The First Day in My Own Movie

(Continued from Wednesday, August 28, 2013 . . . )

The first five weeks in that seventh grade classroom in Omaha were straight out of the 1955 movie The Blackboard Jungle. Watching it as a college freshman, I’d thought that the unruliness and violence portrayed in the movie’s inner-city classroom could happen only among the really poor, those who had nothing to look forward to. Those whose rage boiled over because of poverty. I didn’t recognize the bias of that belief nor the naiveté.

         Now, five years later, I daily entered a classroom that vied in rowdiness with the movie’s—a classroom of young, middle-class, Catholic students whose lives seemed far removed from those of the high school students in the movie.

         Each day they gleefully dashed to their desks ready to intimidate me. The entry door was at the back of the room; my desk at the front. As I sat there, I could look to the left of the rectangular classroom and see three rows of desks parallel to the inner wall. The boys sat there. To my right, along the wall of windows, sat three rows of girls.

         On my first day in that classroom, I’d discovered, after everyone had quieted down, that they’d completed all the textbooks by Christmas. Hearing this, my mind went into high gear. “I don’t believe that you know everything that’s in those books,” I said. “I’m going to give you some written quizzes to find out. You’ll have to prove me wrong.”

         The challenge prompted them to take paper and pencil out of their desks and settle down. The day passed: a quiz or two; recess; another quiz; lunch; another couple of quizzes; recess; a final quiz.

         As the day progressed, I gave a twenty-five-question quiz on each subject area: English, geography, civics, science, reading, math, American history. Some answers would require a simple true/false or yes/no; others, a word or two; still others, a paragraph of explanation.

         Fortunately, I’d majored in English Literature in college with minors in history, philosophy, and math. I’d had a good education and so, simply by flipping through their textbooks, I thought of questions to ask.

         After each quiz, I had the students trade papers with one another. Then we’d discuss each of the questions to arrive at what might seem the right answer. But I insisted that we listen to other answers to the same question to determine if any of them contained some kernel of accuracy.

         A student grading a paper that had an answer that differed from the “right” one had to try and figure out why the other student had written that answer. Was it a feasible response to a question that might appear to have only one answer? A student could defend her or his answer if the grader argued with it. 

         They seemed to love to debate, although they often resorted to put-downs and yelling. But I’d remain silent, simply watching them or the clock. They didn’t seem to know what to make of me.

         At the end of the day, I collected all the papers and said I’d look them over and give them grades. That night, after getting permission from Sister Brendan to stay up late, I graded and then stapled together each student’s quizzes.

         The next day I asked Jenny, one of the seventh-grade girls, to hand back the papers. She sashayed down the boys’ aisles, humming. Suddenly she yelped, arched her body, and scurried down the row toward where I stood. But as she passed two other boys, she yelped again. When I asked what had happened, she looked down at the floor and muttered, “Nothin’. Nothin’ happened.”

         Walking purposefully down the aisle, amidst catcalls and hooting, I discovered that each boy had a math compass on his desk. At the far end of the row sat Ron—six foot tall already, broad shoulders, muscled arms and chest, smug attitude.

         I’d recognized him as soon as I’d entered the classroom that morning with Sister Brendan. He was the boy who’d done the bashing on the playground the Friday before.

         When I stopped at the side of his desk and put my hand out for the compass, he bragged, “No girl gets by me without tasting the sharp end of my compass.”

         All I said was, “Not any more.”

         From that time on, I passed out all the papers.

                           (. . . continued next Wednesday, September 11, 2013)

Poster and compass from Wikipedia.
Stack of books by Gualberto107 of freedigitalphotos.com

Kindness from a College Friend

Today’s act-of-kindness story takes place in September 1954 when I began college at Mount Saint Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas. Just three months before, I’d graduated from St. Mary’s High School in Independence, Missouri, a small town with a population of about 30,000 at the time. St. Mary’s was also small. Its entire enrollment was only about 140 students, of which 30 or so of us were seniors.

My senior picture, sans eyeglasses. The photographer “prettied” me up!

         Mom drove me up to the Mount in early September where I encountered a freshman class of about 140 students—as many as the entire student body at St. Mary’s High School. Many of these young women had come from small towns as had I; but many others were from Chicago and eastern states like New Jersey and New York.

         It seemed to me then that I was a true hick among sophisticates. And so I became tongue tied. To make matters even worse, I’d lost a tooth filling on the trip up to the Mount. I was going to college on a scholarship and Mom didn’t have the money to give me to go to a dentist in Atchison so I had to find a way to keep the cavity secret.

