Hawthorne Lacey Decker - Cardboard ocean: a memoir

H onest, Miss Johnson, me and all the kids on my street, we go swimming in the Mediterranean every summer.

That was in the 1950s in P. S. 54 in Queens, New York. Dont worry if you have no idea where that is. Most New Yorkers dont know either. It is not the part of New York that has big buildings. It is not the famous part. It is like East Vancouver, or Whalley. They are in greater Vancouver, but a universe away.

Miss Johnson looked down at me. She wore a long skirt. She always wore a long skirt and told us she would never get married because we were her family. If she married she would have to quit teaching because that was the law. So she did not get married. I thought that was terrible because she would never have sex, which I knew you should have because it made you happy.

Actually, it did not make you happy if you were married because married people I knew were always yelling at each other so I thought they could not have sex because they were not happy. This was one of the things I did not understand. You had to get married to have sex and sex made you happy, unless you were married, then you were not happy. We wished Miss Johnson would get married so she would have sex, even if it would make her unhappy.

Dont lie to me, said Miss Johnson. It is good to have imagination, but dont lie.

Honest, we are going swimming in the Mediterranean like we did last summer. I can still remember how some stuff in the ocean tastes.

Mickey, if you lie again I will send you to the principal.

But Miss Johnson, I am not lying.

Have you ever been on an airplane? she asked.

No.

I did not see what that had to do with it.

Have you ever been on a boat?

No.

This was plain silly now.

Have you ever met a Greek?

Okay, now were talking. Things were going to go my way.

We know lots of Greeks. They are right next to the Mediterranean, I said.

What do they look like?

Miss Johnson was getting angry. I could tell because she was breathing deeply and the bumps underneath her blouse were getting bigger. We all liked it when Miss Johnson got angry.

They are hairy, I said. And they wear heavy winter coats all summer long

That does it, Mickey. Youre not only lying, you are making fun of me. Go see Miss Flag right now.

Darn, darn and worse. I am going to be held in again, and that would mean I would miss a game on the street and worse, I would miss a swim in the ocean, which was the Mediterranean even if she did not believe me. And at the end of the summer the ocean would be gone and I hated to miss even a half hour of swimming.

Go sit in the corner, said old Miss Flag, when I arrived at her office.

I had been there before.

Whats it for this time? she asked.

I said, Miss Johnson said I should see you because she said I was lying, but I was not lying.

Well, stay there until you decide to tell the truth.

So I went over to the big chair in the corner at least it was not facing the corner and I sat. I liked the chair. It was smooth and hard and all wood and I could look at the grains and follow them with my fingers, but it was still a prison. I had to sit and sit and sit while people came in to see Miss Flag, and they would wait in the outer room with me until she would see them and I would sit and they would go in her office and close the door and time would pass very slowly and they would come out shaking their heads and walk away and I was still sitting.