by Robert Klein
The school buildings themselves, P.S. 94 and J.H.S. 80, were more interesting by far than their names. These particular architectural types of New York City public schools were designed and built in multiples for economy. They still dot the city and serve their intended purpose. They were handsome, sturdy structures of mortar and stone, unlike the flimsy stucco temporary-looking schools one sees in the Sun Belt and California and much of the rest of America. The city schools were built extremely well during the Depression thirties, when men were hungry for work: skilled stonecutters, metalworkers, and carpenters. The buildings displayed architectural details purely for aesthetics, the kind that would rarely, for economic reasons, be placed on a public building today. There were massive white pillars at the entrance to 80, which reminded one of the Parthenon and the antebellum South, with a touch of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello: all right in the middle of the Bronx, mind you. The rapidly growing Bronx, haven of the overcrowded Manhattanites, with its optimistic art deco pretensions.
Our student body was as sturdy as the buildings we learned in: highly motivated, well-behaved first- and second-generation American kids that we were. There were dress codes that seem quaint now. The boys were required to wear neckties, and the girls wore dresses or skirts. Once a week there was an assembly in the auditorium for which the boys wore white shirts and blue ties, while the girls wore white middie blouses complemented by a blue scarf.
The teachers at the elementary level were all women: As I recall, I did not have a male teacher until the seventh grade. Many of these women were unmarried and childless, and while having children is not necessarily a prerequisite for being a good teacher, in their case it would have helped. They seemed to have no clue about the dynamics of childhood, with its exuberance and curiosity, which were easily mistaken for misbehavior in their minds. There was none of the informality seen in today’s schools. In those days elderly people looked older than they do today, from their clothes to their state of mind, not to mention today’s increased life span and youth-driven culture. In any event, my memory is of strict old ladies, with old-fashioned long dresses, black lace-up shoes, and hair back in a bun, like Miss Grundy from the Archie comic books. Margaret Hamilton on a broomstick also comes to mind. They disdained humor, all the worse for a class clown like me, so I had to be extremely careful about how and when to be funny. They tolerated no talking, fidgeting, or other crimes of the classroom. They were teaching in one of the best schools in the vast city, with energized, nonviolent children and a corps of parents encouraging their kids to achieve. Yet they continued to keep order as if they were at San Quentin, and violators were subjected to humiliating punishments such as confinement in a corner or the clothes closet, along with vicious verbal assaults.
One teacher, Miss McIntosh, wore a black dress every day, in mourning for her long-dead brother, along with a three-by-two-inch iron crucifix that looked like it weighed five pounds and could incinerate Dracula in four seconds. Whether it was the dearth of dry cleaning or the infrequency of her baths is unclear, but an odor emanated from the woman like the bottom of a bird cage. I used to say that she wore a perfume called Keep Your Distance, one of the first jokes I ever made up. The perverse thing is, she knew she stank; she made excellent use of this fact in exacting her many punishments in the enforcement of discipline. If a student talked too much, she would order him under her desk for the full array of olfactory torment. If he fidgeted excessively, he was required to sit in her stench for the allotted time.
Corporal punishment—that is, striking a student—was no longer allowed at that time, it being the progressive postwar era in New York City. The teacher could not technically hit the child, but the old crones found ways of skirting the rules. The push-probe-pull method was popular, in which the teacher would not hit you but would poke you with her gnarled, witchlike fingers and grab your face like a taffy pull until you screamed, though technically she did not hit you. The pull-and-choke was also a favorite. It was executed by pulling the compulsory necktie up like a hangman’s noose until the errant boy’s face turned the school colors. Many on the faculty of my elementary school, P.S. 94, had not graduated from colleges and universities, as is required today, but had attended two-year so-called normal schools, which were an early source of teacher training. They learned the best methods that the nineteenth century had to offer, including strict discipline, rote memory, and no nurturing whatsoever. Despite the rules, there were indeed rare incidents of tiny smacks to the arms and minor cracks to the head, and rulers as weapons. But we were cowed children, respectful of authority, who were used to an occasional bop on the head from our parents. In addition, the incidents were neither bloody nor brutal, the teacher knowing in an instant that the point was made. But one day Mrs. Graux went over the line. Way over the line.
