Down the Alphabet

Drawing by Marie Schmidt

Down the Alphabet

Toti O’Brien

        The efforts my father poured into teaching one of my siblings how to write went down in history. Dad never tired of bragging about it, though his tale didn’t particularly flatter my brother. He loved the child, obviously. He favored him, indeed. He didn’t make fun of him out of any kind of hostility. Maybe he was unaware of potentially hurting his feelings—unable to resist what he deemed a good joke—or he meant to stimulate the boy’s pride by public, incessant nagging. His strategy might have been more efficient than it seemed at first sight. During childhood and teenage years my brother showed no inclination towards school, study, culture, or literature. Yet, he later became a fine intellectual. Dad might have hammered those seeds of erudition very, very deep.
        Dad described how he tried to lead my brother from mere spelling, one letter at a time, to forming phonemes, syllables, words, and how much the boy resisted the process. What amazes me isn’t my sibling’s supposed slowness (Dad’s request was most likely age-inappropriate). What indeed stupefies me is Dad’s dedication. He sure didn’t give me the same kind of attention. Mom didn’t either. Their negligence—should I call it so?—was perfectly normal since I was child number one, the experiment.
        I learned how to write, sort of, thanks to an uncle on Mom’s side, a quite young, charming man. I adored him, though I believed him fairly incompetent about children’s tastes and needs. The inadequacy of his gifts was blatant. I first noticed it when he gave me a set of letters and numbers, little clear plastic squares in a box, with no explanation. Was it a toy? I was a month shy of turning four. What was I supposed to do with those things? “Learn how to write,” Mother said. I remember no one giving instructions, just me crawling on the floor, disposing those small bits into sequences somehow and slowly starting to make sense.
        How possibly? I have no recollection of my mental processes, though some must have been at play. I remember intense, strenuous muscular effort, and exhilaration due to presumed success. Later I remember adults towering above me, correcting the words I formed. Momy. “It takes two m’s,” they’d say, softly giggling. I had just drawn two m’s from the checkered satchel, red and white, Grandma had given me to replace the discarded box. Those bags filled the kitchen cupboards, holding pasta, rice, lentils, and beans. Mine held letters and numbers, another yet non-incomparable kind of ingredient. Dady, I wrote. Again someone laughed. “It takes two d’s,” they bragged in that peculiar adult tone, puffy, imbued with divinity. Two d’s was what I had pulled out! I eventually understood they meant three, a flash of revelation to which I often return. I guess life’s nuts and bolts were all summarized in that literal and numeral discrepancy.
        Thus aligning small squares in a constant flow, leading from the kitchen to wherever I’d find myself, I learned how to write, I believed. I was sobered up on my first day of school, at the age of four and a half. My parents made me skip kindergarten. When I grew up such irregularities were common. I was sent directly to first grade, with the six-year-olds. On day one, when the teacher started mentioning vowels, I raised my hand with a smile. I remember my enthusiasm on realizing I knew what she was talking about. All anxiety about the new, strange environment briskly melted away.
        I was called to the blackboard. I began writing, absorbed, enchanted, unselfconscious, until the teacher’s laughter brought me back to reality. I had traced a huge snake of characters, relentlessly twirling around like a long, curvy river. I hadn’t split words from each other because I didn’t know I should have. When you talk you don’t, unless you take a breath. The teacher thought my ignorance hysterical. Laughter had put tears in her eyes, I noticed, when she curtly sent me back to my seat, afraid of setting a bad example. Or wanting to state auto didacticism wasn’t recommended when it came to formal education. Do-it-yourself kinds of approaches would produce idiosyncratic, ridiculous aberrations.
        Did I grasp this scenario at four and a half? Absolutely. Not in the above formulation, but as a condensed yet thorough intuition. Still smiling, without feeling (or showing) offense, I resumed my place. “Shut your mouth,” I said to myself, “and do exactly what everyone else does, no matter what you think or know.” I still live by that principle. I was happy to trace vowels and consonants on my neatly lined, pretty notebooks for the following months.
