privilege

rose knew a lot of people who wished they had been born poor, and hadn’t been. so she wouldqueen it over them, offering various scandals and bits of squalor from her childhood. the boys’

toilet and the girls’ toilet. old mr. burns in his toilet. shorty mcgill and franny mcgill in theentrance to the boys’ toilet. she did not deliberately repeat the toilet locale, and was a bitsurprised at the way it kept cropping up. she knew that those little dark or painted shacks weresupposed to be comical—always were, in country humor—but she saw them instead as scenes ofmarvelous shame and outrage.

the girls’ toilet and the boys’ toilet each had a protected entry-way, which saved having adoor. snow blew in anyway through the cracks between the boards and the knotholes that were forspying. snow piled up on the seat and on the floor. many people, it seemed, declined to use thehole. in the heaped snow under a glaze of ice, where the snow had melted and frozen again, wereturds copious or lonesome, preserved as if under glass, bright as mustard or grimy as charcoal,with every shading in between. rose’s stomach turned at the sight; despair got hold of her. shehalted in the doorway, could not force herself, decided she could wait. two or three times she weton the way home, running from the school to the store, which was not very far. flo was disgusted.

“wee-pee, wee-pee,” she sang out loud, mocking rose. “walking home and she had a weepee!”

flo was also fairly pleased, because she liked to see people brought down to earth, natureasserting itself; she was the sort of woman who will make public what she finds in the laundrybag. rose was mortified, but didn’t reveal the problem. why not? she was probably afraid that flowould show up at the school with a pail and shovel, cleaning up, and lambasting everybody intothe bargain.

she believed the order of things at school to be unchangeable, the rules there different from anythat flo could understand, the savagery incalculable. justice and cleanliness she saw now asinnocent notions out of a primitive period of her life. she was building up the first store of thingsshe could never tell.

she could never tell about mr. burns. right after she started to school, and before she had anyidea what she was going to see—or, indeed, of what there was to see—rose was running along theschool fence with some other girls, through the red dock and goldenrod, and crouching behind mr.

burns’s toilet, which backed on the schoolyard. someone had reached through the fence andyanked the bottom boards off, so you could see in. old mr. burns, half-blind, paunchy, dirty,spirited, came down the backyard talking to himself, singing, swiping at the tall weeds with hiscane. in the toilet, too, after some moments of strain and silence, his voice was heard.

there is a green hill far away

outside a city wall

where the dear lord was crucified

who died to save us all.

mr. burns’s singing was not pious but hectoring, as if he longed, even now, for a fight.

religion, around here, came out mostly in fights. people were catholics or fundamentalistprotestants, honor- bound to molest each other. many of the protestants had been — or theirfamilies had been—anglicans, presbyterians. but they had got too poor to show up at thosechurches, so had veered off to the salvation army, the pentecostals. others had been totalheathens until they were saved. some were heathens yet, but protestant in fights. flo said theanglicans and the presbyterians were snobs and the rest were holy rollers, while the catholicswould put up with any two-facedness or debauching, as long as they got your money for the pope.

so rose did not have to go to any church at all.

all the little girls squatted to see, peered in at that part of mr.

burns that sagged through the hole. for years rose thought she had seen testicles but onreflection she believed it was only bum. something like a cow’s udder, which looked to have aprickly surface, like the piece of tongue before flo boiled it. she wouldn’t eat that tongue, andafter she told him what it was brian wouldn’t eat it either, so flo went into a temper and said theycould live on boiled baloney.

older girls didn’t get down to look, but stood by, some making puking noises. other little girlsjumped up and joined them, eager to imitate, but rose remained squatting, amazed and thoughtful.

she would have liked longer to contemplate, but mr. burns removed himself, came out buttoningand singing. girls sneaked along the fence, to call to him.

“mr. burns! good morning mr. burns! mr. burns-your-balls!” he came roaring at the fence,chopping with his cane, as if they were chickens.

younger and older, boys and girls and everybody—except the teacher, of course, who lockedthe door at recess and stayed in the school, like rose holding off till she got home, riskingaccidents and enduring agonies—everybody gathered to look in the entryway of the boys’ toiletwhen the word went round: shortie mcgill is fucking franny mcgill!

brother and sister.

relations performing.

that was flo’s word for it: perform. back in the country, back on the hill farms she came from,flo said that people had gone dotty, been known to eat boiled hay, and performed with their too-close relations. before rose understood what was meant she used to imagine some makeshiftstage, some rickety old barn stage, where members of a family got up and gave silly songs andrecitations. what a performance! flo would say in disgust, blowing out smoke, referring not toany single act but to everything along that line, past and present and future, going on anywhere inthe world. people’s diversions, like their pretensions, could not stop astounding her.

