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Writer's pictureLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Nov 180 min read

Excerpted Inspirations #154


[Meg Murry’s little brother Charles Wallace is suffering from a mysterious illness. Meg’s first task in helping him is to Name her old school principal, Mr. Jenkins, with whom she has never gotten along. With her partner Proginoskes, she must identify which of three identical Mr. Jenkinses is the real one.] In her mind’s ear came the echo of Calvin’s voice, coming back to her when she had been sent – unfairly, she thought – to Mr. Jenkins’ office, and been dealt with – unfairly – there. Calvin’s voice, quiet, calming, infuriatingly reasonable. “When I started seventh grade and went over to Regional, my mother bought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost a dollar, which was more than she could spare, and they were women’s Oxfords, the kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could jam my feet in, and went to school. The kids knew me too well to make remarks in my presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he’d noticed I’d outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair he thought would fit me. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he hadn’t gone out and bought them for me. I make enough money in the summers now to buy my own shoes, but I’ll never forget that he bought me the first decent pair of shoes I ever had. Sure I know all the bad things about him, and they’re all true, and I’ve had my own run-ins with him, but on the whole we get along, maybe because my parents don’t make him feel inferior, and he knows he can do things for me that they can’t. Meg muttered, “It’d have been a lot easier if I could have gone on hating him.” Now it was Proginoskes’ voice in her mind’s ear, not Calvin’s. “What would be easier?” “Naming him.” “Would it? Don’t you know more about him now?” “Second-hand. I’ve never known him to do anything else nice.” “How do you suppose he feels about you?” “He’s never seen me except when I’m snarly,” she admitted. She found herself almost laughing as she remembered Mr. Jenkins saying, ‘Margaret, you are the most contumacious child it has ever been my misfortune to have in this office,’ and she had had to go home and look up ‘contumacious.’ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door (1973), pp. 115-116

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