by Eudora Welty
“Remember when she first come to Banner? She wasn’t as determined then as she got to be later. She was scared as a little naked bird. Wonder why!” said Aunt Nanny.
“Far from what she knew,” said Aunt Beck. “That’s in her face again now.”
“Got here and didn’t even know how to pull mustard,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Yes, she knew that. She was brought up an orphan, after all,” Auntie Fay said.
“What do men see in ’em?” whispered Miss Lexie.
Miss Beulah came marching to Gloria and planted her feet beside her. “Gloria Beecham Renfro, what are you doing down on the dusty ground like that? Get up! Get up and join your family, for a change.” Miss Beulah reached down, took Gloria by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.
“I still don’t believe I’m a Beecham,” she came up saying. The watermelon juice by now had chalked her face pink and stiffened her lips as it dried.
“Gloria,” said Miss Beulah, “go back in the house and wash that face and get rid of some of that tangly hair, then shake that dress and come out again. Now that’s the best thing I can tell you.”
“No thank you, ma’am.” She stood right there. “I’m standing my ground,” she told everybody.
“And look at her,” said Miss Lexie. “I guess you-all will make me be the one to fix her so we can stand the sight of her.” She walked up to Gloria and clapped a hand on her shoulder as if she’d been empowered to arrest her. “You need a little trimming done on you. Gonna run?” Miss Lexie invited her. Her fingers made sure of the needle she carried in her collar. She threw out her hand at random, a thimble was tossed from among the aunts, and she cupped it to her breastbone to catch it. Then she threw forward her Buster Brown bob and pulled off over her head the ribbon that carried her scissors with her everywhere.
“Lexie, you always bite off more than you can chew,” said Miss Beulah. “And this house never allowed sewing on Sunday.”
“I’m not going to come out of my dress for anybody,” said Gloria, arms clamped to her sides.
“We know you’re modest,” teased Aunt Nanny.
“You just stand still, and tell it to stay light,” said Miss Lexie to Gloria. “The men ain’t going to pay a sewing session a bit of attention, and Jack ain’t here to worry about.”
On her saying that, the uncles turned their chairs a little bit, and Mr. Renfro got up and hobbled away, as if to see how many more of his watermelons still waited in reserve under the porch. With a long sound like a stream of dry seed being poured into an empty bucket, the song of the locusts began.
“I’ll tell you one thing about that dress—you can’t hurt it now! Not after the travelling it’s done today,” Aunt Nanny said gaily, “and the waltzing around it’s had.” She swung the sash she held.
“I found my patch ready-made,” said Miss Lexie, ripping.
“Will you please spare my pocket?” cried Gloria.
“I’ve already got it,” said Miss Lexie and slipped it wrong side out.
“No wedding dress I ever saw had a pocket,” said Mrs. Moody.
“It was carrying my wedding handkerchief,” said Gloria.
“Looks prettier if you hold it,” said Miss Lexie, handing it up. “And you might want to drop some tears, who knows? Just for a change.”
Miss Lexie began snipping at the hem of Gloria’s dress. “I worshipped her! Worshipped Miss Julia Mortimer!” she suddenly declared from behind Gloria, close to her there near the ground. She brought out her words as loudly or as softly as she ripped, as if to keep up with her thread. “She lived and boarded with us, right across the road from the schoolhouse, and taught me as far as the seventh grade. She encouraged me too, when I was coming up. For all anybody here knows, I might have had my sights set too on stepping into her shoes.” She paused to rock on her heels where she squatted, giving her silent laugh. “But they die,” she said. “The ones who think highly of you. Or they change, or leave you behind, get married, flit, go crazy—”
“Lexie, has anybody asked you for your story?” Miss Beulah asked, still patrolling the yard, down as far as where some boy cousins were tinkering under two of the cars, keeping her eye on the whole scene.
“My memory reaches back to where she first came to Banner,” said Miss Lexie, going after the thread. “But it was before that that Grandfather Renfro said, ‘I’ve lived a long time and come a long way to find out there’s a rushing river still left between my folks and something they ought to have on the other side. And I’m going to pray till I find a way for mine to get ahold of it.’ He meant a good schooling. He’d had Papa and his two little sisters going to Alliance. It meant two of ’em riding the horse to a place up the river, and the little one hanging on behind to ride the horse back home. Then they rowed ’em across and walked the rest of the way.”
