Chapter 20: The Canteen

The school year progressed into the fall with Cookie attending her daily classes and trying to learn as much as she could from the hand of odd teachers that she was dealt.

As tough as her studies were, she had to take extra caution between classes as other students delighted in slamming her locker door shut on her, blocking her way in the corridors or knocking her books from her grasp and kicking them down the hallways as she scurried in futility to collect them.

"No running!" a teacher would yell at her and the other students would laugh at her plight.

After one such chase, Cookie recovered her scuffed math book from where it had come to a stop at the far end of the hall. However the time it took to chase it down resulted in her arrival, at her math class, a full forty-five seconds after the bell had rung.

"Miss Mullins," Mr. Fay bellowed as Cookie, in her blue cardigan sweater and white pleated skirt, tried to slip unnoticed to her desk, "aren't we just a tad late?"

Cookie, hugging her book to her chest, looked back at him and stated, "I'm sorry, sir, but the kids in the hall..."

"Don't try and blame your tardiness on others, Miss Mullins. Come up here before the class."

And Cookie set her book on her desk and walked up to the spot that Mr. Fay had indicated to, right next to his desk.

A grinning Mr. Fay walked over and gently placed his hands on Cookie's shoulders and then turned her to face her fellow students. Then told her, "Get down on your knees, Miss Mullins." Which reluctantly, and with all eyes watching her, she did.

"Now," he said, as he stood behind her and placed a large, open hand on top of her straw-blonde head, "hold your arms out to your sides and place your hands, palms up."

Cookie did as instructed while Mr. Fay reached to his desk and picked up two hefty math books and then rested one on each of her open hands. "There," he told her, "just hold that pose and keep those books up until I tell you to stop."

Mr. Fay went about leaning at the front of his desk and talking to his class about fractions while Cookie knelt there and felt the pain slowly begin to ache its way through her outstretched arms as she struggled to keep both the books cradled on her hands. This went on for fifteen long minutes until it became a living agony for her. Mr. Fay noticed the little, plaintive sounds she was emitting and the grimace of pain on Cookie's reddened face and how her arms were starting to droop slightly from the strain.

"Up!" he yelled at her now. "Hold the books up, I told you!"

And Cookie struggled anew to keep both books on her hands and her arms straight outward.

Seeing as how she could accomplish this, Mr. Fay walked to the front row of desks and, still lecturing the class, picked up two more math books and walked over to behind Cookie where he placed one atop the book out to her left and the other on top of the book out to her right.

The added weight caused searing pains to go through the deltoid and bicep muscles of both her thin, outstretched arms and, try as she might not to, Cookie grimaced even harder in pain and her eyes began to tear up and (as much as she fought against it) she began to cry before everyone in the class, calling out, "Please, Mr. Fay!"

"Please, Miss Mullins?" he inquired, a look of satisfaction growing on his grinning face. "Please what?"

"Please sir, may ... May I lower my arms now?"

Mr. Fay, and the other students, just watched her strain and wobble and cry, the red in her face becoming almost purple before he finally said, "Yes, Miss Mullins. Put the books down and go to your seat."

On hearing his words, Cookie just collapsed backward, like a house of cards, hitting her shoulders and the back of her head hard on the vinyl tile floor. She lay, for a few awkward moments, in a pile of aching arms, exposed, askew legs and open books, before she could gather enough presence to cross her thighs, tug the hem of her skirt down and get to her feet. Wiping the tears of both pain and humiliation from her face, she heard the snickers and saw the smirks, on the faces of all of her classmates, as she walked slowly to her desk and sat herself heavily down.

Ricky Lowman, who sat at the desk to her left, leaned over and whispered, "I like your pink panties, Cookie."

At which point she folded her arms on the desktop, buried her face within their shelter and noticeably shook as she wretchedly cried.

Despite the daily terrors of Mr. Fay's class, Mr. Boswell's second-hour History was becoming the one subject that Cookie enjoyed the least. It wasn't that he was physically or emotionally hurting her, like Mr. Fay. It was a much odder situation than that.

One late-October Thursday, Cookie was at her desk and working on an essay about Michigan. It was for a competition, for Junior High students across the state, sponsored by Governor Romney and the legislature. The grand prize offered was the governor himself coming to the school of the winning student to present a certificate toward a scholarship to Michigan State University. Wanting to do well, she had researched her subject matter and had written down a great deal of facts about the Great Lakes and shipping and the Potawatomi and Chippewa natives and Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and the early French settlers of Fort Ponchartrain and Detroit and the beauty of Mackinac Island and the Tahquamenon and General Custer's hometown of Monroe and the northern lumberjacks and Paul Bunyan and the furniture industry in Grand Rapids and Kellogg's and Post of Battle Creek and the giant auto industry in Detroit and Flint. She had all of her facts down and was trying to write it out in as literate and poetic a way as she possibly could when Mr. Boswell stopped by her desk and picked her paper up and started to read it.

"You're submitting an entry in the essay contest?" he enquired, looking down at her.

"Yes, sir. I was just trying to transfer my notes into some kind of order."

Mr. Boswell took the paper to his desk and continued to read what she had written until he looked back at her and said, "I could help you with this, Cookie. If you'd like."

Cookie smiled widely at him. "Yes, Mr. Boswell. That would be so nice of you."

Mr. Boswell waved her up to his desk and Cookie, wearing her turquoise dress with the back-tie sash, brought her notes and stood beside him as he pulled his swivel chair out a little, turned his left leg toward her, patted his knee and said, "Sit down here, Cookie, and let's go over what you have written."

Something about this didn't seem quite right to her and Cookie smiled uneasily and said, "I can just stand here, sir."

"No," he said, patting his knee again, "sit down right here with me."

Cookie looked around the room nervously and saw that only a couple of students were looking up from their history books in their direction.

"I'd rather not, sir."

"Sit!" he demanded adamantly and Cookie hesitantly sat down across his knee and he swiveled them both toward his desk.

"Look right here," he said, directing his finger toward a line that she had written on the paper. "You write in this sentence that Sassaba was the Chief of the Chippewa Indians when Louis Cass visited Sault Ste Marie in 1820. But wasn't Hiawatha their Chief?"

"Oh, no sir," Cookie replied, looking down at her paper and notes with him. "Hiawatha was just a fictional character in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The real Chief of the Lake Superior area Chippewas was Sassaba, though it was from the same era that Longfellow was writing about."