Struggling in My Cocoon

My happiness returns bit by bit as I finish fourth grade and head into fifth.  It returns as I spend summer afternoons with Kim, Karen, Tricia, Patty, and Sue—my Frear Ave friends. Sometimes we create whirlpools by swimming circles or we play Marco Polo in Kim or Patty’s backyard pool. Sometimes we play with Tricia’s antique tiny Barbie dolls. Some days we play kick ball in the center of the road on our little dead end street. We use whatever we can find for bases: old boxes, someone’s jacket, or even a rock. Kick ball days are my favorite because we have to round up more neighborhood friends who we don’t normally play with—brothers, sisters, kids from neighboring streets. Neither age nor gender is an issue for any of us. We are boys and girls, children, adolescents, and teenagers, and we never fight nor is there ever a power struggle. We play happily until the sun is replaced by stars. It is these days that refill my heart with the happiness it has been missing. It is these friends who remind me that people are good and that life is good.

So I happily enter my fifth grade year at Public School #2. Gretchen is not in my class this year—I assume someone of importance made the wise decision to separate us. My new teacher is Mrs. Fran Hyde. She is new to our school. She is clearly green and every child in the class knows it. The teachers as School 2 are gritty and tough. They are tired and sarcastic. Mrs. Hyde is kind. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She is emotional. She shows that she cares. We eat her alive. Our class is pure chaos.

Most girls enter a cocoon of change around the fifth grade. It is the point where boys begin to notice them as more than peers, and so the teasing begins when one develops an interest in another. It begins innocently for me with a boy calling me “spaghetti head” because of my long, straight hair. This teasing spurred other boys to begin using this nickname for me.  Still, it doesn’t bother me because I like my long hair and I understand that they do to. Unfortunately, my body is also changing now, and Mom notices. She lets me know that it’s time to go bra shopping. The timing for this could not be worse with me already being on everyone’s radar.

I return to school lifted and pronounced, and it is quickly noticed and pounced upon. The kids, boys and girls, begin to call me “tissue tits”. The more red-faced I become, the more I am taunted. The more I explain, the guiltier I look. So I go into the hallway with Arshea Phillips, the alpha female in our class. I actually lift my shirt in the hallway and expose myself to her, hoping she will then tell everyone that I am not stuffing a bra to appear to have something that I do not. It is humiliating, but completely worth it to stop the constant barrage of accusations hurled at me. Arshea decides to keep my proof to herself. The taunts intensify in frequency and vulgarity.

The next day I open the lid to my desk and there is a Charmin wrapper. The class erupts in laughter and I shrink and my face burns. I quietly allow this behavior for over a week, hoping that the kids will forget me or move onto some other not-so-hurtful interest to occupy their small minds. They do not. I'm too easy a target for them.

I finally have enough, I swallow my pride, and I quietly tell Mrs. Hyde what has been happening. Mrs. Hyde responds flippantly by telling me that I have been encouraging them to say these things to me. I have encouraged them to dub me “tissue tits” and to leave tissue wrappers in my desk? I assume she is saying this either because she, too, believes that I am stuffing my bra with tissue or because I have not fought back. My heart begins to beat very hard. My temples are thumping so loudly that I cannot hear anything else that is being said. The blood in my body has risen from the pit of my stomach and now covers my entire chest and face so that my skin resembles a hot tamale candy. I completely lose control of my tightly held emotions. David Banner has morphed into the Hulk. I pick up a desk and I throw it at Mrs. Hyde while I curse her very existence.

 

I feel utterly defeated--more betrayed than I have ever felt. How could she, as a teacher and a woman, not understand this? How could she blame me? I realize on this day that no one will ever understand me. I am different than everyone else in this world, no matter how much I think we have in common, I have been cut from some crazy mold that I shattered upon exit.  

Mrs. Hyde dramatically runs from our classroom. I quickly realize where she is going and fear immediately turns me back into David Banner, then from David Banner to the terrified 11 year old girl that I am.

I will receive the worst punishment of my life for this lack of ability to control my emotions. I still struggle to pass the boulders placed in my brook by my “animal behavior” at school. This is the only musical composition of my life, that if I could choose, I would remove. OK, this and Punishing Gary.