Read Online Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth by Edeet Ravel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Edeet Ravel
Tags: Fiction, General, Female friendship, Holocaust survivors, Self-realization in women, Women art historians, Children of Holocaust Survivors
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I felt free to sift through the rules, select the ones that suited me. I didn’t pay attention in class, I didn’t do my homework, I lost textbooks. I asked to be excused and was found loitering in the yard. Sometimes I was rude. And when my teacher’s back was turned, I slipped my hand into my schoolbag and surreptitiously ate soda crackers.
Attempts to induce me to change my ways failed. I didn’t mind being kept in after school: I read the violet/olive/lilac fairy books in the peace of the detention room. Nor did I mind writing out lines: my mother had bought me a calligraphy set, and I worked on perfecting flamboyant scripts as I copied out promises to improve. I was particularly fond of swashes.
After four years of impasse, they decided to hold me back. My report card was a sad sight: unsatisfactory in every subject except English, which came easily to me, and Geography. Geography was my favourite subject because of Miss d’Arcy, a shy woman with teary eyes and tortoiseshell glasses attached to a neck cord. She wore a cross, and there were rumours that she’d once been a nun. At first everyone jeered, pretended to pray: Ave Maria, Ave Maria .
I strode up to the front, taller than my classmates, brazen as usual, and roared, “QUIET!” There were rough and tough students at Coronation, but they saw me as a fellow reprobate, and if I was on Miss d’Arcy’s side, they decided that they would be as well. I returned to my desk and Miss d’Arcy returned to exports and imports. “Fisheries,” she said. I was in love with that word, with the lilting way Miss d’Arcy said it: “fisheries.”
But in spite of an excellent in English and excellent + in Geography, it was felt that I ought to repeat fourth grade and the principal wrote to my mother to inform her of the board’s decision. They didn’t know what they were up against. My mother marched into the school office, fanning the air with the offending letter.
—who who here is in charge Chekhov she’s already reading—
Followed by a lengthy excursus on dead relatives, lice, husbands lost at sea, and various other topics.
The secretary, then the vice-principal, and finally the principal tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her down. And possibly out of concern for my personal welfare, the principal reversed his decision on the spot. I would be allowed to advance to fifth grade.
It was all over now. The ageless building, with its embedded odour of old salami, decaying peanuts, and wet wool, would be gone from my life for good. Miss Kenny, my homeroom teacher, returned my smile; teachers were always in a forgiving mood on the last day of school. Giddy with relief, I left the classroom and began emptying my locker. Goodbye, Coronation! I tossed my report card into the garbage, along with the empty soda cracker boxes, broken protractors and leaky pens, and ran outside. I wavedto the girls who had tolerated me, waved to Neil Charles, the boy who liked me. As usual, he looked away, embarrassed.
And then I realized I’d forgotten my house key.
I had no choice but to make my way to the Sparkly and Shine Dry Cleaners, where my mother, keeper of the spare key, worked.
The sun was a summer sun, finally reliable after indecisive springtime spurts, and the sky was a splendid blue. I decided to walk the entire way, sixteen blocks. I wish I still had the dress I wore that day: thin grey-and-white stripes on soft, crinkly cotton, black pea-shaped buttons all the way down the front. The dress had come with a bright red patent-leather belt and matching purse, lingering remnants of the Doris Day look. I gave the purse to my mother: “Just right for you,” I said ambiguously. But the belt I kept—I liked its coy puerility.
My new white sandals clicked on the pavement. I fell into a reverie in which it seemed to me that the clicks were linked by an invisible mechanism to the sun, and the wild buttercups scattered on patches of creased grass were bits of liquid sun that had
Attempts to induce me to change my ways failed. I didn’t mind being kept in after school: I read the violet/olive/lilac fairy books in the peace of the detention room. Nor did I mind writing out lines: my mother had bought me a calligraphy set, and I worked on perfecting flamboyant scripts as I copied out promises to improve. I was particularly fond of swashes.
After four years of impasse, they decided to hold me back. My report card was a sad sight: unsatisfactory in every subject except English, which came easily to me, and Geography. Geography was my favourite subject because of Miss d’Arcy, a shy woman with teary eyes and tortoiseshell glasses attached to a neck cord. She wore a cross, and there were rumours that she’d once been a nun. At first everyone jeered, pretended to pray: Ave Maria, Ave Maria .
I strode up to the front, taller than my classmates, brazen as usual, and roared, “QUIET!” There were rough and tough students at Coronation, but they saw me as a fellow reprobate, and if I was on Miss d’Arcy’s side, they decided that they would be as well. I returned to my desk and Miss d’Arcy returned to exports and imports. “Fisheries,” she said. I was in love with that word, with the lilting way Miss d’Arcy said it: “fisheries.”
But in spite of an excellent in English and excellent + in Geography, it was felt that I ought to repeat fourth grade and the principal wrote to my mother to inform her of the board’s decision. They didn’t know what they were up against. My mother marched into the school office, fanning the air with the offending letter.
—who who here is in charge Chekhov she’s already reading—
Followed by a lengthy excursus on dead relatives, lice, husbands lost at sea, and various other topics.
The secretary, then the vice-principal, and finally the principal tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her down. And possibly out of concern for my personal welfare, the principal reversed his decision on the spot. I would be allowed to advance to fifth grade.
It was all over now. The ageless building, with its embedded odour of old salami, decaying peanuts, and wet wool, would be gone from my life for good. Miss Kenny, my homeroom teacher, returned my smile; teachers were always in a forgiving mood on the last day of school. Giddy with relief, I left the classroom and began emptying my locker. Goodbye, Coronation! I tossed my report card into the garbage, along with the empty soda cracker boxes, broken protractors and leaky pens, and ran outside. I wavedto the girls who had tolerated me, waved to Neil Charles, the boy who liked me. As usual, he looked away, embarrassed.
And then I realized I’d forgotten my house key.
I had no choice but to make my way to the Sparkly and Shine Dry Cleaners, where my mother, keeper of the spare key, worked.
The sun was a summer sun, finally reliable after indecisive springtime spurts, and the sky was a splendid blue. I decided to walk the entire way, sixteen blocks. I wish I still had the dress I wore that day: thin grey-and-white stripes on soft, crinkly cotton, black pea-shaped buttons all the way down the front. The dress had come with a bright red patent-leather belt and matching purse, lingering remnants of the Doris Day look. I gave the purse to my mother: “Just right for you,” I said ambiguously. But the belt I kept—I liked its coy puerility.
My new white sandals clicked on the pavement. I fell into a reverie in which it seemed to me that the clicks were linked by an invisible mechanism to the sun, and the wild buttercups scattered on patches of creased grass were bits of liquid sun that had
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