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The Essay - Susan Andrelchik
It was my first day at my third high school. My grandmother gave me a talk all the way there. This is your last chance, I have had it, all you need to do is keep your mouth shut or I don’t know what I’ll do to you.
The school was in the worst neighborhood we had ever lived in. I heard it was the last possible placement for most of the kids who went there. How did my grandmother expect me to stay out of trouble when everyone around me was trouble?
I entered my first-period class. The student desks faced any direction but to the front. I looked out the window down to the parking lot. Some kids were getting off a bus, flinging backpacks, lighting up for one last drag before entering the building. The breeze of the warm late summer carried their voices upstairs through the window.
A nervous hello everyone made me whirl my head toward the front of the room. I laid my
eyes on the teacher and instantly filled with rage. Yet in that same moment of blind anger, I believed she was there to save me because she had not done so when she should have. I picked up the desk closest to me to heave it out the window. Then she looked at me. Just scoot it to where you want it, you don’t have to carry it to a new spot. She did not know who I was. Making a point no one would get would be a waste of time and I’d probably get kicked out on my first day. So, I put the desk down and took a seat.
I was five years old when I last saw her. That day I watched her from my front yard carrying boxes and lumpy black trash bags out of her house. She put them into the back of her boyfriend’s truck, the boyfriend who had interrupted my salvation. She hated her stepfather and found a way out. But she was supposed to become my new mother. That was my plan. She was almost out of high school and had big desires to learn how to cut hair. I knew it would work. I could live with her when she got a job. I could get away from my grandmother.
Here she was standing, a full-fledged English teacher in a rundown high school on the outskirts of a rundown city. She looked good and nearly the same. Something in her sorrowful eyes told me that the boyfriend I had long ago seen her with was not her last. She wasn’t wearing a ring, so nothing had worked out for her in that department. She was nervous in her introduction to the half-asleep junior class, and I felt sorry for her. If it hadn’t been her, I would have said something snide and given her a hard time to stifle whatever flow to her speech she might have thought she was achieving. But it was her and I was still in shock, so I kept my mouth shut.
We got our first assignment. Write an essay about the most significant person in our lives, past or present. What the…? My first period teacher was my babysitter when I was four. She liked to feed me peanut butter sandwiches for a snack. She used to stay with me until my tired old grandma got home from work. Sometimes it was not until after nine and I’d be in bed. Grandma needed any extra overtime she could get at the grocery store.
My babysitter often handed me my snack and would ask me if I ever get tired of the same old thing. I would shake my head and channel surf for cartoons. Then she’d pull a book out of her purse. She did that sometimes, checked out kids’ books just to read them to me. I always turned off the TV and then scooted over to sit in the crook of her arm.
When I unlocked the front door, Grandma shouted, did you stay out of trouble?
My babysitter was often witness to the trail of men my mom brought home during the day when Grandma was working. She treated me nicely and told me none of it was my fault. I was still so young, and I didn’t get what she meant. Later after my mom left and she had been my babysitter for a long time, she told me about her stepfather and how mean he was and how unfair adults could be to children. She said over and over, when she got into one of those talkative moods, that she would treat her own children so nicely and never yell and make sure she stayed married to their father, so they wouldn’t have to endure stepfathers. Sometimes I saw her on her front porch crying. She’d wipe her nose and give me a little wave, then go back inside.
My favorite times, besides the books, were after I finished my bath and sat down on the couch to watch TV with her. She would let me put my head on her lap and then run her fingers through my hair until I grew sleepy. She’d tuck me in and kiss the top of my head good night. When I started kindergarten, she told me she was almost finished with high school. I just knew she’d get a good job somewhere and then take me with her because who else in the world
would my grandmother find to babysit me all those hours who lived just across the street?
She didn’t really announce she was leaving but she started bringing the boyfriend around to our house and told me not to tell my grandma. He was older. I overheard the let’s-move-in- together-baby comments and haven’t-you-ever-heard-about-emancipation ones, too. So, when I saw the boxes, I screamed into my pillow and started getting into trouble at school. She tried to say good-bye, but I pretended I was sleeping. After that, I babysat myself making sure none of her replacements wanted to stick around.
