A Room of My Own Read online

  Well, I reflected, at least she remembered to call me Virginia. But before I could find much comfort in the thought, she continued. "Have you taken full leave of your senses! What have you gone and done to your hair?"

  Rather foolishly, I replied, "Charlotte cut and curled it, Mama. Don't you think it's pretty?"

  "Charlotte cut it," Mother echoed angrily. "Charlotte cut it! Somehow I knew she'd be behind this. I've half a mind to keep you from that Charlotte Besac. Honestly, I don't know why I've let you associate with her this long. I thought maybe you'd be a good influence on her, but I suppose it's true that bad company corrupts good morals. She's bound to turn out no good, that one--just like her mother."

  "Mama," I cried, "you can't mean that! Charlotte's my best friend, and she's a good person, too, no matter what you say. And what's the matter with Mrs. Besac? You just don't like her 'cause she wouldn't join the Women's Temperance Union when you asked her to!"

  "Don't argue with me, Virginia Jane!" Mother cried.

  Then and there I decided I really did prefer that she call me Ginny after all.

  "And anyway, never mind about the Besacs. It's you that's got me nettled now. If you weren't so big, I'd take you right over my knee and spank you! Honestly, what would compel you to do something like this? I can't spank you but I can send you to bed without your supper. Go on upstairs. Go on," she said, waving both arms like an agitated policeman directing traffic. "I don't want to see you again till morning."

  I started up the stairs but had only climbed a few when I heard the scrambling of my siblings' feet on the hardwood floor of the hall. The commotion had drawn them from the parlor where they were playing. The three of them stood there in the wide front hallway, lined up like stairsteps and gazing at me with mystified looks on their faces.

  Simon, with all earnest concern, asked, "Gee, Ginny, was you in an accident?"

  At the prospect of my having been hurt, Molly's lower lip quivered and she began to cry.

  Before I could explain, Papa rushed out of his office, carefully but firmly shutting behind him the door to the waiting room. "Lillian," he said, "a half-dozen people have their ears pressed up against the waiting room wall. Now, what on earth is going on here?"

  Mother pointed one accusing finger up at me and said, "Just look what your daughter has done to her hair!"

  Papa looked up and studied me a moment. Finally he asked, "Got yourself a new 'do, Ginny?"

  "Charlotte cut it for me, Papa," I said demurely. "I wanted to have my hair bobbed like all the other girls." Then I added hopefully, "Do you like it?"

  "Never mind that," Mother interjected. "What's right for other girls and what's right for you are two different things."

  "Well, now," Papa said, coming to my defense, "if it's what the other girls are doing, I don't see anything wrong--"

  "You let me handle this, William," Mother said, cutting him off. "No daughter of ours is going to go prancing around in public looking like some cheap flapper."

  To Mother's obvious irritation, Papa gave a brief chuckle. "Well, you can hardly keep her indoors until it all grows out again."

  "Maybe not," Mother said, "though I've half a mind to do just that."

  "Now, Lillian--"

  "Go on upstairs, young lady," Mother ordered. "No supper for you tonight, and that's just the beginning. You won't get off easily this time."

  "Now, Lillian--" Papa tried again, but it was no use. Mother had spoken, and that was that. When it came to the patients, Papa had the final say, but when it came to the children, Mother was not to be overruled.

  When I started up the stairs, Mother turned the last remnants of her wrath on the younger ones. "Didn't I tell you ten minutes ago to wash your hands for supper? Come on, now, Molly, stop your blubbering. There's no use in tears. Simon, you and Claudia set the table, will you? And leave off one place setting. Your older sister won't be joining us tonight." Molly belched out a final howl as Claudia and Simon led her off to the kitchen.

  When I was halfway up the stairs, I realized that Papa still stood at the bottom looking up at me. I turned and paused a moment, long enough for him to give me a wink and a nod. He liked my hair. I knew he did. I smiled at him in return. Then whistling "Joy to the World!" he returned to his patients. He and Dr. Hal would be eating a late supper, as usual.

