An Intimate Life by Cheryl T. Cohen-Greene Read Free Book Online

it out,” she would demand, and when I still misread it she would grab my arm and squeeze it so hard that I sometimes cried out in pain. Once, she became so enraged after I misread “can” three times that she lifted me off my chair by my arm and then slammed me back into it. I started having so much anxiety that the words on the page blurred when I tried to read them, which made my performance and my mother’s anger worse.
    What I couldn’t understand and what I would resent for years was that my mother was an otherwise compassionate woman. We had a neighbor Greta who was mentally handicapped. I had seen my mother be so gentle and kind with her. I had seen her insist that Greta be treated with dignity and respect. And it wasn’t just with Greta that my mother showed tenderness. She was a good neighbor who readily helped anyone who needed a hand. Why couldn’t she show any sensitivity to me? Did she know that there was something bad about me? I figured I must have been fundamentally unlovable and in need of drastic improvement. Trouble was, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to better myself.
    I was probably in third grade when I concluded that something about myself had to be kept secret. I had come to believe that I was what was then called “retarded.” I just didn’t show it like Greta did. I had to keep it quiet or I would never be allowed in the same classroom as my friends—that is, if any of them still wanted to be my friend after they found out. I would become a social outcast and an embarrassment to my family. Nanna Fournier was the only one who would probably stand by me, but I wouldn’t tell her. She might still love me, but imagine her disappointment if she found out. Certainly no one would want to ever marry me if this got around. On one hand, I thought I was lucky not to be obviously retarded. On the other, I suspected I might be better off if I were. Then, at least, people would lower their expectations and I wouldn’t disappoint them.
    At the end of each school year, I dreaded the terrible news that I would have to repeat a grade. To my relief, it never came. I managed to squeak by from year to year. Maybe it was to compensate for my academic deficiencies, but I soon became a real cutup, and at times a devilish one. I could chat with anyone and loved to talk. I was, by nature, an optimist and even a leader, at least on the playground. I learned that I was funny and had a knack for socializing and storytelling. I could reenact movie scenes, reeling off the dialogue in the voice of Natalie Wood or Tony Curtis or any of the other popular movie stars of the time. I could make my classmates laugh and they liked me for it.

    By the time I reached junior high, I couldn’t always hide my poor performance in school, and my friends started to help me keep pace with the rest of my class. Often before heading off to school we met at Martha’s Sweet Shop around the corner from St. Mary’s. Martha’s had a soda fountain and played the latest and hippest rock and roll. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Big Bopper—my friends and I swooned over them while we enjoyed Lime Rickeys and English muffins smothered in butter and jam. My compatriot Lisa and I would sit next to each other on the stools that swiveled all the way around and she would carefully go over my homework, replacing my mistakes with the right answers.
    Unfortunately for me, our morning cheat sessions didn’t last beyond the first few months of the eighth grade. One chilly morning as “Chantilly Lace” blared from the jukebox and Lisa and I huddled over my math homework, I spun around and saw two dark figures approaching the door, their habits swirling around them like smoke. As they got closer there was no mistaking them: Sister Agnes Genevieve, my eighth-grade teacher, and Sister Alice, the Mother Superior. Somehow they had found out about the pre-class homework swapping at Martha’s, and they put an end to it