War Torn Love (6 page)

             
The only actual part of the school day I generally tended to enjoy was lunchtime - and recess - and the best of all was of course, the end of the school day. Best of all though was end of school on Friday. I absolutely detested school, school was hard for me. I really worked hard for
every grade I received all the way through - the polar opposite for my sister. I achieved good grades; but I think I worked so hard, because I was one that liked to please.

             
Abram and I took our lunch together - we would more often than not sit together to eat, but it wasn’t long before of the wintry cold weather had arrived with its vengeance. We would sit under a very old oak tree situated in the middle of the schools playground - I loved that old tree. When the leaves had departed from all the many branches, I was sad – watching it drop
its
finery around
its
feet and go to sleep. By then it was too cold, and as a consequence we were then forced to take our lunch inside the classroom. Then I sat at the window, and looked out at the tree. And that meant we were not given that break in the middle of the day, away from the teacher I so enjoyed. She just gave us evil looks, as she would eat. And even at lunch we were expected to behave ourselves, and sit as quite as can be…

             
To mine, and everybody else’s alarm, and horror, there was a new fourth grade teacher without word of warning.  The teacher, I had thought, and was somewhat excited about becoming my new teacher was much nicer. I was under the assumption I was going to have - the very teacher my older sister had the fortune
of having
;
my
sister told me grand stories about her
. U
nfortunately,
for me, and the rest of my
classmates
, she was having a baby, and during the course of the summer break, she had decided to not come back to teaching this entire year, too late for me of course. I really hoped this teacher was going to be even better. That was a laugh! She was mean!

             
My new schoolteachers name was Mrs. Kaczmarek. After getting an opportunity to know her, she made the hair on the back of my neck stick straight up, just hearing her nasal rasp in her voice. I knew the very instant I saw her, that she was not going to be a pleasant sort of person. She was an older woman - her face was rutted with the effects of age, and I would guess unhappiness. There
were deep creases
and wrinkles, with particularly heavy dark wrinkling around her eyes Dark splashed shadowy bags deposited under each of her eyes, making her face look sunken and miserable. To me at the time she looked so old, however she probably was not more than forty years old. She had to wear spectacles in order to see clearly. Blind as a bat without them. Her eyes were hazelnut in co
lor, and from what I could tell
she was cold in nature. Oddly enough, she never cracked any sort of a smile, or of much as expression whatsoever, other than of course, the anger that reared its ugly head. She in no way wanted reveal to us anything personal about herself -to any of us-and she certainly cared nothing of any of her student’s lives. You knew just by glancing at her, that she had not sought to be here, she did not have the fervor. Her hair was long and wavy in nature. She successfully ruined what might otherwise have been beautiful on her if she wore her hair down. By wearing her hair pulled up into a tight bun, I think it was actually lifting her loose skin on her wrinkled face, pulling it back and up, sort of creating the effects of a
face-lift
, without actually receiving a
face-lift
. But she would have needed to pull it back much tighter to make the winkles completely fade away. Her hair was salt and pepper in coloring, she was built slightly on the heavyset
side. Her figure was very unflattering, not so bad at her later age, she was built like my grandmother, and probably not much younger, though of course an eight year old is a poor judge of this.  Her clothing looked well worn. I was flabbergasted that she was even married. Later sadly, I found out that she was in fact a widower, with the loss of her husband in a tragic mining accident two years earlier. All the life seem to be burn out in her face after that, her shoulders hung low, devoid of confidence, she always looked tired. She turned astringent as a consequence of her tragic loss - she only was teacher because she needed the money to feed her family, and there wasn’t a whole lot of jobs prospects of availability to women of this era, and in this horrible economy.

             
She talked in a very thunderous, commanding sort of voice-un-lady like, if you were to ask me. I was taught that women were
supposed
to be seen not heard – and she was the exact opposite to that of my mother. You can certainly appreciate when she communicated in this manner, to the class, it tended to frighten me every time she spoke - a voice that would normally be uncommon coming from a woman.

             
If that was not bad enough, she carried, always within
arm’s
reach of her, her ‘punishment rod`. What I am speaking of is a three-foot long, three quarters of a one-inch thick, wooden round dowel. I disco
v
ered
its
dimensions and makeup was significant - it had to be flexible, with that snap back, to successfully achieve the snapping stinging effect that she searched for, yet did enough not to break when she struck it on the poor waiting pupil’s exposed
open palm, or butt. She was proficient
and lightening
fast with it, - it was as if it was an extension of her own arm. She was skillful to accomplish a swishing whipping sound. Sort of a sound a bee makes while flying by your ear. And trust me, you didn’t want to be the one that she was producing the sound for.

             
There was a female student in my class, which has started circulating an account spread fear around the classroom. The girl claimed that our teacher could pluck a fly out of mid-air. The story started when a girl named Anelie says she had personally witnessed the event, while showing up to class early one morning. She claimed that was coming out of the coat closet, located at the back end of the classroom, were the students stored their coats, and lunches. And she said she saw her do it, Everyone gained a new, quite awe for that rod and all of us grew to dread it.
             
