Creeper

"Amelie, "Sammie," MCG, and friend Anita
a visit to SF before graduation

         He called himself a skinhead. His head was shaved; he wore jeans, suspenders, and tall doc martin boots. He repulsed me, but I was seventeen and I had only two weeks, just two weeks left in Tuolumne, that tiny, tiny town at the bottom of the valley, that had held me too tight with its big mountain arms.
         It was June and the days were long and hot, longer now that leaving was so near. Mom was out of her head from too much meth and not enough sleep. She was either wiping at her nose and sniffing or screaming, using every version of the F word with a "shit" and a "goddamn it" thrown in for emphasis.

As if in a final act of self-hatred, a final cut from the serrated mountain-shaped knife, I began fucking Creeper, or letting him fuck me. Recovering from a broken neck, he wore a neck brace which gave him a de-helmeted Darth Vadar look, and his head shaved with a razor nearly everyday, still flaked with dandruff that up close made him look like a very old man. Still it happened at night, after the beer and the desperation set in. It happened in the dark.

He said he was a skinhead, and I knew what that meant, but still he hung around people he was supposed to hate, or did hate, or whatever. And that's how I felt, whatever. There was no one else. I could tolerate the revulsion for just two weeks. I had been hated for so long already, none of it felt real anymore, and I was going to leave it all behind. I just had to get through these last fourteen days -- the bitter end of a long sentence, just 336 hours, 20160 minutes, 1209600 seconds of the dusty driveway, the dry star thistles, the go-no-where roads, and the dead feeling inside.

