The Way Smart People Do

The Way Smart People Do Patricia Foster I'm driving down Bon Secour Road past the shrimp boats and the long, rickety piers, past Butchy's Bait Shop and Miss Stevens's Antiques, turning the S curve toward the palmetto flats. The next house will be Mrs. Newman's, my seventh-grade English teacher, retired now for over thirty years. I see her just as she was in 1960, monolithic, restless, a battleship captain -who plunged us through the icy seas ofgrammar, demanding our perfect behavior with nouns and verbs, and especially adverbs. Every day we raced to the board to diagram sentences, to pit our resources against one another. Every day, waiting for her command, I felt a constriction in my throat, an impulse to scream. Today I find her slouched in a comfortable chair facing Bon Secour River, a lap robe over her lap, her face as stern and principled as ever. Her gray hair stands out in a shag-Uke fuzz. A slight moustache darkens her upper lip. I come in quietly and hug her tentatively. She seems pleased at the gesture and simultaneously confused by my affection. She points to a chair across from her and as I sit I'm drawn to a view of the river where a fierce white sun strikes the watery surface, making it glitter like tin. Sea oats and pampas grass hug sandy banks. Dragonflies hover, spreading iridescent wings. "This heat," Mrs. Newman sighs, fanning herself with a folded church buUetin, and I reaUze for the first time that she's getting old. Age spots freckle her hands. The cords on her neck stand out like buried piano wires, and her voice—that booming "Chill-ren!"—is now scratchy and thin. We talk a bit about the weather, about my visit with my parents, about the year I was in her seventh-grade class in Foley, Alabama, and to my surprise, she turns accusing eyes on me. "Your sister was quicker than you, more responsible in the classroom," she says abruptly. "You, I remember, were timid. Oh, I could see you were smart, but sometimes you didn't act the way smart people do." 73 74Fourth Genre My face grows hot. The violets on her windowsiU turn a brighter shade of purple. I feel a familiar quivering of fury, a clutch at the heart. Didn't act the way smartpeople do. What girl is she talking about? I see myselfat age twelve counting my notebooks, stacking my books the day before school, sharpening my pencils, this girl who loves the dry, whispery feel ofchalk, who hates the antiseptic odor of the GIRLS bathroom, who stiU remembers this woman's familiar voice barking, "Chill-ren," her breath sUghtly acidic from the onions in the potato salad at lunch, "today we're going to learn the sub-jMnc-tive!"And yet for a single instant I am that twelve-yearold kid again, frizzy-haired and anxious, my head lifted with the startled hope of approval. As again I pass Miss Steven's Antiques, I remember how often in childhood my inteUigence was judged by others, articulated as "this" or "that" as if I were an object to be dissected, a character in second or third person . You, my dear, will be a communicator, you have such good verbal skills. Oh, no, she'll probably never do well in math; she doesn't understand associativefunctions . And there was always the Egg Lady, voluminous in bulk and talk, who sat at our kitchen table with her cartons ofeggs, gossiping over a cup of coffee with my mother, signifying the town's venial sins, gathering in our little trinket of news. "You heard about Lucy Hadley, six months out to here and no husband!" she'd whisper. "It seems she took up with you know who, and Lord, she's in for it now!"Then turning to my sister and me as we crowded into the room, "And what are you girls up to this summer?" she'd ask, slyly changing the subject, eyeing a chocolate chip cookie, scooting her body closer to the plate. DutifuUy we told her our summer plans, writing stories with...