03-02-2011, 09:27 PM
There once lived a woman who strongly believed that education was a curse and thus any children she might bear she would save from its indignity. This woman was not some caricature dwelling in the swamps of a backwoods country, nor a religious fanatic, but a middle-class schoolteacher.
As a girl she read all day and night crouched in a corner of her bedroom beside a pile of books borrowed with her mother's library card, the pint-sized bibliophile at rest. By age twelve she was quoting Dickens and at thirteen fell in love with Virginia Woolf, determined to one day have her talent but be spared her tragic ending.
Friends of her mother would pass her door or see her walking up the stairs loaded with fresh tomes and say: "Your Josephine is awfully smart! Her sister Marianne got the looks, but she got the brains." Marianne meanwhile would be primping in her room or pulling on a party dress two sizes too small having told her mother it was all she could afford with her pocket money when really she liked the way it hugged her figure accentuating her blossoming breasts for the pleasure of potential suitors.
Josephine considered her sister a slut before she even knew the word and pitied her like she did the children at her school. 'If only they knew what I know' she'd think while being brought to tears by a near perfect combination of words in Mrs. Dalloway.
But sometimes glancing through her window at the children below telling jokes, playing games, getting sick, holding hands, growing up together, she wondered if perhaps they held some knowledge which she hadn't derived from her books. She'd always quickly dismiss this idea and return to the page her finger lay on.
Marianne fell pregnant at the age of nineteen by a restaurateur's son who could support her and soon moved her in to an expensive flat. Marianne could still wear small party dresses and leave her child with a babysitter while her husband took her out after work. She hadn't even finished her GCSEs and had been a waitress for her father-in-law when her future came along neatly wrapped.
Josephine meanwhile was beating out her brains at a prestigious university where achievement, attendance and discipline were encouraged through fear. She befriended an aspiring playwright who hung herself in the toilets one night after someone alerted the dean to her stealing food from the cafeteria. Her parents' cheques being only enough to pay off her tuition fees it turned out she was broke and couldn't pay for meals. Too ashamed to ask her peers for help and even more so to consider coming home she'd survived a fortnight on yoghurts and fruit and whatever she could stuff down her blazer. The person who exposed her stealing was never identified though it was believed to be a student.
Following news of her friend's suicide Josephine took her first day off in three months and strolled aimlessly about the town she'd beforehand caught only glimpses of through the car window on her way here and the one in her student room since. Single mothers pushed prams up and down the street wearing pink tracksuits and cheap jewellery; homeless men cluttered the air with whiskey and shook paper cups at passing shoppers; a group of retards were ferried around by carers who dispensed soft drinks and snacks and clucked like hens at their charges. A thought from childhood entered her mind and lingered a while before being dismissed and she caught sight of herself in a storefront window, shabby and depressed, a bundle of unwashed, un-ironed clothes, a satchel on her back like a great dead baby. She returned to her rooms at a trot.
She graduated with first class honours in her chosen subject and decided out of some obscure duty to become a schoolteacher. Too poor to pay the rent on a flat by herself she lived with her mother throughout her training, returning to her childhood room.
Almost nothing had changed since she'd left it four years ago. Shelves lined the wall still straining from the weight of all the books she'd bought at car boot sales and second hand shops, their spines now obscured by layers of dust. In the corner was a toy chest with its clasp still fastened more than a decade later. Her mother had once kidded herself that Josephine at night would take out the contents and played with them. It opened surprisingly well and Josephine saw for perhaps the first time the stuffed animals and plastic telephones and dolls and hairbrushes and assorted goodies.
She pressed her face into them and wept, the plastic cold like rain against her cheek. Some minutes later she heard the threshold creak and raised her head like a cat in defence to see her mother leaning against the doorframe smiling benevolently. "Brings back memories, doesn't it dear?" was all she said.
Once her training was complete she sought out a job at the school which taught her and her sister and was soon put in charge of the first year students, bright eyed infants annoyed at being torn away from their television screens to be bamboozled with the alphabet. Her sister Marianne enrolled her son there, and pushed for a bit to have him taught by Josephine, though the school council rejected this. Nonetheless Josephine saw her sister everyday, now plump with her second child yet still dressing like a catwalk model, her face flushed with youth and sensuality, while the other mothers there to collect their children gave her both their jealousy and awe.
Josephine bought a house near the school and lived on her own. Though she was by no means unattractive men shied away from her, finding her intelligence intimidating. Her one long-term lover had dumped her on the spot after she corrected his grammar during sex.
Her house had a basement and she put in it her old toy chest, telling her mother her future children might make use of it some day. Her mother had beamed with pride and joy.
After the last bell had rung, the papers had been marked and her lesson plans checked, she took to going home and taking out the toys, playing with them down in her basement, giving the animals voices and pretending to call people on the plastic telephone. When this wasn't enough she bought a carpet, put up wallpaper and installed a bed (all coloured a garish pink) dressing it in coverlets and quilts with pictures of Disney princesses on.
Then one particular student at school caught Josephine's attention. She was a serious young girl who wore hand-me-down clothes and rimless glasses for which the other children teased her. One day during play time when she couldn't see her Josephine searched the entire building until she found her in the library curled up with a copy of a Roald Dahl novel. Josephine hugged her fiercely and the child went limp in her arms, quiet and awkward and a little scared. "I'll save you" the elder whispered in her ear, though she wasn't sure that the younger could hear.
That afternoon she bought a Dictaphone and after recording herself loudly reading passages from Great Expectations played it on loop in the basement then left and stood in the garden outside to see if she could hear it. She couldn't.
The last thing she bought for the basement was a system of locks which she fastened to the door. Locks so heavy and convoluted that a grown man couldn't break through them. Let alone a little girl.
