Jasmine Doe

Hale

English 1301

September 29, 1994

 The Box

      One school morning in the first grade, our studies were interrupted when Mrs. Melder announced that school had been canceled for the day.  She instructed us to gather our belongings and then wait quietly at our desks until our parents came for us.  One by one, the students in my class disappeared as their parents came to take them home. 

     When Mrs. Melder and I were the only people left in the classroom, I told her that there was no one to pick me up.  Daddy needed our one car for work, I explained, and our family was too new in the neighborhood to know anyone with an extra car.  She told me we should give Mama a few more minutes.  While we waited, I wondered if her bee hive hair-do would collide with the desk-top, if she was taller than Daddy, if those beady black eyes were as small as they looked behind glasses, and if her think pale lips ever smiled.

     Finally, Mrs. Melder suggested we call Mama from the school office.  We did and Mama said I should begin walking home right away.  My teacher added that the school was about to close and I should hurry.

     When I stepped out of the building, I stopped.  The school appeared abandoned and spooky with its outside lights on in the unusual mid-morning darkness.  I was stunned to see a miniature lake in the sunken breezeway area.  I didn’t know that rain could cause so much trouble.  I knew there was no way around the water.  On the other side of the school’s circular drive, however, I could see patches of green grass.  I know what I had to do   Before I began, I opened my satchel and pushed my reading textbook as far down as I could.  As I did, the day I received my first school book flooded my memory.

     Mrs. Melder had made each of us stand by her desk while she prepared every new book for student acceptance.  I stood on the tips of my toes to witness my name being inscribed on the first line of the box reserved for student names.  With both hands, I carried my book back to my desk as if it were a delicate antique that required special handling.  The book was a beginning reader, sky blue in color with Alice and Jerry holding hands, running across the front cover.  In between its hardback covers was everything a first grader wanted to know about Alice, Jerry, and their adventures, one sentence at a time in tall bold black letters.  In a life full of hand-me-downs, my reader was one of a kind.

     That afternoon, I ran all the way home because I couldn’t wait to share my new book with Mama.  She patiently listened to me rattle on about our newly formed reading groups at school.  We examined the color pictures, and with her hand on top of  mine, we pointed to some of the easier words.  She told me that she was proud my school had entrusted me with such a beautiful book.

     Satisfied my book was safe in my satchel, my attention returned to the problem at hand.  I placed the satchel on top of my head, Indian style, and started the walk home.

     The first couple of steps left my feet heavy and squishy.  Slowly, I felt my way through the muddy water, and careful though I was, I lost my balance.  The satchel tumbled off my head, through my arms and plunked on to the water’s top.  I reached for my satchel right away, but I saw that it was floating.  Fascinated, I was content to hold the satchel’s see-through plastic handle loosely so that the gently, swirling ripples of water would curve around the corners.  I allowed the playful waters to move my satchel ahead of me until it was time to step onto higher ground.  As I pulled it out of the water, I was almost sorry the fun was over.

     Mama was waiting for me at the end of our carport.  In record time, she relieved me of my wet shoes, socks, and satchel.  I stared at my wrinkled toes while Mama placed my saddle oxfords on the oven door to dry.  When she asked me how my satchel had gotten wet, I simply shrugged my shoulders.  Mama reached into the satchel for the book and once she located it, the look on her face made me want to run.  I didn’t want to see what made Mama’s Cajun eyes darken.

     I almost didn’t recognize my reader.  The book was swollen, and its spine was broken. The pages were warped and stuck together with Mississippi flood water.  Before a tear could escape, Mama carefully lifted he book and laid it on a flat surface to dry.  Maybe we could save the book.  We would see.

     The next morning with bed sheets in tow, I scrambled to the kitchen where I knew the book was waiting.  I didn’t believe it was possible.  The poor thing looked worse.  I lifted its front cover just enough to peek into the student names box.  Like an aura, blue ink sprawled in all directions from my name.  I felt like my book had died.  The tears fell easily that time, and I imagined countless excuses for not attending school that day.

     I begged Mama not to make me go to school.  I pleaded with her to write Mrs. Melder a note saying the book had been lost.  Mama wouldn’t hear any of it.  Wasn’t it punishment enough that I had lost the one thing I cared most about?

     Mama walked with me to school that day.  She held my hand all the way to the breezeway area which was now back to normal.  We didn’t say much; we didn’t need to.  Mama gave my tiny hand a reassuring squeeze and left me there with the dead book to face Mrs. Melder alone.

     Mrs. Melder didn’t say much either.  I stood in front of her desk, head bowed, oblivious to the whispers behind me while she stared with disgust at the destroyed reader.  From a pile of old readers, she chose one that looked especially tired and opened its cover.  Careless, she scribbled my name underneath every other student’s name, so far down the list that my name wasn’t even in the box.