At last the morning came that we had all been waiting for. The annual McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children All-School Poetry Contest!
Once a year, in the gymnasium, a new King or Queen of Poetry is crowned. The child who is crowned Queen or King of Poetry is praised to the heavens and showered with a lifetime of glory and honor. It is the Academy Award, the Nobel Prize, and the MacArthur Genius Grant all rolled into one. When your most humble narrator was a child in East Germany, she won the Grundschule Poetry Contest and was heaped with honor and glory. There is nothing like a wonderful boost for a child’s ego, early in life, to send her on the wonderful path of the teaching and the scholarly appreciation. That warm feeling of triumph is a memory I treasure to this day.
The morning was boiling hot, but all the children were dressed in their finest clothes. Little patent leather Mary Janes shined. Hair tied neatly in beautiful pink bows. Lace-up shoes polished. Jackets and ties. No food on any shirts! It was a glorious, glorious morning. All the school was there. The parents. The teachers. Not the staff, of course. The grandparents. Even the children of the custodians were in their nicest frocks and overalls. The mood was festive. Fröhlich. Upbeat.
It was as wonderful a day as is possible to imagine.
Well, not totally.
When you work at a place with only one German employee, things can quite easily get into disarray. The McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children was no exception to this ironclad rule. Children were running every which way. Teachers were yelling. Parents were wondering where they should sit. Grandparents were staggering around and bashing people with their canes. There was actually even a dog in the back of the gymnasium, barking. Not one solitary person had the presence of mind to take it outside and lock it in a hot automobile.
The gymnasium, on a blistering day in June, was a festival of disgusting smells, most of them involving the sweat. I was certain that, behind a bleacher somewhere, a sweaty child was throwing up.
From my seat where I was doing my knitting surrounded by my beloved pupils, my sharp and clever eyes noticed a man looking at me from across the room. I was not sure who this man was, but I felt that, once upon a time, he may have been a student of mine. So many attractive men had been my students at one time or the other.
The beastly dog’s incessant barking was getting on my nerves. The yelling of the children, the moaning of their parents, the hysterical screeching of the grandparents wandering lost, were getting on my nerves. What I needed was a bottle of Schnaps and a fistful of tranquilizers.
Mr. Hertenstein took his position on the stage. Everyone instantly got quiet like dead bunny rabbits. It would be wonderful to be the principal of a school and be able to make seven hundred people become quiet and still simply by stepping up to a podium!
Even more wonderful than winning a Golden Apple the fifth time for Excellence in Teaching at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children, I must confess, it would be deliciously wonderful to become the principal of the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children. This was a thought I almost never allowed myself to think. Sometimes when he had a few brandies, Mr. Ravenbach would have this thought and speak it out loud to me. I would always say, “Tut-tut” and say no more about it.
But, deep inside, I must confess, a tiny flame did burn.
Perhaps, if Tobias Wilcox won the All-School Poetry Contest . . .
Handsome Mr. Hertenstein said, “It’s fantastic to be gathered here today for the annual McKegway All-School Poetry Contest. Each and every child wrote and learned his or her own poem all by themselves, from kindergartener to eighth-grader. Isn’t that fabulous?!” Mr. Hertenstein applauded vigorously. Everyone applauded vigorously. Everyone wanted the principal to adore them.
My applause was the loudest.
“Will the children who won for their grade please come onstage to say your poem for the All-School Poetry Contest. Kindergarten on my right, eighth grade on my left.” More joyful applause.
Mine was the most joyful. I am certain Mr. Hertenstein was pleased.
The nine children stood up and awkwardly threaded their way down front, then up the steps to the stage and a row of hard wooden chairs.
Susie Clementine sat first. So adorable with her pink shoes. Followed by first grader Matteen Taheri. Then, for the second grade, Alejandro Gonzales. Third grade was rather poorly represented by Amanda Pennington. Then, as you are quite well aware, along came young Tobias Wilcox, representing the fourth grade, and in particular, the wonderful classroom of wonderful Mrs. Leni Ravenbach. Wunderbar!
As he marched up on that glorious stage, young Tobias Wilcox was radiant. Positively, extravagantly, radiant! I had never seen a more handsome boy. And, in this flattering light, such an interesting thing, can you believe it? He did not look even the slightest bit fat!
