Mattie

by Judy Alter

  “Yes, Mama, I knew he was coming to talk to you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought, well, you wouldn’t like the idea, wouldn’t let me stay.”

  “Oh, Mattie!” She grabbed my face in both her hands and looked deep in my eyes, an occasional tear trickling down her face. “How could I not let you stay? It’s an opportunity for you, a chance for a better life. You know how things have been for me in this dingy, gossipy little town. But being here was something beyond my control. I had no choice. I had, uh, promised to wait here for someone, and by the time I knew that was hopeless, well, there was no place else to go. But now you have a chance to, well, to do whatever you want. If you stay here now, then you won’t have to stay here always.” It was a long speech for Mama, and it left her out of breath because of her bad lungs. She sat a minute, just staring at me.

  “I’ll miss you . . . you and Will Henry something awful,” I said. But inside I was thinking that now I knew a little more about the mysterious man who had fathered us. He left Mama in Missouri and never came back for her. One thing seemed certain to me: I was descended from a cad.

  “We’ll miss you, too, but it isn’t like we’ll never see you again,” she said brightly. I guess she didn’t believe it even then, but I didn’t know any better.

  The next couple of weeks were a nightmare. Mr. Reeves was most efficiently getting my family ready to leave, and I was torn with guilt for not going with them. How could I abandon my own mother?

  One day I sat and watched Will Henry and Mr. Reeves pore over a map. “Now, right about here, I think, Will Henry, is some good farmland. Nice and rich soil. We could raise wheat . . . But maybe that’s a little north for your mama. If we went south some—”

  Will Henry was enthusiasm come to life. “We could raise cattle, couldn’t we? Right there on the prairie.”

  “Maybe so. Do you know much about cattle?”

  “I’ll learn,” he said with eight-year-old confidence.

  “I’m gonna need you some to take care of your mama, you know. She can’t do any hard work.”

  “But nursin’s girl’s work.”

  “Will Henry, we will each do what we have to do.” That was delivered in the sternest tones I’d ever heard from Mr. Reeves.

  “I’m going, too,” I announced suddenly. “It’s my place to care for Mama.”

  “Now, Mattie, your plans are all made, and your mother agrees with them. We’ll get by.”

  Maybe that was what bothered me. They would get by without me, but would I be all right without them? Much as I had railed against our life, this was my family, and I loved them. I wanted to watch Will Henry grow up and see Mama grow strong and happy again.

  When Mama heard about it, though, she took one of her firm stands. “No, Mattie, you’ll stay here. It’s best.”

  “Here?” I cried, suddenly in a rage. “Here, where everybody teases about my mother and knows I have no father? Here, where I haven’t a friend my age in the whole world? Here, where I hate to go to the store or run errands because of what other kids say to me? Where I watch Mary Jane Canary look at me like I’m scum?”

  Mama was stunned, but Mr. Reeves recovered after just a minute. He raised his hand as though to hit me and was stopped only by Mama’s scream.

  “Don’t hit her!”

  “I won’t have her talking to you that way.”

  “No, she’s right. Life in Princeton has been pretty bad for her . . . for all of us . . . but it’s all she’s known. Mattie, come into the bedroom with me.”

  We sat together on the bed in silence for a moment, and then she put her arm around me. “I didn’t know, Mattie, I didn’t know how awful it was for you.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. And for a long time I didn’t know what I was missing. I guess until the day I went with you to the Canarys’ house and saw that awful brat.”

  “You may come with us, of course. We won’t leave you here.”

  “I don’t know what I want,” I said, biting my lip. “I hate Princeton, but I want to stay with the Dinsmores and read those books and somehow make things better.”

  “Mattie, how do you know that the problems you have here, your feelings about me, your questions about your father, won’t follow you to a new town? Will Henry can go easily. He has none of those feelings, but I really doubt that geography is going to change much for you.

  I thought about what she said. “Couldn’t . . . wouldn’t things be different if you arrived someplace married to Mr. Reeves?”

