When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

injustice, a violation of the truth. He used to organize the five of us for pranks, and he was able to do this with great efficiency because he made it clear that he, and only he, knew our characters. He'd stand on the dock with his arms crossed over his bare chest, surveying the group, taking stock again of our strengths and weaknesses, our basic selves, which were so difficult to hide from him.
    My grandmother owned the lake compound near Antigo, and she stayed all summer, making sure, she thought, that her grandchildren followed the rules. Boys past the age of six used the outhouse or the bushes, no matter the weather. Boys were never under any circumstances to come into the house to bathe, and only if they were near death could they sleep in the closet-sized room off the parlor. Boy creatures washed in lake water with lumps of scratchy white soap, did their business in the wild, and remained healthy. The girls, the young misses, were not allowed in our domain, in the upper boathouse, on pain of a punishment that would surely humiliate all of us. I imagine d o ur having to line up in the living room, my grandmother's demanding we speak about our misdeeds, her calling on us, displeased and indeed violated by every word we said. When I thought of the interrogation, of her disappointment and disgust--which we had brought upon ourselves--I felt near to vomiting. Buddy always reassured us, telling us that if we followed his directions we wouldn't get caught. Thus was our path charted for us; thus was it our duty to cross the unyielding line.
    There were two or three plots we used to gain entrance to the girls' quarters, in the long hours of the afternoon or the darkest night, so that we could execute the time-honored violations, short-sheeting the beds, tucking salamanders into neatly folded clothes, plunking turtles in the toilets, and once, we stood sentry for Buddy while he spent an hour with Cousin Mona. That evening we were sick with excitement and wonder, and never again could we look Mona in the eye.
    It must be said that the four girls our age retaliated more or less in kind. They TP-ed the inside of the boathouse every year, a trick that always gratified them, rolls of toilet paper crisscrossing the open room so densely it was impossible to move from one end to the other. They managed to do half the job the year I was fourteen, while we slept. Buddy was visiting for a weekend, the extent of his time with us that summer, and it was he who woke and captured two of them. He told Pammy to stay, and then he heaved Mona, the most comely, over his shoulder, and walked with her down the stairs and out to the dock. No doubt being thrown in the lake by Buddy was what she'd hoped for, what she'd planned. He didn't push her but lowered her lovingly into the glassy water, slipping in after her, moving quietly out to the raft. They probably only took off some of their clothes at the ladder. The rest of us, including the other hostage, sat around on the beds, rubbing our eyes, unable to think what to do that might somehow match Buddy's fun, or anyway the story he would tell when he was finished.
    Although all of it seems innocent now, and harmless, what I remember is my terror of Grandmother, the idea of her wrath. In truth , she was as mild a Victorian as they come, a woman who loved the thought of her family surrounding her even as she found it wearying. She did narrow her eyes down the table at us for an infraction as inevitable as belching; of course she did, because she was sure that if civility was taught to a child everything else of importance--schooling, profession, marriage--would fall into place. Her round face was weathered, and she wore her steel-colored hair in a loose bun. Even when she smiled fondly, I thought her severe. I suppose I dreaded what might come on the heels of her disapproving glances because Buddy claimed she'd once whipped him with a stick. That punishment, he explained sagely, had had the effect of