Collecting Boyfriends

        One summer, I collected boyfriends. I was fifteen and dating three guys all at the same time. Al was my Mexican-American boyfriend, Toby was my punk rock boyfriend, and Mike was my San Diego, skateboarding boy friend. Al, who was older, never told me his actual age because all the pot he smoked made him paranoid about statutory rape. Toby and I were both marching band nerds. We both played the drums. Mike spent the summers in Soulsbyville, a tiny spec of a town wedged between Tuolumne and Sonora, even smaller than Tuolumne. His parents were divorced, and he spent the school year living with his mom in San Diego. Mike must have dated Mexican girls in San Diego, or wanted to because he was more comfortable with me in public and otherwise than any guy I had dated.
         Alphonso Garcia, or Al was tall with washboard abs, long dark hair, and big brown eyes and long eyelashes that women always commented on. That I met Al through my mom was not lost on me. He and Randy would come over and hang around the house visiting with Mom and getting high. Al tried to ignore me at first -- tried to stay focused on sampling the product, but I found ways to get his attention. I wore catholic-school girl skirts or camouflage shorts with men’s see-through-white undershirts, cut so they'd bare my mid-drift. My shoulders, arms, and legs were defined from playing drums and twice as dark than usual from the sun. I was inexperienced, and Al knew it, liked that about me. Not quite a virgin -- someone had to show me the way, and he knew the way. But he vacillated between keeping things all business and acting his age. He didn’t want to fuck things up with my mom, and he knew my step-dad Donnie was uneasy when he and Les were around.
         Toby had braces and wore eyeliner. He was skinny, and he always brushed his teeth before we went out to smoke cloves and hang out at the Europa diner with Amelie, Sammie, Cindy his sister, and whomever else we could fit in Amelie’s car. Toby liked me but he was shy, and I probably came on too strong, getting drunk and kissing him when all he wanted to do was press his leg against mine in the car or under the table at the diner. The wealthier, prettier, trendy girls liked Toby too -- I felt I had to work extra hard to keep him interested, and I got the impression that he both liked and worried about my being Mexican. Even though he was a year younger and Sandy’s younger brother, I felt the most insecure about my looks when I was around him.
         Mike wore plaid board shorts and sex wax t-shirts. He told me I was beautiful as he rubbed his hand down my thigh, his skin light in comparison with mine even though he was a rather tan San Diego boy. We spent a lot of time rubbing up against one another in our bathing suits and otherwise at the Tuolumne pool, at the river where I took him skinny dipping for the first time, and in his dad’s bed. His dad told him that he was glad that he had found someone to spend time with while he was at work, and my job being shut down mid-way through that first summer made spending the day together possible. For the first week after the summer program for school-age kids had shut down, I continued getting rides to work from my step-dad. Mike would wait there for me with his skateboard, and after pressing me against the gym wall, pushing his body against mine, and kissing me soft then hard, he’d flip his bangs out of his blue eyes, grab me by the hand, and we’d half-skate, both of us on his board, half walk to his dad’s house where we’d spend the rest of the day alone.
         Since my mom sat around the house and smoked pot all day, I didn’t bring a lot of friends home, certainly not boyfriends. Al knew all that; he was on the inside, and so when my younger sister who I shared the attic bedroom with wasn’t around and my step dad was still at work, he’d sneak up the ladder to find me, his heavy boots on each two-by-four step giving him way every time. He’d sit down on my bed, a box spring and mattress on the floor, and lean back, his arms over his head, the back of his head in his hands, and his daddy long legs splayed in out in front of him, his knees forming pointy angles. His dingy white t-shirt always rose up as he leaned back exposing his stomach -- muscular and brown. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his bare stomach. Still early in the relationship, I reached out and slid my hand up under his shirt. I could feel goose bumps rise up over his skin. He closed his eyes for a second. Then he grabbed my hand, stopping it before it slid any lower.
         “Jail bait, that’s what you are. Jail bait,” he said, holding my hand under his shirt in place and smiling. He had a fantastic smile.
         I kept my hand where it was and climbed on top of him, straddling him, pinning him down to my bed and leaning my face close to his.
         “Don’t worry, no one here wants the cops around,” I said breathing hard into his ear. He smelled earthy and sweaty, and I could feel his heart beating under his shirt. I didn’t care that he was older, or a high school drop out, or laying low growing pot in the foothills –- his black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin didn’t look out of place on mine. I felt him warm and hard under my thigh. I licked the skin under his ear, pushing his hair back. His large hands gripped my thighs, pulling me toward him hard.
         Toby was shy. He liked me, but I had to pursue him. He was only fourteen. I was just getting to know his older sister Sandy who was a year older when Toby caught my eye. The Summerville High and Sonora High bands had a couple of joint events every year. He played the trumpet, drums, and bass guitar and he looked like his sister Sandy who was one of my first girl crushes. I liked that he was younger and shy. I remember really seeing him for the first time behind a drum at Sonora High. He had an earring in his ear and he was wearing eyeliner, pegged pants, and an open, button-down, plaid shirt with a grey t-shirt underneath it. He sort of took my breath away, a band geek and punk kid all in one. His favorite record was Social Distortion's Mommy's Little Monster, a record that we all listened to over and over. He didn’t talk much, and when he did it was about music or his father, also a musician who had toured with a variety of bands when he was younger and who died suddenly a short time later, devastating the entire family and the rest of us too because his parents had still been married after many years and had still been totally in love.
         I mostly hung out with Toby in crowd with all our other friends -- it felt better that way. We’d sneak glances at each other and sneak off and kiss for a bit, but I was careful not to steal all of his innocence all at once. When I first met Mike that summer I invited him to the river with a group of friends, that included Toby and a bunch of others from Sonora, so he could make some friends. We had a favorite spot down under an old railroad bridge in Sonora just off of Tuolumne Road.  It had a waterfall and a couple of deep pools and level places to wade with wine coolers in hand. Toby was into me that day, pulling me into the water and kissing me like I was his. I could see Mike watching us from where he sat alone on a nearby rock. I had invited him so he could make some friends since he was only in town for the summer, not sure if Toby was coming or not or if he did if we were even really together. Toby and I were standing in a pool of water just above the bar of sand where everyone else was hanging around, and he was holding me around the waist and kissing my neck -- something that I had wanted, been wanting for months, and it felt good, but I could barely feel anything, not with Mike and his sad blue eyes so close by.
         Mike loved the Rolling Stones. Just before we met, I had lined up a housesitting job. One my high school teachers who lived in town hired me to take care of her chickens, goats, and cats. Mrs. Somerwell and her husband were super intellectual communist hippie types with a big record and book collection that lined the walls of the living room and dining room. I had planned on trying to take Al to their place to keep me company, but he hardly ever left Randy’s side, so I wound up taking Mike instead. Al told me to date other guys because he didn’t want me getting to dependent on him; I was in still in high school and he wanted to keep it that way. Even though he wanted me to see other people, I didn’t tell Al that Mike and I spent a night up there together, listening to Stones tracks the whole time: “Brown Sugar,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” Satisfaction” “Paint It Black,” and the song “Angie” over and over again. We put blankets and pillows on the front room floor but we barely slept. Mike had only had done it with one other girl, and I had only done it with Sam that one time and Al only a couple of times at that point, and our fifteen-year-old bodies, cursing with horny hormones needed more. We rolled around under the covers all night, dozing off for short periods of time, one of us waking and reaching for the other -- I’d unwind myself from his arms and pull myself back on top of him where he’s open his eyes all blue and sleepy, and he’d grin, a sign that he was ready to go again.
         “You are so fucking beautiful,” he told me in the morning as the sun was coming up over the hills. He was propped up on an elbow, the other hand tracing my collarbone and down under one breast then over the other.
         I couldn’t help smiling and lowering my eyes.
         “I mean it,” he said, lifting my chin to make eye contact and kiss me soft on the mouth, so I’d believe him -- wouldn’t contradict him or point out a flaw or wish for something that I didn’t or would never possess.
         It was a deliriously hot summer. There were days when I’d get home from work after seeing Mike for an hour or so after my shift and Al and Randy’s car would be in the driveway, and the phone would be ringing, and it would be friend Sammie calling to say that Cindy, and Toby, and John, and Paul wanted to get together. I had gone from being rejected or ignored by all boys at my own high school and not wanting to date any of them anyway and replaying The Smiths in my head over and over, “I am human and need to be loved,” to deciding that I need to make a rule about only sleeping with one guy on any given day and maybe even creating a two day rule, if that was even possible. Seeing Toby less that summer made it easier, and he was the easiest to give up or avoid since he was shy and young and a virgin, and lived in Jamestown. While others may have, I didn’t get all caught up worrying about my reputation, or feeling bad, like I was disrespecting myself. I actually felt pretty damn good. I only worried about getting pregnant. And I mostly only worried about getting pregnant because Al worried about it all the time, but I was on the pill -- had been for about two months. I was taking some precautions.
         Mine and Al’s relationship took off that summer. He brought a strange kind of balance to my life and to my sense of self, and he was a realist, also paranoid and ignorant and frustrating at times. Al knew that I dated other guys, wanted it that way too, and we continued seeing each other for almost two years, but only when he’d show up at my house with Randy to see my mom or conduct business. For a short period one winter when it was too cold to stay in their cabin in the hills, I saw Al nearly every day because he and Randy stayed in a small trailer on the lot behind our house. Randy picked fights with me and with Al because I was coming between them, keeping Al from him, and jeopardizing their operation by risking problems with my step-dad. I knew that Randy was jealous too, not of me, but that it was Al who had a girlfriend this time when he didn't. All the adults in my life, including Randy, said that what I felt for Al wasn’t really love, but they were wrong.

