If a child was naughty, he or she was ordered to the principal’s office — and went. The children dressed nicely and behaved nicely. They learned their lessons and minded their manners. She supposed she was lucky to have been retired all these years when young people had become rowdyish, sloppy, ill mannered and rough. Therefore, she could think about the past with quietude, untouched by the turmoil created by the young of today.
Or had been able to until recently, when the neighborhood had gone downhill to an alarming extent and the young people who passed her house on their way home from school had thrown incredible insults while doing so.
“Ha, old Pickle Nose, how’s your garden doin’ today?” and “I’ll bet you got some guy stashed away in there, may be in your bed, ha?”
Raucous laughter from the motley crew of young ruffians, children she was growing to hate and fear. They shouted obscenities at her, laughed at her, ridiculed her rather protuberant nose, cast reflections on her ancestry of which she was so proud (a governor, a Supreme Court justice, a hero of the Civil war, far back of course, but there, nonetheless) and always the obscenities, the coarseness, the wretched grammar that never failed to grate on her ears.
“I bet you ain’t got nothin’ that we want!” “Between you and I and the gatepost.” “Those kind of flowers make me sick at my stomach.” “Where’s all the cats old maids are sposed to got?”
Outraged, she would reflect that at least her own students in years past had not only been polite and well dressed, they had learned the grammar she had taught them, the English which was so vital to their future lives. They could write compositions and they could quote from Shakespeare. They learned to modulate their voices and do their elocution lessons — Whereas these young ruffians would turn out to be nothing but criminals or welfare recipients for the rest of their lives.
Five of them came along now and, rather than face them again, she laid down the hose and went to the faucet to turn off the water. As she bent over, one of the young voices bellowed, “Christ, what a butt! How about that — hey, Tony? How’d you like to—”
More obscenities. She turned around and recognized them. She had been subjected to their vulgarities more than once before. But this was the final time. Everyone, she reminded herself, has a breaking point beyond which he or she cannot endure. No one can be pushed beyond that point without disaster!
She stood up and turned to them and smiled. “Hello young people,” she said. “How about coming into the house for refreshments?”
They stood stock still — the tall, towheaded youth of thirteen and his younger companions, Tony the Chicano, Ezra the little black boy, the slyly grinning Eurasian girl, Iris, the fiery haired (and tempered) Irish miss, Maggie — they stood in wonderment at the pleasant response to their comments, then relaxed, grinning.
“What kinda refreshments?” asked Frank, the towhead.
“Lemonade and cookies!” He turned to the others, they grinned and echoed, “Lemonade and cookies!” and burst into wild laughter, finally falling on the ground in. their ecstasy and beating at the soil. Lemonade and cookies!
“That all, Grandmaw?” yelled the dark-featured Tony. “No pot? No booze? We’ll come in your house for some real chow. Refreshments? Lemonade?” The others howled in glee.
Miss Palmer felt quite sick but persisted, nonetheless. “Whatever you want,” she said slyly. “I got” (purposely reverting to their form of communication) “some stuff inside you never seen before. Good grub and a lot of gold coins. A collection. I figured maybe you’d want to take a look.”
They gazed at her more respectfully. Frank looked at the others. “Old Grandmaw’s maybe got something. Wanta see?” Gold coins glittered in the eyes of each child: Easy to grab them from the old dame.
They followed their leader through the gate of the picket fence and into the house behind Miss Clara Palmer, who had finally reached her individual breaking point. It will be a long time, she assured herself, before these ruffians ever see daylight again — and led them into the big old house where she lived alone...
“Now,” said Miss Palmer, “here you stay until you learn the rudiments of language and deportment which the Board of Education has not seen fit to bestow upon any of its students for the last ten years. Here you stay! Do you understand?”
She was sitting at a worn wooden table in the huge windowless basement of the old house. Ranged around one end and part of the adjoining sides were her young charges, chained to things that were firmly embedded in the concrete walls. They were terrified and, for once, quiet.
The least terrified was the young Mexican boy, Tony. He spat at her and shouted, “My father, he kill you for this!”
“Quiet,” said Miss Palmer, and her voice was the cold tip of the iceberg. Beside her on the desk was the old-fashioned pistol with which she had herded them into this room, a bell such as was used in schoolrooms in her day, and a long buggy whip. “There will be no talking without my permission — just raise your hands if you have something to say.”
They all started walking at once, and Miss Palmer banged her hand on the bell and raised the whip. “You-will-not-interrupt,” she said in her icy voice. “I will tell you what you need to know. Now!”
She stared at them and they were quiet again. “At present,” she said, “You are illiterate young ruffians. You have no manners, no knowledge whatever, and a culture that belongs back in the caveman era. Before you get out of here you are going to be well-mannered, cultured, moderately educated young people, a credit to the future of your country.”
The Eurasian girl, Iris, said, “I’m scared. Why you do this?”
“I just told you,” said Miss Palmer. “Parents and teachers alike are responsible for the way the young are growing up these days, and I am going to prove that decency and intelligence can be brought out in young children if enough attention is given to them.”
“You are a God-damned old bitch!” shouted the Irish girl, Maggie.
Miss Palmer rose quietly from her desk and, whip in hand, approached the redheaded spitfire.
“One more remark like that,” she said, “and you will feel this whip against your legs. I do not wish to hurt you but if that is the only way you can be taught, then so be it. Is that clear?”
She looked around at the young, grubby, frightened faces and thought with satisfaction, The first step taken.
Back at her desk, she said in her pleasant, no longer icy-edged, schoolteacherish voice, “Now, children, I will explain how you are going to live down here. There will be no more privation than is necessary. Your chains are long enough so that you can lie on the floor and this evening I will bring down some blankets for you. Hot meals three times a day—”
“Hey, Grandmaw,” the oldest boy, Frank, taunted, “how we gonna pee?”
The bell sounded loudly. “Do you want to feel the whip?” she demanded. “First, you spoke without raising your hand. Second, I am not your grandmother nor anyone else’s. Third, you committed a vulgarism in referring to a natural function of the body. Keep still, all of you!” and now the iciness had returned.
“I mean what I say and you are in no position to argue about it. Now... if and when any of you feel the need to go to the bathroom, simply raise your hand and ask politely to use the lavatory. I will then unfasten that person, and I will have this pistol in my hand in the event there is any attempt to overpower me.