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2002-05-16 - 5:08 p.m.

The first few years of my school career I was a timid student. Looking back, I blame my skittishness on my kindergarten teacher. I also blame her for my fear of leaking. That woman was a capital B bitch.

She was tall and skinny as a tree, jutting and sharp, shrouded in brown. Sister to that monstrous green and melting witch in Wizard of Oz. Nobody could fool me, I knew the teacher was a witch. She wore a cap of tight auburn sausage rolls on her head, was a hundred years old and all wrinkly. I knew if I ever saw her tongue it would be long and pointed as a dragon's, and when her thin, white lips parted, instead of teeth, I was going to see flames flicker and smoke billow.

I kept hoping she'd either melt away into a muddy puddle, or catch her frumpy brown dress on fire with her flaming tongue and become a cinder, but that never happened. Anytime the monster would sneak up next to me or frown at me with her witchy eyes my breath would catch and my heart would slam against my small ribcage. I would shrink and scooch down in my desk, mouth level with the desktop, my own eyes wide in fright.

I was a child of the 50s, in the days before Little People Play School, Fun Factory, Raggedy Ann and Andy Pre-School, Kids Korner, and all those other socialization and learning centers for prekindergarten kids. A timid, unsophisticated only child whose exposure to adults was limited to eight very familiar and caring people. All family. I had yet to experience my first baby-sitter, and overnighters meant staying at one or the other of my grandparents’ homes, and my dog usually came along with me.

Mother and Dad and Mickey the cocker spaniel had been my best play friends before I took the plunge into the big world at age five and one month. And I liked it like that. Maybe because I enjoyed our times together so much, I didn't think about wandering beyond my singular, intimate world. I know, because of my as yet undeveloped sense of security, I felt comfortable with my parents and dog. The love and acceptance my parents' felt for me was unmistakable in their actions and words. Abandonment and meanness were out of the question.

Out of the question, that is, until that day in early September when I had to start school.

On my first school day, before I even left the house to walk into the cavern of old brick building, I was in an uproar, and I was sure this going-to-school business was the cause of my trouble. Mother would not let me leave the house in my blue jeans and denim jacket. The red felt cowboy hat WOULD wait for me in my bedroom. I was frilled out in my Sunday-best yellow dress, the little skirt billowing out like a mushroom cap over the prickly crinoline, with white scalloped collar hugging my neck (which Mother had twice scrubbed clean herself). My black Mary Jane's scrunched my toes, and I shuffled St. Vitus's dance through the house. I thought I would probably die before the morning was over.

Mother primped and posed me on the front porch for my first-day-at-school photo. I gathered within myself, jutted out my lower lip and did my best to protest the nonsense. Then, holding Mother's hand, I was reluctantly dragged off to school and down the shadowy hallway--my starched crinoline flouncing up and down, my hard-soled shoes clicking and scuffing along the marble floor--and into the room with little desks, little scrubbed-faced boys and girls, the alphabet wrapped around the walls up by the ceiling so high I had to squint to see it, and huge, spooky Miss Watkins. I slipped behind Mother and tried to bury myself in her skirt. When Miss Watkins turned to look at me and I realized she was the green and melting witch's sister, I KNEW I was going to die before the half-day was over. And somehow this scary lady had to have something to do with me being stuffed in the showoffy dress and silly shoes. She had managed to take over my Mother and make her do mean things to me, and it was her fault my mother walked out the door and disappeared, leaving me alone for the first time with a stranger.

I didn't die that first day. I made myself smaller, willed my bottom to be still on the thorny crinoline, kept my numb feet firmly planted on the floor, didn't bring attention to myself by punching any of the boys at recess, and I managed to survive the witch's den.

At home I shucked out of my dress, tugged on my jeans and jacket, retrieved my red felt cowboy hat and charged outside, first checking behind the door for Miss Watkins, and then tiptoeing through the raspberry patch to make sure she wasn't lurking out there waiting to snatch me up and take me back to her scary room. Satisfied I was safe back in my snug little world, I ran and rolled and climbed and curled up with Mickey to soothe the tension in my body after four hours of paralyzing fear.

After several weeks I began to work up my courage. Whenever Miss Watkins turned her back on me to scold another child and I thought she couldn't see me, I would muster up my bravest and meanest look and stare at her hunched, bony back. But I didn't try that often. I knew she had another set of witch eyes hidden in those tight curls and she would catch me staring at her. And I had spent endless hours convincing myself that, if caught, she would lunge across the room, clutch me in those skeleton hands and drag me off to her dark hidey hole.

In my mind she was always stomping around the room ready to grab and shake one child or another, or she was somewhere behind me, just out of my sight, ready to grab me with her cruel hands. Although she had never touched me, I was sure she would, so I always tried to know exactly where she was in the room. So it was a surprise to me when she was suddenly at my desk one day.