“Where was the bridge?” Aunt Cleo was asking.
“Nobody’d dreamed yet we needed one,” Miss Beulah said forbiddingly.
“Man would pole you across for the promise of a fat hen or a sack of potatoes,” said Granny. “A fellow thought twice about it, then, whether he wanted quite as much as he thought he did to be on the other side.”
“Grandfather took all this to the Lord,” said Miss Lexie, “and the Lord told him it would be a lot better if they built a school on this side of the Bywy and let the teacher do the crossing. So as to save time and trouble and to cheat the bad weather, she could board on the Banner side during the week. Well, then!”
“You mean to say we owe Banner School to a Renfro? Never dreamed that!” Aunt Nanny cried, and called, “Why, Mr. Renfro!”
“And Miss Julia Mortimer was the living answer to Old Preacher Renfro’s prayer? I never knew that either!” cried Uncle Noah Webster.
“Well, not right directly,” said Mr. Renfro. “There had to be a generation go by before something more come of it. They had to build the schoolhouse. And after it’s built and standing there, there was a little breathing space while they could hope the teacher they prayed for’d never come.”
“But here she came. Miss Julia Mortimer,” said Miss Lexie, snipping and ripping, squatting her way around Gloria’s skirt. “Solid as a rock and not one bit of nonsense, looking like the Presbyterian she started out to be. First thing, she clamped down on the men and made ’em fence the yard to keep us in and saw out more windows to see our lessons by, and she scrubbed it inside out and scoured it without any help, raised up a ladder and painted it herself inside and out. ‘That’s a good start, now,’ she says when it’s white and got a flagpole. ‘And I’ll keep lessons going till you find somebody better.’ That’s how she got herself in harness.”
“Where did they even find her!” exclaimed Aunt Birdie.
“They didn’t have to find her. She’d found them. Banner School was ready for a teacher, and that was all she needed,” said Miss Lexie.
“How old was you then, Lexie?” asked Aunt Nanny. “How old are you now?”
“I’m old enough to remember the first morning,” said Miss Lexie, “with a mind still clear. She steps to the front and says, ‘Children of Banner School! It’s the first day for both of us. I’m your teacher, Miss Julia Mortimer. Nothing in this world can measure up to the joy you’ll bring me if you allow me to teach you something.’ ”
“And Banner was glad to get her!” Miss Beulah said. “Oh, yes, Grandpa offered up a prayer of thanks for her and asked the Lord to spare her.”
“At first everybody must have been as happy as she was,” said Miss Lexie. “Fell in love with each other! I’ve come to believe that’s a bad sign. The next thing they knew, Miss Julia Mortimer was saying that poor attention and bad behavior on a Monday would always be punished on a Tuesday. On Tuesday, here came all the children to school and some leading their fathers. So Miss Julia said ‘Good morning!’ to all alike, and then she called up the pupils that hadn’t behaved on Monday, like Earl Comfort, and one by one she gave ’em a little token of her meaning with her fresh-cut pea
ch-tree switch. Then she says, ‘Now. If any of these fathers who were so brave as to come to school this morning feel prompted to step up too, I’m ready for them now. Otherwise, they can all stay right there on the back bench and learn something.’ And invited up old Levi Champion first—Homer’s daddy.”
“He run,” said Mr. Renfro. He sat down by Judge Moody and smiled at him. “I know that without being there. She meant her words entirely, the lady did. Then and every other time she delivered herself.”
“From that day on, she was a fixture at Banner School,” said Miss Lexie. “She wouldn’t have given it up for anybody. Now, your turn,” she told Gloria. She went on. “Promptly, she nailed a shelf there under the front window and called it the library. She took her own money to fill up that shelf with books.”
“She made salary, didn’t she?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“The first month, the way the old folks remembered it, they paid her with seventeen silver dollars. But afterwards, they wasn’t ever able to come up to that brave start,” said Miss Beulah.
“They knew about warrants, even in the early days. Teachers just got a warrant,” said Mr. Renfro. “And there come up Mr. Dearman—”
“Perish the name!” cried Miss Beulah.
“Well, he was going around the country buying up teachers’ warrants at a discount,” said Mr. Renfro. “That’s telling the least of him, Mother.”
