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THESIS

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LIBRARY

Michigan State
University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

Lessons

presented by

Barbara McCarty Clauer

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Masters English
Jegree in

 

 

AW; [31M

Major professor

Date 12/11/00

 

0-7 639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

 

 

PLACE IN REI'URN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINE return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE

DATE DUE

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11m gamma.“

 

LESSONS
By

Barbara McCarty Clauer

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English

2000

 

ABSTRACT
LESSONS
By

Barbara Mch Clauer

This thesis, consisting of a series of connected creative non- fiction essays, explores the

circular connection between being a student and being a teacher.

Copyright by
BARBARA MCCARTY CLAUER

2000

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THESIS SEEDS ............................................................................................................................ 1
LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 ............................................................................................. 8
BEGINNINGS ............................................................................................................................ 10
SPONTANEOUS BOWEL MOVEMENT ................................................................................ 13
HELPEE .................................... ' ...................................................................... I ............................ 15
SMEARED ........................................................... : ..................................................................... 23
LIGHTS OUT ............................................................. , ................................................................ 25
CONDEMNED ........................................................................................................................... 42
LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY II .......................................................................................... 43
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL ......................................... 45
PRACTICE ................................................................. 51
PRISON ...................................................................................................................................... 53
JOURNEYS ................................................................................................................................ 74
LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY III/CONCLUSION .......................................................... 102

iv

Thesis Seeds

There he was, staring at, or rather past, five of himselves with a detached expression:
Paul Auster’s father. What was behind this fun house photo? What could Paul Auster
have to say about that austere man on the cover of his book The Invention of Solitude?
What could a son have to say about his father, his life, his unique experience that would
keep me awake long enough to finish this book for my graduate writing workshop?
Never mind just awake, I couldn’t sleep until I got from page one to page one-seventy-

two. My new addiction: creative non-fiction.

New? Maybe not. The. naming of what I recognized as what I’d always been writing,
and more recently reading, was new. Creative Non-Fiction. The class gave energy and a
name to that feeling of recognizing what I already knew - the form I am most drawn to as

both writer and audience is creative non-fiction.

For that initial graduate class in creative non-fiction we read:
The Invention of Solitude - Paul Auster
Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir — DJ. Waldie
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison
Welcome to My Country, The Prozac Diary -— Lauren Slater
The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Non-Fiction - Robert
Root, Michael Steinberg, eds. (especially influential was Mary Elizabeth Pope’s:

“Teacher Training” and “Composing Teacher Training”)

 

Several essays:
0 “Biography of a Dress” — Jamaica Kincaid
o “Owls” — Mary Oliver
0 “The Black Widow” — Gordon Grice
0 “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart” — Minnie Bruce Pratt
o “In Bed” - Joan Didion
o “Posing: Autobiography and the Subject of Photography” — Paul Jay
0 “Life Writing and Light Writing; Autobiography and Photography” —

Timothy Adams

I’ve since inhaled such creative non-fiction as:
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Non-Fiction - Judith Kitchen, Mary
Paumier Jones, eds.
The House on Mango Street — Sandra Cisneros
The Eloquent Essay: An Anthology of Classic and Creative Non-Fiction — John
Loughery, ed.
Tales Out of School - Susan Richards Shreve, Porter Shreve, eds.
Fourth Genre journals and other creative non-fiction essays covering a wide

range of styles

On that very first day of the workshop, however, I realized I had experience having
already read in my career, ta-da!, many works that would fall under the expansive reach
of creative non-fiction. For example:

Woman Warrior— Maxine Hong Kingston

An Unquiet Mind — Kay Redfreld Jamison

Letters to a Young Doctor, Mortal Lessons — Notes on the Art of Surgery -

Richard Selzer

A Street in Mara/tech - Elizabeth Wamock F emea

Un dia en la vida - Manlio Argueta

Usos amorosos de la postguerra espafiola — Carmen Martin Gaite

even Let ’s Go — Spain, Portugal, Morocco 1991-1992 could squeeze into the

genre

countless essays disguised as literary criticism

My list of what to read next is currently under construction.

 

In my lifetime I have taken many courses in creative writing - l’ve studied poetry and
fiction and I’ve written poetry and fiction. Almost all of what I have created could be
considered creative non-fiction in that I was drawing from personal experience. This
habit, in my writing, of continuously exploring my own experiences, used to embarrass
me as if I wasn’t strong enough in my poetry or fiction to find my way out of my own

mind. To realize that what I was doing in my own writing had a name, other than

regurgitation, not only elated me but made me want to see how far I could pursue it. To

the thesis!

Of the books we read in that graduate workshop, Auster’s initially took the deepest root.
Paul Auster was writing about his father. Much of my own writing prior to this
workshop, both poetry and fiction, had been dancing around my father as the subject. In
the margins of Auster’s book I redundantly wrote ‘sounds familiar’, ‘yes’ and ‘wow’ next
to passage after passage- It was simultaneously sad, illuminating and amazing. A unique
strength and draw of creative non-fiction is its ability to transmogrify someone else’s

private experience into your own.

I decided to stop dancing around the father-subject and find a way into it through my
class essays using an Auster quote from Solitude as my mantra: “If there is nothing, then,
but silence, is it not presumptuous of me to speak? And yet: if there had been anything
more than silence, would I have felt the need to speak in the first place?” (20). And I
eventually used another Auster quote to justify quietly turning away from my decision to
pursue the subject: “There has been a wound, and I realize now that it is very deep.
Instead of healing me as I thought it would, the act of writing has kept this wound open”

(32). But there’s something to say of what I learned in between these two quotes.

. I learned that I can make or re-make a different sort of truth through writing. I learned
that I am far from ‘beyond’ what I see as my father’s trespasses. I learned that no one is

all good or all bad. I learned that some writing is laborious, joyless. I learned to break at

.m—
Q...

‘tr. -

 

least'one old silence. I learned that the pure guilt produced by breaking the silence did
not bring release or energy but more guilt which begat guilt which begat guilt. . . guilt is
not productive. I learned what writing yourself into quicksand feels like. I learned the
need to remember the sound of both derisive and hearty laughter. I learned how much I
adore the genre creative non-fiction. And I learned that although my first official foray

did not fully bloom I didn’t want to put down the pen of creative non-fiction.

Initially, pre-Auster-wound-quote, I envisioned expanding my project for the workshop
class into my creative thesis for my masters degree. The first iteration of my thesis idea
was a series of connected essays in different creative non-fiction sub-genre styles -
personal, memoir, photograph, mosaic, lyric, etc — regarding my father. The essays
connected in that they were all titled with one of the 10 Commandments and they forged
ahead with the litany of creative ways my father broke each commandment (don’t be
alarmed, it was going to be an imaginative stretch to pull off thou shalt not kill...) A
couple worked, because they opened up to something else, but more didn’t, because they
were performing guilt, propping open the wound. The writing wasn’t wretched — it was
evasive, protective. And I was not enjoying the writing. I may have stopped something
productive. I may have some growing to do as a writer and as a daughter to see worth in
returning to a project I didn’t enjoy. I may have to grow into understanding the
difference between writing that brings joy and writing that is enjoyable. I may now have

the new guilt of giving up to deal with...l may not.

Thesis false starts: 1 Barb: 0 What to do now? I am not a morning person. One
morning, early in the summer, I bolted upright in bed before full sunrise straining for the
echo of a dream-like voice (sounding suspiciously like my own) asking “what brought
me to this thesis-place?” Fumbling for a bedside notebook, I began writing down names
and kinds of teachers - school teachers (good and bad), coaches, piano teachers, friends,
family, pets, myself, situations. I made notes on classmates I could not forget. I made
notes on major influences that moved me to this place — graduate school. I made a long
list of rambling “I remember” phrases. And finally, I drew a circle with the words

teacher and student inside it. I was making my moming-hazy way toward my real thesis.

A modicum of background information: Late in my senior year of college at Alma I
panicked. I was convinced I should go right on to graduate school in English or perhaps
in Creative Writing to pursue my dream of teaching that had blossomed at college. In a
dramatically self-defeating move I sent some of my writing at the last minute to one
MFA program at a highly regarded school. . .and was promptly rejected. One is all I
needed to tell me what I already ‘knew’. So. . .I decided that road was closed, sat in a
corner feeling very sorry for myself and added my name to an Alma-sponsored interview
trip to the Detroit area. As a result of that trip I ended up getting hired at a market
research firm doing qualitative research and writing business reports mostly for Ford
Motor Company - not known for encouraging terribly creative writing. This went on for
a little over four years. While I did learn quite a bit and gained valuable life experience, I
think it takes exactly five years of working in a business office before your brain begins

to leak out your ears. Just under the wire, before irreversible brain seepage commenced, I

 

decided it was time to get back to what I really wanted to do. It was time to go back to

school.

It was time, in other words, to return to being a student to be a teacher. I wrote that
phrase that odd morning burst as well: return to being a student to be a teacher. Its
circularity struck me. Teachers and students. Become a student to become a teacher to

remain a student to remain a teacher to become a student...

The way I now describe my thesis project is this: A series of connected creative non-
fiction essays, vignettes and poems, that explore the relationship, in my life, between the
idea of student and teacher, the different ways of being or understanding the words
student and teacher and the circular nature of the roles of student and teacher both in and
out of the classroom. Some of my father writing will still find its way into the end
product because he has both wittingly and unwittingly been a teaching force in my life,

but it isno longer the quicksand core.

I am excited about my project. I’m excited to see where it goes, how it grows, and I’m
excited to be focused on writing creative non-fiction. I’m hoping, though, that in the
future those inevitable and amazing bursts of thought and energy regarding my thesis will

be polite enough to attack me afier sunrise.

Lite

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Literacy Autobiography I

“Once upon a time. . .Little Red Pony. . .The End...”

“Mom, can we read it again, please?”

“Once upon a time. . .Little Red Pony. ..The End...”

“One more time?”

“Once upon a time. . .Little Red Pony. . .The End...”

“Once more?”

“Once upon a time there was a little girl who actually went to bed when her mother told her

to. . .The End, Goodnight.”

Literacy and power. When I was four,.I hadn’t yet grasped the slippery connection between
the two. . .I just obsessively loved that little red pony. At four, I wasn’t just confused as to

' whether the complicated path to literacy meanders toward or away from power. . .I didn’t
really even understand the subtle difference between wanting to have a little red pony or
wanting to be that pony. Not surprisingly, the first book I ever learned to read on my own
was The Little Red Pony. Being a tiny tuft of a four-year-old person, I can understand how
my Grandpa Lewy thought I had memorized it when I read to him (especially when he told
me I had a good vocabulary and my answer to his compliment was “what’s
‘vocaboolary’?”). He knew I made mom read it to me over and over. . .and over. But she

swears I could really read it. . .Smt and The Pokey Little Puppy too.

 

» Reading and writing play a central role in how I understand myself. As little children, my
older brother and I often sat and listened to dad read to us afier dinner -— Hiawatha, The
Brother ’s Grimm, many tales fiorn Greek Mythology and other stuffy classics. My husband
jokes about parents “grooming” children fi'om birth to be pro athletes (NF L quarterbacks,
tennis stars, etc.) but with hindsight, I believe dad was grooming his children in an academic
version of the same obsessive drive. He wanted us to be academically advanced, to have an
advantage in school and therefore the (supposed) power that goes along with academic
success. . .I only wanted to know what was going to happen to Hiawatha on “the shores of
Gitche-Gu-Mee”. Upon entering formal schooling, I was labeled “advanced” because I
arrived at their doorstep reading, spouting Greek mythology and writing my own stories
about things like an ant named Jake and his life with his “aunt” (I remember thinking that
was terribly clever) Judy who lived in a tulip. All through grade school I was often placed
in a corner (a-lonely) to read, write, and generally do my own work while the rest of the
class, as my teachers told me, “caught up”. Caught up? Are we racing? The litera_cy-power

connection was not sinking in yet.

Beginu

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Beginnings

She’s holding her elbows tight to her side for her first school picture, clenching her fists.
Tense. This is what new situations like school made her look like at first. She’s smiling,
sort of, like the man behind the camera said to. . .he also said some dumb things like “say
Snuffle-luffagus” and laughed by himself, thrilled with his extensive knowledge of

Sesame Street.

She’s 4 ...almost 4 and V2. Very important, that ‘/2, it made her less than two years
younger than her big brother. Except for that first scary day of school, when she walked
with her mom, not-letting go of her hand even inside the classroom, she walked to Adams
Elementary for pre-school every day with her big brother and his friend from down the
street. They were in 1“ grade. Maybe walking with her brother every school day is a

stretch. She had just started pre-school and every other was more like it.

Pre-school was a new concept, not just for her, but for Adams Elementary in general.
Mrs. Woodworth, and her assistant Mrs. Williams, were just beginning the program and
Mr. Jones, Adams’ principal, gave them a room right inside the door farthest fi'om busy
Adams Road. The pre-school room was long, skinny and lined with wooden book
- shelves full of easy reading Golden books like The Pokey Little Puppy and There ’s a
Monster at The End of This Book. In the two back corners stood tall wooden cabinets

hiding finger paints, construction paper and, on the tippy top shelf. . . glue. The floor was

10

 

. partially covered by green carpet thin enough to allude to the hardwood underneath and

both the front and back of the room had old slate blackboards naming the full width.

Adams school itself is a square sturdy looking three-story red brick building, cornerstone

reading est. 193 7. It stands in the middle of a Birmingham, Michigan neighborhood that

 

was, in the early 70’s, an upwardly moving upper middle class neighborhood, called
Forest Hills, laced with anglo sounding streets like Wirnbleton, Abbey or Dorchester. A
neighborhood elementary school. Only a handful of students arrived by bus. The
majority of the pre-school through 7th-graders materialized from the surrounding
neighborhood in small groups, crunching through neatly raked leaf piles, metal
lunchboxes swinging. Hers had Evel Knevel on it with a Snoopy thermos. . .both

treasured hand-me-downs.

Instead of posing stiffly for Mr. Snuffle-luffagus, she’d much rather be back in her pre-
school room playing with the gerbils, Bump and Squeak. She named Bump, because she
thought naming a gerbil Squeak like Mindy did was so duh and at least the other one
should have a good name. Not that she was terribly creative with names. . .her pink
blanket that she was already writing poems to (not about but to) she called. . .Pinky. Or
instead of sitting wide-eyed in front of the umbrella-shaped lights for the man who was
now saying “say Cookie Monster” she would much rather be fmger painting or drawing
something for Mrs. Woodworth or Mrs. Williams, both of whom she adored. Who
wouldn’t love a woman as old as your mother who could happily spend the entire day

with fmgerpaint on the tip of her nose? Early in the school year she drew a picture of her

11

 

family, but neither of the pre-school teachers could tell which stick figure in the family of
four was the mother because she drew everyone in pants. Mrs. Woodworth always wore
long denim skirts and vests and Mrs. Williams usually had on a big flowery skirt with

lots of pockets full of treats for little hands. Apparently a woman in pants, like her
mother, was still generally confusing in the mid-70’s. Even so, her drawing was returned
flamed by smiley face stickers. Thrilling to a 4'/2 year old, even if they weren’t scratch n’

sniff.

With each smiley face sticker on her drawings, each story circle time where she knew the
ending of the book and each exhilarating finger painting session, she grew to love going
to school. The 7-year-old confidently staring out from her second grade school picture

would have rolled her eyes at the baby she had been beginning pre-school at Adams.

12

 

 

A Spontaneous Bowel Movement

Dad pulled the gray, tiny, bent mouse, its stiff pink paws curled in prayer, out from the

trap under our kitchen sink and moved to try and block my view. . .but I saw.

"Why is there poop hanging from hisbutt, Dad?"

He sighed and then in his doctor voice said "Every animal, at the moment of death, has a

spontaneous bowel movement, humans included. It's a normal process of biology."

That sounded terribly undignified to me. "So the last thing we all do when we die is

squirt out one last poop and that's it? That's the best we can do?"

He sighed again. "Yes, that's the best we can do."

