In July Susan Young accepted my invitation to come out from her home in Roanoke for a visit. The poor girl did not do well at sleeping on a featherbed on the floor and “roughing it” with the O’Keeffe family, but she was a good sport—except when we all ran down to the river in the early morning, wearing only our underclothes, for a swim before breakfast. This was simply too much for Lady Susan, as Francis called her. Completely dressed in her embroidered cotton lawn dress and gartered stockings, she watched us from the shelter of a shade tree. She might have wanted to join us when we jumped into the water, or baited hooks to catch fish to fry over a campfire for breakfast, but she could not bring herself to do it.
“She lacks only a parasol,” Francis said after Susan left. I could tell that he’d been attracted by her delicate beauty, and that she was attracted by the lack of polish and pretense that set my brother apart from most Southern boys, but each took care not to let the other know.
We moved back to town at the end of summer, and I spent part of every day in my studio painting still lifes: flowers and leaves stuck carelessly in jars, a bowl of purple grapes and oranges. Most often I worked with watercolors, pinning a sheet of paper to my easel, dampening it with a wet brush, and letting the bold strokes of paint blossom and blend into one another in unexpected ways.
I did pencil sketches of Francis and Alexius and Auntie—Auntie was the one who never seemed to change. I coaxed Claudie to come and sit while I drew her picture. She sighed and agreed to put on her best dress and shoes, and I tied a bow in her hair. I sketched quickly when Claudie posed for me, because she was a restless child who hated to be still for long. A bowl of fruit was so much easier.
My mother didn’t bother framing my pictures anymore. “There are too many of them,” she said with a little laugh.
Too soon the summer ended, and with it the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I was resigned to returning to Chatham for one more year. I was nearly seventeen and sick to death of being escorted by chaperones on our weekly visits to the town, as though we were still children, constantly in danger of some undefined threat, with no idea how to take care of ourselves. As a child I’d roamed the farm on my own, and no one thought anything of it. But at Chatham, even an afternoon walk off school property was forbidden unless a teacher went with us. I wanted to wander alone, poke into dark corners, discover whatever I could. But that was not allowed.
I chafed under these restrictions. Why couldn’t I just take my sketchbook and pencils and go where I pleased? Set up my easel and paint in plein air, if that’s what I felt like doing? It was what artists did, and I felt that as an artist I deserved that independence.
So I looked for ways to ignore the rules without getting caught. Pulling off harmless escapades, like swiping onions from the garden and eating them raw, didn’t win me any artistic freedom, but it did make me feel I had some control over my own life.
The girls still talked about how we had once danced the Irish jig in the dining hall after lights-out, as though that had been a wild adventure. They wanted to learn to be naughty and counted on me to show them how. Thanks to Francis, I knew how to play poker, and I offered to give them lessons. We played for “chores,” like carrying an extra load of wood up to the stove in the dormitory, or making up someone’s bed for a week, or smuggling out an extra dessert at supper. They were thrilled to be doing something we knew would be disapproved of by nearly everybody.
One night when Elsie was off, Willie Mae, who did our laundry and sometimes filled in for her in the kitchen, fixed leaden biscuits and lumpy sausage gravy for a supper that nobody liked. Lucille pushed away her plate and said, “Our cook back home makes the most wonderful roast chicken you’ve ever tasted,” and Alice said, “Oh, my goodness, Lucille, just thinkin’ about our Consuelo’s chicken makes my mouth water!”
After Susan and Earnestine raved about their cooks, I said, “Let’s get ourselves a chicken and cook it!”
The girls rolled their eyes. “Just where do you think we’re going to get ourselves a chicken, Georgie?”
“We’ll kidnap one from the henhouse.”