Mrs. Kaczmarek preferred number one body site to smack you with her lightning dowel rod, the spot to achieve the supreme cutting stinging power was to slash the open end of both of your palms at the same time. Her reasons for taking such actions is that when in her warped view of the world - you were out of line, like talking out of turn, or heaven forbid answering a question incorrectly. She thought that you were not paying attention. Alternatively another reason to be struck by her was, just if she was in a bad sort of disposition for any given day, or perhaps she wanted to make a point. Our classroom was set up as a small dictatorship for all intents and purposes. We all grew to fear her rod. We liked to walk up and down the line, taping it in her hands. It would send chills up and down my
spine
.

             
Mrs. Kaczmarek, seeing Abram and I were acquaintances, immediately took a small pleasure and
divided Abram and I up, in her new school year’s seating assignment. But our seats were at the back portion of the classroom, the two of us separated by three desks. She ended up seating the two of us and the other three Jewish kids in the very last back row of the classroom, purposely alienating us from the other children.  Her actions towards us the rest of that first day would promptly made it
abundantly clear to Abram and I, that this woman had it deliberately out for the kids that were Jewish in her classroom. I would even go as far as saying that she had pure distain for us. I have seen that sort of look before. I was taught not to hate other people, but this woman was making it extremely difficult to not hate her, though I did my best to find the best in her. Sadly - for all of us - on the first day I knew that it would prove evidence to be a very extendedly long, grueling, very trying and taxing school year on me, one that had gone from awful to most dreadful. As soon as she had gone over all her rules, and what she was expecting of us. To be honest I had already in my young life experience a bit of discrimination for simply being Jewish - like the part of town I lived in- was the Jewish quarters. However, up until that day, it never really tended to bother me. At eight years of age, I wasn’t able to fully able to grasp, or identify with the abhorrence some poured towards us. To those people, when
one is
Jewish, like it’s a dirty thing, or something. Even on that first day, I knew that my teacher was going to prove to be vindictive and cruel towards us five Jewish students in particular.

By the end of that first day of school, I was an emotional wreck. I came home from school, completely devastated. No one ever had treated me so horribly until that day. I couldn’t comprehend why my new teacher could not like me - freckles and all. I was a likable enough girl; at least I thought I was. All my teachers have liked my sweet disposition, up until
now;
I had always been the teacher’s pet of sorts. When I arrived home, I slammed the screen door open, and ran straight up to my bedroom, buried my face into my pillow, and the dam of emotions let loose on me all at once. After holding them back all day, I really could not help myself. I began to bawl. Momma could hear me crying through the heat vent, after coming in through the back door that led into the kitchen. I could always count on
her;
maybe I purposely wanted Momma to hear me. My wish was granted, she in her characteristic sweet way came up to the room with a plate of hot freshly baked oatmeal cookies, and milk. The ones I could not resist.

             
“Darling, what’s wrong - why on earth are you crying? What has my girl so saddened? Did something happen to you at school today - did someone hurt my baby girl?”

             
She went ahead and set the plate and cup of milk down on my dresser, and came and sat beside me. I sat up and she - warmly hugged me, I melted into her arms. Momma had a very gentle soul. Just as Momma put her arms around me, Sissy walked in through the bedroom door, saw that I was weeping on Momma’s shoulder. I could say a lot about my
sister, which
was not always so flattering, but when someone was hurting, she had a huge
heart just like Momma, and was always there for me when it really counted. Every little sister would be glad to have her as a big sister. Sissy and Mom both put their arms around me. It felt so good to be between then after all of what I had been through. They both asked me what was so wrong. I tried my best to discontinue my crying. I was so upset it was difficult to talk.

             
I wiped the tears away from my eyes and pulled away from Momma’s chest, so that I could look at her face, and talk with her.

             
“Momma what’s wrong with being Jewish?”

             
This time when I asked Momma she did not struggle with the answer, or endeavor to sugar coat it
when I asked the thorny question. I was watched her reactions after I was asking and she had not even squirmed when I had asked her. She completely understood what it was that I was talking about, and currently going through. She told me later she was upset that I to was now having to experience the darker side in people who are anti-
Semitic
. She looked over at my sister, who also perfectly understood what I was experiencing. The look they gave each other was curious to me. Momma got up,

             
“Excuse me a moment. Hana
” Leaving
the room for a moment. She returned a minute later, bringing back with her the
scriptures’
from the Torah.  Mom sat between Sissy and me on the bed, then read a few passages, thinking the God’s own words would help shed some light, put me at ease, and God willing, answer some of what I was wondering. They both knew that finding out this answer
would rob me of a small piece of my adolescence, and innocence, which I did not deserve to lose, not just yet anyways.  I had pretty much been sheltered living as we did in the Jewish section of town.