I felt quite an outpouring of love and affection and tenderness and caring for my young pupil. His poem was, like his adoring teacher, wunderbar!
Other than the ceaseless barking of the insane dog, it was a glorious, glorious day! Making altogether too much noise, the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students took their place onstage to the right of young Tobias Wilcox. The longer they had been away from the orderly classroom of Mrs. Leni Ravenbach, the more scruffy, less pleasant, and less presentable each child had become! Truly, the eighth-grader looked as if he had been dragged out of a polluted river after a month underwater.
No one could be quiet. I was so deeply embarrassed for Principal Hertenstein. How marvelous he looked in his three-piece dark gray suit and bright cardinal-and-gold tie, standing before the parents, the grandparents, and that horrid barking dog!
He raised his hand, gently, quietly, and with scarcely a noticeable motion. Everyone in the sweltering gymnasium was instantly silent. Including the dog.
“Shall we begin?”
As Larry Dooling, the McKegway Gazette reporter, made notes on his little notepad, the first little girl, the one in the kindergarten, did a fine job. She did not pee-pee in her ruffly underwear or vomit. Quite the improvement over the kindergarten poetry learners in years past!
I rubbed my big, hard belly and waited with great anticipation for the first-grader and the second-grader and the third-grader to start and finish their poems. I was so pleased that I had been able to reach young Tobias Wilcox and been able to help him, and that he had seen the light of day and realized a warm, wonderful poem about his beloved Grossvater would be the best thing in the world for him, his parents, and his future.
The first grade child and second grade child, they did well. Actually, not so well. The first grade child could not stop looking at himself on the big video screens, and the second grade child forgot the words to his poem and had to be reminded six times. Finally, he cried and sat down. How awful for Mrs. Jiang, his teacher! I observed her bright red face and her shame. She should have drilled him more. Then she would not have been embarrassed in front of everybody in the whole, entire world.
The third grade child, the less said about her and her idiotic poem, the better.
At last came the grand moment for which we all had been waiting.
Mr. Hertenstein said, “Representing Mrs. Ravenbach’s fourth grade classroom, Toby Wilcox.” The amount of applause young Tobias received while stumbling to the center of the stage was disconcerting. I had no idea the child was so popular.
He removed his baseball hat and put his hands behind his back like Abraham Lincoln. He looked around the room. He looked at me. His teacher.
Inside, I felt warm and peaceful. A sweet poem about a beloved grandfather . . . wunderbar!
What then came out of his mouth was not what I was expecting. I will never forget a word of it. Not in a million years.
He said, “This is called ‘My Teacher.’ I wrote all of it myself.” He was smiling an enormous amount. His teeth looked like piano keys. He was smiling more, in fact, than I’d ever seen a child smile in my entire teaching career.
He began to recite his awful poem.
“Her crowning glory is her golden hair;
We wish her manners were equally fair.
She lectures that the worst thing is a liar,
But our classroom smells of her pants on fire.
She goes on and on about what we lack,
While she ‘invented’ Mr. Ravenbach.
I bet she made him up, who knows why . . .”
Everyone was sitting up straight. No one was breathing. Each and every person in that hot, stinky gymnasium was drinking in the awful Dreck Tobias Wilcox was reciting as if it were the nectar of the gods.
I regarded their faces.
They were believing what the odious child was saying.
The room began to swim and swirl. I tried to raise my wonderful self from the rickety chair. My until-now-reliable muscles were not helping. A taste of panic spread through me like slow fire, not unlike five shots of Schnaps.
Then, from across the dark gymnasium, I saw a tiny woman slicing ahead like hot acid through a sea of dirty little ants. Mrs. Button! My dear friend! Coming forward with an expression of righteous anger that made my heart swell in my great, firm bosom. I could see that she had something she wanted to share with one and all. The look of venomous hatred on her face said it was going to be directed at young Tobias Wilcox, her across-the-street neighbor and tubby nemesis. She was going to give him a piece of her mind!
The moment, the day, the entire school year would be handed back to me, as I so richly deserved. Victory was about to be mine.
