On The Periphery - Short Story By Margaret Duda

 

                                                                                                    

On The Periphery

 

Short Story

 

By Margaret Duda

              

               A block long and almost as wide, Dawson's Bazaar and Auction House was the place where everyone in town went to bid on the dreams and defeats of others.  It was here that fantasies were created and failures relived as the auctioneer's mallet pounded out the final price to be paid.  In front of the ugly barnlike building was a huge macadam covered parking lot, which was often filled with dusty pickups, battered used cards and Amish buggies. Behind the building, however, there was nothing but a rundown two room shed, which was always mistaken for an old garage.  It was here that Ruby Raymond lived and wept, but it would be in the main building itself that she and I would fashion our dreams and make our choices.

               Ruby Raymond and I were in the same grade in school and we both suffered from the same affliction.  We were both on the periphery of the inner circle.  Being on the periphery was a lot like being in Purgatory.  In both instances, you felt as if you were on the brink of where you should have been.  It was a state which left you with a terrible feeling of longing and being left out, of not quite being able to make it no matter how hard you tried.  As the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, I always felt I was different.  As the daughter of poverty, Ruby Raymond knew that she was.

               In the mid-fifties, all the girls still took Home Economics in school and the boys took shop.  It was the era before feminism and the pill and no one had even thought of the ERA.  Ruby Raymond and I were scheduled to take Home Economics at the same time even though she was in the secretarial curriculum and I was in the academic.  Ruby had only recently moved to town so few people knew her, but we all noticed her when she told the teacher that she would not be able to make the mandatory cotton skirt.

               "My Ma says we can't afford it," a brazen voice said from the rear and we all turned around to stare.  The insolence seemed to fit the short, dumpy figured girl with the unruly red hair.  Her faded dress was a familiar flower sack pattern and she wasn't wearing any crinolines like the rest of us.

               "Please come and discuss this with me after class, Ruby," Mrs. Wilkerson said, not wanting to embarrass her further.  "I'm sure we can work something out."

               "Okay, but my Ma says we can't afford it," she repeated and no one doubted her word.

               When Monday morning arrived and Ruby laid out a tiny flowered print on the cutting table, I told her it was a pretty pattern.

               "Mrs. Wilkerson bought it," she admitted, caressing the material with her hand, "after she talked to my Ma."

               As I cut out the pieces of my own material, I remembered how Mama had driven me downtown during her rest period.  My parents had a small restaurant and Mama, who did all the cooking, was supposed to rest from one until three, but she had insisted on driving me to the fabric shop and telling that I could pick out anything that I wanted.  Mama was like that about school.  She was the one who decided that I was going to take the Academic curriculum when she found out that I needed it to go to college.  I was definitely going to college, Mama said, because it was the only way that the daughter of immigrants could get ahead.

               Actually, the restaurant wasn't really a restaurant.  It wasn't even in the center of our small town of seven thousand.  It was more like a little luncheonette squeezed between a liquor store and a laundromat on a small road out by the Air Base.  It only had eight tables and a counter and the air was usually filled with the throaty songs of Elvis on the jukebox or the clanging of bells from the pinball machine.  There was one other thing, however.  There was the smell of Mama's cooking.

               All her life, Mama had loved to cook and garnish what she made.  She could make a platter of cold cuts look like a banquet for a king.  But it was her Hungarian cooking that everyone loved and the Airmen from the Base would flock to the restaurant to have her specials and Mama knew she had been right to lease the building.  It had been her choice to open the restaurant after Papa's arthritis got so bad that he couldn't keep the gas station anymore.  And now they were making as much in six months as Papa had made in two years at the gas station and it was all going into a special account.

               "For Mancika," she told the customers, using my Hungarian nickname.  "She's going to college to become a teacher."

               "A teacher," Papa would repeat and everyone would nod their approval.

               The only problem was that I didn't want to become a teacher.  I wanted to become a writer.  Ever since I could remember, I'd had to string words together in ways that were unique to me and reflected my innermost thoughts.  It was an obsession and I left evidence of it everywhere.  There were poems scribbled on napkins in the restaurant and on the backs of envelopes at home.  I couldn't help myself.  It was a need that I had to fill, but Papa would have none of it.

               "How can you dream about being a writer when I can't even speak the language?" Papa would demand in Hungarian.  "No, it is not possible."

               "But I need to write, Papa, just like Mama needs to cook."

               "Mama needs to cook because we need to make a living.  Forget about this writing.  Go to college and become a teacher.  People always need teachers."