         Every time I smiled at some one in the dorm or the halls of the administration building, I kept the right side of my mouth stiff so as to cover what seemed to me to be a gaping hole in my lower right-hand canine tooth.

         In my mind, I thought that everyone must see me as that strange, cavity-ridden, acne-faced kid from the town where President Truman lived. I was miserable and after two weeks of awkward smiling and talking, of hearing stories about plays on Broadway, and about air travel, I knew that I didn’t belong in college. I was just a country bumpkin.

Mount Saint Scholastica College Administration Building—1954

         One of the freshman—Marge Tansley from Chicago—befriended me during those two weeks. Somehow she found something to like in me despite the dark hole in my tooth. As Marge and I sat in the rec room on the first floor of the ad building, I dolefully confided my decision to quit college and return home. I moaned about my gaucheness, my ineptitude, my ignorance, my lack of social graces, and on and on and on.

         Marge took me in hand. Instead of calling me “Dolores,” the name by which I’d always been known, she welcomed me into the kingdom of nicknames. Surely that meant she liked me!

         “Dee,” Marge said, “you belong here just as much as any of us do. Give us a chance. We’re already friends. You’ll make lots more. Come on! Stay! Stop thinking of yourself all the time.”

         I protested. She insisted. I moaned some more. She shook me by the shoulders. I finally relented. “Okay. I’ll stay four more weeks. Just four.”

         She hugged me. And that, my friends, changed my life. I stayed at the Mount, made many friends among the student body, got an excellent education, became involved in student government, and on April 10, 1957, in my junior year, I realized that I wanted to enter the Mount convent after I graduated the next year.

         For me two roads diverged: stay or leave. I stayed and that “has made all the difference” as the poet Robert Frost would say.

         That difference came about because of Marge Tansley, who entered the convent after our freshmen college year. We met again at the sesquicentennial celebrate this past weekend. She is yet another blessing in my life. As are all of you. Peace.

Here I am as a freshman in St. Lucy’s dorm

 after Marge encouraged me to stop thinking of myself

 and to start concentrating on my classmates.

PS:  Tomorrow, I’ll post one more story about the kindness others have extended to me. But before I do that I’d like to explain what prompted these postings. They are part of the Wayman Publishing blog fest, which ends today—Friday, May 31.

            Wayman is offering ten e-books as free downloads to you. Other books are offered at a greatly reduced press. Both of Dulcy’s e-books—A Cat’s Life and A Cat’s Legacy—are available. The first for 99 cents and the second for free.

         Almost seventy other bloggers are participating in this celebration of random acts of kindness. If you’d like to read other stories of how we gently touch one another’s lives, please click here to find information on the other bloggers and their postings as well as the names of the ten free downloads.

Making Heaven Interesting

For me, fear and desperate planning filled the first three months of Grade 5. I had to somehow avoid Mr. Jackson’s groping hand when he drove me and his sons and daughter and my little brother to and from school. Grade 6, however, went well. No trauma that I can remember except for Dad’s drinking and the loud arguments between him and Mom. I kept hiding the hammer, axe, and knives for fear that during one of those drunken arguments he’d try to kill her again.

         In fact, I remember the fall months of 1947 with enjoyment for it was then that I first studied ancient history. One November day, while reading about the Grecian city-state of Thebes, I had a déjà vu moment and roamed the streets leading up to its ancient citadel. The present merged with the past and I became Theban. That experience led me to visit Greece in 1993 and work on a Bronze-Age-Greece novel.  

  

    Remains of Cadmea, the central fortress of ancient Thebes.

         The other vivid memory I have of Grade 6 concerns heaven. Over and over in religion class Sister Mary McCauley talked about the afterlife.    

      Dante and Beatrice gaze at the highest heavens.

         “What will we do in heaven,” I asked one day.

         “Why, Dolores, you’ll praise God for all His glory and beauty and goodness. You’ll sing, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and Earth are filled with your glory!”

         “That’s it?”

         “Yes. Isn’t it glorious?”

         Clearly, she thought so.

         I didn’t.

         The truth was that hell, despite its flames, sounded much more interesting. No mealy-mouthed humans there.

Medieval illustration of Hell 

in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript

of Herrad of Landsberg—about 1180.

         So I thought. And thought. And thought some more about how to make heaven appealing. After alighting from the school bus one afternoon, I ran up the rutted driveway, into the unpainted house, and called out, “Mom!”

         “I’m here. In the kitchen.”

         Dumping my books on the divan, I hurried to the kitchen where Mom stood at the range, stirring a steaming pot of macaroni. 

         “Mom!” I shouted. “You know how heaven being boring bothers me?”