“Yuck.” My 5-year-old wheels turned trying to make this horrible new knowledge a
positive thing. I blurted in one long breath: "Fine well maybe everyone is just making
themselves all empty on the inside to get ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit, or
something, when they go to Heaven, you know, sorta cleaning themselves out of
everything from Earth to be ready for those things from Heaven, I dunno what, but things
that shouldn't mix with poop, you know, pure things, good things, things that haven't
been digested and squeezed through our insides...things, maybe, we don't have any ideas

about in real life except that somehow we know that for something we need to be all

13

 

clean-sorta on the inside so that it's just our souls and Heaven's stuff inside and no poop

huh, Dad?"

He didn't sigh, but shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. Wondering why I couldn’t
just be a normal S-year-old and ask him about something like where babies come from.
Then he let out air that I didn't knew he'd inhaled. "No. We die. We empty our bowels.

It's biology."

l4

Helpee

In kindergarten.

I could read Spot and The Little Red Pony.

He just played with his zipper.

His pants always fell down

And he had peanut butter up his nose.

Teacher with the vests and bell bottoms and

Bride of Frankenstein hair

Told him he turned it gray.

He didn't understand. .

I could read Spot and The Little Red Pony

And he just played with his zipper.

He was in his second year of kindergarten when I met him. His name was Sean. Even in
kindergarten he was an angry boy who did not quietly absorb the abuse students hurled at
him. Usually the boys who called him stupid, fatso or stinky could out run him, but if
they stumbled, his large meaty fists left bruising evidence. He would instantly become
frenzied, eyes closed, beating and flailing on his prisoner until he was yanked away by a
teacher. Sean was large, round and breathed loudly through his mouth. His chin was
usually on his chest, eyes on the floor, while he absent-mindedly picked his nose and
squinted. His dull ashen hair stuck up in back, his underwear band was usually visible

and he smelled like a combination of things a supposedly potty-trained kindergartner

should not still smell like.

I could already read and write before I was in kindergarten and was confused that he
could not. My heart twisted at his blank stares in response to the teacher’s questions. He
was struggling to recognize his written name; I was reading at a 2"d grade level. He was

causing a new gray hair on the teacher’s head each day; I was asked to be her helper and

15

lead show and tell. He was constantly fighting with the other kindergartners; I organized
group games at recess. And yet I felt connected to him. Every day, I was isolated in one
corner doing my reading and writing exercises; he was alone in another comer ramming a
Tonka truck into the wall.

Mrs. Orva was a little severe looking. Our kindergarten teacher had dark hair with two
gray streaks at her temples, pale sallow skin and high arching eyebrows that were drawn
in. She wasn’t a mean woman. She was simply a woman who had lost her patience by
eight a.m., yet was trapped in a classroom with 25 five-year-olds until noon and Sean
could not (or would not I’m sure she suspected) understand what she wanted him to do:
“Sean! No! Not there, the toys have to go back in the chest by the door. No! That box
by the door! The door!” as Sean lost patience hirnself and violently threw and kicked
toys in all directions. . .some rolled toward the chest. Close enough, I hoped from my
non-trouble-making comer. It was amazing that this woman, who only possessed one
face, could make it look so cold and angry at Sean, but would turn to me with a warm

smile and kind eyes and gently ask me to help him pick up the toys.

In first grade

I was Teacher's little helper.

He was my helpee.

I knew everything

About Spot and The Little Red Pony.
He couldn't read.

He couldn't write.

I decided he must be left-handed
And made him write that way
Because I did.

I was Teacher's little helper.

He was my helpee.

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I loved her: Miss Page, my first-grade teacher. She gave out bubble-gum scented
stickers when you did well. . .and even when you didn’t. She had long, really long, shiny
straight black, never-pulled-back hair that she parted down the middle. She wore bell-
bottom pants and clogs. When she hugged you, which she did a lot, her hair fell around
you like a hug too. She smiled almost constantly, had big friendly teeth and liked to sing
even when it wasn’t song time. I loved her. I desperately wanted to be her favorite.

Early in the school year, when she asked me to be her helper, I almost cried.

By first grade, I was no longer just watching Sean’s struggles at school. He was my
friend. My mother and his were involved in Adams School’s yearly flower sale and
knew each other well. He .was the last, by several years, of five children. While his
mother may have recognized his need for help in school, she adopted a ‘wait and wait
and wait and see’ attitude. In kindergarten, I often brought Sean-stories home to my
mom, and she suggested, at the beginning of first grade, that I sometimes walk to school
with him. We lived on the same street. On our walking together days, he would be
waiting for me by himself on his front porch, ofien just finishing his snack meant for after
song time, wearing the same tan corduroys he wore every day. His mother didn’t seem to

notice the smell.

We were both fascinated by dirt — crumbly dirt, earthy smelling dirt, dirt with worms in

it, black dirt, but especially dirt in mud form. We would walk in contented silence,

savoring the feeling of cold mud slithering through our fingers and dropping in fat

17

satisfying globs on our shoes and the sidewalk, leaving our own Hansel and Gretel trail.
And we both loved to peel the bark off sticks to get to their smooth pale insides. If I had
played with Barbies, they probably would never have been clothed. Instead, I undressed
sticks. The natural knots bothered Sean. He kept the smoothest, knotless sticks in a
secret stash by the school’s back door. The others, mine included, he broke and tossed

away when we arrived at school.

Our walks became not sometimes, but every day and grew ritualistic — pick up Sean, find
some mud, leave mud trail, peel three sticks each, choose those that would live, throw
away the rest, enter school, go to our respective comers. A shared fondness for mud and
naked sticks constituted a deep friendship in first grade. In the short time it took us to
walk from his house to Adams School, the mud would dry in small clumps on our hands,
faces, hair, shoes and clothes -— treasures to be picked off during the day, a favorite
pastime of Sean’s. In the winter, when pliable mud was scarce, Sean resorted to an
indoor way to get his pick-fix. He introduced me to his meticulous habit of pouring
milky white Ehner’s glue allover both hands, smoothing it out into one thin layer, letting
it dry until it was see-through and then satisfyingly peeling it off slowly like sunbumed
skin. Sean and I both loved to get dirty every day, but the next morning I would be
dressed in clean clothes minus any dirt or glue while he had on the same tan cords and

was happily picking very old mud out fi'om under his nails.

We did not share a love of fuzzy manila paper, the kind with the solid and dotted lines to

guide our letters. I loved its buttery paper smell, I loved its slightly furry texture and I

18

[I‘llaALlA

loved to fill it up with letters and words. Sean only liked to crumple it up in tight balls so
it would go farther when he temper-tantrum threw it across the room. September, and
our first grade class was supposed to be writing our names on that lovely fuzzy manila
paper. This was only a warm-up. Spelling lessons were to begin in earnest soon.
Boring. ..I had already covered every inch of mine — Barb, Barbara, BarbBarbBarb,
Brab, Arabrab, BrabBrabBrab, BarbBarbBarb, BARBARA!!! — and was bouncing

and wiggling impatiently in my chair.

“What now Miss Page? What can I do now?”

“Why don’t you see if Sean needs help.”

Gladly. Most of his recognizable letters were backwards and the pages not crumpled in
balls had many rips and tears fiom violent erasings. I decided he must be using the
wrong hand and that he should probably write the way I did, with my left hand. He
trusted me enough to try. That made all of his letters unrecognizable and backwards. I
sat staring at his shredded paper; he picked mud out of his hair. Finally, I traced out his
name several times. He could follow my traced letters just fine. Teacher’s little helper.

My work there was done.

In grade school

He d’nappeared to someplace

That would teach him

about Spot and The Little Red Pony
And make him wear a belt.

His pants still fell down

And nobody gave him peanut butter.

19

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In 2"‘1 grade I was placed in a 2MB“l split class so I could read and write with the 3rd
graders. Sean was sent to Kensington Academy, a small private school that specialized in
Special Ed., a manila paper prison where writing and reading would be pounded into him
by impatient Orva-like teachers who did not appreciate the particulars of mud. . .at least
that’s what I envisioned from my comer in the 3rd grade room. With some perspective
and a name to apply, I now think Sean was dyslexic. The rage I remember from Sean
was later echoed in a younger cousin of mine, Andy, who was diagnosed with dyslexia in
1985 when he was 8. By then I knew better than to suggest Andy’s difficulties could be
fixed if he would simply write with his left hand. However, Sean at age 8 was not
diagnosed with anything specific and the general term ‘special’ was slathered on to plug

the gaps and give the appearance of something being done.

At age 7, I harbored the self-important romantic belief that Sean didn’t trust anyone but
me. I liked to imagine that I alone knew how to calm him, to cool his rage with smooth
sticks and mud salves and that the teachers at Kensington would never see the contented
glue-peeling Sean I knew. Even though we contrasted in our success as students, Sean
and I were not that different. We were two facets of isolation. To be busy with his
problems and feel sorry for his isolation allowed me to ignore my own isolation. As a 2'1d
grader in a 3rd grade classroom, I missed the distraction of ‘taking care’ of someone else

— a distraction which took care of me.

20

Before I could begin 3rd grade, my beloved Adams was closed and I had to go to a new
school, Harlan. Sean wasn’t there either. At Harlan, I sharply felt the absence of not

having anyone to ‘take care of anymore...

Sean reappeared in middle school with thick glasses and a much larger pair of tan
corduroys. Hestill emanated anger. Kensington had deemed him prepared to return to
public school. . .middle school no less. Prepared. Who, if possessed of the smallest proof
of difference or non-conformity, is prepared for the pressures of cliques, exclusion, and

mental torture that, having been honed in grade school, explode in middle school?

- I remember sharp guilt about not feeling allowed to be his friend again. That sentence
embarrasses me now. When does that exact moment occur? That exact moment when
fitting-in and being accepted by peers you hate is more important than anything else?
More important than empathy, more important than fiiendship, more important than
someone else’s suffering. In middle school, I certainly couldn’t admit that mud and
sticks were still cool and I decided not to remember that our connection had gone beyond
dirt and glue and into our shared isolation. Still reeling fiom my Harlan experience, I
was too busy emptying out my soul in order to fill it with the right Le Sport Sac or pair of
acid washed Guess jeans in an attempt to fit in socially — a feat which befiiending the

ultimate middle school outcast would render impossible.

I watched Sean’s excruciating middle school experience just like I had watched him in

kindergarten. The students came up with more creative variations on stupid, fatso and

2]

litr‘hlaall‘h

stinky and more anonymous ways to torture him. Instead of at least duking it out on the
playground, Sean was left with no outlet for the rage he felt when some faceless
tormentor tripped him in a crowded hall or put gum on his seat or taped kick my fat ass
signs to his cords. And if he did retaliate, it was a random echoing of his flailing fury
from kindergarten that inevitably got only Sean suspended as the lone identifiable culprit
for the hallway disorder. Eventually though he did get his hands on one tormentor and

punished her with all the hurt he’d felt from others.

In middle school

At our lockers

Someone called him Stupid Fatso

And he pushed her through a second story window.
[watched from my locker.

Spot and The Little Red Pony watched from his...

He disappeared again
To another someplace.

22

Smeared

It was a big butt. It was a big butt in beige polyester pants that over the years had spread
out to fill the big wooden chair behind the big wooden desk. It was my third grade
teacher Miss Price's big polyester butt and wedged behind it was the safest place on the

playground of my new school, Harlan.

We were all in the somewhere between eight and nine. Half of us were two months into
a new School. What else could we do but play Smear the Queer? Two teams, Harlan
kids vs. Adams kids, no rules beyond tackle and pummel whoever has the ball or your hat

or whatever...

I thought he was so cute with his curly black hair and big white teeth. Omar. My threat
was the Sahara in summer when he was close. Hooray! when he stole my orange and
yellow knit winter stocking cap with the red fluff on top. I got to Smear the Queer! I got
to tackle him! I couldn't wait to impress him, so I grabbed his unmittened hand and threw
him to the ground as hard as I could. Aha! Smeared! I win, he noticed me. But he was
crying...really crying and all because of an icky girl. He sat up and pulled a big sparkling
piece of clear glass out from between his thumb and pointer finger and his face was

whiter than his pretty round teeth.

Where was that butt? I needed to find that butt to hide behind. I was new at his school

and a girl, and I had made him look stupid. I had made him cry. He had big nine-year-

23

Oil.-

we

96'

Th;

pol

Sm

old friends who already weighed ninety pounds. The kids whose school I had infiltrated

were coming to kill me. Where was that butt?

That butt was standing next to the door and I couldn't wedge my terrified self between the

beige polyester and the rough red brick.

"Go play honey." the distracted butt said.

The whole school was marching under the metal monkey bars coming to kill me. The big
polyester butt gently pushed me away and continued giving some other blue wool butt a
casserole recipe. Neither butt cared that I was definitely going to get

Smeared...permanently.

Ringing bell. Joy. Recess was over and we all went inside to the blackboard room so the
bothered butt could comfortably continue to spread in its big wooden chair. The black
curls hated me and I didn't see the pretty round teeth anymore. Permanent rain in the

Sahara. But the ninety pound giants always picked me first for Smear the Queer.

24

Lights Out

.6 Hello Barbara are you there?
If you are we do not care... P
(To Simon and Garfiinkel’s

the “Sound of Silence ”)

My mother told me, many years after the fact, and most importantly after they had turned
on again, that ‘the light went out of my eyes’ at Harlan Elementary. Harlan is just an
organized conglomeration of bricks, glass, tile and lights. . .people are the only things

with the power to flip the switch on or off.

Journal entry 10.26.90

(part of a list of “things I want to remember”) What it felt like to be in a new school:
Elementary school was hell for me. One of the most painful times in my life. The saying
“kids can be so cruel” is s9 true. I was teased because I had curly hair, got good grades
and was a tomboy. The song they sang “Hello Barbara are you there, if you are we do
not care” is the stuff psychotics are made of. When mom says the “light went out of my
eyes” I think it was about then because I started believing I deserved the awful treatment

I got from them. I wasn’t getting much better at home.

25

The

lllll'

Cllf

m1

The Bus

So Adams School closed. Going into 3rd grade, I didn’t understand about dwindling
numbers of kids or that our neighborhood was considered an old neighborhood. . .not
enough families popping out future Adams schoolers. All I understood was that to get to
my new school I had to sit on a bus. Bus #704, a modern, square, serious, flat-nosed
school bus. The old buses that had pulled up to Adams looked like they had noses and
were smiling between the headlights and the grill, but this new bus had more of a pained
look, like it had hurt to have its nose flattened. That square, flat—nosed bus turned north
on Adams road, which was at the end of my neighborhood street, Abbey, and went about
four miles to Harlan Elementary School. Every morning I wished the bus would just turn

south and go four little blocks to take me back to Adams.

The Schools

Harlan: a cold, smooshed one-story tan brick modem-looking school with claustrophobic
ceilings and exposed glass hallways connecting the pod-like classrooms.

Adams: a maternal, comfortably square, three-story old red brick schoolhouse with high

arching ceilings and speckled marble hallways.
Harlan: on the scary, impersonal 45 mph busy section of Adams north of Birmingham in

Troy, a city without a downtown, many children arriving by flat-nosed school buses,

parents didn’t know each other, had a, gasp, latch-key program. .

26

 

Adams: on the 25 mph neighborhood section of Adams in Birmingham, close to
downtown, most children arriving by walking from the surrounding neighborhood, active

parents, no latch-key.

Harlan: Principal Faust — told my mom he only knew the names of the ‘bad kids’ and
had tall, skinny, tight-faced, sinister, Hitler-mustached Mr. Rop do his dirty work
disciplining.

Adams: Principal Jones — knew everyone’s name and had a secretary, Miss Fox, with big
frosted 705 hair and blue eye shadow who often gave out hugs to the kids sent down to

Mr. Jones’ office.

Harlan: cold, colorless, unkind.

Adams: warm, colorful, home.

The Choices

The choices for the Adams families were Harlan or Pembroke Elementary Schools. My
mother decided to send my brother and me to Harlan because she had vigorously
researched the two and found out that Harlan had a Gifted and Talented program as well
as having a well-known art teacher, plus more kids from Adams happened to be going to
Harlan. She was not thrilled to have to make the choice at all. Pembroke was actually
closer to our house and I’ve sometimes wondered what would have been different if I’d

gone there. Probably not much.

27

The Other Parent

He saw me but he didn’t. He held in his mind a misogynistic image of the correct and
least bothersome kind of daughter — obedient. feminine, interested in cooking and
sewing, not dirt and football, dressed in skirts and saddle shoes, not her brother’s hand-

me—downs. Whenever he happened to look at me, he automatically slid this image over

his eyes like a slide. Click.

