Desne A. Crossley: Old Fist, Daniel and My Mom

We called her Mrs. Fitzgivens to her face, but “Old Fist” was a legend at suburban Ralph Junior High School. She held court over eighth grade History and knew the subject well. Still, she shouldn’t have been a teacher, a “shaper of young minds.” Tall and stout, she always perched sideways on a high stool behind an oak lectern. Her skin was uneven, lumpy like tapioca. She often threw a cardigan sweater over a white blouse; the knife-pleats of her skirt made a partial fan from the seat of her stool. Her ankles were thick, and she wore neutral-colored wedge sandals. Imposingly, she would drape herself across the reading stand and pan the classroom with her hard little eyes. She prized herself on being smart and comedic. I tried to like her, but knew her to be petty, mean, and unpredictable.

Back in 1967, Old Fist had her class divided in two. The right side, closest to the door, was “bad.” Could this proximity suggest looming expulsion? The left side, near her, was “good.” Along this good side was a bank of sun-filled windows with a view of manicured bushes and the spacious modern campus. The bad side had a long, empty beige wall with horizontal windows way up near the ceiling. Any daydreaming from a seat on that side would have been an exclusively interior exercise. The student relegated to the very last seat was “the dunce.” A boy in my class named Billy had that dubious honor and might as well have worn a white cone-shaped hat every day. He looked confused at that last desk of humiliation, in the corner. Beneath the mildly disruptive playfulness, he was a bright kid waiting to be encouraged. Billy was in the wrong room.

Old Fist ran History class as though she was host of a popular reality show. It was some surprise to me that she made time to teach The U.S. Constitution and Moby Dick. What hangs in my mind is the amount of time she spent bragging on and on about her family, with its three generations of Stanford University graduates. According to her, the whole Fitzgivens family was intellectually dazzling beyond belief. Then, to add insult to injury, she would wave her arm dismissively toward the right side of the room and quip, “Of course, none of you will ever get into Stanford.”

I sat in the good section and wondered why she took every opportunity to shame kids and to believe that these slams were hilarious. Was she so hostile because she represented Stanford’s elite, yet failed to realize her potential? Old Fist was an iron hammer who made me loathe Stanford before I really knew anything about the place. To me at thirteen, it was where mean blowhards studied to belittle others.

Ralph Junior High was a white school, the first “White” school I ever attended. My mother made it her business to spend time on campus, without my knowledge at first. She drove a white Spitfire sportscar and would just show up and talk with staff in her warm and disarming way. She knew the value of finesse and even offered to volunteer. This was likely part of a layered strategy to guard the quality of my educational experience. After all, we had relocated from an all-Black neighborhood in Chicago in the summer of 1966 to suburban one in northern California. 

The counselors at Ralph were pleased that someone engaging, self-confident, and skilled would offer to tutor kids. I’ll bet that none of them guessed my brilliant mother was a college dropout. 

Mom was assigned to an athletic-looking blond boy named Daniel. He and I shared a few classes, but not History. He was one of the “cool kids” who smoked under a shade tree on a grassy slope near school known to everybody as “The Hill.” I didn’t really know him. Through my mother, I would learn that he attended a separate History section with Old Fist draped over the lectern panning for victims.

Mrs. Fitzgivens reportedly could not stand Daniel, who did not read near grade level. Mom didn’t share details, but still I imagined him relegated to the dunce seat. Mom was to tutor him in reading, without Old Fist’s knowledge. Apparently, some of the school’s staff worried that Daniel’s grades could degrade even further should this shaper of young minds learn someone cared enough to intercede on the boy’s behalf. The context was a mystery to me: Daniel’s lack of proficiency would have been obvious to all his teachers; why, then, had staff singled out Old Fist specifically?

My mother was careful to maintain Daniel’s privacy. She did say enough to make me understand, though, that some people of knowledge and authority were not to be trusted. Also, to appreciate that students at Ralph, while overwhelmingly White, were of many different backgrounds—like our Chicago neighborhood, in which race was singular but backgrounds diverse. 

I presume that Daniel and my mother first met somewhere on the Ralph campus, but privately, so no teachers could gossip. Mom didn’t mention their first meetings. What she did say was that Daniel could not read. I don’t know for sure, but think that he must have trusted her enough to take her to his house. Mom would note that there were no books at all there.

“Do you like comic books?” my mother asked Daniel.

“Yes,” he smiled.

“Do you have any?”

Daniel’s gaze dropped. He said quietly, “No.”

“Could you get your hands on some?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel shrugged.

Mom smiled in that trust-inspiring way of hers and stepped out on faith. “I always liked them as a kid, myself. Would you read them if I got my hands on some and brought them to you?”

Daniel’s face was bright, “Yes. That would be fun.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me what you like. I imagine things have changed a bit.” Mom’s expression would have been mischievous—one that would signal they would share this boy’s secret of finally learning to read in adolescence.

My mother brought him the latest comic books, and some vintage ones with strong artwork as well. This animated start to reading, with short text in bubbles, was just right. Daniel began haltingly, reading aloud a word at a time. My mother had chosen illustrations and story lines with Daniel’s spoken cues in mind. She was enthusiastic, like a cheerleader. Daniel devoured these adventures in the nurture of Mom’s non-threatening bubble, and his facility developed quickly. She brought a steady stream of magazines and books on various subjects at increasingly challenging levels. Knowing my mother, she would have slipped in a few car magazines. The point was to make whatever they were tackling together interesting to this boy personally. 

Counselors at Ralph were deeply impressed with my mother’s deft touch and delighted with Daniel’s progress. It was lost on no one that this Black volunteer mother-White disadvantaged student duo was a big deal, gossip-worthy. And, unfortunately, Old Fist would notice that Daniel was alert to what was going on in her class lately. She had leveled her hammer on this boy, who wasn’t staying put where she wanted him, near the door of expulsion. How dare someone slip in secretly and disprove her elitist judgment? One of her discards was thriving.

It was unusual for a cool kid to approach me, a square Black girl with ribbons on my braids, but one day Daniel walked right up to me and smiled. Without mentioning tutoring, Mrs. Fitzgivens, or reading, he said, “Your mother’s really cool, and I want you to know how grateful I am to her.”

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Copyright 2024 Desne Crossley