         Toby and I would see each other off and on for about a year or more without ever getting super serious because there didn’t seem to be any point, and we waited until he was fifteen to go all the way. I couldn’t bear to tempt him into anything other than intense kissing sessions and heavy petting which he got rather good at until he was at least fifteen, the age I was when I did it the first time. It happened one night at a big sleepover party at Amelie's house, the same night that we had to get Amelie's grandmother to drive our friend Becky to the hospital because she poisoned herself drinking too much. She was fine in the end, only in terrible trouble with her parents. The next morning, bleary-eyed and jittery, Cindy came out of the room where she had spent the night with her boyfriend, and gave Toby a congratulatory hug.

‘You’re a man now, Toby,” she squealed loud enough for everyone to hear.
         Mike was only in town for a few weeks the summer I collected boyfriends. He went on vacation with his dad near the end of his stay only to return for a couple of days before going back to his mother in San Diego, something that I was almost relieved about because I didn't think I could keep up such a frantic pace though we had a long, teary goodbye on our last date. Chaperoned by his dad, we went to see National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation. Mike’s dad sat away from us nearer to the front of the theater amongst a group of people who laughed at every single one of Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold’s blunders. Mike and I sat in the back kissing the entire time, stopping to wipe away tears, each of us promising the other, not to be true, but that we’d see the other again. And I did see Mike again the next summer after his dad moved to Angels Camp and one time the summer after that though we were never quite able to capture the magic of that first summer, the summer that Al showed me the way, and Toby let me pursue him, and Mike said, “Look at you. You are so fucking beautiful,” the summer I collected boyfriends.

