Mazie, A Dear Soul

      I admit it. There was a chip on my shoulder as I walked into the classroom. My third new school that year.

     “Don’t worry if you don’t make friends, we’ll only be in Modesto for three months at the most. As soon as Dad gets a job in San Diego, we’re gone from this ugly town”, my mom assured me when she noticed my glum face.

      I couldn’t find my birth certificate. Perhaps it had been lost in one of our many moves. But I found my baptismal record that I would use to register and started off for the school that was six blocks away.

      Modesto farmers were selling their land to developers. There were new homes being built all over the city. Housing was in demand at this time, right after the Korean War. My dad was a house painter and we moved to Modesto because there was a lot of work for men in the construction trades.

      Farms prospered in Modesto as well. This brought migrant workers cycling through the crops. Grapes, apricots, peaches, walnuts, pecans and field crops were always in need of cheap labor. The crops were picked primarily by ‘Grapes of Wrath’ type families.

      I handed my paperwork to the teacher and kept my head down. Frequently, I would spend my entire time at a school never making a friend. I was used to being by myself at recess and lunch. I hated it, but I was used to it.

      “Class, we have a new student today. This is Brenda. Brenda’s there’s an empty seat by Tippy, you can sit there for now.”

      I had dressed inappropriately for Modesto. Flannel shirt, jeans with flannel lining. Not one girl in class had on pants. Ouch! Where I had just come from in the Northern California mountains it was snowing and warm jeans were a necessity.

      I slumped into my seat and composed my face into a ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ scowl that dared anyone to laugh at me.

      Tippy was instructed to share her book with me until the library got my text books together. Her Social Studies book was on her desk. She told me they were studying Mexico that semester.

      “Like we need to learn about Mexicans, we’ve got too many of them here” I muttered…way too loud.

      “Brenda” the teacher spoke sharply.

       “Yea?” I said not getting up from my seat.

       “I don’t know what your last school was like, but in this classroom we never, never make rude comments about race, understand?”

       “Sorry” I mumbled, feeling hot from the bottom of my feet clear through my ears.

      I saw Tippy writing on the top of her tablet. She nudged my foot under the desk and casually pointed with her pencil. “Watch out, Mr. Hill is old but he hears everything.”

      I didn’t really dislike Hispanics. Perhaps a psychologist could tell me why I made that comment. I guess I was trying to sound tough.

      I ate lunch by myself that day and every other day. I always tried to look as if eating by myself was my choice. I would watch clusters of girls eating their lunch and then running off to play together. Tippy ate lunch with Martha. They were both pretty and smart and laughed together all the time. Martha always brushed the ground before she sat down trying to keep her dress clean. Tippy sat on her lunch bag. I ached to have them ask me to join them.

      Mazie ate by herself too. She was a little Mexican girl. Her mom cooked for migrant workers. Mazie and her mother moved from farm to farm but always stayed in Modesto. I never heard her mention her father.

      One morning as I walked toward my classroom, Mazie approached from the other direction.

      “Hi” I said, still painfully embarrassed by the comment I had made on my first day of school.

      Mazie was tiny. Her hair was in shiny braids. She had huge black eyes, which she kept cast down as we both arrived at the door of the classroom at the same time.

      I walked in and put my lunch on the shelf in the back. Mazie had already placed her lunch on the shelf, but I saw her pick it up and move it over next to mine. She gave me a very shy, tentative smile. I noticed that one of her front teeth was black, like she had fallen and killed the tooth.

      “Did you say ‘hi’ to me?” She had lifted her eyes to mine, but spoke so quietly I wasn’t sure it was me she was speaking to.

      I nodded and started to walk to my desk.

      “Wait,” she whispered. She ran to her lunch and opened the bag. “Here” she said holding out a plum.

      We ate lunch together every day after that. Sometimes walking around the playground after we ate. Once in a while she would bring a toy from Mexico that she said was her brother’s, a stick on a string with a ball on the end. We would toss the ball up and try to catch it on the end of the stick. Occasionally, there was a short line at the tether ball. “Hurry,” she would call as she ran to get in line, always saving me a place in front of her. We would wait in line until our turn came and drag the game out as long as possible. She always had a tortilla with butter and a piece of fruit. Before she ate the fruit, she would offer it to me. I think she was the gentlest soul I had ever met.

      My mom always packed me a tasty lunch. A sandwich and fruit, a carrot and usually a cookie or graham crackers. I would split my dessert with Mazie each day.

      Mazie had the cutest way of mispronouncing words. She would say ‘chimley’ instead of chimney and ‘hurvy’ for hurry. She read well, so I think it was just the way her mother must have said the words.

      Frequently, Mazie would come home with me and eat dinner. I never saw where she lived. Before it got dark, she would take off at a lope across an open field behind my house to get home.

      Once, I invited her to spend the night but she told me that she always worked with her mother on Saturday and Sunday. 

      We were happy friends for about two months. It didn’t bother us a bit that no one else wanted to be our friends. We had each other. We didn’t care so much that we were outcasts.

