"The Summoner’s Monkey"
by Jeanne Maxwell


CHAPTER THREE

Soon enough, my aunt’s second child was born, and I remember standing peering through the slats in the bassinette at the new arrival. I was four at that point, my cousin Evan two and a half, or nearly. And now here was the third of our little band, Sessa. Sessa Angelique Rowntree; never let it be said that Aunt Delora didn’t like mouth-filling names. Just ask her older brother, Evan Montague.

Sessa was a suspicious baby, and she cried more than Evan. Which wasn’t to say she was fussy, or impossible; Evan cried hardly at all growing up, Sessa cried just a little more. In fact, the only time I remember Evan seriously breaking down was when we went in for pictures around this time.

Six months after Sessa was born, Aunt Delora decided she wanted official pictures of our family. So off everyone trooped to Sears Photo Studio, and pictures were set up. There were several shots taken of Sessa, staring mistrustfully at the camera, and a few of Aunt Delora holding her new little girl. There were shots of both Evan and I individually, and one of my mother holding me. Then my aunt asked if Evan and I would mind posing.

We looked at each other, shrugged, and went to sit on the carpeted platform. That’s when the trouble began.

Both my mother and my aunt had warned the photographer not to touch Evan. "He’ll do what you tell him to," they told him, over and over, "just don’t touch him. If you need to move him, call one of us, and we’ll move him. But don’t touch him."

The photographer nodded, with that I’ve-heard-it-all-before expression I was beginning to expect on certain adult faces, and had us get into position. Everything went smoothly at first--look to the right, snap! Look to the left, snap! Soft focus, snap! Hold your cousin, that’s good, snap! Hold this beach ball, snap!

Then the photographer forgot, reaching out to take the beach ball, and pushed Evan closer into frame. He inhaled a startled breath, rearing back, and began to shriek like he was watching someone murder his mother. Worse, his nose immediately began to run and his eyes swelled up from tears. I tried to comfort him, best I could, but he was having none of it.

To this day, there are family pictures wandering about of me with my short-cropped hair, in a denim playsuit, holding Evan, snot-nosed and teary-eyed, staring mistrustfully at the camera.

Around this time we began attending weddings. Friends, neighbors, family members--suddenly everyone was getting married, or planning to get married, or talking about getting married. I began getting very familiar with grange halls, Masonic temples, church gardens and wineries. As a result we spent several evenings at one house or another while the adults danced the nights away. Several times we ended up driving out to wine country, spending the weekend with my uncle Nathan and his family.

Though Uncle Nate lived in wine country, he actually had bought a tract of land and was running a small ranch. He trained ponies, raised pigs--though sent them out for slaughtering--and had a three-level ranch-style house. Which was kind of funny when you think it through: a ranch-style house, actually on a ranch? In California? Only in your dreams. But that’s what he had.

We spent a lot of time out here, summers here, spring vacations there, but it’s the weekends I remember most. I remember every time I was there and by myself, he would take me downstairs, and teach me to shoot pool on his full-size pool table in the basement. His hobby was carpentry, and he even made me a little stool to stand on--because by myself, I wasn’t old enough to reach the top of the table. Evan wasn’t interested in pool at that point, being two or three years old, and Sessa was not even crawling yet. So it was just Uncle Nate and me, down in the basement.

It’s strange how perceptions change. Back then no adult saw any problem with an adult male and a very prebubescent female being alone for several hours out of view of other family members. These days, even under observation, an adult male is considered suspect. What changed in this society? What fear developed about adult-child interaction?

I think I see a light. I can’t let them know I know. I think I see light far off in the corner.

A year later I started kindergarten in San Jose. It was a set of small little buildings, at that point, only about twenty, thirty kids or so, total, divided into two ‘classes’. It was painted in concentric circles of yellow, green and blue, where it wasn’t a pinkish-grey--the pinkish-grey being the various layers of paint on the cinderblocks. It sat off-center in the playground, the playground--save for the front double doors--surrounding the structure. Surrounding the building were covered walkways formed out of that ubiquitous seventies material--large, square poles of dark-brown painted wood.

By the time I started kindergarten I knew how to read. So it was bitterly frustrating to have the teacher try to spell out her name for us in the class. She started introducing herself by opening a big picture-book, the one my mother owned, with the large picture of Mount Fuji. I saw again the perfect cone, the perfect dusting of snow at the peak, and smiled.

