Rotten Apples

Our eighth grade classroom was a no-man’s land where the dumb boys slept in the back of the room. Sister Hell-To-Pay spent her long math-oriented days stalking the back row, nudging, popping, and slapping people awake. When she got tired of patrolling, she would open her perfectly organized drawer, grab a nub of chalk that had been retired and beam one of the offenders. Their heads all had different sounds. Albert Boudreaux’s would ring like a dull bell, Ray Coniff’s thudded like a watermelon, and Arthur Ball’s produced no sound at all, because his hair was long and greasy.

Sometimes, when there was no particular target, but everyone seemed listless and inattentive, she would throw an eraser into the crowd, or ping the chalk off the globe. She stayed angry. We didn’t dare ask her to explain anything. It was just a game of survival. If you got out that day without wounds, you were successful.

At night still, when my bedroom gets really quiet, I can hear the swishing of whatever that was under her black garb. And it is more than frightening. In my mind’s eye I can see her mole with the little hairs growing out of it, and I can feel the fear of the numbers themselves.

It was the time when we worked with reading kits and paper folded into four columns for conjugation purposes. It was the time that I became what people called, “popular.” It was also the time of my greatest despair.

One afternoon, after the million-year-old nun had given me my guitar lesson, I returned to class with my red guitar. Though she had worked with me for an hour on Chipanaecas, I just had to show off four notes that I had recently taught myself. I stood in the front of the room without permission and played the first four notes of And I Love Her. I didn’t get to see the adult reaction, but the students screamed and cheered. I became popular that day. But the glory was short-lived.

As my popularity grew, I found it necessary to return the favor of being invited to the nice homes of the other children whose dads were doctors and lawyers.

My barefoot party was a great success on the concrete slab in the back of the house. Mama even let me rent Chinese lanterns from the rental company around the corner. And the most popular boys, Johnny Waller and Jack Bird were there. I vowed never to hose down that concrete slab again.

But the sad evening that foreshadowed my demise came when I had a slumber party. The house looked okay and the food was all ready. The girls came in one at a time and though it was a little stiff, each had a seat somewhere in our big, uncluttered living room.

Then, Mama came through the door to get something off the shelves. She was wearing her homemade washrag slippers. I didn’t care. My mother could sew well and the rags were brand new. But I will never forget when Lily turned to Suzanne and whispered something ugly that made her look at my sweet Mama’s feet and start laughing. It broke my heart.

I knew I could not compete. I knew the street where I lived was a little close to the wrong streets. But I did get invited to a party at a neighboring church parish. Word had spread about how fun I was and I went. Bad mistake. I never dreamed the girls at our parochial school would be jealous.

We had a séance where we called back dead singers and then I told a joke. When I returned to school on Monday, I was presented with a petition. It was signed by all the girls in the crowd, but two. It stated that because I was “too wild, nasty, and boy crazy,” I was being thrown out of the crowd. I wish I had known then that being thrown out was a good thing, that it was something that happened to all prophets. But I didn’t know that. And my life became a temporary nightmare.