On the second day of class I walked up to her desk. I leaned over her, getting as close as I dared to her hair. I wanted to see if she still smelled like roses. The scent of light citrus filled my nostrils. Better than when she was in high school. I lingered and asked about the length of the essay and the due date, even though all the information was written behind her on the board. We had time in class to work on our papers. She told us the assignment was to see how well we write. She said she wanted to spend as little time on the mechanics of English and get to the good parts like novels and poetry. I gave her my most sincere smile and headed back to my seat.
I raised my hand a little later. How about you write an essay, too. I’m pretty sure the class wants to know more about you. Like where are you from? She blushed. I suppose that’s a fair idea. I’ll think about it. I really did want to know who the most significant person to her was, then maybe I’d get to hear enough to figure out the gap of the last ten years.
I went home and worked on my essay. I was pretty sure even if she had not walked into that classroom, she’d be my subject. But would I care if I used her real name? Would I care if she never knew I was Michael now and not Sonny anymore? Would I be upset if I never saw her again?
On day three I turned in my paper. I stared at her as I put it on the pile. Can I go to the nurse’s office? I don’t feel so good. I didn’t want to hear her essay after all. I knew she did not write about me. It was never me. But now she would know it was always her.
On The Lamb - Julie Iverson
“We got to get clothes; three days we go bul, fresh so we not crumb.”
“Nah, three days? Nah, what fuh”?
“Cuz we ade it, Mum’s prize pie, the jawn fa’ St. Michaels, Tommy”
“Jeez, James, bro’ now I’m skeered. She okay or she keel us”?
St. Michaels Parish at Queen Village, Philly, the staple of the neighborhood where James’ mother, a known widow there, wins the blue ribbon every year for her melt-in-your-mouth pie. No matter the filling or flavor, it is the flaky mouthwatering crust that blows the judges away. This opportunity disappeared with each bite what with James and his bestie, Tommy, arriving home hungry.
James is an only child whose father was a fireman for the city of Philadelphia and ultimately,
lost to a fire when James was in elementary school, summer after third grade, age nine. He and
Mom lived at Queen Village where she is an active volunteer at St. Michaels. At the hospital, she works as a nurse, LPN licensed practical nurse, never finding the time to move up to Registered Nurse for the money. There was some life insurance, so they do okay. Best friend Tommy moved to the same hood in fourth grade. His parents were newly divorced from Fishtown, about ten miles away. Tommy was set for a do-over of grade four when it became decidedly better for him to do-again-fourth at a new school. Tommy leaves for Fishtown each July 5. th Schools out the third week of June but Tom’s Tavern, where Dad works, is tourist busy until after Independence Day.
Now that James is age twenty, Tommy is twenty-one years old. Each guy works part-time, James delivers car parts from the warehouse to the pickers at the dealerships. Tommy is busboy at Tom’s Tavern, a family business where three generations of Tom have gone before him. The elder Tom men were Philly police who worked the tavern after putting their twenty years in.
Tommy is not doing a criminal justice career. Tommy and James are part-time students at the city campus of Temple University. Very part-time, still working on gen-eds.
“Iz the’ weekend, we go away and come back later, few days”
“MMM, that mad, okay we go. Where”?
“We got our boy Bobby at New Hope, we get wit’ Septa, one night, AO. Next by bull we get to the Houdini museum at Scranton. Gotta’ take the Greyhoun’ bus, my man. There’s no rail here to there.”
“We sneakin’ and sleepin’ there at Houdini? Whack, how’s dat”?
“Bet the fishin’ cabin have us for eighty bucks, just a night. We take our wooders and
caffeine, maybe pick up the good venison jerky up there.”
“Wooder ice? That’s whack when it melts”
“Nah, wooder bot’uhls, just ta’ drink.”
