On Growing Up Tough: An Irreverent Memoir

  Mama hated gossip and never gossiped; she said so, herself, frequently. I believed her, naturally. She leaned towards me and asked me quick little questions. Who was the gentleman? Had I ever seen him before? What did That Woman say to him; I was to repeat everything he had said and what she had said. I did. Mama was quite flushed. She even smiled a little. Then she remembered that I had disobeyed, and she clipped me once. But absently, as if thinking of something else.

  I rubbed my smarting cheek while Mama smiled faintly and somewhat maliciously. She became aware of me again. “Oh, that creature!” she said at last. “If there were any decency among people someone would tell her poor husband. This has gone too far. In the day, of all times! Has she no shame at all?”

  I considered these remarks. I hadn’t the slightest idea why my client should have any shame, but apparently it was expected of her. It was also expected that her husband be informed of the gentleman. Thinking these thoughts I took my brother out in his cart after I had washed the dishes. For some reason or other—and Mama was never a neighborhood visitor—she had gone to see the lady next door, in great haste.

  Wheeling my brother was no fun. I would often relieve the monotony by giving the cart a hard shove down-street, then race it to the corner where I’d grab the handlebars just in time to keep my darling little kinsman from hurtling over the curb, and into the path of traffic. I had begun the preliminary warm-up when I remembered once more that I was a saint, and saints did not endanger the lives of little brothers, no matter how detestable. They definitely did not race and show their drawers to the public. I sauntered sedately with the cart and resolutely stifled my solid hate for small boys in general and my brother in particular.

  Bored, I began to think again of Angie who was such a scandal, and the gentleman, and again of my mother’s remark. I became excited. I would do another good deed, if Angie’s husband returned that day. I wheeled Sonny’s cart near her house, and walked it up and down. I doggedly paced, refusing an offer to play baseball and abandon Sonny on some lawn, refusing other offers to go skating. I was full of duty and thoughts and saintliness. I yawned, while keeping an eye on Angie’s house, and I even brought myself to wipe Sonny’s wet little nose. I usually let him drip, and at this time of the year he always dripped.

  Then, to my joy, I saw Angie’s husband coming up the street, his eyes already bright with love and anticipation. I pushed the go-cart rapidly towards him, and stopped him. He, like Angie, loved children, and he looked at me affectionately and this was remarkable as I was not a very attractive child. “I have something to tell you!” I told him, breathlessly, my heart swelling with goodness.

  And so I told him.

  He stopped smiling; he turned very white. His eyes looked sick. He kept wetting his mouth as he looked at me intently. Suddenly, he was not so very young any longer. He sagged a little. I continued my story, righteously. I told of the nightly visits of other gentlemen. “Mama says it is a scandal,” I informed him, “She called your wife that Creature.”

  Then he spoke, very quietly. “And before a child, too.” He patted me on my holy head and went slowly, slowly, up the street to his house. “Where’s the automobile today?” I called after him. But he did not answer. His back was the back of an old man.

  (I don’t know what happened after that. I heard only fragments of remarks from my mother, and others. But Angie’s husband was never seen again after that day. A few days later a pallid and weeping Angie left, after the furniture was taken out of the house and carted away. I was sorry to see her go, as I watched at a distance. She was a scandal, Mama had said, but I had liked her so much.)

  I had done a terrible mischief in all innocence, and with only the most saintly of intentions. It was many years before I realized the fearful misery I had brought to two young people. Angie was doubtlessly a joyous sinner, but I had destroyed her husband’s life and her own. She had been lovely and kind, and she really adored her husband and in time, losing her first youthful excitement over living, and coming to her senses, it is very possible that she would have reformed and have devoted her later years to a large family of children. After all, tens of thousands of quieted Magdalenes sleep in the hearts of multitudes of good wives and mothers. If only, I have often thought, I had not been a saint on that particular day, and full of urges to commit Good Deeds!