One of the first gifts I remember my father going but on his own to buy me was a
sweater. New clothes for my new school. There I stood in my brother’s t-shirt and
ripped jeans, which showed my permanently scabby knees; dandelion smears on my
nose, cheeks and forehead, topped with wild hair, leaf-accessorized from playing tackle
football with the boys. Happy 8th Birthday. This gift was special to me because it was
from dad, not mom with dad’s name addedto the card later. I tore open the pink
(warning!) wrapping paper and forced myself to smile through the sting in my eyes. It
was a sweater. It was a white frou-frou cardigan with pink flower shaped buttons and
appliqued pink, blue and yellow girly-flowers all over it. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry
because I hated it and I was supposed to love it, I was supposed to dream of wearing
frou-fi'ou sweaters while stirring stew on the stove, I was supposed to be happy with my
father’s image for me, I was supposed to squeeze myself, force myself to fit this image, I

was supposed to be grateful he remembered my birthday.

One of the first sprouts of father-guilt was planted soon after when I stuffed that sweater

under a box of waiting hand-me-downs in the comer of my closet and claimed, sadly,

28

tragically, regrettably to have lost it at my new school. I would visit it periodically

tearing off the frou-frou flower petals. . .he loves me, he loves me not.

The Teachers

3" Grade

In third grade Miss Price was my main teacher, Mr. Melton taught art class, Mr. Jacobs
taught gym and Miss Partlow was the music teacher. Except for Mr. Melton, my third
grade teachers - my first impression of Harlan - set my memory of Harlan as a place

filled with an odd mix of apathy and cruelty.

Miss Price: A waste of beige polyester.

Mr. Melton: Art class. One of the rare happy places at Harlan. I loved everything about
art class. I loved the backward father shirts we were for smocks. I loved the chalky feel
of construction paper. I loved paint under my nails. I loved being able to do in a
classroom what I constantly did at home: draw. And I loved Mr. Melton’s crooked
glasses, his wild mustache and beard and his paint speckled denim apron. Somewhere in
my mom’s attic sits my big project from fourth grade: a wood frame, stuffed dummy
wearing a lost and found leftover green hooded sweatshirt, plaid pants and hard bottomed
white baby shoes. In fifth grade, he framed my series of three pencil drawings of a
stuffed opossum - whole possum, detail of the left paw, detail of the face — and hung it in

Harlan’s main hall right on the way to the cafeteria. I had never been that proud.

29

 

Mr. Jacobs: A creepy man with a Popeye chin. I was good at everything in gym except
the torturous rope climb. Trying to climb the huge, rough thick rope hanging from the
gym ceiling, using the periodic knots, was one of the purest forms of torture I could
imagine especially since Mr. Jacobs and the rest of the class gathered around the bottom
of the rope. This was supposedly for safety but I remember agonizing because I was sure

they could all see the childish pink and orange turtles covering my underwear...

Miss Partlow: She had wide open eyes and black hair with grey streaks around her face.
If you chewed gurnin her classroom, she made you stick it on the end of your nose for
the whole class period even if you tried to throw it out right as you stepped in her room
and even if it kept falling on the floor and losing its stickiness through the dirt. She
taught us to sing The Sound of Silence in third grade. Not only did I have nightmares
about something softly creeping to plant seeds in my brain while I slept, but my
classmates learned it so well they began coming up with their own playground lyrics just

for me.

There’s more. Miss Partlow made us put on performances. Agony. I kept wishing she
would just please pick partners but she never did. For the first one no one would be my
partner and while the three most popular girls sang and danced to “Bring Home the
Bacon” I opted to recite a poem. At least I wasn’t the only one doing that. However, the
other kids were smart enough to choose something like Shel Silverstein’s Lazy Jane:
“Lazy lazy lazy lazy lazy lazy Jane, if she wants a drink of water, she waits and waits and

waits and waits and waits for it to rain”. I, on the other hand, was a slow learner

30

regarding coolness and, encouraged by my father-programming and my fervent need to
please him, recited Frost’s The Road Less Traveled. They started snickering after

“diverged”. To the playground!

Summers

The summer between 3rd and 4'h grade I spent playing with my brother, competing on the
country club swim team, getting dirty and being invisible to my father. The summer
between 4th and 5'h grade I spent playing with my brother, competing on the country club

swim team, getting dirty and being invisible to my father.

The Teachers

4'" and 5’" Grades

For fourth and fifth grade we had four main teachers. Mr. Cunningham: science, Ms.
Fahlen: social studies, Mrs. Black: math, and Mrs. Pinnick: English. Mrs. Schraeger
taught the Gifted and Talented class. Mr. Melton still taught art and Mr. Jacobs and his
rope, along with Miss Partlow and her gum fun didn’t disappear over the summer like I
had hoped. The general apathy continued though broken up by some hiccups of good

teaching, attention and kindness.

Mr. Cunningham: My 4'" grade homeroom teacher. He had salt and pepper curly hair,
sweaters with elbow patches and thick glasses which caused him to squint and look
confused. While I do remember one science project concerning potential energy, a

wound up rubber band and magically rolling a coffee can up an incline, much of my time

3]

it

Mr.

“'85

in his class was spent counting ceiling tiles in the hall where I was regularly sent for
talking and talking and talking... By 4'h grade I’d somewhat honed my class clown skills
as they deflected a bit of the inevitable playground torture. At parent-teacher conferences
that year, he told my mother, after she reminded him who I was, that I could be or do
anything I wanted... If I’d put my mind to it. I’m sure he wished to say “if she’d shut up

for a minute.”

Mr. F ahlen: The other 4th grade homeroom teacher. She was younger than my mother,
had very high unnaturally red hair and wore florescent orange-pink lipstick, which
usually ended up on her teeth. She was the first woman I’d ever heard use “Ms.” before
her name. When I repeated her name to dad, he corrected me saying, “You mean Mrs.”.
She ‘taught’ by making people read out loud from our social studies book with the

tractors and aborigines on the front.

Mrs. Black: My 5th grade homeroom teacher. She was old. She had all white hair and
black eyebrows that arched when she was mad. Although not a huge math fan, Mrs.
Black at least made me feel like I could do it and wouldn’t let me get away with “I don’t
get it.” And, even though she knew exactly what I was doing, she sometimes let me stay
inside at recess when I pretended there was some reading for Mrs. Pinnick that I needed

to finish.

Mrs. Pinnick". The other 5'h grade homeroom teacher; good friends with Mrs. Black. She

was also old and had all white hair, but she was my favorite teacher of the four. She

32

wore pink lipstick that never got on her teeth. I’m not sure if I liked her because I loved
the subject of English, or if I ended up loving the subject because I liked her. However,
several things connected with Mrs. Pinnick ended up adding to my playground problems:
I endured my mother organizing a geeky after-school Junior Great Books club with her
and she moved me ahead in reading levels so I was again left alone in a comer with a

bullseye on my forehead.

Mrs. Schraeger: Day after day, though, it was Mrs. Schraeger, the Gifted and Talented
teacher, who made me really happy, for one hour of the day, to be at Harlan. My mother
had chosen wisely if only for this one special classroom and its teacher. Mrs. Schraeger.
She was tall and always smiling. She reminded me that asking Why? and not accepting
Because was good and right. She would never let me look at a problem or project from
just one perspective. G & T class: one consistant hiccup of happiness between 7:45,
when I got on the bus, and 3:45, when I got home. In fourth grade, I was one of about ten
students, identified by our teachers, to participate in Harlan’s Gifted and Talented
program. Luckily the “Bring Home the Bacon” girls happened to be chosen for G&T
too, which made it magically less geeky. We learned about things fiom computer
programming to making sturdy balsa wood structures, from writing plays to making
papier-mache puppets to act in those plays. Plus we got to get out of regular classes to go

to G&T. Sometimes I even got to stay in at recess...

33

Th

The Other Parent

He was there but he wasn’t. He was the scary low sound of the Mercedes pulling into the
driveway late at night after being called to the hospital. He was the tight knot in my
stomach if I didn’t excel in every aspect of school. He was a turned back to me and my
mother and a conspiratorial whisper and arm around my brother. He was the guilt] felt
thinking of that crumpled, petal-less sweater in my closet. He was the insistence that we
take piano lessons with an omery, former concert pianist. He was the impenetrable cloud
of cigar smoke and Wild Turkey in his leather-bound book fortress den he called The
Growlery. He was family dinners where we discussed Greek mythology but never our
lives. He was creating my brother, his son, in his own image, hoarding him, trying to

soak him in his own misogyny. He was baffled by his daughter; possibly repulsed.

He ended up teaching me so much.

The Playground

So much depends on a grade school playground. Metal bars, social order.

In my few years at Adams, I had achieved princess of the playground status. My friends,
Bill, Jason, Tara, Ann, Lindsay and Allison would all wait until I told them what we were
going to play that day — hop scotch, kick ball, smear the queer, hump-a-jump, swings,
tag. Once, I threw a slight temper-tantrum when Bill suggested a more democratic
method of choice, and had to spend recess standing at the fence with my back to

whatever stupid game they chose without me. . . it sounded like tag. Tara came over to sit

34

with me though. Of all my friendsat Adams, only Tara and Lindsey ended up going to
Harlan too which might have been nice except that by the end of 3“l grade Lindsey
moved to Texas and I’d ruined my friendship with Tara. Unfortunately, full of my

experience as Adam’s playground coordinator, I strode onto Harlan’s playground

unprepared.

flOn the goo-oo-d ship Lollipop
Barb was da-an-cing and her pants did drop’

Down to her feet, so everybody saw her seat fl

What I was unprepared for were the rules of Harlan’s playground regarding the social
order. Tease or be teased. At Adams I was busy and bossy but torment was something I
didn’t practice. I don’t think I’d been called a harsh name yet by anyone but my brother
and we usually descended directly into pummeling each other rather than name-calling.
Suddenly the Harlan kids were spitting things like pubic head at me — I didn’t even
understand that one at first — backed by the harmonics of songs they made up. The things
about me that just were — good grades, tomboy, curly hair — were wrong all wrong at

Harlan. '

The Targets
Hair .
What was the fascination with hair? I needed short, straight brown hair. No deviation

accepted. The red headed kids like Tara got it the worst — carrot top, fire head, bozo.

35

Then came me with my unruly curly hair - velcro head, q-tip, brillo head. My disturbing
non-conformity was on a biological level - the most dangerous (speaking of that, I was
also too tall). Poor Rick, he had bright red, curly hair. The playground crew had so
many names to pick from, their heads pepped off. Plus, he walked with a crooked foot
and a limp. . .they could hardly ask for more! - The curly part made Rick and me an
obvious choice to be paired together in a favorite playground song. Wouldn’t our babies

have been cute?

flBarb and Ri-ick sitting in a tree,
k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes

marriage, then comes baby in the ba-by carriage fl

Tomboy

Going into Harlan, my clothes closet looked basically like my brother’s wardrobe of one
or two years earlier. I wore everything but his old underwear. This was by choice. I
idolized my older brother. I loved wearing his old jeans with patches on the patches on
the knees, button-down oxfords, striped boyish short-sleeved shirts and plaid big-collared
button-downs. The boys at Harlan didn’t care. . .they were just happy when I evened up

the numbers playing soccer, football or kickball. The girls, however, cared.

The first day of 3rd grade, my precious Evel Knevel lunchbox (hand-me-down) was

drooled over by the boys but ridiculed by a table of 4th grade girls. After that, I begged

36

mom to put my lunches in brown bags like everyone else and even sometimes stomached

drawing flowers and smiley faces on my lunchbag like some of the other girls. Gag.

I wanted to be just like my brother. I wanted to wear dirty jeans and play tackle football.
However, I was a girl and expected to conform to the narrow, restrictive standardsof girl-
dom set by my peers. The ultimate irony and cosmic revenge was that I, though
absolutely not interested in the trappings of femininity in grade school, was one of the

first girls to really start looking like a girl. The horror!

Grades

I made the mistake of coming into Harlan loving to learn. I quickly tried to correct that
ridiculousness or at least fake the ideal of average. Toward the end of 5th grade is when I
finally thought I’d mastered fake disappointment at my grades in order to give the
impression I’d done poorly. However, the fact that when a teacher called on me I
couldn’t undo my father-programming enough to give wrong answers sort of undid my

act.

Through Harlan and beyond I snuggled between my desire to conform to the average and
my desire to excel. My ingrained fear of failure regularly duked it out with my fear of
not fitting in. By the end of Harlan, fear of not conforming had won some battles —
boxed up my brother’s clothes, tried to feel comfortable in skirts, ironed my hair,

slouched — but fear of failure won the war.

37

One 5]
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One shining moment of coolness
Mr. Rop was Harlan’s disciplinarian. When a student was sent to the Principal’s office, it

was not to see our milk-toast Principal Mr. Faust but to see his henchman, Mr. Rop.

Fourth grade: feeling saucy, two other girls and I jumped the fence on the wooded west
side of the playground to see if a crazy man really did live in a cabin back there like the
fifth-graders said. Iris, the lazy-eye, blue-eyeshadowed, red-haired with white roots
playground monitor caught us. Jumping the fence was a serious offense on the Harlan

playground. Down to Mr. Rop the three of us were sent.

We sat in silence while he stared at us. The two other girls started crying. Suddenly
some brave spirit inhabited my body for a moment and] blurted out: Mr. Rep-we’re-
really-sorry-but-our-kickball-bounced-over-the-fence-and-we-only-went-into-the-woods-
far-enough-to-fmd-it. I was not known as a trouble-maker. . .he considered my breathless
confession. . . .then he told us to ask Iris to get it next time and sent us back to class with
gentle patronizing pats on our heads. Ta da. The two other girls stared at me with
admiration all the way back to class. That lie made me officially cool and teasing exempt

for the rest of the week.

Monday, however, all was back to normal.

38

The Schoolmates

Kelly

Was from Harlan and it wasn’t until the end of 4'h grade that we became friends. We
were the only two girls who played soccer and kickball with the boys, and so bonded
over our undesirable tomboy status. In 5'h grade, we played on the same organized
basketball and softball teams. She forever had my loyalty when she pretended to forget
and didn’t use against me on the playground the fact that I once enthusiastically scored a
basket for the other team wondering why no one was guarding me (hooray for the days
before camcorders). In middle school, as the Derby Dragons, we were also on swim
team, ran track and played basketball, softball and volleyball together. . .our friendship

was sealed in our competitiveness and our social marginality.

Cassie

Attended Harlan for 4"I and 5''1 grades only. She was from New York and moved back
there before middle school -— the result of her divorced parents’ selfish tug-o-war. I’m
sure she goes by Cassandra now with a forced accent on san. Now she was different.
She was from New York City. She didn’t seem to care one bit about getting teased. In
fact, she seemed to enjoy being as different as possible — a tactic I admired but never
grasped. She wore pointy cat-eye glasses, long skirts, lots of black and wrapped gypsy
scarves around her head that clashed with the ones she wrapped around her waist. She
fascinated me. I admired her aloofness. She was also in G&T and we immediately
became friends - especially after we confiscated papier mache materials for Bring Home

the Bacon voo doo dolls.

39

(A

The Lights

Characters:

Barb: trying to join the Teasers.

Tara: red-head, chubby, loyal friend of Barb’s from Adams Elementary

Group: pack of nameless, faceless 3rd graders

Time:

A few months into 3rd grade. Winter.

Setting:

School playground. The backdrop is a small, snow-covered hill. The top of a tan brick
school building is visible beyond the hill. Playground noises in the background. The
stage is covered in knee deep ‘snow ’. Children in moon boots and snowsuits are building
a snowman at the back of the stage. When the curtain rises Barb paces stage lefi while
Tara stumbles in fiom stage right followed by shouts. She is pelted with several

snowballs fiom off-stage. Children ’s laughter.

Barb (to herselflthe audience): Maybe they’ll forget to tease me if I join them teasing
her. (looking at T ara) But she’s my friend. (looking down at her boots) But I’m
tired of it. I’m tired of it. (stufling curls up under winter knit cap) I don’t want to
be teased anymore. Tease or be teased. . .I’d do anything for them to just ignore

me. (looking at Tara) But she’s my friend.

40

Br

GI

Ill

Tara (yelling toward the source of the snowballs while wiping tears): I’m telling!!