After a good deal of scoffing and laughter, Lucille and Alice and I sneaked out to the henhouse, Lucille and Alice stood watch, and I grabbed the first chicken I saw—it was too surprised and sleepy to object. Since I was the only girl with experience in life on a farm, I wrung its neck. Annabelle and Earnestine drew short straws and had to clean and pluck it, gagging as they did, and Alice buried the incriminating remains in the garden. I was amazed that she knew how to handle a shovel. Surely her family had a whole team of gardeners!
“Daddy’s crazy idea,” Alice said. “He says he wants me to be ‘capable.’ Of what, I don’t know. Digging, I guess.”
We cooked our stolen chicken in the woodstove in our attic dormitory. It was burnt on the outside, half raw inside, and tough all the way through, but we ate it out of plain stubbornness and felt immensely proud of ourselves, because we’d gotten away with it!
When I wasn’t figuring out ways to break school rules, I painted. I’d become more adept at watercolor, and I’d gained better control of the shapes and colors in the wet-on-wet technique, painting on dampened paper. My best works early that year were of a bunch of lilacs and another of ears of red and yellow corn—I won a prize for that one. And I did an oil painting of our red barn back in Sun Prairie, simple, geometric, and bold. It reminded me of my childhood and how much my life had changed.
Six of us were graduating seniors, and we often talked dreamily about the future and what we hoped our lives would be like in five years. All of them seemed to be thinking of the same thing: marriage and a family. Those girls had been sent to Chatham by their parents for an education that would make them desirable marriage material and would attract husbands who were guaranteed to support their wives properly.
I asked Susan exactly what “marriage material” meant.
“It’s not just how to balance a punch cup or dance well, Georgie,” she explained. “It’s more than that, like how to carry on an intelligent conversation—”
“Not too intelligent, though,” Alice interrupted. “Boys don’t like girls who are smarter than they are.”
“Annabelle will have to be careful, because she gets the highest grades in everything,” Bea teased.
“I’m smart enough not to let on that I know more than they do,” Annabelle replied airily.
All of this seemed pointless to me. I had no interest in boys, or in the men they would someday be, much less in finding a husband.
“Georgie, tell us what you think!” said Susan. “What is your life going to be like five years from now?”
“I don’t want what the rest of you want. I’m going to have a life that’s different from yours,” I told my friends. “My art is the most important thing, and I’m willing to give up everything else for the life of an artist.”
“You mean you’re never going to marry?” Lucille asked in disbelief.
“Maybe one day I will, but not for years and years. How would I have time to paint if I had a husband and a houseful of children?”
“You could hire servants to look after them,” Earnestine suggested. “Of course you’d have to marry a man of means.”
“Even if I was somehow able to marry a man with money, someone has to supervise the servants and run the household. And all of that would keep me from painting.”
I’d been chosen art editor of our class yearbook. I decorated the pages with my ink drawings, but I was not responsible for the two lines that appeared beneath my photograph:
O is for O’Keeffe, an artist divine.
Her paintings are perfect and drawings are fine.
My classmates clearly saw me as an artist, and I saw myself that way. But I had no idea how I’d reach my goal of dedicating my life to my art. All the artists I’d ever heard of were men. Of course Mrs. Willis was an artist, but she was headmistress of a school and taught art classes besides. When did she have time to make art
? I wondered.
Nearer to graduation, Mrs. Willis invited me for tea. A table in the garden had been laid with a linen cloth and china teacups. Mrs. Willis added cream and stirred it with a silver teaspoon. I wondered what we’d talk about. I admired her roses, and she told me their names and said they’d been planted by Mr. Willis before he died. Then she changed the subject.
“Georgia, I’d like to discuss your future plans. That’s the main reason I’ve invited you here today.”
“I want to be an artist, Mrs. Willis.”
She nodded. “Yes, and I believe you have the talent to succeed. But you need more training than I can give you. When I was young, I enrolled at the Art Students League in New York to learn to paint, and then I studied at Syracuse University in New York State to earn my teaching credentials. Perhaps you might consider following a similar path.”
Mrs. Willis was observing me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. But I did not know what to say.