  And now I also reflect on the evil crimes being committed these days against mankind everywhere by those moved by the utmost good-will and a firm determination to reform and change human nature. I ponder on the rage they must evoke, and the terror and despair and ruin and anguish. The do-gooders may, as I was, be anxious only to be helpful; they may even devote all their lives to a dubious duty, and with selflessness. They may think they are assisting man to a higher estate. They may, in reality, be assisting him to Hell, as Angie and her husband were so assisted; and with the same innocence. Talleyrand said, “It is not enough to do good. It is often better to refrain from doing good, judiciously.” Every seasoned clergyman learns that.

  Oh, what happened to my saintliness? I forgot all about it the following morning because the first day had ended in total boredom and with an inner sensation of emptiness. “It was too good to last,” said my father, gloomily, (but with some relief), when I came in the next day with a bloody nose after an exhilarating boxing-match with Charley, which I had won, and a pocketful of nickels and dimes.

  I have never been a “saint” since, though often tempted. My guardian angel hastily helps me change my mind. And so I have not committed any other mischief, either, as I did on the Day I Was Absolutely Perfect.

  4 Sharing

  It was a Monday morning and Teacher smiled at us radiantly. (It did seem to cause her pain, but never mind.) She said, “Children, we are going to play a new game today! We call it “Sharing Our Week-End Experiences.” That means you will all take turns telling all the rest of us what wonderful things happened to you on Saturday and Sunday, and what you did and thought, and where your parents took you, and what you said, and what you played. Won’t that be fun!”

  We kids stared at Teacher vacantly, and blinked. The old girl continued to beam at us encouragingly. Then she pointed to a little boy; “Tommy dear; Do tell us what you did this wonderful spring week-end! And what your mama and papa talked about!” She had a notebook open and a pen poised.

  Tommy rose sluggishly and blinked. “Well, uh,” he said. “Saturday I skated. Sunday, we went to church. We, uh, had a big dinner. We all went to sleep. Then we went to the park and watched the airplane over the river. We came home and had some sandwiches, and then we went to bed.”

  Teacher wrote rapidly. “And what did you think about it all?” she cried.

  Tommy considered. “I wished school was out. I wished it was summer, so I wouldn’t have to go to school no more.”

  Teacher’s pen flew. Her face became serious. She said, “Don’t you like school, Tommy?”

  Now, it is normal for healthy children to despise school with all their barbarian little hearts, and even young children suspect those mates who declare they “love” school. They consider them either liars or fools out trying to attract the favor of Teacher. They are quite right, of course, and a thorough dislike for school was once accepted as quite natural among teachers, who probably hated it, too. But Teacher had been taught that a child was “in emotional difficulties” if he didn’t like being tied to a desk all day and confined in a dreary space, while the sun shone outside invitingly.

  “I hate school!” said Tommy, with powerful emotion, and we almost applauded.

  Teacher’s face was now really somber. She made several more notes, then called on a little girl. The child’s recital was dull. So were the ones following. An ominous sleepiness began to overpower me. A delicious inertia was creeping over me, and a soft darkness, when Teacher’s voice sharply awakened me. “Janet Caldwell! It is your turn to share.”

  I stood up, crumpled as always, with my red hair over my face and in my eyes.
I considered. The other kids had had uneventful week-ends, all seriously the same, and all tepid. Mine could have been gloriously different. Still, I hesitated. The British indoctrination of reticence had been pounded well into me at home and in British schools. Teacher fixed me with her hypnotic eye. “Well, well?” she said, with impatience. “Surely something happened at home, Janet, over the week-end that you can share with us.”

  Kids, as a rule, have a pathetic belief in the omniscience of adults. I hadn’t as yet discarded that belief, though it had begun to waver alarmingly when I was three. So, I considered that if Teacher wanted to know my experience it was quite all right to crank up a really good one for her. Hadn’t I been taught that one was to obey one’s superiors?

  In the two weeks I had been in that school I had already acquired a little notoriety among my innocent playmates, so that the half-dozing class came to attention and stared at me. This was both flattering and unnerving, but children love an audience. I brought the week-end experience into my inner eye and suddenly found it quite exciting, far different from the memoirs of my fellow-sufferers.