Group (children ’s laughter, fiom ofifstage): Go ahead, Lardo!

(the group of laughing children enters playfully shoving and punching each other,
Barb watches them as Tara backs toward her and the group advances)

Group: (to Barb) What are you looking at Pubic...

(Barb interrupts the group by stepping toward Tara, Tara, still walking
backwards away from group bumps into Barb, she turns around startled and
then smiles with relief)

Barb: (takes a visibly deep breath and shoves Tara hard into a snow drifi and says with
only slight vigor) Watch where you’re going Fatso Red. (staring horrified at Tara
crying on the ground at herfeet, soft whisper) Ohh.

Group: Good job Pubic Headll (laughing and shoving Barb as they walk of stage left

humming “0n the Good Ship Lollipop ”).

Curtain

When my mother said, many years later, that ‘the light went out’ of my eyes at Harlan, I

guessed that was the exact moment.

41

Condemned

19 May 83

Dad,

One of the gerbils is dead. I er_2_’t want to see which one. I only got a glimse, but
what I did see is that it was all mangled. The other one is picking at it. (Mom said it’s
because it wants to keep a clean nest) I won ’t go Close enough to see if their water is
empty. And 1 fed them yesterday. We don ’t think they canablized because they ’ve lived
together this long.

I think it was Muflin because she wasn ’t looking to great. And was always in bed.
Maybe they got sick of each other, or they were old. I 've had them for four years. In a
book I read it said they could live in captivity for 2 years, 3 at the most. I ’ve had them 4

years.

I ’m
satisfied
with

them

Love,

Barb

42

Literacy Autobiography II

Throughout grade school and middle school [became acutely aware that not everyone
viewed reading, writing and learning the way my family did. My peers were not of the
same mindset that those things were natural, important and not influenced by standards of
coolness. In 6'h grade, during a section in English class on Greek Mythology, I was the
only person who knew all the myths referred to and answers to questions asked.
Remember how the know-it-all was treated in middle school? I quickly learned about
blank stares, “I don’t know” and the importance of fitting in for social survival. Go
ahead, ask me a question about Greek Mythology. . .I promise that I-don’t-know-never-
heard-of-it-I’m-too-cool-to-care. However, at home, where I wasn’t judged to be uncool,
I would stay up all night like a guilty addict reading, by flashlight, Madeline L’Engle’s
Wrinkle in Time or C. S. Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe series (I just had
to look up how to make ‘series’ plural. . .disregard my claim to literacy!). I was
beginning to realize literacy was not innocent. I was beginning to realize, in fact, that
literacy and the attendant love of learning that often accompanies it somehow led to
social powerlessness. This seemed counterintuitive to me. However, middle school
being what it was. . .I quickly dropped out of the gifted and talented program I’d been
involved with since 4th grade and learned to inhale cigarette smoke and throw tennis ball
bombs off parking structures. Cool! I was still reading obsessively at home but soon

plummeted into the V.C Andrews Flowers in the Attic series...

43

Toward the end of high school, with a modicum of social autonomy returning and with
the influence of several amazing teachers (Ms. Aviv and Miss Angott, Creative Writing
and Advanced Placement English, respectively. Kind and encouraging, insightful and
demanding. . .respectively) I felt less shame publicly pursuing my love of reading and
writing. Digression: the word “shame” is staring at me. How ridiculous was it that I felt
ashamed of my literacyl? I have distinct memories all through my education of having
literacy somehow connected with a sense of shame rather than pride. When I was in
kindergarten, I remember bursting into tears (in my isolated corner) because I had gotten
some red marks on a reading exercise. When a classmate asked me what was wrong I
lied and said I was sad because my grandpa just died. . .I was more averse to being
academically imperfect than to lying. Later, I was more chagrined to be academically
advanced. I often quickly stuffed A-papers in folders to give the impression I was
unhappy with a poor (cool) grade. I couldn’t bring myself to actually try to do poorly in
school considering my father-programming from early childhood. However, my greatest
coup was when, as a junior in high school, I actually earned a B- in Calculus! To do
poorly in school and to not excel at any form of literacy oddly equaled social power.

Literacy and power. What an odd dance they have choreographed in my life.

Thou shalt not steal

I know what you’re thinking. . .I was thinking the same thing. Cute dog picture. Gag.
What serious person writes about dogs? And especially dogs rolling on their backs in
cute poses? I tried not to write about this picture but Ingo wouldn’t let me.

Teachers. There are good models and bad. . .can a dog, through refocusing the lens, fit in

the first category?

Inge was the most genuinely German name my mom, brother and I all liked — he was a
German Shepherd/Doberman Pinscher mix after all. We just couldn’t name a 4-lb. 8-
week-old pitiful bony thing Adolf or even Fritz. We got the name fiom Tanja, the
daughter of family friends from Germany, who had stayed with us the summer I was
twelve. She spent much of her time moping around the house whining about how much
she loved her wonderful boyfriend across the ocean: “Ich liebe Ingo {go—00.” And we all
liebened Ingo soooo right away ourselves. He was my first dog and I miss him. Oddly,
his influence in my life seems to ferment and grow more potent with time — a

phenomenon I keep stirring with my pen in order to understand.

Why am I compelled to write this story? I feel compelled to write this because I write.

Writing keeps wounds open, open wounds must be examined with a pen.

45

August 2000 was the 5'h anniversary of Ingo’s death and the 14'h anniversary of his

emotionally layered homecoming. I was 14 when we got him. He replaced my dad.

The summer before my freshman year in high school I was volunteering at the Humane
Society and my parents were divorcing. Ingo and his sister had been abandoned on the
corner of a chaotic intersection in a damp cardboard box with a handful of Cheezits for
sustenance. I was lining puppy and kitten cages with newspaper the day the two
malnourished 7-week-old dull-furred runt puppies were brought in. When I held him,
Ingo-to-be’s spine poked up between my fingers while he licked my face. He came home
the next day, which was about one week after my dad had dropped the divorce bomb

during dessert.

My dad left a vacancy in the house mid-August 1986, and I was encouraging Ingo to
scratch up dad’s precious leather chair before the first day of high school. I took this
picture of Ingo belly up on the former leather throne very purposefully - I inhaled his
puppy obliviousness which erased the stale, lingering smell of dad’s stogies and leather
bound books. This picture still has power over me. So sweet. So sad. Those two hot
weeks in August, right before high school began, melted and ran together just like the
popsicles my brother and I hypnotically placed on the dinner table when dad made the

deafening announcement he was “making a mid-flight correction”.

46

lfid-
WOII

nn'r

lngo
aehh
PUP!
even
(flag
loflh

day.

()ne
Pm;
and
tool
couj
lny
mid
han

SW3

Mid-flight correction: my father’s euphemism for ‘leaving all of you for another
woman’. The un-flinching loyalty dogs exhibit is probably what gained Ingo a home in

my mother’s house that August.

Ingo was my dog — he found me at the perfect time. Throughout my parents drawn out,
acidic, cancerous divorce, I distracted myself by concentrating on training and loving my
puppy. Sometimes I get the sad feeling that perhaps years of sharing my broken heart
eventually broke his. He was only nine when he died. A few different veterinarians had
diagnosed [ago with a heart murmur as a puppy but they had all downplayed it. Perhaps
lolling in the chair for my camera was payback for a poking and prodding at the vet that

day.

One afternoon, in the first month of age nine, Ingo slipped into tachycardia - heart
pumping at humming-bird rate without feeding his body much blood or oxygen. Mom
and I had decided we wanted to try an extensive, expensive drug therapy program and
took him home from the vet’s to rest and begin it the next day. He was so weak that he
couldn’t make it up the stairs and under the covers to the foot of my bed to sleep-drool on
my toes. I decided to curl up on the floor of the den with my friend for the night. At
midnight, he very slowly and deliberately crawled onto my lap, put his nose under my
hand and, after a quiet moment, had a massive back-arching, eye-rolling, tongue-

swallowing, heart attack, and then went limp. . .his taileven un-curled.

47

That dog is still so wrapped up in my family sadness. To think of that night still makes
my chest hurt. I can’t imagine when it won’t. To write about it and still feel so much
emotion both embarrasses me and piques my curiosity. . . When will sweet memories of

Ingo not bring bitter memories of my parent’s divorce? Can I write through them? Can I

force the wound closed with this thread of ink?

Fall of 1999, I assigned my first classroom full of students the poetry topic of “What I’ve
Ieamed from...” and asked them to go below the surface, and beyond the obvious.
Thinking I should probably, in all fairness, be writing, or at least wrapping my brain
around, what they were writing, I started trying to think profound droughts about people,
situations and other non-obvious things from whom/which I have learned deep lessons. I
just lied. It wasn’t to be fair that I did the exercises I assigned with my students, it was to
get myself writing again, because at first, the thought of teaching scared the pen right out
of my hand. During this writing exercise, Ingo in general, and this picture, specifically,
kept popping into my head and I kept trying to lay him to rest again and again. I give. It
seems terribly simplistic to me now that my life is immersed in daily deep thoughts
academese style to try and articulate ‘what I Ieamed from my first dog’ but he just keeps

insistently laying his head on my lap-top. ..

What I Ieamed from two early teachers...
From my father I Ieamed that his love was conditional. From Ingo I Ieamed that some
kinds of love are constant and simple. From my father I Ieamed not to discuss

problems. . . just leave. From Ingo I Ieamed about loyalty. From my father I Ieamed that

48

it’s more important what people see, than what is. From Ingo I learned that what is is all
there is. From my father I learned that things should be revered and are more valuable
than people. From Ingo I Ieamed that a leather chair is just furniture but only a person
can ahh-scratch that spot he couldn’t reach. From my father I Ieamed that so many

different things can be stolen.

When my father, several months into the stale-mate of my parent’s ‘negotiations’, snuck
into the house and made my brother and me help him steal that leather chair, his leather
books, artwork from Europe and many other things from my parents’ 21 years together,
that my mother punitively would not give him, I took comfort in the thought that dad
would no doubt seethe wondering who had defaced his throne. Later, feeling barbed guilt
for my forced part in the heist, I gratefully took Ingo for a walk while my stiff-jawed
mother calmly and eerily took pictures of the resultant ‘crime scene’ for her lawyer -—

empty spaces in rooms and on the walls, empty spaces everywhere.

Somehow my little oblivious puppy, wriggled into that symbolic chair, wove himself into
my family story and absorbed some of the cancerous anger that dwelled there. . .enough to

eventually burst a heart.

Teachers. Good models, bad models and both can teach. One can be hidden in a dog suit
and the other in a father suit. One can be hidden behind fmgerpaint and the other in
stretched out polyester. One can be hidden in the word ‘student’ and the other obscured

by ‘teacher’.

49

What I have learnedfi'om my students...

From my first classroom of students: I learned it’s unpleasant to be surprised by a double
eyelash attack in each eye when sharing dog stories — I don’t think they believed I was
losing eyelashes that quickly. I learned that sharing my own work planted seeds of trust.
I Ieamed I don’t have to be perfect Day One. I Ieamed to use humor to ease myself next
to the word ‘teacher’. I Ieamed to move past performance and into teaching. I learned to
see unexpected teachers where students should be sitting. I Ieamed I made the right

decision to return to being a student to be a teacher...

I know what you’re thinking. . .I can’t help thinking the same thing. Cute teaching
stories. Gag. What serious person writes about dogs and students as teachers? I tried
not to make that connection but Ingo, and the fact that I see teachers everywhere,

wouldn’t let me.

50

Pr

Practice

Early morning, singing the words and the note names full lung while banging on the
keyboard two fingers to one key, fl PAPA HAYDEN’S DEAD AND GONE, BUT HIS
MEMORY LINGERS ON )5 CCEEGGE, FFDDBBG. “Papa Hayden”, the first song I
could play by heart. I was five when dad decided it was time to begin another phase of
child grooming — piano lessons. The first man my brother and I took lessons from had
been sent by the piano store. The chair creaked under his weight and he seeped over the
edges. Every week in the six months he served as our teacher, he inevitably fell asleep
during at least one of our lessons, snoring louder than our playing. Mrs. Martin was next.
Dad researched her through acquaintances and then observed a lesson she gave. He was
duly impressed. She had played with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and studied under
the famous Russian pianist, Misha Kotler. She scared me. I was her youngest student.
She only made an exception because Dad, who wanted my brother and me to take lessons
together, assured her] had discipline beyond my years. She had half glasses chained to
her, which she often placed on the end of her nose, looking down at me over them, with
one eyebrow raised. This usually happened after I mumbled how long I’d practiced that
week. She kept clippers in her purse; if my nails clicked on the keys during the lesson
she would whip them out and give me a clipping — verbal and nail. “Barbara, stop.” clip
clip “And how many hours did we practice this week?” clip clip. . .silence, my eyes
widening, trying not to cry. . .“Give me your practice record. Now play what you were to
have memorized while I look at it.” My mom decided it would be helpful for her

children if she also suffered through weekly lessons. After almost two years Mrs. Martin

5]

finally asked mom “And just why is it you’re doing this?” Mom: “To help keep the kids
interested.” Mrs. Martin: “They’ll do just fine without you.” That was mom’s last
lesson. My brother and I took lessons from Mrs. Martin every Friday evening for ten
years. She retired and moved away around the same time dad left us and that was it for
piano - Mrs Martin and dad were a unified front and quitting piano was not an option
before their absences. In college, believing] missed the discipline piano brought to my
life, I signed up for non-juried lessons, realized I’d lost my way on the keyboard, spent
every free moment in the sound room practicing feverishly, imagined dad and Mrs.
Martin’s severe, spectacle disappointment, then, seething with guilt, quit piano again. ..it

was the only class I ever failed in all my years as a student.

52

Prison

“When you start shootin’, you hardly ever hit who you want.” - Chris, Mid-Michigan

Correctional Facility inmate and participant in poetry workshop.

Characters:

Young Barb:

l9, Ahna student, bursting with, among other things, naiveté

Older Barb: A thin shell around Young Barb, a little bit older, a little bit more

Matt:

Chris:

Smoke:

Tyrone:

Dale:

Dennis:

Jefii

Time:

perspective
22, Young Barb’s boyfriend and poetry workshop partner

Early-205, white inmate, participant in poetry workshop

- Mid-208, black inmate, participant in poetry workshop

Late-205, black inmate, participant in poetry workshop
Late-30$, black inmate, participant in poetry workshop
Early-403, black inmate, participant in poetry workshop

Mid-40$, white inmate, participant in poetry workshop

The collision between April/May 1992 and the present

Settings:

Alma College: a small, private, liberal arts college consisting of around 1200 students

mainly fi'om upper middle class Michigan families. It is located in the middle of the

53

mitten in the predominantly farming town of Alma, Michigan. At the time of the prison
workshop, the college was both beginning to emphasize service-learning and struggling

to promote diversity. Students nicknamed Alma “the bubble

Mid-Michigan Correctional Facility: a mid-sized minimum-security prison consisting
mainly of inmates serving out the ends of longer terms. It is situated in between
cornfields in St. Louis, Michigan north of Alma and east of the leaden Pine River. The
prison itself is encircled with several menacing layers of glinting razor-wire fencing. The

inmates called it a ‘kiddie camp’.

Older Barb (0B):

My first teaching experience was in a prison. And like my recent teaching experiences it
had the added layer that I was a student at the same time. In April/May of 1992 Ahna
College students from an advanced creative writing class I was in participated in a poetry
workshop at the all male Mid-Michigan Correctional Facility. The professor of our class,
Dr. Palmer, through his kind, open, creative teaching style, is the model] keep in mind
when I teach. It clicks that my first teaching experience happened through him. He
chose poetry as the focus of our workshop having in mind other workshops some well-
known poets had put on in prisons. We were the first class of undergraduates he tried this
with. Although the experience would have been interesting at any college, Dr. Palmer
especially understood the value of getting students outside the bubble that was Ahna.
What better way to pop the bubble than with the razor-wire drama of a prison setting,

kiddie camp or not?

54

Before the workshop sessions began, we were visited in our Alma classroom by a
representative from the prison sent to deliver a strict set of rules regarding interaction
with the inmates: Do not give any inmates your full name. Do not give any inmates your
phone number or address. Do not discuss their convictions or sentences. Women: Do
not wear shorts or short skirts or any tight or revealing tops. Do not fratemize with

inmates on a personal level. Do not forget these men are convicted felons.

