The calendar reads Friday, August 28, 1970, when I start my climb to the end of the world. I head to a place where only one person may want me, leaving a place where only one person will miss me. I’m surprised the warmth of summer fades quickly this high in clouds that spill over mountaintops, so my car windows are rolled up and the heater works overtime. Wind whips through treetops, and I creep around blind curves with rock walls on one side and drop-offs tumbling into loose air on the other. Gone is this morning’s sense of anticipation as my headache tightens. I reach for the bottle of aspirin and swallow two.
On the first patch of level ground, I find the schoolhouse with its rusting roof and unpainted wood. A woman stands in the doorway with her hand raised in flat greeting. I thought Preacher Eli Perkins was to meet me. Just then, the storm unleashes and blots out everything behind a wall of water and I wait, grateful for a reprieve.
I sit in stillness for the first time in a long time, surrounded by boxes of my life. Another hand was raised to me last May, not in greeting, but to put me in my place. I lean my head against the window. Rain pounds around me and obliterates here and takes me back to there.
? ? ?
“You are dismissed, Miss Shaw.”
That verdict had hung in the air of Dr. Virginia Collingwood’s ordered office before I even entered. She added, “There’s no need for debate. No one stands in your corner on this matter.”
I hadn’t said a word, yet she raised a small hand in protest. “I’m not interested in your side of the story…how you have been wronged or your actions misunderstood. Damage has been done, which I must spend precious time undoing, thanks to you.”
Dr. Collingwood held out an envelope. “Here is a recommendation of sorts for your years here.” She didn’t pass it halfway across her expansive desk. She made me reach.
“My words may help you land another post somewhere. In return, you must leave today without further incident. And please, please do not damage our reputation any further or the consequences will be more severe than dismissal.”
Ravenscroft, a century-old boarding school for girls in eastern North Carolina, is conservative and traditional. I am neither. Yet for the ill-fitting years I stayed, a rebel with a friend on the board as buffer, I’d skirted dismissal so often over issues of feminism, liberalism, and our First Amendment rights that I believed I was bulletproof.
I was not.
I stood, interrupting Dr. Collingwood, and walked to the door.
“Miss Shaw! We’re not done.” She raised her cultured voice in surprise.
The fight had gone out of me. “Yes, we are.”
It was easy to put my life in boxes and load them in the deep trunk of my Edsel. I needed to break from this place for many reasons, mostly because I didn’t fit. I never fit. I’m always crossing the line; rhetoric is a tedious adversary. My last rebellion was written across the painted wall of my living room in permanent marker. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. (Thank you, Ms. Sanger.) How many saw it before it was painted over?
I shut the door to this place I had only borrowed, and the catch of the latch was final. The campus was deserted that Saturday evening, my colleagues off at dinners and movies, so I was spared good-byes. I drove away, numb, windows down, magnolias pungent, the only sound the crunching of tires on gravel. I passed brick buildings and empty sports fields and grazing horses. Then the heady pine woods enveloped me.
I saw lights ahead, like a landing strip. I coasted closer and saw students, my girls, standing on each side of the road, holding lit candles illuminating young faces. Folded notes fluttered through my open car windows. They held the wisdom of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, which we shared in secret, sitting barefoot on the floor of my tiny living room, drinking strong coffee by candlelight until the early hours of day.
Last in line is Jen Carter, a senior on my dorm. She held the bonsai tree that had sat on her windowsill for four years. Her grandfather planted its seed a half century before. Jen loved the tree. It was her peace offering tonight, and a farewell gift I had to accept.
I cried.
? ? ?
The storm abates. I pull a canvas field coat from the backseat and slip it on. The woman is again at the door, waiting. She looks like a woman used to waiting, poor dear. Her age is hard to guess. Like these mountains she calls home, her shoulders are worn down.
I open the door and step over a puddle. “Hello. I’m Kate Shaw.”
She screws up her forehead. “You that teacher from down below,” she states.
“Kate. Please call me Kate. And, yes, I am she,” I say automatically, and then bite my tongue. Judgment slides over the woman’s hooded eyes, doubting already my fit for the task. I walk forward with extended hand and she shakes mine limply. She looks up at my height of six feet, two inches and likely questions my inclinations in such a manly frame. I blush when I’m winded or embarrassed. Otherwise, I’m plain as a pikestaff.
When she doesn’t answer, I say, “I thought Preacher Eli Perkins was to meet me.”
“Had him a funeral.”
She doesn’t introduce herself, so I ask, “What’s your name?”
She stares at me, so I repeat, “Your name, please?” and smile, trying to soften her attitude toward me. She looks off to the side and mumbles. I think I hear “Prudence P…” but don’t catch her last name, and don’t ask again. She’s put me in my place with her insolence.
I make small talk as we step inside the schoolroom. “What nasty weather! I feared the wind would blow me off the road and I’d never be found.”
“We’d a looked.”
I count eleven scarred desks sitting apart like lonely islands. A woodstove is in the corner, and a blackboard with a diagonal crack is bolted to the wall. A table for the teacher is center front with an oil lamp. A second lamp is on a window ledge. The glass shades are dirty. There’s not a book. Not a piece of paper. Not a poster.
When it became clear I was taking this job, Rachel had asked hopefully, “Won’t you miss teaching Chaucer and Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf?” I was cavalier, shaking my head. Now, my soul is chilled in this stark space that smells of kerosene and wood ash, with no electric lights or creature comforts against the cold.
“I’m sorry, so sorry you had to wait.” My voice sounds out of place in this odd quiet. “I underestimated the time needed. The road was so steep…”
I stop talking and look at the woman. Her face is blank. I’ve never looked into such a face. The charcoal lids of her eyes are sunken. Her neck is creased with grime, her nails caked to the quick with dirt, her shapeless dress little more than a rag. One shoe is tied with a strip of cloth to keep the sole from flapping. This is poverty the likes of which I’ve never imagined except in the books of Dickens and the Bront? sisters.
“Do you know how many students will come?”
“Nope.” She folds her arms, and I see the face of the enemy, hollow and hard. In the same instant, I realize I am the enemy, a threat in this hard and hollow place where she survives and I have yet to prove myself.
I fumble for the right words and sigh. “I come in peace. I simply hope to help.”
I think her folded arms relax. Or maybe not.
It’s only midafternoon yet night feels close. I’m tired. Tired from the drive. Tired of upheaval, judgment, adjustments.