 
        Happy yet not comfortable, as I soon developed a problem with the right margin, which I kept trespassing in spite of verbal and written reminders. For some reason I wasn’t able to pull my metaphorical brakes, and the finish line always came to interrupt an impetuous vowel, irresistibly swelling, reclaiming its curves and tails that I couldn’t simply cut off because of a mere stop sign. My sentences systematically went overboard. They spilled ever so slightly, yet enough to drive my teacher nuts.
        Grades were double by then, split by a dash, like a fraction. One evaluated the contents of the homework, the other its form. Usually my contents were fine. My form wasn’t. Therefore my scores fell in spite of my efforts. In some unarticulated zone of my brain—my soul, probably—I must have perceived unfairness, must have questioned the relative worth of a solved arithmetical problem, of an accurate summary or thoughtful composition, and the shape it took on the page. I wasn’t entirely sure a little twirling, some zigzagging here and there, should weigh so very heavily on my reputation. My low grades resulting from calligraphic intemperance sounded a bit harsh, a bit punitive.
        A day came when I couldn’t help answering a note my teacher had penned, in red, at the bottom of my most recent homework. “Why don’t you ever stop at the line?” Without hesitation—in a fun, friendly, jocular mood—I penciled down, “Why don’t you give me more than seven, for once?” All my classmates lined up nines, tens, and tens with mention. I was sent to the principal on the spot. I remember proceeding alone towards the dark office, where you’d never set foot unless in case of great trouble. I don’t recall being scared, but confused, bewildered, astonished, and flabbergasted.
        While I sat in front of the authority, I slowly relaxed. She was not mean to me. She might have realized I had intended no harm. No revolt either. She must have guessed I was a case of uncouth, wild innocence. She tried to explain it was ok for the teacher to write notes, but not for me to respond. My written reply had been highly disrespectful. I had treated my instructor as if she had been my peer, which of course she wasn’t. I recall my brains struggling with something that made no sense at all, the whole concept of hierarchy being out of my grasp. I was smart enough to understand I shouldn’t display my naiveté. I should apologize, acquiesce, and be adorable. My handwriting, alas, didn’t become any tidier. Therefore my grades remained mediocre.
 
        Until fourth grade came and our notebooks evolved. There were no more margins. Halleluiah. Now I could pour my contents onto the page, unworried and unfettered. My essays were quite good, I’m not sure how. Usually we had a choice among two or three topics. Some of them were linked to a lesson just learned, history, geography, or science. One was freer, of the kind that in later years and higher grades would be called “critical thinking” or else “creative writing,” meaning it would allow me to spin something out of my mind even if I hadn’t studied it at all.
        I threw myself at those looser subjects like a drowning man at a raft. Being invariably unprepared on the academic front, I could think and put my thoughts on paper if needed, as I could use my imagination to weave credible narratives. How had I managed those skills? As an avid reader, I guess. And a tireless, eager, enchanted listener to whatever someone else had to say. To write an essay, either in class or at home, was more fun than trouble. Still I remember a time when I felt dry, frustrated, and incapable of lining up two sentences—the only case of writer’s block I can think of in my entire life.
        I told Mother. At that age—eight years old?—I was crazy about her. She was perfect in my eyes, a goddess, a saint, the Holy Virgin, and of course my greatest love. Furthermore, she was never there. The main editor of a technical publishing firm, she was busy from Monday morning until Saturday night. On Sundays she brought home mounds of pages to copyright, or she was on the phone talking to authors, typists, and typographers. To use a banal formula, she was married to her job. And what a marriage!
        The afternoon when I dared asking for help, she magically found the time to listen, smile, and jot down a line-up I could follow in order to develop my subject. I was in heaven. I wrote what she suggested in a state of teary devotion. I remember the topic was “spring”. Why did it seem so forbidding? I recall, and will never forget, she suggested I’d describe small leaves, tender and shy. Therefore my souvenir was soaked in a throbbing shade of lime green.
