A Garden of Earthly Delights Page 6

  4

  South Carolina: spring. A woman in a dark dress stood in the entranceway and waited until everyone passed by and settled inside. It was hot. The schoolroom smelled of something nice—wood and chalk and something Clara did not recognize. The woman had broad shoulders and a heavy, solid body that reminded Clara of a tree trunk: the way she stood there waiting, her face hard as the children hurried by sometimes slowing one down by grabbing the back of his neck, you'd never think she could come to life and walk to the front of the room. Her hands were big and veined and her neck was veined too, but she had a winter kind of paleness that set her off from the people Clara was used to seeing. There was no telling how old she was. Clara's last teacher, a few weeks ago in another state, had been like that too—different from the women at camp. She used her words more cautiously. Clara had never heard anybody talk as much as schoolteachers talked and she thought this was wonderful.

  But people on the outside always talked more. When you met someone from camp outside, in town, you could tell they were from camp; there was just something about them, people as far apart as Clara's father and Nancy and Clara's best friend Rosalie and Rosa-lie's whole family.

  “Stop that! I said stop that!”

  The teacher was after someone. Clara and Rosalie giggled, pressing their hands against their mouths. They heard a scuffle, and choked sounds of laughter. Their spines tingled but they didn't turn around to look even though everyone else did—they were new here and kept themselves tamed.

  “He hit me first, goddamit,” a boy said.

  “Get over here—sit down!”

  After a moment the teacher came to the front of the room. Clara saw her eyes flick over her and Rosalie and the other new kids from the camp; they were all together, sitting up near the front with the little kids. Rosalie was a year older than Clara; she was eleven; but both she and Clara and the boy with the splotches on his neck were with the little kids. They giggled and hid their faces in their books when the teacher was with the other grades. Clara's knees were hard against the bottom of the desk. She was getting big. She could feel herself growing. She was as tall as Rosalie and would be taller, and as tall as some of the girls from the farms. Being with the sixand seven-year-olds made her want to baby them, the way she babied her two little brothers. But they didn't like her. She wondered why the teacher had put her and Rosalie and that boy up front with such little kids.

  On the first day, the teacher had held a book up too close to Clara's face and said, “Read this.” Clara had blinked at the type nervously. Rosalie had her own book and held it hard against her stomach, her head bowed, but she did no better than Clara. “You're both slow. Far behind,” the teacher said, not looking at them. And then Rosalie had started to giggle and Clara joined in, and the teacher had gotten mad at them both. Rosalie's mother, who had brought them over, had hollered at them and said it was a fine beginning for them, what the hell was the matter … ? Rosalie's mother had worn shoes with black bows on them that day, just to take them over to the school.

  Now the teacher was approaching the first-grade group. It was only nine o'clock and already hot. Clara liked the heat, she could feel it get inside her and make her sleepy; she liked to close her eyes in the sunlight and fall asleep like one of those happy clean cats you saw sometimes around farms. She'd looked out the bus or out the back of the truck many times to catch sight of those cats— sometimes they'd be sleeping on a stone wall right out by the road, their fur ruffling in the wind. A patch of sunlight fell through the window and onto the teacher's arm. Clara watched it. The teacher's arm was lard-pale but had dark hairs on it like men's arms. The teacher had a solid, thick waist. Her belt was thin and had begun to turn over on one side, showing a cardboard lining. Clara watched her dreamily through her lashes. Everyone hated the teacher but Clara didn't; she liked that kind of skin and she liked the big round pin on the woman's collar, a round gold pin that looked like the sun. She would buy a pin like that someday, she thought, with her own money, and maybe she would be teaching school too—

  “Hello. I am a boy. My name is … Jack,” one of the six-year-olds read. He was from a farm. He sat across from Clara and up one, and Rosalie sat right behind him. Rosalie had long stringy red hair and surprised eyes. If she was caught doing something bad she turned those eyes on you and you had to laugh—once at recess, in the last school they'd been at, Clara had seen her opening up a handkerchief and when she snatched it away a little tin whistle fell to the ground. The whistle had been someone else's, a girl's, but Clara would never tell; she thought it was funny. Things came into Rosa-lie's hands as if they were just lying there waiting for her. She never stole things but only “found” them.

  “I live in a white house. This is my house.… This is my dog. My dog is black.”

  The boy read slowly, emphasizing each word the same way. He was the best reader and Clara kept hoping he would make a mistake. She followed the words with her eyes, memorizing them. She knew where the sound “house” was because there was the picture of a house over it. The house was white with three big trees in the front lawn. Clara loved the pictures in the book and had stared at them many times. Her favorite was the one of the mother and the baby sitting in the kitchen. It was toward the end of the book, so probably they wouldn't get to it; they'd be moved to another state by then. This picture showed a woman with nice short yellow hair holding a baby on her lap. The black dog was sitting and looking up at them and it looked as if it were smiling. Behind the woman was a big window with white curtains with red polka dots on them, and plants in flowerpots on the windowsills, and a clock. But the clock was fake; if you looked close there was no time on it. To make Rosalie jealous, Clara told her that she had been in a real house once, up in Kentucky.

