“Come in and set,” she said warmly as we went inside. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I was puzzled to see a penned-off area across the opposite corner of the room, looking as if they kept some pet animal there. Then the back door slammed, and a boy in his teens, big and hulking, shuffled into the room and stood staring at me with watery, vacant eyes. He wore no pants, only a tattered sweater that came over his thighs, almost to his knees. I could tell that he had nothing on under the sweater. His dark hair was long and matted, though it looked as if it had been whacked off by someone months before; his face was smudged with dirt. Saliva drooled from the corners of his mouth and trickled through the grime on his chin.
Since he was still staring at me, I said weakly, “Ah—hello.”
He made no answer, just stood there. Empty desolation looked out of his eyes. And the stench, the terrible stench . . . How could two women “visit” in a situation like this?
“That thar’s Wilmer, my first-born,” Mrs. O’Teale said as matter-of-factly as if she saw nothing wrong.
The boy pointed to a tin plate of cold corn bread on the table. “Unh—Um-humh. Ah-h-mm. Oo—anh.”
“Hongry, Wilmer? Wal, don’t squawk.” She thrust the plate into his hands.
He crammed a fistful of corn bread into his mouth. I could not look. Should I ignore the boy and talk about the other O’Teale children in my school? Or should I pretend that there was nothing wrong with this boy? (I had heard at the mission that he was subject to frequent epileptic fits.) But would it not be better to admit the reality and be sympathetic? His mother decided for me.
“Wal now, that should keep Wilmer from starvin’—And how are my young’uns doin’? In the school, I mean?”
“It’s probably a little too soon to tell,” I hedged. “It takes a while, you know, for pupils to get accustomed to a new teacher.”
“Aye. Some teachers from the level lands has had theirselves a time. Recollect one that didn’t stay no time a-tall. Left sayin’ she weren’t gonna put up with boy-persons a-carryin’ knives to her school, flashin’ them at her.”
There was a loud clatter and I jumped. Wilmer had finished the corn bread and dropped the tin plate. He pointed to it, rolling across the floor, and bared his teeth in a caricature of a grin. “He! He—Mm—oo! Unh, he!” Saliva poured down his chin.
I was revolted and then ashamed of my revulsion. I looked away, only to have the boy shuffle into my line of vision as he crossed the room to a pile of glistening rocks and pieces of metal and glass inside the pen.
Mrs. O’Teale’s eyes followed mine. “ ’Course sometimes Wilmer takes a notion to run off a piece. Don’t know himself where he be. Then we’uns have a time findin’ him. Don’t want him to git ahold of a rifle-gun or fall off-n the mountain—er nothin’. So when he takes fits like that, we fence him in.”
Animal grunts came from the corner in the gathering darkness as Wilmer sat on the floor playing with his rocks.
I decided to risk one question. “Has he always been like this, Mrs. O’Teale?”
“Yes’m. Since he was birthed, that is. But he’s a good boy. Never gives me no trouble.”
There was a long silence. I could not sort out my feelings and swallowed back a nauseous lump in my throat. What ultimate tragedy, to have brought a son like this into the world! But Mrs. O’Teale gave no indication that she felt any tragedy. Compassion for her and for her boy rose in me. Yet I dared not express it for there was the strange feeling that if I did, she would look at me blankly and wonder why I felt sorry or embarrassed for her. Perhaps, I thought wildly, since she must live with this, she was better off with the insensibility. The room was dark now and there seemed nothing more to say. “I must be going,” I said as I rose. “And we haven’t talked much about Smith and Orter and Mountie and—” Suddenly I was aware again of the dreadful odor from the corner and my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember the names of the other two O’Teales. “By the way, where are all the children?”
“Went a-visitin’ to my sister’s. They’ll be a-comin’ back most onytime now. Here—let me light the lamp so’s ye can see where ye’re goin’. Real neighborly of you to come and say howdy to us.”
“I want to help however I can,” I told her as I went down the steps. “Next time I’ll be able to tell you more about the schoolwork.” But if only I had real answers to give this O’Teale family.
The minute I was out of sight of the cabin, I lifted my skirts and ran wildly down the road, making a wide detour of the dead rabbit. At the mission house, I dashed up the stairs directly to my bedroom. There I changed all my clothes, brushed my long hair by a wide open window so that the clean mountain air could pour through it. Then I washed my face, first in warm water, then in cold, scrubbed my hands over and over and over. Like Lady Macbeth, I thought ruefully . . . But I could not scrub my memory, nor rub out what I had seen.
Miss Ida’s piercing voice came up the stairwell, “Miss Huddleston—supper’s on.” And a few minutes later she was serving us salmon croquettes and hash-browned potatoes. There was nothing wrong with Miss Ida’s cooking. Any other time I would be enjoying this food, but tonight my stomach was churning.
Now Miss Ida was bringing in a bowl of cooked apples. I swallowed, took a deep breath in an effort to get my unruly stomach under control. Mind over matter. Any thought will do. David’s sister is not a pretty one. She knows that. Maybe that’s why she’s so cranky and hangs on to David so hard.