               I would say no more, but I continued to dream and to write when Papa was busy elsewhere. 

               As we worked on our skirts in Home Economics, Mrs. Wilkerson also decided that we should learn how to dress.  One morning she told us that we would all have to stand up in front of the others and let them criticize the way we looked.  The others, the ones on the inner circle, stood up eagerly since they knew that their outfits from Gilly's, the expensive department store downtown, were exactly right.  When it was Ruby's turn, she stood up in her faded and wrinkled dress and the others said little, but they didn't have to.  Ruby already knew what was wrong with the way she looked.  Then it was my turn.

               As I shuffled to the front of the class, I smoothed down the front of my skirt, but I knew that it wouldn't make any difference.  Since Mama did not have time to do the laundry, I usually did it on Monday afternoons after school, but one of the waitresses had quit in mid-afternoon the day before and I had to go and help out until closing time.  Then I had a biology test that I had to study for and I never did find time to wash the clothes.  As a result, all of my cotton skirts were in the laundry basket that morning.  The only thing I had to wear with the purple blouse Mama got me on sale at Sears and Roebuck was my navy blue taffeta skirt.  I thought the skirt matched the tiny navy blue flowers in my blouse, but I knew it was wrong even before the girls said it.

               "I think her skirt is too dressy for school," one said.

               "I don't think purple goes with navy blue," another quipped.

               "You should never wear taffeta with bobby socks and penny loafers."

               My face burned and my eyes filled with tears.  How could I have been so stupid, I wondered?  I should have stayed at home, but Mama would never have allowed that.  There was nothing more important than school, she insisted.  At that moment, however, I would have given anything to be somewhere else and when I got home that night, I wrote a long poem entitled "Humiliation."

               When we finally finished our skirts, we had a fashion show in class, but after that, none of the inner circle girls wore their skirts to school.  They wouldn't be caught dead wearing those old rags, they said, but Mama insisted that I wear mine at least once every two weeks and Ruby wore hers every day.

               From the sewing section, we went on to Home Life.  When it was my turn, I told the others about listening to Hungarian records and eating Hungarian meals and learning Hungarian customs.  I told them how my parents wouldn't let me date until I was sixteen and how I had no time for slumber parties because I had to help out at the restaurant on weekends.  I thought it would help the others to understand, but I was wrong.  The others could not relate to my life at all.

               All of us, however, could sympathize with Ruby's stories of her family of eight living in the two room shack behind Dawson's Bazaar and Auction House.  We shook our head in understanding as she described sleeping in a bed with three other siblings and having to put pans on the floor when it rained and the roof leaked.  What affected us the most, however, was her story of how they all got on each other's nerves in the crowded shack.

               "Last night my littlest sister kept bothering me as I was trying to do my homework so I finally hauled of and smacked her.  She started crying and woke the baby who had just fallen asleep.  Ma got up out of the chair in the other room where she was listening to the radio and took the strap off the wall.  She got me down on the bed and I still had the marks on me this morning."

               When she finished, there was a long silence.  Even Mrs. Wilkerson was at a loss for words.  Finally, she swallowed hard and said:

               "Perhaps I'd better have a talk with your mother, Ruby.  Maybe we can find a place for you to do your homework without being bothered by the others."

               Mrs. Wilkerson did speak to Ruby's mother and Ruby told us that she now had a quiet place to do her homework.  It was in the main building of Dawson's Bazaar and Auction House where her father was the caretaker.  They had a used furniture section there and Ruby was allowed to go there and work at whatever table she could find.

               I was filled with envy.  In the summertime, I always went with Mama to buy fresh produce from the Amish who set up stands beside their buggies in the parking lot on Friday mornings.  As Mama checked out the vegetables, I was always drawn to the main building as if it was a giant magnet.

               As I would get closer, I could hear the chanting voices of the auctioneer, the German dialect of the Amish, and the slow, drawn out drawl of the local farmers.  I would quickly pass by this roped off area because I hated the smell of animal manure and the perspiration odours of those waiting to bid.  The farm equipment section was little better and I was never interested in the dusty round oak tables or carved glass china cabinets in the furniture section.  The long tables of knickknacks came next.  These items were never auctioned off as they were too small but one could browse for hours and then pay a dealer for whatever you wanted.  There were some real oddities on those tables and even under them.  I found a three foot tall metal ashtray in the shape of a naked woman once and another time there was an old painting of a couple riding in a Model T with a dog running alongside.  But it was the area just beyond the knickknacks that interested me the most.  It was there that I found the real treasures of the universe.

