By B. P. Gibson
Preface
My name is strange, foreign barbarian, at least that’s what my name means. My sisters were adorned with names defined as “grace” and “purity,” empowering them with the potential for meaningful character and honor. I refer to them by their names’ meanings, while all other names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent.
That Man
I was six when that man took my hand and towed me down that long hall. Tears streamed down my face while I attempted to explain and struggled to keep up with his fast-paced, long, angry stride. It was bad enough he yelled at me in front of my classmates, not once, but twice ― two days in a row. The first time was due to a false accusation, and the second time for doing what he told me to do.
The first time, he yelled, “You didn’t take your bus home yesterday!”
“I did,” I told him.
“Then you took the wrong bus!” he countered. That didn’t make sense. How could it be the wrong bus? It stopped right in front of my house. All the children from my neighborhood rode that bus, including my sister. “You are to take bus B-23! Can you get on bus B-23 by yourself, or do I need to put you on that bus myself!” He continued his rant while my first-grade classmates listened and watched the whole ordeal, mouths agape, eyes fearful. I told him I could get on bus B-23. A few minutes later, the bell rang. I went to the bus bay and obediently joined the line for bus B-23. Purity, my sister, two years my senior, walked over to me.
“What are you doing?” Purity asked. I explained to her the principal told me to get on bus B-23. “Alright, but you’re going to get in trouble,” Purity said as she left to join the line for the bus that always delivered us safely to our neighborhood.
I stepped onto bus B-23 and found a seat in the back of the bus. A few minutes later, bus B-23 moved forward. Brakes screeched us to a momentary stop before the bus lurched into traffic. I looked back. My neighborhood bus had not yet pulled onto the street. It stood still as though waiting, waiting for a missing passenger, waiting for me. I wondered where bus B-23 would take me. We moved farther and farther away from the school, away from my neighborhood’s motionless school bus, away from everything familiar to me.
Will I ever get home? I asked myself. What will happen to me? What was I to do? Early on, I learned to do as I was told, no questions asked. I didn’t want that man yelling at me in front of all the other children again. I sat quietly in the back of the bus, waiting for my fate.
One by one, the other children were dropped off until the bus driver turned to me and asked, “Where do you live?”
“Country Club Estates,” I told him.
“So, what are you doing on this bus?” he asked.
“The principal told me to take this bus.”
“I guess I’m going to have to take you home,” the bus driver grumbled and then muttered something about how it would take him off schedule and make him late. He drove back toward the school, down the hill, over the bridge, and turned left. We passed the entrance gate pillars before he asked me for directions to my home. When he pulled up in front of my house, I scurried off the bus and through our front door. I was grateful I made it home, happy the ordeal was over. Only it was not over. I just didn’t know that.
I was only six, too young to put together all the pieces of the puzzle of what happened to me before that first time the principal yelled at me. We moved to Country Club Estates during Thanksgiving vacation. The following Monday, Mother registered Purity and me at our new school. It was pristine clean and smelled of white glue, crayons, and newness. Children’s work lined the hall walls in neat rows. Nothing was out of place, not in the halls, not in the classrooms, not anywhere. If I had possessed a lot more life experience, it might have occurred to me that an uptight, anal perfectionist managed that school, but I was six and in awe and wonder of the newness and beauty of my new school. I settled into my first classroom at that school, but only for a short time.
When I returned from winter break, I had a new classroom and a new teacher. My new teacher didn’t give me any work except dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring sheets. The other children were in reading groups and taught math and writing the way I was taught at my old school before our family moved. When Valentine’s Day arrived, my teacher gave each of us a small pile of misshapen, thick, red papers. She told us we were not to touch those pieces of cardboard-thick, red paper until she said we could. She then explained that each pile of thick, red paper made up a puzzle, and when we put the pieces together correctly, our red papers would take the form of a heart. She also told us the first person to make a heart from the puzzle pieces would win a prize. I patiently waited until she said we could start. I quickly put my heart together and raised my hand. The girl sitting next to me began calling to the teacher, telling the teacher I finished my puzzle.
“That’s impossible,” the teacher said. A few seconds later, she announced that Billy finished his puzzle and won the prize. The girl sitting next to me protested loudly, telling the teacher I finished my heart puzzle first. The teacher walked over to us. She saw my completed heart puzzle and said, “Oh she did finish it,” as though she was surprised. The teacher was standing right next to me. I didn’t understand why the teacher didn’t speak to me but spoke about me to the girl sitting next to me. It just didn’t feel right. Why didn’t she say to me, “Oh, you did finish your puzzle?” I also didn’t understand why the teacher seemed astonished that I completed my puzzle or why she said, “That’s impossible.”
