Sixth Grade Schmaltz
Fall
The 25 newly-minted 6th grade students waited, a little on edge, for their new teacher to appear in the classroom. The 30 desks were arrayed in 5 rows of 6, and all were occupied save for the foremost desk in each row. Nobody, it appeared, wanted to be under the close scrutiny of their new instructor.
Into the room strode a short, portly man in his late twenties, with a burr haircut, thick eyeglasses and a cheap suit. “My name,” began the man, reaching the front of the classroom, “is Mr. Shipley,” and he turned facing the blackboard and sketched his name in large block letters. “Now, who are you?” he asked a pretty blonde girl sitting near the front.
“My name,” replied the girl, straightfaced, “is Miss Johnson.”
Several in the class laughed, but then wilted under the glare of Shipley.
“Do you have a first name, Miss Johnson?” inquired the teacher, who already knew full well who she was.
“It’s Jane,” she said. “Do you have a first name, Mr. Shipley?” asked Jane in the same sardonic tone.
“Indeed I do,” answered Shipley. “My full name is Marvin Allen Shipley,” he said.
Jane burst out laughing. “You mean, like ‘Ma’ Shipley?” she asked, rocking back and forth like an old woman. She laughed and was again joined in her merriment by other students. A withering glance from their 6th grade instructor soon brought them to heel.
“Enough!” rumbled Shipley in a deep baritone, and everyone, at his invitation, in turn introduced herself.
Casual, getting-to-know-you chit-chat prevailed for the first couple of hours. The late August heat permeated the tall windows in the classroom. A spinning ceiling fan kept the temperature bearable. There was no air conditioning in public elementary schools in the American Midwest in 1965. Shipley asked about the interests and backgrounds of his pupils and he, in turn, opened himself up to questions from the students.
“Were you ever in the Army, Mr. Shipley?” asked Ruth, a pretty brown haired girl whose own brother had recently been drafted into the Army for service in the rapidly escalating Vietnam war.
“No,” said Shipley, “I was contacted by the government and when I explained that I had a wife and a little boy, I was told that I needn’t bother.” He smiled benignly.
“My older brother has a wife and kid too,” Ruth said pointedly, “but that didn’t get him out of going to ‘Nam.”
Shipley just smiled weakly and shrugged. Turning to a large, thick-shouldered young man by the name of Butch, he asked, “And what do you like to do in your time off from school?”
Butch blinked in surprise and then said in a hoarse voice, “I like to kiss the girls and make them cry!”
The other students groaned and Shipley rolled his eyes, prompting Butch to laugh like a braying donkey. Shipley shook his head. Turning next to a student whom he knew had been held back in school for a year, he asked, “Robert, what are your interests, son?”
“My name’s Rob, and I’m not your son!” said the boy in a dull voice.
“Duly noted,” murmured Shipley, turning to the next student, who turned out to be a small, red haired boy named Willy. “Willy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A baseball player,” he replied at once. The teacher shook his head, thinking that the small frail boy had as much chance of being a professional athlete as Shipley did of becoming CEO of Ford Motor Co., a local employer of prominence.
“Do you have a second choice?” asked Shipley.
“A cartoonist,” said Willy. Before him on his desk was an open notebook in which he had crudely sketched myriad animal figures.
Shipley craned his neck to observe the artwork, then said, “Keep playing baseball is my advice.”
Several students laughed and Willy shot daggers at his new nemesis.
– – –
At recess two weeks later, Jane was chastised by a special education teacher for chasing and making fun of a student enrolled in the special ed. program. “Get out of here, you dirty Mongoloid,” shouted Jane, tossing stones after the child. Jane laughed shrilly. The teacher, monitoring the playground, reported the incident to Mr. Shipley.
“Jane means well,” said Shipley, running into the special ed. teacher in the teachers’ lounge.
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Shipley,” said Mrs. Baxter.
“Besides,” said Shipley. “Special ed. isn’t really a part of Burbank School, now is it? You only use our spaces twice a week and then go onto other district facilities the rest of the week, am I right?” He smiled cunningly.
The other teacher twisted her lips wryly. Shipley was right: special ed., still experimental in this school district, couldn’t afford to be too demanding with respect to their hosts’ behavior.
“I’d like to speak to Jane for a moment if I may,” she said.
Shipley acquiesced and later that afternoon, during recess, Jane and her teacher trooped into the cafeteria, which was used by the special ed. classes when lunch was not in session. Shipley introduced the two.
