My Kindergarten Best Friend
The Obituary
A few minutes ago, I came across an online obituary belonging to my first, best friend. She died in October 2023 from throat cancer. I hadn’t thought about her since fondly recalling our relationship in my memoir. As I write this, the afternoon has become dark and thunder is rolling in the valley. Soon tears will be falling from the sky
Debby and I were best friends from the first day of Kindergarten through approximately fifth grade. We reconnected briefly when we were 24 years of age. I was married. She was divorced. We were living in different worlds.
Following is an excerpt from my memoir (thus far unpublished, am querying agents). Her name, both here and in the manuscript, has been changed to respect her privacy.
Chapter 8, “The Playground,” Bruised Doll: Living with Body Dysmorphic Disorder
“The Number 41 school bus was overflowing with rowdy girls and boys closer to my size. No one even noticed me with all the commotion. The smell of grease wafted from the diner on the corner and mixed with the lead-laden exhaust from cars.
When I stepped off the bus at St. Joseph's, a pulsing mob occupied what had been a quiet and empty parking lot the previous week. Now, it was a playground writhing with screaming, jumping, and colliding bodies.
Holy moly! I had never seen such a scene in my life.
I took my sweet time moseying up the driveway as other kids ran past me on my left and right. Bouncing balls and twirling jump ropes were everywhere. Boys and girls of all shapes and sizes ran out of control in complete chaos. The noise was ear-piercing. I decided immediately that there was no way I was going to risk walking into the midst of this buzzing swarm.
I approached the playground’s cobblestone border because it reminded me of the stone walls that crisscrossed our farm. That day—and every day of kindergarten—I spent my time before school and during recess with eyes downcast. I placed one foot in front of the other as I maneuvered carefully in a Zen-like trance along the top of the cobblestone border.
I was no more than six inches above the ground on my playground path. Still, I held my arms outstretched in one of my favorite fantasy poses—circus tightrope walker on a high wire. The tightrope walker was easier than my ballerina fantasy because it looked like I was innocently trying to balance on the cobbles. I saved my ballerina twirling for the dark upstairs hall at home when no one was around to watch me fall. And here, on the cobblestone border, I met the girl who was to become my first friend and confidante. Like me, she had medium brown hair, and like me, she didn't have much to say. She wore sturdy brown shoes and a dress similar to mine—not too fancy, not too plain.
I don't know who spoke first, but Debby would help me survive the next few years.
“Do you live in town?” she asked.
“No. I live on a farm across the river. It's far from here,” I said.
“I don't live in town either. We live on the lake,” Debby said. “Webster Lake.”
At supper that night, I told Mummy and Daddy about my new friend Debby and Webster Lake.
“Its real name is “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchoggagoggchabunagunggamaug,” said
Daddy. “Most people call it Webster Lake, but it's a Nipmuc Indian name that means
‘You fish on your side, we fish on our side, and nobody fishes in the middle.’”
Debby must have also recognized a kindred spirit in me. We began to seek each other out in the mornings to share our practice of walking the cobblestones together. I was too timid to join in a game of dodgeball or tag with our noisy classmates. I felt overwhelmingly clumsy and self-conscious. There was that feeling again. If I tried to play dodgeball, I knew I'd be the first one out. If I tried to jump rope, I knew the rope would get tangled around my ankles, and I'd fall over like a fool. I might even rip my dress.
Because Debby was as hesitant as I was, I sensed there weren't many kids where she lived, and I wondered… Was she lonely like me? And did Debby ever feel so sad after school that she lay on her bed and cried until suppertime—the way I did?
Even if I had dared to ask her, I wouldn't have received a response because suddenly, we heard the clanging metallic sound of a school bell.
A person who looked like a taller version of Friar Tuck from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” TV show stood on the school's concrete steps with a giant brass bell. Other people, dressed the same, streamed out through the school's front door. Mummy hadn't mentioned anything about these people or who they were. Debby and I later learned they were nuns, and these were their uniforms. I heard other kids address them as “Sister”—not that I would ever speak aloud to an adult—voluntarily, anyway—until third grade.
I could tell from their voices that these “sisters” were ladies. They belted their robes with a long, knotted length of rope like the one Dziadzia used to lead his bull to the barn. The sisters wore black stockings and black leather shoes with thick heels and perforated toes—shoes I thought of as old lady shoes, like Babci’s and Mrs. Thompson’s. A necklace of blueberry-sized wooden beads, accented with a plain wooden cross, hung around each of their necks.
The sister with the heavy bell needed two hands to swing it high. Its weight nearly reeled her off balance. After a few rings, she seized the clapper inside to silence it. We learned that when the bell stopped ringing, it was our signal to freeze silently where we were. I took advantage of this pause in time to clandestinely examine my peers.
Who were these kids anyway? I would soon get to know them well, or at least as well as a kid could, by observing what went on in a classroom where rules would be enforced with the whack of a wooden pointer on one's bottom.
“At least it isn't an army belt,” I thought.
A minute later, the sister on the steps rang the bell again. At this signal, I saw the crowds of children breaking apart into neat rows. Mummy had been told to write my name and grade on a note and pin it to my dress. All the other kids wore similar messages to make it easy to sort and cull us in the roundup.
“Kindergarten!” I heard someone call out.
Kids and their mothers began to gather around one of the nuns. I knew enough to go over there. But why wasn't my mother here?
The nun checked our name tags. She separated the girls from the boys, assembling us in segregated rows by twos. With another bell ring, we all marched inside, grade by grade. We were obedient troops flowing silently up the granite stairs and into the yawning mouth of the school's entryway, like the witch's guards marching into the castle in The Wizard of Oz.
"Oh-Ee-Yah… Ee-oh-Ah…"