        Now that margins were no more there to trip me, my grades had climbed to nines, tens, and tens with mention. This time I got a seven. Thus the seasonal meditation Mom and I had jointly produced, alas, didn’t score well. I’m not sure I told her. I never reported about school. She didn’t have time for such trivia. I had to be self-sufficient. I was. But I do remember how badly I was hurt, almost physically. As if the low grade, just above passing level, hadn’t soiled me but the sacred, shiny, radiant icon of Mother. The affront was unbearable. Of course, I never thought it was her fault, and it wasn’t. I had the clear intuition—though I couldn’t have formulated it—of what had not worked, which was the mechanized, rational, logical approach we had applied.
        Mother thinks about what it makes sense to say about spring. I meticulously write it down. Well, it isn’t enough for good writing. Something else is needed. Maybe a bit of disorder, after all. An imperfect logic. A slight lack of discipline. Sounds like writing can’t be monitored, supervised, or negotiated in pairs. Style is definitely a solely enterprise. Oh, I couldn’t have expressed this whole manifesto in full sentences. But I knew, I perfectly did. No more writer’s block then. No more editors. Mother, Mother. Forgive me.
 
        When, a couple of years earlier, I had been forwarded to the principal after answering to my teacher’s comment, then forgiven on behalf of my ingenuousness, my parents had been alerted. I have a vague recollection of them meeting my teacher, or even the principal. I remember Mother excusing me—perhaps blaming me—by means of an old idiom. “This girl,” she said with a frown, “would shake hands with the Pope if she met him.” Prophetic words.
        Before finishing elementary school I had two major literary achievements. They were glorious, only stained by the fact nothing followed such pristine premises. The first one was an essay I wrote in the class of religion. I have no idea of the topic and no memory of what I produced. But the teacher sent my paper somewhere and it won a contest. Thus I found myself dressed up and slick-combed in a sumptuous hall of the Vatican, lined up with half a dozen of young kids just as petrified as I was. Soon the Pope would come down the line, personally delivering the prize each of us had deserved.
        I can’t summon a single thought, feeling, or emotion related to that moment, besides the stony sensation I mentioned. A stilling, a suspension. I have a memory of colors. White, off-white, yellow, gold, especially gold. Intimidatingly shiny, too majestic yet simultaneously dull in their quasi-monochrome, their bland gravity. I remember the Pope handing me a tight roll fastened by a satin ribbon. I hadn’t seen such thing unless in picture books or on TV. Was it parchment? Papyrus? Something ancient and pompous, also kind of useless, I felt. Kind of empty, a tube.
        After all, the Pope didn’t seem scary. Rather gentle and harmless, a bit like the principal. It was surely my first meeting with celebrity. Look at that. I brought the tube home, duly storing it with a few other memorabilia. I’m not sure I opened it. Once I had shelved my trophy—filed for archival purposes—I might have felt happy, possibly proud. Still, I would have forgotten the whole episode, I swear, if not for the awareness of having pleased my folks. A sharp, haunting feeling.
        I had sensed their joy, which was—strange to say—not properly joyful. Not a funny hat, ball gown, gigantic ice cream, flag, or glass of champagne, all things the word joy usually brings to mind. No. Their happiness at my success was of an unfamiliar kind. Fragile, vulnerable, it filled an emptiness, a small hole I hadn’t noticed before. It spread balm on a bruise, soothed a scratch, maybe comforted a weakness. Well, I couldn’t have put it this way. I just sensed they gulped that satisfaction I brought, out of deep hunger. They devoured it. I was glad. I was scared.
