Coming Ashore

by Catherine Gildiner

  The curtain came down on more than the show, and Sara and I were called to the office to meet with a bevy of school officials, including the principal and the superintendant of schools.

  The first thing I said was that Sara had been in the dark about the content. Then I tried to defend myself, explaining that Ginsberg’s poem was a lament about America’s disenfranchised. I also explained that “Howl” was a very long poem of almost three thousand words and one could, therefore, take any part of it out of context. The superintendent of schools had one of those red faces that got redder with any exertion: at this moment it turned purple. For a long time, he shook his head and breathed heavily as the buttons on his tight suit pulled across his bulging belly. Finally he said, “Miss McClure, are you aware that we have had here in the city of Cleveland worse riots than anywhere else in the country?” He held up two fingers in my face and enunciated, “tw—ice.” He paused to gather more breath, then added, “It is not our desire to make our students howl with rage or to engage in perversion as Mr. Ginsman has done. We are trying to make them into …” He hesitated, then finally opted for “empowered, productive citizens.”

  I was not trying to give any specific message, but only to echo what had touched the students. I tried to explain that if pain and rage were what the students felt, why not express it through ­poetry rather than burning down their own neighbourhood? ­Maybe people have to recognize their own rage before they become, as Merilee would say, “empowered”? I looked at the superintendent of schools. “Empowerment comes through education and hard work. I tried to teach poetry and they felt empowered enough to do this assembly. For Christ’s sake, we had to clean twenty years of grime off the footlights.”

  “If you were so eager to build black pride, why didn’t you include some black poets?” the black female guidance counsellor asked.

  “We did an entire unit of black poetry. Most of the poems that grabbed them and they emulated were not by black people. Actually I admired how they used their gut and did not respond along racial lines. Instead they made non-political artistic judgments. I think that is fairly sophisticated for high school students.”

  That shut her up.

  The superintendent jumped back in. “Clearly those girls hate you or they wouldn’t have betrayed you to us,” he said with a tinge of pride.

  “No kidding. I didn’t expect to reach everyone. No one does. I did push them — hard. I’ll admit that and they pushed back. At least they got off their backsides. I’ll be willing to wager it was more than they’ve done since they entered this school.”

  When the superintendent asked Merilee how I had behaved as a teacher, she couldn’t answer, since she had never stayed for even one minute of my classes. To avoid taking any responsibility, she cut to the chase. “If Miss McClure apologizes and clearly sees that what she did was wrong, then can we put this unfortunate incident behind us?”

  Principal Woldberg said, “Do you see how saying something about giving your semen to people, other men, in public parks, is not high school material — particularly the glorification of that content?”

  “Of course I see that. I wanted Maurice, a student, to know that someone who had won the National Book Award and the Robert Frost Medal had written some lines that were similar to his. Yes, an old homosexual Jew and a teenaged heterosexual black man said almost the same thing. I thought that was interesting — and in some way encouraging about the so-called family of man. I also believe it inspired the students.”

  “Would you do it again for an assembly?” Principal Woldberg asked, fishing for resolution.

  “I wouldn’t have done it the first time. I would never have picked that passage for an assembly or even to read in class. That’s obviously why the girls have done it.”

  The guidance counsellor spoke again. “Miss McClure, I watched you thinking you were the cock of the walk. You thought we were all lazy and had never tried with these students.” I wasn’t sure if she wanted an answer, but I thought it best to remain silent. She continued in a slightly higher-pitched and progressively angrier voice, “Do you think we wanted to close the drama department? Do you think we wanted to pay for the mice instead of books? We were once exactly like you. We tried it all. Contrary to your belief, you are not the only educator here — you are just the latest one.”

  After a brief silence, my curriculum coordinator, Professor Narly, spoke. He pulled out an old-fashioned handkerchief ­embroidered with the letter N, wiped his face and drawled, “I think there is no doubt that Cathy has been somewhat unrestrained, but what she has brought in poor judgment she has made up for in exuberance. Her excitement has galvanized the students. I have never heard a reading like that rendition of ‘Richard Cory’ in my life. The scene from Of Mice and Men was a masterpiece. Having the crippled boy play the handicapped Crooks was certainly going out on a limb, but there wasn’t a peep in the house. Ladies and gentlemen, we have made our point, now may I quote a couplet that is à propos: ‘Our youth we can have but to-day, / We may always find time to grow old.’”

  The superintendent said, “It’s Friday. I believe we will have to meet Monday and make a decision as to whether Miss McClure will be returning.”

  “Fine,” I said and walked toward the door.

  “Is there any more you want to say?” the principal asked. ­Clearly he wanted me to beg for his forgiveness. Or maybe he was really on my side and wanted me to administer an abject apology to placate the superintendent. However, I wasn’t nailing myself to the cross. What’s the worst they could do? Say I couldn’t teach? Hallelujah!

  So I turned to the pedagogical posse and said, “No, I have no more to say.”

  As I walked out the door, everyone else followed since it was Friday at 5:00 and we were still at school. When we went into the hall, at least eight of the students from my class were waiting, led by Tyrone, Carlson and Maurice.