         “Yes.”

         “God seems so conceited. All He wants is to be praised all the time. And it just goes on and on and on with no ending. It scares me. Everything ends. What’s the end of heaven?”

         “It’s the end of life I know about, Dolores. We die and we’re with God.”

         “But just saying, ‘Holy, Holy,’ all the time gets monotonous. I’d like talking with people.” I paused and then confided that God simply wasn’t enough for all eternity.

         “He’s pretty wonderful,” she said.

         “Well, if dead people have been telling Him that since the Neanderthals”—we’d started our study of ancient history with them that year—“then He must be sort of tired of it all by now. Wouldn’t you think so?”

         “Possibly.”

         “So here’s my idea! When I get to heaven I’m going to ask God—as a favor—if He’d show me a movie of every person who’s ever lived—even those babies in Limbo. Going all the way back to the Neanderthals.”

         “Sounds interesting.”

         “Yes," I agreed enthusiastically. "And that’s not all. I’ll ask to see not only the people but also what they thought and what they said and what they dreamed about! And I’ll see and hear their conversations when they were alive. I’ll watch their whole lives! The life of every person!”

         As Mom drained the macaroni, she summed it up. “So you’re going to see a long movie?”

         “The longest ever, Mom. It’ll go on and on because people keep dying and I’d keep seeing movies of their lives. Maybe God will even give me popcorn! Buttered!”

         I went to bed content that night. An eternity of stories . . . and buttered popcorn.        

All photographs are from Wikipedia.

         

Anklets, Saddle Shoes, and Droplets

Last week you learned that I pee when I laugh too much. This happened a lot in grade school. In fifth grade I began my friendship with the bus driver because of blotches left by pee. He found a way to deal with the problem without embarrassing me.

         In seventh grade I also met gentleness with regard to my peeing. But this time I knew real embarrassment.

         The incident began when Sister Mary McCauley, our seventh grade teacher, asked our class to speak for three minutes about something that interested us.

         One by one we walked resolutely up to the front of the room. The boys mostly talked about wars and westerns. One of them had been to Yellowstone and described Old Faithful. The girls related how she’d learned to play the piano. Several talked about their favorite movie stars. One classmate had seen the Atlantic Ocean and talked about the thunder of its waves.

             

         When my time came, I hurried down the aisle to the front of the room. Already a history buff, I’d chosen to talk about the Liberty Bell that hung in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia.

         The boys knew my weakness because we’d all gone through grade school together. So as soon as I started talking, they crossed their eyes and tried on their most grotesque faces. I started giggling.

         Then it happened: pee trickled down my legs. I tried holding them tightly together, but that only made the boys redouble their efforts.

         More drips and dribbles.

         I stood in a spreading puddle of pee.

         I had to talk for three minutes to get a good grade, so I forged on with facts and dates.

         More seepage.

         The pee wet the tops of my white anklets.

         The puddle kept spreading around my white and brown saddle shoes.

How much pee does a kid’s bladder hold? I wondered.

Finally, I finished and raced down the aisle to my desk. Maybe when I sat down, the pool of pee would magically disappear.

         Sister Mary McCauley’s voice brought me to a halt. “Dolores, there seems to be a wet spot on the floor. Would you please get a rag and wipe it up. I’d appreciate that.”

         The boys guffawed; the girls tittered.  

         I got a rag from the closet, wiped up the puddle, trashed the sodden cloth, and sat down quietly at my desk. Behind me, a classmate who was sweet on me whispered, “I liked your speech best.”

         Well, at least it was the most entertaining. A real show-and-tell.

The Busdriver and the Blotch

The fifth grade holds many memories for me. During its first three months—September, October, and November of 1946—a neighbor daily molested me in his car. This happened as he drove my brother and me and his own children to and from St. Mary’s Grade School. In January, I wrote three postings about Mr. Jackson. To read the first of those three, click here.

            The fifth grade, however, also holds wonderful memories for me. Sister Mary McCaulay began to teach us how to craft sentences. Late last year, on my writing blog, I shared three stories about how she began with prepositions, then introduced the building blocks of sentences, and finally helped us construct paragraphs. Thus began my love affair with words and writing.

            My introduction to the memorizing of poetry also enhanced fifth grade. I mentioned the joy of this in my posting last Wednesday.

            A final memory from fifth grade always brings a smile to my face. I hope you, too, will enjoy this story.

            After my parents confronted Mr. Jackson, I rode the city bus to school. Its route brought it out into the countryside. Each morning I’d climb aboard the bus at the juncture of Kentucky and Dickinson roads.

