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A First Journal

by Ann Murray

In the 1950's, Transfiguration School in West Philadelphia populated its disciplined classrooms with look-alike students of working class parents, most of whom were first and second generation Americans. We not only looked the same, we also dressed the same down to the color of the boys' ties and girls' hair ribbons. The desks were nailed into the wood plank floors creating eternally straight rows, our copybooks were all marbleized black and white with a multiplication grid on the back, and we were each armed with a pen, sharpened pencil (the school did not provide the sharpener), and a special pencil for underlining which was red on one end and blue on the other.

Enter into this homogeneous, lock-step environment an episode which pitted me against the immovable Sister St. Carmel, a formidable force who allowed no variations from her idea of a norm, and who didn't concern herself with the tender psyches of her charges.

In my student days, I never earned much repute as a teacher pleaser. My uniform often bore reminders of my breakfast, I braided my own hair, allowing scattered strands to escape in increasing quantities as the day wore on, and occasionally I forgot that all-important colored pencil for underlining. A daydreamer by nature, I often survived the endless lectures on civics, picture study, and geography by practicing ballet (I wanted to be a Russian ballerina) with my fingers executing the steps on my desk surface. I drew fledgling artwork on countless scraps of notepaper, crumpling unsatisfactory renditions and stuffing them into my desk with reckless disregard for desk checks. Occasionally, I tried to perfect my two real talents, reading upside down and penning mirror writing. I exasperated the nuns, whose one good comment about me was that my older brother was worse.

However, despite my finger dancing, my unauthorized artistic attempts, my unique approach to reading and writing, and the trash-to-steam plant atmosphere of my desk, the days still seemed to drag on interminably. Therefore, I set off in search of new diversions. I decided to keep a diary of my days in Room 106. My parents were not ones for parting with money for something as frivolous as a journal, so I cut up copybook paper, taped it together, made a cover with a the title My Diary across the front, and proceeded to record whatever events intrigued, perplexed, or reassured me during Sister's endless intonations. Not one to avoid the truth (I had aspirations to be a news reporter also), I editorialized on the teacher's qualities using adjectives such as cranky, strict, and boring. Now at last with all my alternate activities in place, I was able to withstand the interminable copying of board after board of history notes and mnemonics. No one could fault me. I knew that CAME stood for Cortez conquered the Aztecs in Mexico, and PIP stood for Pizarro conquered the Incas in Peru. I filled out page after page of spelling words written 15 times each, memorized answers to my catechism questions, and deciphered principal x rate of interest x time problems with equanimity, knowing that my journal awaited my comments.

Armed with that journal and a feeling of busy contentment, I got through two or three weeks at Transfiguration and was actually considering that I might be able to make it through grade six without attracting Sister's attention when the unthinkable happened. In a careless moment, I left my homemade journal on the corner of my desk while I hurriedly copied more unconnected facts (Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe; Drake, the first Englishman to do so). The dark shadow cast over my desk and the faint aroma of ivory soap soon led me to know I had something to fear, and every hair on the back of my neck bristled. I became aware that the devil herself was looming next to me, my diary clutched in her spotless, sinless hand.

"Is this yours?"

There was no solar eclipse for that day in 1953, but my world darkened as surely as if one had occurred as I responded a strangled yes. With a flourish of her habit and a final click of her rosary beads, she stomped - journal in hand - back to her desk, her sensible black shoes executing a purposeful stride which did not bode well for me. A curious stir wafted through the class as my classmates sneaked peeks at her reading whatever that thing was she had taken from me. Note copying continued with the class hardly missing a beat while sister perused my journal. My eyes locked on the little book in her hand, something which had once seemed like such a friend to me but now seemed to damn me by its existence. The nun's expression was unreadable. Finished, she appeared momentarily indecisive as she pondered her next move. Then with a steadfastness peculiar only to nuns and superglue, she acted. Walking to the first row, first seat, she gave my diary to its occupant. "You'll read this," she commanded, "and pass it on to the next student. When the last of you is finished, return it to me."

Oh, somewhere in the favored land of education that March afternoon, time was passing quickly for students, but for me the minutes of the next hour ticked agonizingly by while I twisted slowly on the stake of my humiliation as my personal, adolescent thoughts were revealed to my peers. Incomprehensibly to me, each student read my entries while fulfilling the classroom lessons in the joy of picture study, reacting inscrutably to both. On Sister's behalf, I must admit the incident seemed to invigorate and reenergize her, as she delivered an animated dissertation on form, color, and composition in classical art.

As the students packed up their books and lined up in twos to be dismissed, Sister requested I remain behind as she walked the others from the room. As I awaited her return, I became aware of a gradual, almost imperceptible change in my frightened, depressed state. I felt my stunned humiliation slowly give way as my cheeks became hot with the injustice of my treatment, and tears for the first time welled up. My shame evolved into anger and then rage, and by the time my tormentor returned, I knew quite clearly who between the two of us had done something wrong.

Sister came through the doorway and glanced carelessly at my now unflinching gaze. Mistaking my tearful state for repentance, she informed me that in her many years of teaching she had been called worse names than those in my journal. She droned on, but seemed satisfied that my punishment, a public reading of my writing, had been effective, and told me I was free to go. "Someday," she assured me, "you will laugh about all this."

Occasionally, as a teacher, I intercepted a note being passed in class. Without exception, the writer frantically begged me not to read it. They had nothing to worry about, I assured them. I never read students' private notes, I would add, and I’d place the note on my desk where the writer can pick it up, still folded, at the end of class for delivery. It's a promise to myself and my students I've always kept.

The eventual fate of my famous and first journal has eluded me over the years, but I've thought of it often. Without exception, when I reflect on that day I experience a range of emotions - anger, fury, betrayal, helplessness - but I have never yet laughed.