A Little Shame

Remembering an incident from first grade

At P.S. 56, I entered first grade as a shy, sickly kid, perpetually self-conscious about my dark straight hair, short stature, and almond-shaped eyes. I was also the consummate rule follower (at least outside of home), hungry for the approval of the adults in charge, especially my teacher, Mrs. Sciandra, an older woman with eyeglasses that matched her greying hair.

One afternoon I had to wait at school for my dad to pick me up. I can’t remember the circumstances, but I’m assuming he had to work late that day. There was only one other student in the classroom: a perky blonde-haired girl with bangs and big round eyes. I think her name was Lisa. She was sitting on the other side of the classroom near the door. Mrs. Sciandra reassured us that we weren’t in any trouble. “Your parents will be a little late, so you girls can just sit quietly until they get here.” We sat at our desks, our obedient derrieres on the uncomfortable wooden chairs that occasionally squeaked. It was hard not to squirm. The buzzing of the light over our heads was loud and annoying.

When Mrs. Sciandra had to step out of the room for a few minutes, Lisa and I were left to fixate on the rows of empty desks and the huge clock above the blackboard. I looked up and stared, waiting impatiently for the minute hand to move. My eyes then gravitated toward the pieces of dusty chalk and the rectangular erasers at the blackboard. Whenever someone hit the erasers together, there was always a tiny cloud of white dust that would dance in the air and make me sneeze. I resisted the urge to walk up and smash two erasers together.

Soon the cleaning lady arrived and started emptying the garbage cans. I had seen her several times before but didn’t bother to learn her name. None of us did. She didn’t seem very friendly. She was obese and had greasy, light hair and a strong body odor, which was a potent mix of perspiration and cigarettes. I can still picture her thick, bare arms as she swept the floor and emptied the garbage.

At one point, Lisa and I looked at each other from across the room and started giggling. Within a few minutes, she got up, stood on her chair, waved her arms, and started dancing. Swept up by spontaneous mischief, I stood up and started dancing on my chair, too. We never uttered a word—we just laughed uncontrollably.

Our joy was fleeting.

We soon heard someone walking down the hallway toward the room. We both sat down as quickly as we could, but thanks to Lisa’s proximity to the door, Mrs. Sciandra caught a glimpse of her enthusiastic moves.

“What were you doing? Good girls never, ever stand on a chair!” our teacher snapped.

Lisa said nothing and lowered her head. I watched from the other side of the classroom in silence, not moving a muscle. Just when I thought it was safe to exhale, the cleaning lady looked up and pointed her finger squarely at me and said in a husky voice, “That one was doing it, too.”

If I didn’t hate her before, I did then—the moment she became a snitch.

Mrs. Sciandra walked over to me and said, in a tone dripping with disappointment, “You, Gwen? You’ve always been a good little girl. I’m surprised at you!”

I felt a sense of shame that reached all the way down to my toes. If I were capable of blushing, my face would have been a beet red. I don’t recall what, if anything, I said to Mrs. Sciandra. I just remember lowering my head and folding my hands on my lap and staying silent until my father arrived. I didn’t even stop to use the restroom before we exited the school building.

When I look back on that day, I’m not upset that my first public act of rebellion was to stand on a chair. In fact, it seems comical now. My dad thought it was funny at the time, and he immediately took my side against the cleaning lady.

Getting in trouble for dancing on a chair was one of my earliest lessons in humanity, because more than five decades later, what has stayed with me is my own childish shock over the eyewitness testimony. To my 6-year-old self, the woman who cleaned our classroom was invisible. It had never occurred to me that she was a human being like the other adults.

Some years after the incident—I don’t remember how old I was at the time—my mother, who grew up in Japan, told me about her childhood school, Tamagawa Gakuen, an academy that emphasized whole-person education. According to my mom, the school had no custodial staff. The students were responsible for cleaning the classrooms at the end of each day.

Come to think of it, I wonder why Mrs. Sciandra didn’t put Lisa and me to work instead of having us sit at those awful desks. Tidying up bookshelves and cleaning the blackboards—that certainly could have kept us out of trouble.

P.S. 56