Visions of Mrs. Cameron danced in my head.
“That’s it! I’ll sic Mrs. Cameron on him,” I muttered to myself glaring at Principal Stupidhead – I mean Sturgis. His bald pate was shining with sweat, and his black eyebrows surged and sagged over his dull eyes.
“Oh by the way, the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States will no longer be recited here at Wylie Elementary School,” he had just told the gathered teachers at the first faculty meeting of the year. “Not in the mornings, not at assemblies, not ever.”
Indeed! Who did he think he was? Probably a Communist. Or a Nazi. Mrs. Cameron could teach him a thing or two.
She sure taught me a thing or two, way back there in the sixth grade. Too bad she retired. If she were at this faculty meeting, she would have stomped right up to the front of the room, gotten in old Stupidhead’s face and given him what-for.
Of course, way back then, as a scrawny, freckled 11-year-old, I wasn’t so fond of Mrs. Cameron. I thought my life was over when I heard she had taken over sixth grade.
Miss Lily was supposed to be my teacher that year. She was as beautiful as a movie star with long, black hair, creamy skin and eyes the color of blue velvet. I spent my entire elementary school career looking forward to being in Miss Lily’s sixth grade.
And I dreamed about Miss Lily the whole summer after fifth grade. Some of her beauty was bound to rub off on me. I would enter her sixth grade class in September as Raggedy Ann and emerge in May as Peaches and Cream Barbie. Sixth grade would be a turning point in my life.
But Mom came home from registering me for sixth grade and said to my father, “I met Sue Beth’s new teacher at school today.”
I pricked up my ears. My Dad said, “Oh, you mean that real looker, Miss Violet or Miss Rose – Miss some flower or other?”
“No, Miss Lily resigned last week,” Mom said.
I nearly fainted, but I didn’t dare collapse for fear I’d miss something. “She got married last summer and her husband was transferred to Dallas,” said Mom. “Sue Beth’s teacher is an older woman named Mrs. Cameron.”
My life flashed before me. Everything was ending for me. And I was so young!
“I had a Mrs. Cameron at Wylie when I was in sixth grade,” my father was saying. “She was a grand woman. But I think she moved away to take a position at a college.”
“That’s right,” said Mom. “It’s the same woman. She moved back this summer to take care of her mother. When Miss Lily left them in a pinch, the principal begged her to take over the sixth grade again. Mrs. Marsh says she still has a lot to offer children.”
My sixth grade class was in shock the first day of school. In Miss Lily’s place stood an old woman with flyaway hair, a stocky figure and a mole on her chin. Judging by her tent dress, I had more fashion sense than she did. I was going to come into sixth grade as Raggedy Ann and go out in the spring as Pig Pen.
“Mrs. Cameron” had been printed neatly in block letters on the blackboard. When the bell rang, she introduced herself. Then she sat down at her desk and waited for the morning announcements.
The shock was beginning to wear off by that time, and we were all getting mad at Mrs. Marsh – Mrs. Marshmallow we liked to call her – for taking away Miss Lily and replacing her with a toad like Mrs. Cameron.
“Where did they dig up that old fossil?” Ted asked in a loud whisper. His real name was Theodore Bear. His mom named him Theodore so she could call him Teddy Bear. He got teased so much it turned him mean. We kids all called him Ted, very respectfully and, when he turned mean, we turned mean with him so he wouldn’t pound us.
That’s why Jake answered, “She grew up ’round here ’bout a quarter million years ago.”
“She can’t be that old,” I whispered. “Her mother’s still alive.”
“Well, she looks that old,” said Ted.
I was watching Mrs. Cameron all the time Ted was talking. All of us were. We never took our eyes off her. She didn’t seem to hear a word we said.
Ted shook his head and made the loco sign with his finger. “Senile!” he hissed so loud the whole class could hear. We giggled.
Just then the loud speaker system cleared its throat and we got quiet. Mrs. Marshmallow’s announcements would probably be boring, but it was the first day of school so we would give her a chance. Sure enough, she lit into a welcome back speech, and we went back to whispering and giggling among ourselves.