At home the previous summer, after we’d returned to Wheatlands from the rented house on the banks of the York River, I felt a thick cloud of uneasiness hanging over my family like a swarm of mosquitoes. Although no one talked about it, it was plain that business had not picked up for Papa’s grocery store, and he wasn’t selling much feed and grain. I realized then that my parents could barely afford to send me to boarding school and to make sure that my brothers and sisters got an education too. In her most recent letter Mama had mentioned that Papa was looking for a new line of work, and I guessed that money must be getting tighter.
Art school seemed impossible. Where would the money come from? I could not say any of this to Mrs. Willis.
“That’s a very good suggestion,” I said at last.
The maid brought a plate of cookies to the garden and a fresh pot of tea. Mrs. Willis refilled our cups. “I invited you here for a second reason—not just to talk about your future. You have done well enough with most of your required subjects, French and mythology and geometry. But you have another challenge, Georgia. Your spelling is atrocious.”
My china cup rattled in the saucer as I waited to hear what I knew was coming.
“Miss Stevens has sent me a message,” Mrs. Willis said gravely. “She tells me that you’ve failed your spelling test again. I cannot let you graduate in June unless you pass that test.”
Not graduate? I’d been dreading this. “No matter how much I drill, I can’t make sense of it! Why are words not spelled the way they sound?” I asked. My voice was trembling. “Miss Stevens says that English is derived from many different sources, and spellings don’t always make sense. She’s told me that I must write the words over and over until I’ve memorized them. And I’ve done that, but it doesn’t seem to help.” I blinked back tears. What if I couldn’t graduate? Mama would be so disappointed!
“I understand. Nevertheless, you must pass the test. I shall instruct Miss Stevens to schedule another test for you. In the meantime, one of your friends might help you with spelling drills. Annabelle, perhaps?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Willis.” My hand was still shaking when I picked up the teacup again. “I’ll ask Annabelle.”
“Good. You have an extraordinary talent, Georgia, and I would be remiss as an educator if I didn’t do everything in my power to help you find your way. I shall write to your parents about the possibility of further study, if you have no objection.”
I had no objection, but what good would it do if there was no money?
And, as Mrs. Willis had pointed out, it was possible that I wouldn’t even get my diploma. In order to pass that test, I was required to spell seventy-five out of a hundred words correctly.
Abstemious bellicose evanescent fiduciary incontrovertible … Why did I need to know how to spell such words when I didn’t know their meanings or how to pronounce them and would never use them? I stared at my speller and tried to make the peculiar arrangements of letters stay fixed in my mind.
Annabelle tried to help. She dictated words from the list, but I always left out a letter—the i in abstemious, the s or the c in evanescent. I got frustrated, and then Annabelle did too, and said she couldn’t do it anymore. I was on my own.
Miss Stevens, a tiny, birdlike woman with thick glasses, harped endlessly on what she called my “overindulgence in the use of dashes” and my “deplorable disregard for correct spelling.” The first time she gave me the test, I got exactly half of the words wrong.
“But I got half of them right!” I reminded her, and she reminded me that I had best get serious quickly or I would not receive my diploma.
The second time I took the test, I did a little better, but the third was worse. Then Bea began drilling me and I actually improved, because she was not as intimidating as brilliant Annabelle. I had trouble sleeping, and of course I didn’t paint at all—I was thinking of how Mama and Papa would feel if I failed to graduate and had wasted the money they’d spent on my education.
I failed the fifth try, although I came close—seventy-two right. Then, a miracle! On the sixth attempt to pass the awful test, I spelled seventy-six words correctly! I was so relieved that I burst into tears. I was never one to weep easily, but then, I’d never before feared failure. I would graduate!