      Tippy’s grandmother in Iowa died just before Christmas. I overheard her telling the teacher that she would be out of school for at least two weeks. She was getting her assignments and then leaving immediately.

      That same day, just before lunch, Ben, the boy who sat behind me tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a note. I had passed many notes back and forth for Tippy and her girlfriend Martha. I had never received a note from anybody. Mazie would never pass a note in class.

      This note had my name on it. I recognized Martha’s handwriting. I opened it and read, “Do you want to eat lunch with me?’

      I turned to look at Martha with questioning eyes. “Me?” I mouthed pointing to myself.

      “Yes,” she nodded.

      I bobbed my head up and down “yes” and turned around; stunned.

      Martha, the most popular girl in class – well, maybe Tippy was a little more popular – but Martha wanted to eat lunch with me!

      When the lunch bell rang, Mazie had her lunch and was waiting for me. I ran past her as if I had never seen her before in my life. I caught up with Martha and we chatted all the way to ‘her’ tree. I flattened out my lunch bag and tucked my skirt around my knees and began to eat daintily.

      “What did you tell Mazie?” Martha wanted to know.

      “Oh, Mazie and I aren’t really friends you know. We just eat together sometimes.” Sometimes?? We hadn’t missed a day since the first day we ate together.

      I stole quick glance at Mazie across the playground. Her eyes were Oreo Cookies, staring at me in mute shock.

      “Look, the tether ball’s available,” Martha said as soon as her lunch was finished.
 Mazie came over and said quietly, “Can I play winner?”

      Martha was tall and could easily beat me if she wanted to, but that day she would wind the ball around the pole until she had only one more twist left and then let me smack it back to unwind a few times. We hit the ball back and forth, back and forth, intentionally delaying the game.

      “Hey, you guys, hurry, please. I want to play.” Mazie said with a plea in her voice.

      “Hurvy, you guys,” I mocked, enjoying my new popularity.

      When we got tired, we both walked off leaving Mazie by herself with the tether ball. I saw her out of the corned of my eye idly patting the tether ball by herself.

      We ate lunch together every day after that. We passed notes back and forth just like Martha and Tippy did.

      The day Tippy returned from Iowa, I was excited to tell her that I would be eating lunch with her now. I didn’t get a chance to because everyone was crowded around her wanting to welcome her back.

      Lunch time! I hurried past Mazie to grab my lunch and eat with ‘my friends’. They had forgotten to wait for me, and were already sitting down when I arrived at the tree.

      It was an uncomfortable time; neither of the girls spoke to me. When I tried to join in their conversation, my comments weren’t well received. Any one with a lick of social sense could have read that message. I refused to get the picture.

      The night before, my mom brought a box of doughnuts at the grocery store. There were three kinds in the box, powdered sugar, chocolate and brown sugar coconut. My mom packed me a powdered sugar one. I had been against a chocolate, so little bits of chocolate where on it. I broke it in half and offered them to each girl at once.

      Maratha took one look at the half I offered her. “It’s dirty,” she said, mistaking the chocolate for dirt.

      I was humiliated; I walked over and put both halves in the trash.

      While the classroom was still setting settled down after lunch, I got a note from Martha.

 “Don’t eat lunch with me anymore.” Nothing else. No explanation.

      I felt that every kid in the class knew what was in the note and was watching for my reaction. I wadded the note up and put it in my desk. My eyes were stinging and my throat was aching as I tried not to cry. I swallowed once, twice and then leapt up. Rushing past Mr. Hill’s desk, I whispered “Bathroom” and ran out, barely making it out the door before the tears began.

      The next day, just as if nothing had ever happened, I began eating lunch with Mazie again. I never apologized. I just walked up and plopped down next to her. I could feel her watching me from under her dark lashes, but she never said a word. We took up where we had left off. She began coming home with me after school again.

      We moved from Modesto on February fourteenth. In school, we had a Valentine’s party and had cupcakes on red paper plates. I noticed Mazie didn’t use her plate, but put it in her desk. She walked home with me to say goodbye to my mother and father. They had grown very close to her.

      I walked Mazie to the end of my driveway as my father was loading the last of our belongings in a truck. We would be pulling out of town in a few minutes.

      We stood looking at each other; I wasn’t mature enough to say what was really on my mind. That our friendship had been a treasure. That I had abused that friendship. That I would change things if I had it all to do over. That I was glad she was my friend again.

      When I walked back into the house I found that Mazie had left her red paper plate on the kitchen counter. She had written my name at the top of the plate with a black crayon. In the middle she wrote, “I love you.” Her name was at the bottom.

      When I have insomnia, I make up stories about Mazie. Sometimes she lives on a beautiful ranch with a wealthy, handsome Mexican husband. Sometimes she’s an attorney representing Cesar Chavez in his fight for good treatment for migrant workers. Usually she is a teacher, helping kids heal that have been mistreated.
 
      I pray no one else ever mistreated Mazie.

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