whose idea was this, for franny and shortie? probably some of the big boys dared shortie, orhe bragged and they challenged him. one thing was certain: the idea could not be franny’s. shehad to be caught for this, or trapped. you couldn’t say caught, really, because she wouldn’t run,wouldn’t put that much faith in escaping. but she showed unwillingness, had to be dragged, thenpushed down where they wanted her. did she know what was coming? she would know at leastthat nothing other people devised for her ever turned out to be pleasant.

franny mcgill had been smashed against the wall, by her father, drunk, when she was a baby.

so flo said. another story had franny falling out of a cutter, drunk, kicked by a horse. at any rate,smashed. her face had got the worst of it. her nose was crooked, making every breath she took along, dismal-sounding snuffle. her teeth were badly bunched together, so that she could not closeher mouth and never could contain her quantities of spit. she was white, bony, shuffling, fearful,like an old woman. marooned in grade two or three, she could read and write a little, wasseldom called on to do so. she may not have been so stupid as everybody thought, but simplystunned, bewildered, by continual assault. and in spite of everything there was something hopefulabout her. she would follow after anybody who did not immediately attack and insult her; shewould offer bits of crayon, knots of chewed gum pried off seats and desks. it was necessary to fendher off firmly, and scowl warningly whenever she caught your eye.

go away franny. go away or i’ll punch you. i will. i really will. the use shortie was making ofher, that others made, would continue. she would get pregnant, be taken away, come back and getpregnant again, be taken away, come back, get pregnant, be taken away again. there would be talkof getting her sterilized, getting the lions club to pay for it, there would be talk of shutting her up,when she died suddenly of pneumonia, solving the problem. later on rose would think of frannywhen she came across the figure of an idiotic, saintly whore, in a book or a movie. men who madebooks and movies seemed to have a fondness for this figure, though rose noticed they wouldclean her up. they cheated, she thought, when they left out the breathing and the spit and theteeth; they were refusing to take into account the aphrodisiac prickles of disgust, in their hurry toreward themselves with the notion of a soothing blankness, undifferentiating welcome.

the welcome franny gave shortie was not so saintly, after all. she let out howls, made ripply,phlegmy, by her breathing problems. she kept jerking one leg. either the shoe had come off, orshe had not been wearing shoes to start with. there was her white leg and bare foot, with muddytoes—looking too normal, too vigorous and self-respecting, to belong to franny mcgill. that wasall of her rose could see. she was small, and had got shoved to the back of the crowd. big boyswere around them, hollering encouragement, big girls were hovering behind, giggling. rose wasinterested but not alarmed. an act performed on franny had no general significance, no bearing onwhat could happen to anyone else. it was only further abuse.

when rose told people these things, in later years, they had considerable effect. she had toswear they were true, she was not exaggerating. and they were true, but the effect was off-balance.

her schooling seemed deplorable. it seemed she must have been miserable, and that was not so.

she was learning. she learned how to manage in the big fights that tore up the school two or threetimes a year. her inclination was to be neutral, and that was a bad mistake; it could bring bothsides down on you. the thing to do was to ally yourself with people living near you, so you wouldnot be in too much danger walking home. she was never sure what fights were about, and she didnot have a good instinct for fighting, did not really understand the necessity. she would always betaken by surprise by a snowball, a stone, a shingle whacked down from behind. she knew shewould never flourish, never get to any very secure position—if indeed there was such a thing—inthe world of school. but she was not miserable, except in the matter of not being able to go to thetoilet. learning to survive, no matter with what cravenness and caution, what shocks andforebodings, is not the same as being miserable. it is too interesting.

she learned to fend off franny. she learned never to go near the school basement which had allthe windows broken and was black, dripping, like a cave; to avoid the dark place under the stepsand the place between the woodpiles; not to attract in any way the attention of the big boys, whoseemed like wild dogs, to her, just as quick and strong, capricious, jubilant in attack.

