by Alan Holmes
I felt quite let down but soon found consolation in standing on the back balcony of the bus going home. Kids weren’t allowed to be there, but Raimond passed a small bribe to the conductor who conveniently overlooked my presence in this magical place. Raimond knew how much riding on the bus’s balcony meant to me and now, puffing on a Gauloise Bleue, he pointed out the various sights we were passing. He was enjoying the ride as much as I was.
When we approached our stop, Raimond asked me if I wanted to pull la chasse d’eau (the lavatory chain). When he saw how excited I was by this offer, he lifted me up so I could reach it. I gave the chain two smart tugs that resulted in satisfying clangs at the front of the bus. My day had been redeemed.
One aspect of the American School that amazed all non-American students was the fuss the school made over peculiarly American holidays, the celebration of which dominated all else for weeks on end. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day had never been mentioned at any of my previous schools, nor did I know what these were. As for Christmas and Easter, neither had caused even a small ripple in the routine at my other schools, except for the vacations they engendered. French schools didn’t seem to feel it appropriate to expend valuable class time over special occasions such as these—at least in those days.
At the American School, we carved faces in pumpkins and cut out paper turkeys which eventually festooned the walls of the classroom. It all seemed very strange to me. I remember Jean-Louis’s mother coming to pick him up after school, looking at all the decorations and the related activity still in progress and commenting, “Mon Dieu! Ce n’est pas sérieux tout ça!” (“My God! This is all so frivolous!”).
Then came a school play, something else one didn’t see in French schools of the time. Brenda had the lead role as a fairy princess. Mother made her an exquisite costume that looked like a bridal gown. My sister stole the show, not only with her costume but also with her singing.
For my part, I acquitted myself quite well as a gnome. I and several other gnomes formed a chorus, and our roles required us to perform an elaborate song and dance routine. We rehearsed long hours each day for a whole month. Rehearsal took place under the direction of Brenda’s teacher, a veritable witch of a woman called Miss Trotmi. In our final public performance there wasn’t a false step or spurious note because we knew Miss Trotmi would have devoured us alive if there had been.
For this performance I wore a marvelous green satin costume, also made by Mother. The superb quality of the costume’s design and its workmanship pleased me no end, but embarrassed me in the company of my fellow gnomes who had far simpler and even poorly made outfits. I have never liked feeling conspicuous in a crowd.
While there were many divertissements that year, I covered no new territory in maths or French and did moderately well in these subjects because of extensive drilling at my other schools. My English spelling improved a little, and we received a smattering of American geography and history. The school conformed to American standards, which were much less stringent than French standards, and I found it easy to achieve passable grades for the first time in my life.
Looking back on it, I suspect that I probably would have managed quite well if I had stayed in my luminous fourth grade classroom—if only I hadn’t become so absorbed by my drawings and daydreaming. However, I might not have enjoyed life as much as I eventually did in third grade, and I feel that this “lost year” probably didn’t adversely affect my overall scholastic career.
Nevertheless, during the first few weeks in Miss Cabinalice’s class, I grew bored by the slow pace and lack of new work. I continued my habit of sitting in the back of the class. There, thanks to the honor system and Miss Cabinalice’s preference for staying at the front of the class, I resumed what I call “the three D’s”—daydreams, designs and drawings. I managed to avoid being caught at my three D’s by listening with one ear. That way, I didn’t get into serious trouble when the teacher addressed me. This policy resulted in very marginal performance and conveniently earned me no gold or silver stars.
I was assisted in my drawing endeavors by the fact that the classroom had a hand-cranked pencil sharpener to which we could go as often as needed. It amazes me that Miss Cabinalice never noticed how much more frequently I went to the sharpener than anyone else. I had discovered that sharp pencils make for better drawings.
I was secretive about my drawings and showed them only to Raimond, but I never mentioned that I was doing my sketches during class time. He was always interested, providing constructive comments and asking pertinent questions about them. Thanks, in part, to Raimond’s coaching and critiques, these drawings were becoming increasingly elaborate and refined. I planned the layout of cars, even fussing over the placement of knobs and switches on the dashboard and numbers on the speedometer dial. This fastidiousness also applied to locomotives and various types of aircraft, ranging from airliners to a special “Gypsy flying boat,” which was my favorite design that year.
My Gypsy flying boat was a plane well equipped for travel to exotic places. Onboard I could sleep in a bunk, cook and enjoy five-course meals, and write down in notebooks all the discoveries I made each day as I traveled around the world. My plan was to land each night in some new place and camp comfortably aboard my flying boat. The plane was amphibious so I could land equally well near an oasis on the Sahara desert, on a wild stretch of the Amazon, or on some flat country meadow in Europe.
Lindbergh and his wife were doing something like this in a seaplane, as reported in the National Geographic magazines that I devoured each month. Their specially fitted Lockheed seaplane seemed woefully inadequate since it had no living quarters, and all they carried with them were a few sandwiches, which they claimed was all they had room for. By their own account, the sandwiches were usually stale and moldy, and they complained about having to sleep in flimsy, leaky tents when it was raining, or on sharp rocks along some craggy shore near their landing site.
