Hungry

Mrs. Vernon hated you. Or at least in my 8 year old mind, in which every other student thought my thoughts and brought ham and cheese sandwiches and Ectocooler for lunch, she hated all of me. Every morning that she called my name on the roll, I saw a woman of 60-something joyless, tired years. I imagine now that something must have kept her teaching 4th grade. Maybe she had some decades-long friendships with other women in the school. Sharing lunch period, inviting them over for bridge twice a month. I can think she loved pretty blondes whose parents made them wear dresses to school: American little girls. But I had an unpronounceable name and I liked to talk a lot and bring toys to hide in my desk. She didn’t count me among her favored, chose me rather as one of the invaders of an otherwise indefinite childhood. Nobody likes an invader’s face, regardless of what kind of expression it conveys.

I have long since cleaned out my brain corner full of elementary school memories. But here’s a thought: we would have Pollyanna every Christmas at Glen Acres Elementary School. My mom would usually get me markers or sea shells (“shells, mom?”) to wrap and give away. This year, fat Mark Lyman, who joined us midway through the year because his family moved from Pittsburgh, got sick with something bad, like TB or Mono, but came back the day before Christmas vacation without a gift, so we had one less to go around. Who would be the fall-kid, singled-out by getting a special gift--a logistical solution from some closet in the school--delivered personally, embarrassingly, in the middle of the classroom?

Who else. I was prepared to accept this destiny, blushing like a soldier exposing his burnt ass to a class of would-be doctors. I felt their eyes on me as I walked up to the table to pick up the gift. And she said, as I slowly unwrapped it, “I think you’ll like this book.”

Why did you think the situation called for that, Mrs. Vernon? It lasts with me now like I wonder it did for her. Did her son, at my age, 30 years ago, enjoy it as much as I? Was she impelled to retrieve the novel as much by grace as she was by her memory of seeing his body laying on a bed, excitedly immersed in reading? Why did she step forth to deliver a consideration for my own affection, instead of just a “this is a good book”?

I forgot it in my desk over Christmas break, but returned in January to open it up in homeroom. It was called My Side of the Mountain. Mid-century: a young boy goes to live in the Catskill mountains in New York to escape society; mid-Sandro: a young boy tries to hide his reading in math class to escape 4th grade.

I read it over the next week, staying after class that Friday to finish it and almost missing the bus. Mrs. Vernon, ignorant that this sight--one of her mediocre students engaged in a book--was one of rare autodidactic distraction, interrupted my reading to tell me to get out. It was at this moment, convicted of not escaping the classroom, that I glanced at a Barry Manilow cassette tape on her desk. I stared at it for a second before hurrying out.

I had heard of his name somewhere; I guessed he was a singer that old people like. It was strange to think that Mrs. Vernon had a life outside of school. A youth. A first name. Maybe she had children. A husband, soldier in the war. What did she see in me to confide that I might find something of importance in the novel? A bored expression on my face? Was I a good candidate for flight from the sticky suburban mediocrity? Was Mrs. Vernon, now gross and old, once a young, pretty girl who lived in sight of the mountains? Did she hope to find her own Barry Manilow, to seduce and run away with? She would take his hand and run past her own desk, run to the family farm to hollow out an old tree and live while he sang to her.

But she never once mentioned the book at that moment or after. Even as I tried to keep in mind her nominal trust in my reading comprehension, I saw only a vulture; avian maiden in a grizzled, sexless coat. Bird custodian. “The vulture knows and waits,”’ we think, witnessing it most in images that feature its scavenging gaze, a metonymy of filthy wisdom. It might have been prettier once, but lost its crest of feathers for a bald head that could better wend through blood and fat.

I never again looked at the book until a few years ago. I hear Mrs. Vernon was eaten by her young.