Exit Center Stage

Ellie Searl

Perhaps I shouldn’t have resigned.

Drama and my life have been a tight weave since words began to cascade from my imagination. I told stories with great flair - performing stream-of-consciousness sagas, updating the adventures of my characters-du-jour. They somersaulted when excited, stomped when frustrated, danced when amused, wailed when upset, shrieked when scared, and pouted when ignored, which was often, due to failure of the audience to remain as interested in my stories as I. Center stage. I thrived on center stage.

For years, my mother called me a pest. I heard it often in one guise or another. “Stop your blather.” - “Quit being a nuisance.” - “Be more like your brothers - they don’t annoy people.” Once she called me histrionic. I thought that was a compliment.

I was in my first play was when I was six, cast as an apple tree, draped in brown and green crepe paper with red felt dots. I stood erect under the August sun with my bent limbs held in position for the length of the play, which to me seemed like hours, sweat dripping down my tummy making me itch. I wanted to be Alice – the lead – but my friend Karen, Miss Alpha Pants, a doctor’s daughter who always got what she wanted, played that part. Besides, the show was in her back yard, and it was directed by her mother, who also made the white cupcakes with orange icing and pink lemonade. In time, I learned to accept that there are no small parts, just small actors. Often it’s the small role that’s noteworthy. Take Robert Duvall. He played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. All he did was stand behind a door. Mute. Like a tree.

In high school, I played Mammy – in blackface. Highly non-PC today, but at the time it wasn’t considered objectionable. There was one African American family in our town of 800, but even the eldest child wasn’t yet a Freshman, so he wouldn’t have qualified. No one would have asked him anyway because that would have been considered objectionable.

It was when I moved to Ohio that I became active in “living room” theater. Once a month our friends gathered in someone’s home and read a play, acting it out - complete with costumes and props. My first part with this ensemble was Margot Wendice in Dial M for Murder. I performed my role without a hitch, holding the script in my left hand and scissors in my right, so my character could cut coupons from a newspaper.

Our "troup" wasn't a group of aspiring actors - just people who loved theater. Poor Bill, who played Inspector Hubbard, was performance-challenged. He read his part in a monotone, pondering over each syllable as though it had some dramatic significance. But it was reading his own stage directions that threw Hitchcock into a graveyard tailspin. “So, Mrs. Wendice, exactly why did you stab Swann with the scissors? Parenthesis turns to Mrs. Wendice holding the scissors in his handkerchiefed hand parenthesis.”

Sandy, a member of our local community theater happened to be at that play reading. She said I was a natural and should check out the Mahoning Valley Community Theater.

I was somewhat familiar with MVCT. The building was beautiful and spacious and gracious: a large lobby with plush red carpet, mahogany paneled walls covered with photographs of past productions, and an easel holding headshots of the actors in the current play. The proscenium stage looked out onto a semi-circle of seating for over 1000 people. Backstage had rooms, nooks, and crannies designed specifically for props or costumes or rehearsals or carpentry. The separate dressing rooms for men and women had counters and seats for 10 actors each, with lighted mirrors for make-up and hair. This might have been small community theater, but the facility sent off a big-city theater vibe - and I wanted to be part of it.

Within the week, I was at the theater introducing myself and dropping Sandy’s name all over the place. Within two weeks, I had a foot in the door as an intermission hostess.

From the outside the theater seemed vigorous – a spirited force. It didn’t take long to feel the strong undertow eroding its soul.

MVCT at intermission was a performance in itself. The attempt at elegance resembled afternoon tea with the Duchess of Excess. Oak tables, red gilded table runners, tiered candelabras, ruffled paper tart-cups filled with shell-shaped shortbread cookies, towering brass pull-handle urns full of decaffeinated coffee, and heavy cut-glass punch bowls loaded with a sticky foam concoction of raspberry sherbet and Sprite, chilled by a Jello-mold ice ring. I swallowed my love of simplicity, ladled the garish goo into glass cups, and sachayed my way through the crowd with trays of cookies.

But I wanted the stage, and the lobby wasn’t the stage. So I played my role of hostess with enough syrupy sweetness to refill the punch bowls, hoping Important Theater People would notice my charm and enthusiasm. I wasn’t aware that I was breaking Rule #1.

To participate in any type of MVCT event, even serving cookies at intermission, a volunteer needed be a season ticket holder. And to be considered for an on-stage role, a volunteer also needed to be a graduate of Acting Forum I, the theater’s two-week September orientation and acting class, led by the director himself. Acting Forum II, held six months later, was not required, but it was encouraged, advocated, promoted, underscored, and expected, if the actor wanted credibility, respect, and first-name rapport with any of the Regulars.

It wasn’t until I returned a borrowed theater prop to a died-in-the-wool, rule-abiding, finger-shaking theater veteran that I learned of my major indiscretion. She padded to her front door.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Ellie - from the theater. I’m returning your vase.”

She straightened a bit. Her eyes burned into mine. “Hm! You Searl?”

Where was the thank you? The smile? This wasn’t what I expected. “Yes, Ellie Searl.”

“You don’t have a season ticket,” she croaked. “You’re not supposed to work at the theater until you have a season ticket.” She snatched the vase from my hand.

My throat slammed shut. I managed to choke a weak, “I . . . I’m just helping - with intermission – setting up - serving. Sandy is a friend of . . .”

“Doesn’t matter. You want to work at the theater, you get a ticket.” Her chin slumped into her chest as she shut the door, leaving me on her front porch like yesterday’s trash.

When I reported the incident to the volunteer supervisor, I expected to hear gossip-stories about the old bag - but I was chastised - again.

“What? You don’t have a season ticket? You’re not supposed to work at the theater until you have a season ticket. So until you get one, you can’t be a hostess.”

This was Serious Business. My desire to have an acting part overtook common sense. I bought a season ticket, signed up for Forum I, reserved a spot for Forum II, volunteered for the costume committee, and reinstated myself as intermission hostess, sticky punch notwithstanding. I figured I’d better do things according to protocol if I wanted that credibility, respect, and first-name rapport with any of the Regulars.

That’s when I discovered Rule #2. Parts for all play productions were invitation only. MVCT did not have auditions. Any actor aspiring to have an on-stage role - speaking, non-speaking, statue, sauce pan - was sent a letter that revealed the upcoming play and urged the recipient to participate. The letter did not tell the recipient what part he or she would have. It could be the maid. It could be the lead. It could be Boo Radley behind the door. These invitations came from the Script and Cast Council, the Supreme Court of MVCT - whose members continued serving until they died, moved away, or were sent to a home.

The anonymous members of the SCC evaluated prospective actors’ stage presence and acting ability by sneaking in on Forum I and Forum II sessions and taking notes. I could see them lurking in the shadows of the empty theater seats while the class worked on the techniques of voice projection and vowel pronunciation. They sat in the darkened corners of the top rows with their spiral notebooks, coils shimmering red and gold from Exit signs and stage lights. These mysterious creatures are my future in this theater, I thought. How do I appear from their vantage points? Is my voice strong enough? Are my a’s and o’s round enough? Will I ever be in a play? Will I ever receive THE LETTER?

