Somehow

SOMEHOW, IN A TIME OF TROUBLE

   A heavy snow had fallen for that early in the year. The milk had frozen and cracked the bottles on the back stoop. Soot had already settled on the sills when we got up. The snowflakes that I had seen drifting like lullabies during the night seemed by eight o'clock, when my brother and I set out for school, to have caught the news of wartime. They had piled up grey and lumpy, great newspaper wads thrown across each lawn.
   I walked with my older brother to school and I waited for him after school. I had to wait in the cold an hour and a half or walk home six blocks by myself. The choice was mine. I never gave it a second though. I waited. My brother was often taunted by a group of boys from his class that walked ahead of us. To have a tag-a-long little sister was considered unmanly. I could have spared him this abuse but when I mentioned that maybe he'd be better off without me, he said, "Aw, they're just jealous."
   We took our time on the way home, counting maples and looking for cardinals, but we didn't downright dawdle because we had to be back at 4:15 for Jack Armstrong. Also, my mother was alone and she was afraid of kidnappers. I figured when I saw the relief on her face that she was afraid someone would kidnap her. To be afraid for us was illogical as I was in the care of my brother, which was like saying I was in the care of my father. But since my father was away I didn't feel I really knew him; my brother's care seemed titanic in comparison to any father's.
   My brother was an unlikely looking hero but my hero, nevertheless. He was skeleton skinny, short, with dark brown hair that often looked more black than brown; it curled with Irish abandon and grew all over the place. His eyes were so dark I wasn't sure he had pupils as ordinary people should. He had too many teeth which, however, were evenly lined in a large mouth. During the winter, his skin was pale, never ruddy; he never blushed the way I did. Altogether, in winter, he had a ghostly appearance; he was a study in black and white like the woodcuts in our book of Pilgrim's Progress. His teachers remarked that he was meticulous, compulsive, industrious, delightfully well-mannered and a genius. I would have preferred to call him nice but genius was great, too.
   I liked having a genius around the house. It's handy not to have to know anything. Also, people outside the family assumed that because I was quiet and my brother's sister that I was a genius, too.
Being supposed a genius made up for too many teeth not evenly lined in a large mouth with straight-as-a-plank hair. I watched my reputation carefully by declining to speak and practising my handwriting. Kindergartners were supposed to only be able to print. I thought, though, if I could skip learning to print, I could save a lot of time. I was afraid if I went about printing at my customary pace that I would be so far behind by the second grade, I would have nothing but hours of homework. I would miss the Lone Ranger. I had extravagant long range plans which, among other things, definitely included the Lone Ranger.
   We rented part of Mrs. Elvira Hardy's house. The front porch had been boarded up to make a bedroom that led into the kitchen. Mrs. Hardy ate one meal a day at her Association Hall so she had no use for a kitchen but she needed the three bedrooms for her historical records. To use the bathroom we had to go out our back door, tear around to her front door and then upstairs. We had to be finished by the time she came home at 7:30. No getting up in the night. There was room on our porch-bedroom for a double bed and the radio. My mother was very cheerful about it saying that this was just all temporary. But actually, we liked it a lot. My mother had previously had servants when we lived in Brazil so it was quite a help to her that there was not too much to clean. She was able to bake biscuits, from an old family recipe, that were tasteless and hard. My mother had grown up on a farm in Indian Territory where the chores were suited to the child and she had never done anything but pick walnuts. My brother had learned to concoct spaghetti, though; we were well off. We ate early, not the usual nine o'clock we had been accustomed to, because of the possibility of Mrs. Hardy stopping in. Godliness was somehow related to leanness and starvation in her mind. Seeing us dipping biscuits into the sprawling spaghetti would have brought on a scathing sermon.
   We, also, after she came home, got under the covers to talk. We knew she'd eavesdrop and my brother was hopelessly subversive. Although he was a patriot and kept track of the campaigns on a huge map, he had outlandish notions of the future. He had discovered a book from out of the orient that extolled the virtues of pacifism. He said desperately that the war must be won but in our own private lives we were sworn to non-violence. When I say "we" I mean "me." My mother wouldn't hear of it. She thought we'd all go to jail. There was no way to contact my dad if we went to jail because he was at a top secret location in the Atlantic. One day, though, he sent us a clipping from Time magazine that told all about a top secret operation in the Atlantic, so he said we might as well write. My mother didn't care about writing but it made her a little more open minded about going to jail.
   My brother explained and explained at me how we were to resist should an incident come up. I didn't comment. As far as I was concerned it was a lot of malarkey. I was the smallest in my class. The teacher called me Concertina because, first of all, when the roll was called, I replied, "Present, Mrs. Lippincott," as though I were singing Mairzy Doats and Doesy Doats, and secondly because I was so tiny. I really wouldn't have had a moral choice in a confrontation but I was fascinated by his theories:
