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The Humming Girl
Memphis Saltos Second grade was the worst academic year of my whole life. I was in remedial reading and failed math. I was sent to a child psychiatrist because I managed to break my arm and get a black eye in one week (they thought I was abused, I was really just clumsy). I was sent to the principal's office countless times for humming, yes, humming. It was a tough year. At seven I was not as big as a minute, but still an unmanageable little beast made of 3 parts pissed off to 4 parts misunderstood. I wasn't a beautiful or cute child so I doubt I endeared myself to any adult, much less a hardnosed old school teacher. And no matter how many times I tried, my brain refused to hold on to the pathways necessary to sit on a hard plastic chair and listen to the drone of my second grade teacher's (Miss Thorn, ah of course I remember her name--THORN! A thorn at my side!) voice until my eyes crossed. Whenever her lectures became too dull to amuse me I made up my own reality. I would begin pretended I was somewhere else: somewhere cooler with wild appaloosa horses running and kicking around me, or anywhere that didn't smell of sweat, halitosis and cafeteria food. Most of time while I was lost in these reveries I would begin humming, some tune my mom would sing at breakfast or perhaps something I heard on the radio on the way to school. "WHO is doing that humming?" Miss Thorn would yell, knowing very well it was me again. "HER!" Mark Tabor would say pointing to me. He used to love to rat on me. By this time my expression would go blank from embarrassment and terror. "Oh my gawd, am I humming again?" I would think. I truly never meant to BEGIN humming, but somehow it would just happen. Perhaps I was used to being alone, to living life within the confines of my own head that I assumed everyone lived in similar isolation and thus did not hear anything else, like some little girl humming in class. So off I was sent to see Mr. Funches, the principal (I remember HIS name because my mom had a big crush on him). I never thought it was fair. How do you explain to the principal that your teacher and Mark Tabor were just conspiring together to humiliate you? That you never meant to hum on purpose? By the end of that awful school year I was thought not so much boneheaded stupid as stubbornly stupid by my teacher. The late springs in Louisiana were so desperately hot that there as nothing to do but stay as still as possible and sweat and let your mind wander and hum even more. When Miss Thorn refused to let me go to the bathroom because of my antics I had had enough. I remember taking a deep breath, raising my chin a littler higher, and walking straight out of the classroom. I walked all the way down that busy street to my home. My mother didn't seem to shocked to see me sitting out on the porch with my lips pursed in my familiar tragic I'm-just-so-persecuted pout; but she did complain to my dad later "Our reina de la basura will be lucky to graduate from elementary school! What will we do with this pata caliente when she is a teenager?" |
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