The Freewayfayers' Book of the Dead

by John Okas

  She is accepted in the Saint Clara Urbana Bernard Academy, the most exclusive and expensive private school for girls on the upper east side. From grades zero through twelve, Saint Bernard’s prepares fewer than two hundred of the city’s most privileged young women, those who are growing up terribly rich and being groomed as the wives of men of leadership and responsibility. The school insignia, an oval emblem, with the initials SCUBA and a stylized silhouetted profile of Saint Clara against the Big Apple skyline with her telltale hustle and bustle, her hair in a bun, and her walking stick wagging behind her, has been the symbol of urbanity among little old cosmopolitan club ladies for over a half century. A thoroughly distinguished and charming gentlewoman and scholar, Clara Bernard was, by all accounts, a spirited lecturer as well. Anything but parochial, the school’s namesake and founder is a secular saint. Uncanonized by either the Holy See in the Eternal City or the High Church of Inkland, Bernard’s title, bestowed on her some fifty years earlier, was one of local great affection. Braving snow, rain, or cold, she would go through the city’s poorest districts at holiday time, dressed as the Jolly Old Xmas Elf with a bag of toys and goodies to give out to the children. Hence she became Saint Bernard, Santa Clara to lost niños y niñas.

  Indeed, Clara Urbana Bernard, was a great humanitarian, a giver of both time and money. Her fortune and her zeal succored the Big Apple’s poor with soup kitchens, improved its aspiring middle class with libraries, and served its well-to-do with funding for the arts. She started the Academy with a generous endowment for scholarships and the motto, “From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs,” two years before the publication of Werner Frank’s Call to Commonism. She was an ardent abolitionist, an advocate of racial equality, so sincere a believer in integration that she and her husband adopted two children, one black, one brown. She intended her academy to be open to all who could pass the screening, whether rich or poor, regardless of color or national origin. Certainly, while she was alive, the school had its mix of colors, as well as girls whose parents were unable to pay the tuition. However, soon after her death, the realities of the private school’s high tax district gave the board of trustees a good excuse for keeping the admission of needy students to a minimum. Non-whites fell by the wayside. In recent years, while still maintaining its image as a liberal institution, the Academy has become everything its founder stood against. Only because of Gloria’s near perfect score on the intelligence test and her family’s exceptional ability to pay is her tan color overlooked.

  When the summer light gets golden, Gloria knows schooldays are at hand. She falls silent, sits tightly, and waits. A man in a brown uniform brings a box one morning. She wants to know what’s in it. When she sees it she gasps: her uniform.

  There is a ruffled white shirt with scratchy cuffs and collar, and clumsy oafish brown wing-tip shoes. The bulk of it—pleated check skirt, knee socks, sweater, and jacket—are all blazing bilious green. It makes Glory think she’s in the army now. The height of ugliness is the green beret, crested with that harrowing emblem, the official oval patch with the outline of that SCUBA lady with the big bust and the big can. It literally sends her hot bowels running like cold feet.

  She misses her first and second days of school. On the third day the doctor is called. “Nothing serious, I’d call it a typical case of the preschool jitters,” he tells the family, while he writes a prescription. “Give her a tablespoon of this every four hours and she should be right as sunshine in the morning.”

  But she isn’t. The next day the bug is worse, she throws up her breakfast of jam and toast. Harry and Sarah both come to the Parlor of Roses, where the patient, now moved by Laudette into a proper bed, wants no part of the bowl of sticky rice porridge the sitter is holding and is unresponsive to the peptalk she is being peppered with.

  “Now, Baby, you can’t be crawling into tight spots and playing with your possum your whole life. Wake up and die right! You’ve got to get out and go to kiddy garden and play like other little girls in fresh healthy air. Now, come on, I want you to eat up, get well, and get dressed. That’s all there is to it. Do you hear? And take off those tights, they’re too tight. They cut off your circlization and cramp your veins until you get a heart attack. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “Lawdy, that’s stupid. Kids don’t have heart attacks.”

  “Normal kids don’t, but those that act too grown up for their age and talk back get them all the time.”

  Is that the truth? She looks at her stepfather, who is shaking his head and smiling. Yet Gloria can see that she has them all concerned; now is the time someone might listen to reason.