"Tell me what this is, children," she asked. She was a tall woman, or at least seemed tall to me, with bright eyes and dark blonde hair. I raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"That’s Mount Fuji," I said. "It’s in Japan."

She blinked for a moment, looking at me, and then shook her head.

"No. Anyone else?"

They sat and blinked at her, and looked at me, and I was stunned. I’d never had an adult before tell me I was wrong when I wasn’t. I couldn’t even think past what she’d said. It never occurred to me she would want another interpretation, a more literal one. I waited until I couldn’t take it any more, and then raised my hand again.

She waited, to see if anyone else would join me, and then looked my way.

"Yes?"

"That is Mount Fuji," I said, stressing the words. "It’s very well known. It’s the highest mountain in Japan."

"Please don’t say anything else," she told me, and I began to tremble. I looked around. All their eyes were empty. All their eyes were empty. They’d never know this. I knew this, and I wasn’t being allowed to speak. I sat in silence, my hands clenched in my lap, my teeth clenched, determined not to speak again.

No one else did, either. One of the other children sucked his thumb noisily. No one else moved or spoke.

Our teacher sighed, closing the book.

"It is a hill, children," she said patiently. "That is the first part of my name. Hill. Can you all say that?"

"Hill," the class repeated dully. I said nothing. It was not just a hill. It was the highest mountain in Japan, sacred to the two largest religions there. Three temples are built at the summit. Later a weather observatory was added, because the mountain sits so closely to Tokyo. It has a history of erupting, being as it’s a volcano, and the story goes that there is an imperial dragon coiled at the base. When he twitches, the mountain erupts. He has not twitched, apparently, since the early 1700s.

She looked around at my still, set face and everyone else’s dull, uncomprehending ones, and picked up a bell. She rang it, smiling.

"Tell me what that is."

I fought the urge to raise my hand and say, "It’s a bell, you stupid woman". Not the least because I was not raised to treat adults with any disrespect, but also, I suspected her of further trickery. She’d said I was wrong once, and I hadn’t been; what would she say now?

She waited, and when even I did not raise my hand, she sighed, shaking her head.

"It’s a ding, children." She rang the bell again. "See? Listen. That’s the sound the bell makes--Ding!"

She rang the bell a third time for effect. I blinked, shocked. I think I was beyond words at that point and near tears with frustration. I watched as she rose from her chair and went over to the blackboard. She carefully wrote *Mrs. Hilding* on the board and I gritted my teeth until I heard grinding. I felt insulted, betrayed, and hurt, and it didn’t help that everyone around me was starting to nod off.

She passed around coloring books after that, and we were asked to color in A through F on the basic books. This was no hardship for someone who’d been coloring for a year now, and I soon grew bored. I’d brought one of the Andrew Lang Fairy Tale books with me--it was either the Purple Fairy Book or the Orange Fairy Book, I can’t remember--and, after I was done, I started to read.

She came over, slightly frowning.

"You are supposed to be coloring," she said sternly.

"Mrs. Hilding," I said, painting the words in a long-suffering tone, "I have finished the pages. There’s nothing else to do."

The frown intensified. "Show me."

I sighed now, but carefully closed my book, marking it with a ribbon bookmark my mother had made. Then I opened the coloring book.

"A," I said, pointing out the red apple. "A is for apple." I looked up; she nodded, asking me to go on.

"B is for ball. C is for cat. D is for dinosaur." I looked up, cocking my head. "Technically, this is a brachiosaur. Shouldn’t that be under B?"

She took my crayons away, and my Andrew Lang book.

"You are to sit there until the end of class," she said, walking away. "It is impolite to correct people."

I couldn’t stand it. I stood up.

"Even when they’re wrong?" I shouted at her retreating back.

I spent the rest of the class in the corner.

Somewhere in all of this, though, she’d heard someone either no one else had, or was just determined to get me out of her classroom, because she wrote a note that I was to take to the office the next day. Which I did. The note said that I had a pronounced lisp, that needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

That morning I was introduced to my speech therapist, who spent three hours every day with me, going over vowels and dipthongs, measuring my lisp on sibilants, recording my voice and playing back the sound. I was overjoyed--not only was my therapist a younger woman, with the most amazing fall of glossy brown hair, but that was three hours I did not have to spend with Mrs. Hilding and her endless restrictions. Unfortunately, all good things end--and after three months, my therapist called for a meeting with my mother. I was allowed to sit quietly and listen.

"Mrs. Delacourte, I’ve taken your daughter as far as we can go, therapy-wise. She needs surgery."

I blinked. Surgery? First I’d heard of it.

