Elementary school, 1986

We sat in pairs facing each other, that was how we were placed. Later on I learned that boys passed notes too but then it seemed like only girls did. First grade classroom is only a handful of scent memories now: pencil shavings; fermenting bananas; fat pungent markers of cherry, licorice and grape; Mrs. Lucas’ Avon perfume; chalky Comet residue on the desks; peanut butter chemically bonded to jelly; the funk of six-year-old boys and girls.

In the basement of this school—WPA project, mid-1930s—there was a giant boiler room. You could hear the furnace coughing to life from up in the gym, certain classrooms. The basement halls were long ago painted blue green. Morgue mold blue green. Our sticky cafeteria was in the basement, also the cramped music room. A windowless room with bare brick walls is where I learned to play cello and failed to sing. The closet, 10 x 16’, was actually a separate universe: stacks of sheet music, small guitars in cases, dusty flutes, heaps of tubas—a valve and key world. I spent a few afternoons hidden between the upright bass and a forlorn oboe.

The playground was sweet at the edges but shitty in the middle. The edges frayed into woods thick with willows and swampy cattails. Old bridge over a stream, clomp across on the way home from school. The jungle gym was a good place to get tetanus and a battered ego. Swings were neutral ground; you could be alone on them and technically you were participating, not sitting out. But still sitting. Only your legs had to work, and eventually you didn’t have to work at all, swings carried you. The myth that somebody’s older sister went over the top. Rush goes the gravel below, the trees and then the afternoon sun, one fast take for ground, school, faces, sky. Stop too fast: light fish go darting by, proof of invisible worlds.

At the beginning of gym class came a command: Run around the playground and the baseball diamond and then up by the cafeteria, five times. Mush! For the slow asthmatic girl it was blown out defeat. Falling down three times in one relay race, having spontaneous nosebleeds. Passing a hollow baton between sweaty palms: the point was to tire us out. The gym teacher was one of the last of the old guard and totally unsuited to handling children. Girls were ding dongs, boys were superstars. He was tall with a white crew cut, boxy glasses, and pants around his sternum. His silver whistle shined like melting stars. In third grade a girl fell off the uneven bars and this barnacle of a gym teacher stood right there and did not catch her. She broke her arm and hand. The elementary school was sued and I hoped the old gym teacher, who'd spent forty years throwing dodge balls at small children, would finally retire but he didn't.