Angels Unaware

his pockets.
“Suit yourself,” Reverend Hamilton said. “But I intend to sign a complaint that she assaulted my boy and they will take her from you forcibly, if necessary.”
Jewel burst into tears, but I knew crying wouldn’t do any good. So I told her not to worry, that I’d be all right and would come home again real soon.
The next morning, I left. I stood for a moment at the top of the road—at the very last point where you can still see the inn, before it was lost to view—and turned back to look once more at the house. Jewel stood on the porch, alone. She waved, slow and sad, when she saw me turn, and I was struck by the notion that when I again stood on this very spot, everything would be somehow changed. The Hospitality Inn would not be the place I remembered, and Jewel would be very different from the woman I’d left. Threaded through this peculiar certainty was the feeling that something was about to be lost that would never be gotten back again. Jewel put a lot of credence in feelings. I didn’t. I just turned and walked on.
I stayed at the Schuylkill County School for Wayward Girls, for three short months. Ah, dear old Schuylkill, my alma mater. I will always remember it fondly. It was just the kind of school I’d always imagined rich girls went to. We got three meals a day in a clean dining hall, and we wore neatly pressed white blouses with little collars, grey jumpers, and saddle shoes. I had never looked so nice before, nor have I since.
Every girl had a chore at Schuylkill, and the laundry—given my extensive experience—fell to me. It was easy work compared to what I had been accustomed to at the inn. In the basement of the school, great machines washed the clothes automatically, and neatly spaced clotheslines waited in the sun for the wash to be hung.
Schuylkill had a library, too, that was as big as the entire second floor of the inn. We were allowed to check out as many as three books at a time. Mrs. Gulliver, the librarian, liked me and when there was a book I liked especially, she’d let me keep it for my very own. She even let me keep the K volume of the encyclopedia, even though it broke up the set. That was how I learned all I could about Kathmandu, so that when I went there someday, I’d be prepared.
Sometimes I read poetry and me and Mrs. Gulliver would talk about it. Mrs. Gulliver was partial to Keats, but I thought he was a sissy. I liked Byron. He travelled more. He wrote: For though I fly from Albion, I still can only love but one. Albion is England, and I couldn’t understand why his Lordship didn’t just say England instead of confusing everyone. Mrs. Gulliver said it was probably because England doesn’t rhyme with love but one. I wish I could have introduced Mrs. Gulliver to Leon. They’d have gotten on like a house afire with all the reciting they’d have done between them.
I was disappointed to learn that Byron had lived in England. It didn’t count as travel if you already lived there. But he redeemed himself a little in my eyes when Mrs. Gulliver told me that he’d died in Greece. I was so impressed that I made up my mind then and there that I, too, would die in a foreign land far from the place of my birth.
Mrs. Gulliver had never travelled any further than Scranton to visit her sister, but I liked her just the same.
Most of all I liked living at the Schuylkill County School For Wayward Girls because I had so many friends there, especially Martha Balzell, who was in for pickpocketing, and Theresa Fimple, who’d castrated her uncle when he’d made her do things to him once too often. I’d never had any friends at home. Even my sisters were not the kind of people I’d have picked for friends. But at Schuylkill, none of my classmates had fit in at home, which was why we all fit together so well at school. I secretly hoped that I’d never finish paying my debt to society.
In fact, if not for Jewel’s letters, my bliss would have been unmarred—words I had come across in poetry and in conversation with Mrs. Gulliver. I even started writing some of my own poetry. Puberty does that to people, makes them melodramatic; makes them think that they are feeling things that no one has ever thought or felt before. Byron would have been green with envy.
“Jewel, Jewel, never cruel
But oft the fool
And very messy
When it comes to men named Jesse.”
(That was my first effort.)
Second effort:
“I make the concession
To the hospitality profession
For the sake of my mother
Who’ll have no job other
But I’d sure prefer
To leave it to her
Get a room with a view
In the town Kathmandu.”
(Well, it was better than the first.)
Mrs. Gulliver loved my poetry, which suited me fine, because at that age, I needed somebody to love something I did, even if it did stink. I guess it was her liking me that made me comfortable enough to read Jewel’s letters to Mrs. Gulliver, who got a big kick out of the “creative” grammar and misspellings. Mrs. Gulliver was nice to call it “creative” instead of “stupid.” She was always very charitable about ignorant people and never looked down her nose at those who hadn’t had a good education.
I guess Jewel was getting scared that I was too comfortable at Schuylkill and might never come home, because every week, I’d get a letter from her:
Deer Darcy,
I miss you trebly. Plees com home. Leev that scool. You don’t belong ther. We ned you and wont you bac with us.
All her letters were the same and I ignored every one of them, reading them to Mrs. Gulliver, then tucking them under my mattress. Except for the last one. That