Part 1 ~ Teachers
The young girl looked around her room with satisfaction and ease. Breathing a deep sigh she noticed that everything was exactly as it should be. Her bed had been made with military precision so that she sat on the floor to read, do homework, or play while there. Under no circumstances could she disturb the little coverlet that she had so carefully smoothed out wrinkle free. It's edges where sharp, clean and in line with the four walls, something she had tried duplicating from a picture she saw in her mother's J.C. Penney catalog. There was comfort in it's symmetry. Even her stuffed animals were lined up in neat little rows from left to right, the larger animals progressing towards smaller ones, and darker colors giving way to lighter shades. She had carefully named them all and it gave her much pleasure to look at them sitting there at attention, but she wouldn't allow herself to touch them. They, like the bed itself needed to remain flawless. She had just walked home from school where she was failing. Thank God her parents didn't know, but in the back of her mind she knew they would find out soon enough. She had hidden her report cards from them all year, but the fact was, they had never even asked her for them. Didn't they care how she was doing in the 6th grade? She worried that her teachers would hold her back next year, but back then the system rarely did that. The one thing she looked forward to at school was seeing Mrs. Bell. She felt like Mrs. Bell was the only teacher who ever noticed her. This might have been because she was the only Caucasian teacher and she the elementary schools only Caucasian student. In Hawaii most kids went to private school, but her parents couldn't afford that. She reckoned Mrs. Bell knew this and was probably taking pity on her. Now, she was on the floor, piecing together the torn fragments of paper that she had watched her mother throw into the waste basket, wondering what punishment would befall her. She preferred 'restriction' over the belt, but it wasn't up to her. Her mother would decide and then her father would administer it. Methodically she puzzled over the jagged edges of paper, matching up words and gingerly taping the card back together. It had taken some time, for her mother had been thorough at shredding it in her rage. 'Sweet Jesus', she thought, 'When is she going to learn to use matches'? She had to read the handwriting once or twice to ensure she was really seeing what she already knew. She exhaled heavily, the filthy words and images the man had written to her mother filled her with a combination of disgust and relief. She placed his card in between the mattress and box spring of her bed and went to organizing her closet, picking off small pieces of lint left by the washing machine.
poem by Sara Fielder
Added by Poetry Lover
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