They Wouldn’t Let Me Enroll In Public School

I know it was my third summer, for that was the time I went “public,” and many people have cited the event to me in succeeding years.

Even though they had called me “little genius,” and knocked into my
head the need for serving God and Civilization as described to me in
the English language pages at either the beginning or the end of the
prayer book, I was basically a nicely-kept secret.

I know it was in the summer because I was hot. I simply did not want
to sit in the living room, for with all the summer heat, the customary
breezes off the sea had not been able to make it inland to us.

My brother sat down with one of the old “Golden Books.” Me, I wanted
something interesting.

There was a New York Times on the sofa. Usually Daddy got it first,
then Mommie and I competed for sloppy seconds of everything he had not
crumpled up yet. No parents were in sight. I quietly took the New York Times out and sat at the top step, by the front door.

I wish I could say I remember exciting news from the mid-July day in
1956 when the neighbors stopped by and decided and told me that I was
“cute,” which is a certain stimulus for me to do something especially
endearing. Daddy was always saying the Herlihy sisters kept to
themselves because they were “old maid schoolteachers” so they were
“straight-laced” which I guess meant something like “serious” or
“terminally dull.

They wasted no time in commenting on how cute I was, pretending to
read the New York Times.

I told them I wasn’t pretending, and I passed the paper down so that
one of them (I forgot whether it was Sarah or Jane) asked me to read
silly (and dull, of course) article from the Business section. I read
it aloud for what seemed like an interminable amount of time when I
asked her permission to stop reading, for I wondered if that had been
enough to convince her I was not faking and she said “just fine.”

By now neighbors were gathering from both sides of the street, and
even behind on Prescott Avenue, since it was so hot everybody wanted
to be outside, anyway.

Everybody was asking me to read one article or section or the other,
and really, I don’t remember finding any words that were hard to sound
out or to understand. One Herlihy sister dragged the other back to her
house. I asked if everything was okay and they told me I was just
fine. That seemed weird, mostly because they were a lot older than me
and more likely to be sick.

Apparently Mommie was disturbed by the noise because she was really
quite upset for no reason I could understand.

She told me to come back in the house instantly. Already socialized
somewhat, I told her I would come back in the house, after I said
goodbye to the nice people.

She was still angry. I tried to send the people away but was not very
successful. I mean our neighbor to the right, who I had never seen
standing so long in one place, was starting to talk about bringing
nice cold drinks for people.

By this time, the Herlihy sisters were walking back up from their
house on Webster Avenue (just around the corner to the right)
accompanied by their father.

I knew he was the Chelsea Superintendent of Schools, and was a very
important man in Chelsea.

He was spherically shaped and sweating profusely. My father came out
of the house (the only time I had ever seen him walk out on and
descend the front cement stairs ) and shook hands with Dr. Herlihy.

He had hired my Father to do a few days of substitute teaching shortly
after his degree from Harvard in the early 1940s. This magically had
permitted him, under Massachusetts law, to be “grandfathered” into a
teaching certificate in the Commonwealth without benefit of taking
formal education in how to teach.

My father was clearly no grandfather since I not only was not old
enough — but already was reasonably certain I did not want — to have
children, and my brother did not seem too excited about it either.

Anyway, Dr. Herlihy told my father he didn’t want me in Chelsea Public
Schools, and he raised his voice like I thought old, bald, and
probably smart men absolutely were not supposed to.

He must have been large enough for Mommie to hear in the House, so she
came out to help Daddy argue.

She did the one thing I couldn’t — she got the crowd to go away.

She started yelling about how it can’t be right to not let a little
girl to school.

He said he would falsify the records and say I was there and they
could even keep me home but he did not want me in his school, because
I would be a “disturbance.”

As the crowd left, I joined my parents.

“I’m a nice girl. I wouldn’t make a disturbance.”

He did not answer me, which was obviously impolite.

This started an orgy of being excluded/rejected/just plain kicked out
of schools that marked my childhood.