  “On Saturday afternoon,” I said, “Mama almost brained Papa with a frying pan, and then she threw a knife at him, and then he want out to the saloon and got drunk and didn’t come home until Sunday morning. He didn’t look well. He had a black eye. He told Mama it was worth it, and she hit him again. With the rolling pin, this time.”

  My schoolmates were enchanted. They laughed and clapped, and I preened. But Teacher was pale with horror. She said, in a hushed voice, “Your parents used violence on each other, Janet?”

  I wasn’t too certain what violence meant, but the sound of it seemed to fit the case. I nodded happily. “But Mama can hit harder,” I informed the class, who applauded again (especially the little girls). “Mama can hit very hard,” I went on, “though she’s little. Papa’s afraid of her, though sometimes he hits back.”

  Teacher folded her hands prayerfully on the desk. The kids looked at me with envy. What had their week-ends been in comparison with mine? Dullsville.

  “Was your mother … er, drunk—too?” asked Teacher, almost whispering.

  I considered. Now I come of two hard-drinking races and never will I lie and say that liquor never crossed Mama’s lips. I didn’t lie then, either. “Oh, Mama drinks, too,” I said airily. “But I don’t think they get drunk. They don’t fall on the floor, like the men I see coming out of the saloons sometimes. They just fight.”

  I am sure I made a Prohibitionist out of Teacher on the spot. She closed the notebook as if it were the Book of Doom, and rested her hand upon it and gently bit her lip. She stared into space. She said, “Spelling books, children.”

  That was a come-down, of course. Later, Teacher asked me, in a hushed voice, to remain a few minutes after school. This was annoying. Mama had no patience with tardiness, and I had to wheel little Brother in the afternoons, and Mama took no excuses. After the other kids had left the room at two-thirty, Teacher drew me tenderly and slowly to her knee and gazed deeply and compassionately into my eyes.

  “Tell me, dear,” she said, “did you cry and tremble when your mother—did what she did to your father?”

  I was astonished. “No,” I said, “I thought she had killed Papa, at first.” I was a little regretful. Not that I didn’t have great affection for Papa, but murder is dramatic and children are eager for drama.

  Teacher had begun to scribble in her notebook again, and for the first time a little apprehension touched me. Her pen was quite feverish. She said, “Janet, dear, didn’t you just shake when you thought your Mama had killed your Papa?”

  I thought this over, trying to remember. Hazy remembrance came to me. “Oh, I thought if she’d killed him she might be hanged, or something. Then he got up off the couch.”

  “Dear sweet Heaven,” breathed Teacher. Her eyes were full of tears. She helped me on with my coat, something no adult had done since I had been three, and she took my hand and said bravely, “We really must talk to Mama.”

  Now apprehension rose to fear. I tried to pull my hand away. “Mama will kill me!” I exclaimed. Alas, as always, prudence came to me too late. And tears. I yelled with fright, seeing Mama’s outraged face. “You made me tell the class!” I screamed at Teacher, “I didn’t want to, but you made me!”

  I had visions of police, and me in prison, iron doors clanging after me. Teacher had somehow pervaded my mind with criminality as well as terror. What had I done? I suddenly knew—too late, as usual—that Mama would not look kindly on my breach of reticence to entertain the class. How could I have forgotten that before my parents did battle they were careful to close doors and draw draperies?

  I must have impressed Teacher with my terror, for she dived again for notebook and wrote something in it. This released my hand. I wanted to run for my life. And, believe me, I was sure it was my life. To this very moment the trauma of it remains with me; I never see Big Mommy in action or hear her voice in our suborned Press and on TV and in the mouths of politicians without that old feeling of sixty years ago, that feeling of imminent terror and despair, of absolute helplessness, and the desire to flee to some safe spot.

  Teacher patted my shoulder. “All right, dear,” she said. “Go home, alone. It will be all right.” I fled, trembling and sweating with dread and with the sensation that I had escaped something terrible. I had. Temporarily.