The commute to Bobby’s at New Hope, Pennsylvania is uneventful on the Septa rail. They take the Warminster line at Queen village station, plan to walk to Bobby’s parent’s house where their old pal smuggles the two into the basement. There is a large sectional down there for a good sleep. They promise Bobby to be ouda’there early, six in the morning so as not to alert the parents, his or theirs.
“Bobby’s family into the Birds, our Iggles. Stanely cup is now afta’ Easta’ they quiet now,
sleepin’ early.”
James and Tommy are good boys and always able to get up early whenever need be. The Mom’s are their rock and they never want to disappoint. Tommy’s Dad is cool but not the disciplinarian. One night gone isn’t going to be a shocker, but two?
“Jawn wuz that big ride dare”?
“TomTom, we on the lamb now, this not a city bus or school bus, dis Greyhound!”
The bus from the borough of New Hope, Pennsylvania to Scranton is every bit of three hours with a window view to die for. The river areas and Delaware river gap, steep and rocky and always lush. Fishing and deer hunting are at their best for Pennsylvania outdoorsmen. The weather is not yet hot, usually more wet and for this, James and Tommy get lucky. Around Allentown the conversation drifts between the fires, the mine fire from Centralia that keeps on
burning underground to the dairy cows they pass. James has read more about the state than does Tommy and so he recites happily, the tutorials he knows.
“We could hide at the Appalachian trail. People do it, they hike it to disappear.”
“Apple-atcha? That is the hills and the peoples there, we not them, mmm mmm.”
Happens more than we know, people are unbeknownst of the perimeters of the Appalachian trail. Down south in Georgia, folks assume the trail ends somewhere southern. They get on it west of Atlanta. Hiking up north at Piscataquis, Maine is the upper limit for the trail though, most agree the Delaware river gap is the most stunning in elevation and foliage experienced. This is not at all where Washington crossed the Delaware. The trail traverses the Appalachian Mountains, hence the name. Regionally, the Appalachia community spans thirteen states, more
than one hundred counties. Kinship within generations of settlers includes Native American tribal communities as well as melting pot from the great migration of early emigrants. Dialect and culture can be described as collectivist in the rural counties stretching from the western Catskills far south into northern Mississippi. James has paraphrased this lesson.
Finally, James and Tommy reach Scranton, Pennsylvania and get to their Pocono destination. Harry Houdini performed two seasons nearby, long ago, and everyone still talks about the world’s greatest magician. The museum exhibits memorabilia in two rooms where James and Tommy obediently read the descriptions as if they are on a school field trip.
Details of this day can best be described as wholesome and clean-cut. They are good boys and when they leave the Houdini Museum, James and Tommy look for a hoagie spot. James was right, a night nearby is eighty dollars at a place resembling a log cabin. They sleep, exhausted. There’s not much to be said in the morning, just wanting to take the big bus back to Queen Village, home-sweet-home.
“Where you been? I’m worried sick, two nights gone is too much.”
James’ mother whacks a light palm over the tops of their heads. They know when they are being scolded and wait for the worst of it, frozen.
“Tommy, young man, you call your mother right now, please.”
“Ma’ umm sorry, we really sorry for what we done.”
“What? Wha’d else”?
The full confession of the devoured pie comes out and how hungry they were and how tasty is was, another blue ribbon, probably, they believe.
With that, his mother who is practically also mother or at least, an auntie, to Tommy, bursts into tears, barely able to get enough breath to declare her love and devotion and worry over what…?
“PIE? I tell you, you make me a new pie, huh? How’s that”?
And so, this was the new beginning for James and Tommy. They go to the kitchen where James suddenly recalls the recipe by heart; three cups flour, one cuppa lard or shortening, whichever, salt, egg, tablespoon of wooder and the secret ingredient, a teaspoon of white vinegar.
Get it all together in a ball and youse DO NOT roll it out until it has fully chilled in the freezer for an hour.
“What’s th’ flavor”?
“Not rhubarb, ju’eet dat? Nah, there’s nod enough sugar to straighten oud a rhubarb, I mean it, any other jawn a’wright.”
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