I Dwell in Possibility. Toni McNaron

resourcefulness. Hearing it, I always see myself sitting alone in a room, coloring or reading or building some new fantasy world.

      The story began in my baby bed with its several rows of colored wooden beads strung on thin metal rods like an abacus. From the time I could stand, I moved the beads in endless mutations to produce colors and spaces. At three, I was given a little slate with a real abacus for its top. When my mother handed me my slate and piece of chalk, she said: “Here, honey, now draw a cat or print your ABC’s.” As long as she watched, I demonstrated what I gather were my precocious motor and mental skills. But as soon as she went into some other room, I put down the chalk and began to count and arrange the beads. I loved the click of one against another and the gliding sound as I moved a whole row from left to right, fast. Their bright reds, blues, greens, and yellows cheered me up, reminding me of my baby bed and of how much I liked standing up in it, staring at the big colored spheres.

      At about four, I began to catch my feces in my hands before they fell into the toilet bowl, take them into my bedroom and hide them in an old shoebox my sister gave me. That box stayed under my bed, near the windows. When the grownups were busy elsewhere, I would steal into my room, crawl down between my bed and the wall, haul out my box and make wonderful creations. At its height my collection included ten figures and four or five cars. One day as I was busily executing my new idea for a giraffe, my mother discovered me. Deeply shocked, she gave me a severe lecture about “niceness,” then punished me by having me sit quietly in a chair for some five minutes. A few days later, she presented me with a box of colored modelling clay, but I refused to use it, saying, “Clay is for babies.”

      I learned during this earliest phase of my artistic development that what I made could not last long, and that lesson was reinforced throughout my childhood. As payroll master for his company, my father brought home bags of bills and change every Thursday, only to take them away on Fridays to hand out in small brown envelopes to the workers. But while they were in our house, I could dump out and play with their contents. Each unbleached muslin bag from the First National Bank of Fairfield could hold several hundred copper pennies. I loved to hear them tumble onto my bedroom floor, then watch them scatter under my bed, into corners, out into the hall. Because Daddy worried that a coin or two might get lost under some piece of furniture, he urged me to play on the living room rug. The public nature of this space frustrated me, since people tracked back and forth on their way out the door. In the middle of an elaborate design, a large foot could invade my work area, disrupting my pennies, causing me to cry quietly as I tried to restore them.

      The pennies served as borders for buildings, people, objects. But almost as soon as I had finished a town or barnyard or sentence, Mamie came and scooped them up because she needed the room for something, or Daddy rebagged them so he could get to bed in time to feel rested at 4:00 A.M., his wake-up hour.

      The effect of these interruptions on my creativity was marked. Unlike some I know, I never kept a diary or journal, and I have no signs of childhood art, though I engaged almost daily in the act of making. I remember feeling quiet and steadied by such activities, safer than when talking. From a very early age, I was able to lose myself in such creative play, going far from5130 Holly Court, Fairfield, Alabama. But writing any of it down seemed dangerous to me; someone could easily take my stories or plans away if they existed on paper. So I lived out my mother’s proud boast—I did indeed amuse myself for hours, leaving no record for anyone to find, not even me.

      I was a skinny child with a head full of long blond hair that I wore in curls like Scarlett O’Hara. This hair was mostly a bother as I ran wildly outside. Summers, Mamie plaited it into two stubbly braids held with rubber bands that pulled and were covered with grosgrain ribbons of various colors. Try as she did, my mother seemed incapable of making tight, neat braids like I saw on girls at school, but at least my neck was partly cleared so sweat could roll down easier. Every late afternoon, my hair had to be brushed, since my rambunctious playing tangled it horribly. Tender headed, I cried through most of this ritual. But all adults seemed convinced that my hair was my “crowning glory,” so there was no getting away from the torture. To this day, I have to force myself to brush the recommended fifty strokes and prefer simply to wash my hair and run my hands through it as it dries.

      The reason I was skinny is my food story. At a rather early age I learned that if I did not eat my lunch or dinner, my mother would stay at the table coaxing me. Wanting her undivided attention sometimes fiercely, I began what must have been a tedious ritual. I picked and poked at my food until my father and sister were long gone from the table. Then Mamie and I were left to battle out the carrots or spinach or even mashed potatoes and gravy. “Eat, honey,” was the refrain to which I turned deaf ears, knowing I could outsit her and keep her talking.

      The hard part of my regimen was that food got cold and inedible, so that finally no one would have wanted to have it. To handle this unforeseen development, I figured out how to toss bits of congealed vegetables or cold meat down the big furnace duct that came up to the dining room floor and was covered with a metal grating that I polished monthly to keep its brass coating shiny. While Mamie was in the kitchen getting another glass of iced tea, I would deftly get rid of some of the odious food. When she returned, I would brag about my cooperative behavior, “See all I’ve eaten while you were gone; aren’t I a good and brave girl now?” My poor mother praised me for what she took to be eating but what in reality was lying and having sure wrist action that later helped me throw a baseball to first base with amazing accuracy.

      One day when I was about eleven and had been tossing unwanted food down the grate for years, I was shocked to learn that we were going to have the furnace cleaned out. On the appointed day, I made myself scarce the moment the burly white workman arrived at about nine in the morning. Ironically, we were all having lunch when he knocked on the basement door, came into our dining room, and unwrapped a small bundle. “I can’t tell how this stuff ever got into your furnace, ma’am, but I took it out. Do you want me to throw it away or what?” To my horror, the bundle contained parched chicken bones, unrecognizably shrunken things that must once have been carrots or beans or squash, dust-coated blobs of years-old potatoes. My mother graciously scooped it all up, saying over her shoulder as she fled into the kitchen, “Oh, never mind, I can just put it here in the trash, probably a cat or mouse did it.” Lame by any measure, and we both knew it.

      When Mamie returned from the back porch, she sat down resignedly and looked right at me. “Toni, honey, how could you have told me such stories all these years. I thought you were trying to eat, and you were doing something no nice person could imagine. Wherever did you get such an idea in the first place?” I answered not at all but glumly chewed the vegetable before me. I never really answered Mamie, and she never required it. From then on, I had to invent new schemes to cover my not eating. Stashing small amounts in a pocket or trying to attract the cat’s attention without also alerting my mother were far less effective than the furnace trick had been.

      Though I resisted real food, for years I played something called “store” and a variation I named “drugstore.” Mamie saved Rice Krispies and Grapenuts Flakes containers, Quaker Oats tins, RC Cola bottles, Oxydol boxes. Being resourceful, I also badgered our next door neighbor lady for such rareties as Black Jack shoe polish cans, Sauer’s almond extract bottles, and Blue Bonnet margarine holders. On makeshift shelves or tall cardboard crates, I set up my wares, each marked with a tiny price tag, and sat patiently waiting for other children to come “buy” something. We never actually paid money for such empties but gave each other rocks or shards of pretty colored glass that had been given designated values.

      “Drugstore” was beautiful. I saved old medicine bottles, of which we seemed to have a great abundance, what with the vague illnesses that kept me home from school and my mother’s various potions. Into each clear bottle went first tap water, then a few drops of food dye. The result was a rainbow of bottles, each having a label on which I wrote the virtues of the exotic contents. “Sure cure for toenails hanging part way off.” “Take one spoonful daily and never again have circles under your eyes.” “Drink regularly for itchy heads or rashes between your toes.” Each evening, I stored all the pretty liquids in the basement, only to set up the entire show next day even though almost no one ever came to see or buy my magic elixirs. The colors fascinated me, just as the beads on my baby bed had years before and