Disgusting, fat, repugnant, reprehensible, and not too bright Tobias Wilcox took a deep breath and bellowed, “Mrs. Button! You stop right there! Don’t you even open your tiny little mouth with your dead-person lipstick! It doesn’t matter how rich you are, nobody in this entire gym wants to hear what you have to say! Your kids graduated forever ago and you’re not even a parent here! You only came to get me in trouble and tell lies to help your fat friend Mrs. Ravenbach! Don’t come over to my house! You only pretend to be my mom’s buddy! Don’t ask her if you can borrow sugar, or butter, or a loaf of bread, or two eggs! I don’t ever want any more of your stupid brownies!”
“Why . . . you impertinent . . . little twerp,” Mrs. Button stammered.
“Get outta here! This’s not your school! It’s mine!”
The entire student body, they clapped! Apparently, the bitter feeling young Tobias Wilcox held for his across-the-street neighbor was shared by all of the children. This came as quite the surprise, as she was a totally delightful woman. Who made such lovely tea cakes.
My dear friend, Mrs. Button, was, for the first time since I’d known her, unable to say a single, solitary word. Not one! With all the blood boiling inside her, her eyes were about to explode.
As she walked away, her lovely dress seemed to grow three sizes as she shrank just a little. Pushing on the gymnasium door, she pivoted and stared at everyone with hateful black rage. The expression on her sharp-toothed face was the most poisonous, the most vengeful I had seen on any face, ever.
Even my own when I practiced in the mirror.
As the gymnasium door clapped shut behind my dear, dear friend, I resolved, the next time we had tea, to give her an extra lump of sugar. She deserved it.
Like the Tirpitz’s twin 38-centimeter deck guns revolving to face a tender target, my attention to young Tobias Wilcox I directed.
Knitting clutched to my marvelous bosom, my fashionable French high-heeled shoes made a wonderful thundering sound as toward the stage I marched. Tobias Wilcox’s poetry-reciting voice was extraordinarily clear and painfully loud, and, worse, could be heard by every person and dog in the gymnasium, as he said . . .
“She’s so compelled to lie, lie, lie
About me stealing her dumb brush and comb;
THE PENITENTIARY SHOULD BE HER HOME.
WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL—”
I’LL TELL THEM SHE TAUGHT US HOW TO BE CRUEL.
BUT I COULD PROBABLY FORGIVE HER LIES
IF, MR. HERTENSTEIN, SHE’LL APOLOGIZE.”
My face hurt, my ankles hurt. My chest hurt. I was afraid I was going to fall down like a giant redwood tree, dead of a heart attack. Encouragingly toward our principal I looked, but he remained maddeningly silent. I yelled at Tobias, “SIT DOWN. NOW.”
He said, in a most irritating tone, “I will not.”
“Mr. Hertenstein, YOU MUST STOP THAT BOY!”
Principal Hertenstein said, “Why?”
Tobias scrunched his little fat-cheeked face and said impertinently, “Why should he stop me?”
If there is one solitary thing that makes me lose all sense of the order and the discipline, it is being sneered at by an inferior.
“YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE FIRST RULE OF THE ALL-SCHOOL POETRY CONTEST!” I was breathing so hard.
His little voice was soooo syrupy nasty. “What rule was that, Mrs. Ravenbach?”
“EVERY CHILD’S POEM IS REQUIRED TO COME FROM THE WRITING THAT EACH STUDENT CREATED IN HIS OR HER JOURNAL!” From my mouth, spittle flicked.
He sounded too sweet, like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Too sweet. “I wrote in my journal just like everybody else.”
Unable to keep the victory from my voice, I deeply inhaled. My wonderful chest expanded. “YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO THAT ALL THE ENTIRE SEMESTER LONG, NOT ONE SINGLE WORD OF THIS HORRID POEM WAS EVER MENTIONED IN YOUR PRIVATE JOURN—”
The entire gymnasium went as silent as the Lakehurst Naval Air Station the morning after the Hindenburg disaster . . .
I had made a terrible mistake.
My first.
Fat little Tobias Wilcox’s deep, scratchy voice floated out above the heads of every person in the gymnasium. “Mrs. Ravenbach, you . . . read . . . my . . . journal.” His voice was as lethal and precise as a hypodermic needle filled with the potassium cyanide. He almost sounded German.