Mrs. Graux (pronounced “Grow”) was a sixty-four-year-old widow teaching the fourth grade. She was not the youthful sixty-four one would assume today. She was an old sixty-four, the strictest teacher in the school, and every pupil’s nightmare. At the end of third grade, one opened the envelope containing fourth-grade information gingerly, like the bailiff reading the jury’s decision. “Who you got? Graux?” It was a one-year sentence. She looked the jailer’s part. There was a strange lack of mobility in her neck that placed her head in a permanent tilt to the left, giving one the impression that she was looking at you askance, which she probably was. She wore tiny spectacles low on her nose, with a deadly stare and scowl that could be truly frightening. A master of surprise, Mrs. Graux would sometimes smile before ripping into her prey like a Tyrannosaurus rex, whether the attack was verbal or otherwise. One did not talk back to Mrs. Graux. One did not talk fresh to Mrs. Graux. I had managed to get through the school year with a combination of occasionally charming the old lady and staying out of her way.
In truth, I was too much of an extrovert to stay permanently submerged, completely out of her sights. I had always been able to favorably impress adults in general and teachers in particular. I knew what they liked in a child. This may be a cynical view, but being able to please my elders was a primary force in my early life, and it worked to my advantage. This turned out to have benign consequences, perhaps due to the high quality of grown-up I depended on and trusted. It was a good thing I didn’t experience an eccentric uncle who liked to bounce me on his lap—when I was fourteen. Though it was difficult, I did a decent job of picking and choosing my moments to score a point or two with Mrs. Graux, a hard-core case, which I hoped would be added to the bank of good points in the event of subsequent misbehavior.
My big opportunity to clinch a spot on her good side occurred just before the Christmas break. On the last day before vacation, we had a class party at which we were permitted to sing songs of the season and eat nuts and raisins. The impending holiday put an extra measure of goodwill and jollity into the school atmosphere, as I have found to be the case everywhere during that season. Given that the students were almost all Jewish, a number of them got up and sang Chanukah songs. I observed that Mrs. Graux was bored but, to her credit, tolerant. She endured a barrage of musical homage to menorahs, dreidels, and potato latkes, none of which she knew or cared the least bit about. No one—vegetarian, omnivore, or carnivore—can resist the flavor of a well-seasoned, crispy potato pancake: in Jewish parlance, a latke. I assume that Mrs. Graux unfortunately lived and died without experiencing this pleasure. In any event, in the middle of all these Chanukah songs, I could see in her gentile eyes, on this cold December day, the genuine longing for a good old Christmas carol. I could hardly blame her. “Menorah, Menorah Burning Bright” and “Let’s Spin the Dreidel” have less musical resonance than “The First Noel” or “Silent Night” or Handel’s Messiah. Having a nice choirboy voice worthy of an eighteenth-century castrato, and being fond of Christmas carols, I seized the moment, stood up in front of the classroom, and proceeded to perform a lovely rendition of “Silent Night.” I could see the teacher melt as I sang in my boyish soprano. M
y classmates appreciated the performance as well. Despite the Jewish upbringing of most of them, they were Americans, assimilated enough to have heard Perry Como sing this beautiful tune dozens of times. I reached the finale: “Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.” Incredibly, I saw a teardrop roll down the teacher’s cheek. It was the first, and certainly the only, occasion on which Mrs. Graux showed any tenderness whatever, and I was the cause. It was sheer theatrical guile and cynical calculation that I used to soften her: my first lesson in the power of . . . well . . . show business. I had in effect manipulated Mrs. Graux, but she was oblivious to that, having been thoroughly cheered by my song. She and the class gave me a hearty round of applause, because I sang damned well. This was good but did not compare to the self-interested satisfaction I got from Mrs. Graux’s reaction. As she wiped away a tear, she said sincerely, “That was for me. Thank you, Bobby, that was beautiful.”
