“No,” he said, “we don’t swing or slide-nor see a saw!” He grinned up at me faintly.
“What a shame!” I said. “Did they all wear out? Can’t the school afford new ones?”
“We don’t swing or slide or seesaw.” The grin was dead.
“We don’t believe in it.”
There’s nothing quite so flat and incontestable as that last statement. I’ve heard it as an excuse for practically every type of omission, but, so help me, never applied to playground equipment. I couldn’t think of a reply any more intelligent than “Oh,” so I didn’t say anything.
All week long I felt as if I were wading through knee-deep Jello or trying to lift a king-sized feather bed up over my head. I used up every device I ever thought of to rouse the class to enthusiasm-about anything, anything! They were polite and submissive and did what was asked of them, but joylessly, apathetically, enduringly.
Finally, just before dismissal time on Friday, I leaned in desperation across my desk.
“Don’t you like anything?” I pleaded. “Isn’t anything fun?”
Dorcas Diemus’ mouth opened into the tense silence. I saw Matt kick quickly, warningly, against the leg of the desk. Her mouth closed.
“I think school is fun,” I said. “I think we can enjoy all kinds of things. I want to enjoy teaching but I can’t unless you enjoy learning.”
“We learn,” Dorcas said quickly. “We aren’t stupid.”
“You learn,” I acknowledged. “You aren’t stupid. But don’t any of you like school?”
“I like school,” Martha piped up, my first grade. “I think it’s fun!”
“Thank you, Martha,” I said. “And the rest of you-” I glared at them in mock anger, “you’re going to have fun if I have to beat it into you!”
To my dismay they shrank down apprehensively in their seats and exchanged troubled glances. But before I could hastily explain myself Matt laughed and Dorcas joined him. And I beamed fatuously to hear the hesitant rusty laughter spread across the room, but I saw ten-year-old Esther’s hands shake as she wiped tears from her eyes. Tears-of laughter?
That night I twisted in the darkness of my room, almost too tired to sleep, worrying and wondering. What had blighted these people? They had health, they had beauty-the curve of Martha’s cheek against the window was a song, the lift of Dorcas’ eyebrows was breathless grace. They were fed- adequately, clothed-adequately, housed-adequately, but nothing like they could have been. I’d seen more joy and delight and enthusiasm from little campground kids who slept in cardboard shacks and washed-if they ever did-in canals and ate whatever edible came their way, but grinned, even when impetigo or cold sores bled across their grins.
But these lifeless kids! My prayers were troubled and I slept restlessly.
A month or so later things had improved a little bit, but not much. At least there was more relaxation in the classroom. And I found that they had no deep-rooted convictions against plants, so we had things growing on the deep window sills-stuff we transplanted from the spring and from among the trees. And we had jars of minnows from the creek and one drowsy horned toad that roused in his box of dirt only to flick up the ants brought for his dinner. And we sang, loudly and enthusiastically, but, miracle of miracles, without even one monotone in the whole room. But we didn’t sing “Up, Up in the Sky” or “How Do You Like to Go Up in a Swing?” My solos of such songs were received with embarrassed blushes and lowered eyes!
There had been one dust-up between us, though-this matter of shuffling everywhere they walked.
“Pick up your feet, for goodness’ sake,” I said irritably one morning when the shoosh, shoosh, shoosh of their coming and going finally got my skin off. “Surely they’re not so heavy you can’t lift them.”
Timmy, who happened to be the trigger this time, nibbled unhappily at one finger. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not supposed to.’”
“Not supposed to?” I forgot momentarily how warily I’d been going with these frightened mice of children. “Why not? Surely there’s no reason in the world why you can’t walk quietly.”
Matt looked unhappily over at Miriam, the sophomore who was our entire high school She looked aside, biting her lower lip, troubled. Then she turned back and said, “It is customary in Bendo.”
“To shuffle along?” I was forgetting any manners I had. “Whatever for?”
“That’s the way we do in Bendo.” There was no anger in her defense, only resignation.
“Perhaps that’s the way you do at home. But here at school let’s pick our feet up. It makes too much disturbance otherwise.”
“But it’s bad-” Esther began.
Matt’s hand shushed her in a hurry.
“Mr. Diemus said what we did at school was my business,” I told them. “He said not to bother your parents with our problems. One of our problems is too much noise when others are trying to work. At least in our schoolroom let’s lift our feet and walk quietly.”
The children considered the suggestion solemnly and turned to Matt and Miriam for guidance. They both nodded and we went back to work. For the next few minutes, from the corner of my eyes, I saw with amazement all the unnecessary trips back and forth across the room, with high-lifted feet, with grins and side glances that marked such trips as high adventure-as a delightfully daring thing to do! The whole deal had me bewildered. Thinking back I realized that not only the children of Bendo scuffled but all the adults did, too-as though they were afraid to lose contact with the earth, as though … I shook my head and went on with the lesson.
Before noon, though, the endless shoosh, shoosh, shoosh of feet began again. Habit was too much for the children. So I silently filed the sound under “Uncurable, Endurable,” and let the matter drop.
I sighed as I watched the children leave at lunchtime. It seemed to me that with the unprecedented luxury of a whole hour for lunch they’d all go home. The bell tower was visible from nearly every house in town. But instead they all brought tight little paper sacks with dull crumbly sandwiches and unimaginative apples in them. And silently
