T he next time I saw May Elizabeth Hayworth was on the first day of school that fall. I liked school and I was always a good student. I even enjoyed the long walk to Riverside Elementary, crossing the bridge, hiking through the tiny downtown district and up the hill to the school. The modern one-story building had been constructed after the war to accommodate the baby boom, and it had a long central hallway and huge picture windows in each classroom that overlooked the grassy school grounds and play yards. I loved the way the halls smelled on the first day, like fresh paint and disinfectant. The linoleum floors were slippery-shiny, the desks freshly sanded and clean. They never stayed that way for very long.
After taking care of my siblings all summer, I was glad to be out of the house and away from them—although I did have to hold Poke’s hand and walk him to his kindergarten classroom that fall. He walked agonizingly slow, too, looking all around at everything as if he’d just hatched from an egg that morning and had never seen the world before. His arms must have stretched two inches that first day from me pulling on them as I tugged him along. When we finally arrived, I pushed him through the door of the kindergarten room, then fled so I wouldn’t have to watch Poke destroy the place.
My fourth-grade classroom was two-thirds of the way down the hall, and the handful of kids who had arrived before me were milling around, looking things over. I found a desk with my name taped to it—Kathleen G.—and slid into the seat, swiveling it back and forth a few times and opening and closing the hinged desktop to try it out. The lid squeaked. I liked the scary, haunted house sound of it so I did it a few more times. Then May Elizabeth Hayworth sailed into the room.
Even at the tender age of nine, she had already perfected the art of making a grand entrance. She waved her hand like Mamie Eisenhower and called out, “Hello-oo, I’m here-ere,” as if we had been holding our breath, waiting for her to arrive. You would have thought she was Elvis Presley the way the other girls gathered around her. May and I had never been in the same class before, but the rest of the kids already knew that if a Hayworth was your classmate, you could expect a small truckload of treats at all the class parties. The Hayworths were the richest family in town. May’s brother, Ron, who was two years older than May, ruled the playground the way Jimmy Hoffa ruled the Teamsters.
“So this is my room!” May said breathlessly. Her blond curls bounced as she looked all around. “I was hoping I’d be in Miss Powell’s room across the hall. She’s young and pretty and does the funnest things in her class. Oh, well. I’ll just have to make the best of it, I guess.”
She was flying high, talking nonstop, commanding attention. The other girls, who had been laughing and talking before May arrived, fell silent in awe. The boys practically bowed down to her. I was watching her performance from a distance, content to be a silent bystander, when, to my horror, May Elizabeth Hayworth suddenly singled me out.
“I know you,” she said, pointing. “You’re the girl we gave all our old clothes to, aren’t you?”
I ducked my head inside my desk like a turtle trying to crawl inside its shell, clinging to the forlorn hope that no one had heard her. May walked closer, and I unconsciously curled my legs beneath the seat in an attempt to appear smaller—maybe even to disappear. No such luck.
“That dress used to be mine,” she announced to the class. “I didn’t want it anymore because it’s ugly and I hate the color green. The knee socks used to be mine, too.”
I felt my cheeks turn hot with embarrassment and anger. Each year since I’d started kindergarten, every kid in Riverside except me had arrived for the first day of school in a new outfit. This fall I finally had new clothes to wear—well, they were almost new—and that loudmouth May Elizabeth had to go and ruin everything. Nobody would have known that my dress was secondhand if she had kept her stupid mouth shut. Why did she have to go and spoil it?
“You can have this dress, too, when I’m tired of it,” she said, pinching the fabric between two fingers, then flinging it away like Uncle Leonard flicking ash off his cigar.
I gritted my teeth, wishing she would move to China—or at least transfer to “fun” Miss Powell’s class. But no, May found the desk with her name on it and plopped her plump bottom down in the seat right beside me. I would have crawled inside my desk and closed the lid, but I was afraid I would get stuck. It would only add to my humiliation if the Riverside Volunteer Fire Department had to be summoned to pry me out.