Bobby was not a name Mrs. Graux used in addressing me as a general rule. It was more likely to be Klein or dummy. From that point on, I felt like I had a little credit in the bank with Mrs. Graux.
* * *
Most of our parents were first-generation middle-class Jews involved in white-collar work. They sent their children to school every day, neatly and properly dressed, clean handkerchief, homework completed. They had a strong sense of getting their fair share of opportunities in the hopeful postwar liberalism. Yet they were compliant people who believed in and communicated to their children respect for authority. I was taught to ask a policeman for a dime if I got lost, in order to call home. If a neighbor woman complained to my father that I had misbehaved, her word as an adult authority was not questioned. If a teacher wrote a note to my parents about an offense in class, it was automatically assumed that she was right, and I was warned, “You better not be a troublemaker, or it will go on your permanent record and you won’t be able to get into college and get a job.” After one of these behavior letters, my father said the least prophetic thing he ever said to me: “Robert, don’t be the class clown; being a comedian doesn’t pay.” But that’s another story.
One of the girls in my class, Lauren Kay, was an anomaly among us. Lauren came from an atypical home for our neighborhood. She had an older brother named Sam, who was in the sixth grade and considered the toughest boy in the school. In addition, there were several other older brothers who were said to have had trouble with the law, and around whom much legend formed. The fact that few of us had ever met them added allure to the rumors. It was said that Lauren’s parents were “a little slow,” and they were the only family in the neighborhood receiving public assistance. Lauren’s mother was a peculiar-looking woman, rarely seen, whose clothes and sloppy makeup gave her a clownish appearance. Lauren’s father was the superintendent of the building they lived in, and given to singing on the street as he put out the garbage cans for collection. He wore a sleeveless undershirt in the appropriate weather and sported a tattoo of a naked lady on his forearm that he got in the navy. He enjoyed making the children laugh by removing his dentures and collapsing his cheeks. At these times he was well lit but always harmless. Lauren was embarrassed by him, and as a result, she never invited her fellow students to her house. She had a tough exterior and a panoply of profane language that only the boys could match. She could be intimidating in an argument and sometimes got into fights after school.
Lauren was by no means a homely child, though she had an inch-square red blotch, a rare birthmark on her right cheek which is called “port-wine stain.” (Gorbachev, the pivotal Soviet premier, had one on his bald head that looked like a country on a map.) Some of the children called Lauren Ink Face behind her back, though few would dare say it directly to her and risk a fight. She was not well dressed or particularly popular, and some of the children treated her warily, but she and I got along well. I could make her laugh, and she was not a child who laughed often. I think she admired my pluckiness in making the class crack up on occasion and risking the wrath of the teacher. One of my most popular shticks was placing my right palm under my left armpit and flapping my arm like a country water pump. It made an authentic fart sound that couldn’t be distinguished from the real thing. Farts have always been, and always will be, funny to human beings, for reasons unknown.
Poor Lauren. I felt a little sorry for her, since she apparently came from a troubled home and was poor to boot. She did not come to school in the well-pressed, well-starched blouses, like the other girls; she had fewer outfits than they. Mrs. Graux displayed an obvious disdain for her as one of the slower learners. One day as our class was settling down after lunch for the afternoon session, Mrs. Graux was in a particularly foul temper. Lauren was having a conversation with Susan Gilbert, and Mrs. Graux gruffly told her to take her seat. The child began to comply, but not quickly enough for the teacher, who forcefully grabbed Lauren’s sweater and hurled her with an emphatic “I TOLD YOU TO SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!”
“Don’t you push me!” Lauren shot back.
There was a stunned silence. “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Mrs. Graux said slowly, with all the venom she could muster. Then she leaped, like the predator she was: “HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT, YOU BRAT!”