The number of Alma students from our Creative Writing class willing to submit to the
prison’s background check and participate in the workshop was ten and I, as a
sophomore, was among them. That meant five tables of two Ahna students for the
twenty-five inmates who had volunteered for the workshop. We squeezed jig-saw
puzzle-like into the trailer, plunked down in the middle of the exercise grounds, that
served as the one classroom facility for the entire prison. Dr. Palmer drove us to the
prison in his enormous blue van Tuesdays and Thursdays for 2-hour sessions five weeks
in a row in April/May of 1992. The van ride was usually full of chatter between the
students picking each other’s brains for workshop ideas to add to the ones we discussed
in our class on non-workshop days: What poems are you going over today? Did you
bring any of your own? Do you have any new writing exercise ideas? The ride back was

often quiet.

Upon arrival, the Alma students were frisked and sent through metal detectors prior to

entering the prison to teach. The women usually had an audience of the male students

55

from our class watching us get fn'sked. There were plenty of male security guards to

frisk the male Alma College students but only one female guard to frisk the women.

We chose our workshop partners. Mine was an easy choice, Matt, who also happened to
be my boyfriend at the time. We both played college sports — football, volleyball — and I
was giddy with the word-parallel of student-athletes teaching student-inmates. We had
five inmates in our group -— Chris, Dale, Dennis, Tyrone and Jeff. None of them ever
missed a workshop session. I used to cling to the ’idea that we were the only bright spot

in their day never once considering that attendance wasn’t optional.

Young Barb (YB):

Journal assignment for class: Tuesday 5.12.92

Is it flattering? M. By the end of the day, Tuesday, which started with the prison
workshop, I felt like bits and pieces of a person. The first half jigsawed my outsides and

the second half scrambled my insides.

I would not say everything that went on at the prison was unexpected or traumatic, it's
just that I was not prepared for such a barrage of attention...unsolicited. It started with a
very sweet poem addressed to me from Jeff that he called ‘Beauty and the Beast’. These
men are lonely. Fine. I took it as a kind gesture because it was not lewd or suggestive but

made me know I had somehow left something of myself on someone's mind. Anything

to generate poetry.

56

Jefl:
Beauty and the Beast

As I gaze beyond the silence of the moonlight
I’m thinking of a beautiful woman tonight,

it’s your beauty I’m truly thinking of, my
gracious and beautiful cooing dove.

I can picture the breeze teasing your soft gold hair
and the warm sun tanning the flesh that’s bare,
also I see the softness of your gray blue eyes,
they look so gentle and they don’t tell lies.

I’m not judging you like the cover of a book,
it was just your beauty that made me look,
and I believe that beauty runs deep inside,
just as sure as the rising of the high tide.
Barbara don’t be embarrassed by this poem
I’m just trying to make you feel at home,
‘cause in four weeks our class will cease,

the final parting of “Beauty and theBeast. ©

Au revoir mon frer,
Jefi‘ery A. S------

OB:

When I re-read that poem, it still brings a rush of self-consciousness and then I have to

laugh. For public consumption — Jeff, Matt, my journal for class — I forced a reaction of

patient acceptance. Anything to generate poetry. Gag. One of my first earnest forays

into martyrdom. Despite my outward indignation I copied his poem word for word, with

the goofy smiley face and all, into my own journal and then admitted, though only in my

journal, how pleased I was. I was so young and so pliable and so flattered. Would I be so

flattered now? I fear I would be. Jeff had surreptitiously slipped me the poem right

before we began our third workshop session and watched closely as I read it. One more

57

teeth-grinding layer to all this is that while I was struggling in my first experience
teaching to feel like a teacher the inmates were insistent that I should mostly remember I

was a woman...and that somehow thrilled me too.

YB:
Personal journal entry Tuesday, 5.12.92:
When I first read [Jeff’s poem] I was really uncomfortable and just smiled politely and

put it away, but reading it again and writing it now, it makes me happy.

0B:

Is one body capable of simultaneously feeling: empathetic, hypocritical, flattered,
indignant, teacherly, taught, na'r've, cynical, manipulated, manipulative, lustful, self-
conscious, observed, observant, earnest, embarrassed? I feel all these things when those

weeks in April and May of ‘92 collide with the present.

I turned 20 during the course of the workshop. A young 20. A young, sheltered 20 from
an all-white affluent neighborhood, who was only becoming slightly less sheltered away
at college. I neatly, naively, blindly, blithely compartmentalized the whole experience. I
still do. So what that we walked past razor-wire, metal detectors and a gauntlet of leering
inmates as we made our way to the trailer. We were teaching poetry. So what that our
group of inmates intimated they were in this kiddie camp for things like murder and
assault. I decided they must be overgrown, angry, misunderstood Seans and together we

would write beautiful mud-salve poetry. So what that several of them visibly looked me

58

up and down fi'ont and back to begin each session, wrote me inappropriate notes and
included references to my body in their poems. They were writing poetry and I was
teaching them. So what that, as the workshop went on, I chose baggier and baggier
clothes to wear or that I self-consciously held my workshop folder over my chest, like a
newly budding middle-schooler, when walking from the trailer to the prison exit or that I
read sexism into every word coming out of my boyfriend’s mouth. He was male and sat
at our table in the trailer. . .therefore I sometimes cast him as just like ‘them’. He said:
“Forget about it.” I heard: “Calm down you hyper-sensitive, chick.” He said: “Humor
them.” I heard: “Prostitute yourself.” He said: “Let me hold you.” I heard: “Let me hold
you down.” The prisoners weren’t affecting me. My life would not intersect theirs in
any significant, lasting way. I was just there to teach them life-altering poetry. I just

didn’t realize whose life would be so altered.

YB:

Journal assignment for class: Tuesday, 5.12.92 (continued)

Just to explain why I felt so cut up though by the end of the day...I left the prison feeling
very conscious of being a female. Lou, in the van, after I told him about our session,
jokingly suggested that I shave my head so no one would bug me. Grr. It was an
innocent comment and most of the things said to me through the course of this
particularly strange in that way day were innocent but I just found myself getting more
and more flustered and then angry. For some reason, after getting back to campus, it
seemed like every single male I came across, either playing sofiball or walking out of the

dorm had some comment, gesture, connotation something or maybe I was just hyper-

59

sensitive. Anyway, by the end of the day I felt like so many pieces put together walking
on legs. Tits and ass as that one Chorus Line song goes. It was not me walking around
but parts someone could enjoy. As one of the guys said at the prison about me or at least
the compiled me sitting at the table, "yeah I could handle some of that." So at that
moment I was That. And so on. I learned more Tuesday than I think I would have liked
given a choice but what a valuable, aggravating, teeth-grinding, hate every male, bite off

my innocent boyfriend's head, door-kicking day.

0B:

Poor me. Those nasty prisoners were looking at my body. I didn’t like that at all. . .not
one bit. . .no siree. ..I was appalled. Appalled into practically bursting with covert pride in
this new power I’d just discovered. Sex. My personal journal entries from this time are
all jumbled together, bouncing fi'enetically between the collision with my own sexuality
both at the prison and in my relationship with Matt and the great, often, new-to-me, sex
we were having. I romanticized the prisoners and I romanticized Matt. I imagined that
Matt would have willingly ‘defended my honor’ but was bound by our agreement that the
prisoner’s not know we were a couple- The sexual tension at the prison pulled me taut,
and he, as my heroic, quiet, strong boyfriend was there to absorb my potential energy.
The enduring picture I have of us as a couple is this: We’re posing, dressed for a formal
dance. Matt, quiet and strong in his tight-end football playing size and strength dwarfs
me; arm around my shoulder protectively. I lean into him, looking athletic but slightly
awkward in heels and a black, strapless, serve-up-the—cleavage sheath. We skip the dance

entirely.

60

With perspective, I’m beginning to understand the connections between the very new and
physical nature of my relationship with Matt and my reactions to the attention of the
inmates more completely. It was like a chemistry experiment gone bad: in a small
beaker mix five lonely inmates, a raging hormone boyfriend, one l9-year-old girl just
beginning to exercise her sexuality, add in a dash of poetry, teacher-idealism and

naiveté. . .now shake. I must have been walking around in my tits and ass indignation like
a taught, twanged tuning fork with my frequency set on titillate. And both Matt and the
inmates tuned in. Gracious-me-how-dare-you-look-at-my-body~don’t-stop-why-didn’t-I-

discover-this-earlier-you-pigs!

YB:

Personal journal entry: Tuesday, 5.12.92 (continued)

Wow. I learned a lot today. The rest of the visit afier Jeff‘s poem to me was a little
unnerving b/c for some reason we saw other sides of these guys. We read a good number
of poems with them and somehow these poems connected with these men because
different people came out of their mouths than the week before. Dennis, after we read
Clifton's “White Lady”, talked of his brother's son getting shot in the head over a bad
heroin deal. And Chris, afier Watt's “Mother” and Dennis' story said something to the
effect of having at least 15 more years to serve paused, and then added, "yeah when ya
start shootin’ ya hardly ever hit who ya want”. And Dale was talking about prejudice
afier Jeff read one of his own poems about Rodney King saying that in the prison

cafeteria when whites and blacks automatically tend to split up and sit on opposite sides

61

he goes, "where there's the least hostility" and Dennis (who is a very big man) said he just
goes where the line is shorter. Also Dennis, who has been transferred from lots of
different places talked about seeing a guy in Jackson killed with some wood spike thing
jabbed right in his jugular and how your life can be worth a pack of cigarettes in prison.
Tyrone said he never wants to remember his past and the way he deals with it all is to just
forget it. Wow. And how many pages in my journal have I spent bitching and whining
about my dad and the divorce? They call the Mid-Michigan Correctional Facility a
"kiddie camp." Chris also wrote about feeling like property because everything they
touch, just about, has Property of Mid-Mich Correctional blah blah blah stamped onto it.

Wow.

Chris:

Caged

If I was a bird

I would fly away.

I would fly out of this cage
that they have me in

to feel so free
no longer like someone’s

property

0B:

At the prison, Chris and I both felt like a piece. . .of property and ass respectively. His
poem forged a connection. Damn, that wasn’t supposed to happen! Despite my attempts
to compartrnentalize, the workshop has endured in my memory as an amazingly fruitful

experience. Not only did it generate pages of my own journals, poems and fiction, it also

62

planted seeds that turned into tiny fruits of confidence, seeds that turned into a more
complete picture of myself and my background, and the most virulent of all, seeds that
turned into a desire to teach. After I closed my agape mouth and absorbed their stories,
by association at least, my thick, shiny shellac of na'r‘veté began to melt the tiniest bit.
Although some of the inmates were earnestly trying to get laid on paper, some produced

strong poetry in our time together and that was amazing to witness.

We read poetry with them, we wrote poetry with them, we practiced brain-storming
techniques and devised writing exercices, they shared their work with us, we shared our
work with them. The first time Matt and I brought in poetry of our own, I believed that I
was simply bringing in what was my most polished poem at that time. I must not have

been able to hear my more deeply layered thoughts over the whine of the tuning fork.

clean White teeth

you with your clean White teeth and
you with your shiny straight soft hair.
you with your smooth, pale, thin
White skin.

you loved to turn my rough
Black hands over

and hold them next to yours
so White

to show how our skin was
Almost

the same color

on the soft pink side.

and you loved those soft pink palms
on your pale White face

behind closed doors,

closed eyes.

63

you loved my White smile

framed by pink lips.

and you loved my pink palms and soles.
but you could not love my

Black face and Blackest elbows

and you could not be brave

enough to see past

what was alike.

you loved my White teeth

because they were White

like yours.

but you would not see

that next to your White skin

your own clean teeth

turn a frightened yellow.

~Barb

YB:

Personal journal entry: Tuesday, 5.12.92 (continued)

Wow. I. read my poem “clean White tee ” and each guy had a copy and when I finished
Chris asked what it was about and Jeff answered “interracial relationships” and I said yes
and then Chris asked where I got it “if I didn’t mind” and I said partly from my own
experience and partly from imagination. And as those words left my mouth I could just
see Tyrone and Dennis (both black) look at me totally different. Tyrone kept saying,
"this is all-right, yeah this is all-right. You 're all-right" and asked me to s_igg it! To
Tyrone from Barb. And then Chris asked me to “autograph it” too sol did the same way
but then he goes “N 0, you have to put your last name on it for when you get famous”.
Totally unprepared. Stutter. And he slid it across the table back to me and I knew I

shouldn’t have but I felt so flustered and I did put my last name on it and then instantly

got really nervous. Matt was mad and thought I should tell Dr. Palmer, but I’m not going

to. It was an interesting experience because I want to trust these men. I just do. But I
felt nervous about it all. . .and kind of manipulated. The ‘rules’ the guards had given us
‘for your own safety’ were ringing in my head. Not bad just forced learning.

Appreciated learning though.

0B:

0k. Now what on earth was I thinking sharing “clean White teeth”!? I didn’t, at least I
hope I didn’t have in the back of my mind as 1 went to make copies of that poem. . . ‘I just
want them to like me, to accept me, to see me as not just a rich white kid from the
college’. But what was I really thinking? I remember that experience every time I
choose to share work with a class I’m teaching. In a Creative Non-fiction class I taught I
shared a piece I’d written about my parents’ divorce. As I handed it out my stomach
churned wondering how the students would react to my essay. Would they be
embarrassed? Would they turn away from my vulnerability? Or would they feel
connected? In a poetry course I taught, my first college teaching experience, I actually
shared both Clean White Teeth and parts of the prison workshop story behind it. A
wonderful excavation. Not only did it help me air out my conflicting memories but the
story also impressed the students with the simple fact that I’d taught poetry to prisoners
when I was about their age. They thought I was cool and I realized that almost every
action in the classroom is fueled by ulterior motives. I do believe sharing work also has
the more innocent effect of building trust, and the courses I’ve taught and shared work in
have confirmed my belief. However, I have to dissect my motivations each time I share

my own work with students. In the case of the prison workshop, I did not yet have any

65

motivation—dissecting tools. I had neither perspective nor any prior teaching experience.
I sallied forth anyway. Clean White Teeth was a poem I’d written for an earlier creative
writing class. Ibelieved it just happened to be my most polished piece at that time. I
believed I had no ulterior motives. None whatsoever. Matt shared a poem on
alcoholism. I thought it was a wonderful choice. I wonder now if we looked pathetically

transparent to the inmates in our group.

YB:

Personal journal entry: Tuesday, 5.12.92 (continued)

After the clean White teeth incident, I was talking to Jeff about one of his poems and
Dennis and Matt started talking and when I looked his way, Dennis looked all guilty and
they were kinda laughing but wouldn’t tell me why; Matt told me later that Dennis was
asking him if he had a girlfriend and Matt said no (we agreed it would be better if they
didn’t know we were dating). Then Dennis talked about being lonely and asked Matt
which one of us Matt would date “Blondie or Red” (Steph) and Matt pointed to me and
Dennis nodded. Then after the session was over, Smoke fi'om Steph’s group came over
to me and asked if I had a pen pal. I said no and he asked if we could be pen pals “cause
I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better”. Steph told me later that he had told her I
was “cute” and she also said another guy said “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting some of
that” about me. Creepy and grr. So I left the prison real tense, said something in the
form. of snapping at Matt when we got out of the van and he walked off without one word

to me! Then I got back to my room even more tense and Dr. Palmer called to see if

everything was ok b/c he’d heard I’d had “sort of a difficult time at the prison today.”

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We talked for a bit and I didn’t want him to worry or get any of the inmates in trouble so

I assured him it was no big deal and everything was ok.

0B:

Did I think I was at the middle school boy girl dance? Will you go out with me? Check
yes or no. Some of my personal journal entries on the prison workshop are almost
indistinguishable from my sophomoric, now stomach churning Sunday night wrap-up-
the-weekend entries - “I can’t believe Matt’s stupid friend asked if he was ‘off to play
with Barbie dolls again’ when we were leaving the party!!!” I was inhaling the attention
and exhaling forced indignation at my objectification - a new word to me compliments of
my English courses. During high school I had been curled in a ball, socially, while I
licked the wounds caused by my parents’ divorce- I was underdeveloped, even fetal, in
the area of dating and the opposite sex. I’d never dated anyone until after high

school. . .I’d never been asked. Suddenly in college, uncurled, happier, away from home,
men were noticing me, hearing a faint hum. By my sophomore year and this workshop
my hum and twang had been ratcheted up a few notches and was ricocheting off of their
burns and twangs and confusing me like a crazed strobe light. I was incapable of

perspective regarding that type of attention. All I knew was that it was attention.

