The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [91]
Mom’s job was teaching remedial reading in an elementary school in Davy, a coal-mining camp twelve miles north of Welch. Since we still had no car, the school’s principal arranged for Mom to get a ride with another teacher, Lucy Jo Rose, who had just graduated from Bluefield State College and was so fat she could barely squeeze behind the steering wheel of her brown Dodge Dart. Lucy Jo, whom the principal had more or less ordered to perform this service, took an instant dislike to Mom. She refused to say much during the trip, instead playing Barbara Mandrell tapes and smoking filter-tip Kools the entire time. As soon as Mom got out of the car, Lucy Jo made a big show of spraying Mom’s seat with Lysol. Mom, for her part, felt that Lucy Jo was woefully uninformed. When Mom mentioned Jackson Pollock once, Lucy Jo said that she had Polish blood and therefore did not appreciate Mom using derogatory names for Polish people.
Mom had the same problems she’d had in Battle Mountain with organizing her paperwork and disciplining her students. At least one morning a week, she’d throw a tantrum and refuse to go to work, and Lori, Brian, and I would have to get her collected and down to the street where Lucy Jo waited with a scowl, blue smoke chugging up out of the Dart’s rusted-through tailpipe.
But at least we had money. While I’d been bringing in a little extra cash babysitting, Brian was cutting other people’s weeds, and Lori had a paper route, it didn’t add up to much. Now Mom got paid about seven hundred dollars a month, and the first time I saw her gray-green paycheck, with its detachable stub and automated signatures, I thought our troubles were over. On paydays, Mom took us kids down to the big bank across from the courthouse to cash the check. After the cashier gave her the money, Mom went into a corner of the bank and stuffed it into a sock she’d safety-pinned to her bra. Then we all scurried around to the power company and the water authority and the landlord, paying off our bills with tens and twenties. The clerks averted their eyes as Mom fished the sock out of her bra, explaining to everyone within earshot that this was her way of making sure she was never pickpocketed.
Mom also bought some electric heaters and a refrigerator on layaway, and we’d go to the appliance store and put down a few dollars every month, figuring they’d be ours by wintertime. Mom always had at least one. “extravagance” on layaway, something we really didn’t need—a tasseled silk throw or a cut crystal vase—because she said the surest way to feel rich was to invest in quality nonessentials. After that, we’d go to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill and stock up on staples such as beans and rice, powdered milk, and canned goods. Mom always bought the dented cans, even if they weren’t marked down, because she said they needed to be loved, too.
At home, we’d empty Mom’s purse onto the sofa bed and count the remaining money. There’d be hundreds of dollars, more than enough to cover our expenses until the end of the month, I thought. But month after month, the money would disappear before the next paycheck arrived, and once more I’d find myself rooting in the garbage at school for food.
Toward the end of one month that fall, Mom announced that we had only one dollar for dinner. That was enough to buy one gallon of Neapolitan ice cream, which she said was not only delicious but had lots of calcium and would be good for our bones. We brought the ice cream home, and Brian pulled apart the carton and cut the block into five even slices. I called dibs on first choice. Mom told us to savor it because we had no money for dinner the next night.
“Mom, what happened to it all?” I asked as we ate our ice-cream slices.
“Gone, gone, gone!” she said. “It’s all gone.”
“But where?” Lori asked.
“I’ve got a houseful of kids and a husband who soaks up booze like a sponge,” Mom said. “Making ends meet is harder than you think.”
It couldn’t be that hard, I thought. Other moms did it. I tried quizzing her. Was she spending the money