  “Gentlemen,” Tyrone said with his huge football body squarely planted in the middle of the hall, his hand held up in a stopping motion. “Miss McClure never got into that kind of … you know, the nasty stuff them girls went off spouting. Miss McClure just trying to say, ‘You think your nerves are tried, read this — then you goin’ to find you ain’t the only one ailin’.’”

  Carlson piped in with, “Hey, you teach Hitler — don’t mean you love the dude. You get my meanin’ here, men?”

  The principal listened to what they all had to say and said, “This is a very serious issue and your feedback has mattered ­greatly. This is the first time a group of students has ever come to my office on behalf of a teacher.”

  Then the superintendent, who wasn’t giving an inch, said, “I don’t believe we have ever had one in trouble.”

  “Hah,” Tex poked his small head around Tyrone’s back and started naming off all kinds of incidents that must have happened over the years. Carlson added to the list and then Maurice said, “Jus’ ’cause we don’t come tear-assin’ down to your sorry office, don’t mean there ain’t been trouble.”

  With that, the superintendent chose to shut up.

  Professor Narly was emotionally overwrought. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling and shaking the hands of each boy in the group who had come to my defence, “wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could help each other out like this on a regular basis?”

  CHAPTER 14

  a massacre

  Again, where the people are absolute rulers of the land,

  they rejoice in having a reserve of youthful citizens,

  while a king counts this a hostile element

  and seeks to slay the leading ones,

  all such as he deems discreet,

  for he feareth for his power.

  — Euripides, The Suppliants

  Sara and I and the kids made it through the long winter at Thomas Paine High School. If we had not exactly found liberty, we were a long way from
death. I had managed to get to spring without another “incident” and we only had one month left to go.

  Finally, the May heat melted the ice and even the patches of snow were gone. The top came down on the 409, and the radio blared “Groovin’.” The Cuyahoga River was again flowing, although it had caught on fire the previous year. Flames climbed as high as five storeys until fireboats brought them under control. The fire was attributed to waste dumped into the river by the waterfront industries, though no one knows if it started from spontaneous combustion or if it was a welding spark. Tyrone told me that a rival drug gang had thrown his cousin in the Cuyahoga and when the Coast Guard pulled his body out in the morning, he looked as though even he’d been dipped in lye. His hair was even straight.

  The tulips and daffodils were announcing the earth was again breathing, and the lilacs were just starting to spread their aroma across Cleveland Heights. All of this heralding of spring was happening everywhere except at the Alcazar Hotel. Nothing was in bloom there. The dead palms paid no attention to spring, refusing any form of resurrection.

  One day in early May, Sara and I dragged ourselves home from school on an incredibly hot day. Count Sandor told me that a ­woman named Baby had called me and wanted me to call her back.

  “Baby made a long distance call to me? We hardly talked when we were roommates,” I said to Sara.

  “Why the hell were you roommates for two years?”

  “I don’t know. She was assigned to my room after my first-year roommate quit school without telling me.”

  “Remember on the first day of school before you’d met her and she was playing that insane song on her tiny record player and we heard it from down the hall?”

  “Oh yeah, ‘The Ballad of the Green Berets.’ She played that song hundreds of times,” I said.

  As we waited for the groaning elevator, Sara said, “Remember her ironing board with the special weenie board for capped sleeves? She ironed a blouse every morning. Who does that?”

  “Remember when she thought a spade was a shovel?” I added and Sara started laughing.

  “Oh God, she isn’t coming here to visit, is she?”

  “She would only come here if it had to do with work and it was paid for.”

  “Man! Baby was one strange chick.”

  “Actually, we are strange and she is really normal. Robbie has been her boyfriend since she could talk.” Robbie had gone to Kent State on an ROTC scholarship to take Earth Sciences, while Baby studied primary education. She had no money, was in the co-op program and cleaned the slop off cafeteria trays night after night before going home to the good ol’ Proctorville farm, and worked again on the weekend. She was the first of her family to go to college. My father would have admired her: she came for an education, worked her ass off and got it.

  “Remember when she dragged us to watch Robbie march along in his ROTC suit? He did that little parade thing in the courtyard where he swung his gun around like he was a drum majorette in drag,” said Sara.

  “They’re called drills or manoeuvres,” I said.

  “It always amazes me what you know.”

  “It amazes me what you don’t know.”

  “Yeah, like who got you the speed that sped you to Oxford?”

  “You’re right,” I acknowledged as I opened my now-soggy ­takeout BLT.

  We settled down to grade school papers; Sara was in art so she had a lighter load than I did. I had to slog through forty essays on what Julius Caesar’s “et tu, Brute?” meant to you. The first essay was titled “A Deal Gone Bad.”

  When the long-distance rates went down at 6:00, I phoned Baby. I knew she would flip if I called earlier. Clearly this was an important call. Baby never once called her boyfriend at Kent State due to the long-distance costs. She wrote him a letter every night at exactly 10:00 p.m.

  She picked up on the first ring.

  “Baby, I heard you called. Is everything all right?”

