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Miss Murianna Murray was an institution in our elementary
school. Most every child was petrified of her, including
me. I was the last of 9 children and many of them going
before me had left their reputations in that school, and
believe me when I say Miss Murray never forgot a thing.
She was
a tall, very large woman with steel gray hair. She always
wore dresses that were long and they had high necklines and
long sleeves. She wore a bunch of keys on a heavy string
around her neck and you could hear her coming when she left
her office to trod down the halls from one room to another.
She wore high heels with tie strings. I had never seen that
kind of shoe before but she wore beige heavy stockings with
the shoes.
When we
heard her coming we all prayed she would be going to another
class and not ours because coming to our class usually meant
trouble for one of us. I tell you the truth our teachers
didn't have to use very much punishment to keep us in line.
All it took was t he threat: "GO to the Principals office."
That was enough to scare the devil out of us. When we got
there, she would make us sit outside her office for a long
time to think about what we had done and what our punishment
was going to be. When she finally called us in, well, when
she called me in, my bladder was about to bust and there was
no bathroom privilege until we had seen the principal. Miss
Murray would look over those tiny glasses of hers and the
look was enough to kill. Then she would discuss, as she
said, our misdeed. Usually the punishment was to stay after
school and clean the blackboards or write sentences or our
times tables.
I told you I was the last of the children in my family and
unfortunately my family of sisters and brothers had left a
nasty taste in her mouth. Miss Murray sent me home one
day because of the dress I had on. It was a lovely pinafore
dress but according to Miss Murray it was indecent and I was
to go home and change it. My mother was infuriated and told
her my dress was perfectly fine and if she had a problem
with it, then it was her problem, not my mothers and
certainly not mine. I really wanted to change that dress
badly but Mama wouldn't let me so I had to wear it the rest
of the day under the scrutinizing eyes of Miss Murray. That
afternoon Miss Murray called me out of class and asked me to
help her sew some new curtains for our auditorium stage. I
didn't know how but she taught me and for some reason took
an interest in me from that day on. She was forever getting
me to count the lunch room money or do this or that,
whatever chore she had for me. I began to like this strange
woman. She taught me a lot. She taught me a stitch called
the chicken stitch for hemming. She taught me the correct
way to count money, always putting the face of the paper
money up. She taught me a lot of little things I would not
have learned had she not selected me to help her like she
did.
I was
very active in school, I tried out for all the main parts in
all the plays we did and Most of them I got. I played Snow
White and sang Some Day My Prince Will Come. I also played
Martha Washington in a school play and Miss Amatuli, my
fourth grade teacher, used a whole can of Baby powder to
make my hair look white.
When I
was in the sixth grade I was selected to be the May Day
Queen, and I was very ill with the flu. My mother had not
shampooed my hair for a couple of weeks and she had it in a
pony tail. One of the boys in my class hurt my feelings when
he said he had never seen a Queen with her hair in a pony
tail so I ran home crying and my mama used a can of some
kind of cleaner for your hair to clean it dry, she brushed
and brushed it and it did turn out lovely. I dressed in a
beautiful borrowed white dress and was back in school ready
for the May Day Parade and the dance around the May Pole. It
was so pretty. We were right across the street from the Fire
House so Miss Murray had Fire Marshall Hopkins to come and
crown me and the boy who was May King. We had tall crowns
made of card board and aluminum foil with fake rubies and
gems of all kinds glued to the crowns, I was very proud of
my crown. When the day??™s festivities were over, right before
we were dismissed to go home, Miss Murray grabbed our crowns
and said she was going to put them up for next year. I was
so disappointed. I wanted my crown. And all those good
feelings I had for her just went away like whoosh. Yes, she
had been nice to me and given me privileges that others
didn't have but taking my crown away was the last straw and
after that I just turned against her like all the other
kids. I mean one cardboard crown and I would bet you that
they never used it again; it probably was put up and pushed
around until it was no good to anyone anymore. Children pay
attention to behavior like that. Maybe it was pay back for
my mama telling her off that day over my pretty pinafore
dress. I wonder.
Nanci L. Stroupe
Hampton, VA
Onenoni @ aol.com
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