“No matter how, Miss Julia got books and came bringing ’em. I bet you Banner School had a library as long as your arm,” cried Aunt Birdie, as though she saw a snake.
“Then what happened to it? It was gone by the time I came along,” said Auntie Fay.
“It got rained on, darlin’,” said Aunt Nanny, letting her grin show. “I believe the teacher was young enough to cry.”
“She only started it again. And kept her map of the world hanging up year in, year out,” said Aunt Birdie. “And did it rattle on a March morning!”
“And we’re not on it,” said Miss Beulah. “Miss Julia said—”
“ ‘Put Banner on the map!’ ” came a chorus, the men joining in.
“We know the rest!” said Miss Beulah. “That’ll do for her now, Lexie.”
“I worshipped her as a child, though please don’t ask me to find you the reason for it now, now that I’ve seen her go down,” Miss Lexie said. “I cried when she had to leave our house for this one.”
“Stayed with me first,” said Granny, looking at them sideways out of the slits of her eyes.
“Don’t start getting jealous, Granny!” Uncle Noah Webster said. “You didn’t want the teacher, did you? Grandpa and us children filled up the house for you, didn’t we?”
“Everybody had to have her. The Comforts, they had their crack at her too. Come the long winter evenings, they all had to crowd mighty close together in the room with the fire to both see and keep warm by. And she’d stand up and read to ’em! Made ’em mad as wet hens. They had to hush talking, else be called impolite,” said Aunt Nanny. “I used to be there and in the same boat with ’em, because, you know, that’s who Mama gave me to.”
“Read to ’em? At home?” Aunt Birdie cried.
“It was her idea, not theirs,” said Aunt Nanny. “Old Mis’ Comfort says nobody’d ever know what her and the children suffered, with that teacher cooped in with us all winter. Old lady’s dust now, but she one time heard Miss Julia out to the tag end of her piece in the reader, and then that old lady spit in the fire and told the teacher and her own daughter—who’d just had a baby without sign of wedding band—’Now be ashamed both of ye.’ ”
“That’s enough,” said Miss Beulah.
Miss Lexie said to Gloria, “If anybody’s trying to cut under you, hold still.” She looked up at the rest of them, from under her Buster Brown bangs, and said, “But I didn’t come in that class. She encouraged me. She made me work.”
“That’s her case, all right,” said Auntie Fay. “Lexie went charging through Banner School and got her diploma right on time. And she went and lived in Ludlow in a Baptist preacher’s widow’s boarding house, and in the afternoons and all day Saturday wrapped packages in the corner department store. We didn’t think she was strong enough to go to high school too.”
“I had my sights set,” said Miss Lexie, squinting her eye now at the scissors in her hand. “But it took more strength than I had—I fell down on Virgil, and wasn’t shown any mercy.”
“They was just trying to keep you out of State Normal,” said Auntie Fay provocatively.
“I thought I could teach just as well without Virgil,” said Miss Lexie. “And I could have, if they hadn’t given me Banner right on top of Miss Julia. They’d put her out to pasture—against her will entirely and much to her surprise—it’s nothing but a state law. And who would dare come after her? I tried holding ’em down. But my nerves weren’t strong enough. I switched to caring for the sick.”
“Uh-oh!” said Aunt Cleo.
“And then it came. The Presbyterian sisterhood in Alliance sent out a call on both sides of the river for a settled white Christian lady with no home ties.”
“Oh, those are the scum of the earth!” Mrs. Moody burst out. “We had one of those for our preacher’s widow! Got her the same way!”
“And I presented myself,” Miss Lexie said. She was under Gloria’s arm now, snipping higher, at the gathers of her waist. Gloria had to keep both arms raised while Miss Lexie went around her, smelling of sour starch. “I left Mr. Hugg for her. I thought the change would have to be for the better.”
“I don’t know about the rest of it, but it looks to me like you’ve got a few ties,” remarked Mrs. Moody, as if a nerve still throbbed.
“The one thing I was sure of was I was the best she could do,” said Miss Lexie. “And that’s what I told her. You’re supposed to turn when I punch you,” she said to Gloria. “Have to get you from all sides. You would suppose she’d count it a blessing, getting for her nurse somebody she’d once put to work and encouraged. Somebody that knew her disposition and couldn’t be surprised at her ways. Another teacher.”
