Tisha Page 14

  “You black-assed half-breed sonofabitch,” Mr. Vaughn said. “It seems to me I’ve seen your face around here an awful lot lately.” He was still holding the ball, and suddenly he drew back and threw it. Fred ducked, but he didn’t have to. It went wild.

  Fred looked him straight in the eye. “You go to hell,” he said.

  My brain started working, and I found my tongue. “Mr. Vaughn, I didn’t think anyone would think it was wrong for me to give the kids the afternoon off,” I said. “I’ll be glad to talk about it with the school board if you want me to.”

  That took the wind out of his sails. He gave Fred a contemptuous look just to show he was too puny to bother with, then he went on over to the post office. Fred and I drifted over along with everybody else and I tried to act as if nothing had happened, but I was so upset that the whole time we waited for the pack train I could hardly say a word to anybody. Even if he didn’t like me he had no call to say what he did to me, especially in front of the class and everybody else, and he certainly didn’t have any call to say what he did to Fred.

  I felt a little better as soon as I saw Nancy. She didn’t act too enthusiastic, though. All she gave me was a curt “How do.” She gave even less than that to the people who said hello to her. She just mumbled something and then looked away. I figured she felt strange. As soon as she was settled down, she’d probably be more friendly.

  Inside my quarters, while Nancy put away her things I sat down and read a note from her mother that Mr. Strong had handed to me. Along with a few other things Mrs. Prentiss had to say, she wrote that Nancy was usually sensible, “but keep an eye on her. Don’t let her go off to any of those miners’ cabins by herself. She’s inclined to be lazy and stubborn. You make her toe the mark. I’ve warned her to be obedient and help out all she can. Otherwise you’ll send her home and I’ll whip the daylights out of her. Don’t be afraid to tell her that.” She’d also had second thoughts about her offer to pay me. “I heard you don’t have an outfit,” the note ended. “Since it won’t cost anything for Nancy’s room maybe we can work out something where I send you some grub for her keep.”

  I put the note in the stove, not thinking one thing or the other about it. Once I had a little boy in my class whose father wrote me that the boy was a liar and a thief, and he turned out to be one of my smartest and best pupils. So I knew better than to judge somebody from what somebody else said.

  She didn’t have much with her, just a few pairs of bib overalls and a couple of washed-out old dresses that looked as old-fashioned as the ones in Mr. Strong’s store. After we found a place for everything I told her how much I’d looked forward to having her with me. She didn’t say anything to that. Aside from being so lonely, I went on, the school was taking up so much time that I couldn’t keep up with all the chores. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad,” I said, “if there was running water. I never realized how much water a person used until I started packing it up from the creek—water for washing clothes, for washing yourself, for cooking, washing dishes. That’s all I seem to do all day is pack water and then dump it out.” I started to laugh when I told her about the first bath I took. It was a major undertaking. Besides a five-gallon pot I’d had to borrow from Maggie Carew, the top of the cookstove had been crammed with every pot I owned. But when I poured the water from them into the washtub, even with cramping myself down in it, it came up about five inches. After I was finished I felt as dirty as when I started. On top of that it was another major job to dump all the water out back. “Ever since then I’ve settled mostly for sponge baths.”

  She didn’t find anything funny about that, so I asked her about her schooling. “What grade have you gone through?”

  “Eighth.”

  “Without being able to read?”

  “I can read somewhat.”

  I gave her the nearest book at hand, a fifth-grade reader. Opening it, she studied it for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to read. When she finally did she spat the words out like pits, but she did well enough.

  “You read fine,” I said. “I don’t see why you need me.”

  “I know most of the words,” she answered.

  “That’s what I’m saying. You read pretty well.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I know how to read this book ’cause my ma tutored me with it.”

  “How long ago was that?” “Two years ago.”

  She saw that I still didn’t understand what she was getting at.

  “I can only read,” she said, “if somebody reads it to me first and shows me the words. Don’t you see? My ma read this to me.”

