Sentenced to a Year of Report Cards

I'm taking a creative writing course at Suffolk Community College and this is my first assignment: Write about an event from your life, age 7 or younger.  First, write about it in the first-person present, as if you are the child.  Then, write of the same event as an adult in the first-person past.  As usual, I bent the rules a little by using the adult segment more as an epilogue, rather than a redundant retelling.

Part One – I Am Indicted

Oh, boy, I’m really in trouble now. I didn’t think anything would be as hard as second grade. Our assistant principal, Mrs. Como, came into the classroom this morning and my teacher, Mrs. Herman, called me up to the front of the room. I was standing there while Mrs. Como pointed a piece of paper at me and told my classmates that this is what happens to students who don’t know how to behave.


I’m always being sent to Mrs. Como’s office. Mrs. Herman hates me and every time I make a peep, she points her finger to the door. I don’t even ask where or why anymore, I just go. Sometimes, Mrs. Como talks to me about my behavior, and sometimes she calls my Mom on the phone while I’m sitting in her office. When she talks, it’s boring. But when she calls Mom, I know I’m gonna get a beating when I get home. I’d rather be bored.


This was different. Mrs. Como was telling everybody about the piece of paper.


“Starting today, Charles will be bringing a report card home for his parents to sign every day. Mrs. Herman shall note all instances of his misbehavior. If he bothers any of you, tell your teacher and she will write it on the card.”


I’m dead. This means a beating a day, starting today. I didn’t do anything bad today, so the space on the card is blank, but just telling Mom about the report card means an hour of screaming and cursing and maybe some smacks with the wooden spoon. I didn’t say anything about it when I went home for lunch. Now, school is out and I’m walking down the block towards home. I’m not close enough to see my apartment building and I start to pray that it caught fire and killed everybody inside. I get closer and see everything is okay. That means everything is okay for everyone except me. I’m dead.


I ring for Mom to buzz me in. I usually take the steps two or three at a time. This time, I walk up the stairs real slow to the fourth floor. The apartment door is unlocked. Good. Maybe I can sneak past her to my room. I close the big door, nice and easy so Mom can’t hear me coming in. I tiptoe into the foyer and then I stop at the sound of her voice coming from my parents’ bedroom.


“Charles!”


How does she do that? I walk into the bedroom and Mom is sitting at the sewing machine, doing her piecework. That’s her job, sewing these white strips together all day. She won’t tell me what it’s for; she just calls it her “homework.” Grandma told me they were bra-straps, but not to let anyone know I knew that. Grandma trusts me and I act dumb, for both our sakes. Mom looks up from her sewing.


“Did anything happen at school today?”


I take a deep breath and hand her the report card, looking down at the floor. I try to answer, but the words get stuck in my mouth.


“Stop mumbling.”


“You have to sign it.”


I‘m afraid to look at her. I wait for a question or a scolding, or a slap across my cheek. I start to cry, but try to hide it. I hear Mom sigh and tell me to bring her a pen from the kitchen counter. I run off to get it, just happy to be safe for a little bit. I walk back in and hold out the pen, reaching so maybe I can avoid the first swing. Mom grabs the pen from my hand, signs the card and hands both back to me.


“Put the pen back where you found it and put the report card with your books. Then come back here.”


I do what she says and I’m standing in front of her again. I’m waiting for my punishment, tensed up for the screaming and the beating, but Mom stays calm.


“Mrs. Como called me after lunch. She said she likes you very much. I don’t know why. She says you’re disruptive in class and your teacher is close to a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Herman wants you transferred, but Mrs. Como wants to see if this daily report card will help straighten you out.”


Mom is starting to cry while she’s talking.


“You’d better not get into any more trouble in school, Mister. I swear, you’re making everyone miserable and I’m sick of it. Behave yourself. I’m tired of hearing that you lack self-control. I’ll beat the crazy out of you if I have to, understand?”


“Yes, Mom.” I want to say it isn’t fair, but I’m glad to get away without a beating this one time. I know I can’t be good in school, but now I have to be extra careful. This Second Grade life is hard for a kid. It’s all so strange, but I’m not allowed to say why I think it is, because nobody else understands. It isn’t fair, not one bit.


Part Two – I Am Judged


It is a fact, a well-worn shoe walking through our family’s inner circle, that I was an abused child. My younger brothers and I laugh over the memory of that age of lunacy whenever the family is gathered around a holiday table, goading Mom into admitting she’d be under arrest for her past sins in these sensibly modern times. Dad remains silent when the subject arises, as he did when the bruises were fresh. Much the same as other invited guests from the periphery of those good old days, he didn’t witness the crimes. He worked two jobs, sometimes three, to keep us warm and fed, and to keep Mom stocked with wooden spoons.


Perspective is important when attempting to pass judgment; the difficulty in achieving a truly fair point of view is probably why it isn’t a good idea to judge anyone in the first place. Nevertheless, I started out telling this story, so I may as well finish it. My adventures in school and the daily behavioral report that I was compelled to present to my parents were byproducts of my own conscious choices. I constantly questioned established rules and tested permissible limits, and did so in a manner unacceptable for that time, or any other. I ridiculed the basic tenets that my parents and teachers held dear and held myself hostage to ideas they could not fathom. This is not a design for happy childhoods in otherwise comfortable circumstances.


The daily report card affair lasted less than two months. In the interim, I misspoke on occasion, prompting the vague entry for the record, but not presenting any concrete argument in favor of Mrs. Herman’s bad seed theory. Also during that period, our class took a series of standardized tests, where students penciled in the answers to multiple-choice questions. School officials disclosed the results to my parents a few years later, and the timing couldn’t have been worse for Mrs. Herman. This poor scholastic performer, this unbridled scamp, mindlessly frolicking within a classroom designed for accelerated students (and often setting it on its end), earned the highest test scores in the district.


Mrs. Herman took a sabbatical in the middle of the school year and the daily report card followed close behind her into mere remembrance. I’m not sure if she left at administration request or felt cowed by her failure to assess my potential or if I, as my mother put it, finally drove the poor woman to the loony bin. All I know is that every teacher of mine in the years following, until we moved out of the Bronx, knew me by reputation before the school year began, keeping careful watch and a tight rein over me throughout the school day.


Looking back now, I can appreciate those educators having jobs to perform while trying to work around the instability that I represented. For them, I embodied an impossible challenge and each, in their own way, placed me in the category of unwanted annoyance. For me, their ignorant fear of my unknowns fed an element that bloomed into a character full of impish, sardonic glee. As an adult, I revel in my particular personal niche and in the fact that no amount of mental or physical torture can dissuade me from being the smiling pain in the ass that life trained me to be.