What brought this outburst of creative designs to a halt was another parent-teacher conference. Mother and Miss Cabinalice knew that I was mostly going over old stuff and were baffled as to why I wasn’t doing better. A few days after this conference, Raimond provided Mother with a clue to the mystery by telling her how impressed he was by the drawings I was doing. He had been sworn to secrecy, but probably thought it applied only to the subject matter of the drawings. I’m sure he never intended to betray my confidence—Raimond wasn’t like that.
Mother tipped off Miss Cabinalice, who came off her podium one day and caught me working on an important set of aeronautical drawings that were lying on top of my desk. She quietly asked me what I was doing. Remembering Mother’s homily on fibbing, I made a clean breast of the whole matter. Continuing in her quiet, pleasant voice, Miss Cabinalice asked me why I made so many drawings.
“I’m so bored that I can’t help being dans la lune—that’s where I find all my best ideas,” I said to her in those words. “And then, some of my ideas seem so good to me, that I just want to draw them, that way I can look at them whenever I need to.”
Miss Cabinalice listened patiently and told me she wanted to see all my drawings during recess. But for now, I should give up being in the moon or making any further drawings in class.
Later that afternoon, we went over my collection of drawings in detail, and Miss Cabinalice showed as much interest and enthusiasm as Raimond had. She went on to explain that I could probably do the class assignments very fast if I really paid attention to the matter. And if I did that, she would allow me to draw during any leftover time, while some of the other students were finishing their assignments. Then she awarded me a silver star for the day.
I told Miss Cabinalice that I didn’t want the silver star; I wanted a green one instead.
“Is that because you feel you don’t deserve a silver star?” she asked casually.
“No, I just don’t like gold
and silver as colors for stars,” I replied.
“Oh, I see!” she said. “But since I now know the color you want instead of silver, you must also tell me what color star I should give you when you deserve a gold star.”
After some deliberation, I settled for a bright, lemon-yellow star.
During the drive home in Mr. Spafford’s car that evening, I was in a trance. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been expelled, jailed, slapped on my thighs, or subjected to verbal abuse.
Miss Cabinalice was a young, stunningly beautiful Panamanian woman. Despite her Latin American origins, she had flowing, golden-blonde hair and very blue eyes. Her complexion was quite dark, which I assumed was a deep suntan, the result of living in a sunny country. In contrast to all my previous teachers whose dress was generally so drab, Miss Cabinalice always wore the most elegantly tailored suits.
What I liked about Miss Cabinalice was something I had never seen in any teacher until then. She was lively, enthusiastic, funny, entertaining, warm and, best of all, a good listener. I was no expert on the subject at the time, but I don’t remember that she had any trace of an accent in either English or French, both of which she spoke fluently, though Spanish was her native tongue.
I wondered why it had taken me several weeks to notice her charms, and I said so to Mother, to which she replied, “Encore une fois, tu étais dans la lune, mon cher!” (“Once more, you were in the moon, my dear!”). My daydreaming was now a major source of concern to Mother, and she was determined to stamp it out any way she could. She berated me whenever any evidence of it occurred or used sarcasm and ridicule to make me feel foolish for indulging in daydreams.
Mother developed a bad habit of her own. She refused to believe things I told her about school—or anything else, for that matter—unless it conformed well to what she expected or liked to hear about the subject. And she constantly accused me of inventing. “Alain, tu inventes!” became a household refrain. This infuriated me because I had taken Mother’s lecture on fibbing to heart and wouldn’t for anything in the world allow myself to be caught in another major untruth. Well, perhaps I told the occasional white lie, but Mother herself had shown me their use and value. Her attitude caused me to clam up about all my ideas and daydreams. Raimond was the only person to whom I could talk freely.
Brenda was in the classroom next door to mine. A curtained French door connected the two rooms and, from what we could hear through that closed door and its heavy curtain, it was clear that Brenda was not as fortunate with her teacher as I was with mine. Miss Trotmi, a French woman with a shrill voice and sour demeanor, was a real virago. Whenever Miss Trotmi’s caterwauling reached a crescendo—a daily occurrence—Miss Cabinalice rolled her eyes in mock wonder, to the immense amusement of our class.
My admiration for Miss Cabinalice became an infatuation. I was transfixed by all she said and did. She made everything fun, even things I used to think of as dull. Eventually, she could do no wrong or boring thing, and everything she said or explained seemed crystal clear. I would have followed her over a cliff. The very sound of her voice was music to my ears. I was completely spellbound by Miss Cabinalice.
I decided that thirteen years hence, when I reached the magical age of majority (when it would be all right to do anything I wanted), I would ask her to marry me. No one, not even Raimond, knew of my great love, so afraid was I that something would topple my fantasy. Surprisingly, I even succeeded in keeping it from Miss Cabinalice, who showed me no particular attention or favoritism, as evidenced by the stars on my chart. By the end of the school year, I had only three honor stars—which for me were, of course, green and yellow. Most of the other students had four or five honor stars, and a couple of students had over a dozen.