  That someone is not Laudette. Gloria has heard all about the religion Laudette believes in, about a God being nailed to a cross. On several occasions, the sharp Bee has heard her mother tell the sitter not to give her baby any instruction in matters of faith or moral guidelines based on religious lore. As in so many other things, Laudette overrides her employer’s wishes and Sarah’s voice of disapproval grows fainter every time it is tested. Gloria knows that her mother is not one for rules, and rarely offers strong opinions. As a five-year-old who seriously thinks about justice in the world, Gloria thinks it’s laudable that her mother doesn’t want X-or Z-based religion crammed down her throat, but surely it is a striking defect that she will not seriously contradict Laudette. Having Laudette as a go-between allows Sarah the questionable luxury of never having to handle Gloria’s upbringing. When it comes to how to raise a child to produce a normal adult, Sarah has no essential values, and does not trust herself now any more than she did as an unwed teenage mother.

  Lately Gloria has heard her mother mutter about growing up in a house where the father went by the book and the mother was unassailing and compliant. Now here in Swan’s house there are two strong women, and neither is Sarah. Gloria and Laudette each has a mental picture of herself in charge, and they are willing to fight for their convictions. Unsure, Sarah thinks it must be wise to assume that the baby-sitter knows best. She says weakly to Gloria, “Baby, maybe Miss Lord has a point. You might feel more together if you at least tried to get up.”

  Gloria feels better today, but would rather not get up. The school and the uniform are a prison sentence. Worse, they are the end of her kittency. A happy time, she would cling to it, and burrow back in for as long as she can. But Gloria is no longer wholly innocent, and she is curious about the world. She wants to learn about reading, writing, and arithmetic, but at her own pace, and without having to get in line for it with a bunch of other girls. The subject she finds most fascinating is her own roots. She is aware that there is a secret in the family and that it is connected with her real father and to men in general. She sees her mother squirm at her attempts to flush out consistent details about her father. She gathers there is some taboo—that is the first thing she would like to learn about.

  “Mummy,” she says, “I think I’d feel better if you told me about my father, the one who died. What was his name?”

  She sees the two women exchange a bothered look. Her Daddy-o’s brows widen with an interest in the question.

  Whatever hand she is dealt, Gloria plays it to suit her purposes. If her question is answered, she will learn, and be ready to go to school. If not, in order to avoid telling her, her mother will back off and take the pesty Laudette with her.

  Perplexed Sarah says, “Well, I used to call him ‘Cornie’.”

  “Whatever happened to him?”

  “He’s in heaven, baby, he had an-uh-uh-accident. If you close your eyes maybe you can see him.”

  Gloria actually has no trouble imagining a father for herself. She closes her eyes and sees a fine figure like a flash of sunlight crossing her mind, but by the time she realizes who is there, he has vanished. When she opens her eyes, her mother and the annoying Miss Lord, in order to avoid further questioning, are gone.

  “Do I really have to go to kindergarten, Daddy-o?” She appeals to Harry. “It sounds lik
e a silly place. I know I can learn a lot faster on my own, with you helping me. Can’t we tell the school I’ll start next year in grade one?”

  Like every man she meets, Harry is Gloria’s champion. He comes to her rescue by going out and arguing with the women about it. “I do think she may be right, ladies. Kindergarten is really still just pre-school. Why torture the child for no reason? And she’s barely old enough for school. After all, she won’t even be five for another two months. Were she born one day later, she would be the oldest girl in her class rather than the youngest. Her childhood will be over and she’ll get knocked around in the world soon enough. Why not postpone it until absolutely necessary? I’m in favor of waiving grade zero for her entirely.”

  Laudette says, “She has to go to kiddy garden, Sir. It would be a shame to deprive her of the fun of making mushmallow pies and doing fingerprinting.”