a mistake she made early and would not have made later on was in telling flo the truth insteadof some lie when a big boy, one of the morey boys, tripped and grabbed her as she was comingdown the fire escape, tearing the sleeve of her raincoat out at the armhole. flo came to the schoolto raise cain (her stated intention) and heard witnesses swear rose had torn it on a nail. theteacher was glum, would not declare herself, indicated flo’s visit was not welcome. adults did notcome to the school, in west hanratty. mothers were strongly partisan in fights, would hang overtheir gates, and yell; some would even rush out to tug hair and flail shingles, themselves. theywould abuse the teacher behind her back and send their children off to school with instructions notto take any lip from her. but they would never have behaved as flo did, never have set foot onschool property, never have carried a complaint to that level. they would never have believed, asflo seemed to believe (and here rose saw her for the first time out of her depth, mistaken) thatoffenders would confess, or be handed over, that justice would take any form but a ripping andtearing of a morey coat, in revenge, a secret mutilation in the cloakroom.

flo said the teacher did not know her business.

but she did. she knew it very well. she locked the door at recess and let whatever was going tohappen outside, happen. she never tried to make the big boys come up from the basement or infrom the fire escape. she made them chop kindling for the stove and fill the drinking pail;otherwise they were at liberty. they didn’t mind the wood-chopping or pumping, though theyliked to douse people with freezing water, and came near murder with the axe. they were just atschool because there was no place else for them to be. they were old enough for work but therewere no jobs for them. older girls could get jobs, as maids at least; so they did not stay in school,unless they were planning to write the entrance, go to high school, maybe someday get jobs instores or banks. some of them would do that. from places like west hanratty girls move up moreeasily than boys.

the teacher had the big girls, excepting those in the entrance class, kept busy bossing theyounger children, petting and slapping them, correcting spelling, and removing for their own useanything interesting in the way of pencil boxes, new crayons, cracker jack jewelry. what went onin the cloakroom, what lunchpail robbing or coat-slashing or pulling down pants there was, theteacher did not consider her affair.

she was not in any way enthusiastic, imaginative, sympathetic. she walked over the bridgeevery day from hanratty where she had a sick husband. she had come back to teaching in middleage. probably this was the only job she could get. she had to keep at it, so she kept at it. she neverput paper cut-outs up on the windows or pasted gold stars in the workbooks. she never diddrawings on the board with colored chalk. she had no gold stars, there was no colored chalk. sheshowed no love of anything she taught, or anybody. she must have wished, if she wished foranything, to be told one day she could go home, never see any of them, never open a spellingbook, again.

but she did teach things. she must have taught something to the people who were going to writethe entrance, because some of them passed it. she must have made a stab at teaching everybodywho came into that school to read and write and do simple arithmetic. the stair railings wereknocked out, desks were wrenched loose from the floor, the stove smoked and the pipes were heldtogether with wire, there were no library books or maps, and never enough chalk; even theyardstick was dirty and splintered at one end. fights and sex and pilferage were the importantthings going on. nevertheless. facts and tables were presented. in the face of all that disruption,discomfort, impossibility, some thread of ordinary classroom routine was maintained; an offering.

some people learned to subtract. some people learned to spell.

she took snuff. she was the only person rose had ever seen do that. she would sprinkle a bit onthe back of her hand and lift the hand to her face, give a delicate snort. her head back, her throatexposed, she looked for a moment contemptuous, challenging. otherwise she was not in the leasteccentric. she was plump, gray, shabby.

flo said she had probably fogged her brain with the snuff. it was like being a drug addict.

cigarettes only shot your nerves.

one thing in the school was captivating, lovely. pictures of birds. rose didn’t know if theteacher had climbed up and nailed them above the blackboard, too high for easy desecration, ifthey were her first and last hopeful effort, or if they dated from some earlier, easier time, in theschool’s history. where had they come from, how had they arrived there, when nothing else did,in the way of decoration, illustration?

a red-headed woodpecker; an oriole; a blue jay; a canada goose. the colors clear and long-lasting. backgrounds of pure snow, of blossoming branches, of heady summer sky. in an ordinaryclassroom they would not have seemed so extraordinary. here they were bright and eloquent, somuch at variance with everything else that what they seemed to represent was not the birdsthemselves, not those skies and snows, but some other world of hardy innocence, bounteousinformation, privileged light-heartedness. no stealing from lunchpails there; no slashing coats; nopulling down pants and probing with painful sticks; no fucking; no franny.

there were three big girls in the entrance class. one was named donna; one wascora; one was bernice. those three were the entrance class; there was nobody else. threequeens. but when you looked closer, a queen and two princesses. that was how rose thought ofthem. they walked around the schoolyard arm-in-arm, or with their arms around each other’swaists. cora in the middle. she was the tallest. donna and bernice leaning against and leading upto her.

it was cora rose loved.

