Stories of My Life

“You don’t happen to know where he came from?”

“Well, he came here from New York.”

“New York? He wasn’t a dancer?”

“Oh, yes. He was quite good in his time. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him now, but he was a fine dancer twenty, thirty years ago.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he grew up?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “North Carolina somewhere, I think.”

“Next time you see him, would you ask him if he remembers anyone named Katherine Womeldorf from Calvin H. Wiley School?”

Some days later the phone rang. “Katherine?” said an unknown male voice. “This is Gene Hammett.”

“Eugene! Do you remember me?”

“I even remember a joke you told me in the fourth grade. I asked you why if you were born in China you weren’t Chinese. And you said: ‘If a cat’s born in a garage, does it make it an automobile?’”

“And what about you? You danced in New York, and now you’re a famous teacher of ballet. It’s hard to imagine. You were a little round boy when I knew you.”

He laughed. “Well,” he said, “now I’m a big round man.”

I saw Eugene a number of times after that, and he was a big round man. But I also saw pictures of him, leaping like Baryshnikov from the boards of a New York stage. And even if I missed knowing him when he was slim and gorgeous and at the height of his career, I wouldn’t give anything for knowing that it happened as he had determined it would, back there when we were both weird little nine-year-olds at Calvin H. Wiley School.

I’ve tried a couple of times to put Eugene into a novel, but I’ve found that you can’t put real people into books. Characters in books have to be believable, and real people, especially people like Eugene, are simply not believable.

I did try to put Pansy, the seventh-grade bully, into Bridge to Terabithia. It was going to be the perfect revenge for all those terrifying recess hours she caused me, but, there, again, I don’t know why Pansy was a bully. I know that people aren’t born bullies, and that no one is a bully or a snob who is comfortable with himself or herself. But I had to know why Janice Avery was a bully, and when I knew, I felt sorry for her. Before I finished the book, I rather liked her. It ruined my plan for revenge. I heard somewhere that unless you can find yourself in your villain, he or she will remain a cardboard character. Good advice for fledging writers, I think.

We had to move after I had finished the seventh grade at Wiley School. The house the church had rented for us was sold and two moves later we ended up living totally across town, so I began eighth grade again with no friends. It might have been a terrible year for me, except for Pat Sewell and Jeannie Snyder. They were best friends, but somehow decided to adopt me as their other best friend. Not long afterward, Audrey Lindner arrived at Gray High School, and the three of us adopted Audrey as the fourth best friend in our little crowd. Unlike most of the girls in the eighth grade, the four of us were still girls rather than adolescents. None of us had a boyfriend, and we hadn’t begun to long for male attention.

After eighth grade, we thought we were returning to China and left Winston-Salem. I lost touch with Pat, Jean, and Audrey, but I’ve never forgotten them. I still have the pictures taken on my little Brownie box camera of the week we spent at Pat’s family vacation house on Manteo Island. Pat’s mother was a wonderful hostess for four thirteen-year-olds. She took us to see where the Wright Brothers had made their historic flight and to a production of The Lost Colony, introducing us to the romantic mystery of the disappearance of those early settlers. All four of us longed to grow up to be actors in that great outdoor drama. One morning there was a contest to see who could eat the most pancakes. I won.

In the years since 1946, I have been able to make a number of remarkable friendships with persons who have changed and enriched my life immeasurably. I think this inestimable gift dates back to Gray High School and the unselfish way Pat and Jean welcomed me into their special friendship, and then helped me welcome Audrey into our circle. My observation has been that thirteen-year-old girls don’t often reach out like this. I’d love to be able to thank them for teaching me how to be a friend.

Three schools later when I was a junior in high school and we moved to Charles Town, West Virginia, this magic of friendship happened again. Barbara Hughes was the most popular girl in the small school, and rightly so. Even as a teenager she was one of the most caring people I have ever known. If I had been a weird little kid in the fourth grade at Wiley School, I was certainly a weird big one as a high school junior in West Virginia. I had come from a number of unknown places, most recently from a large high school in a big city. Most of the students had been in school together since first grade.

My father was traveling for the mission board and was rarely home, and my mother was in poor health. I had left friends and a fine high school in Richmond. My unhappiness with the move and my natural shyness made me appear, as I was later told, snobbish. But Barbara took me under her wing, and because Barbara liked me, everyone else had to at least tolerate me.

She married while in college and her name became Barbara Thompson. Thompson Park, the place where Gilly Hopkins finds herself accepted just the way she is, is named in Barbara’s honor.

Grandmother Goetchius as a young woman.

Grandmother Goetchius

Although I was at last able to make friends in America, there was one person very close to me that I had great difficulty getting along with—my grandmother. Of one thing I am very sure: When I speak about my grandmother, I am never fair. She was, in the eyes of most people who knew her, a remarkable woman. I didn’t want a remarkable woman, I wanted the warm lap and unconditional love other people got from their beloved grandmothers. My first cousin Mary told me once that she thought she and I had had two different grandmothers. She was quite right. She and her older sister Elizabeth Anne were the first two grandchildren. They never knew a time when Grandmother was not a loving presence in their lives, and I am quite sure that Grandmother provided for them the warm lap and unconditional love that every child longs for.

It was a different story when their brother Charles came along. Grandmother had never had a son, much less a grandson, and Charles was all boy. She had no idea how to deal with such a creature. Young Charles was always hoping for the kind of approval she lavished on his older sisters, but nothing seemed to please her. One day in his adventures he came upon a lovely green snake. The perfect present for Grandmother, he thought. He still remembers her scream.

Mary and Elizabeth Anne loved their brother and tried to help their grandmother understand that, despite his total lack of academic zeal, he was really a great guy. Charles was a high school football star, so the sisters decided to take Grandmother to a game. If she could only see him in his element, she would appreciate him more. Unfortunately, the elements of the chosen day did not cooperate. It was a wet day and the field was a muddy morass.

Grandmother’s horror increased by the minute, watching these man-sized boys grabbing each other, throwing each other down, and rolling about in the mud for no apparent reason. The older sisters were caught up in the game and when Charles made a spectacular saving tackle, they cried out: “Did you see that, Grandmother? That was Charles!”

But all Grandmother could see was the depths of depravity to which mankind had fallen. “Oh, daughters,” she mourned, “to think they were made in the image of their Creator.”

Perhaps the chief source of my difficulties with Grandmother is that I met her for the first time when I was five years old. I readily admit to stubbornness, pride, jealousy, and a terrible temper. Indeed, I plead guilty to any of the seven deadly sins available to a five-year-old. Grandmother saw me, not as a grandchild to dote on, but as a wild thing, desperately in need of straightening out before it was too late. My mother, apparently, was not adequate for the task, so it was up to her. We weren’t in the country long enough for her to complete her mission, so when we came back the second time when I was eight, she took up her assignment in earnest.

One of her favorite admonishments to me was “Be sweet, my child, and let who will be clever.” Well, I didn’t want to be sweet, I wanted to prove myself clever, especially since those American teachers of mine thought me a bit slow.