During Forum I, I met some lovely people with whom I developed a comfortable relationship. Whenever I bumped into one of them, I felt welcomed. But the Regulars, I discovered, were a different breed altogether. Forget the credibility, respect, and first-name rapport. Getting recognition from the prima donnas of MVCT was like trying to toss water through a wall of glass. Those Experienced Actors fed each other’s egos and padded their own self-importance under the pretext of theater loyalty. During breaks in rehearsals they talked about the good-old-days when people, themselves included, of course, really understood what real theater was all about – when actors were “off book” before the third run-through, or when actors were so good they didn’t need voice lessons, or when cast parties were fun. “Not like today,” they’d say, “when everybody and his uncle wants to be on stage, but can’t act their way through a rat hole.” No, I wasn’t comfortable with the Regulars.

I repaired and pressed costumes, organized outfits on backstage racks, assisted with quick changes, and stayed late to clean up. But I was an underling and didn’t warrant recognition by the actors who had more important things to consider – like their write-ups in the playbook or their headshots on the lobby wall.

One afternoon, I received a letter from the SCC inviting me to play a role in Twelve Angry Women. Thrilled to be asked, I removed everything from my personal calendar that interfered with rehearsals six days a week for six weeks and three long weekends of production after that.

I loved everything about the on-stage portion of the production. I learned my part quickly, followed the directors’ instructions, and acted well, I thought. I thrived on playing someone else night after night, allowing my character to take charge of my life for a few hours, stepping into my character’s soul and letting it lead me through the imaginary world of the playwright until the curtain fell. What a charge it was being “other-personed.”

I had very few wrap-up notes from the director after rehearsals or performances. Every now and then he’d give me a suggestion. There were virtually no negative comments. And there were never positive comments. I asked a Regular why the director didn’t give much feedback about my on-stage performance.

She said, “If he doesn’t give you notes, he likes what you’re doing. Don’t look for compliments. You’ll get a big head.”

Droves of big heads roamed the theater. I wanted to answer, "Like you?" but didn't.

Despite joining the ranks of those who had received an on-stage role, backstage was as uncomfortable as ever. The Clique of Regulars held court, and the Others, like me, stayed in their corners waiting until approached to take part in conversation.

Once I volunteered to be a Director’s Assistant for Steve, one of the Regulars, who was invited by the SCC to direct a one-act play for the little theater-in-the-round. Steve was a terrible actor. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Wretched directing others and making it a decent production. My husband and I had seen Steve play the lead in Neil Simon’s Chapter Two. Stiff, robot-like gestures, monotone delivery – emoting less passion than a throw rug. Ed and I left at intermission while those who could stick it out elevated their sugar levels on liquid treacle.

For six weeks as Steve’s assistant, I sat beside him, followed the script, cued the actors, took notes, checked on props, and located costumes. I even prepared a dress rehearsal feast of bagels, veggie spreads, and coffee. “Good job, Ellie,” I congratulated myself after opening night.

A week later, Steve passed me in the hall, stopped, looked at me with a slight squint, and said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that really meant, “What the hell are you, a stranger, doing, running amok in my theater, where everyone else around here is a Regular, and you aren’t?”

“I’m Ellie – Ellie Searl.”

No reaction.

“I was your Director’s Assistant for last weekend’s production.”

“Oh. Right. Hi.” And off he went.

Had Steve not been such a terrible actor, I might have dissolved into the linoleum, but by then I had realized that the Clique of Regulars, those people I so envied and wanted to be like, consisted mainly of acting automatons, like Steve, who hadn’t learned their craft at all, or if they had, they had forgotten the main concepts of verisimilitude, voice control, natural stage gestures, pacing – all those skills that hold people in their seats beyond intermission. The Regulars flouted the notion of self-improvement. Repeating Forum I or II? Putting themselves under the scrutiny of the Script and Cast Council? Ridiculous. Those classes were for amateurs.

The director frequently gave notes to the Regulars during performance recaps. “Show more emotion.” - “I want to believe that you’re angry. - “Don’t sway when you speak. You’re not HOLDING A BABY!” I flashed my high school play when we sing-songed our way through the script, stomped for emphasis, and flailed our arms without purpose.

What I didn’t understand was how the Regulars continued, season after season, to buffalo the SCC into thinking they were still worthy of lead roles. Probably the director wished like hell he could hold auditions - cull the old-timers from the list.

MVCT was built on a foundation of antiquated tradition, which hadn’t been evaluated in decades. Loyalty to the theater’s dead founder was strong, and no one had the where-with-all to challenge her design. The theater was haunted by long- departed big-city theater wannabes: their footsteps creaking stage floorboards, their apparitions spewing tucked-in-the-attic-thinking.

Yes, the building was beautiful and spacious and gracious - and if used according to physical design, had great potential in developing a welcoming stage for the community. But as long as the Powers that Be held onto the old rituals and continued to dilute the spirit of new blood, the theater would be a shell - without heart and without passion. Eventually I came to accept that community wasn’t a priority and probably wouldn’t be for a very long time. So, after a five-year love-hate relationship, I severed ties with the Mahoning Valley Community Theater.

Sometimes I regret giving up that real-theater rush of on-stage performance. I continue with the occasional play readings in people’s homes. Just last September I played Sister Aloysius in Doubt. It was a hoot being an irate nun vying for the removal of Father Flynn, an alleged pedophile priest.

Every so often, when I return to Ohio for visits, I run into a Regular from the theater. We’re polite, but there is a lingering tension and a slight sting, the kind one feels when a small wound is exposed to the air.

I played a variety of roles at MVCT, both center and back stage. Some were big, some were small, and some were barely visible. I even stood behind the door.

In retrospect, I am glad to be out of the shadows. If you see Boo, tell him I said ‘Hey.’

EVS 08/09

Happily Ever After

Ellie Searl





. . . they lived happily ever after. THE END."

Night, night, sweetie girl, sleep tight.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That they liveded happily ever after.”

“Lived, not liveded. Well, they just did, like in all your other stories.”

“Bambi’s mommy didn’t - she got shotted by a bad hunter.”

“Shot, not got shotted.”

“And the poor little match girl got frozed.”

“Just say froze.”

“But they got dead! They didn’t lived happily ever after.”

“You mean they died, not got dead. And it's live happily ever after, not lived. Well, true, they didn’t, but that’s not how you say it.”

“What about the blinded mice? Their tails were cutted right off . . . with a carvenife . . . what’s a carvenife?”

“Blind mice, not blinded. Cut off. It was a carving knife, not carven - it's like the one we use to slice our roast beef with.”

“She chopted their tails off with her meat cutterer?”

“Chopped their tails off. . . with a meat cutter . . . oh my, . . . yes. . . . she did. “

“Why? Did she hated the mice? Were they bad?”

