The Other New Girl

by LB Gschwandtner

  My fingers were having trouble holding the paper where I’d written out what I wanted to say. I was struggling to get control of my hands when from the stage came Mr. Brownell’s soft voice.

  “It is at times like these, rare as they may be, that we search within the community of spirit to ease our shock and calm our grief.”

  As he began, I looked across the row to where Daria, Tim, Brady, Faith, Jan, and Stocky were all sitting. I expected Daria and Jan to have those slightly cynical expressions they usually had but was surprised to see Daria, especially Daria, with tears glistening on her cheeks. Jan’s head was bowed. Faith looked straight ahead and Brady looked as if she had been wounded somehow and was trying not to show the pain.

  “For we are a community,” Mr. Brownell was continuing. “A community in more than spirit but no less than spirit. For the spirit that resides in each of us has its own voice, its own purpose, its own dimension, immeasurable by any standards and complete within itself. We are here to support each other and when one of us falls outside the circle of spirit, we mourn for all our spirits. We might feel we failed our spirit sister. I caution especially the young people in our community not to despair even as we say farewell to one of the spirits among us. Life is a long road and at the same time a short one. Young people must look to the future while learning within the present. It is our mission—our mission undertaken together here at Foxhall—to always aspire to a more centered space within the spirit of community and the life of individuality. Rely on each other, confide in each other, trust each other as a community of one collective spirit out of many singular ones.”

  Before I could stand, Mr. Williamson began to speak.

  “I am reminded today of the difficulty in knowing what is right.”

  He means me. He’s speaking right to me. So they all think it’s my fault. That I did the wrong thing. That I screwed up the whole school, upset the equilibrium.

  “The right thing is not always the easy thing or the clear thing. At times we are faced with choices in life that are not clear-cut. That’s when we must look to the inner light to guide us on the path of right. We have all faced a shocking situation here at Foxhall. We are all part of it. No one person is responsible. Perhaps it is a lesson for all of us that we never know what is in the heart of another and therefore we must tread carefully lest we do damage, even without realizing it beforehand. The human heart can be fragile. The human soul can be bruised. The human mind can be distorted. So we must find it within ourselves to always allow the dignity of the human spirit to shine through.

  “I want to read a note that was found in Miss Bleaker’s possession after her death. Perhaps it will explain, at least in some small measure, the events we have all experienced.”

  He read the same note that Bleaker had read in my room. And I realized it had not been about some abstract concept but about her and how she viewed her life—and ultimately her death.

  When he stopped, silence once again filled the vast Assembly Room with its tall windows and row upon row of old wooden seats, each held to the next by a network of iron fittings, each seat with a hymnal in its holder beneath the seat. This was my chance and I stood and looked over the rows I could see from my position on the main floor midway between the doors and the stage. I held the paper tightly in front of me and cleared my throat. Then, something came over me. I couldn’t say what. It was like the spirit that was supposed to move you to speak at Meeting For Worship actually found its voice from somewhere inside me, or perhaps around me, or even from the air I breathed in at that moment. All I can say was I felt untethered for a few seconds, maybe less, maybe more, but certainly for some indeterminate time, as if an up-draft had lifted me and separated me from myself—or at least from the self that monitored my own feelings and doubts and fears. In that moment, I also felt a wave of something unseen hovering there with me, a benign yet powerful sense that I was not alone, that all the people in that great room, there with me, were part of this feeling that I was not alone and this sense of well-being felt like a blessing of some kind. Maybe it was simply adrenaline. Or the feeling a runner gets during a race. Endorphins maybe or some other surge of energy. I had no need to examine it then. I simply felt it and, from that place, I began to speak.

  “This is all new to me,” I began. My own voice sounded hollow to me, as if from inside a giant tin can that made the sound reverberate.

  “I’ve only been coming to Quaker Meeting for three months, so I’ve never been moved to speak before. I know we’re supposed to voice some spiritual concern but I guess that leaves a lot open to interpretation.”

  By now my voice didn’t have the hollow sound in my ears anymore. But I noticed something else. A lack of sound, or rather a lack of the sound of anything but my voice. I’d become used to the sounds of shuffling, coughing, throat clearing, even muffled whispers during Meeting. But I’d never heard the sound of absolute quiet before. The sun had risen high enough by then to cast a glowing light through the tall windows, a light that spread across the room making everything look softer. I looked up then, up to the beam where Bleaker’s body had hung.

  “I don’t know if the spirit is moving me or if it’s events that have made me stand here today. Maybe you could argue that the spirit is always operating while events are transitory. I’m not smart enough or educated enough to know how to interpret a spiritual awakening. I’m only left with questions. Like, was it her spirit that made Miss Bleaker hang herself in this very room?”

  There, I had said it out loud. She hanged herself. I waited for the gasp but it didn’t come. In that few seconds, I knew that nobody was going to stop me or make me sit down.

