Mrs. Jackson was my primary school music teacher.
No hands in pockets (ever).
Don’t jiggle pocket change (ever).
Stand up straight (always).
You are not a windmill.
No one can hear you if you sing into your chests. Heads up. Up. UP. UP. There you go.
That’s the kind of teacher she was.
Her do-re-mi-so-fa-la-te-do scales made us hoarse.
Up and down, louder and louder, softer and softer, whispers and whispers, then louder and louder.
Every lesson, at least three times a week, she’d get all into it as if we were some famous choir about to sing for the Queen of England or maybe the Pope.
“Posture. Posture. POSTURE,” she’d yell when we marched in single file into her music room even if she was looking the other way. We’d pull our shoulders and break single file the line momentarily to disperse and ascend her squeaky choir platforms which half-mooned her piano. We knew our assigned places and made a “frightful noise” in the few seconds it took for us to reach our places. Jackson never had to tell us to be quiet, stand still, or to stop our fidgeting. Her conductor’s baton and behave-yourself eyes with a clear-her-throat little cough simultaneously deployed could have successfully commanded us to invade Normandy.
Mrs. Jackson had us take deep breaths and fill our lungs with fresh, frreshh, freshhhh air and hold it in tightly, tightleey, ttttightleeeey, until she counted to all the way slowly to 10 and, wait, wait, waaaaaaittttt, then let it all, aaaalllll, aaaallllllll out, out, out, as ssssssilently, ssssssilnetly, ssssssinetly SSSSSILLENTLY as possible.
Then, scales.
One morning while we were do-re-mi-ing to her heart’s content I reached for my bus fare in my pants packet and dropped it.
Horrors.
My coin rolled across her floor.
It rolled and rolled and rolled and did a little twirl and curtsy and a bow until it finally fell flat near a piano leg. Mrs. Jackson grabbed my coin and slipped it into her embroidered flowers-arranged-like-music-notes pocket on her denim jacket.
I knew I’d not be able to tell her how much I needed that coin.
These were perfect-storm-stutter-conditions.
Everyone knew what happened.
Everyone was quiet. She knew it was my coin.
Everyone – all 26 of us – saw her whip it up. The whole class knew she wasn’t pleased that my dropped coin interrupted her lesson.
This was old hat to us: If someone fell off a platform or tripped on a stair or started another verse to a song when there wasn’t one or if a boy forgot and started singing the girl’s section, we’d see the short, quick movements of her eyes. She would have stuffed all the you-disturbed-MY-lesson people into her little embroidered flowers-arranged-like-music-notes pocket along with my coin if she could.
I needed that coin.
My bus fare.
It’s that or walk home.
I knew no words would come out of me in the ways I needed words to come out if I tried asking her for my bus money and so I held back and left the classroom last, staring back at her, so she’d see me and say something but, by then, she was attending some other earth-shaking catastrophe. I lurked near her door at lunch but I knew I wouldn’t get my coin because she’d ask me why I was waiting and I would have to remind her that she had my money and I knew I wouldn’t be able to say what I needed to say and that the words I needed would lock inside my head.
When the bell rang at the end of the day and I came down the top stairs from where I could see over the fence to where the teacher’s cars were parked I could see hers was gone.
Now I had to walk from Durban North all the way to Red Hill.
The only way I was certain I wouldn’t get lost was to follow the bus route and so I walked up Margaret Maytom Avenue to the bus timing point. This was where the bus driver got out of his seat and reached up and opened the little door above the stairs and turned the 700 to 710. Then he’d move back to his seat and reach up and open the little door above his head and change the DURBAN NORTH to RED HILL. By the time I reached the timing point on the day Mrs. Jackson had my coin, my bus had long gone and the waiting bus was already full of high school boys.
I had my favorite bus drivers.
There was one bus driver who, if he’d seen me walking, would have stopped and called me onto the bus. He would not have watched to see me drop my coin into his little cash thing because he would have known the reason I was walking. I’d often see him let boys who had lost their money onto the bus. One morning he saw me running from our house to the bus stop.
I had already missed his bus but he broke the rules and stopped to let me on.
None of my favorite drivers was driving when Mrs. Jackson took my bus fare and I had to walk home.
At the end of Margaret Maytom I turned onto Umhlanga Rocks Drive and walked until I passed the big gates leading to Dr. Clarke’s house. “Umhlanga” is a Zulu word. In Zulu hl is like sh English so to say it correctly you say Um-SH-longer and I know all this because my favorite maid Pauline taught me all the Zulu I know. Dr. Clarke was our doctor. Every time we drove past those gates Dad said we paid for those gates and Mother would say, “After all he’s done for us, Ernest, he deserves those gates.”
Just like the bus I turned by Brian Gow’s house (he was in my class) which was on Kingston Road. That next corner was where Blackburn Road began and I finally passed the Montfleury Hotel. I crossed the street so I didn’t have to walk by the exact spot where a boy from my school was killed on his bicycle. Even though he was killed long before I was born I avoided that spot especially if I was riding my bicycle. “We paid for those gates,” and, “killed right there on his bicycle” were verbal markers of our whereabouts and why I always had to take backroads.
I passed Mrs. Berry’s house where Blackburn Road went down the hill and changed from Durban North to Red Hill and then I was home.
Took me hours.
It was a long enough walk for a boy to really need to urinate.
I didn’t know what to do so I just held it in and kept walking and I arrived home with a really big damp patch in the front of my school pants.
Every time I filed into Mrs. Jackson’s music room I knew what I remembered and It wasn’t do-ri-me.
Years later – decades later – I saw Mrs. Jackson at church.
I took a deep breath and held it in and counted slowly to 10 and filled my lungs with freeeesssh air right in front of her. Then, I told her every detail I remembered about the day she kept my bus fare.
I couldn’t help it and not a single word refused cooperation.
The words flowed and flowed.
We laughed.
Mrs. Jackson was amused that I remembered her blue denim jacket and the little yellow daffodil music notes on her pocket. I told her if she still had that denim jacket she could dig in that little pocket and release all the little kids who disturbed her music lesson and my bus fare.
She told me she was really, really sorry.
“Keep the change,” I said.
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