“Want to see my new school supplies?” May asked the throng of worshipers who had assembled around her. I glanced over as she opened a beautiful red-plaid schoolbag with leather trim and brass buckles. It was jammed full of new things: scissors, gum erasers, brightly colored numbertwo pencils, a flowered pencil case with a zipper, ruler, protractor and compass set, and a brand new box of crayons—the kind that came in sixty-four colors and had a crayon sharpener on the side. I loved to color, but I always had to use the school’s crayons—dirty, broken bits of wax with the paper all torn off. They made my fingers feel grubby after I’d used them.
I watched May arrange her arsenal of supplies, noticing that her desktop opened silently, and I had to turn away as my cheeks turned from pink to green with envy. I lifted my own desktop, but all the fun had gone out of the squeak; it sounded old and broken to me now. I held it open with my head and quickly shoved my “new” pencil case—one of Uncle Leonard’s used cigar boxes—deep inside where no one could see it.
Then our teacher marched through the door. “Good morning,” she announced in her husky, smoker’s voice. “I’m Mrs. Wayne.” She was so tall and massive that generations of students before me had speculated that she was John Wayne’s twin sister. She was certainly built like him. Older, wiser kids like Ron Hayworth whispered that she had begun life as the Duke’s twin brother but had gone to Scandinavia for a sex-change operation like Christine Jorgensen.
Mrs. Wayne had a bosom the size of Mt. Everest, and it seemed to create a chronic problem with her brassiere straps. She spent hours of class time groping inside her blouse to haul the errant straps back into place on her shoulders. She made it look like such a tiresome chore—as hopeless as shoveling sand against the tide—that I was glad I wouldn’t have to worry about such a complicated thing as a bra for a few more years. When I finally did get my first bra I always remembered Mrs. Wayne’s troubles and was careful not to make any embarrassing adjustments in public. Of course, by that time smart women were burning their bras in protest—and I would have wagered that Mrs. Wayne was among the first to light a match to hers.
But I liked Mrs. Wayne in spite of her brassiere woes. She wasn’t a warm, motherly person, but that was okay with me. She ran her classroom with equal justice for all, rich or poor, boy or girl, and she never failed to give praise where it was due. I would smile as I read the succinct notes she wrote on my papers—Nice work, Excellent—and in my mind I could hear her praising me in her gravelly man’s voice.
The first morning of school passed quickly, with no more embarrassing announcements about my wardrobe from May Elizabeth, and at noon we filed down the hall to the cafeteria. May was rich enough to buy a meal ticket, good for an entire month of lunches from the school cafeteria. I went through the line to collect my free carton of milk, courtesy of the public assistance program, then sat down alone at an empty table in the corner. A moment later, May sank down beside me with a gray plastic tray of food: a gooey tomato and macaroni dish called “Roman Holiday,” a dinner roll, red Jell-O made with fruit cocktail, and chocolate pudding with a button-sized dollop of whipped cream on top.
I kept my wrinkled paper lunch bag on my lap, busying myself with my carton of milk as May glanced over at me. I was ashamed to open my lunch in front of anyone, let alone a Hayworth. I’d made the sandwich myself with the only things I could find in the cupboard that morning— two leftover ends from a loaf of white bread and a layer of peanut butter from welfare, all wrapped up in a square of used tin foil. I ate with my head down, my sandwich concealed in my lap, taking furtive bites from it as May gobbled forkfuls of “Roman Holiday.” When I finished, I carefully folded up the foil and the paper bag so I could use them again.
“Want this?” May suddenly asked, pointing to her chocolate pudding.
“I’m full.” She puffed out her cheeks as if struggling to hold back all that she had eaten. I gave an indifferent shrug, trying to disguise my yearning.
I loved chocolate pudding. May stuck a spoon through the pudding’s rubbery skin and slid the dish in front of me. “Here. My mother doesn’t like it when I waste food. She says, ‘Think of all the children in the world who are starving.’”