“I just wanted to speak with you for a moment, Jane,” said Mrs. Baxter. She went on to briefly explain the mission of special ed. and to enlist Jane’s support for her efforts. Drawing her narrative to a conclusion, Baxter said, “You understand, don’t you, Jane? I want us all to just get along.” Baxter leaned forward in earnest. She had to tread cautiously here. Roger Johnson, Jane’s father, was a member of the Board of Education.
Jane, who had been fighting back against laughing in the teacher’s face, finally gave up the struggle and said, “Alright, just so long as I don’t have to touch one of those Mongoloids!”
Baxter sighed and came back to her full height. She’d tried. She looked over at Shipley, but all he did was shrug. Throughout her school years, Jane seemed to harbor a particular resentment for such children until, almost 10 years later, she gave birth to the first of her own two children with Down’s Syndrome.
– – –
“How old is this new teacher of yours?” asked Cynthia, Ruth’s mom, one evening at supper.
“27,” Ruth replied.
“So he’s already been in the Army?” asked Cynthia.
Ruth shook her head. “No,” she said. “He said he doesn’t have to go. He has a wife and a little boy.”
“Humph!” said her mom. “That won’t keep you out of the Service nowadays. He probably knows someone on the local Draft Board! The fix is in,” said Cynthia, who was a big proponent of conspiracy theories.
Ruth shrugged.
“I saw old man Shipley’s photo in last year’s yearbook,” said Melanie, Ruth’s sister, older by 4 years. “He got out of the draft because he’s so fat. He must weigh nearly 300 pounds!” She hooted.
“What are you going to be studying this year?” asked Cynthia next.
Ruth pulled a sheet of paper from her bookbag. “All this,” she said.
Cynthia accepted the document and read, nodding her head. “Math, spelling, social studies, science, art…”
“Mr. Shipley has a degree in Chemistry,” remarked Ruth. “He says he wants to get a job at the high school teaching that.”
“What sort of a man is he?” asked Cynthia.
Ruth shrugged again. “I don’t know. He seems to like to tease people, make fun of them.”
“Well, you just do what you’re told,” advised her mother. “Next year you’ll be in junior high; won’t that be fun?”
Ruth and her sister both rolled their eyes.
– – –
A few weeks later Butch made an enemy of another student. That student, an 8th grader named Boxey, repeatedly called Butch “stupid” and “retardo” and stole his lunch. Finally Butch caved to his tormentor’s badgering and agreed to fight him after school one day. Boxey, who was tall and meaty and decidedly mean, was still not as large as Butch. He came armed with a retinue of supporters, who urged him to do unspeakable things to the underclassman.
Then the fight proceeded. Boxey peppered Butch’s face with short, sharp jabs, emulating his hero, Cassius Clay. He even chanted, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” But he did little damage. Butch threw just one punch, to Boxey’s ribs, likely facturing one. Boxey, impaired by the damaged rib, tried to strike Butch in the crotch, but Butch easily deflected the blow. Boxey cried out in pain, grabbed at his injured wrist. He sank to one knee.
“Go ahead, Butch,” called out Rob, his sole booster, “finish him off. Beat the hell out of him. He’d do it to you!”
Butch shook his head and dropped his fists to his side. “He’s hurt,” he murmured, picking his jacket off the ground. “It wouldn’t be right. Let’s go,” he said, and led his one friend away.
– – –
“Pamela and I are getting a divorce, Rob,” said his father Aaron Braden bluntly. “She moved out this morning.”
Rob frowned. Things had been so shaky in the Braden household recently, indeed, for as long as Rob could recall, that he had long suspected that it would end like this. “When?” he asked.
“As soon as she can get the lawyer she’s sleeping with to file the motion,” replied Aaron harshly. He went on to levy bitter criticism against his wife of 14 years. Rob was the couple’s only child.
“What happens to me?” asked Rob, cutting to the chase.
“Well, Pamela doesn’t want you,” said Aaron coldly. “You’d just cramp her style. I guess I’m stuck with you.”
Rob swallowed, nodded and turned away. He’d found out all he needed to know. Rob never saw his mother again.
Winter
Three children, selected by lot the day before, accompanied their teacher on a trip downtown during the school’s extended holiday lunch period. Though they would forgo ice cream and roasted turkey served in the cafeteria, they would be given treats by their teacher nonetheless; plus, they got an off-campus excursion. Their mission: to purchase for their class a Christmas tree.
After they’d all piled into Shipley’s “groovy” new Mustang, they debated over where to obtain the tree. “I think Lentzburger’s has a tree lot again this year,” noted Ruth. Levi Lentzburger was her mother’s brother.
