Her Name Was Patricia

     The sun hung high in the Florida Sky...like a vaporizing gun...blinding yellow and burning hot.  It was like a weapon firing down full-blast upon me in my little blue-checkered, cotton dress...and the mugginess made my panties wet in the Fall of 1973.   I was in the first grade. 
I had a big-boned  teacher...Mrs. Champion.  She wore red lipstick and polyester.  Her mouth puckered even when she wasn't speaking.   She was tall and preached in a voice fueled by loathing.  Although she wore no glasses her eyes seemed always to squint at us through scornful lenses.  She spent much of her time paddling our hands with a ruler and it hurt a lot.  She sat me in the back-row of the class for "talking too much."
     The desks inside of our concrete-block, prison-like classroom had been arranged in a two by two form.   I found myself seated next to a strawberry blond girl named Patricia.  She had eyes of blue and green that sparkled beneath her pixie-cut, reddish hair.  I called her Trisha for short.  We became best friends.  I found out Trisha lived only a few streets over from me so we were able to play together sometimes after school.  She lived on Berry Avenue.  The house is no longer there.  It had been a white, wooden house trimmed in black and had an old, in-ground pool that was filled in with dirt.  The neighborhood we lived in was called Woodland Acres."  It was also a slum area known in the Jacksonville vernacular as "Sin City."
     Patricia had a young mother, an older brother and I have no memory of meeting her father.  I wish I could remember more about the things we played...games, dolls, etc,???  I remember talking and walking around her yard ...I remember staring at the pool full of dirt and how odd and kind of scary it appeared to me.  I remember sitting on her bed and talking...but the content of those conversations seem to vanish whenever I reach for them...grabbing at them with my minds hands.
     I lived in a small trailer that had a large room built by my father, attached to one side of it.  In my mind's eye there are only slivers of her being there ...catching lizards and laughing and running around our back yard.  I remember my mother and I sitting on the side of my parents bed.  We were alone in the bedroom.  She was awkwardly trying to give me a side-hug when Trisha died.  She said that Patricia had been "a good little girl."
     Two weeks earlier I walked into my classroom and Trisha wasn't in her seat.  I was irritated.  I knew I would be alone all day without my friend.  It was a long day with Champion's condescending-puckering, and no companion to endure with.  I somehow managed my boredom and disappointment, while sweating the day away in my little, wooden chair beneath my desk.  We were locked in a room behind a slab door, where only a handful of windows could deliver the occasional whiff of fresh air.  The next morning Patricia would be there...I was sure.
     Days passed...and the days passed long and confusing.  "Why was it taking her so long to get over a cold?"  "Why was it taking her so long to come back to school?"  Her empty desk was miserable for me...I was drowning alone in an ocean of ole Champion, who cared nothing to hide her contempt for little children.  I got paddled on the hand for talking too much.  I licked my palm when no one was looking to sooth the pain.
     It was a Thursday morning.  My mother was walking me to class when we happened upon Patricia's mom.  Her brown eyes were staring into a lost space...like a postal worker who didn't know what box to stick the mail in.  We met along the aged, concrete walkway that led to our classrooms.  The cement beneath our feet was stained a grayish-black from decades of dirt.
     Trisha's mom was young, thin and tall with long auburn hair.  My mother asked the question.?  My Momma knew something wasn't right...and I must have complained to her everyday after school concerning my friend.  "How was Patricia?"  I stared into her Mother's face for emotion...for an answer.  I can only remember words like, "Fever...they can't get the fever down...they packed her in ice."  She was in the hospital.  And then it seemed as if she said "they piled many blankets upon her."  The memory is old now and the pieces fragmented.  I didn't fully understand.  But her mom seemed calm.  It seemed that whatever emergency that had occurred was over.  She would be coming back to school.
     The weekend passed.  It was a Monday morning.  Trisha would be back at school!  As I made my way down the concrete walkway to class, the sun hung like a vaporizing gun in the sky...like a fiery weapon blasting directly down at me.  My panties were wet. And the mugginess covered me like a soggy, sky-blue blanket.  I reached the door to my classroom ready to be thrilled to be reunited with my best friend...but again her desk was empty.  Patricia's seat was empty.  Depressingly I laid my things down upon my desk and sat in my little chair to prepare for another day alone. 
     When I finished setting up my duty's for the days work, I looked up towards the front of the classroom to witness an unexpected site.  Sitting at ole Champion's desk was a strange woman.  Mrs. Champion had taken the day off from work and we had this new lady for a substitute teacher.  She had curled, short hair.  It was light in color from aging.  She wore glasses and a blue, polyester suit.  Soon after... the morning announcements commenced across the intercom.
     In those days there was a thick brown box with a speaker in it, which hung upon the wall of every single classroom in the school.  It was called an intercom.  At precisely 9AM every morning it became the voice of God to the little children behind the block walls of public schools.  But it was really the voice of principle Rancor...or perhaps it was Rancid?  Either way it is the same.
     Like every other, indoctrinated child around me, I sat silently listening.  Principle Rancor was a short, white-haired, egotistical little man...his voice a sneer.  He wore polyester pants and a tie.  I stared at the brown, wooden box that hung from the wall above the sink from which we drank "out of" and washed our hands "in" after recess.  Like a good little soldier I was fixated...focusing total attention as Rancid's words flowed forth from the box.  And as the words flowed forth I became transfixed. 
     He was using powerful words, something like ..."We lost one of our students..."One of our students passed away over the weekend...her name was Patricia...the funeral is today "...
It is so cloudy the words in my mind as I try to remember.  I remember being transfixed...the words are all in pieces now but I remember exactly what that brown box looked like hanging on the wall.  And the words were downloaded and the message was received by my 6 year old mind.
     And I burst into tears.  Great sobs were suffocating me.  I was in shock.  I had no voice.  Patricia had contracted the Meningitis...How come no one told me?  My friend died alone...alone...alone... I didn't even get to say goodbye.  
     Suddenly New-Mrs-Blue-polyester charged at me.  She stomped with great authority across the classroom floor.  She towered over.  She had one hand on her left hip...she was nearly shaking.  She screamed down at me as the wailing tore from my very soul without permission...and my broken heart strangled my voice.  She screamed violently "WHY ARE YOU CRYING???"  "WHY ARE YOU CRYING???"  I looked up to answer but no sound came from my throat as I tried, and then my head just fell back into my hands.  She was throwing her right arm out pointing at me, demanding an answer.  She grabbed my arm and jerked me out of the chair and dragged me up to the front of the classroom.  She sat me in a chair facing the chalkboard.  She kept screaming at me.  She ordered one of the other children to bring me a handful of those rough, old, brown-paper towels hanging over the sink.  I was grateful. 
     I sobbed in anguish bent over in my little chair unable to speak.  It felt like some force was reaching down into my body and stealing my breath for pain.  The classroom had remained silent from fear...we were trained through the pain of the "ruler," not too speak.  Continuing again her attack she began to scream at me and demanded an explanation for my uncontrollable outburst of tears.
     And behind me lay a sea of all the other little ones...all the 6 year old babies seated silent and frozen at their desks.  Across that sea at the very back of the room sat two empty desks stacked one against the other...they were nearest to the door...the door-way out...they were both empty now. 
     And as the crazy lady wearing polyester blue continued her hysterical interrogation something happened.  Somewhere in that sea of terrified children, a little boy stood up.  He was one of my classmates...I saw him ever so briefly in my periphery but cannot remember his face or name.  He stood up behind his desk, in spite of everyone's fear.  The woman stopped and looked at him...and he said simply ..."That was her best friend." 
     I have no more memory of that school day.  My parents were not called.  Nor did the substitute teacher apologize.  My teacher Mrs. Champion had gone to the funeral.   The only memory I have is after school, sitting on my parents bed with my mom.  I told her Patricia was dead.  She awkwardly put her arm around me in a half hug, and she said "She was a good little girl."

