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STARTING SCHOOL
My first day at school is indelibly stamped on my psyche.
It was a traumatic event, the first step of my journey toward
adulthood.
The experience of starting first grade was undoubtedly more
daunting in the 30s than it is today. Day care centers and nursery
schools were still institutions of the future. In our school there
wasn't even a kindergarten. So I went right into the first grade,
cold turkey. And this is how I remember it:
I am on a bus with my mother. (My father is not there,
having gone to work as though this was just an ordinary day.)
The bus ride is fun; but I am a little leery about what awaits me
at the end of it. Until now, I had no complaints. Life had been
good to me. I spent the days playing with my dolls, cutting out
pictures from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, and talking to my
friends, some real, some imaginary.
Now I am entering a new phase, and it is not by choice. But
my mother says it is something that happens to everyone. I am
six years old, and therefore must go to school.
Who invented it? Maybe that is one of the things I will
learn.
We get off the bus in front of a red brick two-story building
and walk around it to the back door, which is open. Inside there
is a wooden staircase with shiny banisters leading up to another
level. I can hear the sounds of voices and scuffling shoes
somewhere above me. Some nuns stand in front of a door,
talking. I wonder whether they are the same nuns I see walking
out of church with their faces covered after Sunday High Mass.
One smiles at us and tells us where we are to go. It is a room
next to a water fountain.
Inside there are other children, sitting at varnished desks
arranged in neat rows. I am assigned to the second desk in the
third row. There is a shelf underneath for my tablet and pencil
box.
In front of the room is a bigger desk, with a nun seated
behind it. I have been told that my teacher will be Sister
Carmela. My mother is bending over the desk, writing
something on a piece of paper the nun has put before her. When
she finishes she walks over to me and says it is time for her to
leave.
I start to cry. I am being abandoned. My mother has signed
a paper turning me over to this institution where I have been told
I will spend the next eight years. I am on my own, in a roomful
of strangers.
Sister Carmela comes to my desk. She wears thick glasses
and smells of Palmolive soap. Her veil brushes against the back
of my head as she bends down to say something. "I taught your
brother two years ago. He's in the room just across the hall."
Her voice is not harsh, as I imagined it would be.
She talks to other children as she hands out sheets of lined
paper, announcing that this morning we will begin learning the
alphabet. This makes me feel better, as I already know most of
it, even though I can't yet say it backwards, like my older
brother. I stop crying.
Sister Carmela goes to the blackboard and begins writing on
it with scratchy white chalk. The letters of the alphabet. The
first letter is an A, shaped like the roof of a house. We are told
to copy it.
My pencil box has three long yellow pencils in it and smells
like the nickel-and-dime store where my mother bought my
school supplies. I take out one of the pencils, which has a
smooth, sharp point, not like the pencils in the kitchen drawer,
which my father sharpens with his pocketknife.
The girl sitting across from me drops her eraser and I pick it
up for her because it bounced to my side of the aisle. We smile
at each other. At recess I learn that her name is Teresa.
By noon we are handing in our work sheets. Sister Carmela
says we are making good progress.
Soon it is time to go home. Our mothers are in the hallway
waiting for us. Tomorrow, Sister tells us, we will have school all
day and learn how letters are put together to make words. That, I
think, will be useful to know.
"How did it go?" It is the first question my mother asks me.
I shrug my shoulders. I haven't forgotten how she left me
that morning to fend for myself in a strange environment.
"Tell me about your teacher."
"She's nice. Not the type to abandon children, certainly."
"Did you make any friends?"
"Just one. Teresa."
I check the canvas bag bouncing against my thigh to make
sure my pencil box is still there. Tomorrow I will need it.
Tomorrow, when I return to school. The thought does not
frighten me. I feel more confident now than I did this morning.
Mother has acted in my best interests after all.
I take her hand as we cross the street to wait for the bus that
will take us home.
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