554
THALIA SELZ
What's Aggie to me or me to she, that I
~hould
weep for
her? "Come on in," said Aggie's loving rna, "and recite to
my
guests. Aggie don't have no memory at all, but now
her,
she's
fabulous-"
indicating me in my lank pig-tails, horrid scarred
knees, and scuffed Buster Browns.
With a fierce pride, ignoring the reproach of poor Aggie's
ashamed, admiring eyes, I dove with flawless form:
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Sixty lines complete with dramatic modulations of tone, inspired
gestures, and bell-like enunciation. I had had no other teacher
than my mother with her beautifully controlled, schoolmarm
voice and her untamed, gothic imagination. Aggie, asking noth–
ing from life, congratulated me solemnly:
"Gee, you sure got a fabalus memry, all right ...."
Except for Oliver Twist, she had the most wretched child–
hood I have ever heard of.
"Weep, damn you," I plead into my frozen featherbed, in
the guilt-lit hotel room. And
reeeeek
I hear it once more out on
the flowering Tyrolean meadows, the light swing on the Gary,
Indiana-manufactured hinges, opening to the gentle, firm touch
of Mr. Doom with his soft death's eyes, coming to claim me once
and for all.
It was Aggie's gate. No, it was mine-it was Mary Melow–
ski's
(Polish-Catholic)
next door!
I am crying now, without effort, without guilt, into
my
fragrant pillow smelling sweetly of straw, crying for Mary's les–
sons in wickedness under her back porch, for her brothers' fur–
ther lessons in the secret hut, for calling and yodeling at front
and back doors, for the drunken Mexicans up by the tracks,
for running in the ozone-smelling sunshine-a sudden, mindless,
breast-bursting sprint toward the train-whistle miles away, for