![[Image: CARVED%20TOY%20BOX.jpg]](http://www.simonriddell.com/images/Old%20School%20Pine/Coachhouse%20Furniture/Boxes/CARVED%20TOY%20BOX.jpg)
As a girl she read all day and night crouched in a corner of her bedroom beside a pile of books borrowed with her mother's library card, the pint-sized bibliophile at rest. By age twelve she was quoting Dickens and at thirteen fell in love with Virginia Woolf, determined to one day have her talent but be spared her tragic ending.
Friends of her mother would pass her door or see her walking up the stairs loaded with fresh tomes and say: "Your Josephine is awfully smart! Her sister Marianne got the looks, but she got the brains." Marianne meanwhile would be primping in her room or pulling on a party dress two sizes too small having told her mother it was all she could afford with her pocket money when really she liked the way it hugged her figure accentuating her blossoming breasts for the pleasure of potential suitors.
Josephine considered her sister a slut before she even knew the word and pitied her like she did the children at her school. 'If only they knew what I know' she'd think while being brought to tears by a near perfect combination of words in Mrs. Dalloway.
But sometimes glancing through her window at the children below telling jokes, playing games, getting sick, holding hands, growing up together, she wondered if perhaps they held some knowledge which she hadn't derived from her books. She'd always quickly dismiss this idea and return to the page her finger lay on.
Marianne fell pregnant at the age of nineteen by a restaurateur's son who could support her and soon moved her in to an expensive flat. Marianne could still wear small party dresses and leave her child with a babysitter while her husband took her out after work. She hadn't even finished her GCSEs and had been a waitress for her father-in-law when her future came along neatly wrapped.
Josephine meanwhile was beating out her brains at a prestigious university where achievement, attendance and discipline were encouraged through fear. She befriended an aspiring playwright who hung herself in the toilets one night after someone alerted the dean to her stealing food from the cafeteria. Her parents' cheques being only enough to pay off her tuition fees it turned out she was broke and couldn't pay for meals. Too ashamed to ask her peers for help and even more so to consider coming home she'd survived a fortnight on yoghurts and fruit and whatever she could stuff down her blazer. The person who exposed her stealing was never identified though it was believed to be a student.
Following news of her friend's suicide Josephine took her first day off in three months and strolled aimlessly about the town she'd beforehand caught only glimpses of through the car window on her way here and the one in her student room since. Single mothers pushed prams up and down the street wearing pink tracksuits and cheap jewellery; homeless men cluttered the air with whiskey and shook paper cups at passing shoppers; a group of retards were ferried around by carers who dispensed soft drinks and snacks and clucked like hens at their charges. A thought from childhood entered her mind and lingered a while before being dismissed and she caught sight of herself in a storefront window, shabby and depressed, a bundle of unwashed, un-ironed clothes, a satchel on her back like a great dead baby. She returned to her rooms at a trot.
She graduated with first class honours in her chosen subject and decided out of some obscure duty to become a schoolteacher. Too poor to pay the rent on a flat by herself she lived with her mother throughout her training, returning to her childhood room.
Almost nothing had changed since she'd left it four years ago. Shelves lined the wall still straining from the weight of all the books she'd bought at car boot sales and second hand shops, their spines now obscured by layers of dust. In the corner was a toy chest with its clasp still fastened more than a decade later. Her mother had once kidded herself that Josephine at night would take out the contents and played with them. It opened surprisingly well and Josephine saw for perhaps the first time the stuffed animals and plastic telephones and dolls and hairbrushes and assorted goodies.
She pressed her face into them and wept, the plastic cold like rain against her cheek. Some minutes later she heard the threshold creak and raised her head like a cat in defence to see her mother leaning against the doorframe smiling benevolently. "Brings back memories, doesn't it dear?" was all she said.
Once her training was complete she sought out a job at the school which taught her and her sister and was soon put in charge of the first year students, bright eyed infants annoyed at being torn away from their television screens to be bamboozled with the alphabet. Her sister Marianne enrolled her son there, and pushed for a bit to have him taught by Josephine, though the school council rejected this. Nonetheless Josephine saw her sister everyday, now plump with her second child yet still dressing like a catwalk model, her face flushed with youth and sensuality, while the other mothers there to collect their children gave her both their jealousy and awe.
Josephine bought a house near the school and lived on her own. Though she was by no means unattractive men shied away from her, finding her intelligence intimidating. Her one long-term lover had dumped her on the spot after she corrected his grammar during sex.
Her house had a basement and she put in it her old toy chest, telling her mother her future children might make use of it some day. Her mother had beamed with pride and joy.
After the last bell had rung, the papers had been marked and her lesson plans checked, she took to going home and taking out the toys, playing with them down in her basement, giving the animals voices and pretending to call people on the plastic telephone. When this wasn't enough she bought a carpet, put up wallpaper and installed a bed (all coloured a garish pink) dressing it in coverlets and quilts with pictures of Disney princesses on.
Then one particular student at school caught Josephine's attention. She was a serious young girl who wore hand-me-down clothes and rimless glasses for which the other children teased her. One day during play time when she couldn't see her Josephine searched the entire building until she found her in the library curled up with a copy of a Roald Dahl novel. Josephine hugged her fiercely and the child went limp in her arms, quiet and awkward and a little scared. "I'll save you" the elder whispered in her ear, though she wasn't sure that the younger could hear.
That afternoon she bought a Dictaphone and after recording herself loudly reading passages from Great Expectations played it on loop in the basement then left and stood in the garden outside to see if she could hear it. She couldn't.
The last thing she bought for the basement was a system of locks which she fastened to the door. Locks so heavy and convoluted that a grown man couldn't break through them. Let alone a little girl.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe
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