I ignored the implication that I was among the world’s starving children, knowing full well that I probably was. I devoured the pudding, skin and all, then licked the bowl and spoon. I think it was May Elizabeth’s lunchtime gesture of charity that made me decide to come to her rescue when Danny Reeves tried to bully her on the playground during recess.
Danny was a ruffian who should have been in junior high but had flunked a year or two. He roamed around our neighborhood of run-down houses like he owned the whole world, helping himself to whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Anything that wasn’t chained to someone’s house, he considered his—and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he carried bolt cutters in his back pocket, just in case. I’d stood up to him once before when he’d tried to snatch Poke’s fire truck away from him, and I’d learned that Danny was really a coward at heart. I stood up to him this time, too, when he grabbed the chain of May’s swing in midflight, nearly flinging her off.
“Time’s up,” Danny growled. “Get off.” May was clearly frightened, not only because she’d nearly been thrown to the ground, but because Danny had a menacing, escaped-convict face, and a skinny, tough-dog stance, as if he ate barbed wire for breakfast and land mines for lunch. His favorite phrase was “You wanna make something of it?” In the hierarchy of the school playground, Danny stood a notch lower than May’s brother, Ron, and I wondered if he’d decided to take out his frustration on Ron’s pudgy sister in retaliation.
I strode over to face Danny head on. “You get out of here, Danny Reeves, and leave her alone. You’re not the boss.”
“You wanna make something of it?”
“Mrs. Wayne might want to. She’s our teacher.”
“So?Who cares,” he sneered. But he sauntered away all the same, obviously aware of Mrs. Wayne’s reputation for law and justice—not to mention her formidable size. I was shaking in my sneakers, but it was the good kind of shaking, the kind that comes from a rush of adrenaline, not fear. May gazed at me in awe.
“Wow! You saved my life!” she said in her overly dramatic way. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.” I walked away as she began pumping her legs again, trying to resume her lofty height. “Saving her life” might have been an overstatement, but I felt good about my actions just the same. To my mind, I had evened the score and erased the stigma of charity, making the hand-me-down clothes she had given me truly mine. I’d earned them. I’d stood up to Danny Reeves, of all people. I’d repaid the debt.
Later that afternoon, when Mrs. Wayne told us to choose a partner for an art project, May turned to me first and said, “I choose Kathleen G.” I usually ended up paired with kids like Charlie Grout, who lived next door to us and was almost as poor as we were. Charlie had been the butt of everyone’s jokes since first grade when he’d wolfed down half a jar of white paste before the teacher caught him. But I didn’t have to be Charlie’s partner today. The class queen had chosen me.
“My best friend used to be Suzanne Clark,” May informed me, “but she moved to New Jersey last summer. You can be my new best friend.”
I hesitated, not sure I wanted to be the runner-up. I felt like the girl in the Miss America pageant who has to stand beside the winner and watch her cry tears of joy as they put the crown on her head. Then I remembered my showdown with Danny Reeves, and I knew that May’s offer of friendship wasn’t based on charity; I’d earned it. I slid my desk across the aisle toward hers until they touched. We were partners.
“Does anyone need crayons?” Mrs. Wayne asked. She approached my desk waving a carton of broken-down crayons that might have been new when George Washington was president. Our town was small enough for Mrs. Wayne to know that I was one of the kids who always needed to borrow the school’s crayons. She stopped beside me, holding the tattered box in one hand, groping for her bra strap with the other. This time May saved me.
“Here,” she said, pulling her glorious, brand-new, sixty-four-count box of Crayola crayons from her desk. “You can share mine.”
I decided it was going to be a wonderful year.
Being May Elizabeth Hayworth’s new best friend created a chain reaction of problems that started as soon as my mother learned of our friendship. “Hayworth!” she grumbled, making the name sound like a curse word. “I don’t want you associating with those stuck-up rich people. Stay away from her.”
My uncle Leonard—president, founder, and sole member of the Tri-County Communist party—was especially gloomy in his analysis. “Just because the Hayworths own the factory, they think they own the entire town and everyone in it. Nothing good can come of this liaison, Kathleen.