At that instant, Miss Ida passed the apples over my shoulder and the steam from the bowl wafted close to my nose. Through a haze I saw Miss Alice looking at me questioningly. I swallowed again. It was no use. I managed to blurt out, “Excuse me—” as I fled toward the yard.
Moments later I felt Miss Alice’s firm cool hands, one hand on my forehead, the other on the back of my head. “Go ahead, Christy. Get rid of everything. Thee will feel better now.”
“I—haven’t been so sick since . . .”
“No, don’t try to talk.”
The strong hands supported my head. Finally it was over. Miss Alice asked, “Just one question, where were you this afternoon?”
“O’Teale’s.” Even to me, my voice sounded weak and far away.
“Oh—I see. No wonder. That’s the worst place of all.”
Later on that evening Miss Alice came to my bedroom. I was propped up in bed working on lessons, but my mind was not really on what I was doing. So many questions and thoughts were tumbling over themselves inside me. There was the need to spill them out to someone. Miss Alice must have known that.
She had no sooner sat down on the edge of the bed than I started. “Father was right,” I blurted out. “Even the old train conductor and Mrs. Tatum were right. I wasn’t willing to listen, that’s all. I don’t belong here. I’m going back home. Miss Alice, I’m sorry about the children and all.” Then I started crying. “It’s no use, just no use.”
Miss Alice let me sob, talk, rave on and on, patted me now and then. She made no protest when I told her that I was going to leave, offered no arguments why I should go or stay, asked no questions, never even said anything about my finishing out the school year. In the end, her silence was more eloquent than any words.
At last I lifted my head, tossed my tousled hair out of my wet eyes to look at the serene woman sitting so erectly on the edge of my bed. Suddenly I needed to know what she was thinking. The gray eyes looked back calmly, unblinkingly for long minutes. Depths of quietness, wells of thoughts seemed to lie behind those eyes. Still she said nothing.
“Am I wrong to feel this way?” I asked, suddenly unsure of myself.
“Any sensitive person would feel exactly as thee feels.” The voice was crisp, matter-of-fact.
That odd habit of hers of lapsing into her Quaker “thee” at tender moments. Yet she wasn’t a bit consistent about it.
“Maybe it’s just as well this happened,” she went on. “Now is as good a time as any to decide whether you’ll go
home or not—provided you make your decision on a true basis.”
“What do you mean—a true basis?”
“The way life really is.”
“Not much of life can be as bad as what I saw this afternoon.” My words had rebellion in them, I knew they did.
“You’d be surprised. Every bit of life, every single one of us has a dark side,” she retorted. “When you decided to leave home and take this teaching job, you were venturing out of your particular ivory tower. I know. I was reared in an ivory tower too. Then we get our first good look at the way life really is, and a lot of us want to run back to shelter in a hurry.”
“You? Did you ever want to run back?”
Her reply was a chuckle so soft that it was almost a sigh. “I? Yes, certainly. I’m a classic example. At age sixteen I had, shall we say, a difficult experience, so difficult that after that I didn’t ever again want to see any dirt—or blood—or disease—or cruelty—or death. Ever since God has been gently, steadily, prying the little girl’s hand off the little girl’s eyes.”
“How? How did He pry your hands?”
“Through circumstances. Through plunging me over and over into situations where I had to look . . . had to see reality.”
“Bad circumstances? Really bad?”
“Really bad.”
There was no mistaking the quiet emphasis of the words. My eyes searched Miss Alice’s face in an effort to read everything there. “But how could it have been that bad?” I probed. “I can’t see that you’ve been scarred by any of it—or coarsened.”
A variety of thoughts were mirrored in her smile, a slow smile with sadness in it. “Yes, really bad,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Like the crippled nine-year-old girl who was beaten over and over by her mother’s lover, day after day, then finally brutally raped by the same man. The child died the next day.”
I hoped she would not give any more details. My horror must have shown. But Miss Alice took no notice.
“Or there was the day I walked into a cabin over on Hog Back Mountain and discovered a woman strung up from the rafters—swinging—dead. Her imbecile husband was there gaping at the body. He was the murderer. When I asked him why he had done it, his only explanation was, ‘A woman what can’t stand hangin’ a few hours ain’t no woman a-tall.’ Then there was—”
“Please,” I interrupted desperately. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
Miss Alice looked at me curiously. “You’re sensitive, Christy. So am I. You want to know why seeing stark evil hasn’t made me rough or bitter?” She seemed to be seeing into her past. Then she took a deep breath, plunged on. “Remember, I said it was God who was prying the little girl’s hands off her eyes. As if He were saying, ‘I can’t use ivory-tower followers. They’re plaster of paris, they crumble and fall apart in life’s press. So you’ve got to see life the way it really is before you can do anything about evil. You cannot vanquish it. I can. But in My world the battle against evil has to be a joint endeavor. You and Me. I, God, in you, can have the victory every time.’ After that, He was always right there beside me, looking at the dreadful sights with compassion and love and heartbreak. His caring and His love were too real for bitterness to grow in me.”
“Then if God was standing right there, looking and caring, why didn’t He stop things like that?” The bitter question clawed at my throat. “A Supreme Being with real power and real love wouldn’t stand by and watch a little girl raped and a woman hanged. How could He?”