In an instant, she had hit the girl square across the face and knocked her down. There was a good deal of gasping, none of us ever having seen such an assault by a teacher or such a surly retort by a pupil to a teacher’s command. It did not happen at P.S. 94. Mrs. Graux quickly calmed down and assumed an almost casual air. She attempted to play down the incident by beginning a history lesson, but we were all in a kind of shock, and, like the teacher, merely went through the motions. Lauren silently sobbed in her seat, her head buried in the dreary oak desk with its three generations of carved graffiti. Steeped in humiliation, she never looked up the rest of the day. No one could concentrate with the specter of a little girl sobbing into her desk for three hours. Mrs. Graux completely ignored her, which made the whole scene all the more cruel. None of the children dared leave their seats to comfort her. The three o’clock bell mercifully sounded, and we all grabbed our books and coats and poured out the door to line up for dismissal in the hall. Lauren did not speak to anyone while walking home from school. Eric, a good-natured fat boy; Harold, the class Episcopalian; and I were the only children who approached to console her. But she could not be consoled. I touched her shoulder, and she looked at me, not so much with anger but rather with a look of pure misery that said, “Leave me alone.”
Though stickball season was just beginning, the weather giving late-March hints of the spring to come, I had no desire to play that afternoon. I couldn’t get the incident out of my mind. I didn’t say anything to my parents that evening for some reason I cannot explain. But after school and the next morning, the class talked of nothing else. There was some minor bravado from a handful about teachers not being allowed to hit students, but no one suggested a remedy. Many blamed Lauren for not having taken her seat immediately and for talking back. After all, they reasoned, a teacher has to keep order and can only take so much. It was pitifully evident that Mrs. Graux’s long-term intimidation of us had had a deep effect.
The next day the teacher came to class with the sunniest disposition we had ever seen in her. She complimented one of the girls on her pretty dress and the bright green bow in her hair, and she kidded me about needing a haircut. It was not in Mrs. Graux’s nature to kid. She sat down at her compulsively neat desk, but instead of immediately beginning our lesson, as she normally did, she told us a story that she characterized as “amusing”—about how her neighbor’s cat had eaten the family goldfish. It was a clumsy attempt to reestablish some sense of normalcy in the volatile atmosphere. Everyone kept sneaking peeks at Lauren, who mostly stared at her desk and traced the graffiti on its surface with her index finger. Her face was a blank. She appeared to have a small pink mark on her cheek, the one opposite the port-wine stain. After several unsuccessful attempts at humor and casualness, Mrs. Graux told us to take out our te
xtbooks, and we resumed our lessons. At recess, the boys played their usual punchball, and the girls jumped rope, but the tempo of the games was a snail’s pace involving more speculation about the day before than enthusiasm for playing. We somnambulated into the afternoon session like little zombies. Nothing was the same; the mood was somber and fearful. Perhaps there was some collective guilt. We were sheep, and helpless.
About one-thirty, Mrs. Graux was teaching arithmetic at the blackboard when a man entered the door at the front of the room. “You Mrs. Growx?” he asked, pronouncing her name as it was spelled, without the silent French X. The class broke out laughing at the maladroit pronunciation. “You Mrs. Growx?” he repeated.
“I am Mrs. GRAUX,” she snapped. “Who are you and what on earth are you doing here?”
He stepped closer to her and said, “You hit my daughter. You ain’t got no right to do that.”
“What are you talking about? I hit your daughter!” Mrs. Graux turned paler than usual as it dawned on her whom she was talking to.
“I am Lauren’s father, and you hit her,” he continued relentlessly.
The teacher assumed her most terrifying scowl and began the verbal assault that worked so well on the kids: “HOW DARE YOU COME IN HERE. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”
The simple fellow, thinking he’d been asked a question, replied, “I told you, I’m Lauren’s father, and you hit her, and that ain’t right.” He was almost nose-to-nose with her now, and the class froze with fear. The laughter that had accompanied the man’s abrupt entrance had turned into the scary silence of twenty-eight children who had no control over the unfolding events.
“You’re drunk! I can smell it on your breath!” she shouted.
“I ain’t drunk,” the man replied. Lauren, already a diminutive child, was nonetheless attempting to make herself even smaller. She was trembling and angry, though she did not cry. Mr. Kay began pointing in the old lady’s face. “You hit my daughter,” he repeated again and again. Many of the children were stealing quick glances at Lauren, and she knew it. Some of them looked down at their desks in order to block out what was happening.