  We occupied an apartment on quite a nice street in my home city, and Mama had brought treasured family antiques with her from England, including some fine tables and mirrors and an excellent oriental rug or two. We also had beautiful lace curtains and velvet curtains, and Mama was a furious housekeeper, keeping everything shined and polished and scrubbed while she bewailed her lot in America not having a maid-of-all-work as she had had in England. And there was usually something very savory simmering on the stove, and the house smelled of wax and polish and lavender, and the windows glittered.

  Home was a haven to me that afternoon, though usually it definitely was not—being filled with chores I had to do after my stroll with little Brother. I was very subdued and didn’t once complain. Papa, home for tea, gazed at me apprehensively. “Is the lass ill?” he asked.

  Mama roughly felt my brow. “She isn’t feverish,” she said. “She didn’t cause me any trouble today, and that’s unusual. Maybe I’d better give her a dose of castor oil and syrup of rhubarb, just to be certain.”

  To show my state of mind, I was even glad to take that horrible stuff, remembering Teacher and my narrow escape from catastrophe. But later that night a policeman came to the door and requested an interview with my parents. I looked at him with absolute terror, because I was filled with premonitions.

  To the British, the police are sacrosanct, are Authority and are respected. That is, they were until comparatively recently. The Police did not come to one’s house except under dire provocation. My parents were aghast. Here was the Law. He was also a big young Irishman with a fresh face, and he looked about our nice and shining apartment with puzzled astonishment. I know now that he had expected a filthy slum and broken cartons and dirt and drunkenness and, possibly, blood on the floor. His eye fell on me, and he saw me glaring with fright at him, and he pursed his lips. (I can see it all as vividly as if it were happening just now.) He cleared his throat. He was embarrassed.

  Papa, with a very white face, invited him to sit down and Mama queried if he’d like a “nice cup of tea.” Her little hands were trembling. The young policeman, recognizing an Irishman when he saw one, sat down and thanked Mama for the tea, and she added some pound cake and fresh cream. He stirred his cup and thoughtfully watched the swirls in it.

  “I tell you, Mr. Caldwell,” he said at last, “there’s been prowlers around this neighborhood in the past couple weeks, and we’re looking for them, and I thought maybe you’d seen them around. Nice flat like this. Just what they’ve been looking for.” He admired the heavy silver teaspoon and weighed it in his hand.

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bsp; Papa had heard that America was a violent country, long before he had come here, and so he was not surprised. He almost regretfully assured the policeman that he had seen no criminals.

  “And a lot of drunkenness gets reported to us,” said the young man. “Mean neighbors, I’ll be thinking. A body can’t take a drop anymore without some Nosy Parker calling the Po-lice.”

  Papa caught the drift at once, and so did Mama; but, thank God, they didn’t connect it with me. They were indignant, and nodded their heads. “Mind my words,” said Papa, darkly, “they’ll be stopping us from having a drop of the Creature one of these days. Will you have a drop?”

  The young policeman did. When he rose to go he considered me. “Nice little girl you have here, Mr. Caldwell,” he said, in a voice which denied the words, and his look at me was stern. I was rescued.

  5 The Purple Lodge

  The nature of human beings never changes; it is immutable. The present generation of children and the present generation of young adults from the age of thirteen to eighteen is, therefore, no different from that of their great-great-grandparents. Political fads come and go; theories rise and fall; the scientific “truth” of today becomes the discarded error of tomorrow. Man’s ideas change, but not his inherent nature. That remains. So, if the children are monstrous today—even criminal—it is not because their natures have become more polluted, but because they have not been taught better, nor disciplined.

  When I was nine years, I became part of a gangster group in my school. There were fourteen of us; I believe we called ourselves the Purple Lodge because some of the children had Masonic fathers who went to lodges. Anyway, it had a rich and terrible sound and children healthily love anything that smacks of violence. One of the reasons that we formed the gang was because we were bored to death in school, and normally healthy and intelligent youngsters usually are—despite what the “educationists” try to tell parents.