The Invasion

          No European nation could have bested our rural Illinois town. We had a loyal citizenry, our own vernacular, a representative cuisine, remnants of family dynasties and even some unique tourist sites. We were better off than much of the world, and there was rarely outside interference. Our borders were secure.

           So when the French invaded, we were naturally alarmed.

           Some say that the most tragic year for the English was 1066, when the Normans crossed the channel and completely wrecked the language. We were no philologists, but we too would have fought hard at Hastings.
          Freshman year. French I. A small but resilient band. The teacher was an outsider, new to the school, and though we didn't dislike her (quite) it was hard to keep a straight face when she introduced herself as Miss Diggle.
          Oh rare Miss Diggle! Orange hair as big as a continent, parchment-pale skin, searing red lipstick, soft, sly voice. Her teaching method was calm, quiet, almost hypnotic, but all the while she was preparing a siege. She would take us captive and immerse us in French.
          Day One. Do not open your textbooks. Listen. Listen again.
          “Papa, mangeons dans un restaurant ce soir. Oui Papa, dinons en ville. Excellente idee, mais demandez a Maman d'abord.”

           Now repeat, line by line.

           That was when heads began to roll.

           We said,“Papa, mowgee doo resteroo sissy. Wee paba deeno veal. Egg-sale day may day dom dibbo.”

           After a few rounds of this, Miss Diggle told us what we were butchering. Apparently, two children in France wanted to go to a restaurant. Their father liked the idea, but they had to ask Mom first.

           We howled. Why didn't they just say so? 'Mowgee' and 'deeno' for eat? What kind of family was this? 'Wee' for yes? That kind of thing could get you in trouble. A 'resteroo sissy'? Hardly an excellent idea. They ought to stay home. Let them eat toast.

           Miss Diggle was unfazed. She went on to teach us about French culture. Over there, people spoke through their noses. They ate goose livers. They took their dogs to all the restaurants. Women carried loaves of bread under their armpits, which they never shaved. And there was always a revolution going on--probably because the masses couldn't pronounce anything.

           We learned that life was very hard in France. They had something called the Imperfect (no surprise there) and a lot of confusion about masculine and feminine. But what did it matter? Le, la, it's still only a table. Cats aren't always male. And just because it's covered in sweat, bread isn't necessarily boy-like. Losing points on quizzes only increased our prejudice against the French.

           None of this was really Miss Diggle's fault. She had many strengths. In addition to her bold lipstick and her ability to keep a straight face, she had convinced the upperclassmen that they were now fluent. One day a senior girl stopped me in the hall to express, in raptures, how lucky I was to be starting French. She had loved it; it would forever be her favorite language; it was branded in her soul. As proof, she casually rattled off Lesson One:

           “Papa, monjo noon restawraw sisswa...Weeee...Ay-zay-lone eeday....”

           Well I say, Berets off to Miss Diggle. We remember her with delight. In fact, I googled her surname just now, and as I suspected, there is great dignity in it. We would have paid more respect, I think, if we had only known that Diggle “derives from a geographical locality, from the village of Diggle, once a farmstead, scarcely a hamlet, on the Yorkshire border.”

           I don't know exactly where that small town was, but I bet they, too, fended off the Normans before letting themselves be conquered. History does repeat itself.

The Mask

         There was a house in our town that had no green lawn, no trees and a single cracked step at the door. Really a cement square more than a house. According to my imagination—I never was inside—it had only one room, occupied by a family of fifteen children. I imagined that they all slept side by side on a hard floor, like sorted lumber.

           The reason I believed in the existence of fifteen children was this: there seemed to be one in every grade. Except for height, they were exact replicas of each other: brown hair, scattered freckles, short and slim, a bit smelly, and uncannily quiet. J. was in our class. He was not a bad kid, but had absolutely no self-assertion. I was on the other end of the social spectrum: smartest in the class and teacher's pet. The reader will forgive this claim; it is not a boast. I abused my status terribly.