  I ambled to my room and made a beeline for the dresser mirror. I had to reassure myself I'd done the right thing. The mirror told me that I had, in spite of Mother's explosion.

  Turning my gaze from my own face, I rested my eyes on the two magazine photos I had stuck in the mirror's frame--one of Charles Lindbergh, the other of Charlie Chaplin. I thought of them as My Two Charlies. "Well, what do you guys think?" I inquired. After all, as Charlotte said, it was what the men thought that mattered. I had a feeling that like Papa, My Two Charlies rather approved of the bob.

  I blew them both a kiss, then lay down to dream of gazing at a Honduran moon while Charlie Chaplin kissed my hand and called me Honey.

  Chapter Four

  A few days later I was pacing the floor of my room, trying vainly to recite a poem by Thomas Campion. Memorizing three poems by this sixteenth-century wordsmith was part of my punishment for cutting my hair. My sentence also included sewing one skirt and two aprons more than what I was originally supposed to stitch that summer, reading two more library books, mastering three more piano pieces, attempting six more recipes, and committing to memory--in addition to the usual weekly scripture--the third chapter of Second Timothy, which talks about the sins of silly women (such as myself, I presumed). In other words, Mother was trying to keep me too busy to get into trouble again.

  Campion alone almost made me regret cutting my hair, but not quite. I was determined to take my punishment without so much as a whimper so that Mother wouldn't think I was bothered by it. Strutting back and forth in front of the mirror as I performed for my two Charlies, I recited dramatically, "To music bent is my retiréd mind, / And fain would I some song of pleasure sing...."

  I didn't understand the meaning of the words that tumbled pell-mell from my lips. Campion might as well have been writing in Latin, for all I understood his poems. I was used to memorizing the vintage English of King James, but Campion was one step beyond James in poetic oddities. Nevertheless, I stumbled through the baffling lyrics again and again, hoping that when it came time to recite them to Mother, she'd be just preoccupied enough with other things that I could substitute my own fillers should I find myself drawing a blank.

  Surprisingly, in spite of Mother's threats, I was not forbidden to see Charlotte. I think that was Papa's doing. Mother may have disapproved of our companionship, but Papa liked Charlotte, and he knew it would have broken my heart to be separated from my best friend. When Mother laid out my punishment the morning after the hair-cutting incident, not a word was said about Charlotte. But later in the day when I took a message to Papa in his office, he said, "Oh, by the way, Ginny, I heard there's a new Buster Keaton picture showing down at the bijou starting this weekend. You and Lottie won't want to miss it, I'm sure." That was Papa's way of letting me know I was allowed to continue associating with my accomplice in crime.

  When my sorry delivery of Campion was interrupted by the doorbell, I knew it was Charlotte, for I was expecting her. I had talked her into going to the Saturday matinee of the Keaton movie Papa had spoken of, The Passionate Plumber. She had balked at first, retorting, "Just how in the world can there be anything passionate about a plumber? It's just going to be an hour of Buster Keaton going around fixing toilets and falling down." But with a little persuasion on my part--I reminded her it was possible Mitchell Quakenbush would put his money down for the same show--she agreed to go.

  Hearing Charlotte's voice in the hallway, I blew my usual farewell kiss to the two Charlies and hurried down the stairs. Charlotte was there talking with Simon, who hid his hands in his pants pockets but couldn't hide the flush on his cheeks. Simon was a shy fellow, bespectacled and bookish
, the spitting image of Papa when he was a boy. Not your usual rough-and-tumble type, he was rather frail, thin, and sallow skinned. His penchant for reading and his enjoyment of piano playing didn't bode well when it came to being popular among the neighborhood boys. He had a few friends, but he largely preferred his own company to that of the other kids. It seemed he was never happier than when he was curled up with one of Papa's medical books. His future seemed already certain, though he was only nine years old.

  The attention of a young lady invariably left Simon tongue-tied. When I met up with my friend and my brother in the hall, Simon was trying to say something to Charlotte, but it sounded as though his teeth were all tied up with rubber bands. He looked up at me helplessly, then made his escape back to the piano, where he hammered out his embarrassment on the keys. Above the music I hollered, "Mama, Charlotte's here! We're going down to the picture show now."