cora lived with her grandparents. her grandmother went across the bridge to hanratty, to docleaning and ironing. her grandfather was the honey-dumper. that meant he went around cleaningout toilets. that was his job.

before she had the money saved up to put in a real bathroom flo had got a chemical toilet to putin a corner of the woodshed. a better arrangement than the outhouse, particularly in thewintertime. cora’s grandfather disapproved. he said to flo, “many has got these chemicals in andmany has wished they never.”

he pronounced the ch in chemicals like the ch in church.

cora was illegitimate. her mother worked somewhere, or was married. perhaps she worked as amaid, and she was able to send castoffs. cora had plenty of clothes. she came to school in fawn-colored satin, rippling over the hips; in royal-blue velvet with a rose of the same material floppingfrom one shoulder; in dull rose crepe loaded with fringe. these clothes were too old for her (rosedid not think so), but not too big. she was tall, solid, womanly. sometimes she did her hair in aroll on top of her head, let it dip over one eye. she and donna and bernice often had their hairdone in some grown- up style, their lips richly painted, their cheeks cakily powdered. cora’sfeatures were heavy. she had an oily forehead, lazy brunette eyelids, the ripe and indolent self-satisfaction that would soon go hard and matronly. but she was splendid at the moment, walkingin the schoolyard with her attendants (it was actually donna with the pale oval face, the fair frizzyhair, who came closest to being pretty), arms linked, seriously talking. she did not waste anyattention on the boys at school, none of those girls did. they were waiting, perhaps alreadyacquiring, real boyfriends. some boys called to them from the basement door, wistfully insulting,and cora turned and yelled at them.

“too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!”

rose had no idea what that meant, but she was full of admira tion for the way cora turned onher hips, for the taunting, cruel, yet lazy and unperturbed sound of her voice, her glossy look.

when she was by herself she would act that out, the whole scene, the boys calling, rose beingcora. she would turn just as cora did, on her imaginary tormentors, she would deal out just suchprovocative scorn.

too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!

rose walked around the yard behind the store, imagining the fleshy satin rippling over her ownhips, her own hair rolled and dipping, her lips red. she wanted to grow up to be exactly like cora.

she did not want to wait to grow up. she wanted to be cora, now.

cora wore high heels to school. she was not light- footed. when she walked around theschoolroom in her rich dresses you could feel the room tremble, you could hear the windowsrattle. you could smell her, too. her talcum and cosmetics, her warm dark skin and hair.

the three of them sat at the top of the fire escape, in the first warm weather. they wereputting on nail polish. it smelled like bananas, with a queer chemical edge. rose had meant to goup the fire escape into the school, as she usually did, avoiding the everyday threat of the mainentrance, but when she saw those girls she turned back, she did not dare expect them to shift over.

cora called down.

“you can come up if you want to. come on up!”

she was teasing her, encouraging her, as she would a puppy. “how would you like to get yournails done?”

“then they’ll all want to,” said the girl named bernice, who as it turned out owned the nailpolish.

“we won’t do them,” said cora. “we’ll just do her. what’s your name? rose? we’ll just dorose. come on up, honey.”

she made rose hold out her hand. rose saw with alarm how mottled it was, how grubby. and itwas cold and trembly. a small, disgusting object. rose would not have been surprised to see coradrop it.

“spread your fingers out. there. relax. lookit your hand shake! i’m not going to bite you. ami? hold steady like a good girl. you don’t want me to go all crooked, do you?”

she dipped the brush in the bottle. the colour was deep red, like raspberries. rose loved thesmell. cora’s own fingers were large, pink, steady, warm.

“isn’t that pretty? won’t your nails look pretty?”

she was doing it in the difficult, now-forgotten style of that time, leaving the half-moon and thetops of the nails bare.

“it’s rosy to match your name. that’s a pretty name, rose. i like it. i like it better than cora. ihate cora. your fingers are freezing for such a warm day. aren’t they freezing, compared tomine?”

she was flirting, indulging herself, as girls that age will do. they will try out charm onanything, on dogs or cats or their own faces in the mirror. rose was too much overcome to enjoyherself, at the moment. she was weak and dazzled, terrified by such high favor.

from that day on, rose was obsessed. she spent her time trying to walk and look like cora,repeating every word she had ever heard her say. trying to be her. there was a charm to roseabout every gesture cora made, about the way she stuck a pencil into her thick, coarse hair, theway she groaned sometimes in school, with imperial boredom. the way she licked her finger andcarefully smoothed her eyebrows. rose licked her own finger, and smoothed her own eyebrows,longing for them to be dark, instead of sunbleached and nearly invisible.