  “It seems like an awful way to die. I hope when I die, I just drift off to sleep and enter another dimension. I hope it’s not painful or violent. I hope it’s like coming home. To a spiritual home. I can’t believe it was that way for Miss Bleaker. I think she must have been very unhappy and tortured about her life. I can’t say I thought about that when she was here. I’ve only thought about it after. Because before, when she was someone who had power over me, I thought of her as an enemy, as someone who was only there to thwart me. I wasn’t the only one who thought that. It was probably cruel and thoughtless of me to think that way. I can say that now but I never would have admitted it to anyone, especially myself, before.”

  I hadn’t looked down at the paper in my hand yet but now my glance fell on the word Moll. I looked up again, at the light streaming through the windows, streams that glared a little, no longer soft, early-morning light, but mid-morning rays soon to reach their most piercing.

  “There’s really not much more I can say about that. Except no one has talked about Moll Grimes. And she’s the person who really suffered because of all this. She doesn’t know what happened here and, if I could speak to her, I would never tell her about it because it would just make her feel worse about herself. So what’s the point of making a person feel worse? Poor Moll. So unsure of herself. I mean, I think we’re all unsure of ourselves in some way but Moll was unsure in almost every way. She was only trying to feel pretty. What’s wrong with that? Is that unQuakerly? Is that against some sort of rulebook? Moll wanted to fit in, at least to try. And she got squashed the first time out of the gate. And that makes me angry, on her behalf.

  “In Quaker Life class we learned about how Friends side with the abused and disenfranchised of this world through everyday activities and on a global political level, through work camps and the American Friends Service Committee. Sit-ins and soup kitchens and working for political refugees and those without any power.

  “Maybe I’ll get in trouble for saying these things. I guess I don’t really care much about that anymore. But what about a girl like poor Moll, who never hurt anyone? What kind of a place is it where students ostracize and ignore the weaker ones? What about the Miss Bleakers of this world, who misuse their power and authority without understanding how it hurts the ones they’re supposed to be helping?

>   “I’ll never see Moll again. She ran away to join some group where she feels wanted and accepted. I don’t know if it’s a better group than a Quaker group was for her. I sure hope so. I hope she finds some contentment. And a place to use her brain, which is exceptional. Better than mine, certainly. Why can’t we be prized for the gifts we do bring instead of chastised for those we don’t? I can’t answer that. But it’s something I’m going to strive for from now on. It’s something I hope to be able to develop. I want to accept people for who they are and what they offer. Isn’t that what Foxhall is supposed to be about?”

  When I sat down, there was not one sound in the room. I looked down at my hands, holding the papers that I hadn’t even read. They were not shaking anymore. Wes reached over and squeezed my arm.

  FORTY-ONE

  Christmas Break

  SO WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT AFTER ALL? SOMETIMES LIFE seemed like a conspiracy theory. Nobody really knew the totality of what happened, so everyone felt free to weave stories out of bits and pieces that didn’t necessarily fit together. The old saying that truth was stranger than fiction may be the closest I would ever come to untangling the threads of my first sophomore semester at Foxhall School.

  One truth I knew: power would always seek to increase its strength in whatever way it could. It was like one of those infernal black holes whirling out there in space, pulling every bit of matter into itself until it would be crushed by its own pressure. But power could never operate on all fronts at all times. It was in power’s unattended gaps where the meek might make their move. Would they truly inherit the earth? To be honest, I didn’t think anyone would inherit anything. We were all so temporary. One direct hit by a big asteroid and we could all be gone, leaving the earth to re-imagine itself over the next few millennia.

  What happened to Moll and Bleaker would fade from collective memory at Foxhall. Today, I’m sure no one knows what happened back in that first semester of 1960. Today, things are radically different at Foxhall. The students there now would look back at my first semester and wonder what the fuss was about. And today, the cult started by Sung Myung Moon owns newspapers, multinational corporations, and banks and still adheres to the ideology of its founder. I have no idea if joining what became known years later as the Moonies was good or bad for Moll, probably some of both. But here is what I believe: she finally felt accepted otherwise she wouldn’t have followed them.

  Continuity. Plants know about that. Trees lose their leaves and the next season start all over, pushing out the green buds with fervor and certainty in the future. People are like that, too. Resilient, always looking for a recovery, a new start, often giving birth under awful circumstances but doing it anyway. While we continue the paths that have been laid before us, we look over the hill at new vistas, turn corners, and meet new possibilities.

  I never did get to California for Christmas. I was interviewed at length by Mr. Williamson, Miss Alderton, and Mr. Brownell, who turned out to be incredibly understanding and kind. They asked countless questions about Moll. I told them everything I knew. I never did meet her mom and I guess that was the way they wanted it—or someone did anyway.

  As it turned out, the doctor let my mother go home for Christmas, so my parents drove to Foxhall and told me we were all going to some fancy resort in the Caribbean for the holiday. Someplace nice and warm where we could all relax. It was a funny idea, I thought at the time. Relaxing was about the furthest thing from my mind. I tossed some clothes in a suitcase and met them at the front porch of Fox Dorm. Wes was waiting to say good-bye. I never saw him look so sad.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t be long. We’ll be back in three weeks.”

  “You’ll be all tan and gorgeous,” he told me.

