It was all very melodramatic. I was drunk and I was probably just doing it for attention, but then again I may have also been looking for an easy way out of the pain that had been building up inside of me all my life. Sue had escaped from Doyle, Ricky had escaped from his pain over losing me, but I was still stuck with my mother, our dark apartment, and my life.
Whenever anyone asked me about that night after the fact, I tried to laugh it off, saying I was just drunk. But I felt exposed, and once again I felt that horrible shame inside for having done such a stupid thing.
I also felt ashamed of the way I had treated Ricky. I had led him to believe I cared about him more than I did. But the truth was, I hadn’t realized that men could get their feelings hurt. I didn’t entirely understand that they were humans too. The contact I’d had so far with men had been mostly painful—them leading me on and using me for their own selfish needs. But Ricky had been caring and kind toward me and, in return, I had been condescending toward him. I thought I was better than him and I let him know it, and I hurt him deeply in the process. I had been arrogant and selfish and self-centered and heartless, like so many members of my family—and worse yet, I’d used my sexuality the way Helen did, seducing him in order to feel powerful. I vowed to never do that again.
part five
dreams of escape
“By God, I shall spend the rest of my life getting my heart back, healing and forgetting every scar you put upon me when I was a child. The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape.”
—Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel
chapter 31
Once again, I’d come dangerously close to the flame and somehow managed not to get burned. I cared about Sue, but though her rejection of me stung, she also represented everything I was trying to get away from. And as much as I cared about Ricky, he represented the dead end I feared so much.
I was determined to make more of my life. I wanted to travel and see the world. And I wanted to get an education so I’d never end up like my mother, just scratching at making a living, standing on her feet for eight hours a day, and feeling embarrassed about where she lived. I was going to make a different life for myself, and I was sure that education was my ticket out. I became determined to work even harder in school. I wanted to leave behind the Steves and the Harveys, the Sues and the Doyles, the Rickys, and of course, my mother.
At the start of my junior year, with this focus in my mind, I discovered some hidden talents. I knew I was smart because people always commented on my intelligence and I was always in the smart kids’ classes. I also knew I was precocious—that I sounded and acted older than my years. But, up until my junior year, I had never really excelled at anything. I was horrible in math and just mediocre in classes like history, geography, and science. But junior year, my school decided to do an experiment. They took all the smart kids and put them into one advanced English class and one advanced history class.
There were so many students in each of these classes that we had to meet in the basement. In history class, I just disappeared into the woodwork, which was easy to do in such a large room. But in English class, I raised my hand every time the teacher asked a question. I was interested and engaged.
We started the semester studying poetry and the teacher had us reading poems by Robert Lois Stevenson, William Blake, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In class, she asked us questions about what we thought their poems meant or what we thought an image symbolized. I always had an answer and the teacher was visibly impressed with what I had to say. She said things to me like, “That’s a very interesting interpretation, Beverly.” Or “Good analysis, Beverly,” or, “Excellent.” Then she would ask if anyone else had anything to add. There was always dead silence.
Soon it became almost a joke. The teacher would ask a question about a poem and a silence would fall over the huge classroom. No one lifted their hand. Except me. Mrs. Lester would look around the room and ask, “Doesn’t anyone else have anything to say? Don’t be afraid, there are no right or wrong answers. Just tell me what you thought the poem was about.” But still there would be no response from the rest of the class. Finally, she would look my way, smile, and say, “Yes, Beverly.”
It was clear to everyone she was disappointed that no one else raised their hand, but at the same time she was pleased and eager to hear my answers. And she couldn’t hide her delight when I gave an interesting, thought-provoking response.
I think the other kids were as shocked as I was by what was coming out of my mouth. Who was this person, and where had she been hiding? Up until this point, I had basically been invisible in school. I wasn’t used to standing out, and none of my classmates were used to it either. At first they looked at me like I had suddenly turned a different color or grown a tail, but eventually they began looking at me with a new expression— one of respect.
These were the smartest kids in school, and I was now the star of the class. It changed the way my peers treated me. Needless to say, my self-esteem improved tremendously as more
