© Marianne Paul, story

© Netty Meyer, art

Oh, how Mrs. Ross could scream. It was wicked, how she could reach the high notes. Wicked, how she could make her voice rise to the top of the scale so that it flew off the end of the register, like those dog whistles, sounds so shrill animals alone can pick up the frequency.

The Queen of Scream. That’s what the other children called her. Peter and Adeline, too. Adeline whined that the screaming gave her a headache all the way upstairs in her classroom on the sixth grade floor.  The screaming went up the grate, travelled through the piping and rose like smoke through the floor to her desk. 

Mrs. Ross was wicked, truly truly wicked. Hellishly wicked.  How was it, then, that this hellishly wicked woman could be an instrument of such beauty? What peculiar twist in creation set the stage that Mrs. Ross could carry Maxi to a place that was so exquisitely unearthly, even heavenly?

The place where the angels live. That was the best way the little girl could think to describe it when she knelt on the floor at the edge of her bed that night, and said her prayers, and thanked God for Mrs. Ross.

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

If Maxi skipped just right, kept the spring in her step just so, she missed the cracks that appeared with the regularity of clockwork in the cement.  But if she changed her gait, the spread of her step, then she might step on the crack, might break her mother’s back.

It was a big responsibility, being responsible for your mother’s well being. The little girl took it seriously.  She imagined it like this: the rhyme was a spell like the witch’s spells in the big book of fairy tales that Golda read to her at bedtime, spells that found root in reality when spoken out loud.

And when Maxi miscalculated her step, as happened every once upon a time, and her tiny foot went smack dab across the crack, she would go home fearfully, creeping into the house, to see if her mother were hurt. If she lay broken on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, the black and red tiles like a giant checkerboard.

Once when she played the skipping game, which really wasn’t a game at all since her mother’s back depended upon it, Maxi tripped on her untied shoelace and fell. 

She hit the sidewalk and scraped her knee. Blood trickled down her leg and stained her white ankle sock. She cried at the stinging pain.

But just as much, she cried at the violence committed against her by the sidewalk. And then her cries grew larger than that, larger than just a matter of a sidewalk and a little girl’s bleeding knee. She cried at the sum total of all the violence she would suffer. That she could hurt, that she could bleed, that she could feel this terrible pain.

And somehow, in her little girl way, she understood that this awe-full truth was a way of the universe. The way things were. As surely as the sun rises each morning. As surely as the moon and stars come out into the sky at night.

As surely as all things beautiful as well as all things evil.

 “Mean as a bugger,” Peter warned his sister from experience when it came time for Maxine to take her place in Mrs. Ross’s classroom, the third in the succession of George and Golda’s children to do so.

“She’ll swat you with a pointer if you don’t pay attention, if you even turn away from her for a moment, SMACK!” Peter said, smacking the table with his ruler, the sudden slap, causing Maxi to jump.

“Better still, go ahead. Chew gum. See what’ll happen to you, Maxi!”

Peter repeated the slash of the ruler, and Maxine jumped once again.

Peter laughed and slapped the ruler again. Sure enough, like a puppet yanked by the string, Maxine jumped.

“Don’t call me Maxi!” the little girl lashed out at Peter. “My name’s Maxine.”

Maxi. Maxi was a baby’s name. She wasn’t a baby anymore. Kindergarten kids were babies. Grade one kids were babies. Not students in grade two.

“Maxi, Maxi, Maxi,” Peter teased.

Then his face took on a cruel expression. “Maxi pad, maxi pad, maxi pad,” he squealed racing out of the room.

Maxine had no idea what a maxi pad was, only that the term was derogatory by the tone of Peter’s voice. She didn’t bother to chase him. That’s what he wanted. He’d yell for their mother, and say Maxine wouldn’t stop chasing him. And Golda would tell Maxine to play outside with her friends, to leave her big brother alone.

Anyway, what did he mean, chew gum? Maxine would never chew gum in class. Otherwise, she’d have to stick the gum on the end of her nose; that’s what Adeline said Mrs. Ross would make her do.

Maxine wasn’t sure about candy necklaces, what would happen if she got caught eating the little round bead-candies with holes in them. The necklaces cost a nickel at the confectionery store.

She wore a necklace right now, pulled absent-mindedly at the elastic band upon which the candies were strung, then bit into a bead and swallowed.

The first day of the second grade, Maxine wore a candy necklace.

She thought about eating it, like her friend Becky, who by the time the bell rang and class was dismissed, had only the elastic string remaining around her neck.

But Maxine didn’t have the nerve to do that. She only twined the necklace about her finger, thought about biting into it, never once taking her eyes off Mrs. Ross and her pointer, the imaginary sound of SMACK reverberating through her brain.

