with a successful touchdown drive by the Irish that sent the capacity crowd into paroxysms of glee. As Jake and I jumped up and down in celebration, I felt hands wrap my waist and lift me high into the air, across the tops of heads, over the crowd. Long before crowd-surfing or mosh pits became common, the fans of Notre Dame Stadium had a tradition of lifting people into the air and passing them handover-hand above the crowd. Just as I was losing sight of my family and beginning to feel afraid, I felt a hand firmly grasp my ankle, pulling me back. Without a word, Dad gripped my waist and placed me back down beside him in the stands, but I caught him nod and cross himself in the direction of Touchdown Jesus, the larger-than-life mural painted on the side of the campus’s main library building visible beyond one end of the field.
Every morning during the 1971–72 school year, I paused to take in the imposing facade of Thomas Jefferson Elementary in South Bend before walking up the steps and entering my second-grade classroom, unaware that my school was embroiled in a desegregation battle between the US Department of Justice and public schools in Indiana. That August, Indiana Public Schools had been found guilty in federal court of practicing racial segregation. My school was desegregated for the first time that school year, and many opposed it vehemently. I was only aware of its effect on my friendships with Cedric and Ramona, two black kids in my class, because no one seemed to want us to spend time together.
Our teacher, Mrs. Gruber, worked diligently to separate us, even when we tried to team up for group work in the classroom. She repeatedly concocted reasons for why this wasn’t acceptable—the three of us weren’t close enough in height, we needed to be all girls or all boys, we needed to make friends with other kids “like us,” we needed to be at the same reading level. It went on and on. None of the groups Mrs. Gruber formed mixed black kids with white kids. I sensed she didn’t like me; more than once she had referred to me as a “troublemaker.”
One morning after recess, Cedric, Ramona, and I ran into the classroom laughing, talking about the basketball game we’d just played. A few days earlier, Mrs. Gruber had placed our desks in side-by-side rows instead of traditional columns, and the novelty hadn’t worn off yet. I ran in front of the desks, then vaulted over mine to sit down instead of taking the few extra steps to circle around the row. She descended on me like a lion on a hyena, wooden yardstick in hand. She wrenched me by the collar to the front of the row, bent me over, and shoved my face into my desk. She screamed out to everyone, “Class! This is what will happen if you don’t obey instructions, if you don’t stay in your places!” She swung the yardstick like a baseball bat, hitting me on the backside with her full weight behind it. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! I lost track of the number of hits. I heard gasps from my classmates. I fought not to cry out or show her how much it hurt. I distracted myself by wondering how a woman so old and spindly could move so fast.
“That!” Whack! “Was!” Whack! “The!” Whack! “Most!” Whack! “Unladylike!” Whack! “Display!” Whack! “I!” Whack! “Have!” Whack! “Ever!” Whack! “Seen!” Whack! “In!” Whack! “All!” Whack! “My!” Whack! “Years!” Whack! “Of!” I braced for the next strike, but she paused. I waited for a Whack! “Teaching!” or Whack! “Beating Children!” The tension mounted.
“What are you doing?!” she finally screamed. I assumed she was talking to me and I dared not move or talk. The answer seemed obvious. I’m letting you beat the poop out of me, Mrs. Gruber. But then, a small voice spoke up. I recognized it as Ramona’s.
“Nothing, Mrs. Gruber.” I peeked up and saw Ramona standing at the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?! You get back in your seat! NOW!” As Mrs. Gruber banged the yardstick down hard on the desk beside me and I jumped, I saw Ramona disappear out the door. Splinters of wood flew around us, which only angered her more. She yanked me up by my collar and addressed me. “You! Get back in your seat! If you ever do anything like that again, you will see much worse than this! I don’t know how they do things in Canada, but your behavior is unacceptable!” I bit my lip and limped to my desk, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. Jolts of electricity shot down my legs and up my back as I sat down on my bruised rear end and upper legs.
At home that night, I told my parents that Mrs. Gruber had hit me with a yardstick, but I didn’t mention how hard or how many times, or show my welts and bruises.
“What did you do?” Dad asked.
“I jumped over my desk.”
“Had she told you not to do that?”
“I guess so,” I said, uncertain.
“Well, then, I guess you had it coming, didn’t you?”
Dad hated the corporal punishment required by his job as a school principal, but in an era where hitting was condoned as necessary for proper discipline, he was expected to mete it out to students who disobeyed. His school board used a heavy rubber strap, about twice as wide as a typical ruler. At home, my siblings and I were spanked with a bare hand occasionally, and my parents trusted our teachers to dole out whatever punishment they deemed appropriate.
We never saw Ramona at school again after that day. We were all too terrified to ask why.
BACK IN CALGARY the following summer, our neighbors and friends eagerly waited for us as we pulled up in front of our house after our American adventure. Barbecues lit and beer cases in hand, they greeted us with a block party, welcoming us back home. We settled back into our relationships with friends; we were a year older, but little else had changed.
“You have to be Mary!” Corrine insisted to me. “Katherine’s Laura, I’m Ma, and Melanie’s always Nellie.” The other girls stood around her, nodding in reluctant agreement to her casting for our version of Little House on the Prairie. Corrine was bossy and always organized our basement play. Disagreeing with her never went well for anyone. I felt she miscast herself as Ma. She was definitely a busybody Nellie Oleson.
“I’m Almanzo or I’m not playing,” I demanded, arms folded, determined to play Laura’s husband.
“Fine.” Corrine threw up her hands. “We do need an Almanzo, but it’d be better with a real boy.”
Melanie spoke up. “Lori’s a good boy—she’s good at it,” she offered.
“Fine.” Corrine moved to the blackboard and handed “Laura” some chalk. “Let’s start with a lesson. Laura can be teaching us.”
“This is dumb,” I said. “Laura doesn’t teach us, she teaches younger kids.” I took off the brown vest and Dad’s oversized work boots. “I’m going outside.” I escaped up the stairs to find Jake—I felt more like I belonged when I played with him and our boy friends.
Since our return from South Bend, I’d begun to notice the group dynamics between the girls and the boys on our block. My neighbors Corrine and Melanie formed a tight group along with Katherine, each of them being no more than two years apart. Melanie was my age and we sometimes played together one-on-one, but if Corrine, Melanie, and I played together it seemed to spark conflict. I suspected Corrine was the cause, because when Jake and I got together with Corrine’s older brother Jason, who was Jake’s age, we spent hours together and no one ever fought, argued, or ran home crying.
I didn’t understand it. I wished the girls would play sports recreationally, outside of the organized girls’ leagues that existed for soccer, softball, and hockey. I didn’t think deeply on the reasons behind it in those days; it simply seemed like the girls wanted something else, and I