  “All in good time, Miss Lord. But so what if she misses some arts and crafts? She’ll be more ready and willing in a year. She’s surely able now to do the work of a first grader. We’ll let her meet her class then. Gloria is a special girl. Why, don’t you think she may be a genius? Geniuses can often be misunderstood by other people.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, she did score a hundred percent on every screen test she took, and while reading the newspaper with you does seem more edificational than playing in the sand box, Sir Harry, if you please, this girl’s never had a friend. It’s about time she got off her step-daddy’s knee and got out in the world to meet some other children her own age.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lord, for your opinion. But I think my wife would be wise not to press the child too hard.”

  “I hate to disagree with you, Sir Harry, but I firmly believe that the best way of being understood by other people is to be with them, not without them. But, well, you probably know best, Sir,” she says, mixing a pinch of sarcasm in with her resignation, and excuses herself.

  Harry takes Sarah by the arm. “Why not call the school and tell them Gloria is going to wait a year before meeting her class? Say you had second thoughts, that the child is not emotionally ready.”

  Normally, left to her own devices, Sarah would not go against Miss Lord’s advice. But she is so grateful for her husband’s interest in her daughter, for a moment it relieves her of the sinking feeling of having failed Glory by letting her real father slip away. “All right, Harry,” she says, “go tell her the good news.”

  Kicked Upstairs

  The Bee is a baptist. The one thing Glory surely says “yes” to when Miss Lord calls is “Bath time!” Not a morning or a night goes by when she does not buzz with dipsy mania in the tub room between the Parlor of Roses and Penny’s Anteroom. The tub there is a splendid old rose-tinted porcelain one, deep and long and wide, with brass accessories, eagle wing faucet handles, hot and cold, and a lion’s head tap. The room has cozy, hairline-cracked tile and, on the west wall, stained-glass windows that mute the light, making it more cheery. Rub-a-dub dub, soap-a-dope dope, cleanliness is next to goddessliness. And where a juvenile might splash around with a toy boat or a rubber duck, Gloria, mature and self-confident for her age, relaxes by wrestling with books. Her Daddy-o gives her titles like The Well-Tempered Toy Bear, and others, all recommended for children ten years of age or older.

  If Gloria were the dissatisfied type she would covet her mother’s bigger, deeper bathtub. Yes, the bath across the hall would be heaven to dip into, but she doesn’t think about it. Nor does she think about the hall of mirrors, that silver glass wonderland that multiplies self-portraits to an infinite regress. It is just the sort of place vain Glory should have her eyes on, but she keeps them off it by sounding out words such as “convalescence”, “oyster”, and “procrastinate.” And she dare not even dream of sleeping in the Homer-built bed, a deluxe tent, with its carved posts, silk curtains, and plump pillows. She is sensitive enough to know that all the adults regard the big bed with some respect. Whether it be a sack for pleasure, a source of haunting or mysterious power, she clearly understands that it is something not for her yet. The Bee Goddess instinctively minds her own business in hopes that others will mind theirs.

  As the months go by, fall, winter, spring, the number of visits her stepfather makes to her mother’s bedroom is ever on the rise. Sarah invites him down from the workshop more often, but still stops short of sharing the bed with him afterwards. She doesn’t care whether he comes and goes by the front way or the back. Crawling in and out of the trick armoire is fun for the athletic playboy. Forty-five-year-old though he be, he can make his way in and out of his wife’s bedroom surreptitiously, and enjoy the thrill of a clandestine meeting. But there are times, when their lovemaking is so heavenly, that his exit of choice is on two legs, or none at all, rather than the four on the floor, and he must go back the way he came. He could leave through one of the ordinary exits, but because of the presence of Miss Lord and Gloria in the Suite of Roses, Harry is detoured, not always conveniently for Sarah, through her bath and the hall of mirrors. Queen Sarah loves her privacy and resents her husband’s intrusion in her feminine vanity zone.

  Laudette is fully behind making a move. She thinks sleeping in the Parlor of Roses spoils Gloria. “Sugar, it’s too fancy for a girl her age. It’s part of your sitting room and besides how do you think a big cow like me feels having to pussyfoot my way around all those darn delicate antiques?”

  To clear the other road for her husband and to give Laudette the boost she deserves Sarah decides to shoo the Bee out of her boudoir, baby-sitter and all, upstairs to the third level, east, the children’s wing.

  “Gloria Beatrice,” says Sarah, “you’re going to be starting school soon. Mummy’s afraid you’re getting too old to sleep under the drapes outside her bedroom.”