        My second success was a letter I sent to a local paper, and that was published. I had been fascinated by what a philanthropic society had done for my town. Its members had volunteered a large sum to protect an old monument that pollution was eating away. Many times, on my way to school, I had seen the ethereal glass case being built to enclose the crumbling stones. I had asked for explanations, thus discovering a bunch of stupefying notions. Donors, benefactors, fundraising. Also historical landmarks and cultural heritage, pollution, environment, civil consciousness. Quite a lot to digest, yet it all opened an avenue of thrilling new possibilities. I was so impressed, I asked my folks if I could write a thank you note to these people. They distractedly agreed.
        Why did I follow up? I was eager to see how far into the grown-up world I could venture. I was fishing for a little morsel of adulthood, to see what it tasted like. When my letter, duly signed, appeared in print, once again I perceived my parents’ thirst temporarily assuaged. Thus I had figured out what they wanted from me. Rather, what I could do that would please them so much, it would necessarily empower me in return. I could see my destiny stretch in front of me, in other words, like a large paved road bordered by flowers. Which, if you think about it, at the age of nine can be a terrifying vision. That is why I jumped the fence, started running across fields and meadows, and went lost.
 
        Not yet. My desertion—let’s name it—is barely germinating. It hasn’t reached the surface that is still flat, quiet, and unbroken. Let me backtrack a little. Before my essay about religion—certainly a plain dissertation—and my epistle in praise of our town’s benefactors, I had dared a freer, fancier literary attempt.
        It was summer. I must have been eight and a half. We were spending the month of August in a cottage near a lake. I had time on my hands, probably too much. As a game, I suppose, as I could have cut out paper dolls, I tried for a literary confection. Not sure what it was meant to be. Poetry? Prose? Fairy tale? Defining a format would have been beyond my competence. I know where my inspiration came from. In order to reach our cottage we had to cross a railway. The passage was manually operated, guarded by a flagman sitting in a small shed. Rather a miniature house painted white, with a pointy roof, a small door, a small window, utterly fascinating me. The small house was the subject of my story, though I imagined an old woman living in it. She was spinning, an echo from fairy tales, indeed. I have no memory of a plot. I guess there was none. What I exactly recall is a stylistic device—let us call it mannerism—I applied with great gusto. I began the piece with a thrice-repeated verb, such as a train puff-puff-puffing or run-run-running. After some substantial development, I closed with another thrice-reiterated action. Maybe the old dear spin-spin-spinning or wave-wave-waving at some smiling fugitive spotted through a train window, vanishing in the distance.
        This neat symmetry must have seemed artistic to me, a fine handling of the craft. I distinctly recall how proud I was when I showed the fruit of my labor to Dad. And how earthily he laughed. Also very scornfully. He got angry before he finished giggling, crumpled my paper and furiously threw it on the floor. “A balloon, full of nothing!” he yelled. “Nothing! Nothing but air!” I recall my bewilderment as if it were now. Why was I so literal? Are all children? A balloon? I visualized it immediately. Small and forlorn, nakedly white, its string ripped, flying away from the little house by the railroad. Or, worse, from a train window, a child desperately gaping at the sky.
        It took me a while to understand we were in the metaphorical domain, a place I couldn’t have defined anyway. But I finally realized Dad didn’t mean a balloon should or shouldn’t appear in my story. He referred to the story itself, now lying flat in a corner against the wall. I didn’t try to rescue it. I decided to limit my writing, from now on, to formal requirements, such as homework, letters to Santa, and grocery lists. I should refrain from things unsteadily anchored in reality and, instead, stick to useful, functional, rooted ones. Not writing at all would have been safer, of course, once I was done with school. I already hinted at how I eventually came to espouse such radical, foolproof strategy.
 
        Let me now open a much needed parenthesis. Both my parents wrote, though, as I initially stated, they didn’t bother teaching me.
        Father’s writing was probably the determining element of his identity. I can’t picture him in any other posture than sitting in the battered armchair where he’d land first thing in the morning. A portable desk locked him in place, built after his own design and so loaded with papers, it would spill its contents over the floor had Dad attempted to move. He did not, lost in his world of strange thoughts and speculations, gingerly holding a pencil.
