*This is an excerpt from a novella I have began ages ago, part of a series of fictionalized versions of the lives of teachers I had in school as a child, observed there, and around the village, and heard about from both my parents – during my small town, rural upbringing. Thanks for reading.
When Evaline was born, in January of 1902, she often thought if only she had been born a boy; then, she believed her life would have been an easier and happier one, closer to her actual desires and aspirations. She had been smarter than the boys in her class, in the one room schoolhouse where she started her education, and later at the small brick and limestone high school she attended, only blocks from her family’s business. She had known all at once as a young girl, after a visit to the doctor needing stitches in her knee, that medicine was where her interest lay; she been climbing a tree on a dare, and a branch had broken under even her slight six-year-old weight; that dare would change her life as a child, set her on a course of study she had hopes of fulfilling beyond her family, and town. She was fascinated, watching the doctor swab and draw and knit her skin together with the special needle and thread, and later was equally absorbed by the clarity of the science behind it all; the idea of finding solutions to problems by making right what had gone wrong in the body due to infection, disease, habit, or injury, was terribly exciting. And she saw how the doctor was treated, so deferentially, by her mother, and by his nurse, all crisp and clean in white. She’d never seen her mother act quite that way before, and as for the nurse – she was specially trained, her mother said so, to assist the doctor. The bottles and vials, the shining steel bowls and white porcelain, the glass front gleaming white metal cabinet filled with bottles in green and brown as well as the well-crafted tools of the medical trade – all these enthralled her, as did the rolls of cotton and gauze. What a wonderful world to work in, moving confidently about in a white coat, wearing a stethoscope, shaking thermometers, drawing blood.
As she grew she read about doctors and nurses in books taken from the library, as well as in a few magazines borrowed from the rack in her parent’s store. She looked carefully, riveted, at each detail of the layers of human anatomy, sketched out in multiple colors laid on thin plastic – skin, muscles, organs, bones – in the local library and again in science classes at the high school. Lovely. Everything fit, everything worked together, in silent, companionable concert, until it didn’t, and then, in steps the doctor, all-knowing, all-seeing; she alone knows how to fix, to cure.
Her older sister, Lavinia, the quiet one (she would never climb a tree, no matter how you begged her to join in the fun), was also very bright and had done well in school. She was, at fifteen, already planning on going on to Albany Normal College for Teachers; she wanted to work with children, marry and have a family of her own. She loved baby-sitting, making extra money throughout her teens by helping neighbors out. Evaline, at thirteen, thought her sister was a fool; teaching, especially in the younger grades, was not much more than babysitting in her eyes; she didn’t care for children, refusing to watch the neighbors’ kids no matter how much money, or how many treats, were offered, maddening her mother and father, who ran a successful grocery in the prosperous town of Catskill, N.Y., and who ideally wanted their girls to settle, and stay close by. It wasn’t that they needed the money, even after moving out of the apartment over the business into a house on Orchard Street, but it showed a willful stubbornness in their second daughter, an unfeminine lack of interest in being of help, of which they did not approve. If only, they often thought, they had been able to have a boy. Their third and youngest daughter, born seven years after Evaline, had been their last chance at having a son, a son to inherit the business and carry the family name. They named this late child Georgina, for if she had been born the hoped for boy she would have been George, George Junior. Georgina was not as good in school as her sisters, although Lavinia, the future teacher, spent hours playing at instructing her in the basics, first in their spacious apartment above the store, and later sitting at the dining room in their new home. Georgina was boring and not very bright, in Evaline’s opinion; Georgina would make someone a fine wife one day.
Evaline waited until the Thanksgiving holiday prior to her high school graduation to tell her parents of her plan to study medicine. She wanted to be a Doctor, she told them proudly, a surgeon perhaps, working with the most interesting, challenging patients, dealing perhaps with cancer, about which so much was as yet unknown in 1919, and other cases, too, profound injuries fractures, tumors, ruptures, strokes. We need doctors, she said, the war showed us that, proved it, and we need new researchers; the entire field of medicine, she told them, was filled with possibilities. Later she would cringe at the memory of her joyful confidence that day, announcing her plans.
Evaline had been at the top of her class every year, receiving perfect marks in biology and chemistry. Her teacher for Chemistry, Mr. Reed, told her, not entirely without disapproval, that she was the brightest student he had ever had, by far. She replied, simply, with a slight smile, ‘I know’, watching his thin-lipped mouth tighten with displeasure as she had seen it tighten every year she excelled in his class, especially that first year, when in labs she out-performed her male peers despite being given a seat in the back, and all the worst equipment. Why, he’d once asked her, was she even taking advanced science her first year in high school? Because I want to learn, and I love it, don’t you? That had shut him up. She wasn’t sure if she disliked Mr. Reed or if she appreciated him for all he had taught her, even if it felt, at times, that it was against his will. Sometimes she wished her life were less complicated, that she were more easily satisfied like her sister Lavvy, whom she loved so much and yet, still, somewhat despised.
Evaline had a beau, in the upper grades, a nice boy from a good local family with less ambitious plans for his life than hers. His grandparents were local farmers, but he was a village boy; his father had begun a successful farm supply store, and they had another new house on a similar tree-lined block in town. She’d liked his look and selected him, once, at a school formal, when a ‘Sadie Hawkin’s’ dance was played. He’d been stiff and red-faced, but she knew he was smart, and she might as well show everyone, including Mr. Reed in his role as chaperone, that she could waltz with the best of them. Before the next formal was held at their school, she invited him as her date (he was very shy, which she both liked and thought was stupid and a waste of time), telling him where he to pick her up, and at what time. His parents were members of her parents’ church, a plus, and Bill was one of their four sons, all of whom were known as hard workers, and good with their heads as well as their hands. Evie didn’t think she would marry, medicine being as demanding as it was, but she also believed it was important, especially given her parents antiquated outlook, to have a contingency plan.
They originally met over the flame of a simple test in Mr. Reed’s Sophomore level chemistry class, but there was no flame in her for him, not really. He was nice, deferring to her in all the steps that needed to be done to make the required chemical reaction occur. She couldn’t imagine ever marrying him, or anyone, ever – and definitely not before she had finished medical school. Still, it was nice to have someone in her life, someone to walk out with, to talk to after church or at church dinners and dances, even if her parents made too much of it, encouraging her in her so-called interest in that ‘nice young man’.
Her parents were not happy that Thanksgiving, hearing of her grand plans; they did not agree with Evie that medical school was the right place for her, a good future, or even possible. Girls and women did not become doctors, they said; this was, to them, a known fact, an absolute. Their daughter would not be a doctor; the idea was ridiculous, almost repulsive; she saw the look that passed between them, as if she had released a bad, filthy smell into their well-appointed living room. Evaline told them things had changed, railing at them, frustrated and angry, said that they were being old-fashioned, that Marie Curie was a scientist, a Nobel prize-winner and wife, from years and years and years ago, and that girls could do whatever boys did and even possibly do it better. They told her to calm down, to behave, and that they would speak of it again, after some consideration. Her parent’s always deliberated things slowly, moving in a block, although her father and his opinions, Evaline knew this, ruled.
