fills her lungs with air.
Every few nights she will rearrange the furniture in her roomâthe twin bed, the bureau, the bedside table, the stuffed chair. She will move these things at night when the room is dark. Then when she opens her eyes in the morning, she will be somewhere else.
Someone else
.
Out of necessity she has been waking up earlier and earlier in order to beat her grandfather who has recently moved in with her to convalesce from a fall he took off a carpenterâs scaffold.
In her room she dresses in darkness. Her flannel nightgown she folds in tissue paper and slips into her drawer, a small act to purify the day. And before she leaves the room she kneels down on the floor of her closet to make sure that none of her shoes is out of place. She places her hand on the back of each shoe and pushes so all the toes are lined up against the baseboard. This small gesture folds into the smooth contours of an ordered life and holds together the symmetry of the world. She can sense this and it calms her. At this hour of the morning, the world, to her, is still a fine painting that she will only make a mess of, marching back and forth across it with paint on the soles of her shoes as the day goes on. That is how she thinks of herself in those days. Ungainly and unsure of herself. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough.
In the hallway she stops at the doorway of her brotherâs room. Jack is ten years old. She has bought him a cowboyâs six-shooter and holster for his birthday and it hangs off the bedpost. She listens to him breathing. Sometime in the lastyear while she was growing into her beauty, the sharp angles of her body giving way to roundness, she had begun seeing her brother as more than a pest who plagued her, hiding her lipstick in the mailbox on the front porch, her underwear in the glove compartment of her fatherâs Ford. She had begun to see him as a person who would go on and take his place in the world, and this as much as any other change seemed to indicate that she had finally left behind her girlhood, ducking below the last breaking waves of adolescence, then emerging as a young woman while the turmoil and confusion washed away beneath her feet.
In a bed across from her brother, Aunt Sue is snoring faintly. She works as a nurse in Philadelphia and visits frequently. Her sister, Lilly, lives three doors away and lately has been giving Peggy a course in advanced sewing. Tonight, in front of both these aunts, Peggy will take her place at the Singer machine with the black wrought-iron legs and the little white light glowing beneath its tin shade.
A few steps away she pauses at the door of her mother and fatherâs bedroom. She can smell the printerâs ink on the clothes that her father has left on a chair. Tan khakis, top and bottom. A black leather belt. A white T-shirt. In another hour her mother will awaken to go to work in the cafeteria of the Consolidated School. She will put on her white uniform and the hair net that always makes Peggy feel sorry for her because with the hair net on, her mother doesnât look like herself but like a kitchen worker complying with someoneâs rules. The hair net, something so light that it is almost weightless in her hand, steals her mother from her and Peggy will turn away whenever her mother puts it on in her presence.
In the kitchen on these early mornings, Peggyâs grandfather is already sitting at the oak table, his head in his hands. Somethingis knocked down inside her when she sees that he has beaten her to the day.
She waits for him to finish his silent morning prayers, then touches his shoulder. Here is a man who dropped thirty feet from a carpenterâs scaffolding and landed on his back, the scaffold planks and all his tools crashing down on top of him. When the doctor examined him in the emergency room at Grandview Hospital in Sellersville he exclaimed, âYouâre in so many pieces, Howard, that I donât know
Every few nights she will rearrange the furniture in her roomâthe twin bed, the bureau, the bedside table, the stuffed chair. She will move these things at night when the room is dark. Then when she opens her eyes in the morning, she will be somewhere else.
Someone else
.
Out of necessity she has been waking up earlier and earlier in order to beat her grandfather who has recently moved in with her to convalesce from a fall he took off a carpenterâs scaffold.
In her room she dresses in darkness. Her flannel nightgown she folds in tissue paper and slips into her drawer, a small act to purify the day. And before she leaves the room she kneels down on the floor of her closet to make sure that none of her shoes is out of place. She places her hand on the back of each shoe and pushes so all the toes are lined up against the baseboard. This small gesture folds into the smooth contours of an ordered life and holds together the symmetry of the world. She can sense this and it calms her. At this hour of the morning, the world, to her, is still a fine painting that she will only make a mess of, marching back and forth across it with paint on the soles of her shoes as the day goes on. That is how she thinks of herself in those days. Ungainly and unsure of herself. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough.
In the hallway she stops at the doorway of her brotherâs room. Jack is ten years old. She has bought him a cowboyâs six-shooter and holster for his birthday and it hangs off the bedpost. She listens to him breathing. Sometime in the lastyear while she was growing into her beauty, the sharp angles of her body giving way to roundness, she had begun seeing her brother as more than a pest who plagued her, hiding her lipstick in the mailbox on the front porch, her underwear in the glove compartment of her fatherâs Ford. She had begun to see him as a person who would go on and take his place in the world, and this as much as any other change seemed to indicate that she had finally left behind her girlhood, ducking below the last breaking waves of adolescence, then emerging as a young woman while the turmoil and confusion washed away beneath her feet.
In a bed across from her brother, Aunt Sue is snoring faintly. She works as a nurse in Philadelphia and visits frequently. Her sister, Lilly, lives three doors away and lately has been giving Peggy a course in advanced sewing. Tonight, in front of both these aunts, Peggy will take her place at the Singer machine with the black wrought-iron legs and the little white light glowing beneath its tin shade.
A few steps away she pauses at the door of her mother and fatherâs bedroom. She can smell the printerâs ink on the clothes that her father has left on a chair. Tan khakis, top and bottom. A black leather belt. A white T-shirt. In another hour her mother will awaken to go to work in the cafeteria of the Consolidated School. She will put on her white uniform and the hair net that always makes Peggy feel sorry for her because with the hair net on, her mother doesnât look like herself but like a kitchen worker complying with someoneâs rules. The hair net, something so light that it is almost weightless in her hand, steals her mother from her and Peggy will turn away whenever her mother puts it on in her presence.
In the kitchen on these early mornings, Peggyâs grandfather is already sitting at the oak table, his head in his hands. Somethingis knocked down inside her when she sees that he has beaten her to the day.
She waits for him to finish his silent morning prayers, then touches his shoulder. Here is a man who dropped thirty feet from a carpenterâs scaffolding and landed on his back, the scaffold planks and all his tools crashing down on top of him. When the doctor examined him in the emergency room at Grandview Hospital in Sellersville he exclaimed, âYouâre in so many pieces, Howard, that I donât know
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