The highlight of my need for approval came during a school assembly when I received the Stukey Elementary Student of the Month award. I knew Mrs. Klitsner had nominated me and possibly even argued my merits to her fellow teachers. Just thinking about her confidence in me made me want to try even harder in her class. I couldn’t get over seeing my name on the fancy-looking certificate.
After school, I ran ahead of my siblings and the rest of the kids to get home as fast as I could. I burst through the door and shouted, “Celia! Celia! You’ll never guess what happened today!”
She hurried into the living room from the kitchen. “You got a hundred on your spelling test?”
“No. Better.”
I held up the cream-colored certificate and shouted, “I’m the Student of the Month! Mrs. Klitsner nominated me. Can you believe it?”
She beamed with pride.
Later that night when Mom came home from work, I showed her my certificate. Her jaw dropped in mock disbelief and then her lips slowly curled into a huge smile. She pulled me close to her in a giant hug. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. You’re a wonderful student —so kind and obedient and hardworking.” She stood back, pushed up her glasses that had slipped down her nose, and read the certificate. “I’m so proud of you, Anna. Here, this honor deserves another hug.”
I buried my face in her chest, smelling the Oil of Olay cream she used, the only luxury she allowed herself. I smiled and sighed, contented and secure.
Another reason I loved going to school was for the food. All of the kids in our family qualified for free lunches. While other students may have turned up their noses at the cafeteria food, it seemed like a gourmet meal to me, much better than I ever got at home. I especially loved the pint cartons of whole milk. At home, we had only powdered milk, which Mom would overly dilute to make it go further. The whole milk I got at school was rich and creamy, so I thought I could replicate it at home with powdered milk by adding less water. But instead of being rich and creamy, my concoction was thick and lumpy and made me gag.
One lunchtime I had finished my milk, and when a girl I was sitting with was about to throw her unopened carton away, I asked her if we could swap cartons. I couldn’t bear the thought of that perfectly good milk going to waste. The cafeteria monitor saw me trading food with another student, which was against the rules, and sent me to a table with the other “troublemakers.” I was horrified and humiliated at having to eat there. That was the one and only time I got into trouble at school.
At one point during the year, the cafeteria kitchen was being remodeled, so Mrs. Klitsner sent me home with a note to my mom, saying I needed to bring a lunch to school for a few weeks. It was extremely embarrassing to take two cooked, mashed pinto bean sandwiches or two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches wrapped in an old bread bag or reused tinfoil to school, instead of the normal sack lunches that other students brought. And sadly, there was no milk to wash the sandwiches down.
That school year passed far too quickly. On the last day of school, most of my classmates couldn’t wait for the bell to ring at three o’clock to signal their freedom for the summer. I had been dreading this day because it would usher in another depressing three months of labor at the appliance store. School had become my safe haven. So when everyone ran out the door, with Mrs. Klitsner making sure no one got run over, I lingered in the classroom, picking up candy wrappers and other bits of trash.
Mrs. Klitsner returned, surprised to find me still there. “Anna, it’s officially summertime. Why don’t you join your friends outside and celebrate?”
My stomach churned and my mouth went instantly dry. I longed to pour out my heart to my favorite teacher, to share my burdens with her. How could I explain that I didn’t want to say good-bye to her, to the school building, to the yummy cafeteria food and the playground equipment? I wished I could stay there year-round, in this safe place where I could learn so many things.
But I kept my mouth shut and simply approached her desk and shyly hugged her. “I’ll miss you. You’re the best teacher I ever had.”
Mrs. Klitsner hugged me tighter, then squatted down in front of me so she could look into my eyes. “I enjoyed having you in my class, Anna. I enjoyed school growing up too. I wanted to be at school more than anyplace else because I felt loved and challenged. Is that the way you feel?”
I didn’t trust my voice not to crack, so I merely nodded.
“Listen, you are a wonderful girl, but it’s time for you to go enjoy your summer. I’ll see you in the fall, okay?”
What if I’m not here next fall? What if we move yet again?
SUMMER MEANT WORKING ALL DAY, six days a week, at the appliance store warehouse, instead of just on Saturday. The sister-wives and the kids old enough to work woke up early each morning. It took a long time for a dozen or more people to get dressed and eat a “tasty” breakfast —hot mush with watered-down powdered milk and toast broiled in the oven and slathered with margarine.
Before we left the house, we formed an assembly line to prepare our lunches for the day. The women would set loaves of bread on the table —bread that had been bought at the bakery thrift store, so far beyond the expiration date that it was intended as animal feed. Anyone who spotted any mold on the bread just pinched that part off. Then we kids coated a side of one piece of bread with a thin layer of mayonnaise and another piece with a generous dollop of refried beans. We alternated between that combination and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. One of the older children stacked the sandwiches back inside the bread bags to take to the warehouse.
When everyone was ready, we would scramble into several vehicles, with most of us kids riding in open truck beds. It took about a half hour to drive to the store, so we would leave the house by eight o’clock to get there and be ready to open the store at nine. We worked until nine at night, with a few breaks throughout the day for a sandwich or to play. If we were caught playing when we should have been working, the adults yelled at us for wasting time.
About the same time we moved to Elmer Drive, I underwent another transition. One day while I was working at the store, Mom called me into the break room, where she and Ramona, who now lived in Denver too, were having a cup of coffee. Both of them had enormous grins on their faces.
“What’s going on?” I didn’t think I was in trouble. Did something good happen to someone in the family for a change?
“Anna, come sit by me.” Mom patted the seat of a faded blue plastic chair. “I have something to tell you.”
Mom glanced at Ramona and then looked back at me. “On Monday, you start helping with the younger children.”
“I get to help watch the kids?” This may sound like work, which it technically was, but to me at age ten, it meant that I had graduated from being one of the annoying little kids to contributing to the family. I would alternate between being a mother’s helper and cleaning the appliances.