        This last was an inseparable ornament of his plump, elegant hand, almost conical, fingers tapering down. I tend to remember it as be-ringed, emblazoned with some signet jewelry. But no. Nothing could have been less like my working-class, village-born father. Not an inch of aristocratic pretense tainted his blood. What perennially decorated his hand, stuck between index and middle finger like a cigarette hanging from someone’s lips, was a mechanical pencil. He had a few of those and a love affair with the lead he kept moving in and out of slim cases, with the same meticulous care he could have devoted to handmade fishing baits, collector stamps, bullets.
        Dad had the most peculiar handwriting. Back then, most adult calligraphies—in that era of no computer and scant typewriters—smoothly flew through the page, bending to the right. Dad’s were made of separate scratches—tiny wiggles climbing towards the left—of most uncanny shapes. They were beautiful in their idiosyncratic manner. To me his marks looked like hieroglyphs I, of course, was very proud to decipher. Until I left home, I was in charge of typing his manuscripts, as nobody else could unscramble them.
        Dad was also a listless self-editor, meaning his page rapidly grew from a kind of puzzle to an impenetrable maze. Furious erasures were superscripted in tinier characters, then erased again, replaced by more unreadable scribbling. Asterisks and arrows should help the desperate typist rescuing lost paragraphs, filling in last minute addenda, or rebuilding logical sequences. Usually they achieved the opposite goal, driving the interpreter nuts. But not me, who, being a child, found the adventure thrilling. With hindsight, I guess Dad’s tortuous process must have echoed my own initiation, the time when I crawled along corridors laying letters on tiles, or my vain attempts at negotiating lined notebooks.
        As for Dad’s contents, which I have faithfully transcribed throughout my teenage years, they were showered on me, leaving no trace. Not that he ever thought they could have, or that he gave a damn. Dad wrote about politics, law, and philosophy in a theoretical manner. I didn’t have a clue of what he might be talking about, though I could brilliantly decode his spelling and unravel his sentences. I enjoyed his writing like an abstract painting of sorts. I mean a composition of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, skillfully combined in agreeable patterns.
        The only attempt Dad made at sharing his thoughts with his infant daughter occurred when I was three and a half. I have a blurred memory of another summer cottage, buried in shadowy woods. I recall walls made of stone, a large living room where my tiny cot was, and a fireplace. I was in my pajamas when Dad breezed by, a sheet of paper in hand, finger pointed on it. “Let’s see,” he boomed—tall, dark, tonitruant, terrifying as usual—“if my eldest child understands.” He read a sentence. “Now, what does it mean?”
        “Easy,” I said. “It talks of an object and a subject.” He laughed and he stepped away. Quite a reassuring result.
        I have a sharp recollection of my feelings. I wasn’t intimidated, though I suspect it might have been attitude. I felt confident about “object,” not at all about “subject,” having strictly no idea of what the latter was. I nonchalantly dared uttering the word, hoping it would pass without incidents. I then made myself believe Dad had been satisfied with my performance. But I knew better, having realized at once and indelibly he never would be.
 
        Mother’s writing was a different story. I am not sure of when I noticed it being one of her activities, actually the only one she enjoyed besides reading. Well, enjoying isn’t the right word. An aura of suffering always coated it, a dark halo, larger than the thing itself. Mom didn’t write much. As I have previously said, she had a demanding job plus a family. Still the red thread of her ambition never disappeared from the canvas, so to speak. Bit by bit, she managed to produce a scanty literary output, until at fifty-five she got an early retirement, thus devoting herself to her passion. Later in life I praised her for her constancy.
        As a child, I shared the trepidation she felt while conceiving the idea for a piece, either a travel chronicle, a book review, or a commentary on music or art. Very seldom memoir or short fiction. Never poetry. Mother’s vein was neither lyrical nor intimate, less than all confessional. She had no problem in showing me her outputs and seeking feedback. Early on I was her first reader and most enthusiastic supporter.
