The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [71]
We would go along Erie Street, examining the store windows: the five and dime was our favourite. Or we would peer in through the chain-link fence at the primary school, which was for ordinary children – workers’ children – with its cinder playground and its high carved doorways marked Boys and Girls. At recess there was a lot of screaming, and the children were not clean, especially after they’d been fighting or had been pushed down onto the cinders. We were thankful that we didn’t have to attend this school. (Were we indeed thankful? Or, on the other hand, did we feel excluded? Perhaps both.)
We wore hats for these excursions. We had the idea that they were a protection; that they made us, in a way, invisible. A lady never went out without her hat, said Reenie. She also said gloves, but we didn’t always bother with those. Straw hats are what I remember, from that time: not pale straw, a burnt colour. And the damp heat of June, the air drowsy with pollen. The blue glare of the sky. The indolence, the loitering.
How I would like to have them back, those pointless afternoons – the boredom, the aimlessness, the unformed possibilities. And I do have them back, in a way; except now there won’t be much of whatever happens next.
The tutor we had by this time had lasted longer than most. She was a forty-year-old woman with a wardrobe of faded cashmere cardigans that hinted at an earlier, more prosperous existence, and a roll of mouse-hair pinned to the back of her head. Her name was Miss Goreham – Miss Violet Goreham. I nicknamed her Miss Violence behind her back, because I thought it was such an unlikely combination, and after that I could scarcely look at her without giggling. The name stuck, though; I taught it to Laura, and then of course Reenie found out about it. She told us we were naughty to make fun of Miss Goreham in this way; the poor thing had come down in the world and deserved our pity, because she was an old maid. What was that? A woman with no husband. Miss Goreham had been doomed to a life of single blessedness, said Reenie with a trace of contempt.
“But you don’t have a husband either,” said Laura.
“That’s different,” said Reenie. “I never yet saw a man I’d stoop to blow my nose on, but I’ve turned away my share. I’ve had my offers.”
“Maybe Miss Violence has too,” I said, just to be contradictory. I was approaching that age.
“No,” said Reenie, “she hasn’t.”
“How do you know?” said Laura.
“You can tell by the look of her,” said Reenie. “Anyway if she’d had any offer at all, even if the man had three heads and a tail, she’d of grabbed him quick as a snake.”
We got along with Miss Violence because she let us do what we liked. She realized early on that she lacked the forcefulness to control us, and had wisely decided not to bother trying. We took our lessons in the mornings, in the library, which had once been Grandfather Benjamin’s and was now Father’s, and Miss Violence simply gave us the run of it. The shelves were full of heavy leather-backed books with the titles stamped in dim gold, and I doubt that Grandfather Benjamin ever read them: they were only Grandmother Adelia’s idea of what he ought to have read.
I’d pick out books that interested me: A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens; Macaulay’s histories; The Conquest of Mexico and The Conquest of Peru, illustrated. I read poetry, as well, and Miss Violence occasionally made a half-hearted attempt at teaching by having me read it out loud. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure-dome decree. In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row.
“Don’t jog along,” said Miss Violence. “The lines should flow, dear. Pretend you’re a fountain.” Although she herself was lumpy and inelegant, she had high standards of delicacy and a long list of things she wanted us to pretend to be: flowering trees, butterflies, the gentle breezes. Anything but little girls with dirty knees and their fingers up their noses: about matters of personal hygiene she