First Dance

         At twelve, school dances were an awkward way to spend two hours. I spent most of them sitting on a cold metal chair around the perimeter of the cafeteria, waiting for someone to ask me to slow dance to “Theme From Greatest American Hero," or waiting to hear The Police. Still dances were better than sitting home with my brother and sister, while my mom got stoned and her live-in boyfriend Danny drank beer and watched TV.

My first dance ever was by far the worst. My best friend Amelie and her mom had gone to live in Carson City, so I had no one to dance or sing along with to our favorite songs like, "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," or "Jessie's Girl," by Rick Springfield. And no one really danced. Some kids stood around in small clumps, or sat around the perimeter, waiting for some kind of sign telling them what to do. The cafeteria looked different: big and sort of empty.  The long lunch tables on wheels that folded in half upright were stowed away at one side of the room and the lunch counter was covered by its sliding cold metal shade.
         As he always did, along with one seventh and one eighth grade teacher, Mr. Lark chaperoned the dance. While uncomfortable in my hand-sewn dress, I always felt safe around Mr. Lark, the school's double-duty music teacher and vice-principal. I had been one of his admirers since second grade when he gave me the solo in the Christmas program, and I had since learned to play the flute under his tutelage then joined the elementary school band.

When I was first learning to play the flute, Mr. Lark pulled me out of class once a week for a private lesson in a small room off of the cafeteria in which sat only two chairs, a music stand, and sheet music. Being raised by a single mom, Mr. Lark, was for many years, the only man in my life. I practiced the flute everyday for at least fifteen minutes, as he suggested, because I loved music, but also because I wanted to hear Mr. Lark say how much I had improved on "Merrily We Roll Along," which, to his delight, I had recognized as "Mary Had A Little Lamb." When I asked, he told me that "Mary Had A Little Lamb" had been renamed "Merrily We Roll Along" because the publishers thought we might feel childish playing a song they sang over and over again in nursery school. Like we wouldn't notice. I sure noticed “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the alphabet song. Those were kind of the same too.  When I mentioned these other songs, Mr. Lark smiled and said that I had a good ear.
         Before seventh grade dances, our K-8 "socialized" boys and girls in PE by implementing the infamous square dancing unit -- only to be outdone by the Chicken Fat record we exercised to on rainy days. While I liked boys a great deal and had already been kissed, I didn't especially like holding sweaty boy hands. I would have rather been playing music instead of dancing to it, or waiting for some boy with sweaty hands to ask me to dance or not ask. After the first dance of the year, us girls realized we could simply dance together to our favorite songs, rather than waiting for Ian Dresner or Brett Harding to ask us. Noel Lark, Mr. Lark's younger daughter, would often lead the girls to the floor in a flurry of wild dance moves -- she didn't seem to care at all that her dad was there watching.

         This night, I sat waiting on a metal chair, with a couple of other girls who weren't dancing, thinking I shouldn't have worn the stiff purple dress that my mother had spent several days making for me, hunched over her sewing machine. It had a stiff, floral, quilted belt that never lay quite right. It was already getting late, and I hadn't really danced at all. I had watched others slow dance, spotting horny eighth graders about to get too close, expecting Mr. Lark, Mr. Roundell, or Ms. Martz to tap them on the shoulder and a make a "separate" command with their hands. I only got up from my chair once and it was to walk to the refreshment table. I had a cup of punch served by someone’s mom and wandered back to my seat glad to be up at least walking in time with the music.

         The dance ended at 9:00 PM sharp, and before I left the house that night, I made my mother promise she'd be in the lot waiting for me when the dance got out. Since I had no reason to hang around once the dance was over, I made my way to the parking lot in my stiff dress.
         She wasn't there.

