Tag: school

Within Close Range: Bullies

Because our home’s so far away,

I’m the first picked up by the bus each day

and the very first stop after school –

which makes every student on our route

sit forty minutes more each afternoon

and me, an unwelcome sight.

Full of hormones and hate,

those in last few rows of the long, yellow bus

moan and groan

as soon as I climb on,

making me nervously skitter to the nearest seat

where I crouch and hide and wait.

The hardcore insults come later

and louder

cloaked in the anonymity of the rumbling and motion

of our rolling prison.

Deaf to what he hears,

the bus driver just stares ahead

and goes where he’s told.

United by the same neighborhood,

in the opposite direction,

they snarl and nip at the back of my neck –

piercing my thin skin.

It’s us versus them,

in every nasty word.

But the “them” they think I am

is absolutely absurd.

When their rabid, backseat words

have more than their usual bite,

I step from the bus

and race to the woods,

searching for a way to shake the hurt

in the thick, dim patches of unpeopled forest.

I disappear among the ember-colored leaves

which cap the many trees of Shoreacres

before the heavy freeze

steals the color from the land.

And there, I simply am.

Where I step to the sound of my breathing,

the movement of the clouds,

and to the busy hush of forest life about,

reminding me to go about my own;

and to heal my wounds

with the comforts of home.

Within Close Range: The Pressure of Writing

She moves up and down the rows of desks,

filled with tiny, crouched figures

hovering over lined paper and clutching #2 pencils.

Filling the aisle with her middle-age width and Avon perfume,

I feel the warmth of her body and breath as she leans over me

and sighs.

We’ve been here before.

I’m just not getting this pencil-holding thing.

I thought I was doing it right.

The letters on my paper look pretty much like everyone’s.

Pretty much.

But every time she stops at my desk, she firmly cups her hand over mine and squeezes hard

until she forces my tiny, anxious fingers

to curl around the long, yellow pencil with the well-worn pink eraser.

“A firm grasp is the key to proper penmanship, my dear,” she says, trying to sound patient about my substandard pencil etiquette.

Not wanting to disappoint her

again

I clench that pencil as if my very breathing depends upon it,

until my fingers cramp from it,

and the lead of the pencil presses so hard against the paper

that the letters bulge through the opposite side.

When she asks us to turn our papers over and sit quietly until everyone finishes,

I close my eyes and feel each raised letter with my fingertips.

Wondering whether any one else has to press that hard

work that hard

to squeeze out the letters and words, and sentences,

so very anxious to burst forth.

Within Close Range: Speech Class

Walking hand in hand through the woods to Sherwood Elementary – just Mom and me – I stay in the playground, hanging by my knees against the cool, metal monkey bars; looking upside down at the grey, September sky, wondering what I’ve done to make Mrs. Paschua, my first grade teacher, want a meeting.

On our way home, Mom explains that they talked about the way I speak and why I might have troubles with certain sounds. Mrs. P. thought Mom might be the reason – perhaps a foreigner (with that foreign-sounding name). I giggle when Mom tells me how surprised my teacher was to discover that Mom – that we – are as alien as apple pie.

But I love the thought of someone thinking I’m different. It makes me feel special – a little exotic.

Sherwood Elementary thinks I’m special too. Enough to take me out of class each week to send me to speech therapy, where they work the entire year to make me sound just like everyone else.