My Mother tells me stories about Cucumber, New Hall, War, Welch, and Baltimore

"I hated it, then," she said.

We had been talking about Maia and school. About two weeks, Maia had gotten into trouble for pinching a child in her after school session. I had picked her up, and the woman who runs it had complained that Maia had pinched a child and made him cry. Maia wouldn't tell me why, but she explained something about it to Kristina that night. The boy had told her that he was having a party and that he wouldn't invite her. And she said, she didn't want to hear him talking mean anymore, so she just pinched him until he started to cry. "I couldn't stand to hear him," she said.

A few days later, she had gotten into trouble again. This time, she was said to have hit a girl in the stomach. I was told that if there was a repetition of that, she might be asked to leave. But I learned later that the person who gave me this report, as though she had seen it--the same woman again--in fact had not seen what had happened. So I didn't know what to make of it. It seemed to me that she might have been scapegoating Maia.

My mother had also suggested that as a possibility, and then had gone off into her own reminiscences.

"She was mean," she said, of her third and fourth grade teacher. "First grade was great. I was at Cucumber, then, and that teacher used to take me home with her." She told me again about the green jello episode--how she had been given the green jello for desert, had eaten it desipte the fact that she didn't like it "for nothin'" because that was what her mother had taught her to do to show respect to hosts, and how her teacher had given her a second helping since it was obvious that she liked it so much. "Now I really couldn't say anything," she had said, "so I just ate it."

But all of that was prologue to school at New Hall.

"Second grade was okay because I had June to walk out of that holler with me. We had to walk because we lived too close to the school for the bus. The next year, though, June went to Berwyn, and I had Miss Handy. Helen Handy was her name, and she was just mean. Had her for third and fourth grades. Everybody hated her, especially the ones who didn't have nothing like us, because she looked down on us and would make fun of us."

"I told you about Laura Hicks, didn't I?" she asked.

"Laura was big. I was only 9 or 10 but Laura was about 12 because she had been held back. She was the poorest in the class. And Miss Handy was always picking on her. And one day Laura had just had enough, and she just hauled off and socked her. I had never seen anything like that. Ripped her blouse, too. They came in and got her. Took her out of the room. And Miss Handy went and put a coat on."

"After that, we moved to William Poka, and school was better. I went to school in War with June, and Bernard and Opal were at Big Creek. June wouldn't go, though. She quit in 9th grade. She just wouldn't go. Had her boyfriend by then, and got married the next year. She was 15 and I was 10."

"Who was living at home then?"

"Well, by the time we got to Welch, June had gotten married, and Opal went to nursing school. So it was me, Harold, and Bernard. And then Bernard joined the Army Air Corps when the War started, so it was just me and Harold."

"After the war started, June and Dotch moved to Baltimore to work in the shipyards. And Opal had moved to North Carolina with JC. I couldn't wait to get out of there, too."

"That's when you went to Baltimore?"

"Yes. But I went to North Carolina first. Opal wanted me to come visit, and so I did. She was really unhappy. JC was trying to stay out of the draft. In those days, your draft number depended on if you were married and how many children you had. And so kept on having them. They finally did draft him, but then he told them that Sara was on the way, and so they let him out.

"How did you all stay in touch with each other? Telephone?"

"No, not telephone. We wrote letters."

"Why did you go to Baltimore?"

"Edna had written to Momma, asking her to let me live there with her. And so after I graduated, I went there. Lived there with her, and Curt and Vera, Curt's adopted daughter, in their house. Until Curt started making passes at me."

Edna was Curt's second wife. He ran a store and had a restaurant, and fancied himself a ladies man. Mother wondered about his relationship with Vera. Edna did not like Vera at all, and Mother thought that that was why Edna had invited her to go live there--to heep an eye on Curt and Vera.

Mother had worked at the store, initially, but Curt had started to put his hand on her knee and do other things that bothered her. So she took a job at Revere Copper and Brass.

"And that's where I met John," she said. "He asked me to go out to dinner with him, but I didn't have a coat. So Edna said she'd let me use hers. But she weighed 175 and I was only 115, so it was too big for me. I just put it over my shoulders. John didn't say anything about it, and I thought that that was really considerate."

"But things got bad with Curt and Edna, then. Curt was always jealous of anybody I went out with. I went out with one boy--he was from home, I think. When he shipped out, there was a church service, and we all went by bus to it. The men were inside and they all had their helmets and their rifles on the floor next to them. And the next morning, they shipped out. I'll never forget that service."

"Anyway, Curt was jealous of that boy. Edna didn't want to hear anything about it."

Things came to a head one night in Mother's room.

"She hit me. Just about knocked me out. I didn't see it coming, and it took me by surprise. I told John about it, and he asked his landlady if I could take his room. The next day, I moved out. The war was over by then, and so I went back to War. June and Dotch had moved back to War because Dotch had a house there. All three of those brothers did. And Mother and Daddy had moved there from Welch. Dotches' mother, Old Mother Ross, had rented Albert's old house up on Excelsior Hill to them."

"John told me he'd take me to the bus. I said okay, but then he showed up with his bags. I said, What do you think you're doing?, and he said, I'm coming with you. No, you're not, I said, but he did anyhow. Then when we got to War, I introduced him to Mother, and he got a room someplace. Then he got a job teaching school. And two years later, we got married."

She was tired then.

"I'll tell you somemore another time," she said.

John, Saturday, February 14, 2009.