Finding the Ties That Bind

McClaren Malcolm

You might think it odd that a child would have adults for friends. Yet, between the ages of four and five, I accumulated many adult friends and felt confident in the small world that lined our rural road, Orchard Lane. The lane ran through a patchwork of farms, small and large, sprawled 10 miles north of St. Paul, Minnesota. The inhabitants, mostly in their thirties, were allies, on the same side of a struggle to survive the Great Depression and the war years. They were my friends, each with appealing attributes.

        I maintained these friendships each summer. Most days Mother packed a knapsack lunch and sent me on my way. Since she forbade me to cross the road, I wore a path through the field that separated our plots and arrived at Grandma Colbergs. Although Grandma appeared gray, wrinkly, and frail, she was young enough to have several children in high school. I usually found her in the kitchen ironing the family’s underwear, even the socks. She never talked much, so I lingered long enough to study the yellow fly strip hanging from the ceiling. Watching a fly land and then struggle to get free from the sticky surface held my attention for a while. Then it was time to wander through the house. Sometimes I’d find her daughters, Gladys and Dolly, my occasional babysitters. My appearance was their cue to go pick vegetables. I’d tag along with the girls and pick peas or green beans. Seeing and touching bugs, black slime, and dirt led to my distaste for raw vegetables.

        Dirty vegetables reminded me the eating was better elsewhere. A good choice was Rosella’s place, a converted chicken coop. She lived there with her husband, a World War II veteran. Rosella, plumpish, lips painted bright scarlet, black hair curled and ratted in the day’s fashion, answered my knock wearing a colorful housedress. Her husband sat in a wheelchair at the end of the room with his back turned. He never spoke; he never turned around. Rosella often made fudge for me while we talked, the chocolate vapors distracting me from the subject at hand. Yes, this visit was a good choice after picking dirty vegetables.

        I saved a visit with Aunt Myrtle for last because she lived across the road. I could count on my aunt, with the button nose and perpetual smile, to talk about the Dionne Quintuplets pictured on her kitchen calendar. The miracle birth, five girls with sisters for friends, fed my imagination. Then Aunt Myrtle would suggest I visit her daughter, Myrlene. I climbed the stairs to her room. The perfume bottles on her vanity attracted me, but I wasn’t allowed to touch. Distinctive in her collection was Midnight in Paris, bottled in indigo glass. Myrlene kept me busy flipping through movie magazines, featuring glamour pusses like Lana Turner or hubba-hubba hunks like Clark Gable. Myrlene taught me the meaning of hubba-hubba. She was so worldly; I adored her.

        Then came the inevitable—Mother calling up the stairs, “McClaren, you come home this instant, do you hear?” How did she always know where I was? Mother herded me home across the road, switching my bottom with a fly swatter. The deterrent of the indignity lasted only till I felt the need to pay my respects once again.

        The opportunity to make friends my own age came when I entered school—a two-room country school. The kids surprised and disappointed me. Friendliness didn’t come my way easily. When it did it was fleeting. I missed my adult friends who knew how to treat me. I couldn’t make friends with beasty kids.

        Instead, I turned to learning and ideas, as well as books for friendship. I pored over the colored cloth bindings of books, ran my fingers over the pebbly manila paper, sniffed the printer’s ink, and studied the glossy full-color pictures. Unlike kids, books couldn’t be jealous.

        Dick and Jane, characters in my first reader, made good friends, too. Unlike the school kids, book characters didn’t shove to be first in line and they didn’t call people bad names. But even those friendships had limits because our school had few books, and the word library was not in my vocabulary.

        I was nine when all that changed, when a stranger marched into our classroom. My classmates and I, mostly blond and blue eyed, paled in contrast to this dark-skinned intruder with her square face and red-stained lips. Her voice, hail pinging against tin, banged into my ears.

“Good morning. Are the boys and girls ready?”

        Mrs. Olsen, our tiny teacher, stepped back from her place in front of the class. “Girls and boys, this is the Book Lady. Please line up at the door.”