imitation was not enough. rose went further. she imagined that she would be sick and corawould somehow be called to look after her. night-time cuddles, strokings, rockings. she made upstories of danger and rescue, accidents and gratitude. sometimes she rescued cora, sometimescora rescued rose. then all was warmth, indulgence, revelations.

that’s a pretty name.

come on up, honey.

the opening, the increase, the flow, of love. sexual love, not sure yet exactly what it needed toconcentrate on. it must be there from the start, like the hard white honey in the pail, waiting tomelt and flow. there was some sharpness lacking, some urgency missing; there was the incidentaldifference in the sex of the person chosen; otherwise it was the same thing, the same thing that hasovertaken rose since. the high tide; the indelible folly; the flash flood.

when things were flowering—lilacs, apple trees, hawthorns along the road—they had the gameof funerals, organized by the older girls. the person who was supposed to be dead—a girl, onlygirls played this game—lay stretched out at the top of the fire escape. the rest filed up slowly,singing some hymn, and cast down their armloads of flowers. they bent over pretending to sob(some really managed it) and took the last look. that was all there was to it. everybody wassupposed to get a chance to be dead but it didn’t work out that way. after the big girls had eachhad their turn they couldn’t be bothered playing subordinate roles in the funerals of the youngerones. those left to carry on soon realized that the game had lost all its importance, its glamor, andthey drifted away, leaving only a stubborn rag-tag to finish things off. rose was one of those left.

she held out in hopes that cora might walk up the fire escape in her procession, but cora ignoredit.

the person playing dead got to choose what the processional hymn was. cora had chosen “howbeautiful heaven must be.” she lay heaped with flowers, lilac, and wore her rose crepe dress. alsosome beads, a brooch that said her name in green sequins, heavy face powder. powder wastrembling in the soft hairs at the corners of her mouth. her eyelashes fluttered. her expression wasconcentrated, frowning, sternly dead. sadly singing, laying down lilacs, rose was close enough tocommit some act of worship, but could not find any. she could only pile up details to be thoughtover later. the color of cora’s hair. the under-strands shone where it was pulled up over her ears.

a lighter caramel, warmer, than the hair on top. her arms were bare, dusky, flattened out, theheavy arms of a woman, fringe lying on them. what was her real smell? what was the statement,frowning and complacent, of her plucked eyebrows? rose would strain over these thingsafterwards, when she was alone, strain to remember them, know them, get them for good. whatwas the use of that? when she thought of cora she had the sense of a glowing dark spot, a meltingcenter, a smell and taste of burnt chocolate, that she could never get at.

what can be done about love, when it gets to this point, of such impotence and hopelessnessand crazy concentration? something will have to whack it.

she made a bad mistake soon. she stole some candy from flo’s store, to give to cora. anidiotic, inadequate thing to do, a childish thing to do, as she knew at the time. the mistake was notjust in the stealing, though that was stupid, and not easy. flo kept the candy up behind the counter,on a slanted shelf in open boxes, out of reach but not out of reach of children. rose had to watchher chance, then climb up on the stool and fill a bag with whatever she could grab—gum drops,jelly beans, licorice allsorts, maple buds, chicken bones. she didn’t eat any of it herself. she had toget the bag to school, which she did by carrying it under her skirt, the top of it tucked into theelastic top of her underpants. her arm was pressed tightly against her waist to hold everything inplace. flo said, “what’s the matter, have you got a stomachache?” but luckily was too busy toinvestigate.

rose hid the bag in her desk and waited for an opportunity, which didn’t crop up as expected.

even if she had bought the candy, obtained it legitimately, the whole thing would have been amistake. it would have been all right at the beginning, but not now. by now she required toomuch, in the way of gratitude, recognition, but was not in the state to accept anything. her heartpounded, her mouth filled with the strange coppery taste of longing and despair, if cora evenhappened to walk past her desk with her heavy, important tread, in her cloud of skin-heatedperfumes. no gesture could match what rose felt, no satisfaction was possible, and she knew thatwhat she was doing was clownish, unlucky.

she could not bring herself to offer it, there was never a right time, so after a few days shedecided to leave the bag in cora’s desk. even that was difficult. she had to pretend she hadforgotten something, after four, run back into the school, with the knowledge that she would haveto run out again later, alone, past the big boys at the basement door.

the teacher was there, putting on her hat. every day for that walk across the bridge she put onher old green hat with a bit of feather stuck in it. cora’s friend donna was wiping off the boards.

rose tried to stuff the bag into cora’s desk. something fell out. the teacher didn’t bother, butdonna turned and yelled at her, “hey, what are you doing in cora’s desk?”

rose dropped the bag on the seat and ran out.

the thing she hadn’t foreseen at all was that cora would come to flo’s store and turn the candyin. but that was what cora did. she did not do it to make trouble for rose but simply to enjoyherself. she enjoyed her importance and respectability and the pleasure of grown-up exchange.

