Wolf Whistle Read Free

so afflicted in adulthood.
    Then, if that were not amazing enough, she told of marrying young, of her disappointment in marriage, of never having danced with her husband, or any man. She told of her failed dreams of romance and the joyless mechanics of sex.
    The fourth graders fell in love with Mrs. Gregg. Alice did, as well.
    When Mrs. Gregg spoke, winter scenes, unlike anything Alice had ever actually observed in tropical Mississippi, appeared before Alice’s mind’s eye. Snow fell through forest trees. One-horse open sleighs jingled along country roads. Chestnuts roasted on open fires. City sidewalks were dressed in holiday decorations. Little hooves clattered upon rooftops. Corncob pipes and button noses would not be suppressed. Toyland Towns rose up around the base of conifers.
    On and on Mrs. Gregg talked, and as she did Alice found herself irresistibly drawn to burst into holiday song.
    Mrs. Gregg told of the progressive tyranny of her husband, the sarcasm and mockery and intrusions into her smallest privacies. Whenever she spoke on the phone with afriend, Mr. Gregg interrupted to ask who she was speaking to. Finally she had no friends.
    He mocked her hill accent, and the color and texture of her hair, her thinness, her height and small breasts, the poor clothes she wore.
    And then one day she realized that she was having difficulty speaking. It was a funny thing at first. Even Mrs. Gregg thought so.
    She began to speak in clichés. Scarcely a sentence came out of her mouth that was not a cliché. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” she found herself saying, often without relevance. “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” She seemed to have no thought that was her own.
    Who could fail to listen? Not Alice. No one at all, not the wiggliest rascal-child gathered in this poor shack took an eye off of Mrs. Gregg. Some of the children reverted to thumbsucking and hair-twisting and speaking in baby-talk. One cried, one wet his pants. But not one child lost interest. They were fascinated. A low, quiet music of humming could be heard, a sentimental silence of carols and holiday tunes.
    Mrs. Gregg continued her strange story. The clichés multiplied, she said. She found herself speaking a dead language, she said.
    And then something else happened.
    The clichés began to overlap. “Don’t cross your bridges before they hatch,” she said one day. “A bird in the hand gathers no moss.”
    When this began to happen, she said, Mr. Gregg’s rage at her increased. He threatened her; he called her a bitch, a slut, a whore, a cunt.
    The children’s eyes were enormous. They trembled in fear. They broke into sudden, spontaneous choruses of “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
    She became a hostage, she said. Every mixed cliché endangered her life, and yet she could not stop. “I’m smiling from end to ear.” “The worm is on the other foot.” “It’s so quiet you could hear a mouse drop.”
    Mr. Gregg began now in earnest to beat her, she said. He bruised her arms, he pushed her down, he knocked out her front teeth with his fist.
    It was then, she said, that she lost the power of speech altogether.
    Alice said, “But you have it now! You have such beautiful speech!”
    Mrs. Gregg said, “Santa Claus comes tonight.”
    Alice said, “Mrs. Gregg, please!”
    What happened next explained many things to Alice, though when it was over even she had a hard time believing it had really occurred. In fact, later in life, Alice often doubted her memory of even the most important detailsof her own existence, history, and experience, especially her heart filled with hope when she left the Normal, in love with Dr. Dust, let alone this small interim in another family’s home.
    Much later, when Alice was an old woman, she thought back on this year when she lived with Uncle