“You mean, did she hate the mice. I suppose she didn’t like the mice very much. They must have been very, very bad mice. Let’s tuck you in now.”

“Did they bleeded?”

“Did what bleeded? . . . bleed. . . . It’s bleed.”

“The mice tails.”

“Yes, they probably bled. Now go to sleep.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“Did they bled?”

“Bleed! It’s bleed. Probably only a little.”

“Did they got band-aids?”

“Get band-aids. Yes, yes, . . . ok, now it's got. They got band-aids. I imagine they got band-aids.”

“From who?”

“Whom! Say from whom. Their mother, I suppose. Now good night.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Are you going to chopted me up if I’m bad?”

“Chop. It’s . . . not . . . chopted! . . . No, honey, I’m not going to hurt you, ever.”

“Will I live happily ever after?”

“What? Oh, of course you will. You’ll be the happiest big girl in the world. Ok, that’s all for tonight.”

“You aren’t.”

“Hmm?”

“You aren’t.”

“Aren’t what?”

“Happy.”

“I’m not?

“No. You shout at Muffin and you tell me to wipe my face in a meany voice and you get mad at Daddy when he helpted you wrong . . . and . . . sometimes . . . you cry.”

“ Look . . .Sweetie . . . I love you and Daddy very much. . . but, every now and then, I might get upset . . . just a teeny bit. . . but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy. You’ll see someday. You really do need to go to sleep now. And it's not helpted me. It's helped.”

"Where does the prince and princess lived happily ever after?”

"Do live . . . I mean . . . did live . . .they lived . . . Oh, Lord, . . . ok . . . they did live in a castle.

“Did the prince helped the princess?”

“HELP! It’s HELP! . . . did help the princess. Yes, he . . . well, ok . . . here’s when you say helped. . . he helped her . . . all the time . . . mm mmm.”

“I hope they getted a dog.”

“Don't say getted! . . . Say got!. . . Yes, they got a very, very magnificent dog.”

“What kind of dog? Like Muffin?”

“Absolutely! Exactly like Muffin.”

“Read it again, Mommy.”

“Tomorrow night. It’s late. Now, goodnight."

I kissed her forehead and turned out the light, feeling like going to bed, too. Verb tenses was exhausting. Next time, I'll just stick with the story.

"Mommy?"

"Mm?"

“Does they ever got a cat?”


EVS 07/09

Just a Kid

Ellie Searl

He was just a kid, and he used to live in that shack-turned-shrine.

Gaudy bouquets of sagging paper roses fall into the weeds. Wrinkled posters scrawled with “Rest In Peace,” and “I will love you forever,” written in black magic marker above a distorted sketch of his face - the ink, purple from rain and dew, bleeds across the page. Candles, balloons, American flags, and melted candy lump together in piles. Stuffed animals - bears and tigers and dogs - with faded bows and grubby, matted fur, are topsy-turvy, tossed among crumpled sympathy cards and hand-written notes.

Slumped mourners take snapshots of each other, marking history and capturing tears of personal loss in front of the twisted, yellow Do Not Cross police barrier, stretched from the fence and around the stubby tree - jammed with soggy dolls, hand-made gifts, and toys – into the bareness of the backyard.

And across the street, protected from the hot sun and rain by black and white striped tent awnings, card tables are stacked with souvenirs - over-sized t-shirts, CD’s, and DVD’s - each on sale for the low, low price of $15.00. “Get your t-shirts here!” Seems like a deal. Mourners pocket their cameras and hold up t-shirts to their chests. “Do you think I look best in this one? Or this one?” Boom boxes at top volume play “I’ll Be There,” and “Thriller,” and “Billy Jean.”

He was just a kid. A cute, black kid. One of nine - all squeezed together in a foursquare shack – all trying to find space, like too many broken crayons shoved into a torn, over-used box.

He was just a kid. Handsome. Talented. Could he sing! And dance! He was the best of the five. He was the lead. Still . . . just a kid. And all the while, they say, as he was growing up, they say, he was filled with fear. He cried and endured the onslaughts of an abusive dad.

He and his brothers were very well behaved. Their dad made sure of that. No playtime, no running around the backyard, no friends, not even real school – just rehearse and perform. Rehearse and perform. Entering contests. Winning competitions. Entertaining the patrons of black nightclubs from Chicago to DC. Then Motown. Then LA. Then Neverland. Then . . . what?

He was just a kid who grew from a sweet, round-faced Gary, Indiana, toddler into an exceptional and celebrated entertainer and into stardom and world-wide fame and then into a grotesque, disfigured, emaciated man-child who liked to spread love by sleeping with little boys after serving them the wine he called “Jesus Juice.”

That tiny, garage-shaped home –an empty, rotting, paint-chipped, clapboard house - now the backdrop of a massive mound of tributes to the one who had captured the hearts of devoted fans and had filled the pocketbooks of enabling promoters and had satisfied the photo-lust of the paparazzi and had crammed the agenda of the media and then, after years of mystery, and innuendo, and hanging his baby over a balcony, and being tried for pedophilia, and reshaping his body into a sculpture so skeletal and so removed from the robust cherubic-like child he had been, had finally given the world the option to ignore his misdeeds, his over-spending, his drug use, and his scandalous behaviors.

He had given the world a final performance – one that would wipe his tainted slate clean – one that would allow him to rise out of the mire he made of his life and ride new waves of esteem and veneration – one that would crescendo him into virtual saint-dom: an extraordinary, untimely, unrehearsed death.

But he was always and ever just a kid. A very, very sad confused disturbed talented little kid.

EVS 06/09

My Mommy Is Better than Yours

Ellie Searl

I knew my daughter, Katie, would be a far more charitable parent than I when she was twelve. It was while she was babysitting our four-year old neighbor, Laurie, an outspoken, precocious child. You know the type. The over-indulged genius-spawns who are taught that adult conversation is of minimal significance, and interrupting a discussion about mortgage meltdowns or the President meeting with dignitaries in the Middle East with such earth-shattering news as, Mommy, see? I made the letter L, is a far more critical issue in the scheme of world events.

Such children are encouraged to speak their minds – no matter what. They’ll stare into a poor soul’s face and say, That fat man looks like a gorilla – when he unfortunately does – and the mother, in her need to take every opportunity to reinforce her child’s powers of perception and add yet another word to the child’s burgeoning, somewhat annoying, vocabulary, responds with, Yes, Honey-Bunch, aren’t you the observant one! Observant means you see things very accurately, “accurately” having been taught the day before during dinner while the family contrasted the various green shades of arugula, pesto, and blanched broccoli.

Katie bent down to buckle Laurie’s Mary Janes. The little imp held onto Katie’s shoulder with her right hand, pointed at me with her left, and announced, in her usual whiny tone, “I don’t like you. You’re mean.” Then she put her hand on her hip and said to the top of Katie’s head, “I like my mommy better than yours.”