“And what,” asked Jane scornfully, “get us a Jew Christmas tree? That’s an oxy-moron.”
Ruth, a member of a non-observant Jewish family, stared at her blankly. “What do you mean?” she asked, although she recognized Jane’s remark as part of the same subtle prejudice she’d felt almost since she’d become self-aware.
“Never mind,” said Shipley gruffly, slipping the car into gear. “We’ll just go by Kroger’s.”
“Gimme a hatchet,” offered Jane, “and I’ll cut one down in the city park.” She grinned woflishly.
Minutes later, the children and their teacher were in the parking lot at the grocery, inspecting the meager selection of trees. The children gravitated to the prettier, more expensive trees: magnificent specimens of Douglas fir, priced at $3, $4 and one exquisite specimen at an other-worldy $7.
“I like this one, Mr. Shipley,” purred Jane with cunning, holding up the $7 tree.
“Put it back,” said Shipley, grasping a sparse, practically denuded specimen of balsam from the $1 pile. He shook the tree and needles rained down copiously onto the paved lot.
The children stared at the beleaguered specimen with sad eyes.
“It’s missing a few branches,” remarked Ruth, running her fingers through the blank spaces.
“It’ll be fine,” Shipley assured them. “Besides, we’re on a tight budget. C’mon, let’s check out.”
The little group drifted toward the outdoor cashier, paid for their purchase and were soon on their way, the small, thin tree stuffed unceremoniously into the Mustang’s trunk.
“I’m getting hungry,” complained Jane, running her hand over her tummy by way of demonstration. “When do we eat? You promised us food, Mr. Shipley,” she whined melodramatically.
“Oh, here, Mr. Shipley,” said Ruth, handing over a $5 bill. “I told my mom that you were taking us out today to get a tree and lunch, and she said it wasn’t right that you spend your own money.”
Shipley accepted the bill gratefully. “Tell your mother thanks, Ruth,” he said. Second-year grade school teachers didn’t earn a great deal of money.
Arriving at a small diner, the four found spots in a booth with a formica top and faux-leather seats. An ageless waitress arrived promptly and took their order. The next thing that Shipley did, under the watchful gaze of his students, was to turn up a pack of cigarettes, shake one out and light up. This was extraordinary. Smoking was something that parents did, or a renegade older brother or toughs on TV, not an elementary school teacher. They watched, morbidly fascinated, as their teacher greedily sucked smoke from the coffin nail and then expelled the fetid fumes in their immediate vicinity.
Shipley had budgeted $3 for lunch, thinking 4 hamburgers and 4 Pepsis and then stiffing the waitress on the tip. The tree had been paid for by conscripting a nickel from each student who could afford it, and not everyone could. But now, with the 5-spot in his pocket, the cash-strapped teacher could afford to live a little. The payments on the new car were murder.
As they sat at the table, watching Shipley smoke, the students took stock of their surroundings. “What’s that?” asked Ruth, indicating an elaborate, multi-colored metal and glass device sitting on the edge of the table next to the wall. Shipley recognized it as a rather bizarre looking napkin dispenser, but before he could answer, Rob spoke up.
“It’s a slot machine,” he quipped.
The other children laughed. Shipley rolled his eyes, but chuckled in spite of himself. This was the first time he’d heard Rob speak in days and Shipley was glad that he was opening up again, at least a little. The teacher had heard rumors that the Bradens were contemplating a divorce and this couldn’t be good for their son. In all the school, just a handful of students had parents who were divorced.
20 minutes and 5 cigarettes later, Shipley gathered his charges and they set out. Pausing at the cash register, he purchased 2 packs of Marboros with fifty cents from the $5 he’d gotten from Ruth’s mom. Then they piled back into the Mustang and returned to the school.
– – –
Rob had been acting out. Fits of unexplained temper and irascibility accompanied by mild aggression became common. Mr. Shipley had told him on several occasions to check his temper but, unknown to Shipley, the dissolution of the Braden marriage had been extra hard on 12-year-old Rob. Already wincing from being held back a year for indifference to his studies, he was seething with frustration at rejection by both his parents.
Jocelyn Shipley, Marvin’s sharp-tongued, aggressive wife, worked for the company that administered aptitude and intelligence tests at schools throughout the county. She reported to her husband that, of the 25 students in his class, there were but 3 that stood out as exceptional. The first was Butch, whose IQ was some 15% below average.
“He really should be in a special program,” she said. “But, I know that Burbank doesn’t have a special education teacher on faculty for students his age just now. 5 years from now, you probably will have, and Butch would be enrolled. As for now, he’ll continue to slip through the cracks.”
