A Year With Miss Zee

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Fourth grade was for me a year
Of skinny boys and we, just girls;
And the boys they took their shirts
Off their bony chest, glad and flirt—
They turned Miss Zee’s table
To a stage, oh! they were able
To fit on top; nobody dropped
A step or a foot and they danced
To the songs of late three o’clock.
When Zee was gone for a coffee
Or some chat with the other Misses,
Lem would lead his gang of three
Or four to the table top, or beneath
The sink where it was night dark;
And out came of Red’s pocket
His magic stones he bragged
Could light up like a rocket.
One, two and three, he struck,
He rubbed them and out
Came a spark and shouts
And hoorays— now let me
Tell you some old history,
The toilet room has a story;
How we, just girls, screamed
At Lem and his gang’s scheme.
Yes, they had a chance at girls
In the topless room, May sat
On the bowl like a princess,
She let out her excess and
Out came a shriek of a cat—
Oh, May was that girl cat;
And we watched them,
On the wall climbed Lem,
In the tiny hole was Red,
Mond with his dirty head
Laughed and proud, he said
“This time she had pink!”
 Then out of the cubicle
May frowned and giggled,
Out of the room she stomped,
Her pigtails happily jumped;
Oh, I bet they were happy
Lem liked her when she’s lippy,
And he called her honey;
Sure the toilet has a story.
We, just girls, we had our worries:
This crook boy named Stavi,
I branded myself unlucky,
Stavi boy sat just behind me.
Well, next to me I had Daphne,
She too hated the daily gusts
Of the taxing wont Stavi did to us.
A coin a day to him, pressed, we gave
A jerk he was, a true-blue knave,
He suited his look, he fit his name
Well, and his scrawl on the paper
He stole from Daphne’s plenty pads
That she hid so well in her trolley bag.
To his sneer, we, just girls, were hosts,
His fist he’d show us and he cursed.
I bet his father did too and so he aped
Like a fool, he thought he was a chief thug;
In the movies he saw their vaunts and mugs.
A third class in a liner, in Miss Zee’s class
Third-rate, the speech figures he couldn’t pass.
“Any simile, Stavi?”, Miss asked, dazed he was;
“Stav was as foul as a rat”, said my head.
Simile for a boy, metaphor for a rat, I read
The speech in my head he didn’t find—
Oh, I could’ve clapped and Daphne laughed;
One day he just stopped, he never came back.
Sure, we, just girls, we had our worries.
Miss Zee loved it when we just write
And she’d sit in front and ‘twas quiet.
On the board she taped the manilas
Of endless verbs, present, future, past.
The tenses if they could’ve fussed,
Why put was still put and sit was sat;
Nobody did knew, nobody asked,
So Miss left, for a coffee I bet, or a chat.
Then out of quietude someone spoke,
That was Gary and loudly he proposed,
“A writing race for everyone with a pen!”
And the race started not in a count of ten,
But ready, set and go, dashed to and fro
Our busy hands, jotted words hopped,
The letters ran and the commas jumped.
The point to my i’s they flew so high
And sometimes they were left behind,
So they got stuck inside big O or little p
And I didn’t help, poor dot was never free
From the letter cage; for the race was on.
It went on and Gary neared the end line;
Ruthie, she was fast too like her strides,
Her bottoms they pouted as red lips did,
She duck-walked only that she had speed.
I rushed, my words illegible, I was fallible,
I erred with some words too, I spelled wrong;
And no rubber strawberry could improve.
Still leads had rubber heads so you’d remove
The ugly marks of a stick figure on the bond.
“Finished!”, said a voice, Gary this time he won,
Just in time I dotted my last line and just second;
Then a choir of champ word crammed the room.
Some boy rang the bell, how we raced that noon
Was a story, we did a history Miss Zee didn’t see.
Well, we had days with her when we jellied
Some juicy yellow fruit, a pineapple indeed!
And I brought home my part, a jarful of it,
I bragged I did a lot to it so it was real sweet.
The jelly was my recipe I shared to Miss Zee,
Well, she grouped us actually and we cooked
Like in the book, but some we did off the hook.
Fresh it required, in the market we couldn’t find
A just-picked fruit, so we dealt with the other kind;
Pineapples in cans we acquired, sugared it on fire,
‘Til next year it wouldn’t expire so we were fine;
The tin can said the pineapples sure will survive.
Miss didn’t care if we had canned and she smiled
When she had a taste of it, our jelly fruit paradise.
Oh, the boys too had days, their raw noodle plays;
They made Miss try and she liked it too, the noodle
Should be cooked, it seemed Mond knew a little,
Oh, I bet he knew a lot that he learned to try new—
A pack they opened and cracked went the noodles
In their hungry mouths, the seasoning they passed
Like test papers to the side, to the front and back,
And Miss wondered what the taste was like:
Some strips she took from Lem and surprise!
“Just like chips”, she said, Miss Zee was right—
It need not cooked so the worth you’ll prove.
14th of Feb we made cards as she told us to do,
“Your most loved, that card’s for”, said she;
And I thought who do I love, who did we?
Were they here or there, they were where?
On the card I wrote the name that it seemed
A name I knew so well, and sometimes I didn’t
Quite know how best she was and will still be;
Even so never once I said I was always grateful
Of the truths she taught me I didn’t find in school.
Yes, I didn’t find the softest pillows and blankets,
The crispiest fried chickens, the rainbow color bread.
All I didn’t find in school, but in our home she kept.
Always the safest place it was, though the door old
The walls grey, the rain dripped when it stormed,
From the aged roof waters leaked, but it was home.
So in the card I wrote, to Mama I spoke my heart,
I’d thank her everyday if I should again start.
You see, Miss Zee always loved to watch us write,
And the room was empty, and the noise expired;
Like Lem and his gang were never there, or Stavi
Didn’t kick our chairs, so we, girls, had no worries.
Sure, fourth grade was a story, we made history
We had a year with Miss Zee.


Written on January 7th, 2014





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