YB:
Journal assignment for class: Thursday, 5.14.92
I really do believe these are decent men. They were ridiculously grateful when I told

them just that. I was sorry they had to be so grateful.

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0B:

I was so young. The above excerpt makes me cringe. I turned that blather in! What
practiced compartrnentalizers we all were. The language I used to describe their response
- gratefiil - and the fact that I had the gall to actually tell them I thought they were

decent. ..ugh. I’m holding my age out like a shield: I was 19, it’s not my fault!

YB:

Journal entry for class: Thursday, 5.14.92 continued:

Today we talked about racism, slang, homosexuality...and so on. Tyrone talked about a
mixed race child playing with a black child and the black mother snatching her black
child away from the mixed race child like she was taking it away from germs. We all
agreed that's where prejudice all starts. Dennis and def were saying how those kids

could be friends and who is telling them not to...

Tyrone:
lvory-G- Butterfly-B-

She has caught a yellow butterfly
That was once free.

She takes it with her where
ever she may be

Her friends say she is a fool.

To be seen with her yellow
butterfly in school

Her mother don’t know it yet

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but this pretty Ivory girl
has her mind set.

That the yellow butterfly is

better than others. And she

won’t settle for less for another.

The pretty Ivory girl is coming

of age. Not to let friends, or

society keep her in a Daze.

She has opened her eye’s, and closed

her ears, and Ieamed not to
let others think her out of how her

heart feels.

0B:

I read that journal may and Tyrone’s poem and cynically think: Now who’s transparent?
Then I think: Not a bad poem, look what I helped create. When I remember my
experience teaching at the prison I am incapable of being consistent or even clear.
Cynical, idealistic, cynalistic, idealynical. So much of my idealism, and probably not a
little of the na'iveté, is still very much with me when I teach. I expect to be able to trust
the students. I believe there are life-changing opportunities in the classroom everyday. I
want to help. I’m tempted to give out my home number. How can a person go forward

and teach without the shield of idealism? What happens when it’s gone?

YB:
Personal journal entry: Thursday, 5.14.92 continued:
Smoke, from Steph's group, when we were all on break, called me over and handed me a

note and asked me again to be his pen pal. I did not get flustered, but put it in my pocket

69

and said thanks. He called across the room asking me to read it because he said he
wanted to see my reaction. It was a sweet note, surprising in that he had decided I was
the "little lady" for him, but harmless enough. Of course I blushed. Grr. But thanked him
and said I'd write him a letter knowing I never would. He put his address on the bottom
so the awkward situation of refusing to give out my own never came up. Tyrone had a
lot of poems about inter-racial relationships. Matt and I had sort of a running bet as to
whether or not that would be a topic today because of my clean White teeth poem and
their reaction to it. I was surprised at his work, the bulk and the quality. He was a little
sheepish about one about two pillows and asked me if I understood what the two pillows
he wanted to "hug and not bruise" were. I just told him it was a clever poem. Period.
Dennis asked me if he could have my pen when I left cause then he'd be, "inspired." That
was flattering and surprising, but not insulting. Again, another very interesting day. I
was so happy when mom called so that I had a fresh set of cars to tell everything that's

been going on and hear it again to think it over again.

Smoke: .
Barb a poam for you
A profound and beautiful person with great knowledge of insight of being a poet of noble
thought in an imaginative way. That I will like to associate with you beyond this class!
A poam
On that first school day I
knew right away you were that
little lady for me! I could see
that you are! All I want

All I need is a profound gueene
like yourself. It took me some

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time to realize what I’ve been
missing. But now its clear in my
mind without any doubt you
are that special lady for me
~poet Tim B ------
write back soon! ©

0B:
And we thought we were there to teach. I’m grateful I have these journal entries, just like
I was grateful then to have my mom’s fi'esh set of cars. These entries along with my
other memories of the workshop allow me to revisit that time and take a hit off my 19-
year-old perspective. They also allow me to forgive myself not only for being so young
and naive but also for documenting it. It’s a valuable thing to drag out dusty memories
and journals and remind myself of the conflicting circumstances surrounding my first
teaching experience. Repeating the same scenario now would not work as well. I’m
afraid I wouldn’t be as wide-open, wide-eyed and sponge-like as I was then. I needed to
be all those things to be open to learning from the inmates and not so absolutely sure they

had nothing to teach me. An openness to learning from students of any circumstance is

necessary to teach.

YB:

Personal journal entry: Thursday, 5.14.92 continued:

Another interesting exchange was when Dennis asked Tyrone how old he was and then
he asked me. I was interested to see their reaction: "I'll be twenty tommorow." Quiet. I
think they’d thought I was older. Then Jeff goes, "Geez, I'm old enough to be your

father." Quiet. Then Dennis said, "I'm sony, I know that's something you're not

71

supposed to ask a lady." and I said, "It's alright, I'm not old enough to worry about it yet."

He nodded and said, "No. No you're not." Interesting. I had to smile.

Jeff:

“Parting Moment”

Like a kite in the wind away you blew

I’m so sad this class is now through

it was fun sharing poetry with you

and very heartfelt, honest and true.

Maybe we can share our poems someday

and there’s so much more I have to say,

so I hope we can correspond by mail,

would you? could you? Be my “poetry pen pal?” ©

Jeffery A. S ------

It would be very special if we could share one anothers poems and thoughts Barb “if” you
would like to write me. I don’t bite and I’m “definatly” ngt dangerous. And please Barb

don’t tell the staff I wrote this, I could get in trouble I think?

Bye for now my poetry friend

JAS

0B:

The last day of the workshop we held a poeny reading in the prison cafeteria. We sat in
easy, casual groups that paralleled our workshop groups. Ahna students did not huddle

on one side of the dance floor while inmates leaned surly against the opposite wall. We

danced together while one by one the inmates went to the podium and read. Almost all

72

the inmates chose to read what they thought was their best poem. Dale read one called
“Limits” that began “True love has/no limits/but lots of dirty laundry...” Tyrone read
“Ivory-G- Butterfly-B-” never looking up, Chris read “Caged” avoiding eye contact with
the guard, Jeff read one about Rodney King and Dennis chose to just watch. There was
lots of clapping and whistling from both students and inmates. As the Ahna students left
for the last time we gave each of the inmates we’d worked with a poetry anthology of the
whole class’ work, including a collaborative poem our group wrote called “Bedspins”.
We called the anthology “Out With It”. Centered small and alone on the first page is
written something that, to me, has a constantly metastasizing meaning:

“To serve the memory

of our meeting”.

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Scenes From a Travelling Classroom
“Spain is your classroom” — Oscar, instructor at Tandem Escuela Intemacional, calle Luis

Vélez de Guevara, Madrid, Spain

Journeys

To Spain

I journeyed from the Ahna bubble to Madrid, Spain to spend second semester of my
junior year enlarging my world at Tandem Escuela Intemacional. Madrid popped the
bubble as soon as I stepped off the plane with the explosion of language spoken much
faster than in my Ahna classroom, the labyrinth-like metro - no subways in Alma!, and

the looming buildings — I wouldn’t see the stars again until I escaped the city.

I traveled with another Ahna student, Kelly, and we knew at luggage checkout that we
had very vain-Americana-like packed many pounds too much. On the bus from the
airport to La Plaza Colon, Kelly’s big duffel got wedged in the aisle. The passengers
stepped on and over it without pause while I considered pretending I wasn’t with Kelly
who was by then sitting on the floor of the bus first pushing then pulling her fat bag to no
avail. On our first metro ride from La Plaza Colon to our hostel, the train car was so full
that Kelly and I had to back in with our luggage to a chorus of then-unrecognizable gritas
(expletives) fi'om the other passengers. Someone paid us back by pick-pocketing
everything I had in my I’m-a-stupid-American-traveler fanny pack. Gone were $50
American emergency dollars, my Swiss Army knife and some lipstick that I only hoped

was not the perpetrator’s color. The metro took us to Hostal Josafina, where we would

74

spend two nights before meeting our host families, in what used to be a nice part of the
city. Used to is the key. Carlos, our Alma professor, had recommended it based on a
lovely stay several years ago. We had to maneuver our way through a throng of
prostitutes in front of the hostel door who found two American students loaded down
with an extraordinary amount of luggage dragging themselves into their hostel to be
hysterical. J ésafma herself looked us up and down and then announced she charges extra
to use the shower that was in our room — a bathtub with a curtain around it next to the
sink and toilet. In our first of many Spainglish linguistic licenses Kelly and I dubbed it

and her together Hostelfinaputa. That showed her.

Journal entry 1.10.93: I guess I’m a little homesick right now. Besides being in a
different country w/a different languageanddifferent customs, I’m in a big city, which is
peculiar in itself. Everything is moving go fast. Blur! And for so many people there
isn’t much human contact. Especially as a foreigner I’m not making much eye contact
and I’m constantly worried that someone will strike up a conversation with me. The city

is an interesting creature. ..I feel so isolated by it.

Madrid was a New World to me and I alternated between being la conquistadora y la
conquistarada. For the first month or so I believed it was me vs. Madrid. Days when I
jumped the metro tumstile and wrested 25 pesetas from the city’s grip, I won. Days
when I jumped the metro tumstile and leapt onto to wrong train, ending up on the south
end instead of north, Madrid won. Days when I remembered my metro cara dura (hard

face), taught to me by my host family, and not one person talked to me on the way to

75

school, I won. Days when I remembered my tunnel-visioned cara dura so well that I
actually shoved an older babushka clad woman out of my way while focusing on getting
to an escalator, Madrid won by arming that woman with a deftly swung 50-lb. purse to
knock me on my impudent Americana behind. Days when men hiding under stairs
disfrutando themselves scared me out of the metro and I walked many blocks to school,
Madrid won. Days when a man walking backward, while making lewd gestures at me,
ran into a lamppost, I won. Days when I stopped a pick-pocket in the metro by yelling to
Kelly “There’s a pickpocket right in front of me!”, I won. Days when the lady I saved
from the pick-pocket didn’t thank me and then the pick-pocket himself jumped on my
foot before running out the closing metro doors, Madrid won. Days when looking up
through street lights and skyscrapers I could no longer remember what the Seven Sisters
looked like, Madrid won. Days when I escaped the city and could reintroduce myself to
all seven in the darkness of the countryside, I won. Days when the city, with its thick
unfeeling skin absent-mindedly swatted me away like a pesky bug, Madrid won. . .over

and over. We had an interesting relationship Madrid and I. . .rhinoceros and fly.

We also had an interesting connection. I had kicked and fidgeted my way through Spain
along with Portugal, Greece and most of Europe once before. I did not make the
connection then, but while the plane taking me from the US. to Spain may have seemed
to be traveling a straight line, it was actually not only beginning a circle of my own but
completing one my parents began as well. While stationed in Germany during the
Vietnam War, my mother and father traveled by car through Madrid and the rest of Spain

when my mom was 7 months pregnant with me. They felt confident driving the back,

76

bumpy, twisting, baby jolting roads of Spain because my dad was a doctor and they had
packed, with amazing self-assured forethought, an emergency delivery kit in the car — a
basin, umbilical clamp, suction tools and a blood-flow-stopping hemostat - all wrapped
in scrubs stamped property of Stuttgart Army Base. I wanted out out out! after the trip

because immediately upon returning to Germany, I arrived almost one month early.

I remember my mom telling a story about being very pregnant with me, clambering up on
the base of a lamppost, lost in a crowd, trying to watch the elaborate Semana Santa
processions that take place at Easter. I had always thought the story had taken place in
Italy. They were in Madrid. That’s her, the only one looking at the camera, in the telling
70’s clunky sunglasses and mini-matemity-skirt. Dad was far back in the crowd when he
snapped thisand so could only watch as right after the shutter clicked a man snuck up
behind mom and pinched her very pregnant behind. Happy Semana Santa. I lost hours
looking through these old slides from my parent’s time in Europe grateful for my dad’s
meticulous labeling habits. This slide, dated April 1972 is labeled ‘Plaza Mayor, Holy
Week’. Almost exactly twenty-one years later I sat sipping café con leche in La Plaza

Mayor unknowingly looking toward the very same lamppost.

To a new ‘family ’

Casa de Mateus. That semester, I was peripherally folded into the lives of the Mateus
family, calle Doctor Esquerdo #163, 8'h floor, Madrid, Spain, the apartment of Senora
Olga Mateus and her two grown sons, Mauricio and Enrique, a.k.a. Qui-que. The

apartment, large by Madrid standards, felt like a box to me. The ‘fiont’ door and the

77

‘back’ door were side by side in the hallway. The front door, which opened into the
dining area, was never opened except for company. After the first day - ringing the
streetside bell terrified to meet my host family, worried about how poor my accent would
sound saying “Hola, soy Barbara, la estudiante americana”, dragging my vainly
overpacked luggage to the elevator, standing on one of my bags in the telephone booth
size elevator, knocking on their door, surprising them with my exhausted, gratefirl hugs -
I was no longer company. I was only given a key to the back door, which opened into the
kitchen. If I stretched out both arms I could almost touch the opposite walls. Olga
walked into the kitchen while I was doing this once. I instantly began touching my toes
and told her I was going for a run. She looked at my boots, pants and sweater, and
shrugged her oft repeated ‘odd Americana’ shrug. In the beginning of my stay, Olga
enjoyed showing me off around the neighborhood for attempted gain. Early one morning
she roused me bed-headed and puffy-eyed to go to the market with her. At the fish stand
she grabbed my shoulders and shoved me forward saying “5Bonita, no?” to the

fishmonger hoping for a discount. She didn’t get one.

Qui-que mostly shuffled, a little hunched over, between his bedroom, the t.v. room, the
dining table and the bathroom. The only conversation we ever had was when he asked to
look at the pictures I’d brought from home. He politely commented on all the pictures,
then pulled out a thin brown album sparsely filled with black and white pictures of
himself or his father, who, divorced from Olga, lived in Columbia. I pointed to one

picture of Qui-que playing tennis, barely disguising my surprise at his athletic pose. He

78

said he used to play a lot before he hurt his back, closed the album, and shuffled back to

his room.

Mauricio treated me like a little sister, made littler initially by my infantile grasp of the
language. I seemed to inspire something paternalistic in him. He loved to have long
conversations over cena, lasting long past dessert, instructing me in my Spanish.
However, I can track throughout my journal how our conversations became less and less
infantile and less and less Mauricio—dominated the older in the language I became. Some
of our first conversations were about American customs. Mauricio bombarded me with si
0 no questions and was fascinated to learn that, si, women often drink beer in the U.S., or
that no, I didn’t have to ask my father’s permission to date. In much later conversations
we discussed different forms of racism in the US. vs. Spain. These discussions were
spurred by a national debate about whether a gitano (gypsy) baby boy should receive a
kidney transplant. Despite my impassioned argument over the ridiculousness of the
debate, the little boy died. Mauricio’s response was that it takes a long time for old

attitudes to change.

I eventually realized my battle with Madrid was pointless, so I shifted focus to Casa de
Mateus. Initially I believed I could be the daughter/sister the house was lacking.
However, it eventually became obvious that Olga was running a business. After one
month of being an only child, F abienne, another student from the U.S., moved into
Mauricio’s room and he moved into the hall closet! One month after that, my friend

Kelly also fi'om Ahna, who was barely surviving her host family, doubled up in my room.

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Cha-ching! Either Olga-was cruel or she really didn’tunderstand about girls. Fabienne,
Kelly and I shared one tiny bathroom and Olga refused to ever supply it with more than
one roll. of toilet paper at a time keeping the stash under lock and key. She stingily doled
out toilet paper like it was spun gold. For breakfast, all we were given was one tiny
muffm con mermelada y te. Kelly and I took to ladréning muffms from the pantry under
dark of night to pad the next mornings’ breakfast feeling justified in our thievery over the
growl of our stomachs. The box-like apartment becamecell-like through over-crowding
and stinginess, which forced Kelly and me out onto the streets of our classroom for as

many hours a day as possible. Not a bad thing.

