Sputterpub's Blog

No lifelong relationships came out of Room 6, but none of them forgot their time together. Melanie’s family moved out of the area at the beginning of her junior year in high school, but she corresponded with a few friends and later followed some lives on the Internet.

She was a little surprised about Keith’s success. She learned that he didn’t exhibit psychopathic or sociopathic qualities as an adult. He never became attractive or eloquent, but what started out as drug dealing in late high school morphed into a legitimate import business, and he took off as an entrepreneur. He’d been importing hashish from Pakistan and he got into rugs and carpets. He became acquainted with a small community of weavers and began supplying them with organic dyes instead of the chemically-fabricated tints that developed nations had furnished. His trade became so successful that he abandoned drugs and expanded his legitimate activities. He married, fathered two daughters, and tried to do right by them. One of the daughters was diagnosed as on the spectrum, and that led Keith to some serious financial and time involvement with an autism nonprofit.

Steve’s hyperactivity increased as he got older. It was not helped by his cocaine use. Probably the only thing that kept him from moving on to meth addiction was the gambling he took up at 25. He was good at cards but bad at poker face. He bottomed out five years later, after his second wife left him and he lost his sixth job. He joined Synanon, got clean and fanatic, and entered the trades. He became a fair electrician and a good stone mason. He liked construction because the career limited the number of appointments he had to make, and by then he was thoroughly sick of missing appointments. His third wife told him he had Attention Deficit Disorder but he argued about the “disorder” part of it. He said he was just fine. Before she left him she urged him to get help, but Kaiser told him he was too functional for therapy. They referred him to an ADD support group, but that didn’t work; the members kept forgetting to show up at meetings.

Patrick’s life was the sad surprise. He made it to adulthood, he received enough speech therapy that the stutter became socially acceptable, he married and produced a child of each gender. And then he killed himself. He pulled a drycleaning bag over his head and suffocated on the floor of his study. He left reams of personal journals, in some of which his old friend Melanie was mentioned. His widow then searched her out, and the two women got together for lunch. Patrick’s wife flooded the table with words. Melanie left that encounter convinced that her old pal had been gay and alcoholic and not happy at all.

Melanie married three times before she concluded that it wasn’t the right state for her. She had two children by her first husband, and raised them. She became a business consultant for a living and an unpublished writer from compulsion. She continued to take exception to most generalizations, headlines, and popular conclusions. She developed a precise and compelling way of expressing her ideas, but rarely acquires agreement from others. As far as Melanie’s concerned, everyone has a cognitive issue, and life is a process of discovering and accommodating one another. Her friends haven’t embraced that viewpoint, but they no longer challenge it.

Melanie didn’t forget Room 6. None of the core four did. Steve simplified his experience into an “I hate school” and “School is Jail” philosophy. If he’d had children, he probably would have homeschooled them. Keith ended up on the local school board and unable to sell any of his radical ideas. Patrick wrote some of his into his journals. Melanie was always ready to discuss the subject. All of them had learned that school as they experienced it didn’t work very well. The days were too long, the classes were too full, and the teacher had to pitch instruction to the middle, so the kids who didn’t live in the bulb of the bell curve were not well served.

The posse in Room 6 had come to agreement about what needed to be done. They knew the school day should be shortened – they liked the idea of four hours. They figured that school should run year-round. And they were certain that kids need to be taught by other kids and through narrative. They would have broken classrooms into small groups and had at least half of the lessons told by older student mentors.

No one listened to them, then or now.

Melanie was spending so much time in Room 6 that she was starting to think of it as her own. She had to share it with a few boys, but they weren’t objecting to her little acts of propriety, and they were even taking cues from her about where and when to sit.

All of the inhabitants were supposed to sit at all times – that was one of the purposes of Room 6 – but the group wasn’t very rowdy considering their outlaw status, and Mr. Peterson was starting to leave them unsupervised for quarter hours at a time.

Four of them were regulars. They made it to Room 6 just about every schoolday. Usually there was an additional student or two. Melanie can’t recall a time when there were more than seven kids in the room. She was always the only girl.

The core four came from the same classroom. Their teacher couldn’t handle them and requested their removal. Miss McDaniels wasn’t a strong personality and was a mediocre instructor. But she had 28 other students; she had to extract the bad four or she would have had chaos in the classroom and zero educational progress.

Four bad apples in a barrel of 32, Melanie thought much later. That seemed like a high percentage of unacceptable behavior. One-eighth, she calculated: 12.5%. Sometimes statistics astounded grown Melanie: like the time she counted up the excellent teachers she’d experienced (four), and divided by the number of the profession she’d had through high school (at least 67) and obtained the dismal 5.9% that made her challenge the cultural conclusion that teachers in general were unsung heroes.

The academic year of Room 6 was 1960-61. The place was Chula Vista. The grade was sixth. The students were members of the huge cohort that would be called baby boomers, and they were pioneers in crowding. They were blazing trails without vocabulary. When they became parents there would be words like detention and autism, acronyms like ADHD and DSM IV, phrases like “disruptive behavior” and “behavior contract” and “zero tolerance policy.” But in 1960, there wasn’t much more than “not working to potential.”

