The Autobiography of John Everett
My Years of Innocence
Chapter 1
My mother once told me that the day of my birth was the day of her death, and her treatment of me throughout my boyhood precluded me from regarding these words with any attitude other than absolute belief. You may think it cruel for a parent to tell to her own child such a thing, and so do I; however, an act does not cease to be understandable merely because it is cruel, and I will endeavour to make understandable the reason why she regarded me as she did. It was in the circumstances and aftermath of my birth that her resentment lay.
My father, Alfred Smyth, had spent his adult years as a surgeon, as did his father, and was successful enough in this career to put his salary into a secluded mansion on the western outskirt of Tillamook, Oregon. His success may lead one to think that he also had a wife and perhaps several well-adjusted children; but the case could not have differed more. He wiled away his Saturdays, and his discretionary income, at a rotating selection of brothels. Though according to my mother, he was, barring prurial matters, reserved and mild-mannered. It was within the rooms of one of these brothels that he had sex with a woman who told him her name was Sylvia. She was eighteen and, even in the years I knew her, fair-haired, delicate of facial features, and possessing of a slight build like that of a sylph (from which I suspect she got her name), and she confessed to him that she went into this trade out of necessity, for her lack of education gave her little chance of finding work elsewhere, and her parents, having died when she was young, were of no assistance. To this, Alfred, twenty years older than Sylvia, claimed that he was a wealthy man who could, if she so wanted, be her salvation. In her desperation she obliged, whereupon she packed her possessions, which comprised a small sum of cash in a linen sack, and, having decided to marry Alfred, quit the job and eloped with him.
“Sylvia” needed to use her legal name if she wanted to marry, and, having remembered that she had yet to tell Alfred, disclosed that she was born Sarah Younger. He evidently had no issue with this, as they married on May 17th, 1865, and their wedding was, my mother said, unremarkable. On October 18th, while she lay on the sofa in the drawing room, Sarah screamed from the agony of contractions, compelling Alfred to summon a midwife. Sarah had gotten pregnant months before their marriage.
What resulted from the following eleven hours, accompanied by intermittent syncope, vaginal hemorrhaging, and undignified bodily excretions was a brown-eyed, ugly creature that may as well have been a goblin. When the midwife cut the cord and showed that boy to Sarah, the latter shoved him away and protested, “No! I want nothing to do with that!”, so the midwife took him into her arms and nursed him with her own breast. Three days later a birth certificate was issued for John Younger Smyth. Alfred wanted nothing to do with that boy, either; only a week had passed when he produced a hunting rifle from his closet, exited onto the balcony, and with a pull of the trigger left Sarah with the house and a mountain of money.
The child, within a year of his birth, grew a full head of black hair; within five years, his nose stuck out from his face like a right triangle, and his chin came precociously to a square with a cleft in the middle. The only favors Sarah did the child involved ensuring he did not starve, die of dehydration, or soil himself. That his teeth came in right was a miracle; his diet comprised porridge either burnt or undercooked, for Sarah reserved all other culinary fare for herself. Only once did he wet the bed, but for that Sarah gave him a thousand lashes with a ruler.
American boys begin their schooling the year they turn six, or if their birthday lands past September the year after they turn six. When my mother told me that I was going to go to school soon I was elated, because that meant I would be able to talk to people who would not necessarily shun me. Going to school meant that you were on your way to becoming an adult, and after becoming an adult you could do as you pleased. Having been left largely to my own devices since the beginning of my conscious memory, I knew the night before that I ought to assemble my own outfit and bag. Come morning, and after I had put the suit on, my mother barged in and exclaimed, “Where did my pencils go?!”
“I put them in my bag,” said I.
“Those were not for you, you thief!” She seized the bag from my hand and smacked me with it across the cheek. “Now, go without that bag, damn it! Why must it be that everything you do is wrong?”
