Up a Road Slowly (2 page)

“Whose little girl are you?” she quavered, and I stood there for a few seconds, numb with fear and saying nothing. Then as I fled down the hall I heard a dreadful little cackle of laughter following me, and I nearly fell headlong as my feet raced down the stairs. It was a long time before the small gray presence was exorcised from the otherwise pleasant rooms of Aunt Cordelia's second floor.

Uncle Haskell lived in a renovated carriage house out back. There were a number of reasons why he preferred the privacy of his own establishment, one of which may have been the desire to save himself the distress of seeing his sister carry the load of responsibility that he had no intention of sharing. He liked drinking in private, too; it was easier to maintain the myth of a cultivated taste for an occasional glass of fine wine or some exotic beverage from a foreign port, since he did not relish the image of himself as a common drunkard. He once told my brother, Chris, and me that the bottles we found on the shelves of his kitchen held rare wines from the sunny vineyards of France, and we were impressed until Chris, who was able to read, pointed out that the labels bore the blunt English words, “Old Crow.” Naturally, said Uncle Haskell. The French are a very obliging people. They placed the English translation of
Le Vieux Corbeau
on bottles destined for America.

He was a handsome man, this uncle who was both an alcoholic and a pathological liar. His face at fifty-five was unlined, and his skin, instead of showing the ravages of alcohol, was youthfully fresh and clear. His blue eyes, large and heavily lashed, were full of innocent good humor, a kind of bland assurance that all the world loved him and believed in him. He had a thick growth of wavy, golden hair which he wore rather longer than did the men who were our neighbors, and he kept it immaculate and shining at all times. He was slender and supple; when he walked it was as if he heard an inner music that delighted him down to his heels.

Uncle Haskell had had reason to be furious with Chris and me once in our very early years, and at that time he had borne himself with a magnanimity that somehow impressed me. We had found in Aunt Cordelia's basement a box containing twelve large bottles of a beautifully colored red-gold liquid bearing the English translation of
Le Vieux Corbeau
, although at that time we were too young to read it. The size and shape of the bottles had suggested bowling pins to me. Chris, to his credit, had said no to the game which I suggested, but after I had kicked a couple of bottles from an inverted washtub onto the concrete floor and we had waded in triumph through pools of richly fragrant liquid and had splashed one another lightly, he could not resist joining me in the demolition of another bottle. By the time we were apprehended, five of Uncle Haskell's bottles lay broken on the basement floor.

Mother had been appalled and chagrined. She apologized stiffly to Uncle Haskell, for she was torn between shame at the destructiveness of her children and a conviction that at least a sizable amount of her brother's whiskey was where it belonged.

Uncle Haskell, leaning gracefully in the doorway, turned a look of mingled pain and amusement upon the two culprits and then placed a comforting arm around Mother's shoulders.

“Don't fret your pretty head for another minute, little Ethel,” he said, knowing well that Father would repay him for his loss. “No doubt we should feel a certain measure of gratitude at being able to contribute to the innocent pleasures of childhood.” He patted her gently and then added, looking me full in the eye, “Next time, let's leash your brats, shall we?”

All that was long ago and far away from the October morning when I first came to live with Aunt Cordelia. The memories came back in little pieces as I walked through the large, high-ceilinged rooms, hurrying through them with only one purpose: to get away from Mrs. Peters and the two children. There was a place I remembered, the closet under the stairs that led from the attic to the second floor. Chris and I had played there once, half afraid, half fascinated by the dimly lighted cavern in which the ceiling followed the line of the descending stairs, becoming so low toward the back that even a young child had not room to sit upright. I found the entrance and hesitated; the place looked grim and forbidding, but for all that, it offered security to a small bewildered animal wanting to lick its wounds in solitude. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled as far back into the musty-smelling shadows as my height would permit. There I rested against a pile of neatly packaged bedding, finding little comfort in loneliness, but preferring it to the company of the other children.

Mrs. Peters discovered me before long and she stood at the door, pleading, cajoling, and finally threatening a little.