        Mother’s contents, though way more accessible than Father’s, also washed over me. I don’t recall paying attention besides the emotional kind Mother sought, as I instinctively knew. I don’t think her polished lines could reach the blunt, uncouth child I was. Still, not only did I respect Mother’s writing, I also appreciated its contextual qualities, which, I dare say, were as instructive and edifying as the contents. I cherished her calligraphy, quite traditional, perfectly readable, and devoid of fancies, yet made personal by its extreme smallness and smoothness. It contained no sharp line, no corners. I remember her m’s, n’s, and u’s like miniature waves of a tranquil river. Mother wrote orderly. Her text contained no erasures. She wrote slowly, weighing every sentence, double-guessing herself each step of the way, I suppose, and that’s where the halo of suffering came from.
        She had managed a small desk late in life, when I was long gone, in an alcove adjacent to the main bedroom. It was so crowded I wondered, when visiting, how she could even fit a notepad on it. She had trinkets, framed photos, books, and a humongous quantity of paper, neatly stacked but so un-homogeneous and casual, she had no idea of what was where. Tons of pens and perfectly sharpened pencils in such number, she could have scribbled a Bible, a Koran, or the entire Upanishad back and forth. She appeared to be in love with the writing paraphernalia more than with the activity itself. Her desk was a cramped altar, so overloaded with offerings I had to infer the deity she worshipped was a very angry one.
        The most prominent items on Mom’s desk were stones. Actual paperweights, such as fancy glass spheres. Heavy artifacts of various kinds, gifts from family and friends. Her fondness for those was well known. I have provided a few samples to the collection. But she favored plain rocks, many of them from the beach. Pretty, smooth, agreeable to the touch. Mother’s writing, she innocently admitted, needed pebbles in order to occur, those cool shapes her left hand incessantly stroked. Maybe a stress relieving device. Or a mind unscrambler. Source of inspiration. Natural tranquillizer. Anxiety dispeller. Talisman. Prayer bracelet. Rosary.
        As I said, when I was a child Mother didn’t have a desk. I recall seeing her with a pile of paper at the dining table, at night, and more rarely on Sunday afternoons. I remember not seeing her, but a stack of clean sheets, a sharpened pencil, a few stones.
 
        Let’s go back to my unsubstantial musings about railroad crossing, alas an only progeny, an orphan. I abstained from literary creativity after that. And I won no more prizes, though I didn’t give up entirely on journalism. The uncle who gave me the toy alphabet now suggested I write a column of recipes, for a small magazine he and his colleagues put together for fun.
        At age ten I was a good cook, Mom arriving home from her work too late, and exhausted. Thus I accepted my uncle’s appointment with a sense of competence, plus the excitement of another plunge into adulthood. For reasons I couldn’t imagine, Uncle concocted a pseudonym I should sign with. I enjoyed my pen name as an additional thrill. No one knew who the food writer was. No one guessed her age. I produced, I think, two or three pieces. I’m not sure why I wasn’t asked for more. But the practice had whetted my appetite.
        During the following summer, we were bored out of our minds. We had no proper vacations besides those rented cottages where we’d transfer, sometimes, during Mother’s break, if the heat in town had become unbearable. We would shift our regular family life to those temporary abodes. Dad kept scribbling all day, at best reading the papers for distraction, and Mom was a lost soul without her rigid routine, scared by her sudden freedom, listless, anxious, and melancholy. No entertainment was planned. My parents were too naïf on one hand, too self-preoccupied on the other.
        Luckily, my brothers and I decided to produce a paper, the concoction of which occupied a great deal of hours. It would be the expression of a philanthropic society, maybe inspired by the advocates for architectural landmarks who had once sparked my eloquence. And it would be secret, to make it exciting. To recruit members among friends and relatives, jot down a manifesto, design cards and so forth was a fascinating labor. The newspaper was just a by-product, yet we drafted it with care. We of course spread writing assignments among various specialists, but I typed it all, drew titles in capital letters, made copies and then stapled them. Oh my, were we proud of our first edition!