         Trying not to appear too concerned, I sat down on the cement wall, just off the half-circle drop off zone in front of the school. I watched as the Twain Harte and Ponderosa Hills kids got into their parents' over-sized, newer model, sedans, usually American made. The hills kids always seemed to get picked up first. A few eighth graders who lived between one and three blocks from the school, slowly made their way home on foot, savoring their last moments of freedom, reliving their favorite moments of the dance. I strained my ears to see if I could hear who they were talking about. All the while, I kept my eyes on the parking lot, trying to match the headlights on the car coming my way with the shape of the headlights on my mother's 70's model Nova. The town kids’ parents' cars were easy to spot. They were loud, usually with a bad muffler, or strange pinging sounds coming from the engines, and maybe even a whiskey burn on the side. I was getting pretty huffy after about the fifteenth car -- my mom had promised to be there right at 9:00, to arrive just as the dance had ended. It's not like she was doing anything important. She probably wasn't doing anything at all. I could feel the angry red flush spread from my cheeks to my ears. I squeezed my eyes closed to shut off the throbbing behind them. I didn't know what I was waiting for.
         "Michelle," I heard Mr. Lark's voice coming down the walk behind me, "your still waiting for your mom?"
         He was on his way home. There was no one else around -- no cars had pulled into the school’s loading zone for several minutes. It was probably 9:30.
         "Yeah, I'm still waiting," I said trying to sound hopeful and confident, only my voiced thinned and trailed off at the end of the sentence.
         I wondered if Mr. Lark wanted to look over at his house, which was practically across the street from the school. I had watched Noel walk home by herself ahead of her dad who was still busy with his vice-principal duties. She had stopped and waved and did silly dance moves until she had to cross the street. In his music teacher role, Mr. Lark was silly and irreverent; Noel had certainly inherited his personality. Mrs. Lark who I didn't see often even though she lived just across the street was an elegant woman, known for being beautiful and selling Avon. I knew some people in town thought she was stuck up, but I had seen her smile at Mr. Lark in a sweet shy way a couple of times. I thought that was nice.
         "I could call someone," Mr. Lark offered, now standing beside me watching the parking lot as I had been.
         "Um, you don't need to do," I said, "She'll be here any minute, " as I said this I thought of the previous summer while camping when we saw Mr. Lark and the kids. They had a campsite near ours, and my mom and her friends from town, who also knew Mr. Lark, invited him over to stand around our campfire. My mom was giggling with her girlfriend. They had just smoked a joint in the bushes, and the smell lingered in the air.

         "I told her not to come right at 9:00." I didn't look him in the eye when I said this last part. I looked down at his sturdy brown leather shoes.
         "Are you sure?"
         "Yeah, I'm sure. You don't have to wait, she'll be here."
         "Only if you're sure," he said, nodding and turning to face me directly. I always thought he looked a bit like John Denver – the same glasses, a similar shaped face, the same haircut.

Later in 8th grade, he would ask me how I got the large bruise that covered the left side of my face, and I lied then too -- only that time, I don't think that he believed me.

         "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. She'll be here soon, I'm sure of it."
         Before he turned on his comfortable shoes and walked home, he told me to come and knock on his door if my mom didn't come soon after all, and I agreed that I would. He probably even poked his head out of his front room window to see if I was there. Knowing that he would, I decided to leave after only a few more minutes. My face turned hot again at the thought of Mr. Lark seeing me wait there for my mother who wasn't coming at all.

I walked with no rush down Elm, the last lit street in town. I was still hoping to match her headlights with the ones from my memory, and once I turned down Oak street and walked past the last row of lit houses, I would have to make my way down the long stretch of road in the dark -- no sidewalks, no street lamps, nothing but the cold night air and the sound of crickets, and the occasional heart racing rustle in the blackberry bushes that lined one side of the road. It's only a little field mouse, I told myself each time I jumped at a sound. As I rounded the bend on Oak Street, the light from the houses faded behind me. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes worked hard to adjust to the darkness. It wasn't until I exhaled that I realized I had been holding my breath for several paces. Still hoping my mom might remember that she was supposed to pick me up, thinking that she might have a good explanation for being late, I looked for headlights coming my way from down the road, but not a single car passed by on the long, dark stretch. Now more scared than anything, I tried not to think about the rustling sounds of the tall grasses and trees on the hillside along the road, and kept my eyes focused on the streetlight at the end of the long stretch of unlit road -- the corner of Oak and Bodenhammer Lane. My house on Box Factory Road was just beyond that lit corner. I worried about tripping over large rocks or dirt clods, or turning my ankle in an uneven dip in the shoulder. I worried that something would jump from the blackberry bushes to get me. But if I kept up my quick and steady pace, I would be there in about three or four minutes.
         Once at Box Factory Road, I was no longer scared or ashamed that I been left to walk home alone in the dark. I was angry. Trudging up the driveway to my house, I had no idea what I was going to say or do, once I got inside.
         My mom was in the kitchen at the sink getting a glass of water.
         "Michelle!" she said, looking very surprised to see me.
         "You were supposed to pick me up and hour ago," I said, pushing the door hard behind me.
         "Oh, Michelle," she said, smiling stupidly.
         "What's so funny?" I shouted and marched to my room.
         I let the trap door to the attic bedroom that I shared with my sister drop with a thud. My sister, asleep in her bed, on her side of the A-frame, stirred from the noise but didn't open her eyes. I stood frozen in place, watching, not daring to make another sound.

