Decades after I deserted for good, the therapist sensed my rage. “Every time you get hot,” his eyes searched my face, “try a mirror.” I was the problem, he was saying. You can’t change your Rhode Island hometown, that mill town a brawl. But you can change. The class stuff isn’t new. Take some responsibility.
It was tenth grade, 1959, before America split into two. Why couldn’t I have found a better way? With a straight-A sister at Brown who lunched on Shakespeare and Beethoven, my father head of the state’s forest service, my mother at URI, the state university, I had to be good at something. I was too small for football, not skilled enough at basketball, but I was Miss Italiano’s best geometry student, or so I thought. I was my “own worst enemy,” according to Mom. I bred trouble. I didn’t understand what she meant.
I never knew Miss Italiano’s first name. She wore her long black hair with its sprinkles of gray in a tight bun. Who would she be with her hair . . . down her back, and wild. I was fifteen.
She seemed unfeeling and wasn’t what I called beautiful. I followed her every move. She commanded the space. No nonsense. This country is a democracy, she said, and that meant we all, every one of us, needed to have our heads and our hearts opened. To plane geometry and other people. And she would open us any way she could. I believed her.
Mid-afternoon, a Friday, the sun low, deep shadow in the room, tough to see. She announced a review. I didn’t need it. There had to be something else we could do. “The area of a parallelogram?” she asked, pacing back and forth across the floor before the blackboard. The trim licorice dress, I could almost taste it.
“The base times the height.”
She frowned. I knew the rules. Raise your hand before you speak.
“Who knows the area of a triangle?”
Thighs pressed into the underbelly of the teeny wood desk screwed to the floor, it couldn’t hold me, I strained up: “Base times the height divided by two.” I couldn’t stop.
Miss Italiano glared. I didn’t use my hand. She’d warned me. “You have to make room for others.” I didn’t know how. Why should I be concerned about them. We’re not joining hands here. Democracy is only a word.
She liked having someone as dedicated as me. That little turn of her lip, almost a grin, when she glanced that time. She appreciated me. I could tell.
I was sweating, I smelled bad. Too many nights up with the homework. The dirty work.
“Does anyone know the area of a trapezoid?” She scanned for someone, anyone else. She’d taught the material. No one raised a hand. I kept quiet. Students squirmed and avoided eye contact with Miss Italiano. The room darkened, the long shadows.
Then Frank Giorno raised his hand from a front seat, Frank who was quiet, never mean, didn’t speak in plane geometry, his dad likely sweltering in a textile mill or a nuclear-sub plant in Groton, the granite quarries played out. Frank’s grim eyes, the distress, had followed me for weeks: I don’t know how you do this. Help me. Please. He was from the other side of town, the Italian side. I didn’t help. I had no secret. I didn’t know what to tell him.
Now Frank twisted through an answer you couldn’t hear. Head down into his book, hands squeezing the pages, he wasn’t sure of anything he said. Miss Italiano: “Slow down. Take your time. Take your time.” Frank worked hard; Miss Italiano noticed. Teachers liked “healthy competition.” They drummed the phrase. We proved who was best.
One click on the wall clock, class will end. Come on, Frank, stop diddling. Come on . . .. I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t sit.
I yelled the answer right over him, the middle of one of his sentences. He kept mumbling on, the bell rang. Students rushed for the door, the weekend, movies, the Saturday dance at the Y.
I was the last to leave, alone with my book. I peeked at Miss Italiano, in the half-light, bent over her oak desk. She seemed worried. We didn’t get the easy stuff. I walked to the door and into the dim hallway. I’d done my job. I helped Miss Italiano.
I glimpsed Frank ahead and he squinted back. He wanted my help. I got closer in the hall; he wasn’t holding his book. He grabbed my shirtfront with both hands and threw me up against a locker. His heavy breath into my face.
“Don’t ever do that again. Ever.” He held me there. And let go. He stomped off.
Miss Italiano stood a step behind where Frank had been. She didn’t send him to the principal. No mention of punishment. Her eyes fixed on me. She moved toward me, then hesitated.
“What are you learning?” she almost whispered.
She turned and walked back to her room.