  From the kitchen I heard, "All right. But I want to hear at least one stanza of Campion when you get back."

  "All right, Mama." I rolled my eyes at Charlotte, who smirked and shook her head. The last time she was punished by her mother was on her seventh birthday when she threw her still-lighted cake across the dining room because it had white icing instead of chocolate. I was there at the time and awfully sorry to see that pretty cake flattened against the wall, shards of the shattered plate slicing through it like so much shrapnel. I happened to like white icing and could hardly stand the thought of the cake being ruined. Even so, Charlotte's only punishment was to clean up the mess. If I had done such a thing, I'd still be paying the penalty.

  Before we could escape the house, Papa showed up in the doorway of the waiting room patting the breast pocket of his white jacket as though he were looking for a pen. He appeared to be on the verge of hollering for Mother's help when he spotted Charlotte and me.

  "Ah, hello, Lottie!" he chirped amiably. "I understand you've gone into the beauty parlor business."

  "Oh!" Charlotte exclaimed and started to laugh so hard she couldn't speak. With a hand clamped over her mouth, she backed out the front door and down the porch steps with me trailing her. We giggled our way down two blocks before we could stop laughing.

  Finally Charlotte said, "Your pop's so silly, but he's nice."

  I nodded my agreement.

  "He hasn't been back to that hobo jungle, has he?"

  I nodded again. "Yup, he's been back. And he says he's going to go down there once or twice a week for as long as he's needed. He tried to find a couple of other doctors down at the hospital to give him a hand, but he hasn't had any luck so far. None of them are too excited about going down to that place."

  "I can't blame them," she replied. "Who'd want to--you know--touch people like that. It'd be worse than touching lepers."

  I laughed. "I don't know why you think that. Papa says none of them have any contagious diseases. And not a single one of them has leprosy."

  "Dr. Hal's not helping out down there, is he?"

  "Nope. Papa needs him at the office and for making house calls."

  Charlotte sighed with relief. "Good thing. I wouldn't want anything to happen to Dr. Hal."

  Her words sent an unexpected shiver of concern through me. Frowning, I demanded, "What do you mean by that? What could happen?"

  "Well, you know. All sorts of bad things could happen--do happen--in a place like that. I mean, hobos love to kill people for their money. Don't you read the papers?"

  Actually, I didn't read the newspaper, and I knew Charlotte didn't either.

  Nevertheless, she continued as if she did. "There's stories all the time about the sheriff pulling bodies out of the river--men that've been robbed and beaten to death by the tramps. You'd better tell your Papa not to take any money with him when he goes down there."

  "I never heard of any hobos killing people for their money. You're just making that up."

  "Am not."

  "Are so. Besides, these people aren't really hobos. They're just a bunch of people out of work."

  "What's the difference?"

  "There's a big difference."

  "No, there isn't. Hobos are people out of work."

  "Yeah, but hobos are regular bums. Hobos were bums even when the whole country was rich. The people down in Soo City aren't like that."

  "Virginia Eide, you don't know what you're talking about."

  "I do so. Papa says they're just the same as us except they lost their jobs in the Depression."

  "I don't believe in the Depression. That's just another lie grown-ups tell so they don't have to work."

  "You don't believe the country's in a depression?"

  "Naw. People got tired of working, so they quit."

  I considered Charlotte's theory for a moment.

  Before I could respond, she said, "I bet your mama doesn't like it."

  "Doesn't like what?"

  "Your pop going down to that shantytown."

  "No, not really. She says he's going to bring back some terrible disease and make us all sick."

  "Probably will, if the hobos don't kill him first."