The core four delinquents in Room 6 were a mixed lot. Keith was ugly and truculent, Steve was handsome and dashing in an obnoxious way, Patrick was nondescript in appearance and distracting in speech, and Melanie was contentious. She argued with teachers, staff, students, textbooks, and test questions.

Physically the four were average. Keith was chubby, and to Melanie he looked like Fred Flintstone. Steve was athletic and could have been the son of Superman and Reggie. Patrick ran like a girl and reminded her of Dobie Gillis. Melanie aspired to Katy Keene and achieved Little Dot. But they were all in the acceptable range. It was their actions that set them apart from their classmates.

Her parents were at the front door when she got home. Melanie felt a sudden urge to go, possibly owing to all the beans.

“I need the bathroom.”

“I knew you wouldn’t use theirs,” said her mother as Melanie edged by. She didn’t understand the comment, and apparently neither did her dad. He looked a question at his wife.

“Their house is filthy.”

Melanie hadn’t noticed.

In bed a short while later and too stimulated to sleep, Melanie considered the Swansons. They’d only been in the neighborhood about a year, but they moved in with a splash and had never ceased being conspicuous. They were sparkly people, to Melanie’s eyes. Each was good looking and dressed well, and moved with a sharp edge, crisp and like a coloring book picture that has been outlined in dark crayon. They seemed to be always smiling or laughing. They had an awesome dog. Melanie wished she could have a dog or a cat, but her mother said animals are filthy and wouldn’t have one in the house. Her dad’s tropical fish aquarium was not the same thing.

Melanie didn’t like to be dirty herself, so she wasn’t longing for an unclean house. In fact, one of the conditions contributing to her wakefulness at that moment was the stickiness at the back of her knees when she bent her legs. She normally took a bath every night and got into her bed warm and clean, but the party had used up her bathtime that night. Still, she couldn’t see the Swanson house as sufficiently dirty to avoid it.

As it happened, she didn’t get the opportunity to decide. By the end of January the Swansons had sold their house and moved away. Their residence on the block lasted thirteen months. They had reason to move.

Christmas and Hanukah coincided that year. The festival of lights ran from the evening of Tuesday December 17th to Christmas day. It was a sociable week for the whole neighborhood. Everyone’s mood seemed good.

When Melanie came home from school the Friday after Christmas break, she headed straight to the kitchen for a snack. Her brother was already home – he only went half days – playing with his new Tonka truck in the living room. Melanie’s mother was at the sink, rings on the windowsill dish and hands in the soapy water. She knew Melanie had entered the room but she didn’t turn around. She kept washing dishes as she told Melanie that Dabney’s mother had killed herself. Then she turned off the water, wiped her hands on a towel, and lit a cigarette.

Melanie understood suicide. Her father had her sit with him and watch a television broadcast of “Madame Butterfly” two years earlier, and Melanie had accepted the idea of a person deciding to end her life. What she hadn’t understood was why a writer would choose to end a story with such a sad irrecoverable act, but that question had nothing to do with Dabney’s mother, or father, or Dabney.

Melanie felt solemn. And sorry. Of course she asked why, but her mother couldn’t answer. A week later, she noticed the For Sale sign stuck in the lawn in front of the Swanson house, and then she witnessed occasional traffic in and out. Within a month a big van pulled up and moved the furniture away. Melanie never saw Dabney or her father or Sheba leave. The next day when she woke up, their car was gone.

Sheba wasn’t invited to the Halloween birthday party. Nor were the neighborhood babies. The cut-off age was five. Melanie’s brother Brad didn’t get to attend. The status that exclusivity granted to Melanie more than made up for her inadequate costume.

The grownups wore regular clothes to the party. Dabney’s mama had chosen an orange shirtwaist dress, and “Halloween’d” it with a shiny black belt, black high heels, and black gloves. Her hair cascaded in waves around her shoulders, reflecting glints of lantern light and apparently matching her dress. She had sparkly earrings on that were mostly hidden by her hair, but her bracelets – several on each wrist and at least one heavy with charms – made tinkling music and more light when they flashed with her movements. Dabney’s mama seemed to be in constant motion, bringing platters to tables or her own ice-heavy glass to her orange lips, furthering the impression of glint, sparkle, music.

The food was good. The hot dogs tasted like home but Melanie only had one because she promised her mother she wouldn’t eat more. The beans were different and delicious, chewy and almost sweet, and her mother hadn’t issued any instructions about them, so Melanie kept serving herself from the big dish at the center of her table. The bowls of candy would have been like heaven except Melanie had just acquired her annual sack of Halloween goodies the night before. It was the birthday cakes that impressed her.

Each table had its own cake. Each cake was such dark chocolate inside that it looked black in the party light, and bore orange icing decorated with a jack o’ lantern face. Baked into the cake was a silver charm. The guests were told that the person at the table who got the charm would receive a prize.

