THE EDUCATION OF A QUEEN
553
from once-young faces, old people's coffins. The young never die.
I switched on the bedside lamp. I was clammy-nosed, drunk
on sedative, and absurdly terrified because I had abruptly re–
membered and could not cry for my childhood acquaintance
("friend"
is
too strong a word), Aggie, whom I had not seen
for at least twenty years, who was still in the fifth grade when
she was fourteen years old, and who was the simplest, most
absolute and apocalyptic Catholic it has ever been my misfortune
to meet. A few months before my mother had mentioned in a
moment of brisk reminiscence that Aggie's aunt had told Norbert
Leinfelder who had told her that Aggie had died of uterine
cancer last summer, having given birth to three living children
and one stillborn.
"German Catholic!" snorted my mother. "You'd think
they'd learn, but they never do!"
My first thought then and last night, too, was thank-well,
just
thank-for
all the children, even the stillborn, for the huS'–
band who infused them into that treacherous womb, and even
for the mythic Lord who eased Aggie's end by promising her
cherubs with pancake makeup on their puffing cheeks to take
the places of her children-not to mention of course forgiveness
of her awful sins.
I lay on my pillow, seeing her face dying on her dying
pillow, not as it really must have looked: clayey and nook–
cheeked, puff-eyed, sour-breathed, sweating out her imbecilic
immortal soul at the pores. But twenty years ago, smooth–
skinned, innocently boyish and square-jawed, fearsomely stupid
under her miracle-spinning eyebrows.
I
tried to weep, but she was so evil. She was the most evil
girl
under heaven. She was dumb. Often she smelled of pee,
because she was apt to wet herself when her mother hit her
with the razor strap or locked her into her room for two days
at a time. She cried every passing-time when she did not pass
and the others filed proudly, banners blaring, brasses flying, into
the next home-room.