“i don’t know what she wanted to give it to me for,” she said, or flo said she said. flo’simitation was off, for once; it did not sound to rose at all like cora’s voice. flo made her soundmincing and whining.

“i-thought-i-better-come-and-tell-you!”

the candy was in no condition for eating, anyway. it was all squeezed and melted together, sothat flo had to throw it out.

flo was dumbfounded. she said so. not at the stealing. she was naturally against stealing butshe seemed to understand that in this case it was the secondary evil, it was less important.

“what were you doing with it? giving it to her? what were you giving it to her for? are you inlove with her or something?”

she meant that as an insult and a joke. rose answered no, because she associated love withmovie endings, kissing, and getting married. her feelings were at the moment shocked andexposed, and already, though she didn’t know it, starting to wither and curl up at the edges. flowas a drying blast.

“you are so,” said flo. “you make me sick.”

it wasn’t future homosexuality flo was talking about. if she had known about that, or thought ofit, it would have seemed to her even more of a joke, even more outlandish, moreincomprehensible, than the regular carrying- on. it was love she sickened at. it was theenslavement, the self-abasement, the self-deception. that struck her. she saw the danger, all right;she read the flaw. headlong hopefulness, readiness, need.

“what is so wonderful about her?” asked flo, and immediately answered herself. “nothing. sheis a far cry from good-looking. she is going to turn out a monster of fat. i can see the signs. she isgoing to have a mustache, too. she has one already. where does she get her clothes from? i guessshe thinks they suit her.”

rose did not reply to this and flo said further that cora had no father, you might wonder whather mother worked at, and who was her grandfather? the honey-dumper!

flo went back to the subject of cora, now and then, for years. “there goes your idol!” shewould say, seeing cora go by the store after she had started to high school.

rose pretended to have no recollection.

“you know her!” flo kept it up. “you tried to give her the candy! you stole that candy for her!

didn’t i have a laugh.”

rose’s pretense was not altogether a lie. she remembered the facts, but not the feelings. coraturned into a big dark sulky-looking girl with round shoulders, carrying her high school books.

the books were no help to her, she failed at high school. she wore ordinary blouses and a navyblue skirt, which did make her look fat. perhaps her personality could not survive the loss of herelegant dresses. she went away, she got a war job. she joined the air force, and appeared home onleave, bunched into their dreadful uniform. she married an airman.

rose was not much bothered by this loss, this transformation. life was altogether a series ofsurprising developments, as far as she could learn. she only thought how out-of-date flo was, asshe went on recalling the story and making cora sound worse and worse — swarthy, hairy,swaggering, fat. so long after, and so uselessly, rose saw flo trying to warn and alter her.

the school changed with the war. it dwindled, lost all its evil energy, its anarchic spirit, itsstyle. the fierce boys went into the army. west hanratty changed too. people moved away to takewar jobs and even those who stayed behind were working, being better paid than they had everdreamed. respectability took hold, in all but the stubbornest cases. roofs got shingled all overinstead of in patches. houses were painted, or covered with imitation brick. refrigerators werebought and bragged about. when rose thought of west hanratty during the war years, and duringthe years before, the two times were so separate it was as if an entirely different lighting had beenused, or as if it was all on film and the film had been printed in a different way, so that on the onehand things looked clean-edged and decent and limited and ordinary, and on the other, dark,grainy, jumbled, and disturbing.

the school itself got fixed up. windows replaced, desks screwed down, dirty words hiddenunder splashes of dull red paint. the boys’ toilet and the girls’ toilet were knocked down andthe pits filled in. the government and the school board saw fit to put flush toilets in the cleaned-up basement.

everybody was moving in that direction. mr. burns died in the summertime and the people whobought his place put in a bathroom. they also put up a high fence of chicken wire, so that nobodyfrom the schoolyard could reach over and get their lilacs. flo was putting in a bathroom too, shesaid they might as well have the works, it was wartime prosperity.

cora’s grandfather had to retire, and there never was another honey-dumper.