  “Ah, Mattie, marriage for me isn’t going to make the difference for you. What I’ve done, or what you think I’ve done, isn’t so terrible, you know. What is terrible is the way others have treated you because of it. And something you won’t realize for years is that you’re at fault, too, for the way you have responded to the teasing. No, all those mixed-up feelings inside you will just go right with us west.”

  I lay down on the pillow and began to sob, knowing she was probably right. I wasn’t an attractive child, and at that point it didn’t appear to me that I had much personality to balance my physical deficits. Even though I knew Mama was right and suspected she had much more sense than I had ever given her credit for, I began to wonder if maybe she didn’t want me to go, if my sour attitude and my resentments were unpleasant enough that the family would be happier if I stayed behind. I had no way of knowing how hurt Mama must have been and how hard it was for her to leave one of her own children behind, especially when deep down she must have known that she’d never see me again. Lord, I was stuck with self-pity and not a spark of life. As I look back on it, I can’t believe all the good things that have happened to that colorless girl from Missouri.

  “Mattie, I want you to come with us, you know, more than anything. I will miss you terribly. But I think your future, your chance at what you want, starts here in Princeton, not on a journey west without a destination.” She put an arm around me to hug but had to turn away as a coughing fit struck her.

  And so, that was how I stayed behind when they left to go west. I watched them pack up our meager belongings and the new things that Mr. Reeves had added. Sometimes I helped, but mostly I just stood and watched.

  And then one day I stood and watched as they drove away in a great huge cart loaded down with everything they owned. My own things, which were pretty few, had already been taken to the Dinsmores’, and Dr. Dinsmore had offered to come with me to see them off, but I declined. I guess I thought standing there watching them go was something I had to do alone. And I did it, with a great knot in my stomach.

  We made a great fuss, of course, about how soon we would see each other again, and Mama hugged me a lot. But she coughed a lot, too, and I knew we would not see each other again. With all my mixed-up feelings about her, it made me sad, and I sat down in the dirt outside that tacky little shack and had a good cry. Then I said goodbye to the shack and all that it stood for forever and walked on to the Dinsmores’.

  Life rolled along. I went to school, watched little Sara, who grew more charming by the day, and read everything I could. I went through the American transcendentalists, the English essayists, all in great bunches, even though I didn’t understand much of what I read. Dr. Dinsmore took to guiding my reading program, though always gently.

  “If you’re reading Thoreau, you ought to read some Emerson next,” he’d say, explaining the connection to me. I followed his directions carefully.

  Things between the Dinsmores didn’t get any better. In fact, Mrs. Dinsmore seemed to get worse. A thin, somber woman, she grew daily more withdrawn and unhappy, not that she ever was unpleasant. She appeared to be grateful for my care of little Sara, and lots of days I did think how dull the child’s life would have been if I had gone west, to say nothing of my own life. But still, I wondered how Sara could be so bright and happy in the midst of such an obviously unhappy household. I decided it was Dr. Dinsmore, for somehow he
retained his cheerfulness much, if not all, of the time.

  Now that my family had left, I was no longer quite the outcast with many of the schoolchildren my age, and I would take Sara on long walks through town. It was a relief to be able to walk without being teased and without having to run errands for someone or the other just to earn another nickel. I guess I vowed right then I would never be someone’s servant, and it probably never occurred to me that was my status at the Dinsmores’.

  Mary Jane Canary reminded me of it one day, though. “Look at the little nursemaid,” she taunted from her front yard when I had made the mistake of walking by her house. She was all dressed in fine clothes, and though my wardrobe had improved some thanks to Dr. Dinsmore’s insistence, I still felt the distinction.

  Fixing my eyes straight ahead, I said, “Come on, Sara, ignore the nasty lady.”

  “How dare you call me nasty? You’re the one who’s nasty! Letting your mother go off and leave you to take charity from someone else. And who needs to say more about your mother? Where’s your father?”