               Although the rest of the auction house was haphazardly organized, the aisles of books were always in order.  This was due to the bookshelves that came from the old schoolhouse when they tore it down to build the new one.  Few of the customers in Dawson's had any use for bookshelves so they finally became a permanent part of the building.  As with the knickknacks, you could browse among the bookshelves for hours.

               I loved to wander up one aisle and down the next looking for all the old leather bound volumes.  Once I found a garishly embossed volume called ONE THOUSAND GEMS OF GENIUS IN POETRY AND ART BY 500 AUTHORS.  It was published in 1888 and there were cupids dancing around a bust of Shakespeare on the spine and a toga-clad woman on the cover.  Inside there were engravings and illustrations of famous poets and scenes from the poems.  I loved the way the book felt in my hands and Mama let me buy it for a quarter.  It was the first book I ever bought and it was inside those pages that I found Poe's raven and Byron's Alps, Chaucer’s Parson and Milton’s Paradise.  It was that book, more than any other, which encouraged me to start writing my own poetry.  I knew the shelves were hiding other such treasures, and now I feared that Ruby would find them before I did.

               "Do you spend much time among the books?" I finally asked her, afraid of her reply.

               "Among them musty old things?"  She seemed incredulous.  "They smell worse than the furniture."

               I smiled, knowing that my treasures were safe.

               Weeks passed and our last section in Home Economics was a mini-course on careers.  Mrs. Wilkerson went into great detail on the traditional careers such as teaching, nursing and secretarial work.  From this information, we were supposed to choose our life's goal.

               "And what do you want to do more than anything else in life, Margaret?" she asked me at the end of the course.

               "I want to be a writer," I admitted.

               "Oh," she said and I could hear the tone of disappointment in her voice.  I was clearly one of her failures.  She did not seem to know anything about being a writer and quickly skipped over me to Ruby.

               "And what about you, Ruby?  What do you want more than anything else in life?"

               "I want someone to love," Ruby said quietly.

               All of us turned to stare at Ruby.  Her reply was even worse than mine, I thought, but Mrs. Wilkerson clearly did not think so.

               "Why, that's very good, Ruby.  I'm sure everyone in this room shares your dream and wants the same thing in their lives."

               But Ruby did more than dream.  By the end of spring semester, Ruby was bringing photographs of herself and a boy named Danny to school.  Some of them were taken in Danny's car and the others were taken on odd pieces of furniture in Dawson's.  I recognized the shelves of books in the background.  And in one of the pictures, Ruby was kissing her Danny on an old sofa that was auctioned off the following week.

               "I love him," she said and we all envied the fact that Ruby had achieved her career goal so quickly.  I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a boy put his arms around me, much less kiss me.  But Ruby knew, and there was new life in her green eyes.

               School let out for the summer and the following year I saw little of Ruby as she took shorthand and business math while I struggled with algebra and chemistry.  At the end of the English course on the American short story, the teacher had us try to write our own and I discovered a whole new world.  Although I had enjoyed creating images in poetry, it was nothing compared to creating characters in a short story.  Each character was my own creation and I looked everywhere for bits and pieces that I could fit together to make a whole.

               It was then that I discovered the advantage of being on the periphery.  I could pass among my schoolmates, observing, taking notes, listening to conversations and hardly getting noticed.  It was almost as if I was invisible.  From this vantage point, I could easily look for idiosyncrasies and catch glimpses of unusual traits.  I could note the slang that they used and describe the way they all interacted.  For the first time in my life, I found an advantage to being on the periphery and the more I wrote, the more I realized that I would have to stay there.  It was the only way to see and hear everything that I would need to be a writer.  I continued to look for my material everywhere, but when it came time to write my story, I decided to set it in a little luncheonette that was squeezed between a liquor store and a laundromat on a small road near the Air Base.

               When I got my short story back at the end of the term, I found that I got an A plus and the teacher wrote a note on the paper saying that he hoped I would continue to develop my writing ability.  Since it was the last day of school, we left at noon and I went to see Mama at the restaurant.  I found her making chicken paprikas for dinner and as usual, she was humming to herself.  When I showed her my paper, she took a seat at one of the rear tables and read my story.

               When Mama finished reading, she just sat there and stared at the last page.  I waited, twisting my fingers in my lap, hoping she wouldn't be angry that I wrote about the restaurant and the people in it.  Finally, she said:

               "This writing, it makes you happy?"

               "More than anything in the world, Mama."

