Without breakfast to slow me down, all I had to do was get myself dressed and walk to school, which was only a block away. Even so, no matter how hard I tried to get there on time, I was always late, and all the kids looked up and stared at me when I walked in. Already, I didn’t fit in.
But, being the outgoing child I was, I quickly made friends with two other little girls, Debbie and Mary Lou. We did everything together. At recess we played on the swings, the three of us lined up in a row, flying higher and higher into the sky, laughing our heads off. We took turns on the teeter-totter and glided down the slide. I had never felt such joy. At naptime, we placed our little pallets down side-by-side on the floor. And we talked—constantly.
When it came time to graduate to first grade, my teacher called my mother to school for a meeting. She asked Momma to bring me along.
“Beverly is a delightful child, Mrs. Engel,” the teacher began, looking at me with a serious look on her face. I could sense there was a “but” coming.
“She’s very imaginative and bright,” she continued. “But she talks too much in class. She and her two friends continue to talk even when I tell them to be quiet. It disrupts the class.”
Momma shot me a deadly look. I could already feel the spanking, already hear the lecture as soon as I got home.
But the teacher wasn’t finished yet.
“Beverly seems to be the ringleader. I think the other two girls would mind better if Beverly wasn’t encouraging them. Because of this I seriously considered not allowing her to move on to the first grade, but instead I’ve decided the solution will be to separate the three girls—make sure they are not in the same class next year.”
“That sounds like a good solution,” Momma replied crisply. “But I guarantee you won’t have any trouble with Beverly talking too much in the future.” Again, she shot me a threatening look. “Thank you for your time.”
With that, she abruptly turned on her heel and got out of there as fast as she could. I followed after her. I couldn’t tell if she was moving so fast because she didn’t want to lose her temper in front of the teacher or because she was so humiliated. At any rate, I knew I was in for it when I got home.
As soon as we walked through our front door, my mother laid into me—physically and verbally.
“You know you are supposed to do what your teacher tells you to do. If she tells you to be quiet, you need to be quiet!”
She went on and on about how embarrassed she was that I was once again such a troublemaker. “I don’t know why you insist on making trouble wherever you go. Does it make you happy to embarrass me all the time? Do you get a kick out of it? All I have ever asked you to do is to try not to embarrass me in front of others. Why can’t you do that one simple thing?” With that she gave me several hard swats on the bottom.
I felt horrible. I didn’t know the answer to her questions. I tried to be good and not embarrass her, but she was right, I did keep getting into trouble.
“They’re not going to put you in the same class with Debbie and Mary Lou next year, but I also don’t want you playing with them at recess. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Momma,” I replied dutifully, even though I was panicking inside. What would I do without my best friends? Who would I play with? I never understood why she needed to be so extreme. But I knew to not argue with her.
“You’d better mind me if you know what’s good for you. You may think you can get away with things when you aren’t with me, but it will always catch up to you. I’m going to tell your teacher to make sure you three don’t play together.”
I hated it when Momma got so upset. I felt bad about not minding the teacher and for embarrassing my mother. But mostly I was devastated. For the first time in my life, I had friends I adored, and now I was going to lose them. I’d lost Joey over the summer, and now I’d lost my two new friends from school. And worst of all, it was once again all my fault.
I didn’t make friends easily in first grade like I had in kindergarten. I had a boy haircut, and some of the kids called me “boy” instead of Beverly.
My mother decided on the haircut to make it easier to manage. “I’m not getting up in the morning to brush your hair and put barrettes in it, and you don’t seem to be able to do it yourself, so we’re getting it chopped off,” she’d announced shortly before school started.
I didn’t care one way or the other until I found out she was taking me to a barbershop instead of a beauty parlor.
“Why should I pay an arm and a leg for a haircut at some fancy beauty shop? A good barber can do just as good a job and it only costs me a fraction of the cost,” she’d explain to anyone who mentioned my hair. No one ever seemed to have the nerve to stand up to my mother and disagree with her, or to take my side and encourage her to do better by me.
In addition to my haircut, I always wore tailored, neutral-colored clothes and clunky