“He would have to, if He’d given us men and women a genuine freedom of choice.” Miss Alice’s voice was gentle. “I think it’s like this . . . The Creator made the world a co-operative enterprise. In order for it to be that way, God had to give us the privilege of going His way or of refusing to go His way.”
“But how? How do we go His way?”
“He’s specific about that.” She ticked the points off on her fingers: “ ‘Love ye your enemies’ . . . ‘Do good’ . . . ‘Be ye therefore merciful’ . . . ‘Judge not’ . . . ‘Forgive’ . . . And best of all, ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom.’ A great promise to claim!”
“What do you mean by ‘claim’?”
The Quaker lady was silent for a moment. I had the impression that she was not so much thinking as listening. Then she said, “You’ve heard of ‘staking a claim’ in the old frontier days?”
“Yes.”
“There was lots of rich land available back then. But in order to get any for himself, each man had to move out and claim what he wanted. If he didn’t make that move, then for him nothing happened.
“This isn’t a perfect analogy, but perhaps it will help to explain . . . God has all kinds of riches for all of us. Not just spiritual riches either. His promises in the Bible are His way of telling us what’s available. But this plenty doesn’t become ours until we drive in our stake on a particular promise and thus indicate that we accept that gift. That, Christy, is ‘claiming.’ ”
“This is all new to me,” I told her. “I like it.”
A wonderful smile lighted her face. Then quickly she was grave again. “But we were talking a while ago about running back to our ivory tower. You see, Christy, evil is real—and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where we stand, how we’re going to live our lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”
The words poured over me. Desperately I wanted to understand. I knew that we were on the track of one of those big question marks at the heart of the universe. “But the little girl—?” I asked softly.
“The answer isn’t easy. I doubt that with the limitations of our humanness we can ever fully understand. But in that particular case, I think the little girl was raped because the person appointed to reach her in time to prevent the murder refused to hear—or to obey. I happen to know that a certain man for two days disregarded a strong inner impulse to go to her. Finally he did go, but it was too late. So God’s clear order went unheeded. And evil had its day. The result of our disobedience can be that simple, that terrible.”
I sat, trying to take this in, thinking it over for a long moment . . . The words rang in my mind: That simple . . . that terrible. But that doesn’t explain Wilmer . . . not even the little rabbit that never had a chance.
“Christy, you have questions on your mind. I’m glad you do. Perceptive people like you wound more easily than others. But if we’re going to work on God’s side, we have to decide to open our hearts to the griefs and pain all around us. It’s not an easy decision. A dangerous one too. And a tiny narrow door to enter into a whole new world.
“But in that world a great experience waits for us: meeting the One who’s entered there before us. He suffers more than any of us could because His is the deepest emotion and the highest perception.
“Not, mind you, that He approves of suffering or wills it. Quite the opposite. And He doesn’t just leave us and Himself in the anguish. At the point where His ultimate in love meets His total capacity to absorb and feel all our agony, there the miracle happens and the exterior situation changes. I’ve seen that miracle.”
Looking at my puzzled expression, Miss Alice said quietly, “Probably I’m not making sense to you, Christy. But I’m sure you’ve realized that love has mending power. All of us have watched it work in small situations. Well, what I’m talking about is a vast multiplication of that power.”
“I’m not sure I do understand. But I want to,” I told her.
She nodded, smiling at
me with her eyes, saying nothing more, falling into one of her Quaker silences.
She can be so eloquent, then so quiet—but always poised. She’s a beautiful woman, not just the way she looks either. There’s a deeper kind of beauty in her too: the beauty of a near perfect relaxation. An aura of peace. A knowledge of being at home in the universe. A sense of belonging. It seems effortless but now I know that it was not: sometime in the past she came to terms with life. How? It must have been painful. She just said so. But that was a long time ago, and now—that inner relaxation that sometimes even borders on delight. She can laugh at herself. Often does.
But around and behind my thoughts, still before me in the silence stood the big question: Was I going home? Or wasn’t I? I knew that Miss Alice had not been trying to philosophize; she had been talking directly to the point at issue.
“So what does all this have to do with my going home or not?” I dared to ask her.
“Everything to do with it. Who are you, Christy?”
“I wish I knew.”
“But you can know. You’re important, terribly important. Each of us is. You’re unique. So is David. And Miss Ida. And Dr. MacNeill. No one else in all the world can fill David’s place, or mine, or yours. If you don’t do the work that’s been given you to do, that work may never be done.”
She rose to go. “It’s late and you’re tired. But here’s the question for you to sleep on: were you supposed to come here, Christy? Or were you just running away from home?”
And she was gone.
I awoke to a sunshiny morning feeling so good that at first I had trouble remembering what I had been so gloomy about the night before. Oh, yes—the O’Teale cabin and my feelings of inadequacy as a teacher. But nothing could be that bad, I thought, as I stood before the front window savoring my view, feeling the warmth of the sun through the glass. The tops of the far peaks were still mushroomed in clouds, but the sun in the valley would soon melt the snow and we would see the ground again. Spring could not be far away.