  “Yeah,” I smiled at him and noticed my father getting out of the car and opening the trunk. “Don’t let any of those California girls snap you up.”

  “Not likely,” he touched my cheek with one finger. “You really okay? I mean after everything?”

  “I think so. I’m not really sure. I’ll write you a long letter from whatever beach they throw me onto.”

  I saw my father waving me to get in the car and gave Wes a peck on the cheek and ran down the steps to the car and my waiting parents.

  My mother sat in the back with me, which was unusual. As we drove along the paved road out of Foxhall, I felt something I hadn’t felt since I’d arrived. A kind of nostalgia for Foxhall. Now that I was driving away, I realized I’d become a part of the school or maybe it had become a part of me.

  My mother put her arm around me. I rested my head against her shoulder and started to cry softly.

  “Poor Suzi,” she said softly, which was unlike her, or at least unlike the way I thought of her. “You’ve been through a lot. You’ll have to tell me all about it now that I feel better.”

  She wrapped her arms around me there in the back seat and stroked my hair. I trusted her no more then than I had before. It was certain she’d get sick again because the quiet times never lasted for long. But on that day at least, I could cry and let her comfort me, which was all I ever really wanted.

  “Right after you were born, I asked the nurse for a baby hairbrush. You had thick dark curls that needed brushing right away. You were a beautiful baby with big hazel eyes. I’m sorry I’ve been sick so much. I know it’s been difficult for you. I’m trying very hard to be better.”

  So, about my grandson. Remember him? Born after a thirty-two hour labor, he did not enter this world easily. The last few minutes were accompanied by the wailing blare of a hospital code, immediately followed by waves of staff, white paper bags over their shoes, stampeding past me in a blur of hospital-scrub pale blue.

  I couldn’t imagine wanting my own mother anywhere near me while giving birth, but then I’ve been a very different kind of mother to my children and was grateful that my daughter had wanted me there. At the finale, there were fifteen people plus the husband in her room, all stationed around the mother-to-be, everyone on high alert, so no one noticed when I retired to the hall outside the door. That’s the hardest part. When you feel like yelling commands and taking over but you can’t. And you know it.

  Two female obstetricians—one of them herself a tiny thing—inserted their hands up my daughter’s birth canal and literally turned the baby so they could ease him into this world. What was keeping him from sliding out on his own? Something called shoulder dystocia, when the baby’s shoulder gets stuck behind the mother’s pelvic bone. How come they didn’t notice this—oh, like twelve or so hours earlier—and rush her to a nice, sterile OR and, with a neat, little incision, lift him out with no drama? Who knows? Things don’t always go the way you think they should, even when you have the best intentions and make decisions with a good heart. I learned that long ago at Foxhall and never forgot it.

  When I entered again, after the drama had played itself out, what greeted me was that bright, red patch in the middle of the washable floor. Although someone had swabbed the floor dry, the faded brick color remained a gruesome reminder of the struggle for life. My daughter was still lying in the middle of Heinz 57 blood-red sheets with a nurse fussing around her, checking tubes and vitals. But she was smiling, my daughter, smiling like an angel had just visited and blessed her. So it was going to be all right. Another nurse wheeled in a new bed and the transfer was made, the criminal clues hustled away in a plastic bag, and in came the little, swaddled newborn in his own Tupperware bed on wheels followed by a beaming, exhausted dad and that was a scene I’ll never forget. It was five a.m. and I hung around the hospital, everyone glowing, me included, until my daughter finally drifted off to sleep with newborn James cradled in her arms.

  It was after that traumatic night that ended so happily that I ran into Daria on a steep hill on a windy morning. In my memory, she will always be beautiful Daria aged sixteen. But the reality is different. She aged the way we all have. She wears her life on her face and you can see the pain there.

  We
ll, we were just kids after all, trying to do our best and often succeeding. I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that, after all these years, I look back at my time at Foxhall as anything but enriching, even the bad stuff. What would have been better, you might wonder, for the teen years are not real anyway? Not real in the sense that they are a way station on the path of a life that is becoming. The teen years are a dress rehearsal. But they feel real. That’s for sure. We reside in the teen years for such a short time, and the paths we take during those years diverge and take us off course in such a variety of ways that we only know we came out of a maze and into a world we inherited.

  Was it better for me that I went away to school instead of staying home at that girls’ school? Probably. But no matter where you go, you can’t escape crazy. It’s everywhere. In people, in politics. In wars and religions. I don’t know where it comes from in people. You don’t see crazy in animals or insects or birds. They do their thing—eat, bathe, drink, procreate, care for their young. When it’s time to die, they go quietly.

  So there was crazy at Foxhall just like at home. It stayed with me for life but you can get used to anything. I got used to crazy. I expected it. It got me down for a long time. I felt responsible for it, like I had to do something about it but I didn’t know what or how. The thing is, I’m not at its mercy anymore. If we are all joined in some cosmic way, I no longer need to see the threads or to pull at them or even know where they come from. The cycle of life will spin on its own. I accept that with all its imperfections. For me, that’s aging gracefully.