  Try as I might to be bigger than such taunts, like Dr. Dinsmore had told me, I had a hard time, and this day I ended up clutching Sara’s hand too tightly and walking her home far too fast for her little short legs, while tears streamed down both our faces.

  Mrs. Dinsmore saw us but never said a word, never offered to comfort either of us. She just turned and walked away. But Dr. Dinsmore found us in the hallway, both of us crying and me trying desperately to wipe away Sara’s tears.

  “Good heavens, what’s the matter with both of you?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered. “I guess I got upset on our walk, and it scared Sara. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “Whatever could upset you that badly?”

  My instinct was to bite my lip, lapse into stony but strong silence and tell him it was nothing. But something overcame that instinct. “Mary Jane Canary,” I said.

  “That spoiled child? What did she do?”

  “She called me a nursemaid, and said I let my mother go off and was taking charity and all kinds of things.” Tears crept down my cheeks again.

  “Are they true?”

  “What?” I stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to think. I had let my mother go off, and I was taking care of Sara, which meant I wasn’t really taking charity. “I guess, but Mary Jane doesn’t understand.”

  “Why should she? What do you care if she does?”

  “Well,” I said defensively, “it’s my pride . . .”

  “Are you proud of yourself, of what you’re doing?”

  “Sure. I’m doing better in school than ever, and I’m reading my way through that library, and—”

  “And you’re beginning to learn about my medicines, and you’re taking good care of Sara, who is very happy these days. So you’ve got a lot to be proud of. But it doesn’t matter if Mary Jane knows that or not.” Once again, he towered over me, even when I raised up from my knees, and I was aware of his strength and authority.

  “It’s not that . . .” I remember being thoroughly confused.

  “Think about it a little, Mattie. I know it’s unpleasant to have to listen to her, but at least you don’t have to go with your mother while Mary Jane models dresses anymore.” He got sort of a wry grin on his face. “And we all have unpleasant people to deal with. Come on, I need help measuring out some medicines . . . Sara, you can come, too.”

  Laughing a little now, he picked Sara up with one arm and draped the other around my shoulders.

  Mrs. Dinsmore seemed to get worse every day. I couldn’t understand why someone like her, who had so much, could be so sad and solemn when Mama, who had nothing but trouble, had managed to smile at least half the time and never, ever just sat and stared like Mrs. Dinsmore did.

  I guess I had no conception of how bad she really was even though I saw Dr. Dinsmore daily grow more tired and worried-looking. He still had a smile for Sara and lots of encouragement for me, but I would catch him, sometimes, staring off into space as though lost in thought. And he was careful of Mrs. Dinsmore, as always, but he seemed to spend more time around her, as though he was worried and watching her. One night I guessed maybe he had been worried indeed.

  I was wakened from a sound sleep by an awful screaming, a loud wailing that sent shivers through me and made me want nothing more than to burrow under the covers, pillow over my head, and hide until the noise stopped. After a minute I realized, of course, that I couldn’t do that. I had to take care of Sara.

  She was terrified and clung to me, sobbing, “It’s my mama, it’s my mama.”

  I wanted to say, “Nonsense, Sara, that’s not your mother.” But I knew it was indeed her, and I said nothing but “It will be all right. Your father will take care of her. Maybe she had a bad dream.”

  The screaming probably only lasted two or three minutes, though it seemed like hours, and then it stopped abruptly, as though someone had clamped a strong hand over her mouth. Someone had, I suppose.

  Mrs. Dinsmore did not appear at breakfast the next morning, though the doctor did, looking much the same as usual. When Sara trotted off to play with her dolls, he pushed his chair from the table and talked softly to me.

  “I don’t know, Mattie, that I’ve done you any favor by bringing you here. Things appear to be worse than they were when you were with your mother.”

  “You mean Mrs. Dinsmore?” Filled with curiosity about the night before, I perched on the edge of my chair and forgot the rules against elbows on the table.

  “What else? You’re really too young to have to worry about this, but I guess you’ve worried about other things that were beyond your age.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “Mrs. Dinsmore has a serious mental disorder from which I doubt she will ever recover. She is quiet now because I gave her sedation last night.”