The Olinka affair had never ripened to include fantasies of marriage, so my infatuation for Miss Cabinalice had no effect on my friendship with Olinka. After the failed trip to her house, my crush on her waned significantly, but I still admired Olinka and regarded her as a good friend. Her presence always lit up the scene for me, so I continued to invite her to join in our games, which she usually did.
In June, there was a prize-giving ceremony attended by the senior and junior schools and all the parents. They awarded a prize in the form of a book to the best student in each grade. An engraved frontispiece in each book attested to the student’s achievement and grade point average for the year. Almost every adult associated with the school gave a speech before the awarding of prizes, and their speeches seemed to drone on interminably.
I was distraught and in a wretched mood because it had dawned on me that next year I would no longer be in the junior school and in Miss Cabinalice’s class. Indeed, I would be lucky if I caught an occasional glimpse of her at lunchtime when she brought her class across the street to the school dining room in the main building. The fact that I would be back in the luminous classroom seemed small consolation for the loss of Miss Cabinalice in my daily life.
I even wondered why they didn’t have teachers move up a grade each year with their students so that such cruel separations would not occur. I talked myself out of that idea when I realized that such a scheme would doom Brenda to endless years at the mercy of the terrible Miss Trotmi.
I was deep in my somber reverie when Boris, seated next to me, nudged me in the ribs and whispered furtively, “Hey! That’s you! Go on up and collect your prize!”
I had been in the moon again and had no idea what the prize was for. Jean-Louis, seated next to me on the other side from Boris, had gone up to collect the prize for best student in our class. That had come as no surprise—his row on the chart had so many gold and silver stars that they were beyond counting—but what on earth was my prize for? How embarrassing to win a prize and not even know the reason for the award!
I stumbled sheepishly up to the podium where Mr. Derosier, the headmaster, seized my limp hand, shook it vigorously, congratulated me, and handed me a huge bronze medal in a velvet-lined jeweler’s case. I thanked him and went back to my seat, still baffled.
The medal was engraved with the words:
SCHOOL SPIRIT
ALAN HOLMES
A.S.O.P.
1939
The other side of the medal depicted an angel with excessively large wings. With her left hand, the angel daintily held up one corner of her pleated skirt. In her right hand, which she held out, was something that looked like a garden cutting wedged between her thumb and flattened palm.
Neither the medal’s inscription nor the figure on it made any sense to me, and I was sure there must be some mistake. I was now paying close attention to Mr. Derosier, hoping he might award a second medal to someone else and thereby shed some light on medals in general.
When the awarding of prizes was finally over, Mr. Derosier made an announcement that struck like a spear through my heart. “It is with sadness and deep regret that we bid adieu to Miss Cabinalice, who will not be returning to the American School of Paris next autumn. She is going to marry her fiancé, who is a doctor and lives in Panama.”
As soon as the ceremony was over, I bolted out of a side door of the assembly hall so no one would see me crying. I found an empty classroom and let go, wailing and sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t know how long I was there, but I finally calmed down and went to the washroom to clean up my tear-stained face.
There was one more thing we third-graders had been told to do. We were supposed to gather in a side hallway and, under the care of Miss Cabinalice, march back across the street to the junior school. There, we were to collect our belongings and wait for our parents to pick us up.
In the hallway where we were supposed to gather, I found that my class had already left. I ran out of the building onto the sidewalk and then to the nearest street corner where our class always went in a group to cross the street.
The rue d’Auteuil was a wide and busy artery, and I had never
crossed a street with so much traffic all by myself. To make matters worse, it was now rush hour. I waited on the corner for a moment. Then, when there seemed to be a small opening in the traffic from both directions, I dashed across the street. Several cars screeched to a halt, and drivers cursed me, fists waving. Somehow, I made it across and walked down the sidewalk to the junior school entrance, where I saw Mother and Brenda waiting in the car, talking together so intently that they apparently had not seen my suicidal street crossing, nor noticed my approach. I rapped on the car window, yelled that I would be right back and dashed into the school.
Miss Cabinalice was just leaving the classroom as I neared its door. “Oh there you are, Alan! Where have you been? I was worried sick about you—I assumed you were with your mother, but I haven’t seen her either. Let’s go in and get your books,” she said, taking my hand and leading me into the strangely silent and empty classroom.
“May I see your medal?” she asked as we reached the desk where my belongings were stacked.
As I fumbled in my pocket for it, she said, “Why—you’ve been crying! Your eyes are red and swollen. What’s the matter, Alan?” She paused, and I remained silent, not knowing what to say. Then she added softly in a tone of genuine concern, “Is the medal the wrong color?”
It struck me as an odd question, but there was no hint of sarcasm or teasing in her voice. I suppose she just needed something to start me talking. I was still choked up, and now the tears were welling up again. She crouched down on one knee and put her arm around my shoulder.
Through my tears, I could see the concern and gentleness in her beautiful eyes, now almost level with mine. I managed to blurt out, “You’re leaving and not coming back. And I like you so much.” She put both arms around me and drew me to her. Standing there, surrounded by her warm hug and smelling the fragrance of her hair, the most wonderful feeling came over me.