At me every child was looking. No one cares what the students think.
At me every parent was looking. No one cares what the parents think unless it’s time to get the tuition check.
Our beloved principal, Mr. Hertenstein, was looking at me most intently. He was the one I most didn’t want looking at me.
Into a walkie-talkie Richard spoke. “Now hear this. This is the Commander of the Red October.” The strange man across the room picked up his own walkie-talkie and listened as Richard said, “Proceed toward target at flank speed.” The vaguely familiar man set down his walkie-talkie and moved toward me.
I said, “Tobias Wilcox, there is no way I could have known what was in your confidential private journal! Teachers do not read their students’ personal, confidential, private journals!”
“You did.”
The strange man reached me.
I said, “And how such a thing could you possibly be thinking?!”
Tobias Wilcox said, “I’ve known it a long time, but who’d believe a kid, so we gave it to Mr. Grossinger, and guess what?! He found your nasty teacher fingerprints all over my personal, confidential, private journal! WHO DARES, WINS!”
“We . . . who is this ‘we’?”
The man squeezed my arm. A bit harshly. I inspected him. He was wearing, I must admit, a lovely dark blue worsted wool suit.
“And who might you be?!”
“Eddie LeJeune.”
Every child shouted, “FAST EDDIE?!”
“Mrs. Ravenbach, I am no longer Fast Eddie LeJeune . . . I am the Honorable Edward T. LeJeune. I am a federal judge.”
Every child in the gymnasium screamed.
The dog barked so much, it threw up on a kindergartener.
Tobias put on his nasty hat, jumped off the stage, and directly toward me he ran.
I had a terrible creeping sensation that the order and the discipline were going to become something that only existed in the past and the past was coming very quickly.
Mr. Hertenstein said, “Mrs. Ravenbach? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I am an educator! Why would I lie?!”
Right in front of me, Tobias did a ridiculous little happy dance and said, “Because you are a yucky human being! You put those hairbrushes and comb and mirror in my desk and pretended someone saw me, just to get me in trouble! Didn’t you?!” When I said nothing, he shrieked, “DIDN’T YOU?!!” Natürlich, I kept mum. There was always a chance he would be struck by the lightning.
Tobias said, “Mr. Hertenstein, I got something I gotta tell everybody at the McKegway School! Federal Judge Edward T. LeJeune did not repeat fourth grade and has never been in a penitentiary!”
From the audience, came the cheers. Cheers! I could not believe it.
The next time you mention someone being in the penitentiary, make sure that person is well and truly cold in their grave. It makes for fewer unpleasant confrontations, such as that one.
Pupils and former pupils from all directions squeezed in—like a vice. Fourth-graders, fifth-graders, sixth-graders, seventh-graders, eighth-graders, and also parents, grandparents, and custodians! There were even parents who many years ago in my class had been students. It felt like the witch trials in Salem. Or Joan of Arc, right at the end.
“Who’d ever want to kiss you?!”
“With your stinky mole!”
“How come you never got fired?!”
“You’re mean and you’re ugly and you smell like farts!”
“You ruined my son’s life!”
“I hated brushing your hair, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done!”
“No, no! The most disgusting thing was rubbing her icky feet!”
Tobias Wilcox said, “I never touched her nasty old gross feet!”
Federal Judge Edward T. LeJeune said, “Neither did I, Toby. You and I share a lot in common. We should have lunch sometime.”
The sea of bright red, angry faces gave me the awful sensation that they were chanting, “Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!”
I decided it was best to be elsewhere.
As I staggered toward the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children gymnasium doors, I saw fat, disgusting, deceitful, wretched, and most decidedly unpleasant Tobias Wilcox being kissed by Drusilla Tanner on his dirty cheek and being lifted on the shoulders of his classmates like a Roman emperor or a World Cup goalkeeper, amid hurrahs, huzzahs, hoorays, and overall tumults of exultation.
“Toby! Toby! Toby! Toby Toby Toby Toby TOBY!!”
Never have I ever seen a child so happy. His chums, at their teacher, began to laugh.
I left.
Even as the heavy metal doors slammed behind me, I could hear them laughing.
As I squeezed into my Volkswagen, I could hear them laughing.
And I can hear them laughing still.