My first impulse was to reproach this insufferable undersized snot with, Hey, you spoiled brat, that’s no way to talk. Don’t your parents teach you to be polite? Oh, and polite means nice – as in times you aren’t spanked, when Katie piped up with a soft, “Of course you do. She’s your own mommy. Everyone loves his or her own mommy best. I love my mommy best of all, too.” Katie looked up at me and smiled as she pushed the leather strap through the buckle. “There, Laurie. You’re all set. Let’s go for our walk.”

That was it. No blame, no recriminations, no scolding. Just appreciation and that esteemed attribute, so necessary in parenting - pure acceptance. Chagrinned, I snapped my jaw shut and reflected on the difference between my at-the-ready disapproving response and Katie’s generous one.

Pandering to over-pampered children has never been my forte. Perhaps it’s because I taught school for so many years and encountered bunches of coddled kids whose parents thought their children’s proverbial shit didn’t smell. They say teachers don’t have pets. Well, they do - and their pets are those kids who respect the world and the people in it. Actually, truth be told, teachers’ pets are those kids whose parents are so aware of their child’s malodorous shit, they’ll tell you themselves.

I remember one seventh-grade boy in particular. Ryan. This kid’s sneer suggested he possessed information only the devil could appreciate - and his swagger suggested he was about to act on it. He disrupted class with sniggering, throwing stuff, and just acting like a smart ass most of the time.

The boy was bad enough, but it was his mother who really pissed me off. She worked as a nurse’s aide in a nearby middle school, so you’d think she’d be sensitive to the typical shenanigans of twelve-year-olds, and perhaps even be aware of the appalling behaviors of her own son. She wasn’t.

One day I was forced to discipline Ryan for blatant insubordination and outright defiance. He was to stay after school for a thirty-minute “meeting” with me to review his disobedient classroom behavior and come up with a plan for improvement.

However, it was a policy in my school district to notify, in writing, in advance, the parent of any child who was to serve an after-school detention – no matter what. That meant I had to fill out a Disciplinary Notice of Non-Compliance and document the child’s name, grade, advisor, date, what the child had done, when he had done it, where he had done it, why his behavior was considered out of compliance with the school’s Code of Conduct, and what disciplinary measures I would be taking to help improve the child’s wayward behaviors and over-all school deportment.

So I did. I filled out the form and gave it to Ryan after class, telling him that he had to take home the form, have his mom read and sign it, bring it back in the morning, and then stay after school with me the next afternoon to develop his Improvement Plan.

“I’m not staying after school tomorrow.” He grinned. “You wait and see.” He grabbed the form and walked off.

Early the next day I received a phone call from Ryan’s mother. “How dare you try to keep my son after school? Who do you think you are?”

Startled, I took a second to regroup, and then said in my most welcoming voice, “Oh . . . Hi . . .Mrs. Hollister. Thanks for calling. Did you see the disciplinary form I sent home with Ryan yesterday?”

“You’re damned right I saw it. I got the form right here in front of me. What do you mean by non-compliant and defiant?”

“Well,” I said, “non-compliant means he isn’t going along with what is required here at school, and defiant means he isn’t obeying the . . .”

“What do you think, I’m an idiot? I know what non-compliant and defiant mean.”

“You asked what they meant.”

“No, I want to know why you wrote non-compliant and defiant on this God-damned form! He’s just a kid. He’s twelve years old for Christ sake.”

“He disrupts my class.”

“He’s an active boy. He enjoys life. You teachers are all alike. You people just want robots in your classrooms.”

“He is rude and disrespectful. He shouts out obscenities, he walks around the room during our lessons, he’s mean to the other students - he takes their things.”

“I don’t call that non-compliant. Or defiant. That’s just energy. And I don’t appreciate your writing anything like that on this form here. I’m throwing this away, and you better get rid of yours. It’s not to go into any file. You’re out of line. And he’s not staying after school.”

My heart started to pound. I could feel my emotional state begin to disintegrate. Built-up hostility and rancor toward all those parents who defended the monstrous actions of their terrible children took over my ability to reason. Any good judgment I had stored up became useless -paralyzed. My mouth opened and the awful truth poured out of me as never before in my entire career. I couldn’t hold back.

“Mrs. Hollister,” I said, “I think you should pay more attention to your son’s colossally obnoxious behavior than the wording on the disciplinary form. He’s a shit-faced spoiled brat and one of these days someone is going to whack him up-side the head. You are a coddling mother who thinks her kid’s poop doesn’t stink. And because of your inability to see the oversized layers of crap in your precious juvenile delinquent of a son, he will either end up in the local detention center for youthful criminals or get pitched into a backyard garbage dumpster before he’s old enough to see an R-Rated movie. Oh and by the way, I will deny ever saying any of this to you.”

She may have tried to interrupt me during this harangue, but I kept on in a flurry, fueled by years of pent-up adrenaline and bad-will toward inadequate parenting. Then I hung up. A rush of blood flooded my face and burned my ears. I had to remind myself to breathe. It took several minutes to settle into a modicum of my usual teacher mode and attitude, but then, throughout the rest of the morning, I felt strangely calm, as though I had just risen from a deep-tissue, full-body massage.

I was called into the office later in the day. Since Mrs. Hollister had a reputation for being an insufferable, over-protective parent, and I had a reputation for being a fair, honest, and gracious teacher, her accusations didn’t get very far. My conference with the principal turned out fine. “What did she say I said? Really? That’s terrible! Imagine.” And so on. Poor Mrs. Hollister. No credibility. No resolution.

And Ryan? He still acted like a jerk in my classroom, and I still tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to guide him into becoming a citizen of the world – without his mother’s help. I figured it was best to steer clear of her. Between his seventh and eighth grade years, Ryan and his mom moved to Reno, Nevada. They are now probably quite prosperous, grifting their way through small-town America.

My daughter continues to be charitable toward children. And I continue to believe most of them need lessons in civility.

EVS 05/09

The Dunking Pool

Ellie Searl

Love, sex, and religion were not discussed in my household when I was a kid. Each brought embarrassment, awkward stammering, and red faces. Kissing relatives or saying “I love you” was out of the question. My mother once said, “Nobody in my family ever talked about love.” Well, neither did she until she got old and we forced it on her.

And sex? That was just a distinction between male and female. When I was sixteen, my mom and I had our one-and-only sex talk. She squinched her forehead, “You know, don’t you?” I said, “Yes,” and left the room.

It was the same with religion. No questions. No answers. No discussion. Church was just something I did once a week unless I had junior choir rehearsal or youth group later on in high school. The whole system was a big interference in my life. I had better things to do.

If my parents wanted me to believe in a traditional religious doctrine, other than a fundamental, all-encompassing fear of the Almighty, somebody missed the boat. My Federated Church experiences as a kid left me melancholy on Sundays, guilt-ridden all the time, and scared of God. The only thing I liked about church was Communion Sunday when everybody received fresh bread chunks and tiny glasses of Concord grape juice served in silver trays. Other than that, church was a place I suffered through if I wanted to see the light of day for the next 24 hours.

