Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

people, knowledge was just oddity; it stuck out like warts.
    But I shared my mother’s appetite myself, I could not help it. I loved the volumes of the encyclopedia, their weight (of mystery, of beautiful information) as they fell open in my lap; I loved their sedate dark green binding, the spidery, reticent-looking golden letters on their spines. They might open to show me a steel engraving of abattle, taking place on the moors, say, with a castle in the background, or in the harbour of Constantinople. All bloodshed, drowning, hacking off of heads, agony of horses, was depicted with a kind of operatic flourish, a superb unreality. And I had the impression that in historical times the weather was always theatrical, ominous; landscape frowned, sea glimmered in various dull or metallic shades of grey. Here was Charlotte Corday on her way to the guillotine, Mary Queen of Scots on her way to the scaffold, Archbishop Laud extending his blessing to Stafford through the bars of his prison window— nobody could doubt this was just the way they looked, robes black, lifted hands and faces white, composed, heroic. The encyclopedia did of course provide other sorts of things to look at: beetles, varieties of coal, diagrammed insides of engines, photographs of Amsterdam or Bucharest taken on smudgy dim days in the nineteen-twenties (you could tell by the little high square cars). I preferred History.
    Accidentally at first and then quite deliberately I learned things from the encyclopedia. I had a freak memory. Learning a list of facts was an irresistible test to me, like trying to hop a block on one foot.
    My mother got the idea that I might be useful in her work.
    â€œMy own daughter has been reading these books and I am just amazed at what she has picked up. Children’s minds are just like flypaper, you know, whatever you give them will stick. Del, name the presidents of the United States from George Washington down to the present day, can you do that?” Or: name the countries and capitals of South America. The major explorers, tell where they came from and where they went. Dates too please. I would sit in a strange house rattling things off. I put on a shrewd, serious, competitive look, but that was mostly for effect. Underneath I felt a bounding complacency. I knew I knew it. And who could fail to love me, for knowing where Quito was?
    Quite a few could, as a matter of fact. But where did I get the first hint in that direction? It might have been from looking up and seeing Owen, without two dates or capitals or dead presidents to string together, as far as anybody knew, tenderly, privately wrapping a long chewed-out piece of gum around his finger. It might have been from the averted faces of country children, with their subtle, complicatedembarrassment. One day I did not want to do it any more. The decision was physical; humiliation prickled my nerve-ends and the lining of my stomach. I started to say, “I don’t know them—” but was too miserable, too ashamed, to tell this lie.
    â€œGeorge Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson—”
    My mother said sharply, “Are you going to be sick?”
    She was afraid I might be about to throw up. Both Owen and I were totally committed, on-the-spot throwers-up. I nodded and slid off the chair and went and hid in the car, holding my stomach. My mother when she came had figured out that it was more than that.
    â€œYou’re getting self-conscious,” she said in a practical tone. “I thought you enjoyed it.” The prickling started again. That was just it, I had enjoyed it, and it was not decent of her to say so. “Shyness and self-consciousness,” said my mother rather grandly, “those are the luxuries I could never afford.” She started the car. “Though I can tell you, there are members of your father’s family who would not open their mouths in public to say their house was burning down.”
    Thereafter