Authors Note:
     As an added note, I should like to speak to some consequences that occurred over the next few years.  Patricia had an older brother, and he and I still attended school together.  I remember he became a school patrol-officer for children to walk across the street "before" and "after" school.  He wore an orange shoulder-belt, and a badge.  There was a secret knowledge between us.  At times our eyes locked...and all we felt was shame.  We were unable to talk about it as if it were taboo and we were made to carry a burden of shame and guilt.  We would unlock our eyes as fast as we could ...or perhaps it was me who disengaged my eyes as if it were escaping a predator.  He was tall and slim with short, wavy, auburn hair and he had large and lovely blue-green eyes...he was angry and humiliated just as I, but he used his eyes too accuse me for his shame.  We were both ashamed.  We had a secret between us about his dead sister...and we weren't allowed to speak about it.  Sometimes we would find ourselves together in a group of other students just as school let out and he would say mean, boyish things in front of me.  He and I were alone with a secret...and we knew it...it was so big between us and the silence like a siren.  He knew it and I knew it...and sometimes he was mean to me because he had no other person to share it with.  And our shame made communication between us impossible.  And yet ...the lesson we learned couldn't have been more clear...we were both made to feel ashamed that Patricia died...
     I wrote this story because I didn't want her to be forgotten.

                                    The End