When I was in first grade, we moved in the middle of the year from Illinois to Indiana. My dad’s drunken antics had finally offended the manager of the battery plant where he worked. So it was, once again, time for us to relocate so that he would have a new batch of bosses to offend. I was just getting used to our South Chicago Heights neighborhood and was sorry to leave our neighborhood and my beloved first-grade teacher, Miss Sweetie—her real name. But though only six, I had learned that our sudden moves were inevitable and that no negotiation on my part would matter. It was set, I was to be in Mrs. Rooney’s first-grade class at Franklin Elementary in Vincennes, Indiana.
Mrs. Rooney was absent the first day I arrived and an angelic teacher, named Miss Kindly—also her real name– was the sub. Miss Kindly wore a tidy knit sweater set the color of vanilla whipped cream with a matching wool pencil skirt and pumps. Her honey hair was fashioned in a flawless flip, the bangs separated from the rest with a single strip of chocolate colored grosgrain ribbon. From her slim wrist dangled a charm bracelet bejeweled with miniature icons of what I assumed to be the wonderful places she’d been: The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Seattle’s Space Needle. I instantly envisioned myself visiting all of those places, wearing a cream-colored sweater set.
It’s hard to factor all of the contributing factors, but with all of the anxiety of changing schools, moving, and what turned out to be the flu, my first day in an unfamiliar school, with a substitute teacher proved to be a learning moment. I did so want to make a good impression as a good student, a nice girl. But as the morning recess approached, I could feel waves of heat rising in my body. I didn’t want to–couldn’t have said anything, so I sat as the room began to swirl.
Noticing that I wasn’t looking well, Miss Kindly asked me to stay in at recess. She pressed cool fingers to my forehead while the gentle tinkling of her bracelet calmed me like wind chimes in a cool breeze. I felt an instant sense of relief…just because she was so–well, kindly. In a very instantaneous and unexpected turn, despite every intention to the contrary, I experienced that rare sudden and explosive type of projectile vomiting best portrayed by Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Onto Miss Kindly’s cream-colored sweater dress and matching pumps I managed to spew everything I’d consumed before and after I had crossed the Indiana state line. I was mortified. She–a great actress and a true saint–showed only a flicker of disgust before her face again wore the beatific expression of concern. She grabbed tissues in wads from the box on Mrs. Rooney’s desk, and when they ran out, a stack of scratchy brown paper towels from the dispenser. She mopped me up first; a true act of heroism, then rubbed only most three-dimensional material from her clothes, leaving a stain the shape, color, and smell of which remains emblazed in my memory to this day. She actually had the map of Africa unmistakably displayed on her midriff. Miss Kindly then actually carried me to the nurse’s office where I waited for my mother to pick me up. Between my sobs, Miss Kindly kissed my forehead and said, “Don’t worry honey. These things happen to everybody.”
I don’t know what happened after I left. I assume Miss Kindly had to go get changed and the janitor had to come and sprinkle that mint-scented absorbent sand over the mess I’d made so that the room could be made habitable again. When I was next back in class, Mrs. Rooney was there. Neither Mrs. Rooney nor any of the children ever said a thing about the incident. The mortification was only my private experience. Mine and Miss Kindly’s. I saw Miss Kindly many times over the next few years as she subbed in various classrooms —until my father’s drinking bought us passport to California. She always smiled sweetly at me. I never saw her wear that cream-colored dress or those pumps again though.
Miss Kindly remains in my mind the ultimate role model for gentleness and decency. I only hope that I have risen and will rise again to her level of “kindliness” when someone else’s most unfortunate moment of humiliation is within my purview to lessen.