  “Now, Baby,” Laudette backs her up, “you knew it was only temporary that you got to sleep in these fancypants parlors. Just because upstairs used to be so cold and spooky …”

  Gloria knows what’s coming. The past months she has been watching the reconstruction on the third story. She knows Laudette is looking forward to better nights’ sleep in those more modest rooms. There is no one to appeal to as this time Harry, more than anyone, applauds the shake-up. The several parlors on the second story have such a courtly air, and he can so easily imagine himself a sensual Gourmet; he looks forward to pussyfooting around outside his wife’s bedroom, and envisions extending their passion play out into the fanciful suite, where, he dreams, sex will glow like a red hot bed of roses. Three against one, Glory, the warrior, knows when she must bow to avoid defeat.

  On a dog-day afternoon in July, nineteen thirty-five, Gloria is kicked upstairs. Pearly, Mona, and Laudette install her, frock, block, and toy barrel, in two rooms on the third story in the northeast corner of the house, and Laudette moves opposite her into an identical pair of rooms on the south side, both of them sharing a bath between them.

  Only Gloria says “Boo hoo!” She misses her cushion bed under the red rose drapes, her gilt-edged furniture, funny closets, decorated screens, and murals. The rooms up here are like a boring hotel—plain twin beds, night tables, desks, and lamps. All eastern walls are windowless, as Homer designed them, and the electric light reflecting off Laudette’s color scheme of egg yolk yellow paint and pink pinstripe wall paper seems horribly artificial, so dismal, so unlike downstairs where the leaded casements let sunlight, moonlight, lamplight, and cars’ headlights play on the rosy murals. In many places the museum is no model of ventilation and these rooms, equipped with nothing but overhead fans and door stops, are like sweat boxes. Gloria seeks refuge in a cool bath, but the tub here, brand new, is not nearly as alluring as the old rose-tinted one with its fine crackle, shell shape, and claw feet.

  Her cries of homesickness reach Laudette. “Goddamn it, Lawdy,” she cracks, “why didn’t you at least put goddamn windows in these goddamn rooms?”

  “Baby, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap! Where did you learn that word?”

  �
�I heard Daddy-o say it when he was listening to the ball game on the radio.”

  “Well you don’t have to repeat everything you hear. And you don’t have to undo everything that’s been done. This is the way Mister Homer made it, so a person has cause to develop quality by contemplating inner beauty rather than gaping at the river all day, and this is the way it’s going to stay. Who am I to change the work of a great architectural genius just so a little nobody like you can have a window?”

  “Little nobody, huh? I’ll get you for that, Lawdy, goddamn, I will. What did I do to deserve this? I wasn’t bothering anyone where I was. I want my old tub back and my tent bed, and I miss all the pretty pictures on the walls.”

  “Now you just be happy with what you got, Baby, and stop making a commotion. You know your mother goes through hell, her nerves being what they are. She and your stepdaddy have a right to their privacy and don’t need to be tripping over us at every turn.” It’s Laudette’s policy not to spoil Gloria by indulging her. As sitter, decorator, and general contractor, she stands firm. “Now off you go to sleep.”

  Although she sleeps in a plain ordinary bed she does not feel like a plain ordinary person. At breakfast Gloria complains to her Daddy-o.

  “Miss Lord,” he says, “I think Gloria should have all the comforts and privacy money can buy. If she wants a window, she should have one. From across the river this place looks like a big brick shithouse anyway. And if she’s not happy with the tub or the bed she has, please see that she gets ones she likes.”

  “Yeah, Daddy-o!”

  “Sir, if I may be so bold,” says Laudette, “you go and give her too much and, take it from me, you’re going to have one spoiled brat on your hands. And, Sugar, I really think someone should say something about the language Sir Harry uses in front of the child. You know last night she was taking the Lord’s name in vain left and right.”

  “Miss Lord,” says Harry, rising with Gloria, ignoring the look of disapproval in the sitter’s eyes, “if a Thorco heiress can’t be a spoiled brat who can? And if I want to say ‘fuck you’ in this house, goddamn it, I’ll do it.”