After the announcements, Mrs. Marsh said, “Please stand and face the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.” Ted picked up his hat and put it on. He did that to show he didn’t care about the flag or anything else. The boys slouched and put their hands on their bellies instead of their hearts. They didn’t even pretend to say the Pledge. The girls weren’t as bold. We put our hands near our hearts and mumbled.
Mrs. Cameron had started out the Pledge with a strong, happy voice. But when she realized she was the only one reciting it, her hand slid down to her side and her head sagged forward.
By the time the voice on the intercom was saying, “… with liberty and justice for all,” tears were slopping down Mrs. Cameron’s face. She was hardly making a sound, but a river of water was splashing over the gullies in her cheeks.
She had our attention then. We sat as still as a colony of prairie dogs, squatting on their haunches with ears straining and eyes darting, sensing danger, but uncertain of the source. She didn’t say a word. She just walked out the door.
“What’d we do?” Ted asked. Hardly anything scared him, but he looked pale. None of us had ever seen a teacher break down and walk out. And we didn’t even know what we’d done wrong!
Bad got worse when Ms. Bartholomew walked in. She was tough. She was the power behind the throne at Wylie. She was the school secretary, and she could put the fear of God into anybody. Even Ted.
Ms. Bartholomew strode to the blackboard. “What I Did Last Summer,” she wrote.
Then she turned around and snarled at us, “Get out your paper and pencils and start writing.”
A lot of time passed in deep silence. We were laboring over our papers because Ms. Bartholomew kept stalking around the room watching.
Finally Ted had all he could take, and he put his hand up.
“What do you want, Ted?” asked Ms. Bartholomew. They were old enemies.
“What did we do wrong?” he asked meekly.
“You mocked the American flag,” she said with a withering look that took in the whole room.
“How’d we do that?” asked Ted.
“You didn’t give it proper respect during the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Ted’s pluck was coming back. “We didn’t do anything different than we always do.”
Normally, scary things make a lot of noise, like a thunderstorm or a monster or an angry father. But the really dangerous things can be the softest. Like a rattler. Or cracking ice on a pond. Or Ms. Bartholomew.
She stood in the front of the room, looking us over with her beady little eyes. “It might interest you little barbarians to know,” she hissed softly, “that Mrs. Cameron’s father died for that flag in World War II. Her son fought in Viet Nam under that flag and never came back. Maybe our flag and our country don’t mean anything to you. Maybe your other teachers didn’t care how you acted during the Pledge of Allegiance. But Ms. Cameron cares.”
For a minute nobody said anything. All of us liked our country all right. But the Pledge was just something we had to say every day. It was no big deal.
“Is she coming back?” Ted asked.
“Not if she’s smart,” growled Ms. Bartholomew. “That’s enough chit chat. Get to work.”
I scratched my head with my pencil. I’d written everything I could think of.
Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Marsh came in then and Ms. Bartholomew left. Mrs. Marsh gave us a pep talk about being respectful to Mrs. Cameron, then she left too.
After that, things smoothed out. We were nice to Mrs. Cameron and she managed to explain common denominators to us. Of course, we all learned common denominators last year, but we forgot it over the summer. We were working fractions when the next crisis hit.
Halfway through the morning Mrs. Marsh walked in with a new student. But he was no ordinary student. He was Asian and as short as a third grader. He had smooth skin and slanty eyes.
“Mrs. Cameron, I’m sorry to interrupt your class,” said Mrs. Marsh, “but I have a new student for you.” Her voice was so apologetic you’d think she had broken up the mayor’s golf game, and we found out why. He was a Vietnamese refugee. When she heard the word “Vietnamese,” Mrs. Cameron’s face got hard enough to smash granite on.
“His family decided to take American names,” Mrs. Marsh told us, “and they chose Lincoln for their last name. This is Samuel Lincoln. He doesn’t know much English yet, but his family has a language tutor in the evenings. Pretty soon he’ll be able to talk to you. You children, be nice to him now.”