"For what, precisely? I thought you were training out a lisp."

"Yes, and in normal cases, three months would have been sufficient. But your daughter has a pronounced leader, connecting her tongue to the floor of her mouth. In essence, her tongue is chained in place, and doesn’t have the necessary flexibility not to lisp."

"I see."

"I can recommend several doctors in the area..."

"No need. We’re moving soon. I’ll look for one after we get settled."

My heart fell. Moving? Again? Already I hated moving, and I’d only been in three houses over my entire life. I watched in silence as she and my mother shook hands, and I took that as my cue to hop off the chair. I smoothed my skirt, as I had seen my mother and aunt do, and stepped forward.

"Thank you for trying," I said carefully. She smiled and stroked my hair.

"It was my pleasure, Mary."

But her eyes were worried as she watched me leave.

From there we went back home, and I got the best news paired with the worst--we really were leaving, but I had the next week to pack, and thus wouldn’t have to return to Mrs. Hilding’s class. This was upsetting and a relief at the same time. I set to filling boxes that my mother brought down from upstairs.

Packing was always my least favorite thing. We always had to leave things behind, we always had less room for what we owned. One night we took a break, I remember, and everyone came downstairs to watch The King and I. I’m not sure why everyone was downstairs watching, but I remember I got thirsty, and went upstairs for a glass of water.

I sat carefully on the couch upstairs, drinking, and looking around, listening to the stillness. I looked down to the right of the couch. There was Aunt Delora’s sewing kit. I reached in, finding a paper of pins, and pulled them out while I set the glass down. I pulled out one of the pins--long, gleaming, with a frosted teal glass head--and turned it over in my hand.

Downstairs, I heard strains of music. "Shall We Dance" was starting, and I closed my eyes, imaging the King and Anna gliding through the ballroom, the bell of her dress swinging as he turned her around and around and around. It was one of my favorite movie moments at that point. I smiled, looking down, and the smile died on my face.

The teal-headed pin was pushed completely through my right thumbnail.

While I stared in shock, turning my hand over to ascertain that, yes, the pin was poking all the way through, my mother came upstairs, a quizzical look on her face.

"Mary?" she called out. "You’ve been up here an awfully long time, is everything--oh, my God!"

Everything gets blurry past that point. There was shouting. I remember Sessa’s small grave face looking at my hand, and Evan asking if it hurt. I remember saying over and over I didn’t remember doing it. I remember no one listened. I remember streetlights rushing by as my mother drove me to the hospital. I remember worried looks passing between the doctor and the nurse.

"We could hold her if you like, observe her behavior," the doctor said, as if I wasn’t there listening.

"No, no," my mother said, her voice trembling. "She’s fine. This was just an accident. She doesn’t normally do things like this."

I couldn’t remember doing this at all, I thought, and watched as the doctor carefully snipped off the end of the pin.

"Okay, now, this may hurt a little," the doctor said. Everyone looked so worried. It hadn’t hurt yet, so why did everyone look so worried?

I nodded, though, because they seemed to expect some response. The doctor only sighed, and began to pull out the pin. It came out smoothly, only catching on the underside of the thumbnail, before popping free.

"There’s no blood," the doctor said. "Look, there’s no blood!"

He turned my hand, and I observed with no real feeling the place where the pin had come through the other side of my thumb. Hmm. I was supposed to bleed?

"Mary," my mother said. She put her hand on my shoulder. "That’s not--normal."

"It’s not?" I asked. Just then, a throb of pain stabbed through me, and blood began to drip steadily from the wound. Both the doctor and nurse actually stepped away from me, before the nurse stepped back and reached for the dressing so she could stop the bleeding.

"Well, she...seems to be...fine," the doctor said. "I’ll be...outside if you need me."

"Yes, Doctor," the nurse said, concentrating upon her task.

I didn’t understand then. I only barely understand now. I still don’t know how the pin got pushed through my thumb. Mother seemed to blame me, later, and watched me carefully around all sharp objects. Which was tricky for a while as that was when I first showed an interest in learning to sew, learning to embroider, learning to knit and crochet. Needles, scissors, pins and hooks--all things my mother was wary of me being around, or seeing, or picking up. It was a strange time--my mother handing me the things she wanted to protect me from, and watching me use them as she taught me how they were used. All under the guise of an intense protective urge, a watchfulness, the whole of her attention focused on me. It was unnerving.


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All original content copyright Jeanne Maxwell, 2004. Write to me if you have any questions.

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