Westport is on the eastern edge of the Adirondack Mountains where Lake Champlain meanders from Quebec to Lake George, and the western heavens send Canadian Highs directly to our village. We called these glorious visits Westport Days. And if on Sunday the bright rays of a Westport Day stretched across my bed, inviting me to play in the back yard, the thought of spending the best hours of the morning in the dungeons of church made me miserable. I’d curl into a ball and moan and moan until my mother heard the commotion.

It was always the same. Mom lowered the shades and stood over me - hands on hips, fingers tapping the lace of her apron. “If you’re too sick to go to church, you’re too sick to go anywhere - until tomorrow. That means breakfast, lunch, and supper - right here.”

I went to church.

But it wasn’t just church – it was Sunday school first and then church. In Sunday school, I sang songs from old hymnals that smelled like my cellar, and I colored pictures of Jesus feeding loaves and fishes from his little lunch bucket to hordes of people at the beach. Our lessons about miracles and creation left me bewildered. It all sounded too preposterous. How could a man, any man, even a great man, walk on water or bring sight to the blind, unless of course, the water was frozen and the eyes had an infection easily cured? And it seemed impossible that God built the earth, animals, and people all by himself. I couldn’t even make a decent blueberry muffin for Girl Scouts without help.

Sunday school, church bazaars, spaghetti dinners, choir rehearsals, and the Dreaded Dunkings were held in Beebe Hall, the little white clapboard Baptist church across the street and up the block from the big stone Methodist Church, where the real services were held. We were Federated - merged - because there weren’t enough Baptists or Methodists in our town of 800 to keep separate Protestant churches going, especially with the Catholics taking about half the population.

The chapel of Beebe Hall had long wooden pews with musty, threadbare, red velvet cushions and a pump organ with missing keys. Dead center of the altar behind the pulpit, covered by a trap door and a carpet, was a miniature swimming pool, not even long enough for a hamster to get in a good lap. That was where the minister dunked us to purify our souls. The adults called it immersion. I called it terrifying.

I was dunked at thirteen and became – well – Federated, I guess. I went to special classes to learn what to say and do when I was dunked. I don’t remember any precepts I memorized before taking this leap into God’s territory, and I don’t remember any promises I probably made to Jesus or Mary or anyone else on their staff. What I do remember is the terror I felt. First Reverend McDermott would recite a bunch of religious stuff - which I would have to agree to – and then he’d throw me into the swimming pool. My take on the whole thing was first God would watch me flat-out lie to him, and then I would drown.

God saw everything. He saw me cheat at school and play sick on Sundays. So far, he hadn’t hurled any wrath on me, but what would he do once I swore absolute devotion to something I didn’t understand and didn’t’ believe - right in front of him, my parents, relatives, and anybody else who came to behold this miracle of salvation? Right under his very own roof? It was fear to the core of my being. Though sometime later I was relieved to learn that Beebe Hall was just a social gathering place, and according to the townspeople, the Baptists hadn’t laid any particular claim that their ramshackle bungalow with a steeple was a legitimate House of God.

I stood chest deep in the cold water wearing an adult-sized black choir robe over my favorite blue organdy dress trimmed with grosgrain ribbon. I was supposed to take the dress off, but I refused to strip down to my underwear and slip in front of anybody. My Sunday school teacher tried to get me to undress in the coat closet, but I wouldn’t do that either. If I was supposed to take my clothes off, what was the minister wearing? The idea that he might be standing next to me in his underwear horrified me.

So there I was in the dunking pool, trying to press air puffs out of my billowing robe, freezing, trembling, and scared, feeling the broken tiles and grit on the bottoms of my feet, waiting for Rev. McDermott to . . . just get this thing over with.

On cue, I pledged the requisite allegiances to God and testified to my faith – Baptist? Methodist? I didn’t know. Then Reverend McDermott put his hands on my back and stomach and plunged me backward into the dunking pool. I couldn’t hold my nose, and I wondered if this withered old man had the strength to lift me up again because there was no rehearsal in dunking. I rose out of the water sputtering, coughing, sneezing water out of my nose, and shivering – with sopping hair and my water-heavy robe, dress, and underwear clinging to my skin. Everyone clapped and retired to the social hall for cookies and punch to celebrate my rite of passage.

Besieged by humiliation, I ran into the girls’ bathroom before anyone could congratulate me and sobbed – and sobbed - about what? Lying to God? Not comprehending this mystery everyone else seemed to grasp? Being drenched and wrecking my favorite dress? Or being thirteen and forced to go through such mortifying hoops to become an adult?

I was supposed to be at the party, but I didn’t want well-wishers staring at my sopping head and soaked dress. I refused to come out of the bathroom until my mother brought me dry underwear, another dress, and a barrette to hold back my straggling hair. When I finally joined the others, I sat in a corner beside the kitchen and stared at the floor, arms crossed, mad at everything, especially church. And there I sat until it was time to leave. I barely spoke. My mother thought I was really sick, so she took me home and sent me to bed. It was the one time I went willingly to my room in the middle of the day.

For years I waited for God to wield his hammer on me for my hideous behavior and lack of devotion, but he must have figured my goodness as a person and my strong moral code was worth something, because from what I can tell, he never saw the need to make me pay for my transgressions.

Today I look for truth in the natural world. I am far too pragmatic to subscribe to the idea that a supernatural being built the planets and their pathways around the sun. However, the mysteries of the universe baffle me, and the vastness of the cosmos gives me pause. I marvel at the enormity of the heavens and the secrets of nature - Orion, Cassiopeia, and the North Star; Venus peeking over the horizon; the reappearance of birds and buds every spring, and the monarch butterfly’s 5,000-mile flight to Mexico.

I accept these heavenly and earthly wonders with a thankful grace. As long as I remain a virtuous person with virtuous intentions, and as long as I tend our world with care, I’m satisfied I’ve lived up to my part of any bargain I may have made.

EVS 04/09

From the Frying Pan to the Fire

Ellie Searl

I went to school early to become familiar with the layout of the building and to put my lesson plans and activities in order. The classroom looked like those in the states: rows of flip-top desks with attached swivel chairs; counters strewn with spiral notebooks, teacher’s manuals, and paint tins; hanging cupboards stacked with yellowed bank boxes; bulletin boards covered with faded construction paper; dusty green chalk boards; and a stopped-up sink. It even smelled the same - sour milk, musty gym shoes, and bologna odors hovered in the stale air, trapped by painted-shut, screenless windows.

At one time, schools were built for function, not comfort. A couple of doors, a principal’s office, classrooms along a bleak hallway, a windowless multi-purpose room in the basement, which served as a gym, auditorium, and lunchroom, and open-stalled bathrooms, made an adequate facility to hold children captive while they learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, or until they turned sixteen. It didn’t matter if kids were hot, cold, bored, or constipated.

I placed a red welcome sign on the bulletin board and a curly ivy on my desk to brighten up the institutional appearance.

