Old Miss Gracing by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 9
Through Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter Zeke sought out Miss Gracing’s counseling in many areas. It seemed that he had a knack for getting involved in contentious situations with some of the other kids. The classmate, with whom he was best friends, surprisingly turned out to be Jeremiah, who made him laugh regularly, with his unique observations on things. They decided that when they grew up they were going to be two gun toting good guy cowboys and would have adventures just like John Wayne in televised movies.
Miss Gracing didn’t shy away from potentially provocative conversations with Zeke, continued to enjoy his young insights and trusted that he was motivated not to jeopardize the situation with overly revealing comments to mama. She was pleased that he now fully understood that a wide variety of choices were available to him and was eager to hear the second career possibility he would settle on. Importantly for her, she now saw that she was still able to help some kids. While it bothered her that there now seemed to be a new kind of poverty of the pocketbook and the spirit that she saw as a force more powerful than her words and best intentions, she took some solace in the fact that no one else knew how to address these matters, either, even those thirty years her junior.
Zeke determined that Miss Gracing was appropriately named, as the techniques she suggested to him almost invariably enabled him to conclude a quarrelsome situation rather gracefully, rather than getting into a fight. The one exception to this happened when he thought he had successfully resolved an unexplainable kids’ argument with Thomas K. Murtha one Tuesday.
On Wednesday Zeke went to the school yard as usual and in complete surprise to him, Thomas K. Murtha, slowly and silently walked up to him and punched him in the stomach. Without having braced himself, Zeke literally got all the air knocked out of him and went to the ground on his knees. Thomas walked away, apparently pleased with his instant effectiveness. When the bell rang for lineup, Zeke was just about able to get up and stumble in the right direction. He recounted the story when Miss Gracing asked what was wrong with him. He added to it that he had to get that Thomas K. Murtha back.
Though he thought that he had, he was surprised and happy to see that he had not yet absorbed all of the meaning in Miss Gracing’s repeated words of advice; “You can’t think like that.”
She said; “Are you going to punch him in his stomach?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to let him know that I’m not putting up with that stuff.”
“What will happen next?”
Zeke pictured a number of possibilities, all of them involving a continued fight and said nothing.
She said; “An endless fight, right?”
He grimaced, smiled and said a long; “Yeah.”
“Do you want that?”
Zeke contritely said; “No.”
She said; “All right, then. I’ll take care of Thomas,” and proceeded not to call on him when he raised his hand for the next week. Zeke noticed this and thought his nemesis got the point. It was a real learning experience for him, as his father had told him to hit back anyone who hit him.
Miss Gracing spent the school year much like many of its predecessors and wished that she could have learned to take her own advice, especially in the past. Things could have been so different. At times the dreams prompted her, but often she could, very well, of her own volition conjure up the nightmares that became the determining events of her life. She tried to focus on her job, finding new ways of communicating things to children of a very early age, things she thought were essential for them to know, to have a shot at a good life. Her own dreams relived her first years out of college when she was known as Bonadea Carson; ”Bonny.” She returned home to a well-tended street in Boston, to quickly get a much desired job teaching second grade nearby.
In her exuberance with things going so well, she fell in love with Marshall Courtney, introduced to her by her parents.
He lived in Corpusbury, at that time, a small rural hamlet 20
miles from the city. His tall, thin good looks and laidback rural charm intoxicated her.
As it was getting near Flag Day, Zeke, for the first time had the thought; “Oh, no. Next year I’ll have a different teacher.” He went to Miss Gracing to see if some other type of arrangement could be worked out. Unfortunately, she knew of no way around the system and just encouraged him not to ruin any of the remaining time. She hoped he wouldn’t talk to his mother about that one, as she could easily visualize the gem of a discussion she could have with Mama, who she concluded was an expert at and wallowed in negativity. Her mind was already full of memories, none of which were wanted. Even the good ones.
On Graduation Day, Miss Gracing called Zeke over and told him that he was not required to stay away from her now, that she could be a sort of mentor and that he should feel free to seek her advice whenever no one else had a good answer. And if you forget everything else, she said; “Just remember; You can’t think like that.”
For some reason the softball season was a short one, at least for Dad. So, he was home to begin Zeke’s training as a
real baseball player. He saw more opportunity in baseball, as though the games are essentially the same, softball was never a fan knockout because of the supreme dominance of pitching, resulting in a lot of 1-0 and 2-1 games. Fans want to see hitting. Zeke enjoyed it a lot, especially when the first time his Father brought home a wooden bat and threw a ball to him; he smacked the hell out of it.
Miss Gracing improved her day to day life over the summer.
Perhaps, her own teaching reached her own unconscious level.
She never was fully capable of using it consciously. Whatever the reason, however, her dreams of dead bodies, beatings and psychiatric institutions were replaced by a very recurrent, but tolerable one. In it she became a bird flying on a moonless black night. She was afraid that she would fly straight into a tree. She couldn’t tell where she was and whether she was flying up, down, north, south, east or west. Why didn’t she just slow down and try to find a friendly tree and wait for sunrise? Maybe she was in a barren area. Maybe no sunrise was expected soon. Maybe she felt that if she continued to go fast she would find it quicker. She didn’t think she could count on it to reveal its lazy meanderings in the sky, wherever that was.