The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  Mum always says my dad named Damon Gorely is very beautiful with a very pretty shirt and a nice car and a million CDs of the best music, and stuff in his apartment, neat stuff like big speakers and wall-to-wall rug and dishwasher and his phone does everything, like it can take five calls at once and trace. He is to be famous someday in rap. I like his pictures. He is a gorgeous hunk. You would agree.

  Gordie is of the white color like Mum. My dad is of the black color like me. Except I’m more of a middle color. Like a gypsy queen. That’s what Mum says. And I know someday I’ll be on TV and people will look at me and won’t believe their eyes, because I am prettier than other girls and people always stare and stare at me. On TV I’ll get to wear long earrings and see-through-ish outfits or outfits that twinkle or outfits made of white fur stuff. And I’ll put my tongue over my lips like this and men will die.

  Jane Meserve visits her Mum. Jane speaks.

  Claire St. Onge is Gordie’s X-wife. Claire is fat. She is as round as a balloon. She was an Indian once. She lived with all the other Indians at a place called an Indian Township. She usually wears boots, like Gordie. She has very straight hair, part gray, which she wears fixed on her head with plain pins or in a clip so her hair is long and swingy. Also she wears glasses that make her eyes wiggle-ish. She is short, like a little kid almost. I am almost taller and I am only six years old!

  Claire is a lady of history, knows all the stuff of an olden age. She goes to be a real teacher at a university but only on one day, Wednesday. She says she is an a-junk. Probably because she has a special interestedness in historyish clothes and stuff like cruddy old pots and pans and knives and arrows. She has some pictures and she has some real examples. The examples have rust, I think. Yuk. Gordie calls Claire “our history expert.”

  Claire has two ways she talks. One way is LOUD. The other way is whisperish and she makes her voice very interesting and scary, and the stuff she tells you is secrets. Also she winks. All the kids think she’s cool and they love to do stuff for her and help her with going on trips to Ivy Leegs and lug boxes and all the kitchen stuff too. She calls them “my slaves.”

  Today Claire took me to see Mum. And Mum loved my new sunglasses with the pink heart shapes for the parts that go over your eyes. Mum said, “Where did you get those great heart glasses?”

  I said, “Stuart gave them to me.” Stuart is ONE OF THEM.

  Mum said, “Jane, you know what those are? Those are secret agent glasses . . . which have special powers of vision!” She seemed especially happy about these glasses. She said SPECIAL POWERS OF VISION.

  I said, “I don’t think so, because I only see regular through them. But dark. And pink.”

  She said, “But baby, you will have special viewing powers at times. Suddenly, you’ll see what no regular eyes can see. So you can be a top-notch secret agent.”

  The place where we had to sit to visit Mum is where the copguards make you sit. The chairs fold up if you don’t sit too still. They are metal and sort of beige. There were kids and people in the other room, which is where all the rest went, but we were in a special room, which was so whisperish you could hear the copguards’ clothes being scratchy. Beige chairs look mostly pink through these special glasses. And the really awful orange suit Mum was wearing looked hideous with and without my special glasses, but she just laughed when I asked what other colors she could get. Also, people and walls looked pink to me. The whole day was pink. You can’t see yellow or white when you have pink glasses. I asked Mum, “What is a secret agent?”

  “A spy!” she said cheerishly.

  When Claire was gone a minute in the hall, to talk with a copguard who she says has rank, Mum explained that I could be a spy at Gordie’s place and watch people and then write stuff down in a really small black book, everything they did, what they looked like and stuff and what they said. Then I could report back to Mum and tell her what I have in the black book.

  She said, “From now on, don’t call me Mum. Call me Headquarters.”

  One of the copguards sitting at his own table practically beside us heard this, and he frowned.

  I told her I would most definitely keep an eye on every one of them, but then I said, in a voice of misery so Mum will know I hate them at Gordie’s, I said how I miss her and how when I am in bed at night I think of her and how very pretty she is. But Mum just smiled. And the copguard turned a different way so there was all this scratching sound of his pants and arms. And Claire came back smiling. Everybody very cheerish.

  This made me mad.

  Mum said, “As of today, Jane Miranda Meserve is hereby sworn in as Official Secret Agent One-one-one.”