It was the middle of October in Quebec. I had been hired to take over a third grade class at Hampstead Elementary School, one of several English-speaking schools of the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. According to Carol Miller, the principal, the teacher just up and left at recess one day and never returned. A cardinal rule in education is never, but never, leave school children unsupervised. I figured there must have been some nasty mosquito up her butt to cause her to make such a drastic, unprofessional move. Carol thought the teacher had suffered a nervous breakdown. I’ll say. I pitied that poor, inexperienced rookie who couldn’t manage eight and nine-year olds, not to mention her chosen career.

Educationalese comes in handy during an interview, and I inserted as many phrases as I could without sounding pretentious: Differentiated Instruction, Criterion-referenced Assessments, and all the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I was glib and confident. But Carol seemed more interested in my experience as a disciplinarian than in my ability to spout off instructional jargon. It wasn’t so much that I had been an elementary teacher for four years in Delaware and Vermont - it was that I had served as a reform school childcare worker in a locked institution for delinquent girls and was currently a group home parent for seven incorrigible female wards of the state who thought all adults were useless.

Carol told me a little about this particular batch of third graders. “They’re not quite, ah, how should I put it, obedient. They like to fool around, talk, act silly. They don’t pay very close attention to the teacher. They’re . . . ah . . . a bit difficult.”

If “well, duh,” had been a popular phrase at the time, it would have leaked out. What did she expect? These were little kids. Don’t little kids fool around? talk? act silly? not pay attention? She thought that was difficult? I wanted the job, and I didn’t want to sound impertinent, so I said something diplomatic and professionally strategic. “That’s unfortunate. Sounds like they need some rules and a bit of structure.”

I knew plenty about bad behavior. I’d had clothes thrown in my face and plastic forks poked into my ribs. I’d been threatened with bread knives and locked in the cellar. Her description of “difficult” sounded like petty annoyances compared to the all but near-death confrontations I’d experienced with crazed adolescent girls bent on making me go berserk.

Carol mentioned something about my having the grit and fortitude to take over this class mid-term without her needing to monitor me very much. She hired me on the spot. I was thrilled. I could switch my housemother’s job from full to part time, and my husband, now finished with his McGill class work, could become the full-time housefather. If this teaching gig worked out, we could leave the house parenting business altogether. The sooner I got away from the debilitating turmoil of the group home and the pervasive fear of retaliation, the better. And I was sure we’d make it because it wasn’t likely a bunch of little kids from an upscale community of primarily white-collar workers would get my goat.

I stood at the door to greet my new scholars.

The bell rang. They stampeded down the hallway, smashing into each other to be first at the coat rack. Book bags, back packs, lunch pails, jackets, and gym uniforms were thrown hither and yon on the floor beneath the hooks, which stayed empty of a single coat. Shouts tumbled over each other. “Watch out, you jerk, that’s mine!” and “Piss off” and “You stepped on my lunch,” and “Na-na-na-na-na-na!” and “She’s here!” and “Hey guys! We got a new one!” An unintelligible cacophony of little-girl shrieks and little-boy bellows grew into a discordant symphony as though orchestral instruments were fighting for their space on the planet.

I shushed them to quiet down. I tried to make eye contact and speak directly to a couple of them. They neither looked at me nor listened. I picked up a few coats and put them on the hooks. The kids threw them right back to the floor. Nothing worked. One red-headed, freckled boy shoved me aside as he entered the room . “Move over Stupid; you’re in my way.” He slithered into a desk labeled Jimmy, and swiveled back and forth in his chair until he was greeted by his friends, at which time they moved to the floor under the bulletin board and whispered and giggled and shot defiant glances in my direction.

At the second bell, the rest of the children charged in from the hallway - some to their seats, but most to the floor - chattering with each other as though summer vacation had just begun. I shut the door so the other teachers couldn’t see nor hear what was going on, but I think they already knew, considering they had all shut their doors earlier while my students created chaos in the hall. I did wonder why not one teacher had stepped into my room to welcome me, or even give me a generic greeting, “Welcome to Hampstead. Have a nice day.”

So there I was - a trained teacher, a tough disciplinarian, and an expert, I thought, at building rapport with youngsters - responsible for the educational progress of twenty-four wild banshees who currently were running around, tossing spiral notebooks, performing hand stands and summersaults in the corner, tearing down my welcome sign, and dumping the dirt out of my curly ivy.

I was in the middle of a teacher’s nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. Terror swelled my throat shut and cemented my feet to the floor. Paralyzed by indecision, I watched in disbelief as the students poured paint into the sink, drew nude bodies on the board, complete with breasts and penises, smeared Elmer’s Glue around the tops of their desks with their forearms, and then blew the glue dry so they could peel it off in long strips and roll it up into balls to throw at each other – and me.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was probably just a few minutes, I fixed my voice an octave below normal and boomed at them with the force of a drill sergeant. “STOP! NOW! RIGHT NOW! And SIDDOWN! They stopped and looked at me, a little astonished, I think. No one moved. “I SAID SIDDOWN! NOW!”

One or two kids sat down. Jimmy didn’t, nor did his entourage. I threw Jimmy’s bottle of Elmer’s Glue into the garbage.

“You can’t do that – that’s mine.” He reached for the bottle.

I stuck my foot into the can and pushed the glue toward the bottom, hoping it wouldn’t end up on my shoe when I pulled it out. I said, “You touch that glue, and you’ll sit in this room with me until midnight!”

“You can’t do that either. That’s against the law.”

“Try me, you little squirt! I’m new here. What do I care?”

Jimmy sat down. Without his glue. But he grinned at me. Then the others sat down, grinning, waiting.

Immediately, my moral code sent me into a tailspin of regret and worry. Each of these evil brats - probably all tattletales - had heard me call Jimmy a nasty name and tell him I didn’t care if I broke the law. I decided to recapture my integrity as a teacher and start at the beginning, as if these were normal children in a normal classroom. I introduced myself and wrote my name on the board. “Hi, I’m Mrs. Searl, and I will be your teacher for the rest of the year.”

Giggles, taunts, ridicule, hoots, jeers, and heckles. From various desks came new names for me and their echoes. “Mrs. Cereal, Mrs. Serious, Mrs. Hurl, Mrs. Whirl, Twirly Pants, and Mrs. Surly.” Other than thinking there must be a smart one in the crowd, I was at once appalled and terrified by the absolute disdain for authority these children were willing to display. The pride they demonstrated for each new corruption of common decency indicated that I needed to watch my back. Nothing, not one thing, in my repertoire of disciplinary techniques worked. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn't reason with them. I couldn't control them. They were the most unresponsive beings I had ever encountered, and I was totally out of my element. This group of hell raisers had me in a stranglehold and they knew it. Even the knife-waving, fork-prodding, cellar-door shutting group home girls didn’t throw me into as much of a fear cyclone as these little human horrors.