  “Next, Bobbie,” said the teacher.

  Behind them something was going on. Clara heard a book fall but she didn't dare look around. One day the teacher had shaken her and she hadn't even done anything—someone else had been laughing. So she sat with her mouth frozen into a polite little smile while the teacher's face reddened with that look all adults had that showed they wanted to kill. Behind Clara there was quiet.

  “Pick up that book,” said the teacher.

  A desk squeaked as someone bent to pick it up.

  The teacher stood staring for a while. The red backed out of her face unevenly. Then she woke up again and said, in a sharp, vicious voice: “I saw that! You—get out in the entry! Get out, you little pig!”

  She began to yell. She threw down her book and rushed up the aisle. Clara and Rosalie looked around, their fists pressed against their mouths to keep from laughing. They laughed at everything here in school—what else could they do? Everything was so strange here! Kids as big as they were sat at desks and read haltingly out of books instead of working out in the fields to make money—why was that? If the people from town hadn't come out to the camp in cars and talked with someone, she and the other kids would not be here. It was all so different, so strange. She laughed at everything. People who picked fruit laughed to give themselves time to think. Clara was maybe doing the same thing. She looked around and saw the teacher shake one of the boys—he was big, about twelve. A farm boy. His name was Jimmy and he had done something nasty in the girls' outhouse once, on the floor. The teacher shook him and knocked him back against his seat. The desks were attached at the bottom and so the whole row rocked.

  “Stand out in the entry—you filthy little pig!”

  He went out, his shoulders hunched with laughing. The teacher wiped her face. Clara saw her eyes move over the room jerkingly, and something twitched in her cheek. It was a little twitch like a blink. Clara thought that when she was a teacher she wouldn't yell so much. She would smile more. But she would shake up the bad boys and scare them. She would be nice to the girls because the girls were afraid; even the big girl with the braids wound around her head, who was thirteen or fourteen, was quiet and afraid. Clara would be nice to all the girls but hard on the b
oys, the way her father was. He whipped Rodwell all the time but never Clara.…

  “Read. Start reading!”

  She was pointing at Clara. Clara's face tried to ward this off by smiling the way Rosalie's mother had smiled, but it did no good.

  She bent over the book. Silence. She could feel something itching up high on her legs but she could not scratch it. The words danced.

  “I live in a white house.…”

  “He just read that! We're on the next page.”

  The teacher walked heavily toward them. Rosalie was hunched over her book, not looking at Clara. Everything was quiet except the flies.

  Clara stared over at the next page. Her breath was coming fast. There was a picture of a strange man on that page, dressed in a strange way. He had a white shirt on but it was half covered up by a kind of coat, a short coat, that didn't come closed all the way up in front but left part of his chest to get cold. A red thing was tied around his neck. The strange coat was blue and the man's trousers were blue too. Clara wondered what kind of man this was supposed to be. He was smiling but she had no idea what he was smiling at; it looked as if he was just smiling, by itself.

  “Go on and read. We're waiting.”

  Clara gripped the book harder.

  “You can't be that stupid!” the teacher cried. “Go on and read!”

  “My … My …”

  The teacher leaned over Clara. With one long impatient finger she tapped at Clara's book. The baby had spilled something on this page and Clara's face burned with shame.

  “Begin with this word. This word!”

  She was tapping at a word. Clara knew it was a word, it was letters put together, it was like the letters up at the top of the blackboard that went all the way across the front of the room.…

  “Say it, come on! Say it!”

  “My …”

  Clara felt waves of heat rise about her. She and the teacher were both breathing hard.

  “Father. Say it—say father.”

  “Oh, father. Father. Father,” Clara whispered. “My father … My father …”

  There was silence when Clara's voice ran out. Someone giggled. The teacher's finger did not move. Clara could feel heat from the teacher and she could hear her breathing—she wanted to get away from here, get far away and sleep for a long time. That way no one would be mad at her.

  “How am I supposed to teach you anything? What do they expect? My God!” the teacher said bitterly. Clara remained sitting as straight as possible, the way Rosalie's mother had sat. It was the way to be. After a hot, ugly moment, the teacher said: “How long are you people going to be here?”

  She leaned around so that she could look at Rosalie too. But Rosalie sat the way Clara was sitting, with her own finger on the page, pretending not to notice. “How long are your parents going to be living here?” the teacher said. “Do you have any idea?”

  This frightened Clara more than anger, because she did not know what to do with it. She could hear something nice in the teacher's voice. She smiled, then stopped smiling, then looked over at Rosalie in panic. Rosalie turned and caught Clara's eye and both girls giggled suddenly. Their giggles were like something nasty.

  The teacher made an angry noise and straightened up.

  “All right, next. Bobbie. You read,” she said. Clara could tell that the teacher's voice was now going high over her head and that it could not hurt her.