We were required to wear white dresses for the ceremony. Alice offered to lend me one of hers—she had several to choose from—and I picked the only one without lace. From then on, I vowed, I would dress like a nun and wear only black and plain white. Mrs. Willis made a speech, and our teachers said complimentary things about each of us. Miss Cornwall pounded out “Pomp and Circumstance” on the piano as the graduating seniors, our backs straight as broomsticks, walked to the front of the dining hall to receive our diplomas. My name was inscribed on parchment in Gothic letters—Georgia Totto O’Keeffe—the only time I’d used my middle name. I wished that at least someone in my family had been there, but Mama had already let me know that it wasn’t “practical.” Meaning, I knew, that they could not afford to make the trip.
After the ceremony the six graduates observed the tradition of planting a tree, and that evening Billy, dressed in his Sunday suit with a flower stuck in the buttonhole, piled wood for a bonfire. I’d been chosen to light it. I picked what I thought were my five best paintings and gave one as a gift to each of my classmates. The rest of the paintings I rolled up to use as a torch to light the fire. It was what I’d done with a lot of my pictures before I left Aunt Lola’s—burned up second- and third-rate student work that I did not want to be associated with in the future.
Susan leapt up and tried to stop me. “Oh, Georgie, surely you don’t want to do that! They’re all so lovely!”
“Of course I’m sure,” I told her. “I’m always sure about what to do.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but I said it so convincingly that I believed it myself.
10
Williamsburg, Virginia—Summer 1905
THREE WEEKS AFTER GRADUATING FROM THE Chatham Episcopal Institute I was in the kitchen at Wheatlands, making pies. A half dozen pie tins were lined up on the table. Mama sprinkled flour on the table and flattened a ball of dough with a rolling pin, a few deft strokes one way, then the other, into a perfect circle. My job was preparing the fillings: lemon sponge, egg custard, strawberry rhubarb. The heat in the kitchen climbed. I wore a kerchief wrapped around my forehead to keep perspiration from dripping into the batter.
Several loaves of bread cooled on wire racks. When Ida and Nita had finished frosting two spice cakes and a sponge cake, Mama sent them to deliver the bread to Papa’s grocery—Alexius was tending the store that summer—and bring back a sack of sugar and two dozen eggs. She sighed. “I wish we had our own chickens. They were such good layers, the ones we had on the farm!”
Ladies who’d invited Mama to tea when we first arrived in Williamsburg would send their colored maids later this afternoon to pick up the cakes and pies they’d ordered for their teas and dinners and birthday parties. Mama’s pies and cakes were in dema
nd, even if her presence was not. It had been many months since she’d been invited to a tea.
Claudie and Catherine had gone out to the barn to feed and groom Penelope. Those two were practically inseparable from Auntie’s horse—especially Catherine, who loved to ride and could coax the elderly horse into a brisk trot. Auntie herself was off shopping for darning needles and thread. All of our stockings were full of holes. “Like Swiss cheese,” she said.
Mama and I were alone in the kitchen. “Your father and I have been talking,” she began.
I broke another egg into a bowl and waited to hear whatever she was going to tell me.
“We’ve exchanged some nice letters with Mrs. Willis,” Mama went on. “Such a kind lady! She speaks highly of you.”
I concentrated on beating the eggs. “Mrs. Willis did say she was going to write to you.”
“She believes you have a great deal of talent, and she thinks you could earn a living as an art teacher. She wants us to consider sending you to the Art Institute of Chicago. There’s a program there for training art teachers, and she suggests that you enroll in it.”
I added buttermilk to the eggs. “Mrs. Willis said that?”
“She did. I agree with her that you’re very talented. But I have to tell you, your father is not pleased by the idea. It’s not just the cost. He’s heard that men pose almost naked in some of the classes, and you’d be drawing pictures of them. He wanted to know if this is true. Mrs. Willis explained that the models in the life classes wear very little clothing, but there are separate classes for male and female students.” Mama gathered up scraps of pastry dough, formed them into a ball, and rolled out the last piecrust. “You’d get used to seeing such things, I guess.”
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