          One contribution to popularity was the Halloween costume. It was especially impressive if sewn by your mother instead of store-bought. Halloween was an amazing day at school, all silliness and distraction and pretending not to be recognized. Typically the costume fit the personality, especially the villainous or goofy ones.

          If you wished for complete anonymity, you kept your mask on at recess. I can feel one today. You endured the sharp edge of cheap plastic cutting into your ears; the eye-hole was never big enough; you had to keep tilting your head to see out. The thing always needed adjustment, because the elastic was slick as a dandelion stem and kept slipping. You had to hold it by its chin when you turned your head. Your face got sweaty and your wig (necessary for hiding the other four-fifths of your head) was itchy. Inevitably the mask would be cracked by the end of the day. What a relief it was when the cupcakes were brought out! You pushed the mask—finally!--up to the top of your head so that you could eat.
          On Halloween in second grade there was great alarm and a lot of whispering: J. didn't have a costume. Not even a mask. He was that poor. What would he do at the party? Maybe he ought to go home. But while we were on the playground, the teacher detained him in the room. When we filed back in, J. was at his desk wearing a mask. Dear, kind Mrs. L. apparently kept a box of spare masks in her closet for poor children and had helped J. to choose one.

          It was a pathetic sight: the still boy alone in the center of the room, facing the blackboard. We saw his hair, his pale skin, the curved edge of the mask he had chosen. It was—this is painful to tell—a cartoon character called Porky Pig. That bright pink face was the whole of his poor disguise. He didn't move, didn't acknowledge us, just sat with unwavering stoicism while we pretended we didn't know who he was.

           Things must have improved for J., because the next year he had a full costume and had also signed up, along with two other students, to bring the party cupcakes. I was surprised that he even had a mother, let alone that she would bake.

          Jeff's cupcakes were very beautiful, heaped with colored frosting. But popularity brings power and every year more cruelty, and I spread a rumor that we shouldn't eat them. They might have cooties; let's only eat Mrs B's and Mrs D's. Because I did this, my ongoing punishment is an image of J. leaving school with a full tray in his arms, silent as the Pieta.

          Elementary school is an inevitable spectrum of achievement, and I was a “high level” reader. I deliberately chose the thickest books. My especial pride was choosing one that, in a decade, no one else had endeavored to read. It was some nautical adventure, with "Courage" in the title. I didn't especially enjoy it, but my name was now immortalized inside the cover on a pasted card, which was what I was really aiming for.

          The books I genuinely loved--blessed be our teacher for having them!--were the Oz books. The Wizard of Oz we all knew, of course, from television. But here was Ozma of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Rinkitink of Oz, wonderful thrilling escapes that saturated the mind with strange new color and imagery. And when the teacher took us on a field trip to the library, what did the librarian tell me? That there were twelve more! A whole series on the shelf, just around the corner, second aisle.

           But another explorer had already landed there. Crouched on the rug with Book Five in his hands, was J. He did not see me--my hesitation, my soured hopes, my fear of association. He was far into the splendid world, one he had discovered before me.

           I didn't read any more Oz books after that, and my life is the poorer.

           Fifteen years later I took my beautiful little daughter to a testing center to have her assessed for academic readiness. It was just out of curiosity, really. She was only five, extraordinarily bright, already reading under my own tutelage. The woman who tested her said she was certainly more than ready for kindergarten.

           When we came out of that office, there was a young father with a little boy tucked in close at his side. I knew by the face of his son that this was J. We said a surprised hello. J. was still quiet but not shy, neatly dressed, handsome really, a gentle-seeming parent, and when I asked he told me that his son had just finished the tests and scored very high. He used the word “exceptional” without the barest hint of a boast or a mask of false modesty.

           I'm very glad that I saw J. that day. His son would be twenty-seven now. I hope with all my heart that he is well and content and still the pride of his father, enduring with equal fortitude the sharp edge of brittle things.