"You should ask first," Mrs. Waite said. She wanted to hear me speak so much, she tried
forbidding me to take the pass without asking and she soon saw that I would endure the pain of holding it in more than the pain of speaking. When she saw the agony in my eyes and saw how I squirmed in my chair, she finally offered the pass and I hurried out to do my thing.
Mrs. Waite was clairvoyant when it came to her predictions about my future in school, however. It never took my classmates long to begin teasing me after the start of a new school year. My reluctance to speak, to read aloud, to recite anything drew quick, curious and critical eyes. My behavior, along with my name, gave my tormentors a warehouse full of tortures to inflict.
I don't know how many times I heard someone in one of my classes say. "Her name's Ice because all the words are frozen in her mouth."
Once, when I was in the seventh grade, a group of zirls decided they would make me talk for as long as a minute. They ganged up on me in the girls' locker room after our teacher went to see about a sick student. They stripped off my gym uniform and held me down dangling my clothes around me and threatening to keep me naked until I spoke for the full minute. Thelma Williams held up her wrist and called off the numbers on her watch.
"Talk," they chanted. "talk."
"Or we'll throw all your clothes and your uniform out the window and push you into the hallway."
"Talk!"
I cried and struggled, but they were relentless. Finally. I closed my eyes and began to sing an old Negro spiritual:
.
"I'm gonna sing when the spirit says,
I'm gonna sing when the spirit says, 'Sing!'
I'm gonna singwhen the spirit says, 'Sing,'
And obey the spirit of the Lord!
I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray all night, All clay, angels watching me, my Lord.
All night, all day, and obey the spirit of the Lord!
I'm gonna shout, shout, shout
When the spirit says, 'shout, shout, shout.'"
.
"Shut her up!" Thelma Williams cried. She was in the church choir, too, and couldn't stand that I was singing one of our hymns. It actually frightened her and some of the others, who quickly released my arms and legs and dropped my things at my feet.
"She's nuts. Leave her be," Carla Thompson declared. It satisfied most of them and they left me alone for a while,
As I grew older. I became a little less
introverted. but I was never as talkative as the other girls in my classes. Once, when another one of my teachers remarked about my quiet way, a boy named Ballwin Noble-- who played piano so well he was the pianist for our school chorus-- said. "She's just saving her vocal cords for when it counts the most.'
I looked at him and thought, maybe I was.
Maybe that was something I did naturally.
It just seemed to me that words flew all around me as undistinguished as flies with just a few as graceful and important as birds. I didn't talk just to hear the sound of my own voice or need to talk in order to make myself seem important. Silence was often a two-edged sword. It worked well by keeping me invisible, almost forgotten when and where I wanted to be forgotten. Sometimes merely waiting to speak, holding back, made every word I said seem like a gem. People listened to me more because I spoke less, whether they were my teachers or my friends.
Finally, the second of Mrs. Waite's predictions came true. I was ordered to see the school
psychologist when I was in the ninth grade. Mama and Daddy had to come too. and Mama was asked to come back. She didn't want to, but the principal made her do it. I met with the psychologist a half dozen times afterward. Mostly he asked questions and I either ignored him or gave him as simple an answer as I could.
I was smart enough to realize that the psychologist, Doctor Lisa, had a theory that I was trying hard to remain invisible because my mother didn't want to be a mother and my existence reminded her she was. I had to admit to myself I had stood by quietly many times when I was much younger and wished I was invisible, especially when Mama told new friends I wasn't really her child. She'd lie and say I was her younger sister's child, a sister who was promiscuous, and she was just keeping me for a few years. She hated taking me places with her. and Daddy was often left home watching me while Mama went shopping or out to the movies with some girlfriends.
I could count on my fingers how many times we did anything as a family, especially when I was very little. Whenever Daddy offered to take us out to eat. Mama would complain. "What kind of night out is it with a child, sitting at a table with a high chair in a restaurant and either you or me having to feed her? We'll get a baby-sitter."