  Charlotte's words gave me a whole new reason for not wanting Papa to go to Soo City. Like Mother, I hadn't been keen on the idea since he'd announced his intentions earlier in the week. But unlike Mother, I wasn't worried about Papa bringing back any diseases. Papa was around sick people all the time; a few more wouldn't matter. Also, being somewhat less conscious of appearances than Mother, it didn't bother me that my father would stoop to mingle with those some might consider the lowest of the low. Papa's regular patients had never been exactly wealthy. But what really bothered me, though I'm ashamed to admit it, was Mother's point about these people not being able to pay. They wouldn't even be able to supply us with chickens and vegetables. And that meant less for me. The raise in my allowance I'd been hoping for seemed ever more unlikely.

  But now I suddenly had a far graver reason for objecting to Papa's charity work. What if by going to Soo City he really was in danger? What if some hobo really did try to kill him for his money?

  Charlotte and I walked along in silence, the unseasonably hot sun beating down on our backs and causing the bits of shale in the sidewalk to sparkle. The glare of the light was almost blinding. I squinted and scratched my head and ran my hand down the length of my bobbed hair. I told myself that terrible things happened to other people, not to people like Papa, so I needn't worry about his safety. Besides, Papa always said that God was taking care of us. Surely He'd be good enough to send a few extra angels down the sunray ladder to protect my father if it looked like anything bad was going to happen.

  I had myself mostly convinced of Papa's safety by the time we reached the theater, and when the houselights went down and the movie flickered on the screen, I had forgotten completely about my father and the shantytown. I loved to sit in the middle of a movie house filled with laughter. It made me feel like a part of something wonderful. I enjoyed comedies even more than the romantic pictures that made women cry, and fortunately for me, in those days the comedians were hard at work trying to keep people laughing. Unlike Charlotte, I believed there really was a depression going on, but I wasn't any more aware than my friend of the real consequences of our country's economic troubles. I didn't know that many of those who laughed with me in that movie house were there simply to escape from the fears that had plagued them since the day in 1929--remembered as Black Thursday--when the bottom began to fall out of the stock market. Ten years old at the time of the crash, I was old enough to know that something had happened but not old enough to fully understand what it was. I heard that men were jumping out of windows and women were crying and fainting in the streets, but the reasons behind the calamity were a mystery understood only by the adult mind. I had no idea that the ripples of Black Thursday would ever reach me. And in fact, three years later, the Depression seemed still not to have touched me at all. Something might be happening to other people, but life went on in our house just the same as always. I did recall
that the bank where Papa deposited our money closed sometime in 1930, and Mother, who rarely cried, wept over that. Yet I couldn't see any visible changes in our daily routine. The same amount of food appeared on our table, the same number of dresses hung in my closet, and Papa always seemed to have a sufficient amount of cash in his wallet. He even started giving me an allowance of a quarter a week when I turned twelve. Whatever this Depression was, my family seemed immune to it. It wasn't anything I needed to be concerned about.

  And so I laughed at Buster Keaton as the straight-faced little fellow made a fool of himself for the sake of other people's happiness. I laughed easily and innocently, not afraid of the lights coming on again, not afraid of having to go back out to face the real world. To me, the real world was grand. I wanted to grasp it and hold it to me and take from it everything it had to offer. From where I stood on the threshold of adolescence, life appeared full of promise and possibility, and I was anxious to meet it head on.

  "That was pretty good, wasn't it?" I asked Charlotte as we flowed with the crowd back out onto the simmering sidewalk.

  "It was all right," she said blandly. She'd never admit that she liked a Buster Keaton movie, though my left ear was still ringing from her shrill screams of glee.

  I turned toward the direction of home, but Charlotte stopped me by saying, "I don't feel like going back yet, do you?"

  I shrugged. "What do you want to do?"

  She answered with a question of her own. "How much money do you have?" I reached into the pocket of my dress and pulled out a nickel. "Good," she said. "Just enough for a cherry Coke over at Pete and Jerry's. We can get two straws and split it."

  "Well, all right," I agreed, but hesitantly. Pete and Jerry's was a small ice cream parlor in a rather run-down section of town. Charlotte and I had been there once or twice on the sly, but not since the previous summer. I knew Mother wouldn't want me to go there, and I envisioned myself, if found out, being slapped with three more Campion poems and the entire book of Second Timothy. But I followed Charlotte anyway as she headed toward the heart of downtown.