“Look where it’s brought both of you,” said Miss Beulah. “That’s a good place to stop your story now, Lexie.”
“For how long was she gracious?” asked Aunt Cleo with a short laugh.
“I wish I’d kept count of the few days,” said Miss Lexie. “She was the same to everybody, though. The same to people in Alliance as she was to me, no favorites. All her callers fell off, little at a time, then thick and fast. She made short work of the sisterhood in Alliance.”
“The very ones that went out of their way to bribe you to be her nurse?” asked Aunt Cleo, giving a nod.
“Miss Julia sent them packing when they came calling and told her the angels had sent me,” said Miss Lexie. “When they told her she’d finished her appointed work on earth and the Lord was preparing to send for her and she ought to be grateful in the mean-time. She clapped at ’em—they left backing away.”
“She was a Presbyterian, and no hiding that. But was she deep-dyed?” asked Aunt Beck. “There’s a whole lot of different grades of ’em, some of ’em aren’t too far off from Baptists.”
“I don’t care to say,” said Miss Lexie after a moment.
“I suppose they were right there again the next day, and the next,” said Aunt Cleo, nodding. “The sisterhood.”
“After Miss Julia Mortimer dismissed them?” Miss Lexie exclaimed. “No, nobody tried it again, and then she wondered what had happened to everybody. What had happened to her?”
“That’s the ticket,” said Aunt Cleo. “Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault.”
“So they made me have her by myself, Sunday after Sunday we’d sit there and wait and nobody’d peep their heads in at all. ‘Are they keeping absent on purpose to miss today’s lesson?’ she’d ask. And she’d struggle to her feet and walk to the front porch and ask, “Where’s Gloria Short?’ You were right in style when you didn’t come,” Miss Lexie said, close
to Gloria’s back. “There Miss Julia Mortimer and me would sit, getting older by the minute, both of us. Both foxed up for Sunday, I saw to that. Her on one side of the porch and me on the other, her in the wickerwork rocking chair and me in the oak swing. Pretty soon she’d stop rocking. ‘And what’re you doing here, then?’ says Miss Julia to me. ‘Suppose you take your presence out of here. How can I read with you in the house with me?’ She’d put her foot right down. I’d put my foot down. She’d stamp: one. I’d stamp: one. After all, we’d both learned our tactics in the schoolroom. In my opinion it didn’t matter all that much any longer who’d taught who or who’d started this contest. We’d stamp, stamp—and one-two-three she’d kilter.”
“And where was you, Lexie?” cried Aunt Birdie.
“Right behind her!” Miss Lexie called, right behind Gloria.
“Don’t!” Gloria cried.
“Don’t, yourself. Stop quivering, because I’m fixing now to take a great big whack out of your skirt. I had to puff a little bit to catch Miss Julia. She was too used to charging off in a hurry. She was looking all at one time in the vegetable patch and in the shed where her car gathered dust and behind the peach trees and under the grape vine and even in the cow pasture, to see where the bad ones were hiding. There was I, chasing her over her flower yard, those tangly old beds, stumbling over ’em like graves where the bulbs were so many of ’em crowding up from down below—and on to the front, packed tight as a trunk with rosebushes, scratch you like the briar patch—and down into those old white flags spearing up through the vines all the way down her bank as far as the road, thick as teeth—and there in the empty road she’d even crack open her mailbox, and look inside!”
“How long did she keep it up, looking for company?” asked Aunt Cleo. “A week? A month?”
“Longer! If you could see today the trough her feet have worn under that old wickerwork chair in the yard—she had me lug it right off the porch to where she could sit and watch the road. Like children wear under a swing,” said Miss Lexie. “I used to say, ‘Miss Julia, you come on back inside the house. Hear? People aren’t used to seeing you outside like this. They aren’t coming visiting. Nobody’s coming. And what if they did, and found you outside with your hair all streaming?’ I’d say, ‘Why are you turning so contrary? Why won’t you just give up, Miss Julia, and come on in the cool house with me?’ And when she was inside again, then she turned around and ran me out and dared me to come back in! ‘Get out of here, old woman!’ And she’s full eleven years older than me!”