We were finger painting, and I was vigorously slopping and pushing blue paint around my paper when she marched to my desk and towered over me, bony hands on bony hips and smelling like the moth balls in my grandma's upstairs dresser. I could feel my insides shake; outside my hands trembled and tempera paint flicked off my fingers, sending tiny drops onto the tabletop and down onto the tile floor, a speck landing on her brown button shoes. Her eyes blazed and she yelled at me to clean up my mess. My face burned hot as I stumbled into the tiny washroom at the rear of the class, gathered paper towels and inched back into the room. I could feel twenty sets of snoopy kid eyes on me when I squatted to mop up the mess of blue paint. My lower lip quaked, so I clamped my rattling teeth down to stop it and closed my eyes tight against the tears threatening to stream down my cheeks.

Another day Cecilia Beets and I were in a back corner at the play table sculpting tiny animals with modeling clay. Cecilia, a mean-as-sin, little red-headed Orphan Annie looking kid, had come to school that snowy day with shiny black cowboy boots on under her pinafore. We obediently--and quietly--played with our clay. Occasionally I would cast a glance over my shoulder to keep an eye on Miss Watkins. When she was in the opposite corner, stiff back to me, I smiled and smashed and rolled clay with a little more enthusiasm. We had been playing for several minutes when my enthusiasm got away from me and I accidentally smashed a glob of Cecilia's clay animal. I immediately felt the sharp, stabbing pain drill into my leg. Cecilia had clobbered my shin with a cowboy boot.

Before I knew it, I was yelping like a wounded puppy and hopping around on my left leg, the one Mary Jane tap tapping. To my horror the witchy eyes were on me. I clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the yelps, and, biting down on the inside of my cheek against the pain in my leg, forced myself to stand still.

Too late.

The witch stomped across the room. Her cold skeleton fingers shut tight around my upper arm and pulled me back to my little desk. I was gripped by an unknown terror. Until that moment no grown up had ever handled me like that. My panic was so consuming I sat ramrod stiff, fought back tears and remained silent. Any attempt to try and explain what mean Cecilia had done to me had been shut down by fear.

By spring of that year it seemed a lifetime had passed since I was a trusting, carefree player, romping and running with Mickey, comfortably ignorant of witches in big old brick boxes. In this strange, new world I spent months of grim, dismal mornings trying to make myself invisible to the wicked witch. And it was because of this desire to be invisible that I suffered my most traumatizing moment with Miss Watkins.

Twice a day we were herded into a painfully straight line--Miss Watkins would loudly scold any child who wiggled out of line--and marched to the big bathroom. On this day I didn't have to go, but I went into a little stall anyway, enjoying the brief minutes away from the screeching voice, witchy eyes and clutching fingers. It wasn't long after we returned to the room before I was jiggling in my chair and pressing my legs tightly together. It was going to be a long time before we were lined up and marched off to the restrooms again, but I wasn't going to raise my hand and ask Miss Watkins if I could please use the rest room. I would die before I called attention to myself.

The minutes ticked off; I squirmed. But as hard as I tried I didn't win the battle. I began to leak...and leak...and leak some more. No matter how hard I tried to shut off the faucet I continued to leak. My bottom grew wet and warm, and I could hear the plinkplink of water puddling under my little chair. I scooched down and wiggled my bottom, trying to use my crinoline and skirt to sponge up the evidence. I failed. Miss Watkins had been watching my chair dance and was barreling toward me, brown dress flapping, brown button shoes slamming on the floor. Trying to shrink myself, I scrunched down into my chair, eyes wide in fright, hoping she wouldn’t see me.

She did. And she saw the puddle. Her face crumpled into hundreds of wrinkles, her hard brown eyes bulged and scowled at me, and her loud, shrill voice slammed into me then echoed off the walls: "BILLEE JEAN, have you WET yourself?" I buried myself deeper into the chair, eyes now level with the desktop. But I didn't stay there long. Her long bony fingers clamped into my dress, then deeper into my shoulder, pulling me up and shaking me straight in my chair. Shamed, I watched twenty sets of scared kid eyes snap wide, then blink and settle on me and on my growing puddle.

I hung my head and cried--this time unable to keep the hot tears from pouring down my cheeks--and sat in a mess of itchy crinoline and damp cotton for what seemed forever. Later, when the morning was over, I hung my head and cried the six long blocks home. Once in the safety of my home, I peeled off my soiled dress, crinoline and panties and tucked them at the bottom of the hamper. As I hurriedly covered my damp, shameful clothes with the other dirty clothes in the hamper I silently vowed this awful behavior would remain my secret, especially at home with the people I loved; it was bad enough twenty of my classmates had witnessed my accident. I could not bear to share my humiliation with my parents; in my mind, to do so would make me less worthy of their love.

Finally, summer came and I escaped the frightening witch's den and was happy and free to run and roll and climb and play with Mickey. Many school years have come and gone since I shuffled sheepishly into the gloom of Miss Watkins' classroom, and now I know she wasn't really a witch. She probably wasn't even tall and skinny as a tree, nor was she a hundred years old, and her tongue could not possibly have flicked flames at me. My memories of her today are those of a kid, colored by fear and uncertainty and clouded by one embarrassing morning many years ago.

Yet, even today in stressful, uncertain or unfamiliar situations, the apparition of Miss Watkins floats before me and I start to sweat. My insides shake, outside my hands tremble. Anxiety at the thought of leaking all over the floor builds, fills me and overflows--not into a telltale puddle on the floor--but into a deep-seated fear of humiliation that can sometimes cripple me.

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