I tried my best to tamp down my panic and ignore the paper airplanes, unauthorized bathroom visits, encores of Elmer’s Glue desk-smearing, continued interruptions and manglings of my name, whispering, note passing, farts, burps, and chair swiveling as I struggled to teach one spelling lesson and one math lesson. Only a handful of kids wrote anything on their papers or into their workbooks. The others didn’t even bother to take them out of their desks. I figured four out of twenty-four was better than nothing. I could report 1/6 of my school population was responsive. That’s good in some cultures.

The lunch bell rang and the kids hightailed it out the door. I heard Jimmy say as he shot by, “Let’s see how long it takes to get rid of Mrs. Searl.” At least he got the name right.

I recalled the principal’s portrayal of this bunch of deranged Dennis the Menaces, these Cujos in human form. “Not obedient. Like to fool around. Talk. Act silly. Won’t pay attention. Difficult.” Where had my perceptive brain been? I knew how to read between the lines, and I knew how to read people. What had I missed? I must have been so infatuated with the idea of escaping the confines of the group home, I had surrendered my intuitive abilities and seized this job before making a thorough analysis. Who was I to judge their previous teacher? Now I thought of her as courageous for making it all the way through September and into the middle of October with this herd of feral beasts.

I stayed in my room during lunch and tried to reconnect with my humanity. Exhausted and utterly intimidated by this gang of bandits, I was sure I wouldn’t get through the rest of the day. And the disappointment at losing an opportunity to quit the group home made me weep.

Then I got mad. To hell with ‘em. I thought. Let’m rot. I’ll just read stories for the entire afternoon. If they listen, fine. If they don’t, fine. I won’t be back tomorrow anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

When the students plowed into their seats after lunch, I started to read to them in a very quiet voice. All eyes settled on me. All ears receptive. It was a miracle. I read to them for the rest of the day. As long as I read to them, no one shouted obscenities, no one left for the bathroom, no one mangled my name, and no one squirted glue. A glimmer of civility trickled through. Once the stories were over, all hell broke loose, and we were back to chaos until it was time to go home.

Sheer determination and an ounce of hope sent me back into the ring. I refused to let the fear of Terrible Tiny Town keep me from knocking some decency into their ill-mannered noggins. Very early the next morning, I returned to the classroom with empty boxes and baskets. I removed all items from the students’ desks, packed and labeled everything, and stored them on the shelves made by the hanging cupboards around the perimeter of the room. As the students arrived, I handed each one a pencil and a stapled collection of simple math and vocabulary papers. I said, “Sit down, do this, and don’t talk. When you’re finished with one do the next one until you’ve finished everything.”

My new approach to behavior control in that classroom saved my sanity and my career. I should have published the program I created that day, because years later, the same concepts and techniques became well-known in the educational arena as Assertive Discipline, and had I published mine before Lee and Marlene Cantor published theirs, I could have made millions.

Rather than going into the details of my new program, I’ll just mention that by the end of the day, I had five students staying after school, three until 6:30 pm. I jumped through a series of persuasive hoops to get the parents on my side, especially the single mother of the boy I smacked up-side the head because his insolence caused my hand to rise with a will of its own, bringing a sobering sting to his left cheek. Carol Miller was sympathetic, but a bit rattled at the thought of police intervention. If the mother didn’t sue me, Carol wouldn’t fire me. Fortunately, the mother was as disoriented and spacy as her son was unmanageable. She looked at me with over-medicated eyes and murmured, “Gee, Derek must have made you really mad.” Then her gaze slowly veered off into the hinterlands of some dream world as she lost all mental contact with her surroundings.

Time, structure, and plenty of consistency transformed the trouble-making energy of these tykes into potentially courteous beings. And it took plenty of resolve to remember that these little butt-heads deserved to be appreciated and respected as much as anyone else. I designed and followed a slow, steady educational path, easing into instruction gradually with lots of discipline sandwiched between lots of compliments. By December, they were a functioning class with a modicum of appropriate behaviors and the ability to sit almost through an entire lesson without interruption.

It was at our class Christmas play that I received some recognition for my endeavors. A school psychologist had come to watch Sarah, a particularly needy student, perform the starring role. The play parts had been drawn from a hat, and skinny Sarah, a scrawny kid with decaying, buck teeth, drew the part of Santa. A co-worker told me that Sarah was the worst possible choice for Santa, just as she had told me, on and off since I had arrived, that using worksheets was the worst possible way to educate, regardless of the reason, and keeping kids after school for two hours listening to them vent about their home lives was the worst possible way to discipline, and reading and illustrating stories all afternoon was the worst possible way to teach literature.

The play was a smash hit, and Sarah took her Santa bow with the widest, most rotten–toothed grin ever seen on that stage to the loudest, most appreciative applause ever heard by that class.

Later at lunch, I understand, my skeptic co-worker asked the psychologist what she thought of my teaching style. The psychologist took a sip of her tea, put down the cup, and smiled. “How do you improve perfection?”

That afternoon Jimmy took his book bag and coat off his hook and waved a friendly good-bye. “I liked our play. See you tomorrow, Mrs. Searl.”

I may have started in October, but I arrived in December.

EVS 03/09

Crayon Cigarettes

Ellie Searl

Wild-eyed Sally waved the serrated bread knife in front of Ed’s face. I could see her through the crack in the kitchen door. Her untamed hair flew around and she spat venom. “If she comes in here, I’ll kill her. I hate her guts, and she better watch out!”

Ed knew how to handle Sally. He remained calm. “Sally, give me the knife. . .”

She made small jabbing motions toward his throat. “I hate her! She’s a pig! How can you stand her?”

“Sally, you don’t mean that.” His voice softened. “Do you really want to hurt Ellie?”

Sally was secretly in love with Ed, so she backed off, heaving the knife to the floor. It clatter-bounced on the tile and skittered under the stove.

Sally was part Cree, part French Canadian, part Scottish, and part unknown. I’m not sure which part of her wanted to kill me – probably all of it. She was thirteen, tall, skinny, abandoned by her family, and mad. She was mad at me because I wouldn’t let her go out. It was a weekday – a school night. The girls weren’t allowed out after supper on school nights. Not Cindy, not Carol, not Ellen, not Leez, not Tony, not Lauren, and not Sally - especially not Sally, who didn’t understand her emotions and couldn’t control an ounce of them.

A few weeks earlier, when Sally and I had been on better terms, we all sat in the living room wondering what our collective lives would be like after Ed finished theological school and we left the group home. Ed casually declared, “Sally, if you want me to, I’ll marry you.”

Sally’s cheeks turned apple red and her face slowly transformed from horror-struck to befuddlement to glee to utter and complete triumph. Without moving her head, she ping-ponged glances from Ed to me. Then under a cupped hand, asked Ed in a throaty whisper, “But what about Ellie?” Sally was devastated to learn that Ed would only officiate at a ceremony where she would marry someone probably most unwelcome at this time in her unfortunate teenage life.

My assistant, Carly, charged up from the basement. “What’s going on? Who’s screaming?”

“It’s Sally. I won’t let her go out, so she’s going to kill me - again.”

“Oh, ok, with a knife?”