To a new language

For the two days before we met our host families, Kelly and I were too afraid to try out
our Spanish and so ate at Burger King or McDonald’s. Then we moved to trying
deserted restaurants — deserted because we were still trying to eat on an American
schedule, i.e. dinner around 6:00 pm. — and just pointing to the menu while using as little
of the language as we could. One of my greatest accomplishments in the language was

when I felt confident enough in the communication skills to argue with Mauricio.

Journal entry 2.9.93: Tonight was so cool! F abienne, Mauricio and I had a very heated
discussion all through cena about women and marriage. It was very interesting! I was

also so excited that I actually could get my point across and even basically arng en

 

espafiol!

8O

Another of my greatest language accomplishments during the semester I spent in Spain?
Telling a joke. Telling a joke to my Spanish friends, Maga and Alberto, and having them
laugh at the punch line (I’ve convinced myself) and not at any lingual botching. I cannot
remember the joke; I can’t even begin to reconstruct it. All I remember is that the punch

line was “tomatos planchados”, smooshed tomatos. Sidesplitting.

The same night I told my historic joke, Maga and Alberto took me to a dark tapas bar to

listen to a band popular for their earnest covers of Rolling Stones songs:

Covering “Beast ofBurden
fl] ’1] never be your bestial virgin,

don ’t make me carry your pizza burden... fl -

Shoulder to shoulder, the young Spanish bar patrons faithfully and enthusiastically sang
the same words the popular cover band did. The fact that confusion went both ways was

comforting.

Except for the indication of how much Spanish I’ve lost since that semester, I love that I
need my dog-cared Spanish dictionary to read some parts of my Spain journal now. By
the end of the semester my journal was a jumbled mix of English, Spanish and
Spainglish. And when I’d talk to my mom in the last month my English sentences would
come out organized by Spanish sentence construction: “Morn, yesterday we went to La

Plaza Mayor for to drink a bunch of coffee with milk.” What? Kelly told me I even

81

spoke in my sleep en espaflol once or twice. In spite of myself - my fear of sounding like
a two-year-old, my apprehension about strangers striking up conversation, my lack of

confidence in my language abilities - the language sank in. Deeply.

Beyond Madrid

Not just Madrid, but Spain was our classroom. Not just Spain but anywhere we could get
to! Kelly and I decided early in our semester to save our pesetas for tips. Together we
went to Segovia, Avila, Cuenca, Granada, Toledo, Alicante, Salobrefia (twice), Cordoba
and Morocco. I also went to El Escorial and la Valle de los Caidos with Alberto and
traveled alone from Madrid to Munich. I discovered later that my parents, twenty-one
years earlier, had been to almost all those places as well. Life in Madrid, after several
weeks, somehow found a way to become normal, routine. Life beyond Madrid thankfully

never got there.

Segovia and Avila

Our day trip to Segovia and Avila was our first trip out of Madrid.

Journal entry 1.23.93: Segovia was wonderful, beautiful, fun...I’m _s_o_ happy I went! It

did me such good to get gut of this city. Maybe there is (definitely) esperanza that I will

fall en amor con Espafia and maybe just not _lo_ve_ Madrid.

Segovia was another point of connection with my earlier, fetal trip to Spain. The photo

of the city is from slides my dad took. I walked under that very aquaducto in the photo

82

flabbergasted that I was touching stones manipulated into place in Roman times. I would
have been equally amazed had I known my parents along with me as their freeloading

passenger had walked under the very same arches.

Also, when mom was looking through my thick album of journey pictures for the first
time, she stopped silent at a photo of me standing in front of King Ferdinand and Queen

Isabella’s Segovian castle El Alcazan.

She had once stood in that exact spot, gratefully leaning, pregnancy-tired, against the
sturdy stone wall. In searching feverishly through the slides for that exact picture, I

found one my dad had taken from the same angle as mine but absent my mother.

E1 Escorial and la Valle de los C aidos
Another place mom, dad and I all visited was El Escorial. The photo is again,

compliments of my father who made a point to get the big picture type shots that I forgot.

Alberto, my language partner that Tandem had arranged, took me to El Escorial. Alberto
and I met often throughout the semester and each time we got together we alternated
speaking either all in Spanish or all in English. He was a bit of a history buff and full of
interesting facts, which was great for me. History por Alberto: El Escorial was Felipe
H’s palace which he had built more or less in the shape of a grill to honor the fact that

San Augustine was martyred by being burnt on a grill. Fun.

83

Journal entry 1.31.93: From El Escorial we went to La Valle de los Caidos, (the valley of
the fallen). Franco built it in the 70’s to commemorate the dead from the Spanish civil
war. It was pretty amazing. Part of it is this 11ng cross at the very top of a mountain.
One finger of one of the figures is the size of a man (Mauricio fact). The other part is a
cathedral under the cross and therefore built right into the mountains. It was built by the

blood and sweat of prisoners.

Alberto made me pose for this picture. He was very pleased with himself for positioning

me so it looked like the cross was coming out of my head.

Beyond Spain

By our Easter break, Kelly and I were feeling rather cocky about our travel savvy. We
decided it was time to get out of Spain altogether for our vacation. We decided Morocco,
specifically a little town called El—Jadida on the Atlantic coast, should be our

destination. . .sandy beaches, cheap hotels. We decided we knew better than our Tandem
teacher who told us that women, American women in particular, should r191 go to
Morocco. Ha! iPollo! We were travelers. We knew what we were doing! We took

along two friends from Tandem, Darius and Peter, and called ourselves prepared.

Morocco -— Tangier, El-Jadida
Journal entry 3.30.93 Hotel de Provence, El-Jadida, Morocco:
O.K., so we got off the boat at Tangier and we were instantly “chosen” by, we’ll just call

him, Jaime (we kept forgetting his name, but it sounded like Why Me?) Anyway, we

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were already paranoid about being hustled and this guy was s_o_ persistent. In rehearsed
English: “I am talking to you seriously. I am working here 20 years at the port. I am a
decent fellow. I am having a family. Ask the police, see you can go ahead and ask them,
you see? No problems with me they will tell you I am a good guy. See? You
understand? They are chasing away the hustlers. I am a gu_ic§. You are scared, right?
You have heard about Tangier and you are scared, right? Well, I am talking to you
seriously when I say to you I am not out to hustle. 20 years here at the port I am
working...” and on and on. The four of us were getting my stressed out and he would
not leave us be. Every time we turned around he was standing in front of us blocking our
way and talking to us seriously. We did finally ask several different police-jerks and they
kept saying “Yeah, he’s fine” so we caved because we had 5 hours to wait for our train to
Casablanca and he wanted to give us a tour. We agreed on 1000 pesetas. As we were
walking away from the port I whispered to Peter that I felt a g better that the police
knew Whyme and told us he was o.k. and he. just turned to me and said very matter-of-

factly: “he pays them.”

Tangier at 20

Dirhams exchanged, he guides
us, four American students,
through the maze-like medina
toward Tangier’s Kasbah.
Under the Moroccan noon,
layered clothing is heavy and I curse
this sweaty concession to modesty.

We twist and slither in single file
toward the market, passing
dripping Gibraltar monkeys, skinned
anonymous creatures and twitching

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rabbits, hung by their heels
next to figs and blood-red berries.

Around each bend, eyes within shadowed
doorless doorways emit envy we’re sure,
ignorant that they actually sneer
and mock us as we labor
under our excessively overstuffed,

name-brand hiking packs. ,

Savvy student adventurers, we blindly
follow our guide through narrow,
unnamed passages, strutting
behind him into the Kasbah to suffer
snakes his partners gleefully drape
around our brazenly exposed necks.

As the four living nooses tighten theatrically,
one proud mouth screams, one loses all breath,
one offers up lunch and the last can
only stiffly giggle hysterically. The cohorts
snicker and calmly wait for deep-
pocketed money to be frantically waved.

Dirhams snatched; they slowly uncoil four snakes.
We stare expectantly at our guide...

He exaggerates a shrug and sneer...
Conceded money slapped into his pahn, he finally
moves to undo us from this adventure. Behind him,
we drag ourselves out of Tangier’s labyrinth, pockets

empty, unable to meet the laughing eyes.

Outside the kasbah, after our tour left us dirham-less, Peter wanted to just sit at the train

station, so Darius, Kelly and I made our way to a hotel to exchange travelers checks,

ignoring trailing Why-me Juniors shouting “Hotel? Tour? Guide? Take your picture?” in

practiced German, French, English or Italian, sure we had to be from one of those

countries. No go on the travelers checks. Bad luck was a common theme in our journey

to Morocco. We ended up exchanging a hodge-podge of cash: pesetas, deutchmarks,

francs into a measly amount of dirhams. I think the man at the counter, somehow

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foreseeing that the rest of our journey to El-Jadida would continue to be bumpy, took pity
on us and asked about the rest of our schedule - arriving in Casablanca around midnight
and then trying to hail a cab for the hour plus trip south to El-Jadida. We were so stupid
in our ‘planning’. He called our hotel, the Hotel de Provence in El-Jadida, confirmed our
room, and most importantly, he arranged for them to send a taxi to pick us up in

Casablanca. To the train station to await our train to Casablanca!

My journal relates the whole messy train-ride to Casablanca in and odd mix of wide-eyed
breathlessness, nai'veté and chin-jutting, none-of-this-really-scared-me sarcasm. I relate
everything as one seamless story without acknowledging the confusion of language that
pervaded every adventure. Between the four of us we knew Spanish and English along
with a few phrases in French. The Moroccans spoke French and Arabic along with a few
broken phrases in English. Communication was chaos — mostly done with hand gestures

with one or two word phrases interjected sporadically. Complete chaos.

Journal entry 3.30.93 Hotel de Provence, El-Jadida, Morocco:

So. . .Darius, Kelly and I walked back to the train station thinking we’re pretty cool and
patting ourselves on the back for getting the hang of Morocco and there is Peter talking to
some guy and sharing a bag of pistachios. He was going to Casablanca too, imagine that!
At first, with our back-patting still fresh, it seemed innocent enough and we were soon
joined by his “brother” (a small guy wearing a peach shirt) and another friend (big guy
with dark glasses and a black leather jacket). They were teaching us phrases in Arabic,

sharing their pistachios and I must admit it w a nice change fi'orn Whyme. With my

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perfect hindsight, I know we should have realized they were latching on to us as
hopefully easy targets and we also should have paid attention to how many times they
double-checked that we were going to Casablanca too. We also met two girls from Brazil
who were taking the train to Asilah (the stop before Casablanca) and we should have
stayed close to them, but I know now that our new “friends” were trying to make sure

they had us all to themselves.

We started lining up along the platform getting ready for the train to arrive. A sea of
people materialized crowding the area and suddenly we were way down the platform
from our Casablanca “friends” and close to the girls from Brazil. But just before the train
pulled up and the crush of people started, the three Casablanca guys came running up to
the four of us. Also, some old man latched on to us and told us he’d find us seats “when
the crazy starts”. People everywhere, mass confusion, and Brazil girls nowhere in sight
as the train stopped and the crowd crushed toward the doors. Peter, Darius, Kelly and I
were trying desperately just to stay together in the confusion. The old man jumped on to
the train and yelled at us to board there. I was losing Peter, Darius and Kelly because my
huge backpack with me attached to it was getting stuck in the crowd and I started to panic
as the river of people began to carry me past the door they all had jumped into. Suddenly
the biggest of our three “friends” (sunglasses man) basically picked me up by my huge
backpack and threw me in the door, luggage and all, and jumped in behind me. Deep
breath. So the four of us with the old man’s help found an 8 person compartment. He
put our bags overhead and waited for one of us to give him money. . .and the_n the BIG

fun started.

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There were only 8 spaces in the compartments and there were 2 guys already in ours
when we got there. Our 3 “fi'iends” tried to get in the compartment but I guess they
didn’t ask nice because all of a sudden there was a huge M- The old man wisely took
off tip—less. Now gritas were flying everywhere in Arabic. From what we’ve pieced
together our 3 “friends” wanted to sit with us in a big way. (I know we’re all charming,
but this was freaky) They told the guys that were already in there that they knew us from
California (it seemed like everyone in Morocco assumed that all Americans live in
California) and we’d all been friends for ; years. What!? The new guys turned to the
four of us and asked us if that was true and our shocked faces were enough of an answer.
I_h_er_1, I guess it turned religious because our peach shirt friend had apparently had some
beers (not allowed by Muslim religion) and in the continuing gritas cursed Allah
somehow and Liam flared the tempers. During the tiff, Kelly and I were closest to the
action. Peach-shirt dove over Kelly and I and basically was sitting on the floor near the
window at Peter and Darius’ feet pretending to “protect” all of us but really trying to
avoid getting popped in the face. Heaven forbid anyone would reach across two
American girls to belt him. Then, some new character showed up at the door of the
compartment, pulled out a huge Crocodile-Dundee looking knife and proceeded to wave
it in the faces of our 3 “friends”. Great. Right after that, I was inadvertently nailed in the
right eye with an elbow as one of the original guys sitting in the compartment yanked
Peach-shirt from his haven and punched him in the face. I was fighting a very strong
urge to both burst into tears and laugh insanely while I was thinking very clearly about

whether a stab wound from such an impressive knife would be too unbearably painful.

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Finally the bumbling train police showed up and removed our 3 original “fi'iends”. We
were left with new wonderful friends: the guy who punched Peach-shirt (and me) in the
face, the guy who yelled the loudest, and the knife-waving lunatic, who sat down right
next to me. Whee. The knife-toter looked exactly like the drunken scrawny, red-eyed

loony-tunes cat with a whistle-lisp who is always competing with Sylvester for Tweety.

So our new set of friends start right in telling us how our other “friends” were bad people
who cursed religion and swore in the presence of ladies and they just couldn’t have that
(but punching is o.k.?). What gentlemen. One of them told us that his wife was in
California (of course) and pulled out a handy letter from her so old and smeared it was
illegible, and another told us hfi wife was in Denmark and he was moving there soon.
What a crock, and we’ve known our other “friends” in California for 2 years. They also
told us that our other “friends” were hustlers and that they were probably going to “fuck
you over in Casablanca” (so much for not swearing around the ladies) and “steal your
wife” they said directly to Peter while pointing at me. Grand. I was relatively prepared
for horror stories about getting robbed, etc., but I was far from prepared for the notion of
m (“for her light hair”) being “stolen.” Bizarre. Then they tell us they are going to
Asilah and we should definitely go there with _tl_rgr_n_. (Now who’s hustling?) The Asilah
guys were really pushing it and I was starting to (in my hours of sleeplessness daze) agree
”. . .yeah, Asilah. ..let’s just stop this hell ride. . . .” They EDI telling us we’d basically die,
or worse for Kelly and me, if we arrived in Casablanca at midnight like we were
supposed to. Then all of a sudden the train was at Asilah and Kelly and I got up to get off

and Peter and Darius were saying no and l was truly wishing we would get off there

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because that’s where the girls from Brazil were going. The four of us almost split up,
which would have been a very 133;! thing for Kelly and me. In the midst of the Asilah
guys trying to herd Kelly and me out the door with them, one of the girls from Brazil
shoved her head in the compartment and grabbed the four of us and took us to the
compartment they had been in. They had been sitting with a man and his two young
daughters and she said he knew we were in trouble and he would “take care of us.” So
we piled into his compartment, lost the Asilah guys, and had our lives saved by strangers
— a red-headed woman from Brazil, and a Moroccan father travelling with his young

daughters.

We were all still very traumatized because our original 3 “friends” moved to the
compartment next to our new one and were continuing to keep very close tabs on us. The
four of us have figured out that the big brawl to start the train ride was solely about who
would get to sit with the fresh meat for hustling purposes. What joy. Family-man spoke
no English and only a ygry little Spanish. He was so sweet with his two little girls — one
was 5 and the other, who had crazy curls and was asleep in his lap — was almost 2. He
told us everything would be o.k. and he was the first man in Morocco that I My,
3% felt like we could My, gafly, trust. I remember, while I was trying not to cry
during WWIII in the first compartment, briefly looking out the window and seeing people
working the hillsides, plowing with donkeys and thinking how Leg beautiful this country
was and wishing I could just stare out the window for the rest of the trip. And now that

we were finally safe for a few moments with Family-man, it was dark outside. Not fair.