A 1930s school bus that came before the yellow ones we’re now used to.

            When school ended each day, I could either board the bus by St. Mary’s or walk down Liberty Street and hail down the bus whenever it came by. I mostly chose to do the latter because that meant I could walk several blocks with my best friend: Barbara Ann.

            I shared two stories about Barbara Ann way back in October 2012. The first had to do with preparing to receive First Holy Communion. The next concerned the mishap on that day of celebration. We were in second grade then and we remained fast friends throughout grade and high. Our friendship endures and she called me for my birthday on Monday.

            By the fifth grade, Barbara Ann and I had become connoisseurs of giggling. Gigglers par excellence. Anything and everything could make us giggle. And did.

            Daily we walked down Liberty Street giggling about what Jackie had said when Sister Mary McCaulay asked him to pick his favorite preposition. Giggling about what John Tom had for lunch. Giggling about what an astounding jump-rope jumper Judy was. Our giggling itself made us giggle.

            And as we giggled, the pee began to dribble down my legs, wetting my cotton panties. I’d walk nine blocks with Barbara Ann, giggling and peeing all the way. Then she’d turned left to go down the street to her home and I’d wait for the bus to wheeze to a stop and pick me up.

            The seats in this bus were leather or something that seemed like leather. Maybe naugahyde. So of course, when I sat on them with wet panties, I left an imprint—a large wet blotch. And since I mostly sat in the same seat each day, that blotch got bigger and darker and more obvious as the school year went on.

            Finally one day in early April, I boarded the bus, greeted the welcoming driver, and started down the aisle. Before I could go more than a step or two, he called me back. “Dolores,” he began in a whisper, “I can’t let you sit down on the bus anymore.”

            “Why?”

            “The boss said so.”

            “So I can’t take the bus?”

            “Oh, you can ride. You just can’t sit down." He paused and then whispered more softly. "Do you know why?”             

             “Did I do something wrong?”

            “It’s the spots you leave behind.”

            Oh.

            “Do you want me to walk home?”

            The road out into the countryside was narrow with one lane going each way and deep culverts along the side. Cars came barreling down that country road. In truth, I was a little scared to walk those three miles home.

            “No, Dolores. As I said, you can ride the bus home, but you’ll just need to stand up here instead of sit.”

            “Stand here by you?”

            “You can stand in the stairwell. And we can talk.”

            During those final weeks of fifth grade, the bus driver and I became fast friends. I told him about my classmates and what we were learning. He told me about his two preschoolers and the funny things they did.

            We talked about the Blues—they were the Kansas City Triple A baseball farm team for the Yankees. And we talked about reading. He liked Zane Gray and I liked fairy tales and books like Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland and Peter and Wendy.

Hans Brinker tying on his sister Gretel’s ice skates.

            

The friendship between the bus driver and myself continued throughout all the years I took the bus home because that stairwell became Dolores' throne. The truth is that I never stopped giggling with Barbara Ann . . . and I never stopped peeing!

All photographs from Wikipedia.

A Review of Weeds

The songs my mother sang to me were the first poems I heard as a child. The lyrics of many of those songs remain with me. I still sing them as I drive. Fill the dishwasher. Vacuum up the cats’ fur from the carpet.

            My mom sang poetry; my dad recited it to me as nursery rhymes. I was “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” who was asked, “How does your garden grow?” I was that rascal Jack, nimbly jumping over a candlestick.

            My grandmother was “Old Mother Hubbard [who] went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone.” And that dog was Smokey with whom my grandmother lived, or Kentucky, my young brother’s dog.

            Songs, nursery rhymes, and then in fifth grade the required memorizing of a new poem each week: “The Owl and the Pussy Cat,” “Little Orphant Annie,” and “The Modern Hiawatha,” which was by far my favorite and which I still delight in reciting today—much to my listeners’ chagrin—some sixty-six years later.

Since those fifth grade days of being exposed to a wide range of poetic language, I’ve read and responded to poems from poets of both the past and the present. Two bloggers—Penny and Teresa Evangeline—have introduced me to a number of contemporary poets who have enriched my life in the past two years. Repeatedly poets reveal to me the light at the end of the tunnel. More often they help me realize the deep down humanity and thirst for goodness that is the essence of each of us.

And so today I want to tell you about Weeds, a book of poetry I’ve just completed by a blogger many of you may know: McGuffy Ann Morris. I’ve had the book on my bedside table for over a month now, picking it up each evening, reading a poem, and then considering what it offers me: the truths about my own experience of life.