“Is anyone exceptional for the right reasons?” asked Marvin with a frown.
“Yes,” said Jocelyn. “2 students. Ruth Lanier and Robert Braden.”
“Rob is a miserable student,” opined Marvin. “And his attitude stinks.”
“Yet, he’s very intelligent,” said Jocelyn. “He has an IQ of 131.”
Shipley’s bushy eyebrows arced skyward. “That’s not bad,” he conceded.
“Your IQ,” his wife told him slyly, “by way of comparison, is just 118.” She flashed a mean little smile.
“And what about Ruth?” he asked.
“Ruth,” Jocelyn informed him, “is off the charts smart.”
“How smart?” he asked.
“Try 150+,” she told him.
Marvin whistled soundlessly. No wonder he hadn’t been able to get a handle on that one. She always seemed to be onto him, to see through him.
– – –
“I need that library book back, Rob,” Sheila, the class librarian, told her classmate.
“I’m not done with it yet,” he responded. “I’ll finish it over lunch and then bring it back.”
“I need it now!” she snapped truculently.
This went on for several exchanges until which point that Rob angrily flung the paperback book at the girl. It slipped through her hands and landed loudly on the floor. At that very moment, Shipley looked up, became instantly enraged.
“Enough!” he shouted, and rose to his feet, violently flinging his desk chair into the wall. Everyone froze in place. Reaching into a desk drawer, Shipley pulled out a heavy wooden paddle, walked around the desk and seized Rob by the arm. “You’ll learn,” snapped Shipley, dragging the child in his wake.
They swept out the door and up the corridor to the other 6th grade classroom, where Shipley knocked peremptorily on the closed door. Within seconds, the other teacher appeared.
“Need you to witness corporal, Duane,” said Shipley with barely contained fury.
The three proceeded to a small store room down the hall, unlocked the door and stepped inside.
“You’ve been warned before,” thundered Shipley, grabbing Rob round the waist and bending him over. He then delivered 2 tremendous swats to Rob’s backside. “Now,” snapped Shipley, still breathing heavily, “don’t lose your temper again–or else!”
Shipley marshalled Rob back to class and shoved him through the door, lingering in the hallway and conversing with the other teacher for a moment. Rob could hear some pleasantries exchanged; what sounded like laughter. Red-faced, he took his seat and avoided the others’ stares.
60 minutes later, when Shipley had calmed down and next addressed his classroom, he said that he hoped the students had learned something from the incident which had taken place an hour before.
“I learned something,” remarked Jane with an evil grin. “If you’re big enough, you can bully anyone.”
Shipley frowned darkly.
“She’s right,” said Ruth. “And if you’re in charge, you can get away with it.”
“Ruth,” intoned Shipley ominously. With Jane, he had to put up with this nonsense, but Ruth was another case entirely. Jane’s father was a bigshot, but Ruth’s father wasn’t even in the home.
“Am I wrong?” Ruth went on. “What did you teach anyone here? Not that anger and violence aren’t appropriate. Only that some people can get away with it, where others can’t. You got angrier than Rob ever has. And then you got violent, which he never has.”
Shipley silently stewed.
– – –
Tragedy was visited on Shipley’s 6th grade class in February of 1966. The first instance, unknown to the teacher and to the school-at-large, was when Rob’s mother perished, alongside her new husband, in an automobile accident near Las Vegas.
“Pamela’s dead,” Rob’s father told his son without preamble one afternoon after school.
Rob halted in his tracks. Was this another play on words, of which his father was so fond, as in, “She’s ‘dead’ to me.’?
“Wh…what?” asked Rob.
“In Nevada,” said Mr. Braden. “Hit a truck on the interstate, probably drunk, or else that sonofabitch she was with was. Don’t know yet who was driving.”
“When?” asked a stunned Rob.
“Um? When did she buy it? Hell, I don’t know exactly, probably last night or early this morning.” Rob could smell the heavy stench of alcohol coming off his father. “Don’t ever fall in love, son,” counseled Mr. Braden. “Or else make sure they croak before they take you to the cleaners…”
That was the last thing he said before Rob belted him in the mouth. The next day, Rob arrived for class sporting 2 black eyes and, if truth be known, a body festooned with deep, ugly bruises. The abuse continued. A week later, following the funeral, Rob was shaken by Aaron’s bitter weeping over his wife’s passing. Aaron’s behavior became increasingly bewildering and unsettling to the young man until, finally, he ran away from home. He didn’t see his father again for more than 20 years.