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Our “friends” Dark-glasses and Peach-shirt in the next compartment eventually came to
visit us. Dark-glasses squeezed in between Peter and Kelly right across from me, and
Peach-shirt blocked the door. Dark-glasses was still munching pistachios and rudely
tossing them at my feet; apparently this had become personal. Farnily-man was visibly
shaken up after this visit. Kelly and I kept saying emphatically “5N0! 5Comprende?
3N0!” while they ignored us and spoke directly to Family-man. Dark-glasses was trying
to bargain with F amily-man to get him to abandon us to them! He offered him money
(easily read universal finger rubbing sign for money) for the four of us and when Family-
man said no Dark-glasses pointed to Kelly and me and offered him money for just us!
(Later, when we could sort of laugh about it we kept doing impressions of Belushi from
“Blues Brothers”: “Ze women! How much for ze women?”) Just imagine what they
were thinking! Where would Kelly and I be if F amily-man had just said “screw it, can’t
handle the pressure and I don’t care about these people anyway. . .” After we physically
shoved Peach-shirt and Dark-glasses out of the compartment, and latched the door,

Farnily-man actually tried to find and tell the keystone train cops with no success.

About 20 minutes before we were supposed to arrive in welcoming Casablanca at the
witching hour, Family-man started planning our escape from the “friends.” In broken
Spanish he planned to have us run off the train in formation: Family-man in front
carrying the 2 year old, Kelly behind him carrying his bag, then me with my little
backpack, huge backpack and holding the hand of the 5 year old, then Peter and Darius
bringing up the rear with the rest of the luggage. As the train slowed down we rushed to

the door and jumped off before it stopped. Our “friends” were right behind us, still

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sticking close and watching carefully. I saw them join up with a waiting group. Scared.
We all ran toward the gate and the parking lot beyond. As soon as we squeezed through,
we spotted another lifesaver. Standing next to a big white Mercedes taxi (don’t get all
excited, it was a beat up semi-clunker) was a man holding a bright yellow plaque that
read Hotel de Provence! We thanked F amily-man as much as we could while he hurried
us into the taxi, grabbed his 5-year-old’s hand and rushed toward his car. As we drove

away, I was hoping he and his daughters wouldn’t be made to pay for his kindness...

Compared to the asphyxiating anxiety of our journey from Madrid, El-Jadida was like a
long, deep breath. The owner of Hotel de Provence himself, Mohammed, at 1:30 am.
held open the door for his newest, weariest guests. He actually took my hand as he led us
to our room. It was cavernous — all the better to echo Darius and Peter’s snoring — the
bowed bed Kelly and I shared usually rolled us both into the middle by morning, the
bathroom had no warm water and the floor slanted. . . it was perfect. We slept for 12
hours. The next afternoon, the four of us could only muster the bravery to visit the
restaurant three doors down from the hotel. Everyone who passed us dining at our
sidewalk table stared at us, mouths agape. Foreigners, American women especially, were
not a common site in the tiny town of El-Jadida. Mohammed quietly suggested, when we
returned from dinner, that we - he nodded sheepishly at Kelly and me, then tugged my
hair — stay in after dark. We did not protest and that night the four of us began a
marathon game of hearts. We ended up with a lot of lame pictures of the four of us in the
room - playing cards, trying on hats, sitting on our beds, on our way to the shower. I

only took pictures of El-Jadida, and the people we met there, during the day. And we did

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meet some wonderful people. I learned that not all Moroccans were like our brawling

train friends.

Journal entry 3.31.93 - El Jadida: We found a beach called Sidi Bouzid. Mohammed

drove us there and it is gorgeous. It’s clean, goes on forever, the waves are huge and

 

make that incredible, beautiful big wave crashing noise. I can’t get over how much beach
there is! The waves break way out and come sliding way in so we have to put our towels
about 50 or 60 feet in from where the waves break b/c they come up so far on the flat
sand. Kelly and I walked down the beach and when we came back, there was a guy

sitting w/ Darius and Peter. It was Rachid.

At first Kelly and I stood about 100 feet away from them watching. Did we think they
couldn’t see us? All three started waving us over and still we stood there. I kept seeing
Dark Glasses and Peach Shirt remembering the friendly way that mess began. Rachid
stood up and Kelly and I started looking for pretend shells in the fine sand hoping he was
leaving. He poked me in the shoulder and then said, each word articulated, “I am
Rachid” and laughed. Then he handed me his brightly woven red, green and yellow
Rasta cap and wrapped my hand around it. This was a promising start. I took my Cat
Stevens tape out of my walkman and handed it to him wrapping his hand around it.
Friends. He waved down the beach to several other young men and suddenly we were
surrounded with a flurry of introductions to Rachid’s friends: Lahrsen, Nebil, Breen and

Imad. All nine of us squeezed onto our towels, facing West toward the Atlantic, trading

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disconnected phrases. Nebil: “NBA Action, It’s F an-Tas-Tic” Barb: Shoukron (thank

you)

That afternoon, helped by our new friends, we found the bus back to El-Jadida. By the
time we reached our destination the bus was so full that people were standing on the front
and back bumpers and I was sardine pinned against a window haplessly sitting on my
hands. I was therefore defenseless against the sticky orifice-probing fingers of a little
boy sitting on the lap of the woman next to me. My ‘patience’ was apparently endearing
because even though I was the last of our group to struggle off the bus, every passenger
helped pass me stadium-like toward the door depositing me head-first onto the street. I
lost a flip-flop in the process, which, with lots of hearty laughter, was flung out after me

as the bus moved off.

Rachid and Lahrsen alternated picking the four of us up at Hotel de Provence to meet the
rest of the group for the late a.m. bus ride to Sidi Bouzid. After hours at the beach
followed by a stinky ride back, we’d wash up and get dressed for dinner at one of their
houses. They easily and open-heartedly invited us into their homes. This intricate social
planning was accomplished by gestures and the wonderful fact that Lahrsen could tell

time in English.

Journal entry 4.01.93 El-Jadida: We ate cous-cous at Lahrsen’s house! We watched his

sister, Latifah, make it while drinking mint tea she had made by stuffing mint leaves and

sugar in a pot of boiling water. It tasted like warm toothpaste. The kitchen was a

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kerosene tank that they put one pot over and the water was from a well jg the house by
the door! We ate with our hands from one big bowl set in the middle of the low table and
Ieamed to roll it in balls and flip it into our mouths with our thumbs like they do. I
wasn’t very good at it, since I was using my right hand. Latifah had us try on her
djellabas, the hooded, long sleeve outer garment women must wear outside the home.

We actually ate real Moroccan cous-cous in a real Moroccan home with real Moroccan

friends! I still can’t believe how lucky we are to have met them.

We ate at Lahrsen’s again the next night, but it was Rachid who caught and cooked our
dinner of fried fish -— eyeballs, fins and all. One of the fish Rachid served with an
exaggerated flourish was an eel. . .coiled in a circle, biting its own tail. Despite the fact
that I don’t usually like my food staring at me or baring its teeth, it was a delicious break
from cous-cous. Our lessons for that night were drinking toasts. They taught us ‘misa-
hecha’, pronounced “miss I hate ya”. We taught them ‘cheers’, ‘chin-chin’ (espaflol),

‘down the hatch’, ‘bottoms up’, and then Peter descended into teaching them to swear.

Our last night in El-Jadida was a huge, several course, send-off. We ate dinner at
Rachid’s house with Lahrsen, Imad, Nebil, and Breen. Rachid’s extended family which
consisted of his mother, seven sisters, two younger brothers, grandparents and aunts,
greeted us and socialized afterwards but did not join us for dinner. Instantly upon
entering his house, Rachid showed Kelly and I to the kitchen where his mother and seven
sisters were. We watched his mother making cous-cous, expert hands a blur. One of his

sisters kept touching my hair and twirling the curls around her finger. Although the night

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ended with many four cheek kisses (means good friend) and hugs, there were two

moments of bumbling awkwardness on our parts.

Awkward moment #1

Journal entry 4.3.93 El-Jadida: After the first course of raybi (yogurt drink) the women
served soup. 1h_a_t was interesting. I was sitting in between Peter and Lahrsen and I
whispered to Peter (joking) that none of the soup was going to get to my mouth b/c I had
to eat with my right hand. So then idiot-Peter feels compelled to say something to
Lahrsen. Grr. He asked if it was ok to eat with your left hand but Lahrsen didn’t
understand the question and said one could drink the soup or use a spoon but not to eat it
with your fingers. Then Dunderhead cleared up the question and Lahrsen said/gestured
that “no, Muslims do not use their left hand for anything”. Fine, we all knew that and the
conversation could have been over but then Super-dunder just M to say “Because
Barbara eats and writes with her left hand.” Silence. Great. Then Lahrsen got
embarrassed b/c he’d also said something about how using the left hand is _b_a_d and I got
embarassed b/c I was afraid they’d all think I was dirty or something. I laughed it off and
tried to look natural feeding myself with my uncoordinated, jerky right hand. Lots of
soup and cous-cous ended up on my socks until Lahrsen and the rest decided it would be
helpful to form the cous-cous balls for me, smooshing it into perfect spheres with their
bare hands (gross) then placing it on my right thumb for fumbled flipping into my mouth.

Thanks. My stomach was lurching by bedtime.

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Awkward moment #2

Journal entry 4.3.93 El-Jadida: The sister who was twirling my hair had a fling for
Darius that she did 1g hide. Eventually as a joke (we thought) they got ‘married’
complete with plastic rings and tzaghreets - celebration yells - from the other women.
At one point though, at the very end of the night none of us dumb Americans (especially
M) were quite sure whether it really wag a joke! The sister had her arm hooked in
his and would n_ot let Daruis leave with us! Peter, Kelly and I were nervous giggling
walking down the alley from Rachid’s door, wondering if Darius was coming or not.
When we were half-way down the alley, we heard a loud bye! and he came shooting out
of the house after us. We continued to nervous-giggle until Rachid and Lahrsen dropped

us off at the hotel with many bugs and kisses and bslarnas (good-bye, peace go with you).

Good-bye to El-Jadida, good-bye to our new Moroccan friends whose kindnesses
overshadowed our first Moroccan ‘friends’, good-bye Mohammed and Hotel de
Provence, good-bye warm toothpaste drink, good-bye cous-cous, good-bye Morocco.
Not so fast: Morocco stayed with me for at least a month in the form of a mysterious
intestinal disorder, which visited me for the first time on the train ride from Casablanca to
Tangier. I suspected my very hands-on dinner of the night before as partial culprit.

Using my angry, twisted, green, if-you-talk-to—me-I’ll-puke-on-you face as a shield, the
four of us sailed through Tangier and onto the boat to cross the Straits of Gibraltar

unmolested. Glad to be of service.

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Spain had somehow undergone a sea-change while we were across the straits in Morocco.
It was home! We could speak the language, Kelly and I could walk the streets
unescorted, and no one was trying to feed me cous-cous! I barely refrained from cartoon

kissing the ground upon disembarking.

Madrid to Munich

After Morocco I still had two major journeys ahead of me. I was to travel alone fi'orn
Madrid to Munich where my mother was going to meet me and then after two weeks in
Germany, we’d make the trip home. At the end of my long, lonely trip to Munich would
be waiting, my mother, Tanja, and her mother, Tanti (‘aunt’) Barbara, for whom I am

named.

I had honed my I’m—not-embarrassed-to—ask-for-help skills in my four months as a
foreign student. They came in handy. If I thought I had overpacked to begin with, I’d
done nothing but accumulate for four months - gifts, books, letters even two large
blankets from Morocco. I ended up carrying on my person a large hiking backpack, a
regular sized backpack like a pregnancy (not terribly becoming. . .but the weight balance
at least kept me standing upright), a body-sized duffel and two overstuffed pink and
white striped plastic grocery bags. Everything on the floor and couch of this

homecoming picture, except for Ingo, I carried on my body!

In this pathetic state I met a woman from Switzerland, named Lisle who was also

travelling alone. We Ieamed each other’s names after an awkward and by now familiar

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pointing, gesturing, “You Tarzan, Me Jane” type conversation when I asked her which
number train was on its way. She took pity on me and the one-zillion pounds of baggage
I was lugging, pushing, squeezing and very nearly weeping over in the extremely narrow
train aisles. Without pause, at the end of our shared trip from Toulouse, France to
Geneva, Switzerland she insisted on giving me two Swiss francs to rent a heavenly_cart
for hauling my ridiculous load many landings away to await my last connecting train in a
dignified, back-saving manner. Between her French, German and Swiss and my Spanish

and English we could not find a common language except for kindness.

In Germany and Austria, with my mother this time, we visited many places my mother
and father had been twenty-one years before. It was good to close that circle together. It
was always my impression growing up that the years mom and dad spent in Europe were
their happiest together. Walking the same route to the fortress in Salzberg that they had
walked, or spending time in Heilbronn with Tanja and Tanti Barbara I hoped we could re-

write some of her memories and make them sweet again, not just bittersweet.

We visited Neuschwanstein Castle on my 21St birthday — more than just miles away from

the drunken Ahna birthday I would have had.

Back home

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

~ William Wordsworth

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Just as Madrid had undergone a transformation when I was in Morocco, the US. was
almost unrecognizable to me upon my return. Curbs and the resources used to create and
maintain them baffled me as did garbage and recycling trucks. Mail arriving only two
days after it was sent confused me. And the language. Now English seemed to be
spoken too quickly for comprehension. But it was home and I had an almost painful urge

to travel and embrace every inch of the US.

My best friend, Teri, also studying Spanish at Ahna, met mom and me at the airport in
Detroit. She would be living at Casa de Mateus next semester. We spoke together
excitedly in Spanish and English about my journeys and hers to come and began yet

another circle. . ..

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Literacy Autobiography III - Conclusion

During my undergraduate years at Ahna College majoring in English and Spanish I fully
rediscovered the geek inside and embraced her. Away from home, away fi’om my grade
school, middle school and high school classmates and surrounded by fellow geeks, I
could publicly be myself academically and be happy! I found myself staring agape at
professors I admired who did this literacy thing for a living. I had found what I wanted to

pursue. . .without shame without giving up power.

After graduating from Ahna, I spent several years as a writer for a market research firm still
somehow finding a way to deny continuing the path toward my personal version of literacy
which was connected to teaching. Forsaking the business world just under the five-year
brain seepage limit and returning to school I happily feel as if I have finally, publicly,
proudly stated, without intending to ever attempt recovery: “Hi, I’m Barb, and I’m a

literacy-abolic.”

Now every aspect of literacy that I encounter excites me — How will the tangential nature of
the Internet affect ways of leaming/literacy? How can I expand my own literacy world?
What will 1, how will I and just plain, will I contribute to future students’ literacy

autobiographies?

I spent one year of my graduate experience remembering what it was to be a student instead

of a corporate drone. The second year of graduate school exploded with my first experience

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' teaching my own course. Poetry no less. I fibrillated between ecstasy and terror at the
specter of standing in front of a class. Who was I to believe I could teach? I contacted Dr.
Palmer at Ahna, who will forever be connected to teaching in my life, easily falling back
into the role of advisee. Help! He sent me a measurable stack of examples, ideas and
encouragement. The only way I could walk into that first class with any modicum of
confidence was in the feeling that I would be channeling Dr. Palmer - his patient and
creative teaching ideals and style. With every experience since that first class, I have
foraged more and more of my ideas for teaching fiom my own life, experience, idealism and

enthusiasm.

In an earlier essay, Prison, I rhetorically posed the questions: How can a person go forward
and teach without the shield of idealism? What happens when it’s gone? I don’t think
the shield should block out all else. I don’t think idealism is enough to arm yourself with
before entering a classroom. I do believe it is a way to nourish my enthusiasm and a
salve to prevent me from curling up to lick any teacher-wounds. When the shield is gone,
then your skin must become hard as your defense. Once your skin becomes too hard, you

are immovable and no teaching or learning can happen.

Some of my idealism as a human and not just as a teacher was constructed in response to
my father’s cynicism. I thank him for that as well as for the early programming and all
the painful pricks and prods that nudged me closer to the decisions that have brought joy.
One of the most hurtful and disdainful things my father ever said to me growing up was:

“I can read you like a book.” I hated him for that statement because it oozed with self-

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ascribed power. Power over me. Power to somehow write me and therefore to read me.

Literacy and power — they continue to dance.

Now, I am writing myself.

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