In Weeds, Morris offers us the wisdom of the years she’s spent here on this planet we call Earth. It is a wisdom hard won and for that reason treasured. She is both observer and muse. Here are just three samples of her poetic observations:

            From “Book”

            Life is an open book

            Each person a character

            pasted on a page of time.

            From “Battle”

            I go back in time,

            the battlefield of memories.

            I need to recapture

            Moments lost, moments stolen,

            Looking for myself

            As I really am, not as you

            Perceive me to be.

            From “Median”

            Reflections fade into shadows.

            What I once was has faded;

            What I am yet to be becomes clear.

            I did not choose to be here,

            To be a part of this.

            Forever now will I be both

            Reflection and shadow.

           

In Weeds, Morris moves back and forth between the antipodes of life—from difficult to glorious. As a reader I saw her struggles as well as her triumphs. And yet, as with all poems that come from the depths of the human experience, I also found myself for she presents the realities of our lifelong journey through time and space, memory and experience.

The only slight hesitancy I had in reading Weeds is that I’ve come to enjoy unrhymed poetry more than rhymed. Several of Morris’ poems rhyme and when I first read them I found myself testing out the rhymes rather than reading for what the poem had to offer me in terms of my own experience of life. But as soon as I reread without stressing rhyme, I discerned the message that existed—for me—within the poem.

That is, I believe, a sign of good poetry—that it speaks to the human condition as each of us live out that condition in our own lives. I encourage you to read Weeds and to find yourself within its poems.

As Morris says on the book cover of Weeds, which I believe is her anthem to life, “There comes a time to assess and to weed our lives, in order to find value in the harvest. This book is a culmination of personal lifetime experiences and observations. To each, their own.”

Feeling Guilty for an Adult's Actions

It was on Wednesday, December 19, that I last posted a story from my life for this on-line-memoir blog. That posting was about two Christmas gifts I received in 1946 when I was ten and in fifth grade. The two gifts were a medallion and a rayon slip embellished with lace. I ended that posting with these words, “Always,” that slip “gave me confidence and I needed that in the fifth grade. In January I’ll explain why.”

         Today, I’m writing about events that shattered my sense of security between the opening of school in September 1946 and Thanksgiving. Here’s what happened:

         In grades one through four, I boarded a city bus each morning that delivered me to St. Mary’s in Independence, Missouri. A number of students who attended the Catholic grade school, my brother and I among them, lived out in the country and caught that bus into town.

         However, my father’s drinking left little money for bus fare, so when a neighbor with three children offered to drive my brother and me to school at the beginning of fifth grade, Mom took him up on his offer.

         The first day of school—Tuesday, September 3, 1946—set the pattern for the next three months. The neighbor—let’s call him Mr. Jackson—sat behind the steering wheel in the front seat. I sat next to him. To my right sat his daughter who was in first grade. My younger brother and the neighbor’s two sons sat in the back seat.

A 1941 Plymouth fastback sedan from Wikipedia.

         As he steered the car that first day, Mr. Jackson abruptly shoved his hand under my uniform skirt, roughly pushed aside my panties, and stuck his fingers into my vaginal opening. He moved his fingers around, plunging them deeper and deeper and then withdrawing them and pinching the labia. Over and over he did this throughout the three-mile drive to school. No one had ever touched that part of my body before then and I felt not only surprised but also uncomfortable with what was happening.

         “Please don’t do that Mr. Jackson,” I said.

         “You like this. I know you do.”

         “I don’t. It feels bad.”

         Giving my labia one final pinch, he removed his right hand from under my skirt and slid his right arm behind my back. Then he began to squeeze my right breast. That hurt and I cried out.        

         “Shut up!” he said. And I did. For the next three months, Mr. Jackson did this on the trip to and from school each day.

         During each school day, I’d try to figure out how I could get into the back seat of his car. When he came to pick us up at the end of the school day, I’d say something like, “Mr. Jackson, I need to sit in the back seat so that I can start on my homework.”

         He’d laugh and say, “The back seat belongs to the boys! You’ll sit in front with me.”

         Always I had to accept being wedged between him and his young daughter who stared out the window as we drove home. Even today I do not like to think about what her life must have been like living with her father.

         And so the days passed, with Mr. Jackson thrusting his fingers into my vagina opening or squeezing my breast all the way to and from school.

I never told my mom or dad about this because I thought that I’d done something that made our neighbor do this. I was at fault.

         All this ended on Thursday, November 28, 1946—Thanksgiving Day. In my next posting, I’ll tell you about the final scene and the epilogue of this event in my life.

        

Postscript: Those of you who don’t follow my blog on writing may want to click here to discover the concluding posting I did on my entry into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.