               She nodded slowly.  Then she stood up and started to untie her apron.  "All right then," she said, turning off the heat under the paprikas.  "Come with me.  We still have time."

               "Where are we going, Mama?"

               "You'll see."

               Mama said nothing as she drove past the SAC hangars and the commercial poultry farm and turned down the road that led to Main Street.  We passed the drug store and the jewelry store and Gilly's department store.  Then we turned left and crossed the railroad tracks and drove past the colored school and the bra factory which employed most of the colored people.  Finally, Mama turned down one alley and then another and I realized that she was going to Dawson's Bazaar and Auction House.  Mama parked as close as she could to the double doors and said "Follow me" as she got out of the car and headed for the main building.

               We passed the cattle and the tools and the appliances and the couches and finally came to the section holding the knickknacks.  Mama seemed to know what she wanted because her brow wrinkled when she did not find it in the first aisle.  I had no idea what she was looking for, but then I hadn't been to Dawson's in months since I was usually in school on Fridays.  Suddenly Mama stopped and a wide smile spread across her face.

               "There it is," she said and moved forward down the aisle with me following close behind.  Finally, she stopped in front of a torn lace tablecloth, but when she pulled it back, she revealed an old Royal table model typewriter.  I felt as if I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.

               "Oh Mama," I said, almost in prayer, and moved forward to touch the treasure.  I rubbed my hand over the top of it and then along the sides as if it was a priceless sculpture.  I touched the keys, remembering how they felt in typing class, but did not dare to push them hard enough to make an impression.

               "Is that what you need to be a writer?"

               "Yes, oh yes, Mama!" I exclaimed, hugged her at the same time because I knew that she did finally understand.

               "So we will have a writer instead of a teacher," she said.

               "And Papa?"

               "He will come to understand." 

               I took my treasure home and that summer, I wrote and wrote.  I finished seven short stories and learned how to submit them to magazines.  One of them was finally accepted by a young adult publication and Mama took a picture of me holding the twenty-five dollar check.  Papa started calling me "the writer" in front of all the customers and many of them teased me about giving them my autograph.

               The story was not published until the following spring, but when it did come out, the local news agency spread copies of the magazine and my picture all over their front window.  I made as many excuses as I could to walk past that window.  One day, I found Ruby Raymond standing there staring at the display.  She looked a bit heavier, but her curly red hair was cut shorter now and fell into neat waves.

               "Ruby, how are you?" I asked, genuinely glad to see her again.  I hadn't seen her in school for a long time but we no longer had any courses together and there were over a hundred in our class.  "How have you been?"

               "Fine, just fine," she said, turning to face me as she tried to quiet the baby who fussed in her arms.  He was wrapped in a frayed and faded blue blanket, but he was chubby and pink and he had the Raymond red hair.

               "Is that a new brother?" I asked, admiring his tiny perfect features. "He's adorable."

               "He's my son," she said without hesitation.

               "I didn't know you got married.  How wonderful."

               "I didn't.  His Pa was already married."

               I continued to stare at the baby, unable to look Ruby in the eye.  Like me, she had achieved her dream.  She had found someone to love and in a strange way, I found reason to envy her again. Ruby Raymond only had to give birth once, whereas I would have to spend the rest of my life trying to prove myself again and again.

               "They wanted me to give him up, but I just couldn't.  How can you give up the one thing you love?"

               Finally, I could nod my understanding.  "Could I buy you a soda, Ruby?"

               "That'd be nice.  Real nice."

               Ruby and I continued to see each other all that summer, but in the fall, I went away to college on a scholarship and Ruby sought a new beginning out west.  After awhile, even her Ma lost track of her.

               Although I never saw Ruby Raymond after that, I never forgot her and I now realize that some of us in that class of '59 chose to stay on the periphery, while others had no choice.  Or maybe none of us really had a choice.  Heedless of the consequences, we were all possessed by our obsessions and ruled by our passions.  But all of that was in another time, another era, when a young woman's quest could still begin in an ugly, barn like building, a block long and almost as wide, and filled with the wonders of the universe.

Margaret Duda - Pushcart Prize nominee poet, short story writer, non-fiction author of five books, playwright, and journalist, Margaret Duda's latest book is entitled "I Come from Immigrants" and was published in July of 2023 by Kelsay Books. The 122 page book includes 26 poems, some of her Hungarian immigrant parents, are over 100 years old. The cover is a mourning portrait of her paternal grandmother. Her fine art photographer son Paul designed the cover and prepared the photos for publication.