Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs (15 page)

To report to the principal, I had to walk in on a class of thirty-five studying sixth graders, up to her oversized teacher’s
desk, and still be able to talk.

She was expecting me. She told me she had read my poem.

I felt more confident; I was going to get more praise.

She told me my poem was very good.

I thanked her demurely.

She asked me if there were anything about my poem I would like to tell her.

I had scribbled that poem off in the last five minutes of class without giving it two thoughts; I would have been lucky to
have been able to tell her what was in it, much less to share any in-depth thoughts about it.

She said, “This poem is awfully good for a fourth grader, don’t you think?”

I said, “What?”

She said, “Are you sure you didn’t just read this somewhere, Cheryl?”

I had not yet made the connection between poetry and Mother Goose rhymes—I had never intentionally read a poem in my life.
On the other hand, I had just scribbled that work of art off in the last five minutes of class—in my fourth-grade heart, I
had no way of knowing where the inspiration had come from and I did not, at the time, fully understand her question. I answered,
“No,” but without the same self-assurance I had had when the conversation started.

She said, “Because I think you might have read this poem somewhere before, and then turned it in in class, not realizing that
is stealing.”

I stood there, in front of thirty-five allegedly studying sixth graders, and I could not think of a word to say.

It had never occurred to me that there might be a penalty for being too good at something.

It had never occurred to me to steal a poem.

She told me that if I promised her I had written that poem by myself, she would take my word for it.

I promised her. I knew it was a trick, one of those adult things, and I knew she didn’t believe me, but hell would have frozen
over before I would have let her know what I knew.

I went back to my fourth-grade class utterly crushed. I was convinced I had done something terribly wrong, but I could not
isolate exactly what. All I truly understood from my conversation with the principal was that she did not believe that I was
good enough. Single-handedly in a ten-minute conversation she had erased all of the confidence and self-assurance my teacher
had spent the school year trying to help me build.

I went home and told my mother that the principal thought I had read my poem somewhere.

I understand all hell broke loose shortly after that.

My mother had no tolerance for thieves and even less for people who abused their authority, but God save the authority figure
who unjustly accused one of HER children of stealing.

I understand an in-person discussion was held.

I was not invited.

It must have been an interesting discussion, however, because after it took place the principal was a stickler for discipline
for every student in her school but one. Had I been just a little bit sharper or a little less bent on winning every adult’s
approval, I might have made that woman’s life miserable for a good two years. She went out of her way to make mine uneventful.

My teacher had had no idea why our principal had wanted to see me and she told me personally that she would never have sent
me if she had known. She took great pains to explain to me that the principal had been wrong and had behaved badly.

I was groomed for most of my educational life to become a teacher. It was, for the women who taught me, a safe, respectable
way for a woman to make a living. As we boomer women were told over and over again, before the statistics finally made themselves
felt, we could always count on nursing or teaching to support ourselves. I assumed I would be a teacher myself for a long
time, but when it came down to taking those niggling education classes that were supposed to earn my bread and butter, I sat
down and I had a long private chat with myself. I isolated a few facts I had been ignoring: (1) I didn’t like children when
I was one. I’m not ready to sell them into slavery to pay off my taxes, and I do like the occasional bright child, but as
a group—they are not my favorites. (2) I don’t really like teaching. I like having knowledge; I like showing off my knowledge;
I even like sharing my knowledge; I do not have that selfless desire to see small minds grow. (3) Not a single soul who knows
me has ever admired me for my patience.

I am forty-eight years old. Whenever I have written something I am particularly proud of, and I have shared it with a few
friends who have admired it, and I have milked everyone around me for as much praise as they can possibly give, and someone
less familiar reads it and that person says—as if surprised—
You know—this is really good
… I can still see those thirty-five sixth graders pretending to read.

I only had one teacher who truly did not understand children and I only had her for less than fifteen minutes. I know what
a difference a good teacher can make.

A
BOUT A YEAR AGO
my good truck Hopalong and I were cruising slowly along the gravel road that runs behind Southern Michigan Prison, hunting
for deer, when I espied, in the road ahead of me, an escaped inmate. The inmate looked at me and slowly chewed whatever it
is inmates chew. I looked at the inmate. He was way too big to be anyone I wanted to deal with, so I drove away immediately
to the nearest State Police post (located conveniently right next to the prison) and reported that steer #43 had jumped the
fence. He was now standing on the edge of the road ruminating about his newfound freedom. At the rate he was fleeing, I reported,
they would have three or four hours to run out and catch him before he crossed the road. The officer thanked me for being
a good citizen, showed me a map so I could pinpoint the scene of the crime, and said they would send someone out. I avoided
the area for several days just to be on the safe side—I’ve met hostile Angus before.

My life has been punctuated by testy relationships with cattle.

In fact, I have not done well with anything sporting cloven hooves. When I was very, very small, my parents employed a twelve-foot
goat to torment me. Her name was Suzy and she lived in the Suzy House, which, before Suzy, had been a small milk house attached
to the barn in our back yard. When Suzy moved in she spent a great deal of her time creating small brown beads, which she
used to decorate her new home. I could not have been much more than three or four when Suzy lived with us, so bits and pieces
of my memories are missing—most notably, how I repeatedly came so close to an animal I hated so passionately—but I spent much
of my early youth pinned to the ground in the back yard under my parents’ goat while she stood on the straps of my bibs and
ate my hair. She was big and ugly and she smelled bad. Eventually she ate all of the grass in her pen and my father began
chaining her to a cement block, which she dutifully dragged all over the neighborhood until one night he came home and found
her standing on the roof of his car (I don’t remember, offhand, where the block was) and she mysteriously disappeared.