  After a while, I asked if there was a soda machine or one for chips and candy. But Mum said, “Not in this place, Jane. In this place, they consider everything a weapon.”

  I sort of laughed. I looked at the copguard, but he was turned a little to see people walking by in the hall. He had a gun. I said to Mum, “I like your outfit.” It was actually more hideous than a dead vegetable, but you want to always be nice to your mum and never say stuff she wears looks gross.

  Mum laughed and looked down at herself, then back at me. I decided not to mention her hair, which is always blonde with extra streaks for beauty. But now she has a plain ponytail like usually just for bed or to be sick. And usually she wears lipstick, red, called Glamourpuss or Scarlett O’Hara. Not now. Behind these glasses all Mum’s beautifulish parts look sad and pink.

  And I said, “So where is Cherish? Who’s babysitting for her?”

  Mum said, in a funnyish way, “Oh! Cherish ran away to a farm! She really always wanted to live on a farm where she could dig for rats and mice.”

  I squinched my eyes behind my secret glasses. She is lying. Something is wrong with Cherish. Something very bad has happened. To Cherish. But I made my voice sweet and dopey. “Why can’t me and her just both stay at Gordie’s? There’s cows and stuff at Gordie’s. And guess what! There’s another Scottie at Gordie’s. Named Cannonball. Kind of mean. Bites. But Cherish won’t mind. They could dig rats and be friends.”

  Mum’s voice was still weird. A voice of lies. With secret glasses, lies have a special sound, high and whiny. “I know . . . but Cherish . . . you know how she was! She always made up her own mind and stuck to it. She really had to check out the other farm. She wouldn’t listen to anybody else’s suggestions. Maybe she’ll get tired of it and come back. Later.”

  Through these secret glasses, Mum’s face was starting to look wavery. “Mum, when are you coming home?” My neck hurt.

  Mum said, “Soon.”

  “How soon?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mum.” I didn’t scream or run to hug Mum. I almost did. But I had strong willpower so I just sat there cool as a cucumber and said, “How come I can’t stay here?”

  “You can’t.”

  I take a deep deep DEEP breath and then push breath slowishly out out out out. “Why can’t you come out and just visit?”

  “I would if I could, but I can’t.”

  I look at her so hard, her beautiful hair and her lips.

  “Can’t you just come home for one single day?”

  “No,” said Mum.

  That night in bed, Secret Agent Jane begins her career. Jane speaks.

  I am in my bed at Gordie’s house. Gordie says it’s okay if I keep the light on all night, even though he wants to NOT WASTE.

  NOT WASTE is one of the big rules.

  I wear my secret agent glasses even for night because I might need to see something in a special way.

  Secret Agent Jane finds out more. She speaks.

  Over the week I got a lot of information which I would never have got without these special glasses. Mostly, I hide behind doors. If the doors are open, I stand off to the edge. Also, I sit real quiet. This is always when they think I’m somewhere else. I have information of both Gordie’s house and the Settlement, which is plenty of houses called shops, and I’
ve been in them all. I’ve decided to do mostly pictures in my secret book. Spelling’s too hard when you are in a rush.

  Gordie is mean and makes me go up there to the Settlement place A LOT. Also, Claire is mean. Bonny Loo is mean. Bev is mean. Barbara is mean. They make me go up there when they KNOW I like it here at Gordie’s house better . . . except there’s no food here at Gordie’s. Just what they bring.

  I can tell they are trying to get me to LOVE all those kids at the Settlement and those people, but they are wrong. I’m not falling for it. Guess what. I actually saw somebody’s lips actually say, “Oh, Jane. Your school is right here. It’s School with a Plus!”

  Right. It’s so sick. Would you call this a school? Babies that suck are everywhere. Chickens that walk with people and peck at your shoes. Old ladies who are nuts. Loud ugly men. One has no eyes. One kid has a big bulge on his hand and a broken arm which might smell if I smelled it. The man named Oh-RELL sings loud to himself. One old wicked- old lady never talks, just always pats you. The guy Oh-RELL talks in a language. And his singing is awful. He will never be famous.