   "What happened to Jesus after He was in the Temple" he asked me. I shrugged. "How come no Bar Mitzvah? How come if He was an apprentice to Joseph He never even showed off with one little boat? He had to borrow. Didn't He take any pride in the work He'd been at for 18 years?" There were endless questions along the same line. And finally he popped the answer. "I'll tell you what happened. Joseph couldn't go through with this crazy idea of Mary's and he had Jesus kidnapped by Mongols. Jesus spent 18 years in China, that's what He did. But He couldn't tell anybody about it or they wouldn't listen to what He had to say. He had to be 'just-plain-folks' from Nazareth. And what did He say?"
   Oh golly, I thought. Am I supposed to be able to answer that? I was not up on these things.
   "I'll tell you what he said," my brother interrupted. "It's all here in Chinese. Love. Charity. And no hitting."
   He talked on this way until it was time for Inner Sanctum during which I remained under the covers. Lights out would come swiftly with thoughts in my mind of where we would all end up. My mother, in her place in the middle of the bed would sing dully, "Does you want the stars to play with or the moon to run away with...in your mammy's arms a creepin' soon you will be sleepin'" and would be the first one asleep.
   The late November snow staged the scene for finding out what this no hitting entailed.
   When I go out of school the snow seemed camel high. I waited on the steps imagining a ride to Jack Frost's glass palace. My brother was among the last to come from class. The six boys were ahead, throwing snowballs. I am convinced that I was not intended as a target but it all happened so quickly that everyone assumed instantly that it was an intentional blow, a challenge. One of the snowballs hit me in the eye with full force. I did not cry out although the pain was fierce because I was so scared. I saw the look of rage on my brother's face. Fighting six heavy opponents was going to get us massacred. Resisting was going to accomplish the same thing. I saw the grisly end coming as the boys surged toward us like a glacier turned into a flash flood. They couldn't have been more than four feet away when suddenly my brother flung his arms, scattering his books across a snow bank. He began shouting in a torrent of passion, "Holy Mother! Queen of the Angels! Strike down with thy divine touch the souls of mine enemies! Michael, King of all Glory! Cut away the eyes of these abominations you see before you and roll them to the gates of everlasting Hell. Spit our their hearts from your mercy and twist their veins of ice into a crown..." Throughout, he was spinning, rolling, flailing about in an on the snowbank, the wildest creature I had ever imagined. He looked like a character in a sped-up silent movie making angels in the snow. I wanted to laugh at this black and white extravaganza but the accompanying sound was terrifying, unearthly and came out in such a rush that I was paralyzed with fear. The boys watched a full minute and then took off like the Devil was after them.
   My brother and I sat in the snow awhile not saying anything. What would we have done if his attack hadn't worked? I never after had to find out.
   However, the lesson came in handy on a more minor scale when my son Erik was about four. I was saddled with a new neighbor's boy. The boy was a brat, a whiner, a temper-tantrum prone, unimaginative poor excuse for a human being. I did what I could but was getting nowhere much and the influence on Erik was devastating. My joy of a boy, my wild-haired Irishman, famed for riddles and long distance rock climbing was turning into a brat, a whiner, a temper-tantrum prone, unimaginative excuse for a human being.
   One afternoon, I was sitting in the bedroom which functions much like the old porch-bedroom only it manages to contain a rocker, a TV and a table where we have our spaghetti, in the same amount of space. I had had enough of both the boys. I eyed the bed. It is not a regular bed with a headboard, springs, slats and such refinements; it is two double mattresses on top of each other, very fine for jumping on. Usually it has eight or so bed pillows in differing cases, unarranged, which are not for having fights because someone might break one of my long cherished souvenirs. The pillows are for getting comfied-in and for constructing secret caves. The bed is about four feet from the rocker and had at that time a white spread; it looked very like a snowbank.
   With a speed I've never been know to have, I leaped onto the bed. I set myself like Joan of Arc on bent knee and with my "sword" swiped at the pillows and shouted, "Queen of the Angels! Hear my supplication! Spill milk over the heads of mine enemies and fling their teddies to the far corners of the earth! Take away this burden and spread your smile of glory over all! And then I cracked up laughing looking at those two faces. It worked. I only did it once but it was as though I had the power of the evil eye. I never needed it again.

   My brother came recently to see me after a long absence. He didn't recall his theories, the confrontation, Jack Armstrong, or even being a genius. He remembered our Saturday rides on the elevated when we went to the city, walked from one end of Grand Central to the other and then got back on. I had forgotten.
   It seems we pluck from our memories the moments that we need. And at that critical hour, when Erik was about four, with all flanks moving in on me, I needed a snowbank and a peace plan.