My middle sister, the UnWee, is a woman of firm and determined opinions. A few years ago she bought a new house and while
I was searching for a housewarming present I asked her what she needed or would like. She said, “Anything but a cow.” I admired
her resolve, but assured her I rarely present urban dwellers with livestock as housewarming gifts. She was unmoved. She came
to the city to get away from cows, she assured me; she did not want any cows in her back yard. She did not want any cows in
her life. (This is probably why she moved to Old Dairy Farm Road.) She did not want any cows on her refrigerator, or her cookie
jar, or her dish towels. Any likeness of a cow, the UnWee told me, would be unwelcome in her home. She plans to live her life
in a cow-free environment. Reassured, I took her out for a steak.

The UnWee has reason to be bitter: she was forced to quit school in kindergarten during The Great Cow War. Our mother was
summoned to the school and spoken to by the teacher because the UnWee had rolled up her nap blanket and gone to wait for the
bus. The UnWee informed our mother that the teacher had told the entire class that ONLY BULLS HAVE HORNS. The UnWee, who had
only recently been treated to the sight of thirty (female) cows staggering around in a bloody daze because they had been de-horned,
knew her teacher was too dumb to teach anything the UnWee cared to learn. It took some persuasion from our mother to convince
her that knowledge extends beyond basic farm lore and that perhaps even city folk know things five-year-olds do not.

I (the Least Wee), the UnWee and the Wee One (and two smaller brothers we never bother to count) all lived in a farmhouse
with no farm. Someone had dug it up and carried it away as gravel so rather than being surrounded by farmland we were surrounded
by a huge hole in the ground, which included two big ponds. When we were very young, there was a huge barn at the back of
our lot and it was to this barn that the Suzy House was attached. Having abandoned his profession as a goatherder, our father
briefly penned in a few calves around the barn, had his picture taken with them and then apparently sold them. My father never
wanted to be a farmer. He had grown up on a small dairy farm; his life had been dictated from five in the morning until whenever
he finished at night, seven days a week, for twenty years, by the milking schedule of a herd of ungrateful Guernseys, and
he was done. He fought briefly with the farming gene, first with Suzy, then with the calves, and I think he was relieved when
our landlord came over one day and towed away the barn. The barn, as I remember it, was huge, a haymow in the middle, with
milking stanchions and the milk house at one end, and a few animal pens on the other. One day a group of men came, shored
up the beams, picked up the whole barn, set it on a frame with wheels, and drove away with it. I can still see that barn moving
slowly down the road, the rural answer to mobile homes.

My father’s parents were dairy farmers, my mother’s parents did a variety of things—my grandfather was a retired railroadman—but,
having survived the Great Depression, they maintained a garden, a barn, several fields and two cows. When the economy fell
apart again, the banks crashed and all of the rich people killed themselves, my grandparents would manage, once again, to
survive. This was my grandmother’s explanation of why she kept two cows she never seemed to like, and for years I believed
everyone kept cows as insurance against the next Great Depression, which could happen anytime the Democrats were elected.
I felt much safer when, as a child, I was given a grocery sack full of baby ducks, because I knew I was at least six ducks
away from starvation and suicide myself. I asked my mother why we didn’t keep two cows in case Democrats were elected and
the Great Depression came back and my mother muttered words she told ME never to use.

My mother’s parents’ two cows were a Holstein and a Guernsey. For city folk, that is a big black-and-white cow and a big red-and-white
cow. Both give milk. As I recall, the Holstein was so large she could barely make it through the barn door, which apparently
worried her too, because she always did it at a dead run. I avoided her. Particularly, I avoided being in the same barn doorway
with her. I believe her name was “Petunia.” The Guernsey was named “Junie.” Petunia annoyed my grandmother at great length
because she would only eat the grass on the far side of the fence, and, being a big cow, she did this by simply leaning against
the fence until it gave up and let her over. She preferred to effect these escapes on or near the railroad tracks that ran
along the edge of my grandparents’ property; because my grandfather had worked for the railroad, this posed a particularly
strong sense of responsibility for them. I don’t believe Petunia ever actually attacked a train, but she certainly kept my
grandmother alert and fit.

I never felt entirely safe at my grandparents’ farm. My father’s parents kept about thirty Guernseys. Guernseys are not small
cows and they don’t get any smaller when there are thirty of them. When my sisters and I spent the night with my grandparents,
we would be sent down the lane in the morning to fetch the cows. This is much like sending mice to find a flock of eagles.
The cows would be standing around the woods at the end of the lane, waiting for small children to trample, and when we appeared
they would lower their heads, study us intently, turn to each other, and give the signal: “MOOOOOooo.” I would then turn and
run like the wind for the barn with thirty cows galloping along behind me. Among my fondest childhood memories this rates
right up next to my aunt’s favorite game, called, “No, YOU test the electric fence …” My aunt was five years older than I
was, and she believed quite firmly that I was a useless pain in her backside—her response to that challenge was to electrocute
me.

When we got the cows up to the barn, they each had a specific stanchion they plodded to be milked. Occasionally brief territorial
battles would break out over whose stanchion was whose, which would cause my grandfather to snarl, “Hey,” and slap his cows
with a pitchfork. My sisters and I never argued in front of him. The cows would then be locked by the neck into their stanchions
where they ate and were milked at the same time. My grandfather’s cows never appeared to truly enjoy being milked. Periodically
they would kick at the milking machines, or jerk around as if trying to pull their udders free, and every once in a while
they would let a hind foot fly back in search of small children. Their favorite amusement, however, was to wait until someone
ordered a small child to deliver something at the far end of the barn, load their tails up with used cowfeed and then WHAP
the child in the face with it as they sidled by. Cow tails are made of hairs of about the consistency of fishline and when
delivered with just the right touch they sting like mad. This is probably why flies don’t like them.