        The same went for the second, third, and fourth issues. We must have stopped at five. Not sure why, and I’m quite certain the reasons were trivial, perhaps simple loss of interest. I do not recall what I wrote, if anything. I must have, at least, written the editorials. Yet again, I can’t summon a single word. Verba volant and so do scripta in my case. I remember with amazing vividness how breathlessly I fell for the illustrator, a big cousin of one of my brother’s classmates. The oldest member of our crew, he must have been fourteen. He had red hair and, man, he could draw.
 
        The newspaper closing wasn’t yet the swan song of my vocation, but almost. I made it through high school not very studiously, still managing decent grades, especially in writing, as long as I stuck to those freer prompts. I could tackle them based on simple reasoning and common sense, as long as no academics were involved. I had gotten rid of spelling uncertainties, and my cursive was cute. By then students were allowed to pick exam subjects, thus, for lack of alternatives, I had thought I’d choose essay writing for my finals.
        I could not. In my senior year, the teacher emblazoned me with an F at the end of the first semester and consequently I was disqualified. I hadn’t seen it coming. When I did, it was too late for me to repair the damage. Once again I had tripped myself by sheer naiveté. I had followed my inspiration, as when I crawled along the corridor disseminating sentences, or when I couldn’t end my bulging vowels on time. Now content was the matter. How could I have suspected it?
        In my senior year, maybe abiding by district guidelines, our professor lavished on us the whole gamut of civic topics and the complete rainbow of ethic and moral issues. Family and the military. War and childrearing. Marriage and abortion. Jail and education. Inequality and premarital sex. Adultery and union rights. Dictatorship and immigration. Tolerance, suffragettes, pollution, mass media. The seventies were in full bloom. In fact, they had borne their fruit and we, the teens, had just harvested it.
        Without a concern I wrote what I thought about each topic. I stated what I believed, and my teacher made a point of demonstrating she didn’t share my credos. This time I wasn’t sent to the principal. My papers came back so covered with erasures, exclamations, red marks, they looked like bloodied corpses. At the bottom a huge zero always lurked, hexed over as if for a negative mention. It was a symbolic grade, an F would have been sufficient. But the nullity of my work had to be branded that way. Of course, it was the nullity of my opinions, not of my writing skills. But we weren’t in elementary school. No more fractions. Form and content were supposed to have melted and fused into a coherent output.
        I remember wavering, for a second, when I got my first zeroed spoil, wounded and scarred. I don’t think I was shattered. I wasn’t that sensitive or so attached to my labor. As I said it didn’t cost me hours of strenuous preparation, only momentary focus and sheer honesty. But I was taken aback, surprised, and dismayed. Then I understood. I started to predict the unavoidable outcome. Why didn’t I change strategy? Alas, I lacked the knowledge I’d need for retiring on safer terrain, choosing history, science, or literature-related topics. I was too irreparably behind in my studies. I could manage a passing grade when orally interrogated, echoing what I had heard in class and putting vague notions in nicely rounded phrases. But on paper my lack of data would be impossible to conceal.
        I had no choice, truly, but to keep elaborating on wide issues, using critical thinking. Why didn’t I fake a different set of opinions, matching my teacher’s desires? After all, I didn’t like sticking out. Didn’t my wish to blend emerge on my first day of school? Being a hero or a victim didn’t interest me. Had I known in advance I might have thought of something, but the first criminal evidence stuck into my hands had caught me unprepared. Now I was trapped. I had seen a smile of satisfaction hardening the teacher’s lips. She must have waited for a culprit, an escape goat on whom she could perform her revenge, vent her righteous indignation, her incomprehension and fear. She would make me pay for my entire generation, wouldn’t she?