        Why was our lesson stopped abruptly? Why were we lining up? It wasn’t recess or time to go home. Where were we going? Who was this stranger with the square shoulders and loud, twangy voice? I looked at our kind teacher for reassurance, but Mrs. Olsen looked down and explained nothing.

        As though Book Lady were commanding a troop of soldiers, she folded her arms and demanded, “You will not talk. If you do, you will not borrow my books. No writing in the books. Wash your hands before you read. Is that clear?”

        Silence. Most everyone’s mouth dropped. Our teacher usually spoke gently, trusting us to comply. This outsider barked orders as though we needed a spanking. In clipped terms, she repeated, “Is that understood?”

        I heard my voice creak out of my throat to join the murmurs of others.

It must have been the right response because Book Lady commanded, “Follow me.”

We marched down the hall, out the door to the parking lot. There sat a tan bus with no windows on the side.  I stretched my legs and bent double as I climbed the bus steps. When I looked up, shelves and shelves of books towered over me: thick books, tall and thin books, picture books, red, green, and blue books. I grabbed one that had a yellow duck on the cover. A whiff of printer’s ink tickled my nose.

As I left, Book Lady reached for my book. Her hands, tipped with glass-red nails and cuffed in swirly gem colors, placed the book firmly on a counter. “Name?” Her yellow pencil, poised above a small lined card. She wrote my name on the next blank space. Precisely and with conviction she stamped numbers alongside my name. After tucking the card inside the cover, she delivered the book to my eager grasp, held on, then aimed her piercing eyes into mine. “It’s due in six weeks.”

I fell back slightly as she released the book. I was as excited as Jason must have been when he snatched the golden fleece from the dragon. Not till I was safely back at my desk did I look at the title, The Ugly Duckling.

At home, I read the greatest story since Dick and Jane. They were history. I wanted to tell the author that I understood what he was saying. He wrote about an outsider; he wrote about my struggle to be accepted. I wanted to tell him my story. So, I did. I wrote the first of many stories, but I was timid and shared them with no one.

As it turned out, my pleasure and attention in school work led to my excelling. The school didn’t know what to do with me; I didn’t have the maturity to pass to a higher grade. Instead, teachers gave me added assignments. When we studied Minnesota history, they assigned me to write and direct plays about the state’s founding. Marjorie overcame a dislike for reading history after playing a pioneer girl in one of my plays.

In Seventh Grade, the teacher asked me to teach class one hour a week. I found a geometry book at home and wrote lessons. After I taught the class, Peter used the geometry lesson to build a bird house. Gradually my popularity rose with the students. I had learned the value and power of writing and sharing. Studying and writing in the quiet of my room, I gained understanding, and when I shared that writing, others gained, too. Some students wrote their own stories. I had stumbled on a path to friendship. I had something to give! And now that I had friends my own age, I wasn’t an outsider anymore.

        I wish I could thank Book Lady. Gruff as she was, she showed me a high regard for books. The privilege of borrowing library books led to filling my country head with visions. I could explore the world from my desk and write about what I found. Sharing the writing led to making friends—finding the ties that bind us in supportive relationships.

Book Lady lives for McClaren as though she were still nine years old and facing this formidable woman for the first time. The dialogue is copied here exactly as McClaren heard it, unusual as it is for anyone working with children. From an adult’s perspective, McClaren thinks that Book Lady might have been a returning veteran of World War II. Perhaps she was a former sergeant in the WACs, WAVEs, or WAFs who found employment when baby boomers were flooding the schools, and there were more school jobs than workers to fill them. However unorthodox Book Lady’s approach may be judged, she opened doors for a lasting positive change in McClaren’s life.

        For Doorways, McClaren revisited her favorite story about Book Lady and mined a deeper connection about making friends. McClaren works as a newspaper correspondent, and is author of award-winning stories and books. She is currently working on her memoirs and resides in Venice, Florida, with her husband, Richard, and Pong her cat. Friendship continues to be a work in progress.