  At meals which last for hours—yes, HOURS—kids and people make plays they call skits. For one of the skits we got all fixed up, but I can tell you, it was not beautiful. I wanted to do a sexy dance, but the other kids said that SEX would not fit that kind of play, wait till another one. I wanted to sing “Baby Stands Before Me,” but they said it didn’t fit.

  They all dressed in robes and wigs and masks and head things. At rehearsal, a bunch of them fought over the Thomas Jefferson mask and the mother named Gail said we could make twenty Thomas Jefferson masks later, but for now we had to draw a name and leave it to odds. Some kids were putting lipstick under their eyes. This was blood, they said, for Valley Forge. Some kids just wanted to look terrible and carry guns. These are the boys, of course. And one girl, one big weird girl. But all the rest are boys. They carry guns or stick spears or sword things or knives or clubs. They said they were “The Hydra mob. The true heroes of the people.” But why do the girls try to be ugly too? Like, a teenager named Samantha wore a white yarn wig and pilgrim outfit like a man pilgrim and she had wire made into fake glasses. She was going to be a “Father of the Constitution.” She laughed and said, “It was our first NAFTA.” The rest of them just wanted to be army or mobs. There was nothing pretty to be.

  Samantha told me to be John Adams.

  I said, “GROSS!”

  She said, “Just say the John Adams stuff, okay? You can dress whatever way you want.” She said this sad and sweet like she was talking to an animal. I made my eyes squinty.

  So the boys did the war part, dying and screaming and poking each other on the head. Mostly girls were Fathers of the Constitution, and one boy, Evan—who is cute if it weren’t for the worst pimples—he said Thomas Paine stuff and dressed in pants that didn’t fit him and an actual antique coat. Others wore practically nothing in order to be sailors and slaves. They used purple paint to make whip marks and “scars from the sea.” They said their best thing was fire and they said a poem called “Tiger Burning Bright,” which is about slaves, and they yelled “Yo mateys!” and “Ahoy!”

  Then it was my turn. I was the stupid John Adams. I had put my lipstick on my lips in a beautiful sex way and patted my lips on paper to make them perfect. Yes, lipstick on the LIPS. That is where lipstick is supposed to go.

  I put my hair up in a pretty shell squeegie. The shells are varnished and whitish-pink. So pretty. It makes my neck look long and sexy. I didn’t wear my secret heart-shapes dark glasses because I wanted my eyes to show. My eyes, everyone has always said, look like Mariah Carey’s, which everyone says are “gorgeous, dark, and sultry.” Sultry is actually a real word.

  And then I wore my sundress which lets a lot show. And I wore my gold ankle bracelet and glitter sandals and my long earrings that look just like Mariah Carey’s.

  So there I was up on the stage with all these horridable monsters with swords and hunched backs and bandaged feet and green masks and purple scars and white yarn wigs and funny coats and blood and masks made to be faces of the Constitution Fathers, twelve Thomas Jeffersons, and one kid had a diaper and shower cap, which everyone thought was cute because he’s only age one but was really disgusting, and there was the kid with the busted arm, who was part of the mob, and I was the only pretty person there. You could easily see the difference. My lines went like this:

  The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religish sintimints, of their duties and of their oblations. This RADICAL change in principals, opinions, sintimints, and affections of THE PEOPLE was the REAL American Revolution!

  I spoke all these words with perfect lips and licked these lips with the end of my tongue in a full sex-type lick, like on TV, just the point of my tongue, which is supposed to put thoughts of sex in all men’s minds.

  After the play, I put my secret glasses back on and mothers said stuff was going on inside the shops and everybody was picking up the tables. I said No thanks to helping pick up messy tables, No thanks to shops.

  So then they say, “Jane, maybe you’d like to help with hair in the beauty shop. There’s a bunch going over for haircuts right now. Or maybe you’d like to have your hair done, just have Jillian brush your hair and pamper you.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” said Jillian, who has huge teeth. And funny blinky little eyes with hardly any lashes, like an actual monkey’s.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  And they said more stuff about how wonderful the shops are. I cried, in a quiet sad way. They said okay, I could go back to Gordie’s house with Lee Lynn for a quiet afternoon.

