Back to School

I got a letter! It’s from my new teacher. She writes to tell me that she hopes I had a good summer and she’s looking forward to meeting me and this is the list of supplies I’ll need for the school year. I am ready right now! Let’s go to the store! I need notebooks and markers and an extra box of Kleenex.

The night before school starts, I’m a wreck. I can’t sleep and I keep thinking about my First-Day-of-School Outfit and if we’re going to miss the bus. I lie awake most of the night, watching the clock and counting down the minutes until the alarm goes off.

I can barely eat. Cereal tastes like wood shavings this morning. I get dressed way too quickly and now have nothing to do until the bus comes. My new backpack smells like plastic and possibility. I tug the zippers nervously, killing time, waiting.

Morning cartoons have changed a bit in the past three months. They have a new line up. Hercules then Saved by the Bell then VR Troopers. I see them but I’m not watching. My mind is elsewhere. My mind is wondering where my desk will be and if there will be any new kids and what we’ll play at recess.

The afternoons still feel like summer, but the mornings have grown chilly and damp with dew. We trek outside to the porch, Mom with her camera in hand. We stand by bushes and trees and sit on the porch swing as she snaps photo after photo. We aren’t trying to be models. We are trying to wait for the bus.

Finally, someone spots it coming around the bend. My stomach does flip flops and I think I might lose those Cheerios I ate a half an hour ago. I’m excited! I’m nervous. I’m itchy in my brand new Back-to-School outfit. I’m getting on the bus.

I never get up for school when I’m supposed to. Papaw comes to my room the first time, “Time to get up, Sarah!” A few minutes later, he comes by and flips on the light. Finally, he hollers out, “One foot on the floor!” and that’s when I know it’s really absolutely time to get up or I’m going to miss the bus. Then, I scramble, rush, and forget to brush my teeth and zip my coat, and run out to the end of the driveway as the bus starts to pull away. Our bus driver, Gail, always stops for us though. Those Matlock kids, always late for the bus.

On those rare days when I have time to eat Cheerios before the bus comes, I watch cartoons with my brother.

VR Troopers – kind of like the Power Rangers, except they wear digital headgear and are kind of nerdy.

Histeria! – a ridiculous cartoon with Big Fat Baby and Father Time and a museum tour guide who is always saying, “We’re walking. We’re walking. We’re stopping.”

Power Rangers – obvious.

Hercules – I love the movie Hercules and the cartoon is cool too. I love the singing statues and the little demon guys who are always messing up Hades’s plans.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – obvious. Also obvious that this is the original, well before the digitization, computerized version. Yuck.

Sailor Moon – Oh, I want to be her! "Fighting evil and moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight."

Animaniacs – “Hellooooo, Nurse!”

Tiny Toons – kind of like Looney Toons, except they are all really young and at school together and still getting into all kinds of trouble.

Fraggle Rock – My absolute favorite! Puppets that live in a cave and try to avoid the giant trolls that are always hunting them. Fortunately, the trolls aren’t very smart. Man, those Fraggles sure love to sing.

Gummy Bears – "bouncing here and there and everywhere! High adventure that’s beyond compare!" This is probably where I develop my sense of “high adventure” that will last well into my twenties.

Care Bears – I am such a softy. I cry easily and I can’t take being teased and I love everything the Care Bears stand for. They just want to love and hug and help and treat people well. If I could, I would move to Care-a-Lot and live the rest of my life there.

Uh oh! I have to go! The bus is here!

Mom is making me go to Mean Vicky’s house. I hate it here. We get up really early in the morning, when it’s still dark and still cold. I am bundled up in layers of hats and scarves and jackets and carried to the car. By the time I start to feel awake, we are almost there. I start crying because I know what’s coming.

We pull into her drive. It’s raining. It’s dark. I can see the raindrops falling in the beam of the headlights. The windshield wipers are working over time. Mom unfastens me from the car and carries me up the walk. I’m crying. I hate it here. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me with Mean Vicky.

“Hurry. Finish your cereal. It’s time to lay back down. Time to nap,” she says. I am staring at the little tan O’s floating in the milk in my cereal bowl. I push them to one side and then the other with the spoon.

“Eat it! Quit playing with it.”

Finally, she’s had enough. She takes my cereal. She dumps the milk. She leaves the rest of the soggy Cheerios in the bottom of the bowl. When she says to hurry up and eat, she means it. I’ve never been treated this way before. I wasn’t finished yet!

At nap time, we are not allowed to play in the living room with the toys. She has a chest full of toys, and the lid is propped half open. I can see them from my nap spot. Bright pinks and blues, shiny plastic balls, doll hair, levers and handles. They peek out of the top of the trunk. No one is allowed to play with them during nap time. Even if you can see them from your nap spot. And even if you'll be really quiet and not wake up anybody else.

Nope, no one. Mean Vicky said so.

So why do I see a girl sitting in the middle of the floor, playing with a doll or a truck or a bouncy ball? She has long hair and she’s older than me, but she’s still a kid. Why isn’t she taking a nap? And why does she get to play with the toys? That is against the rules. Mean Vicky said so.

Just when I think I cannot stand another minute, Mom and Nana come to pick me up. Oh, what joy!  I am saved at last. I hope they never make me come here again. I tell them in the car  about my poor, abandoned Cheerios, never to be sweetened and eaten. I cry to them. She’s mean. Who does that? Pours out your cereal like that? Just because you didn't eat it fast enough. I tell them about the girl, the one who got to play with the toys.

“That’s her daughter,” they tell me. They say it like that is supposed to make it okay. I’m someone’s daughter too. What makes her special? Better yet, what makes her more special than me? To not have to nap or follow the rules?

I beg them not to make me go to Mean Vicky’s house again. But I know they will. They have to work.

Rufus lives in a shack in the woods. My brother and I found it once. Old, rickety, a lean-to, really, at the base of a tree. Rufus scratches the side of the house at night, looking for children to steal. He takes the ones who won’t go to sleep when they’re supposed to. And we hear him. Scr-r-ractch-ch-ch. His gnarly, claw-like hands pawing at the house, hoping to find a way in and take us away.

We’re snuggled up in Nana and Pap’s waterbed. It’s warm. The blankets are warm, the bed is warm. The love is warm. Nana has an illustrated Bible that she props on her knees and reads us one story each night. She puts her finger to the page, searching out the stopping point from the night before, takes a breath, and says, “Okay….” That’s how we know it’s time to get down to business.

She wears a robe. The color changes, but it’s always thick and it’s always fuzzy. The belt is tied haphazardly at an angle. She has curlers in her hair. Pink and plastic and right out front to hold her bangs through the night.

When the story is over, we curl up on a pallet on the floor. She’s made us a cozy cocoon of blankets and sheets and pillows. We sleep there, between the bed and the wall, and she wakes me up in the night to use the restroom and have a glass of milk and a cookie. Sleepy and cozy and wrapped in Nana’s robed arms, Rufus is forgotten.

One night, I hear Rufus scratching outside the bedroom wall, hoping one of us will stay up just a tad too late. I notice that every time Rufus scratches outside, Papaw’s arm moves above his head, against the headboard. I know now. I’m in on the secret. But I do not tell my brother.

At night, we snuggle again on the semi-tipsy jiggle of the waterbed, making waves when we can get away with it. We read a Bible story. We curl up in our little nest by the bed. We wake to bowls full of dry Cheerios, already sprinkled with sugar, on the mornings Nana has to leave for work before we get up for school. So much sugar. Everything has a hint of sweetness – the tea, the Cheerios, the cookies. It tastes a little like sugar. It tastes a little like love.