Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Miss Hathaway has tacked pictures of world leaders from a large format photo magazine to the upper runner of the wooden frame of the blackboard at the front of the classroom. F.D.R., Churchill and Stalin are on the left side, near her desk. Hitler, Mussolini, and the Emperor Hirohito are on the right side, away from her desk, and beneath their pictures is written in chalk,"the enemy," and beneath that, for Helen Gunther, who called for further clarification, "BAD PEOPLE". Burt the Dentist's son colors the geographic spread of Fascism upon the world map and on one finger of the hand that grips the red crayon of tyranny he wears a Fu Manchu decoder ring. 6:40:13 PM    comment []

At Town School (White) only Mrs. Sloane cared anything about the suffering Britons (reading after lunch dated letters to her class from a Mrs. Anthrup, her pen-pal of long standing, who was weathering the Blitz with as much as fortitude as she could muster - even that horrible afternoon when Mr. Dillon, her lodger, his head suddenly blew off as they were getting into the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. Mrs. Sloane's class had liked that letter and frequently requested it when Mrs. Sloane sat down with her bundle of pen-pal envelopes for reading time.) Now, instead of working upon Christmas decorations, there is feverish Wartime Visual Aid Construction going on in Miss Hathaway's class. Burt the Dentist's son is coloring in the areas of fascist expansion on a nineteen seveteen map of the world. He has determined Fascism to be red. And since British Dominion is expressed in red, why now near all the land of the world is red. But Burt intends to fix that by going back to color democracies like the U.S.A. and Russia and India blue. But this he worries will contrast ill with the Sea. But the Sea is Green! Surely Burt remembers hearing that. Burt sucks at one of his bad teeth and colors more determinedly the onslaught of evil (the Dentist hates his son for his rotten teeth). Ginnie is in her seat and there is a book in front of her and it is a quiet time in Miss Hathaway's room and all you hear is Burt coloring and the flags fluttering above her. The map is much bigger than Burt. He has taken his shoes off and is wholly contained within the space of the flattened world which is paper mounted upon fabric and that connected to a wooden rod so that really - Ginnie realizes - it's like a flag. Burt has a hole in his sock. His Momma drinks and his Father hates him because his teeth are bad and it just doesn't look good in the community to have a boy with bad teeth when you're the Dentist. "Miss Hathaway's class is for 'under-achievers', " Deela has explained, "but Miss Hathaway is pretty and," Deela puts a finger to her lips to indicate a secret, "in love with Harvey." 2:08:53 PM    comment []

The Principal assigns Ginnie to Miss Hathaway's home room. She writes:"Ginnie Adkins (Stimpson - transient?)" under Miss Hathaway's page in the big ledger prominent upon her desk. Unmistakably goat staus is conferred by her eye but her voice is kind - if weirdly flutey in memory of the weird flute voices of the teachers of her own younger self - when she says: "I am sure (shooor) you're a good girl, Ginnie, and will be an upright citizen in our Fighting Possum community. Yuhreek!" This last strange cry makes Ginnie jump even though Deela has already explained that it is puportedly the sound of a Fighting Possum. Deela is waiting for Ginnie in the hallway. "You'll be in Miss Hathaway's room. The flags are pretty." A substantial part of the Town School (White) curriculum is given to drill and parade. The civic fathers like to run the students around that the populace might see their educational dollars at work. Because Miss Hathaway's room has particularly high ceilings the collection of marching flags and pennants are there stored. The Mayor has been such for near ever, in the manner of Southern Bosses (who cling to life and power like old Italian men until they are gnarled up like fruitless olive trees) and it has been his wife and her seamstress who have fabricated the constructions that flutter above Ginnie in her seat in Miss Hathaway's room. Some bear relationship to the conventional textile semiotics of American History. As in any Southern Town of 1941 Old Glory and the Stars and Bars flutter near each other, lion and lamb, peacefully coexisting in the mysteries of Jesus' blood. 'Gone With the Wind' has only recently played at the local cinema. It was a bad print and the sound of the first half was lost in that flapping sound characteristic of bad sound on a movie machine. 11:02:24 AM    comment []