Y ou just had to stand there and keep touching her and they’d
stare at you. Y ou were supposed to like it because she only
picked you if she liked you or if you were done your test early
or i f you were very good and everyone else stared at you and
you were the teacher’s pet. But m y arms got tired and I hated
standing there and I felt funny and I thought it was boring and
I didn’t see w hy I couldn’t do something else like read while I
was waiting for the test to be over and I tried to prolong it but I
couldn’t too much and I thought she was mean but the meaner
she was the more you wanted her to like you and be nice to you
because otherwise she would hurt you so much by saying
awful things about you to the class. And m y mother said she
was the teacher and an adult and I had to be respectful and do
what she said. I had to be nice to adults and do what they said
because they were adults and I wanted to grow up so I
w ouldn’t have to listen to them anymore and obey them but
the only w ay to get them to think you were grow n up was to
obey them because then they would say you were mature and
acting like an adult. Y ou had to brush the teacher’s collar and
no one ever had to say w hy to you even i f you kept asking and
they just told you to keep quiet and stop asking. She could
make you stand in the corner or sit alone or keep you after
school or give you a bad mark even if you knew everything. I
wanted to be an adult like my daddy. He was always very
polite and intelligent and he listened to people and treated
them fair and he didn’t yell and he explained things if you
asked why except sometimes when he got tired or fed up. But
he was nicer than anyone. He didn’t treat people bad, even
children. He always wanted to know what you were thinking.
He listened to what everybody said even if they were children
or even if they were stupid adults and he said you could always
listen even if you didn’t agree and even if someone was dumb
or rude or filled with prejudice or mean and then you could
disagree in the right way and not be low like them. He said you
should be polite to everyone no matter who they were or
where they came from or if they were colored or if they were
smart or stupid it didn’t make any difference. M y relatives and
teachers were pretty stupid a lot and they weren’t nice to
Negroes but I was supposed to be quiet even then because they
were adults. I was supposed to know they were wrong
without saying anything because that would be rude. I got
confused because he said you needed to be polite to Negroes
because white people weren’t and white people were wrong
and Jew s like us knew more about it than anyone and it was
meaner for us to do it than anyone but I also had to be polite to
the white people who did the bad things and used the bad
words and said the ugly things that were poisonous and made
