One night, instead of pulling on my pajamas, I turned out the lights and sat down on the bed. I wasn’t sleepy. My eyes moved past a frayed arm chair and pine chest of drawers, over to two corner windows. Beyond the windows a dark wilderness beat in shafts of moonlight, hinting of intrigue and mystery. I waited until 10:30 when my parents’ room upstairs became quiet. I waited some more. Then I went over and raised the sash of the back window, jimmied out the screen, and slipped through the opening into the night.
The grass was soft underfoot. I looked around. No sound. Outlines of houses emerged from the darkness as my eyes adjusted, and I could see the shape of trees on the lawns, of cars standing in driveways, and smell warm whiffs of honeysuckle and pine oil. The woods, a black mound in the background loomed as a mysterious but strangely collaborative presence. I started off down the hill, then, to avoid the street lights, moved off into shadows that gathered around me as I melted into their world. I became part of the dark, integrated into a symphony of shades and forms, where no one could see me but I could see everything, where I was secret and safe. The fact that I was on a clandestine venture, unknown to my parents or to anyone, created a thrill and charged every nerve with anticipation.
My parents were baffled. I couldn’t wait for bedtime. Every night I roamed the neighborhood under cover of darkness until I knew by heart the shapes of the houses and the layout of each yard. Cars turned into driveways, headlights shooting ahead of them. Garage doors were opened and closed, bedroom windows raised to let in the air, and I could hear low voices, bed-time voices and sometimes crackling radio sounds. I was drawn to the bustling houses where closing-of-the-day activities were going on.
One night, I came to a white house set at the top of a hill and heard loud voices mingled with laughter and tinkling music coming from an open basement window. It was the Gibbons’ house, where they were hosting one of their Saturday night parties. I tiptoed up and peered into an amusement room thronged with people holding glasses and chatting in small groups, some sitting on stools lined up in front of a bar. To my surprise I caught a glimpse of my mother at the far end of the room, standing in front of a tall man in a plaid shirt, laughing. I watched, fascinated. An obscure impulse arose in me to do something, but I couldn’t think what.
Here was an opportunity not to be missed. Finally I moved to an unopened window a few feet away and scratched my finger nails across it. Nothing happened. I continued scratching, loudly, insistently, then knocked with my knuckles. Suddenly I heard a man’s voice, breaking through the party noise, yelling. I leapt up and ran with all my might through the long yard and into the trees, followed by strident clamor and door slams from the house. I was panting heavily. Thank heavens I hadn’t been seen! All of a sudden I was no longer a happy meanderer, investigating the world. I had become an intruder, a fugitive. I moved deeper into the obscurity of the darkness. My heart pounded, I could feel thumps heaving in my chest. I was electrified. Running back to the maid’s room, I climbed into bed and lay still, clutching Debby. The next day there was no sign of suspicion from my parents. I was home free.
With each foray I became more daring. It was fascinating to observe what was going on inside the houses, with people stretched out next to the radio console or sitting at a table over notebooks or coming in from the garage, talking with voiceless mouths. Since most of the homes were two-story, I saw only the downstairs rooms as I lurked under cover of a moonless night.
I decided Timmy Olson would be a fine collaborator in these nighttime forays. He was hesitant but agreed. I told him I would be at his house on a particular night and to be on the lookout. At around ten o’clock I arrived and crouched behind the lilac bushes as planned. A pool of light from the moon glared on the lawn next to the house and the odor of moist grass stirred around my jeans. Finally the upstairs lights went out, one by one, until the windows disappeared and the house quieted under the dark brow of the sky.
After some minutes had passed, I approached and threw pebbles at Timmy’s upstairs window. No response. Strange. After several tries a flash of light and I caught a brief glimpse of Timmy’s figure silhouetted against the background before the light was extinguished. I took it as a signal and retreated to my hiding place to wait for him to come down.
Suddenly, without warning, a glaring light flashed in an upstairs hallway. I heard voices and doors closing, and the windows of the house lit up like flares on a birthday cake, one by one. I watched, frozen. After some time the back door opened, a blinding floodlight was thrown out over the yard, and a male voice rang loud and stinging through the darkness.
“I know who you are, girl! You get out now! Don’t ever come here again, you peeping Tom!”
Terrified that at any moment he would burst out of the house and right for me, I broke out of the bush and fled, his words stinging my ears. I didn’t stop until I was blocks away, well hidden in the black underbrush. Scurrying home I slipped into the maid’s room and under the covers, afraid the thumping of my heart would never stop. I only wanted one thing: never to see Mr. Olson or his anger again.
The next day my fright gave way to anger, then to rage. Mr. Olson knew it was me because Timmy had told him. Timmy had revealed our plot, the milk toast! I was sure he had blabbed everything on the spot. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? I would never forgive him. I would never speak to him ever again.
Timmy wasn’t allowed to play with me for the rest of the summer. By the time school started in the fall we’d both forgotten all about it.