  Lee Lynn is one of the mothers. She sort of looks like Thomas Jefferson but no mask. Her hair is so weird. Flies around like it’s maybe plugged into the lamp thing. Her face is pretty, but not pretty enough for TV. Sorry.

  I hear the mothers whisper (so I don’t hear) that I am beautiful, which is something they are not used to.

  Boy, do I have a lot of information in my secret book. All their ugly secrets. All their ugly faces. All their noise. All their hideous food. And electric buggies kids ride around in. And weird soap. Oh, God, there’s BARE FEET in the library. And junk everywheres. Would you call that a school? I call it a dump.

  Penny St. Onge talks to us from a future time.

  Dear heavens! The separation of mother from child with such ease could only happen to civilized humans. A mother bear would rip your head off. A human mother without the clutter of law-and-order would claw out your eyes.

  This with Lisa and Jane takes place in the heart of year 2000, the weight of law very heavy.

  And yet Jane, six and a half years old, burned through three foster homes in less than three weeks and was delivered to her Granpa Pete’s gas station in a state car wearing nothing but a violet bathrobe, her arms crossed over her chest to show who is boss.

  Pete Meserve and Gordon, old friends, talked on the phone about the covert transfer of Jane to our home. The Department of Human Services was to keep on believing she was with Pete full-time. And here she landed. How stalwart she seems! This amazing durable little creature, making life hell for us all. Think! Isn’t she the bear? The baby bear who bites the hand of civilization! Some here say, “No, no, no, Penny, Pete says Jane has always been a brat.” But leave me to my illusions. Whenever I look at that little person, who comes to Settlement meals so rarely, so straight-shouldered, and a face too beautiful, saying no to everything we suggest, I smile. Forgive me.

  More secrets. Secret Agent Jane speaks.

  With these powerful secret pink glasses, everything looks so stupid. And people are forced to say the truth before your very eyes. Their thoughts just pour out. And horridable information pours out.

  Like right now, this is morning and I am here with these glasses. I’m hiding. It is Claire talking, Gordie’s X-wife. She is older than Gordie. She is eleven years older than Gordie. This is not the usual way, you know, that
people are.

  Okay, so she is wearing one of her fat shirts and fat pants. And she wears working boots like Gordie. She does not have pretty legs that show like my teacher at my real school I had last year, Mrs. Varney. Mrs. Varney had sandals that had nice heels and were pink. All the teachers at my real school are beautiful and fixed up and they walk cute like Mum does and anybody normal.

  While I am spying on Claire, she is out near the gardens and the garden sheds. People here LOVE gardens and just come and go in the gardens and weed stuff and pick stuff and shovel piles of stuff.

  Gardens are dirty and full of bugs.

  I am standing by the big farm truck, which has a million crates and a tire. I have already wiped my secret glasses off for a cleaning.

  Claire is loading a different truck with two crates of lettuce.

  Bonny Loo almost sees me, but she doesn’t. Bonny Loo is sort of beautiful, sort of ugly. Sometimes she wears glasses. Other people almost see me, too, but they are off in the distance bent down in the gardens a long ways off. Claire is getting in the little truck so she can go off with the lettuce to where she sells it. Because of these secret-agent heart-shapes glasses, Claire’s lips are now forced to tell the truth about my dog, Cherish. “. . . and they left her Scottie in the car with the windows up! You know how hot it was that first day! All cops care about is getting their damn business done. They left the poor little dog alone to die in the sweltering car.”

  “Those shitheads!” snarls Bonny Loo.

  A bug bites my ear. I smoosh it quietly.

  Claire says, “Jane was at school . . . or you suppose they’d have left her in the car too?”

  “Probably,” Bonny Loo says in her sexy deep voice.

  Claire says, “Meanwhile, they take Lisa off in the cruiser, her yelling and sobbing ‘My dog, my little dog!’ and begging, trying to convince the cops to turn back and get the dog. They told her not to worry, it would be taken care of. Of course nobody did anything. So Lisa was screaming at the jail. They said if she didn’t stop, they’d have to stop her. And then Lisa’s lawyer called that night—Kane—and said the tow guy found the body under one of the front seats.” Claire mooshes her hand all over her face and up under her glasses like her face itches, and this makes her face all red and rubbed. She says, “Bonny, that had to’ve been a bad death.”