The piano stood at the back of the class. Black and polished and stark like the ice-covered tree in Maxine’s future. No other class had a piano. That fact itself gave Mrs. Ross power, an aura that put her far above all other teachers.

But after a full week of grade two, the piano disappointed Maxine. It stood large and majestic and novel, but did nothing. Made not a drop of music. The piano was like a wind-chime with no wind. Nothing more than promise. And what good was promise?  If not acted upon?

Without warning, Mrs. Ross stopped writing.  She walked to the back of the room, pulled out the stool hidden under the piano, and sat down. Her fingers moved over the keys. Rippled over them, like wind over tall grass.

She played a lullaby. Soft and fragile. Each note fine crystal that could shatter if touched the wrong way. Then she sang. Voice wrapped around piano notes like a morning glory vine around the stalk of a hollyhock.

Maxine thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it, that she would surely die, the song so beautiful, the voice so beautiful, the notes so beautiful, that she would surely burst open down the centre and spill her insides like a milk pod spills seeds.

Then Mrs. Ross stopped her playing, and returned to the chalkboard to finish the sums. The lap of Maxine’s dress was wet with tears, and her cheeks, too. Maxine crossed her arms on her desk, put her face down so no one would see the dark spots on her light blue dress, nor see her red eyes, her flushed face.

She felt confused that the song could make her cry. She was not sad or hurt or angry or frustrated.

But still she had cried.

This is memory: A fragile line like a fine crack in her mother’s best bone china.

This is beauty: Ice clinging to the branches of a naked tree, voice and piano entwined like a morning glory around a hollyhock. Ego so overwhelmed that it can do nothing other than surrender. Burst open like a milk pod spilling seeds.

That this new awareness, that this, her first perception of art came in such a way, from such a person, was itself a revelation.

That Mrs. Ross, the Queen of Scream, could unleash beauty from wherever it stayed when not in use, from that place where the chimes waited when the wind was still, where the dance waited when the dancer rested, where the song waited when the singer did not sing, taught Maxine something about existence.

That Mrs. Ross could be the vehicle of beauty, and even more startling, be beauty, taught her this: Life held it all. Clutched tightly in its clenched fist. 

That violence and hope, and evil and compassion, and inertia and promise, and ugliness and beauty too, were inexplicably intertwined. Like a bird’s nest knit from string and twigs and bits of paper and cellophane, and sealed with mud.

Thirty-six years old now and rushing off to work – the power of spells, and the violence of sidewalks, and the paradox of Mrs. Ross all but distant memories –Maxine did the unexpected.

She stopped. Marvelled at the branches of the trees. How beautiful they were, cradling the snow in their arms. Holding the snow bravely, even gallantly, against the storm. She felt the beauty so deeply, she thought she couldn’t survive, that her chest would burst. That she might die, shrivel up like a piece of tinfoil set afire, roll up into a cinder, and then be blown away by the wind.

The feeling felt oddly familiar, as if déjà vu. Maxine couldn’t quite put her finger on when she had felt this way before, didn’t remember the Queen of Scream, the unlikely bearer of beauty, didn’t give her credit for this moment, too. 

You can’t look upon the face of God and live, someone had once said to her.

Granted, this tree wasn’t the face of God, Maxine thought, but then again, who was she to say? She wondered why she hadn’t before noticed such beauty in a winter tree, and was surprised to remember that she had once, as a child.

Maxine was a minor work of beauty in her own way on that day so long ago. Ten years old, hopping from foot to foot, trying to keep warm, standing patrol at the train tracks during lunch hour. Arms spread straight from her body, holding the signs, the children huddled behind them.

No other patrol wanted the duty, this particular duty, in the section of town where the houses were dilapidated, and the children were avoided like lepers because it was said they had “bugs”.  So Maxine took it.

Her voice had sounded clear against the crisp winter air, her breath escaping in vapory clouds. Maxine, the adult, smiled as she remembered how she had sang the words, carried out the ritual, now signs up, with such honest gallantry.

As she sang, Maxine had stepped onto the tracks and turned to face an imaginary train, as if she really could stop a train barrelling down the tracks. And after the children had safely crossed the track, she had stopped to stare at a tree. Marvelled at its beauty, glittering as if covered with diamonds.

Strange as it may seem, this single image, without the other million snapshots that made up her life, the million anecdotes, the million events, the million responses, the million sunsets and sunrises, this single image made Maxine’s life worth the while.

This image, and the Queen of Scream.

Ice clinging to the branches of a naked tree, voice and piano entwined like a morning glory around a hollyhock.