Whenever the proletariat tries to consort with the bourgeoisie, it’s the poor working man that always ends up exploited. These arrangements always favor the rich and are always to their advantage. Do you see how this underscores the need for a society in which the resources are evenly distributed and shared rather than—”
“May Elizabeth shares her crayons with me,” I said, rising to her defense. Uncle Leonard shook his head.
“I’m not impressed with such pseudo-generosity. In a true Communist society, the Hayworth girl would give the crayons away, dividing them equally among all the students.”
I quickly did the arithmetic in my head: There were sixty-four crayons in the box and twenty-six kids in my class, which meant we would each get two-and-a-half crayons. I’d be no better off in Uncle Leonard’s Communist society than I was using the school’s box of broken pieces. No, I liked things just the way they were. I sat beside May Elizabeth in class and she shared all her school supplies with me—her new best friend. On the playground, I was her guardian, keeping bullies like Danny Reeves at bay.
When I brought home an invitation to May’s birthday party in October, my mother was furious. “Absolutely not, Kathleen! You don’t belong with those people.”
Fortunately, my father was home from his wanderings for once, right when I needed him. He rushed to my rescue, like Superman saving Lois Lane. “Aw, they’re just kids, Eleanor. Don’t blame the Hayworth girl for her parents’shortcomings. Let them have their fun.” He turned to me, grinning. “Do you want to go to her party, Kathy?”
I had never been to a birthday party in my life—not even my own, or my brothers’or sister’s. Mommy might bake us a packaged cake if she remembered what day it was—and if she had enough powdered eggs on hand from welfare. I glanced at my mother and saw that she was fuming.
“Yes,” I answered softly, hoping Mommy wouldn’t hear me. “I want to go.”
“Then go you shall!” Daddy laughed and swept me up in his freckled arms. I loved him. No one could hug me the way Daddy could. Whenever Mommy hugged me it was quick and efficient, not warm and lingering like Daddy’s hugs. During those wonderful days when my father was home, I was Daddy’s girl, his princess.
My daddy was the kindest, gentlest man in the whole world and as happy-go-lucky as a circus clown. He would get right down on the floor and play with the boys and me, and we’d tickle each other and laugh until the tears ran. Daddy never lost his temper or spanked us, even when the boys deserved it, even when Daddy had been drinking. And he treated my mom like she was the queen of the world. Too bad he was away more often than he was home.
When I was old enough to ask Mom about his long absences, she told me that he was a long-distance truck driver. Later she changed her story and said he was a traveling salesman. I never asked what Daddy trucked or sold. My melancholy, Communist uncle lived with us whenever Daddy was away, staying with us for months at a time, so at least there was a man around the house.
Uncle Leonard was Mom’s older brother and Daddy’s best friend. He was very tall and stoop-shouldered with a droopy, bloodhound face and Brylcreemed black hair. He slept on our living room couch and stored his clothing in boxes stuffed behind it. He had hundreds of books, piled in stacks in every room of our house. The boys used them like bricks to build forts. Uncle Leonard spent his evenings sitting at our chrome dining table, scribbling manifestos on yellow, legal-size note pads. The stacks of his Communist rantings left no place for us to sit down and eat, but that didn’t matter; we never sat down for a meal anyway.
Our car belonged to Uncle Leonard and so did our TV, purchased secondhand, Mom said, so that he could watch the McCarthy hearings.
He watched the news every night, and I’m sure our neighbors two blocks away could hear Uncle Leonard arguing with Walter Cronkite. I’d learned to accept my uncle and his billowing cigars as part of the furnishings, but he made me mad that day when he put in his two-cents’worth about May Elizabeth’s birthday party.
“What about a present?” he asked. “A spoiled, bourgeois rich kid like her is going to expect a present—and a nice one, too.”
Daddy’s grin never wavered. “Then we’d better go shopping for one, right, Kathy?”
“Shopping!” Mom said with a huff. “You think the Hayworths are worth six more months, Donald?”