My throat tight, I exhaled, glad to not have woken or disturbed her dreaming, her long blond brown hair a mess over her pillow, her innocence. But I wanted to go to her and touch her cheek, to pull the blankets up to her chin and lay down beside her.

I went to my side of the room instead. 

Middle School Malaise

middle school aged MCG with friend Stephanie Ballard

        “You sure do move your arms a lot when you talk,” Mr. Roudell said, interrupting. I was telling him that Missy Baker had been tripped by a group of boys on the black top. She did not fall.

“Are you sure she didn't just fall?” he asked looking down at me, his

head blanking out the sun. “Missy falls a lot,” he continued.

         “No, I'm pretty sure she didn't,” I said, pointing at the boys who Mr. Roundell had stopped but didn't bother talking to. “She was running from the ball wall, and they were watching her, and he,” I said, waving my arms and pointing again, “Moved right in front of her and sort of put his foot out.”

“What are you Italian?” he said laughing as he said it.

         I could feel my face flush red. I forced myself to speak.

         “No, I'm not Italian; I'm Mexican,” I said.

I regretted those words as soon as they came out of my mouth.

         “Oh, yeah Mexican,” he said, smiling as he turned away to scan the yard.

         Speechless, I stood and stared at the black top, which spread out all around me in all directions, hard, and rough, and hot.

Everyone got to know Mr. Roundell right away because he was a yard duty teacher, tall, and strict, and really mean to certain students, but all the middle school grade teachers were noticeably meaner: Mr Roundell and his propaganda laden social studies lessons, Ms. Martz who never smiled even when we discussed her favorite books in English, and Mrs. Casserly who talked as much about her husband, who later dumped her, as she did multiplying and dividing fractions. Housed on the elementary school campus, the middle school classes were taught on a block schedule by teachers who seemed to believe it was their job to toughen us up for high school.

I had Mr. Roundell for homeroom in seventh grade where I noticed that he excelled at being cruel with a smile on his face.  While he managed to humiliate me a couple of more times before I graduated from Summerville Elementary, his attitude toward certain students and the movies he showed in class about evil communists hardened me to his tactics. Mrs. Casserly was strict too, and she was moody, but always a tad nicer to those who were already good in math. I wasn’t one of those students.

         Mrs. Casserly wore skirts to cover her wide hips, except on Fridays when she wore jeans and was always in a rush, always trying to fit the long math lesson into the little time she had. Bit she was never in too much of a hurry to tell us a cute story about Mr. Casserly and how their initials were AC/DC, electricity, not the rock band. AC for Anna Casserly and DC for David Casserly. She must have been a newlywed even though she didn't look like one because she talked about her husband a lot.

Early in seventh grade alone at my desk with a pencil and paper, being slow at multiplication facts was discouraging, but I at least understood the concept of multiplication. I couldn't keep up at all when we got to multiplying and dividing fractions and decimals. I could almost feel my brain shutting down. I tried paying very close attention to everything that she wrote on the board and raising my hand and asking questions though probably not enough. I tried calling Mrs. Casserly for help when the others were working problems, and she'd answer my questions in a whisper, as quickly as she could, in a rush to get back to the board to see who had come up with the right answer. She'd scrunch up her face when I asked the same question more than once or when I asked her to repeat something that she had just said. By the end of September, I was totally lost.

I had always been stronger in reading and writing, but elementary school math had been fun too. My third grade teacher Mrs. Shnauble had taught math using blocks, and puzzles, and boards with nails and rubber bands. Mrs. Shnauble had a loft in her classroom, and we were allowed to take the puzzles and boards with nails, or books, to the loft where it was comfortable.

         Mrs. Casserly tried checking in with me when she could once she noticed that I was getting behind, but eventually she stopped checking on me at all. I would sometimes find the courage to ask a question because I knew that's what I was supposed to do, and because I wondered if she noticed I was still in the room, but usually I just faced the board while she lectured and pretended that I was following along. After a while of fearing her chalked hand on her hip and furrowed brow, I stopped asking questions, and Mrs. Casserly went on no longer helping me, and I began thinking that I deserved to be ignored, and like Mr. Roundell had pointed out, that being Mexican had something to with it.