She went out leaving Samuel in hostile territory. It wasn’t that we had forgiven Mrs. Cameron for not being Miss Lily, but she was the teacher. Her antagonism toward Samuel spilled out and infected us.
Mrs. Cameron put Samuel in an empty desk in the back corner where he could see nothing but our backs and her angry glances. He slid down in his desk until he nearly disappeared.
The first week of school dragged on forever. We weren’t mean kids at heart, so we tried to be nicer about the Pledge. Ted quit putting his hat on. And most of us managed to put our hands on our hearts. But we were still mumbling the words. It was embarrassing to say it where somebody could hear us. Mrs. Cameron was the only one talking so’s you could understand her.
We thought we had made some serious concessions. I guess Mrs. Cameron understood because she didn’t rush out crying any more.
But nothing changed for Samuel, at first, except to get worse. Once he got up to get a drink, and Mrs. Cameron hauled him back to his desk, bawling at him all the way. “You will not get out of your desk without permission,” she yelled.
After that, she practically had to pry him out of his desk with a crowbar. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong and was afraid he might do it again. The next day he wet his pants because he was afraid to go to the restroom.
But when Friday morning arrived, the cosmic order of the classroom flip-flopped. Mrs. Marsh had just said over the loud speaker, “Please stand and face the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
To everyone’s surprise, Samuel walked to the front of the room and stood directly in front of the flag. When the Pledge started, his voice rang out, stronger and truer than Mrs. Cameron herself. None of us kids even bothered to mumble. We just listened to him. Every word was clear and true, and Samuel didn’t look embarrassed.
Mrs. Cameron didn’t say the Pledge either. Like us, she just stood there listening. By the time Samuel finished, she was crying. She walked over to him, got down on her knees in front of him and bawled all over his shirt.
Well, Samuel and Mrs. Cameron got to be an item after that. Every morning when it was time to say the Pledge, he came up front and they stood there with their chests stuck out, proudlike, looking at the flag and talking to it like it was sacred. Pretty soon they had the rest of the class shamed into standing up straighter and saying the words so’s you could understand them. Most of us, anyway.
And Mrs. Cameron took over Samuel’s language tutoring. She had him talking English in just a few weeks. Then he told the class about Viet Nam – how his family had gone days without food sometimes and how refugees were herded from place to place like cattle. He said he was proud to be in America where anybody could go to the grocery store and buy food.
At the end of his speech, he went to Mrs. Cameron and kissed her hand. “I kiss you,” he said, “because you gave your son to fight for my people. Someday, I too will fight for hungry, frightened people who have no hope unless Americans help them. Because then I, too, will be an American.”
I looked at the flag and got a lump in my throat. Maybe it was important, after all. Maybe the Pledge of Allegiance was a big deal. Maybe I wouldn’t be embarrassed anymore if someone heard me saying the Pledge.
It seemed like everyone stood a little straighter for the Pledge after that day. And Ted joined the Marine Corps when he was 18. Jake ran for the United States senate. I became a first grade teacher here at Wylie Elementary. And Sam Lincoln became a Green Beret.
I forgave Mrs. Cameron for not being Miss Lily before the third week of school was over. She became my friend and mentor. And she’s still proud of her flag and her country.
She’s the reason I stood up in the middle of the faculty meeting that day with tears pouring down my face. Mr. Sturgis’s black eyebrows met over his nose and he scowled at me. “What?” he snarled.
“My children,” I told him in a soft, calm voice, “will continue saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America every single school day of the year.”
Three more teachers stood up too. “So will our classes,” they said.
Old Stupidhead tried to glare us down, but we glared back. “We’ll discuss it later,” he finally growled.
But we didn’t. The subject never came up again. And every morning, my first graders stand up straight, put their hands over their hearts and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And every year I tell them about Mrs. Cameron and Samuel Lincoln and what a privilege it is to be an American.
-0-© 1995 by Betty Johansen
Photo credit: Brett Sayles on pexels.com