  “But that was two years ago. That’s a long time.”

  “I studied with it for a whole year,” she said. “Try me with another book.”

  I showed her a book of fairy tales. “Have you ever read this?”

  She shook her head. I opened the book to the beginning of a story. She studied the page for almost a minute before she began to read. Later I realized that she had guessed at the first few words. “‘Once … upon a … time …’” She paused before she went on, and what came from her next was gibberish. “… Three … was … a … title … tar …” I looked over her shoulder. “There was a little tailor,” the words read.

  She went on, the rest of it just as senseless, until finally she gave up. “I don’t know what I’m reading,” she said. I had her try again, but it was the same. She even mistook one letter for another—an l for a t, a b for a d. When I questioned her I found out she didn’t know what a consonant or a vowel was, nor had she ever memorized the alphabet. To her a word was just a bunch of letters written down in a certain order. She didn’t know that the letters made up syllables and that each syllable had a sound.

  Now I understood what she meant when she said she could read something only after somebody read it to her first. She was able to memorize the key words, and guess at the rest. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Her teachers had pushed her through to the eighth grade, I guessed, figuring it wouldn’t do any harm and would make her feel good. She couldn’t go any further, though, because in order to get out of the eighth grade she had to pass the territorial examination. And she wasn’t able to read it. After quizzing her for a while I found that she had learned her school work pretty well. She was smart, there wasn’t any doubt about it.

  “We’ll enroll you tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “I don’t want to be enrolled,” she said tightly.

  I had to prod her before she told me the reason: she felt she should have been out of the grades already and couldn’t face the idea of failing again. She became so upset that I agreed not to enroll her even though she would attend classes like the other pupils. At night, I promised her, I’d give her any extra help she might need.

  For the first week I blessed Mr. Strong for advising me to take her. I’d fallen way behind in all my cleaning, washing and ironing, but Nancy pitched in with the chores so willingly that inside of a few days my quarters were spick-and-span. She did most of the cooking too, and even took the job of keeping the fire going. I didn’t know what I’d have done without her, especially when it came to water. The snow that had started on the day she came kept up until it was two feet deep and the creek was running thick with slush ice. Then all of a sudden the temperature dropped to thirty below and the creek froze up. She was one step ahead, though, because she’d already piled snow high alongside the door, and there was our water supply. I didn’t care much for the taste of it. It was flat, until Nancy dumped oatmeal in the barrel, and that improved it.

  “We’ll have to go easy on the water now,” she told me.

  “I thought I was going easy on it before,” I said.

  She said no, I’d have to go even easier. The trick, she showed me, was not to throw any water away until it was thoroughly used—first for personal washing, then for clothes. If necessary it could be used a third time to scrub floors. It didn’t seem very sanitary to me at first, but a
fter packing in snow and ice a few times I stopped worrying about hygiene. She also pointed out to me that Maggie Carew was not only shorting me on each cord of wood she had contracted to supply for the school, but that half of it was green instead of dry. “That’s why the stove smokes so much.”

  After the first week or so problems began to come up between us. I’d told her that before she could learn to read she was going to have to learn how to recognize all her letters, printed and written, and learn the sounds they had. She buckled down at first, memorized the letters in no time, and even started to write simple three-letter words. But when a couple of the older kids saw what she was doing they made fun of her. That ended that. She told me she wasn’t going to work in the classroom any more, at least not on her reading and writing. I let her work in my quarters on those two things, but I wanted her to join the class for discussions, arithmetic, field trips and everything else. She’d sit in class, but she wouldn’t say anything unless I called on her. She was bored. Pretty soon she wasn’t even completing her reading and writing assignments. Either they were done sloppily or not at all. When I asked her what the matter was she said that she didn’t understand why she needed all the drills I was giving her in syllables and sounding out words. She wanted to learn to read and write, and she couldn’t see that she was doing so. I told her that she’d have to start from the beginning. “I know you think you’re not getting anywhere right now, but once you catch on you’ll be reading in no time.”