“Yeah - would you check on Leez? I think she’s chanting. Make sure her door’s closed.”

Carol stuck her head out of her room “Sally! Leez! Shut – the – hell – up!”

Our daughter, Katie, stood at the top of the stairs clutching her blanket and stuffed baby weasel. “Mommy, I can’t sleep. Is Sally going to kill you? Leez is making a funny sound in her room. And Carol just said a bad word.”

“Let’s get you back to bed. We’ll read a story.”

Life in the group home was chaotic, to say the least. At any given time, there were twelve people living, eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, studying, or screaming in the house - seven female teenage wards of the state, two house parents with a four-year-old daughter, one live-in college student assistant, and a Caribbean housekeeper, Inez, who was a better cook than a cleaner.

By the time Sally wanted to kill me, Ed and I had been house parents for the United Red Feather Services of Greater Montreal for almost two years. Our house was a duplex in Montreal West converted into a one-family dwelling. The main floor had a living room, a dining room, two bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a long kitchen in the back that stretched the width of the house. The upstairs had the same configuration, with all five main rooms turned into bedrooms, including the kitchen. The basement had a finished family room and laundry.

Our room was on the main floor, so we could monitor daily activity, and Katie’s room was the kitchen-turned- bedroom upstairs. Hers was a nice space - cupboards for books, toys, and games, a sink for privacy, and a quiet balcony for us to sit in the sun and color and read stories away from the turbulence of broken teenage girls, who would still be on the road to emotional and physical bankruptcy had the Quebec juvenile justice system not stepped in and placed them in a strange home where they were expected to coexist in peace, friendship, and harmony, regardless of the heartbreaking reasons they had been removed from their dangerous homes.

How did two years in this house of turmoil affect Katie’s psyche? She has never complained, but I’m sure there is a part of her that recalls the heartache and desperation that spread around her like air-dust floating in the sun, seeping into her being as she breathed. What lingers in Katie’s now married, mother-heart that unconsciously resonates to the haunting memory of late night, hollow sobbing? Is there a residual empathy that serves her son or husband more compassionately because at such a tender age she witnessed the disenfranchisement of young women tossed from household to household? Does she watch her son more closely - or hug him more often? Does she over-smooth his path so he won’t stumble?

These were not areas of concern when we agreed to feed, supervise, and nurture seven troubled teenage girls for pay. We were a young family who needed a home and occupation while Ed finished theological school at McGill University. I received a full-time salary for serving as house mother and Ed received a part-time salary as house father. We paid no rent, and except for our car, all of our expenses, including food, were handled by the agency. It seemed perfect when we accepted the job. No one mentioned the havoc that would gradually erode our spirits.

Leez opened the door to her room. “Shiiiiitttttttt on you all! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Leez had stopped chanting, and decided instead to regale the entire house with obscenities. Her profanity was usually more creative than a one-word shit repetition. I figured her level of frustration was so high she couldn’t dredge up the usual vulgar repertoire. “Shit and shit on you all.”

I knew Leez would continue swearing in the hallway until someone met her face-to-face and told her to stop, at which time she’d snigger and say something ridiculous, like, “I need a hairbrush.” Leez got attention by screeching, and all my effective methods as an experienced teacher couldn’t make a dent in her shriek-proof armor. Even the director of Red Feather agency had to admit she was truly impossible after he took her for a weekend to prove he could handle her better than we did – but she was unmanageable even with him, and short of electric shock treatments, Leez would remain an unpredictable pain in the neck. I felt vindicated, but that didn’t stop Leez from turning our already crazy household upside down whenever she wanted attention.

The house continued to reverberate with screams and threats as Katie and I settled in to read her favorite Maurice Sendak book - Where the Wild Things Are - 'The night Max wore his wolf suit, and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him Wild Thing.'

“Max was like Sally and Leez,” Katie whispered as she turned the page.

I tried to explain to Katie why the girls behaved as they did even though she had no reference points. I wanted Katie to understand, at least a little bit, that Ellen hid food and dirty underpants in a trunk at the foot of her bed because throughout her abused, miserable fourteen years, she never had anything to call her own, or that Cindy was disrespectful and sarcastic because she didn’t trust I’d care about her for more than two seconds, or that Tony was afraid we’d beat her senseless for nothing more than forgetting to hang up her coat, like her dad did when he broke her arm before the authorities placed her in foster care, or that Lauren cried herself to sleep every night because her twin sister was placed in a different group home across town and hardly ever saw her, or that Carol, the oldest, most mature, most reliable of the bunch, might not ever get over the debilitating grief she carried since her boyfriend, Jack, drowned the summer before after shooting himself up with heroin and diving off a cliff into the St. Lawrence River.

But Katie never judged the girls. She just wanted to imitate them or play games with them or watch them gossip and bicker. Katie smoked her crayons to be like Ellen. She wanted her long, curly blonde hair to look like Carol’s - twisted into a floppy knot and decorated with paper Christmas ribbons and plastic barrettes. She sat next to Cindy during study time, writing repetitive loops page after page on her steno pad, and she read Lauren’s big books upside down in the dark.

Sally stormed up the stairs and pounded on Katie’s door. “Get out here, you bitch!”

I told Katie not to worry; Sally loved her and Daddy and me and nothing bad would happen. What made me so sure, I have no idea. There was little evidence that anyone would be ok in that house, with its exposed, sparking wires of rage, disappointment, resentment, and revenge hanging over us ready to collapse at any moment. Today, under the same circumstances, I’d have my cell phone and pager with me and maybe even wear a medical alert necklace. “Help! I’m pinned down by a crazed teenager and I can’t get up!” But at the time, I had confidence in my ability to maneuver around the hazards.

I stepped outside Katie’s room and shut the door. Sally’s squinted at me. Her arms were crossed, and she tapped her foot as if she were about to scold me for stealing cookies. She had no knife.

I merely said, “Sally, I know you’re angry, and that’s ok.” I walked past her, checking in my imaginary rear view mirror that she didn’t open Katie’s door. Sally stormed into the room she shared with Leez to continue their rants in private. That was the last I heard from either of them that night.

Ed and I did the best we could to help the girls navigate carefully through this tumultuous phase of their lives. Even Katie held their hands on bumpy sidewalks. But we couldn’t help them traverse the years back to their little-girl days to celebrate those long-past milestones - losing a first tooth, entering Kindergarten, finding a firefly, sitting on Santa’s lap, or graduating from eighth grade . These childhood highlights could have fostered trust, poise, security, and a sense of self-worth had they been noticed and commemorated.

All children deserve safe travel into adulthood. Unconditional love, absolute support, steadfast encouragement, and good will are their rights along the way. Rough roads and potholes are expected, but many children, instead, encounter more severe roadblocks: black ice, falling rocks, and dead ends – making the chances of safe passage negligible. If only these children could look over the map ahead of time and use their innocent, unsullied love and wisdom to mark their own routes into the future.

EVS 02/09

Drawing by Katie Searl Bodnar – age five