Scenes from Childhood

1. In My Cradling Arms

How easily I can remember that small parlor with the tiny coal fireplace in England. That room, that house, seems to come in clearer and stronger every year that I grow older. The tall upright piano took up much of the room, that piano where I tried, when I was ten, to play the “Coventry Christmas Carol.” It was bitterly cold in that row house in Cambridge, England. There was no central heat in those days, and in the bedroom we had to stand in front of an electric heater to change into our pajamas.

My father was on sabbatical for the year and we had taken the enormous Queen Elizabeth ocean liner across the Atlantic in warm, easy weather. Under bright sea skies and sun, we had played shuffleboard on deck. Tea and cakes were delivered to us by a steward in a white uniform, while we lay under wool blankets on deck chairs. My father kept saying how charming and fun it was. The wind blew through his jacket sleeves, as if to lift him away. While my mother was afraid the boat would sink. For the whole trip her hands clutched the railings. Her eyes never lightened.

When we docked, we spent a blowsy August ripping around in a tiny white car through villages and along chalk cliffs, looking at crumbling castles lost in the tall grass. And then we settled down to live seriously in Cambridge. My sisters and I were enrolled in school.

Soon it was Christmas time in England and I had to look away when we passed the butcher shop on the corner because whole pigs hung in the window with their sad snouts and their curled tails intact. Downy rabbits too were strung from their bloody ears in plain view. The hamburgers tasted gamey and I had chilblains on my toes from the cold.

I went to school around the corner from our row house. The building was made of stone and had a church-like feel with a walled-in courtyard. The girls had to wear white blouses, black plimsoll shoes, and blue woolen knickers (underpants) for outside gym class, held in the courtyard. We jumped the scissor step over a rod that was raised higher and higher out there. I was quite good at the scissor jump and I had learned to write English style with a pen and nib dipped in an inkwell.

A lot of the classrooms were empty in the school, which puzzled me, and many of the rooms were cold and had desks and chairs piled up everywhere, unused. My teacher was quite harsh and demanded that everyone say, “Yes, Ma’am,” after every sentence spoken to her. She was particularly cruel to my friend Sheila who wore braces and had flecks of dandruff in her long black braids. Sheila was terribly bright, wore thick glasses, read all the time, and wheezed when she breathed. I was aware that the teacher made up reasons to be mean to Sheila. She was always being sent to the first form to sit “with the babies” having done nothing wrong at all, as far as I could tell. On the way to the lavatory, we could see Sheila in the small children’s room sitting in a corner, crying in shame.

The teachers were constantly telling us that the men from Westcott were coming soon. Every song we learned, every drawing we did, every poem we recited was done in anticipation of the arrival of the men from Westcott. And it was then that I had to memorize the Shakespeare poem “Winter.” The coldness of it was quite fitting, with winter setting in, I with chilblains on my toes, the unheated rooms and Sheila’s tears. And mine. The other girls in the class did not like me.

When icicles hang by the wallAnd Dick the shepherd blows his nailAnd Tom bears logs into the hall,And milk comes frozen home in pail . . .

I remember the poem to this day. And I remember too the day the men...