Why would it be impossible? I wondered. I wasn’t as bright as my sister, Purity. She was reading The Wizard of Oz in second grade at fourth-grade reading level, but I was bright enough. It shouldn’t have seemed impossible for me to finish that simple puzzle. I was in the high reading group at my old school. So, my new teacher’s comments and actions about the heart puzzle seemed a little weird, but I was six and still learning about life, so I didn’t think much more about it.
After Spring Break, I found I had a new classroom and another new teacher, my third at that school. This time, my new teacher assigned me to a desk away from the other children. She gave me more dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring pages. She showed me a shallow wooden box containing dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring sheets. Then she told me when I finished one paper, I should take another. Each day, I sat alone working on dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring sheets while my classmates learned reading, writing, and math. Then came that first day the principal yelled at me, the day I rode bus B-23. The day after I took bus B-23, I went back to doing dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring sheets until the end of the school day when the principal came into my classroom and bellowed out my name for the second time.
“You didn’t take the bus home yesterday!” he shouted, “Your mother called me twice today! I’m going to personally make sure you get on bus B-23!” That was when he took hold of my hand and dragged me down that long hall while I did my best to keep up. My classroom was on the far east end of that corridor, and the doors leading outside to the bus bay were on the far west end. That gave me plenty of time to explain. I don’t remember my exact words, but I told him how the bus I usually took was the bus my sister and the children from my neighborhood rode and how it always left me off in front of my house. I told him how the school bus he told me to ride took me to a different neighborhood and put the bus driver behind schedule when he took me home. I told him I always took the right bus until the day before when he told me to take the wrong bus. I told him my mother told me I wasn’t supposed to take bus B-23. All the time I was talking, explaining, pleading my case, that man said nothing while tears streaked my face. We got to the doors that led outside. The principal swung open one of the doors.
There before us on the concrete porch were two little girls. One of the girls was sitting, playing jacks, and the other girl was standing, jumping rope. The girl playing jacks called to the girl jumping rope. She called that girl jumping rope by my name. I knew other girls had the same first name as me, so it didn’t seem unusual, but the principal stopped dead in his tracks and asked the girl jumping rope what her name was. She answered with her first name. He then asked her last name. I was surprised, confused, taken off guard, and perplexed when she answered. I didn’t think what she said was possible. That little girl had the same first name and the same last name as me! I didn’t think anyone could have the same first and last name as someone else, but there she stood, another me!
The principal asked her why she wasn’t on her bus. She said, “I want to play with my friend.” She didn’t seem very smart. In fact, she seemed a little dull-witted.
When I got home, I asked my mother if she called the principal twice. She said she called him once. I never had to ride bus B-23 again, but I continued working on dot-to-dot, mazes, and coloring sheets as my only work for the rest of the school year. That man didn’t correct the situation so I would have proper schoolwork, and he never apologized to me.
He never came to my classroom and said to everyone, “I was wrong. I yelled at this girl, but she was completely innocent. It was another girl with her name that didn’t take the bus home. I’m sorry.” He never said anything like that.
Years later, I looked up the name of the principal. I Googled him and found a picture of a man with his name about his age who looks like him. In that photo, he has four dead bunny rabbits lined up in front of him with his shotgun laid out in front of those dead bunnies. His dog is leaning against him but appears to be cowering as though pleading, “Please don’t shoot me.” He has a caricature of a dove with an olive branch in the foreground as if that makes shooting bunnies acceptable. I tried to communicate with him online and asked if he was the principal of that school. He didn’t answer. Maybe the man in the picture is someone who happens to have the same first and last name as the principal I had in first grade ― it could happen.*
I can only speculate now that the other girl with my first and last name had a mom who kept calling the school saying her daughter was assigned work that was too difficult for her and kept asking to have her daughter placed in a different classroom. In the meantime, I was the one who was reassigned classrooms and given progressively easier work. That other little girl probably prospered from being challenged and given high expectations. As for me, what I got out of it was my all-time most humiliating event ― the next school year, I was retained.
* You can see the photo at:https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=188364978645124&set=a.101687430646213