My night wanderings were about to come to a final, crashing end. A plump teenager started showing up three nights a week to baby sit at the Meeker house. From my post outside the living room window, I watched her play with the baby, talk at length on the phone, and traipse around the house looking in drawers. Some nights she collected a bag of cookies from the kitchen and sat munching, every once in a while poking a few crumbs into the baby’s mouth as it lay in the playpen. The baby spit them out and started crying, stabbing its legs in the air until she plunged a bottle in its mouth.
One night, after the baby was bedded down, the sitter sat in the living room reading a magazine. I scratched on the window and saw her look up, startled. She hesitated a moment before coming to the window and peering out. The next night I tapped on the window again. The girl came over, peering out into the darkness, her face scrunched and curious, looking to the right and left. Then she moved over to the telephone, dialed, and talked into the receiver for a few minutes, obviously telling someone what had happened. I waited around but nothing happened.
This went on for several nights.
Finally, as I was scratching my nails across the pane one evening, suddenly three men with flashlights leapt into the living room from the hall and dashed out the front door. They must have been wearing track shoes and they meant business. I fled across the open lawn and behind the house next door, desperate for cover, not daring to stop to look back. They were close behind. I could hear the stamp of their steps pummeling the ground. Instead of heading directly home, I sprinted up to the highway, my chest pounding, and circled back to my house, carefully scrutinizing the terrain for signs of the men before crossing the street. Somehow I had lost them.
My prank at the Meeker house had taken on serious tones. It was too close for comfort. I decided it would be my last trip to that house.
It wasn’t.
The next day my mother called me into her bedroom for one of those serious talks, and I knew I was done for. I had been identified. She and Dad were horrified. How could I be so sneaky? How long had this been going on? What do you mean you were just exploring? In the middle of the night? What will people think?
I had to return to the house and apologize to the Meekers. I dragged myself over and rang the front bell. Mrs. Meeker answered the door with an irate look, accepted my hang-dog apology, and told me I had frightened the sitter a great deal and how would I
feel if I were in her place? I felt sheepish, but I couldn’t sympathize with the sitter, who was so spooked over a little scratch that she had to call in the National Guard. People with sinister intentions don’t scratch on windows. What was she thinking?
There was no more sleeping in the maid’s room. Debby went back to sleeping alone in the basement. I had become the bad girl of the neighborhood—word got around. I missed being out in the dark among the houses and the breathing shapes, where I was invisible and felt safe.
* * *
Brea Nelson lived across the street with a crazy mother. She was fifteen, two years older than I, and she was my idol. Not only was Brea beautiful, with even features and graceful Scandinavian cheekbones, she was accomplished. She could draw human figures in charcoal, design stylish dresses, and write lyric poetry, some of which she let me read. I was fascinated by her talent, her confidence, and her sophisticated ideas. She aspired, in the privacy of her isolated room on the top floor, to attend a private high school, to study art, and to leave home. She eventually attained them all.
Her mother was a dark force not to be thwarted. She moved about sphinxlike, seeing to the household while Mr. Nelson, a taciturn dentist, read quietly in his straight-backed chair. She saw no need for laxness or frivolity. A short little woman with clipped black hair, a tie-clip mouth, and darting eyes, she ran the house with a stern grip. I never heard her laugh or make an amusing remark. She seemed plagued and did nothing but complain. Brea didn’t do her chores properly. The house was a pigsty (there was never a pin out of place). No one did anything but her. Every little thing rankled the woman.
Mrs. Nelson closely supervised her daughter’s trips out of the house. Brea was not allowed to have girlfriends over—not that she had any girl friends—or come to my house. It was out of the question. She spent most of her time cooped up in her room upstairs, drawing, composing and looking out the window.
Mrs. Nelson didn’t miss a trick. She watched Brea’s every move and tore into Brea or Mr. Nelson when she was overwrought, yelling so shrilly that Brea stayed put in her room most of the time. Brea told me she coped by showing her mother total obedience and keeping her longings and bitterness hidden, her every track covered. Brea’s father was usually in the back room, deep into his paper. I don’t think I ever spoke to him, other than to say hello. Like he wasn’t there.
I dashed over to Brea’s house at every opportunity. When I knocked on the back door, Mrs. Nelson would look at me stonily through the screen. I had nothing to recommend me, but she let me in. I think she tolerated me because I lived across the street and could be released back to my own house at a moment’s notice. Once she discovered I was willing to help with the chores—Brea’s clever ploy—Mrs. Nelson allowed me over for brief periods of whispering up in Brea’s room. I did some vacuuming and dish washing, but this didn’t last; my feeble efforts at housework didn’t meet her standards—I hadn’t dusted thoroughly or I tracked dirt on the kitchen floor.
One Sunday Mrs. Nelson invited me to church. I suspected it was an effort to shape me up. After dutifully joining in the service in the main chapel, I sat with Mrs. Nelson and Brea at a long table for lunch. Mrs. Nelson conversed with a woman friend while Brea sat immobile as if she wanted to stay out of the line of fire. She had one aim: not to set off her mother. I must not have shown much promise, with my lack of religious enthusiasm, for I wasn’t invited again.
After that the reins tightened. Now Mrs. Nelson didn’t want anyone near the house, period. If she found me at the door, even if I had just come to get a book, she would dismiss me curtly, and Brea would have to endure a litany of rage that sent her to her room in tears. From then on I could only visit when her mother was gone, which required a bit of maneuvering, and I snuck hurriedly out the back when we heard her mother’s car grind into the garage.