“Now, let's be a good girl, Julie; come out and let the sun shine on you for a while. Mrs. Peters won't insist that you play if you don't want to—just come out and get a breath of good fresh air. This place will give our Julie a bad headache.”

But I wouldn't budge, not even when she bribed me with chocolate cake. And when she finally started to crawl into the closet in order to pull me out by force, I screamed in such a way that she must have been frightened. Finally she placed some food at the entrance of the closet and left me for the rest of the morning and early afternoon.

I lay there in the darkness for hour after hour with no clear-cut understanding of what my sorrow was; there was a sense of helplessness as to what was going to happen to me, a sense of bewilderment, and the aching memory of yesterday's white faces, the whispers, and the little girl who said, “You're not going to live here anymore, are you?”

I must have slept at last and when I wakened there were voices outside my hiding place and shadows of long legs, sweeping dresses. After a while they moved away, and only two were left, two whom I recognized by their voices. They were Mrs. Peters and Aunt Cordelia.

“I tried half the morning, Cordelia,” I heard Mrs. Peters saying earnestly, and it struck me that she did, after all, know how to use the word “I.” “I coaxed and begged and once I started in to get her, but my lands, she screamed like a child gone daft. I tell you the truth, I was afraid she might go into a spasm. I hope you don't think I've done wrong.”

Then Aunt Cordelia's voice, low and very calm. “No, Cora, you did right. I am grateful to you for staying with her, very grateful.” She paused and then got down on her knees preparatory to crawling back into the closet toward me. “I'll see to her. You can go fix coffee for the others if you will be so kind.”

I was afraid of Aunt Cordelia Bishop, not that she had ever been unkind, but there was an aloofness about her that had always made her keep a considerable distance between us. Chris liked her, and he was obviously her favorite, a fact that didn't interest me especially, for with me Aunt Cordelia simply didn't count. I had once overheard Father telling someone that “Cordelia and the little one bristle at one another in almost exactly the same manner.” Perhaps we did. I hadn't been aware of it, but on that October afternoon she was the last person in the world I wanted to see crawling toward me in the depths of the dark closet.

When she was near me she spoke the name by which she, alone, called me. I had been baptized “Julie,” but Aunt Cordelia felt that certain feminine names ending in “ie” or “y” indicated a frivolity of which she disapproved. Thus, among her pupils, a small Elsie became “Elsa,” and a Betty had to answer to a stern “Elizabeth.” She had told Mother that “Julie” was simply a sloppy pronunciation of that fine old Roman name which their paternal grandmother had borne. And so Aunt Cordelia called me “Julia.”

“Yes, Aunt Cordelia,” I answered, just a little above a whisper. Mother had seen to it that I was always polite to Aunt Cordelia whether I liked her or not.

She came a little nearer to me, and leaning forward, put her arms around me and drew me to her lap. My head was against her cheek, and when I sobbed, I could feel the trembling of Aunt Cordelia's body, and I knew that her face was wet with tears as mine was.

That was the one time I have ever known her to cry, and it was the first time I remember her holding me in her arms. We sat in the dark closet together for a long time; then when there were no more tears left, we crawled out and began our decade together.

 

 

 

T
o be suddenly catapulted into a new way of life at seven is very hard. I envied Laura; she, at least, had our old home, her own rose-and-cream-colored room, the closets full of Mother's dresses. She had Father, too, and the good smell of his cigar in his study; she ate her meals in the same old dining room with him, went to school with the young people she had always known. I thought that life was much kinder to Laura than to Christopher and me.

What I didn't realize was that at seventeen, Laura did not have the adaptability, the readiness to forget, that Christopher and I had at seven and nine. We thought of Mother often in the early days of our new life; sometimes we cried when we were homesick for times that were gone, for the old sense of security within our family. But the days slipped by and the memory of Mother grew fainter, the rooms of the old house that had once been awesome and fearful became familiar and pleasant; school had its compensations, Uncle Haskell was a huge joke, and Aunt Cordelia was a challenge.

