The boys were cruel and wanton...it was obviously their spring of discontent. They were on one side of the sandbox. I was on the other. I wore a brand-new blue button-down sweater and was a fairy tale away from carrying a basket of goodies for grandma who was sick alone in the sandbox. The boys wore an insidious sneer and a lascivious license to bully little girls. They did not like me.
We were all three.
"Confound it!" I remember myself saying. "The ineluctable modality of the visible." I gazed at the sands of time (albeit recess time) and craved the inner folds of eternal endlessness. There. Me. I. Alone. In the desert.
"Waiting for Godot?" I asked them bitingly, hoping they'd leave in sheer bewilderment.
The boys looked at me from the other side. Their barbaric tendencies mandated them to relinquish boorish nomenclatures for the female sex. They directed their eloquence at me; their actions were a precursor to future sexual harassment lawsuits. I looked down at the sand affectionately. All people look at their sand-pile with a kind of affection-somehow, it gave them sincere pleasure, renewed innocence, the sense of belonging-perhaps a preacher may make an analogy in his eulogy:
"You are but one grain of sand. (Amen.) You feel somehow unimportant, loose and running wild through the fingers of God. (That's right. That's the truth.) Yet, as you look at more and more grains of sand, you realize that God is molding you as a part of his kingdom. (Hallelujah!) Yes, you are a grain of sand in God's sand castle. (Praise the Lord!) Yes, you are small, yes, if you all of the sudden fell away from the mold, God wouldn't notice. (Mmm!) But hell, if you bring down other grains of sand, then that sand castle may slump down on the side, and God would be verrrry angry! (Amen!)"
However, the boys' concern was not with the sandbox, and self-realization, and God's wrath, but with me. They were toying with me, teasing me, playing with me. I did not want to play. I wanted to meet in the real world the insubstantial image which my soul so constantly beheld. I wanted to be left alone, in my Sahara Walden. I ignored them.
Unfortunately, then came the word that strikes fear into every mother's heart upon integrating a child amongst strange non-kindred. The word that continues to persevere long into a man's soulless journey through life, to give him a reason to live. One word that is enough to mutate men into wolves. A simple word that taught me to equate the simple with the deplorable.
"MINE!"
A boy had come over to my Walden and claimed his spot. His eyes squinted in full anger; his teeth bared in a menacing manner; his fist raised high in the air, as through to hit me. The army of boys behind him tensed into attack mode. Like a pack of wolves, they crouched down in the sand, growling.
Standing up for oneself. Rising against "the man." Destruction of the old boys network. Killing the big bad wolf. Regicide. The right to bear arms, to free speech, to sandbox space. Women's rights. Did none of these apply to me? Then why couldn't I say a simple word? Against every indoctrination set before me, I knelt there, in wretched silence.
And then, the glass ceiling broke.
The sand came down. The sand came down and raped me. The sand came down and raped me and God was verrrry angry.
The boys chose a rigorous, methodological approach to sand-throwing, preferring to share the pleasures of sadism at the same time, rather than allowing for a slow-paced yet democratically pleasurable queue for attacking, which I would have preferred for personal reasons. I debated whether I should acknowledge their alternatives or simply observe their socialist technique. I believe I chose the latter.
It was over. I had grains all over my body. I was as prickly as a porcupine avoided on a country road, by a swerving car, which then drove straight into a . . . large tree.
A voice from far out on the playground cried:
-- All in!
And the other voices cried:
--All in! All in!
A teacher...a lady...led me inside. Blinded by the sand, I heard her voice telling one invisible boy not to pick his nose. She told another to listen to her and get inside. Another nonexistent child to take his thumb out of his mouth. And a "Stop touching yourself!" to the final unseen lad.
She then attempted to solace me.
--Boys are such little devils, aren't they?
I used my free hand to wipe the particles of derision off my brand-new blue button-down sweater.
--Here, just clean yourself off at the fountain. Let me know when you are done.
She slowly guided my busy fingers to the knob. I turned it, feeling things from a different perspective. I briefly meditated on the remarkable manipulation the blind had to deal with in a seeing world. And then, I bowed my head, as if to pray.
I closed my eyes and let the fountain water kiss my youth. A hot burning stinging tingling wave scraping off my sensitivity made my face crumple together like a leaf in a fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into my eyes. My whole body was shaking with fright, and my crumpled burning livid face shivered like a dead leaf in the winter air. A cry sprang to my lips, a prayer to be let off. But though the tears scalded my eyes and the sand scalded my cheeks and my limbs quivered with pain and fright I held back the hot tears and the cry that scalded my throat. At that exact moment, I finally understood the Joycean weltanschauung from throughout his buildungsroman. At this exact moment, I finally understand.
I looked up at this supposed mentor. The person who was supposed to take my hand and guide me through my utopian childhood, but instead, merely guided me to clean up, so I could look presentable to the public. At that time in my prodigious life, I had been rereading certain theories of independence and resistance, and thus I heartily accepted the motto,--"That teachers are best who teach least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Teachers are at best but an expedient; but most teachers are usually, and all teachers are sometimes, in expedient. The American teacher,--what is she but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of her integrity?
My face wet, my hair taken down from its ponytail, and my pain dulled, I tilted my head while I spoke aloud.
--Accommodation, malleability, adjustment...those do seem to be the order of things, don't they?
The lady looked down at me.
--What?
--I'm cold.
--You will be better. They will be better.
--I don't . . . know.
--Are you all right?
--Yes. No.
The lady placed her hand gently on my shoulder; I put my head back while she sang to me, very softly, an innocent tune we had learned a few days ago:
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf,
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . .
I am.
--jmfe