approached me from behind. Sure enough, she’d stop, rolling down her window.
“Would you like a ride?”
“Oh!” I’d feign surprise as if I’d not seen her coming. “Hi, Mrs. Graham. Yes, thank you.”
I climbed up front, possibly with my Western Auto tennis racquet and bag of dead balls. Maybe my baseball glove or boot skates.
“I’m headed home. Where are you going?” she’d say.
“I’m going home too.” I knew she’d drive right past my house on the way to hers.