The second tragedy came out only a week later, when Mrs. Dinwiddie, the school principal, arrived at the door of the classroom and beckoned Mr. Shipley. After a whispered conversation, Shipley summoned Ruth, who intuited that something was not right. Ruth didn’t return to class for a week, following the funeral of her older brother.
Shipley told the class that Eli Lanier had been KIA–killed in action–in the war in Vietnam. Ruth, he told them, would be absent to attend the funeral and to grieve.
“Is that the same war that you got out of, Mr. Shipley?” asked Jane in a needling voice. Shipley heaved a great sigh. He hadn’t the heart to fence with her this time.
Spring
On the last day of school, the students turned in their textbooks and received their final report cards, each tucked away in a half-size manila envelope. As the children were comparing marks, Shipley said, “I was pleasantly surprised to discover that everyone passed this year, although with some of you it was close.” He smirked at Butch, whose face and neck turned crimson.
Some of the children laughed, but not Ruth. “Why’d you have to go and say that?” she said.
Shipley stared up at her in surprise.
“Butch does the best he can,” she went on. “You can’t say that about everyone, you know.”
Shipley’s own face grew a little red. “It’s not too late to change the grades,” he said threateningly.
“Go ahead and flunk me then,” she dared him. “My scores on tests and on my other report cards won’t back you up.”
Shipley knew she was correct, and he decided to cut his losses. “Butch tries,” he conceded. “Good luck in junior high, Butch, and to all of you.”
The students preened. In just three months they would be 7th graders, and whole new social vistas would open up. They were both thrilled and terrified.
“I’ve some other news for you,” said Shipley. “This is my final year here at Burbank. Next fall I’ll be teaching 7th grade general science classes at the junior/senior high school. So, I’ll be seeing all of you again next year.”
Some of the students spontaneously applauded, while others sat on their hands.
“Shit,” muttered Butch and another student in unison.
“Is there something you’d like to say?” asked Shipley sharply.
Neither boy responded.
As the hands on the clock face wound to 3pm, Shipley said, “I want to say that I have really, truly enjoyed teaching–most of you–this year. Of course,” he went on, “there’s always that one bad apple in any bag…”
As he continued, almost every student wondered if he or she was the one being focused on as a troublemaker. Ruth observed the scene before her. She would go on to earn advanced degrees in Psychology in college and then more fully understand Shipley for who and what he was. Even now she recognized the young teacher for his efforts to marginalize and misuse others. She blew out a breath and shook her head. They’d had each other’s number from the first day, she thought. From his desk, Shipley stared at her.
When the final bell on the final day rang, Shipley watched the students depart. At the last second he called out, “Ruth, would you stay a moment longer, please?”
Ruth turned and walked up to Shipley’s desk. They regarded one another warily for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Ruth,” he said in his deep voice, “I got the feeling just now, and not for the first time, that you don’t really like me very much. Is that an accurate observation?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Shipley,” she said, “it’s not. As a matter of fact, I don’t like you at all.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “May I ask why?”
“Of course,” replied Ruth. “I just don’t trust you.”
“Explain,” he requested.
“My father, as you might know, doesn’t live with us.” Ruth stared into Shipley’s face but could discern nothing. “My mom divorced him when he sexually and emotionally abused my older sister and brother.”
Shipley’s eyes grew a little larger. He knew the father was not a part of the Lanier household, but this was news to him.
When my mom reported him to the police, he was arrested and a judge decided that if dad would divorce mom and pay child support, then he wouldn’t be sent to prison. I see in your eyes the same thing I saw in my dad’s. It’s the same thing I see in a feral animal. When you would pull Michelle onto your lap and act like you were going to spank her, I knew then you were the same kind of monster that my dad is. I talked to Michelle and when she was sprawled face down on your lap, she could feel it too.”
Shipley was deathly quiet.
“You’re lucky you never pulled me onto your lap,” she went on. “Because I would’ve told my mom and she would have got you fired.”
Shipley was sweating now. “So you really hate me that much, Ruth?” he asked bleakly.
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t hate you at all, Mr. Shipley. Like I don’t hate my dad. You’ve both got a problem and I can’t hate you for that. It’d be like hating someone for having measles. I don’t think you’re to blame for it. But, like with someone with measles, I don’t want to spend any time with you or get too close, you know?”
She turned on her heel and as she made her way to the door, the teacher called after her, “good luck in junior high, Ruth.”
“Same to you, Mr. Shipley,” she said without turning around, and passed for the final time through the door.
