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Mrs. Yongé
SUSAN FAY STEINER: When I was eleven in 1959, children were polite to adults and addressed them by their title of Mister, or Mrs. and Miss. When an adult asked you to do something you did it; maybe sulking along the way, but nevertheless you obeyed. This was before kids had rights and parents lost theirs, but also when adults could easily molest or frighten children without much hindrance. It did little good to protest to my parents that Mrs. Yongé was weird. "It's not for you to judge her level of weirdness," snapped my mother. "She's an adult and deserves your respect. If she asks you to carry her groceries into the house or to help her in some other way, then do it! I expect to hear from all quarters at all times that my daughter is polite and considerate. End of discussion." "What kind of a name is Yongé anyway?" I mumbled as I clumped down the stairs to my basement hideaway. My mother's supersonic hearing caught it. "You'll not be disrespectful because someone has a foreign name. Your own name was foreign once." I marched the rest of the way in fuming silence to the basement room that was once used to store coal. That was my sanctuary since my mother rarely went down there after she'd turned the pantry into a laundry room. It was cool, dimly lit and peaceful and the walls were covered with my artwork that they wouldn't let me hang upstairs. When I had my terrible moods, I would always go down there. I would sit on an orange crate and tried to calm down as I watched a spider in the dusty window tie up captives for future repasts. The thing was, in spite of all my mother's rhetoric, Mrs. Yongé
was weird - extremely weird. My mother had no idea. If she believed
me, she'd quickly change her tune and jump to my rescue. "Susan!" I heard her muted yell from the upper regions. Reluctantly I rose and stood at the bottom of the stairs. "What?" "Don't take that attitude with me, young lady! I want you to take a cup of sugar and some eggs over to Mrs. Wyckoff. She's expecting you on the double!" The Wyckoffs lived on the same side of the street as Mrs. Yongé. I would have to pass her house. I slipped two eggs into separate pockets on either side of my jacket, my hand shaking as I held the cup of sugar. There was no escape. Just as I knew the sun would set in the evening, I also knew that Mrs. Yongé would not miss me as I walked by and that on my return she'd be standing on her porch and ask me to come in. At this age, I was not adept at impromptu excuses. Why didn't I just return by an alternate route? The only one would take me past another dreaded site, the hangout of the Lloyd brothers, tough little hoodlums who enjoyed nothing more than threatening me with rape and other atrocities. Frightened as I was of her, I chose Mrs. Yongé over them. Sure enough, she appeared on the porch as if a warning system inside had alerted her to my approach. "Hel-lo, Sus-an," she said in her strangely clipped foreign accent. "Where are you go-ing to-dayee?" Damn, damn, I thought. "To Mrs. Wyckoff," I muttered in reply. Her face abruptly broke into a huge grin. There was something uncanny about it. "Oh, good, Su-san! You will stop in on your way back, yes? I will be waiting!" I sighed deeply. "All right," I said and beaten, trudged on. In less than five minutes, I was inside her door. She stood disconcertingly close, so close that I could see the pores in her skin. She was quite short for an adult, about my own height. She was very good-looking and her hair a startling shiny black that did not seem to go with her skin color. My mother and her friends did not dye their hair and looked down on people who did. I knew my mother would not choose to associate with someone who looked like Mrs. Yongé, yet for some illogical reason expected me to do so. Like many of the conditions of childhood, this one made me feel a bit schizophrenic. "I have something for you to eat," my hostess said in her odd, disjointed manner. "You will like it." She produced from a table behind the door a large plate of chocolate. And I do mean large. It was a platter like my mother put the turkey on at Thanksgiving, covered with an assortment of unwrapped candy bars. If I'd had that tray alone in my room with a pile of Betty and Veronica comic books, I would have been in seventh heaven, but now it just made me feel strange in my stomach. To be polite, I chose what appeared to be a Milky Way and bit into it. It was Snickers but that was okay, though I had little appetite for it at the moment. "You relax now," she commanded me. Although she was not oriental, her speech reminded me of TV actors portraying Chinese people trying to speak English. I couldn't tell what her country of origin was and figured it might be Transylvania. She might be a vampire. My mouth was so dry the candy inside it felt like clay. "After you relax, I have something to show you, Su-san." I was as close to relaxing as someone having a tooth pulled. As I chewed the dry gob in my mouth, I looked around. As usual, the place was weird. I wanted my mother to see it.
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