The location of my father’s property greatly protracted my walk to the schoolhouse, as the schoolhouse was situated within the northern bound of Tillamook. During my travel I contemplated my mother’s chastisement that morning, and I thought to myself that, if thieves were bad people, and if I were a thief, I must have been a bad person. At last I happened upon a building that resembled a brown barn with French doors, and I found with my entry that it was one large classroom. All of the seats, which were built like wooden benches, had children on them except for one spot, and the teacher was already in the middle of an English lesson. He was a bespectacled, foxlike man whom I retrospectively opine to have been a decade too young to teach. I sat down onto the vacant seat, and the teacher posed a question to the class: “Can someone repeat to me a word that rhymes with ‘mouse’?” Having not attended the orientation that I presume preceded the classes, I, without a raise of my hand, shouted, “Mary!”
All the students turned and, perhaps half of them flagging me with their fingers, erupted into hysterical laughter. The most severe of my hurt originated from the mockery I was receiving specifically from the boy sitting right next to me; our physical proximity had, in the few seconds preceding this incident, suggested to me that we were close, even if we had not spoken a word to each other. I had hitherto known nobody well but my mother, whose coldness I had accustomed myself to, and, during my commute to school, I had in the back of my head a hope that I would find, finally, someone who liked to be around me. In this moment I thought that everyone there was to know wanted me dead. The conspiracy of all these people to humiliate me eliminated the scepticism with which I had regarded my mother’s words; if everyone hated me, it must have been I who was in the wrong.
“Halt!” barked the teacher, and silence. When I made eye contact with him he said, “Your answer was wrong; a word rhymes with another word if its last sound is the same as the last sound of the second word. Mary rhymes with ‘carry’ or ‘bury’. Mouse rhymes with ‘house’ and ‘louse’. Now, I did not get your name. Who in the Devil are you, and what compelled you to speak without raising your hand?”
“My name is John Smyth, and I didn’t know I was s’posed to raise my hand.”
“Well, now you know, John. It would be unfair of me to not tell you who I am, since I doubt you know, so I am Mr. Rees.” When he addressed the whole class it was as if I had once more become invisible to him.
“The English lesson is over, so it is time for us to learn the basics of mathematics.”
The heckling of me had ceased by now, and Mr. Rees proceeded to write the Arabic numerals from 0 through 9, in order, on the blackboard behind him. He gesticulated like a madman as he explained how to pronounce and count each one. He moved onto the science lesson after that, in which he explained how water made plants grow, and how food made animals grow. His history lecture, the last class of the day, summarized how the Founding Fathers turned America’s thirteen colonies into one nation. I neither said a word nor uplifted my head during this session. Once Mr. Rees dismissed us, everyone except for myself stood, though I followed suit upon observing what my classmates were doing. We crammed ourselves out of the same door through which we had entered.
When I returned home, there was no one there to greet me, which indicated that my mother was in her bedroom either sulking or sleeping. Those were the only activities she engaged herself in if she was not cleaning or cooking. Since I was scolded whenever I entered her bedroom, I ascended the stairs to the landing on which my own room was, tiptoed inside, and closed the door behind myself. As I leaned against the wall a paroxysm of sadness came over me, and with that sadness came the fresh memories of dejection from all corners of the world, and with those memories came a fit of sobbing which sent me to the floor before I could stop it, and which forced itself out of my lungs with each second that passed.
By five years of age, I had made a habit of making myself dinner at 5 o’clock, an hour before my mother dined, so that my presence in the kitchen did not vex her, and accordingly she had long learned not to do it for me. Once the clock hit that time I went down to the kitchen and prepared porridge for myself, because that was the only thing I knew how to cook. I sat down, holding my food, at the dining table and ate quickly, so that I could return to my room before six.
Then I washed the bowl, pot and spoon at the sink, placed them in their respective shelves on the cupboard, and scrambled upstairs to the house’s only good place, whereupon I laid myself onto the bed and permitted another outburst of tears to overwhelm me. By the time I fell asleep my pillow was cold and wet underneath the side of my head. I dreamt that night of being visited by a tall, skinny man who looked much like I did, with dark hair and a cleft chin and an aquiline nose.