It seemed as though his smile faded slightly at her question, but he quickly recovered. “My Kathy is certainly worth it.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but a few days before the party, Daddy loaded Poke, JT, and me into Uncle Leonard’s decaying 1950 Ford sedan and took us shopping. Not at Brinkley’s Drugstore in downtown Riverside, mind you; we drove all the way to Bensenville to shop at Woolworth’s. Daddy carried JT in his arms as we perused the aisles, looking for something May Elizabeth would like. He had Annie’s misshapen diaper bag slung over his shoulder, which seemed a little odd seeing as Annie had stayed home and three-year-old JT didn’t wear diapers. Besides, Daddy never would have volunteered to change a diaper even if JT had worn one. But there wasn’t time to ask questions. I quickly became distracted by so many choices.
“I don’t know what to buy her,” I moaned.
“Well, you’re her best friend,” Daddy coached. “Just pick something you would like to have, and she’s sure to like it, too.”
There were lots of things I liked. Daddy watched me gaze at packages of hair barrettes, a magic slate that you could draw on then lift to erase, a plastic doll bottle that seemed to magically empty when you tilted it upside down, and so much more. Poke lingered near the Davy Crockett stuff: coonskin caps, rubber tomahawks, and plastic six-shooters with holsters. I finally decided on a box of Play-Doh in four different colors for May Elizabeth’s present.
Once I’d made up my mind, Daddy led us to the nickel-and-dime counter and told us we could each have a quarter to spend. “I need to look at something for your mother,” he said, setting JT down beside Poke and me. Daddy disappeared, leaving us to contemplate the colorful array of ten-cent toys.
There were so many to choose from! Of course my brothers wanted everything in sight. They didn’t understand the value of a quarter and kept reaching their grubby fists into the bins and pulling out items as if Daddy had told them to buy one of each thing. I was exhausted from tugging toys out of their hands and telling them that all the plastic whistles and rubber soldiers and toy cars they were trying to stuff into their pockets cost more money than they were allowed, then listening to them scream in protest. The storeowner hovered close to the three of us, and I saw sweat form on his brow as he tried to make sure that everything the boys stuffed into their pockets made it out again.
Finally my father reappeared and took over, helping JT choose a rubber snake and Poke a plastic dagger. I had settled on a pop-bead necklace. Daddy lifted JT up on the counter while he paid for our treats and for a box of dusting powder that he had chosen for Mom. We were back in the car and on our way home before I realized that we had forgotten the very thing we’d come for: May Elizabeth’s birthday present.
“Daddy, stop! We forgot the present! Go back! We have to go back!”
“I didn’t forget it, honey,” he said, laughing. “It’s right here in the bag.”
“Where? Which bag?” I peered over the front seat, searching frantically. The only thing in the Woolworth’s bag was Mom’s dusting powder.
I didn’t see a box of Play-Doh anywhere. “Where is it, Daddy? Where?”
“It’s right here. …” Daddy slowed the car down a bit, driving with one hand while he fished Annie’s diaper bag off the floor and set it on the seat. Sure enough, May Elizabeth’s present was inside—and also the magic drawing slate and the plastic doll bottle that I’d admired, and a coonskin cap for each of the boys. I also saw a bottle of cologne for Mom to go with the dusting powder, and a shiny three-piece screwdriver set that I figured Daddy had bought for himself.
“Are all of these things for us?” I asked in surprise.
“You bet they are. Why should that Hayworth kid be the only one who gets presents?”
It felt like Christmas as I gave the boys their new hats and sat back to draw on my magic slate. The boys took turns annoying me with their furry raccoon tails. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I began to wonder exactly when Daddy had paid for all of those surprises. He hadn’t put them on the counter when he’d stood in line at the cash register. And why had the clerk put everything in the diaper bag instead of in a Woolworth’s bag? I could have used some extra bags for my lunches.
I got such a funny feeling in my stomach the more I thought about it, that I finally had to go think about something else.