In my presence Eugene Ketterer did his best to appear easygoing, unruffled, and nonviolent, just a regular guy. I called him Mr. Ketterer, he called me Nathan, Nate, and Natie. The later he was in delivering Monica to her mother, the more offhand and, to me, galling was his behavior; to Lydia it was infuriating, and in the face of it she revealed a weakness for vitriolic rage which I’d seen no evidence of before, not at home or in class or in her fiction. It did not help any to caution her against allowing him to provoke her; in fact, several times she accused me-afterward, tearfully asking forgiveness-of taking Ketterer’s side, when my only concern had been to prevent her from losing her head in front of Monica. She responded to Ketterer’s taunting like some animal in a cage being poked with a stick, and I knew, the second Sunday that I was on hand to witness his cruelty and her response, that I would shortly have to make it clear to “Gene” that I was not just some disinterested bystander, that enough of his sadism was enough.
In the beginning, before Ketterer and I finally had it out, if Lydia demanded an explanation from him for showing up at two P.M. (when he had been due to arrive with Monica at ten thirty in the morning) he would look at me and say, fraternally, “Women.” If Lydia were to reply, “That’s idiotic! That’s meaningless! What would a thug like you know about ‘women,’ or men, or children! Why are you late with her, Eugene?” he would just shrug and mumble, “Got held up.” “That will not do-!” “Have to, Lyd. ‘Fraid that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” Or without even bothering to give her an answer, he would say, again to me, “Live ‘n’ learn, Natie.” A similarly unpleasant scene would occur in the evening, when he arrived to pick Monica up either much too early or too late. “Look, I ain’t a clock. Never claimed to be.” “You never claimed to be anything -because you’re not anything!” “Yeah, I know, I’m a brute and a slob and a real bad thug, and you, you’re Lady Godiva. Yeah, I know all that.” “You’re a tormentor, that’s what you are! That you torture me is not even the point any more-but how can you be so cruel and heartless as to torture your own little child! How can you play with us like this, Sunday after Sunday, year after year-you caveman! you hollow ignoramus!” “Let’s go, Harmonica”-his nickname for the child-“time to go home with the Big Bad Wolf.”
Usually Monica spent the day at Lydia’s watching TV and wearing her hat. Ready to go at a moment’s notice.
“Monica,” Lydia would say, “you really can’t sit all day watching TV.”
Uncomprehending: “Uh-huh.”
“Monica, do you hear me? It’s three o’clock. Maybe that’s enough TV for one day-do you think? Didn’t you bring your homework?”
Completely in the dark: “My what?”
“Did you bring your homework this week, so we can go over it?”
A mutter: “Forgot.”
“But I told you I’d help you. You need help, you know that.”
Outrage: “Today’s Sunday.”
“And?”
Law of Nature: “Sundays I don’t do no homework.”
“Don’t talk like that, please. You never even spoke like that when you were a little six-year-old girl. You know better than that.”
Cantankerous: “What?”
“Using double negatives. Saying I don’t do no-the way your father does. And please don’t sit like that.”
Incredulous: “What?”
“You’re sitting like a boy. Change into your dungarees if you want to sit like that. Otherwise sit like a girl your age.”
Defiant: “I am.”
“Monica, listen to me: I think we should practice your subtraction. We’ll have to do it without the book, since you didn’t bring it”
Pleading: “But today’s Sunday.”
“But you need help in subtraction. That’s what you need, not church, but help with your math. Monica, take that hat off! Take that silly hat off this minute! It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and you just can’t wear it all day long!”
Determined. Wrathfuclass="underline" “It’s my hat-I can too!”
“But you’re in my house! And I’m your mother! And I’m telling you to take it off! Why do you insist on behaving in this silly way! I am your Mother, you know that! Monica, I love you and you love me-don’t you remember when you were a little girl, don’t you remember how we used to play? Take that hat off before I tear it off your head!”
Ultimate Weapon: “Touch my head and I’ll tell my dad on you!
“And don’t call him ‘Dad’! I cannot stand when you call that man who tortures the two of us ‘Dad’! And sit like a girl! Do as I tell you! Close your legs!”
Sinister: “They’re close.”
“They’re open and you’re showing your underpants and stop it! You’re too big for that-you go on buses, you go to school, if you’re wearing a dress then behave as though you’re wearing one! You cannot sit like this watching television Sunday after Sunday-not when you cannot even add two and two.”
Philosophicaclass="underline" “Who cares.”
“I care! Can you add two and two? I want to know! Look at me-I’m perfectly serious. I have to know what you know and what you don’t know, and where to begin. How much is two and two? Answer me.”
Dumpish: “Dunno.”
“You do know. And pronounce your syllables. And answer me!
Savage: “I don’t know! Leave me alone, you!”
“Monica, how much is eleven minus one? Eleven take away one. If you had eleven cents and someone took away one of them, how many would you have left? Dear, please, what number comes before eleven? You must know this.”
Hystericaclass="underline" “1 don’t know it!”
“You do!”
Exploding: “Twelve!”
“How can it be twelve? Twelve is more than eleven. I’m asking you what’s less than eleven. Eleven take away one-is how much?”
Pause. Reflection. Decision: “One.”
“No! You have eleven and you take away one.”
Illumination: “Oh, take away.”
“Yes. Yes.”
Straight-faced: “We never had take-aways.”
“You did. You had to.”
Steely: “I’m telling you the truth, we don’t have take-aways in James Madison School.”
“Monica, this is subtraction- they have it everywhere in every school, and you have to know it. Oh darling, I don’t care about that hat-I don’t even care about him, that’s over. I care about you and what’s going to happen to you. Because you cannot be a little girl who knows nothing. If you are you’ll get into trouble and your life will be awful. You’re a girl and you’re growing up, and you have to know how to make change of a dollar and what comes before eleven, which is how old you’ll be next year, and you have to know how to sit-please, please don’t sit like that, Monica, please don’t go on buses and sit like that in public even if you insist on doing it here in order to frustrate me. Please. Promise me you won’t.”
Sulky, bewildered: “I don’t understand you.”
“Monica, you’re a developing girl, even if they do dress you up like a kewpie doll on Sundays.”