A silver charm. Not plastic, not pot metal like a Monopoly token: real silver. Melanie’s next door neighbor was the lucky one at her table. As usual he ate so slowly that everyone else had already finished their cake and pushed the plate toward the table center. Barry was on about his third bite from last when he “yowch’d” and brought his left hand to his jaw. He cupped his palm beneath his own chin and spat out metal. The cleaned-off charm was a dainty little horse.

He had to give the charm to Dabney’s mama but he got a package of Sea-Monkeys for his prize. As did the winner at Dabney’s table, a boy who didn’t live in the neighborhood. Freddie’s father was the winner at the grownup table, and it looked to Melanie like his prize was a bottle of something.

Melanie didn’t care about not winning Sea-Monkeys but she would have loved to have the charm. She’d asked her parents for a charm bracelet for her last birthday but they told her that kind of jewelry lacked class. She didn’t understand the term – it meant school to her – but she gathered that her parents wanted her to wear simple, small ornaments, if any. She opted to go without, but she still liked charms.

The party ended soon after the cake ceremony. The grownup table got a little noisy and then Dabney’s father gently pushed her mama off his lap, stood up, and started the goodbyes. Melanie would have enjoyed the adventure of taking the backyard route home, climbing the low fence in the dark, but she behaved herself and went out through the Swanson house. She got to pet Sheba on the way. She was careful to keep her hands free of dog slobber. Behind her Freddie threw his arms around Sheba’s neck and kissed the dog’s ear. Freddie seemed to always have green snot in his left nostril. It reminded Melanie of a pistachio half. It was gross.

The weather was mild. The sun had gone down an hour before and had taken none of the autumn warmth with it. The yard was lit with paper lanterns strung like big Christmas ornaments from the maple trees. The tables sparkled with glassware and china. Each one had a bunch of flowers and a chimneyed candle on its white cloth. It looked like a grownup party. It seemed like real life.

Melanie was enchanted. She was still a quarter year shy of her eighth birthday but she felt like she had arrived.

She was at the worst table but she didn’t mind. The hosts had set up two wooden tables-with-attached-benches in addition to the one that was a permanent fixture in their yard. The original table held places for the adults. The central table had the biggest flower arrangement and was for the birthday girl and her twelve and thirteen year-old peers. The other borrowed table, the one closest to the fence, seated the neighborhood kids who were invited to attend even though they weren’t close friends with Dabney. They ranged in age from eleven year old Freddie to Melanie, almost eight.

It was a Halloween birthday party. Among other items of good fortune, Dabney had been born on October 31. The actual party was a day late because Halloween that year had fallen on a Thursday, but that was lucky too; everyone got to go trick-or-treating the night before and then reuse their costumes for the party.

Melanie wasn’t proud of her outfit. Her mother was too busy to make a costume for her, too impatient to let Melanie create her own, too thrifty to consider a purchase. Melanie was a hobo that Halloween, which wasn’t very different from the peddler she’d been the year before. Her outfit was fashioned from an old suit that her father never wanted to see again. It was comfortable to wear but it wasn’t dramatic, scary, or lovely. Although Melanie thought it might be nice to be the standout costume of the evening, she preferred not to be noticed. She felt privileged to be at the party and she just wanted to soak in all the sights and sounds in that festive back yard. She hadn’t yet heard of anthropology or even journalism, but she was getting pretty good at spying on adults and the older neighborhood kids; she just wanted to observe.

She was at the least of the tables and that didn’t bother her at all. It made sense to her that the seats with Dabney and her schoolmates were central, and that the table closest to the house was reserved for the grownups. Melanie and other younger kids were next to the rail fence that ran at the back of the yard. They had an excellent view of the other tables, but they were cloaked by shadows themselves. They received exactly the same treats as the other guests, and got to watch Dabney’s mother walk across the yard to bring them goodies. Dabney’s mother was the most glamorous mom on the block.

Melanie didn’t know her name, but she expected it to be different. She thought of the woman as Dabney’s mama (which is what Dabney called her) or Mrs. Swanson. Melanie’s mother taught her to call most of the neighborhood mothers “Aunt Ruth” or “Aunt Grace” or Aunt Whatever-Her-First-name-Is, even though they weren’t real family, but she referred to Dabney’s mama as She or Her.

Melanie figured the name would be odd, like other things about the Swanson family. They only had one child, which was unusual for the block. They all had reddish blonde hair. They owned a big slobbery wonderful dog called Sheba. Sheba was a St Bernard like Melanie had seen on TV: huge and shaggy and gentle. The dog was so large that some of the babies in the neighborhood tried to ride her, and Sheba stood quietly for those attempts. Unlike the other households, the Swansons were neither Catholic nor Jewish; they didn’t leave their house for regular Sunday services and when they did attend, no one knew where. But the strangest fact about the family was their southern origin. No one else in the area came from Mississippi or spoke with their songlike cadence. It was to that heritage that Melanie attributed Dabney’s name and the family’s hospitality.