        I had sensed it, though once more I wouldn’t have known how to express it. But I intuited somehow the inevitability of our reciprocal stance. I doubt I could have retreated after a couple of essays, not even after the initial one, which was, I recall, about family values. Had I suddenly become a meek little lamb, the teacher would have been probably incensed about my falsehood and cowardice. I bet she would have concocted another form of punishment, my chastisement being, of course, her whole point. Or not. Maybe she looked for an abjuration, instead, a conversion. Well, she didn’t get it. I kept my tune unchanged.
        In a corner of my mind, or was it my soul? I pondered the unfairness of the treatment I was receiving. I wasn’t persuaded my opinions were to be judged per se, as the class was meant to teach us how to efficiently put ideas in written form, not to establish which ideas were to be expressed. Wasn’t my present plight the very opposite, though, of what I had endured in the earliest stages of my schooling? When I resented my good contents for not helping my sloppy presentation?
        Not quite. In early elementary school I wrote thoughtfully, and I put those thoughts in well structured sentences. Only, my eye-hand coordination was poor and I had scant control of my motor skills. Thus the visual display of my page was unsatisfactory. To use a metaphor, I knew how to make good ingredients into a decent dinner, but I served it in chipped bowls on a stained tablecloth. I was mortified to be reprimanded, being aware my meal was quite savory, thinking it more important than the silverware, which I deemed accessory.
        Now I still knew how to cook, perhaps using better recipes, more refined. I put the same care into my preparation, perhaps more. Over time I had provided myself with cute tableware. But I was serving raw meat to a vegetarian, so to speak, or caramel cake to a diabetic. My ingredients weren’t faulty per se, just atrociously inadequate for the recipient. Did I believe the recipient should be neutral? How mistaken was I. How pretentious. Truth is, I still didn’t know how to caliber my gesture. Where to stop or what to expect if I didn’t.
 
        Thus I couldn’t choose essay writing for my finals. But I would be tested on general composition. We had all morning and a few alternative topics. By necessity I fell upon the most nondescript. It regarded the third article of my country’s Constitution, the one stating equality for all citizens no matter their gender, race, religion, and so forth. I hadn’t read the Constitution except for the third article, which by pure chance I knew by heart and could have recited out loud, backwards, upside down, and in my sleep. I could handle the prompt, I thought with relief.
        I was wrong. In the tensed, frightened calm of the immense exam room, my mind—was it my soul?—slipped out of control. I got so deep into my reasoning, entangling myself a bit more with each sentence I wrote, I could no longer find my way out. I started figuring out, as I proceeded, that the whole point of stating equality in the Constitution was to lure public consciousness with official discourse, then perform the very opposite of what had been preached. I started to believe such a pompous declaration was a cover up, a justification, or a magic trick meant to distract common people from the daily practice of unleashed institutional inequality.
        Obviously I lacked the skills for linearly expressing, rationally backing up, and supporting my epiphany. But the epiphany overpowered me, squeezing me into a kind of emotional noose. I started writing like Father did, erasure upon erasure, smaller and smaller letters, frantic meandering. Good bye, logic. Since I had enough paper, I should make a clean copy. But the clock was ticking and I had gotten nowhere towards a conclusion. To my own surprise I started crying, not because of the exam, about which I cared less and less. I started crying about the third article of our Constitution. I cried in sadness, dismay, and a kind of old rage.
        I had to ask for the bathroom, being in dire need of tissues. Of course, I was accompanied, to avoid cheating. I remember my sobbing getting out of control as I entered the lavatory. I’m not sure what happened while I was there, washing my face. When I came back I picked a clean sheet, then looked for another topic. One of them regarded a novelist I had at least heard about, and it focused on his authorial vision of modern society. The supposed specificity of the prompt in fact made it vague. I thought that I could manage, and I banally did. Since I ran out of time my essay was sweet and short. Still I had to hand in the bulk of my first outpouring, as nothing could be taken home. I relinquished my constitutional musings, sending to a ton of ink, a maze of tortured labors, a patched up Frankenstein’s skin, my shameful salute.
        I passed my last exam without glory. School was over and so were my writing ventures, for a very long time.