  It didn’t do any good. She just didn’t seem to be interested in learning the way I could teach her. If I asked her why she hadn’t finished something, she’d say she didn’t understand it, and no amount of explaining could get her to.

  I started to think that maybe she didn’t like me, but she didn’t seem to like anybody else either—especially the oldtimers. They’d been a big help to the class with our project, and had invited us over to their cabins when we went out on our field trips. We learned a lot from them about how they lived in the old days. Mert Atwood even showed us how they used to make butter. He brought over some caribou horns that he’d sawed up into lengths almost a foot long. We put them in a big pot and boiled them for almost three days, then we took them out and let the water cool. After a couple of hours, just as he said it would, a couple of inches of white butter formed at the top. It tasted good, too.

  But Nancy didn’t take to the old-timers. The only person she did like was Joe Temple. One time she went over to his cabin and stayed there for quite a while. I hadn’t even known she’d been there until Uncle Arthur mentioned it to me. I spoke with her about it and asked her not to do it again. She said she wouldn’t, but she was surly about it.

  Mert came over after school one day, and after he’d visited with us for a while he took off his yachtsman’s cap and removed an envelope from it.

  “Got this here letter th’other day,” he said to me, “but I’m shipwrecked if I can find my glasses. Can’t read a thing without ’em. Maybe you wouldn’t mind readin’ it for me.”

  I knew he couldn’t read and didn’t want to admit it, so I told him I’d be glad to. When I was finished Mert thanked me and put the letter back in the envelope.

  Innocently, he asked Nancy how she was coming along with her reading.

  “Hell of a lot better’n you ever did with yours,” she said belligerently.

  Stung by the remark, Mert smiled tolerantly. I tried to make conversation after that, but it didn’t do any good. “Well,” Mert said after a couple of minutes, “time to lift anchor and shove off.”

  “You really hurt that old man’s feelings, Nancy,” I said after he was gone.

  “Well he hurt mine too.”

  “He was only trying to be sociable. He didn’t mean anything.”

  “I didn’t ask him to talk to me, didn’t ask him to come here either.”

  “Nobody asked him. He just came because he’s lonely and he likes to talk with us.”

  “Well let’m be lonely some place else. He’s like all them other old windbags, dirty and smelly and always braggin’ about how they’re gonna get rich some day and the things they’re gonna do when they are. They’re not gonna do any of them things ever. They’re just wastin’ time jawin’ and I’m not about to let’m waste my time.”

  She didn’t like it either when I gave Chuck a bath, acting as if he was just about the lowest thing she ever saw. She didn’t say anything the first time, but the second time she said that we ought to make him haul in the snow himself. “Unless you fancy waitin’ on siwashes,” she said.

  I tried to kid her. “Ah, come on, he’s only a little boy.”

  “You can’t even turn around here without trippin’ over ’im.”

  “He likes it here.”

  “Between him and all them other kids you’d think this was a roadhouse.”

  She didn’t like the idea that the kids were always trooping in and out. Even after school they’d come over sometimes to work on something they hadn’t finished in class or to play in the school room. I didn’t mind it at all, but I could see how it would get on her nerves, so I tried to discourage them from coming into my quarters and get them to stay in the schoolroom instead.

  But things kept going from bad to worse between us. I’d heard about some of the feuds that people who shared cabins sometimes got into and I’d always thought they were funny—like Harry Dowles and his wife moving into separate cabins and never talking to each other. I’d found out that even Uncle Arthur and Mert Atwood had been cabin-mates until one winter when they had an argument. They split everything up evenly and what they couldn’t split they cut in half just for spite. They even cut their stove in half, Ben Norvall had told me, and the two of them nearly froze to death.

  Now I could understand how that could happen. When you lived in close quarters with someone and you weren’t getting along, everything that person did annoyed you. Sometimes it was all you could do to keep your temper. That’s what was happening with Nancy and me. We finally got to the point where she wasn’t even saying good morning unless I said it first.