Aunt Cordelia was our teacher as well as our guardian. At the small white schoolhouse where she had taught since she was a young girl, she was
only
our teacher; she gave no sign of knowing us any better than the other children. We called her “Miss Cordelia” as the others did, and when she stood behind her desk, slender and erect in her plain tailored suit with her rich brown and gray hair coiled in braids about her head, we looked at her with the proper respect she expected of us. She demanded obedience, but she was not a grim teacher; if we read a gay story that brought laughter to us, we could count on Aunt Cordelia's appreciation too. She read aloud to us on Friday afternoons, and she read beautifully; I came very close to loving Aunt Cordelia during those long afternoons when I rested my arms upon the desk in front of me and became acquainted with Jim Hawkins and Huck Finn, with little David and Goliath, with Robinson Crusoe on his island, and with the foolish gods and their kinfolk somewhere above the clouds on Mount Olympus. She could be very stern about some misdemeanor in the classroom, but when her point had been made, she seemed to forget the matter entirely and became a pleasant, forgiving friend. Sometimes it was a gambling matter to predict Aunt Cordelia's reactions.

 

 

 

Ordinarily, Chris and I walked the mile and a half to school with our aunt, shoulders pushed well back, every breath employing the use of our diaphragms, our minds fixed, at Aunt Cordelia's suggestion, on the beauty of Nature and the glory of the firmament. On especially inclement mornings Aunt Cordelia would drive her precious car, which was almost as shining and beautiful as it had been ten years earlier. We loved driving to school in style, but our pleasure soon became dimmed a little by the fact that we knew we must spend an hour or so that evening in washing and polishing the car before it was put away for Sunday and holiday driving.

Aunt Cordelia didn't really have to teach for a livelihood; the income from the farm was sufficient for her needs, and the modest salary she received for each month of the school year was not the incentive that brought her back to her desk year after year. Her reason for teaching was actually the belief that no one else would do the work quite so well, would understand the backgrounds of these children whose parents she had taught when she was young. There was never a doubt in Aunt Cordelia's mind but that
her
teaching was the best to be had, and she would have felt that she was denying something beyond price to the handful of country children who sat in her classroom, if she allowed a younger or a less dedicated woman to take over.

And so she went back year after year, teaching from nine until four o'clock, then sweeping and dusting the room after school, carrying in great buckets of coal to bank the fire for the night, arriving at school an hour early on Monday mornings during the winter months in order to get the fire started and the room warm before the children arrived.

Twice a year, in the fall and again in spring, we got a half holiday during which time we helped Aunt Cordelia wash and polish the windows, scrub the floor, wash and wax the desks. By the time Danny Trevort and Chris were ten, they had, of their own accord, taken over the task of carrying in the coal of an evening. Often the three of us stayed after school and did the sweeping and dusting for her, I with a big apron protecting my school dress and one of Aunt Cordelia's round dust caps protecting my hair. She never failed to thank us for our help, and now and then, as a special treat, Danny would be asked to spend the evening with us and there would be a weiner roast or a fried chicken dinner in payment for our janitorial services.

Aunt Cordelia did pretty well at treating all her pupils with the same impersonal detachment, but sometimes she was hard put to hide a particular warmth which she felt toward both Danny Trevort and my brother, Chris. They were both rosy, smooth-cheeked little boys, mischievous at times, but frank and honest, sharing a respect for Aunt Cordelia which I did not always feel. Sometimes at night, when Chris was bent over his homework, Aunt Cordelia would let her hand rest for a second on his head and when he looked up, they would smile at one another. I felt very alone and lost when they did that; sometimes I felt very angry too. As for Danny, he was the one child in school whom Aunt Cordelia addressed by his diminutive name. It is true that he had been baptized “Daniel,” and Aunt Cordelia had as little patience with pet names as she had for most feminine names ending in “ie” or “y”; still, for some unaccountable reason she broke with her principles in his case: he was always “Danny” Trevort.