And then came the disaster that banished me from the house forever. Brea and I were sitting in the kitchen one afternoon. Mrs. Nelson was out. Just that morning a delivery of a half-dozen, hand-painted Easter eggs had arrived from Russia, finely drawn in rich Byzantine colors. They were set on the kitchen table, carefully arranged in a robin’s-egg-blue China bowl lined with a mauve velveteen cushion. The direct light from the window picked up the rich hues of ruby, saffron, citron, emerald, azure, and vermillion and splayed purple and gold sparkles onto a nearby wall. Fascinated, I lifted one of the Russian eggs and held it gently.
“Be careful,” Brea warned, “If anything should happen to one of her precious eggs, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Where do thoughts, or rather impulses that are contrary to every sense of reason, come from? Without thinking I tossed the egg I was holding into the air. Was it a contorted dare from the subconscious? A foolhardy attempt to thwart fate? A reckless abandon, a warped humor? The egg didn’t go up very high, but a nervous twitch or a gust of air must have intruded, for the egg flew past my outstretched hand and landed on the floor, smashed into a hundred brilliant pieces.
Brea refused to allow me to apologize. I could never set foot in the house again. Her beauty, talent, and carefully crafted dreams, her celestial world of escape that soared way beyond my little portion of childish games and scuffed knees was lost forever.
* * *
One mild spring day, Debby and I emerged from a long afternoon in the woods and headed home across Highway 12. The gutters were full of morning rain, and I sloshed along listening to the splat-splat of each step. Going through the garage I entered the house, Debby bounding ahead of me. Debby was not allowed upstairs with wet paws, and I was about to order her to the basement when a figure appeared at the far door of the kitchen.
“Hi. I’m Luanne. I’ll bet you’re Judy.” The strange figure smiled, pulled a towel from the drawer and set about rubbing each of Debby’s paws with a brisk back and forth motion. “You two are as wet as kittens. Better get those soaking tennis shoes off, honey.”
“It’s wet out there,” was all I could find to say. Who was this person with mother’s towel in hand, making herself at home in our kitchen? I knelt down beside her, enjoying Debby’s curiosity. Debby, a good-natured yellow Labrador, watched her paw being bounced around in the air by this stranger, then she twisted full around and stuck her nose in Luanne’s face, sniffing, and started to wag her tail.
When the dog was dried off, Luanne led me into the maid’s room and showed me photos she’d already set out on the bureau of her family: her mother, father, and two brothers were standing on the front porch of the small clapboard grey farm house, with stretches of rich fallow land in the background and three spotted cows standing by a wooden fence.
Mother often hired girls who came in from the country to attend cosmetology school in Minneapolis. In return for helping around the house, the student received a small salary along with room and board. Luanne Johnson explained that she had arrived just that morning.
No one had said anything to me. To tell the truth, I didn’t care to have maids in the house—wasn’t there enough to take care of without having to be always fussing with the maid, telling her what to do and seeing that she was doing it? I resented all maids and found little ways to plague them, to Mother’s frustration. I would rather have Mom to myself, and the fact that I didn’t have her anyway didn’t matter. Mom said I had an attitude.
But Luanne was different. Nineteen, with soft brown hair falling to her shoulders and a sweet open smile, Luanne took to me from the first. I began to spend time in her room or sit in the breakfast nook with a book while she stood over the sink doing the dishes. On weekends she usually went home to the country to see her boyfriend. Sometimes we went for a walk along the dirt path to the railroad tracks. We’d sit on a rock and look up through the trees and watch the clouds form patterns, or listen to a bird caroling from the underbrush. Then Luanne would begin to sing. She taught me a tune about a cowboy named Jack:
He was just a lonely cowboy
With a heart so brave and true.
He learned to love a maiden
With eyes of heaven so blue.
And another:
Bill Grogan’s goat, was feeling fine
Ate three red shirts, from off the line.
Bill took a stick, gave him a whack
And tied him to the railroad track.
My favorite was “Ole Shep”:
When I was a young lad and Shep was a pup,
O’re the hills and the valleys we’d stray.
Just a boy and his dog, we were both full of fun,
And we grew up together that way.
I remember the time at the old swimmin’ hole
When I would have drown without doubt
But Shep was right there, to the rescue he came,
He jumped in and helped pull me out.
The song went on about ol’ Shep growing old and blind, and the boy had to put him down, holding the gun with trembling hands. “No more would I roam with ol’ Shep.”
I sang the verses during my lone treks through the woods on summer afternoons, breaking dead limbs from tree trunks. It never failed to make me cry. For some reason I cried at sad songs and every sappy story. Mother used to chuckle to see me weeping as she read Ferdinand the Bull.
“Why is she crying?” Dad would ask. Mother explained that I felt sorry for Ferdinand.
As she sang, Luanne would stroke my hair. She could produce the prettiest, clearest yodel, and she tried to teach me, “Yodel-let-tee,” but I never mastered the ripple effect of the throat turning over.
A Penny a Kiss Page 9