  A couple of weeks after she arrived Mary Angus came over one Saturday to bring me a pair of moccasins she’d made for me. She brought Chuck and Ethel with her. She didn’t look well at all. Her cheeks were all flushed and there were dark circles under her eyes. I introduced her to Nancy, but Nancy just sat where she was at the kitchen table, sipping some hot cocoa, and hardly even looked up. Mary didn’t want to, but I made her sit down and have some tea while I tried on the moccasins. As soon as she did Nancy got right up and went over to the couch.

  The moccasins were beautiful. They were winter moccasins, with good sturdy moosehide below the ankle and caribou with the fur turned out up to the knee. She’d beaded them with dyed porcupine quills and trimmed the tops with rabbit fur. They fit perfectly too, but after I took a look at the beat-up moccasins on her own feet I didn’t feel so good.

  The three of them didn’t stay long. While they were there, I gave Chuck his favorite—a slice of my “brode,” as he called it, smeared with butter and honey. I gave one to Ethel too.

  As soon as she bit into it Chuck started to bawl her out in Indian. She stopped with her mouth full, looking at him wide-eyed, while he pointed to me. Finally looking up at me she said something like “Oo.” Chuck patted her. “Ver’ good. She not got good manners, Tisha. I teach her say T’ank you.”

  “I’m proud of you, Chuck,” I said. I was too. I’d been teaching him to say thank you when somebody handed him something or did something for him.

  After they all left Nancy said, “You shouldn’ta done that, Teacher.” I’d told her a couple of times she could call me Anne, but she wouldn’t.

  “Done what?” I asked her.

  “Had ’er to the table.”

  “What was wrong with it?”

  “People around here don’t even let siwashes into the house much less sit down with ’em to the table.”

  “Then they ought to be ashamed of th
emselves.”

  She didn’t say anything to that and I was glad she didn’t. I was mad enough so that we’d have had a stem-winder, and things were bad enough between us already.

  We both started to get petty. It was her job to see to it that we always had enough wood and water on hand. But when we ran low on them a couple of times, I had to remind her. After the second time she said it might be a good idea for us to take turns doing it.

  “I’ve been leaving it to you,” I told her, “because I figure you can do it better than I can.” I also figured I was making up for it by tutoring her at night, but I didn’t mention that.

  She didn’t say anything, but after I had to remind her a couple more times I got the hint. Finally we took turns washing the linens, sweeping, doing the dishes and everything else.

  I hadn’t planned it that way at all. I was in the schoolroom almost all day and I’d sometimes be working long after supper planning lessons and activities. I’d thought that Nancy would help me out the way I’d helped out Miss Ivy. But it wasn’t working out that way. I had as much to do as I had before, and besides that I had to put up with someone I liked less every day. When I’d passed through her parents’ roadhouse it was clean as a whistle, and so was Nancy at first. But after a while she was leaving her old dirty clothes hanging on nails or over a chair and didn’t bother to wash them until they smelled as gamey as Ben Norvall’s. If I mentioned it to her she’d put them all in a pile and keep them out of sight, but she didn’t wash them any more often than she did before.

  I mentioned the situation to Mr. Strong one day while we were going over the accounts in his store. “It’s too bad,” he said. “I was hoping that maybe getting away from her family would be of some help to her.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s simply been worked too hard too long, madam. She’s a good girl, but she’s never had a chance. Her mother’s been driving that girl ever since I can remember—made a slave out of her.”

  “If I could just get her to talk …”

  “Can’t get a word out of anyone in that family. All I can tell you is, she hasn’t had it easy. You saw that roadhouse her folks run, the nice way they keep it. Well, they do it by making those kids of theirs hop. Nancy practically raised her two brothers by herself, and when she wasn’t taking care of them she was working the garden or making beds or doing something else—but look, that’s none of your affair. Send her on home if you can’t take it.”