  At recess they ran outside together. The teacher stood in the entry and made them pass one by one. If a boy pushed anybody she grabbed him and he had to wait until everyone else was out.

  Clara and Rosalie approached the other girls. The girls did not pay any attention to them. There was a high concrete step in front of the school, cracked and crumbling, and a walk that led out to the road. Clara and Rosalie sat on the edge of the big step, by themselves but close enough to the other girls to hear what they said.

  The boys played games, running hard. Cinders were tossed up when they skidded. They threw cinders and bits of mud at one another and at the girls. The girl with the braids cried when she couldn't get flaky pieces of mud out of her hair; the pieces were caught. The boys ran by Rosalie and Clara and said, “Let's see your nits! You got nits in your hair!” One of them grabbed Rosalie's long hair and jerked her off the concrete step. Rosalie screamed and kicked at him. “You fucking little bastard!” Rosalie screamed. The boys giggled and ran around the schoolhouse.

  Clara shrank back. She heard the teacher's footsteps in the entry. The teacher ran out and grabbed Rosalie's arm and shook her. “What are you saying!” she cried. Rosalie tried to get away. “What did I hear you say?”

  “They pulled her hair,” said Clara.

  “Don't you ever talk like that again around here!” the teacher said. She was very angry. Her face was red in splotches. Clara, crouched back against the wall, stared up at the teacher's face and couldn't figure out what she saw: the big, hard, bulging eyes, the stiffening skin, the mouth that looked as if it had just tasted something ugly.

  Rosalie jerked away and ran out to the road. “You come back!” the teacher cried. Rosalie kept running. She was running back toward the camp; it was about a mile down one road and a little ways down another. Clara pressed her damp back against the wall and wanted to take hold of the teacher's hand, to make it stop trembling like that. Her mother's hands had been nervous too. If you touched them and were nice, sometimes they stopped, but sometimes not; sometimes they were like little animals all by themselves. When her mother was dead and in that box, her hands had been quiet up on her chest and Clara had kept peeking and watching for them to shake.

  The teacher turned around. “She's a filthy little pig,” she said. “She shouldn't be in school with— You tell her mother that she can't come back if she behaves that way. You tell her!”

  Ned, the boy from camp, was squatting nearby. He began to giggle slyly.

  “What's wrong with you?” said the teacher.

  He stopped. He was maybe thirteen but runty for his age; his nose was always running; he was “strange.” His parents let him come to school because he was too stupid to pick beans right. He bruised them or pulled the plants out or overturned his hamper.

  “Tell her mother that— I don't know—” The teacher's face was heavy and sad. She was talking only to Clara. Clara wanted to cringe back from those sharp demanding eyes, she wanted to protect herself by making a face or swearing or giggling—anything to stop the tension, the seriousness. The teacher said, “What are you going to do with yourself ?”

  “What?” said Clara brightly.

  “What are you going to do? You?”

  It was like a question in arithmetic: how much is this and that put together? If the things were called beans Clara could add them together fast, but if they were squirrels or bottles of milk she could do nothing with them.

  “You mean me?” Clara whispered.

  “Oh, you're all—white trash,” the teacher said, her mouth hard and bitter. She hurried by Clara and into the entry. Her footsteps were loud.

  “White trash,” said the girl with the braids.

  “White trash,” said Ned, smirking at Clara. “You shut up—you're the same thing!” Clara snarled in his face. She hated him because they were together and there was nothing she could do about it. When the other kids laughed at them they made no difference between Clara and Ned—and Rosalie—and the twenty or so bigger kids from the camp who had come to school on the first day, then never showed up again.

  Inside, the teacher was ringing the bell. It was a loose, rusty bell the teacher shook angrily by hand.

  They ran back in. Clara's head had begun to ache. She sat at her desk and picked up her book and looked again at the white house and the man who was a father but who did not look like her own father or any father she knew, and kept looking at it as if trying to figure it out, until the teacher told her to put it away and do her writing. Penmanship. Clara felt heavy and hot and sad, imagining already school over in the
afternoon and the way she would have to run to get away from the stones and mud balls. She and Ned would both have to run, cutting across muddy fields, with the boys laughing behind them.… “White trash!” They were white trash, everybody knew that, and what it meant was that people were going to throw stones: you had to get hit sooner or later.

  5

  New Jersey: tomato season. They came up together in a rickety old school bus. Carleton sat with Nancy, and across the aisle Clara sat with Rodwell and the baby, Roosevelt, on her lap. The bus was noisy and everyone was eating or smoking; Carleton took a bottle out of a canvas bag on the floor now and then, and he and Nancy drank from it.

  “I never been this far north before,” Nancy said.

  “Well, I been here before,” said Carleton.

  His voice was flatter than it used to be; sometimes it surprised him. When Nancy acted like a young girl and made her eyes get big, he wanted to grab the back of her neck and shake her. He knew she was pretending and he hated people who pretended anything.

  “You been everywhere, the whole world over. I never knew anybody like you,” she said.