  I nodded sympathetically, but my stomach lurched. Was I going to have to leave after all? Was that what he was working up to?

  “I thought, for several years, that she would improve,” he went on, “and I did the things accepted by medical science to get her better, but nothing helped. She has, ah, a family predisposition to this type of illness.”

  Sara, I thought. Maybe she’ll turn out that way, too. I looked at her, playing happily with her dolls, and couldn’t believe it was possible. Dr. Dinsmore saw me and read my mind. Shaking his head, he said, “It’s possible, but I hope not. Certainly, without your help, Sara would be growing up in the same dismal atmosphere that her mother did, and I think that contributed. But as long as she can see a brighter side of life, I think she’ll be fine.”

  I had never felt that I was too good at seeing the bright side of life, but I guess I was better than that poor woman sleeping upstairs, and I vowed to be bright and cheerful from then on. It was, of course, a vow I couldn’t keep, but I meant it at the time.

  Meantime, I thought Dr. Dinsmore would never get to the point of what was going to happen in the immediate future. He sat calmly in that chair, looking intently at me while I fidgeted, my mind filled with questions. Was I to leave or stay? Would he commit Mrs. Dinsmore? I doubted that, knowing that mental institutions were hellholes for the patients, who were often chained to their beds, fed the barest of diets and generally mistreated. I can’t remember where I had learned that, but every schoolkid in those days had a grim picture of how awful a mental institution was. They still believed that the mentally ill were no better than animals, and they were treated accordingly.

  Dr. Dinsmore did answer one of my unspoken questions. “She wasn’t always this way. I want you to know that. Once she was young and pretty and always happy. I don’t know what happened, really, to make her change gradually, but she surely wasn’t this way when we married. And I guess that’s the reason I can’t institutionalize her. I will keep her at home as long as it’s safe for Sara.”

  He never said anything about safety for him, and I wondered if she had threatened him when she was yelling and screaming.
>
  “Mattie, the whole question is what you should do. Sara and I have no choice. You do. If you can accept and understand, I would like you to stay. Both for your sake and, selfishly, because you’re the closest thing to adult companionship that I have. But if you don’t feel you can live with this new problem—and you can guess what Mary Jane will say about this when it becomes public—I’ll arrange for you to join your family.”

  Maybe it wasn’t realistic, but I never doubted for one minute what my decision would be. “I want to stay,” I said quickly. In retrospect, it was the best choice, but at the time, I made it for all the wrong reasons, among them a growing recognition of how important Dr. Dinsmore himself was in my life.

  I guess I thought Mrs. Dinsmore would go on staring out the window. This was not to be the case. Something had broken loose in the poor woman that night, and from then on, she no longer sat and stared. She paced and fidgeted and raved wildly and was never still a moment. Dr. Dinsmore took to locking her in her room, which he had taken special pains to make safe so she could not hurt herself or anyone else. But Sara and I still heard her each day as we sat at the dining table or read in the parlor. Sometimes she would sing softly, and other times she would moan long and low. It was eerie, and as long as the weather was good, Sara and I were outside as much as we could be.

  If it weren’t for Mrs. Dinsmore, life would have been pretty grand. School was going well, and I liked it. Even better, I liked learning about Dr. Dinsmore’s medicines. Now that he had no one else to talk to except the housekeeper, Mrs. Evans, who wasn’t very good company, he talked to me about his theories on medication, what he thought made the body healthy and why people got sick.

  “That’s the most puzzling thing, Mattie. Why did she” —he nodded his head upstairs— “suddenly change? What body chemistry in her changed to make her snap loose like that? Someday I suppose medicine will know, but it’s a terrible puzzle now.”

  I didn’t understand how body chemistry could have anything to do with Mrs. Dinsmore being, well, crazy, as I called her to myself, but I was willing to believe it was so if Dr. Dinsmore told me so. And I wanted so badly to be intelligent for him, to be worthy of the trust he placed in me by discussing these things with me.