  “No, Cathy, it isn’t.” Her perpetual cheeriness was drained. “One of Robbie and my best childhood friends was killed today. He was in ROTC with Robbie.”

  “Was it an accident?”

  “No. Well, actually, I don’t know. The Ohio National Guard at Kent State shot him. He was just cutting through the campus to the ROTC building.”

  “What happened?”

  “I have no idea. It was some kind of protest gone wrong.” She began to sob. She cried so hard I couldn’t understand her.

  Sara yelled, “What the hell happened?”

  I covered the phone and said, “Shut up,” to Sara, then, “Baby, I’m so sorry. What can I do for you?” It all sounded so strange.

  “Cathy, would you please go to a memorial for him either at Kent State or in Cleveland? I’m stuck teaching here in Proctorville and I can’t afford the money or time to get all the way up there.”

  “Baby, I’m teaching as well and can’t miss school. But I’ll go downtown right away. I’ll call Case Western Reserve and the other schools and see what they have organized. If nothing is in the works, I’ll do my best to get something happening.”

  “Would you carry a candle?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll send you a picture of Sara and me at a ­memorial if there is one.”

  “Well, this is long distance so I had better go. I knew I could count on you. Bye.”

  I looked at my watch. It was two minutes until the CBS news. I walked over to turn on the TV and told Sara what had happened, when Merlyn stormed in, saying, “Did you hear about the slayings? It’s all over the ham radio.”

  “Everyone quiet,” I yelled. The news began with Walter Cronkite looking right at the three of us as he announced, “Today the Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine others on the Kent State University Campus. The students were protesting the march into Cambodia, and the National Guard opened fire. We have an unconfirmed report that an ROTC student was a bystander going to class and was gunned down as well.”

  Sara said, “That must be Robbie’s friend.”

  After the camera panned across students lying dead on the sidewalk, Walter Cronkite shook his head and said, “Well, that’s the way it is on May 4, 1970. Good night.”

  “That’s the way it is?” Sara said, staring at the TV in shock.

  I said, “It’s like not being in America.”

  Hay called to say he couldn’t come over because every policeman in Cleveland was put on alert due to the Kent State “situation.”

  “Situation? Situation my ass!” Sara yelled.

  Merlyn said, “That was way more than a situation. At first they thought it was a student sniper but then they found out it was the National Guard, although they haven’t admitted it. Ballistics tests will nail them. I also heard on the ham that ROTC guy was shot in the back.”

  “The irony is I’d place a high wager that Robbie and his buddy were probably the most patriotic, America-love-it-or-leave-it types on the Kent State campus,” I said.

  “Well, Robbie’s buddy loved it and left it today,” Sara said, shaking her head in disgust.

  I explained to Merlyn that Sara and I had to get over to the Case Western campus and help organize a memorial protest for Kent State. “Baby can’t make it and she needs us to represent her.”

  Sara and I began bustling around the room packing our cigarettes, when Merlyn asked, “Mind if I come along?”

  “Merlyn, there’s a lot of shit going down here and we can’t play your I’m-not-really-blind game,” I said.

  “Blind? What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “We’ve had a shock and we can’t deal with your meshugas. We know you’re blind and we aren’t pretending anymore. So come along, but get your white cane and take care of yourself,” Sara added as we walked to the elevator.

  “I’m not blind,” he said.

  “Save
it, Merlyn. We saw you at the grocery store tapping a white cane from side to side. Was that a Fred Astaire number, or are you blind?”

  The elevator door closed and we left him in the hall. Sara ­added, “Christ, I’ve had enough of ignoring the obvious.”

  As we were pulling out of the parking lot, Merlyn appeared with his cane at the exit. He hopped in and we sped away.

  I remember the night of the memorial well because I described all the people and the action to Merlyn. Thousands of people lined the Cleveland streets and marched silently in the dark, holding their candles. This was unlike other protests I’d attended for two reasons. First, not all the protesters were students. Many were not even countercultural types at all. Some were local citizens. I saw the owner of the deli down the road, and the clerk from the hardware store where Sara bought her roach clip. Second, this was not a protest but a memorial march. There was no talk — only silence, shock and sadness. As we walked along, Sara and many others had tears in their eyes. She turned to me and said, “I mean, this is so crazy. Isn’t silent America getting ready to talk?”

  Being less than six degrees to one of the slain was all too much. These were deaths on our own soil. I was so relieved my father wouldn’t know what happened. It would have hurt him to know that America had sunk this low. I thought I knew what America was and what it wasn’t, but suddenly I felt as though I’d been duped. Where were we living? On that walk, I realized how much I loved America. I felt as though I’d had a relative who’d committed treason. How could this have happened to someone I thought I knew so well?

  At Thomas Paine the next day, no one mentioned the shootings, and there was no buzz in the school whatsoever. I began to talk about it with the kids in my class. However, they were unmoved. The four wannabe Black Panthers in the back of the room said that now that a few white kids got killed, people were shocked and saying something is wrong in America. One said, “You know how many people got killed in the Hough riots? You ain’t hearda none a them and it ain’t four — it four hundred.” The rest of the class agreed, saying the only difference is that this happened to white people.