penny jackson

THE NOTE

“Marilyn stinks. She makes me want to puke. Throw her in the trash. Throw them all in the trash. ” 

I stared at the words. They were written by Suzanne, a seventh-grade girl in my middle school English class in a prestigious private all-girls school on the Upper East Side.  It was a bastion of upper-crust privilege through which legendary families had passed:  Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, the daughters of presidents.  The students came from mostly Protestant families who lived nearby on Park Avenue and had multiple homes in locations ranging from Martha’s Vineyard to Bermuda to Paris. But then the school, under pressure, began accepting students of color from an organization called Prep for Prep.

Prep for Prep, which started in 1978 and still exists today, identifies promising students of color and readies them for success by placing them at top-tier schools throughout the Northeast.  Three girls from this organization were in my classroom. One of them was Marilyn, the subject of the note.

 The girls were outsiders not only because of the color of their skin, but because so many of my students had been in the same class since kindergarten. Most of my students sounded like characters in a Shakespeare play: Miranda, Juliet, Rosalind, and Helena.  The Prep For Prep girls had names most of my students and colleagues had never heard in the hallways: Aliyah, LaShawn, and Tanisha. Why did they have to sit at the same table together at lunch? They need to integrate, many of the teachers agreed. No one expected the white students to sit at their tables. No, these girls were the ones who needed to try.

What is so remarkable to me looking back is that was absolutely no teacher training classes or meetings about these new students. We were not informed of the challenges they would face, the discrimination they would endure, and how impossibly difficult it would be for them to enter this elite white privileged world. As it was, the school was a minefield of discrimination, all of it code. I knew when parents complained about “pushy” families, they were referring to Jewish families. The few Asian families were viewed with suspicion because other parents feared these children would be at the head of the class and take the coveted prizes or valedictorian seats, as though stealing them. 

Suzanne was a blonde girl whose family was among the wealthiest in the school. Their mansion in Amagansett was legendary and used often for political fundraisers. Although the teachers had no orientation meetings about our new Black students from Prep for Prep, we were very much informed about Suzanne.  She and her brother had been adopted from Romania from an orphanage. Her parents were considered heroes for saving them. If Suzanne had any issues, the reasons had nothing to do with her parents but the hideous orphanage where she was raised. We were to view her with sympathy.

Suzanne had many problems that would drain and strain this sympathy including constant absenteeism, the inability to sit, failure to do her homework, laughing out loud for no reason at all in the middle of class and scratching her arms so intensely with paper clips that sometimes her white school blouse would be stained with traces of blood. There were a few discussions with Suzanne’s mother but they were held behind a locked door with the school psychologist. She was a mediocre student at best whom I tolerated until Marilyn arrived in my class - until I read that awful note. The note revolted me, not only for its content but because it was written in the perfumed purple ink Suzanne liked to use, ink that smelled faintly of violets. Students were supposed to write in blue or black ballpoint, but such rules didn’t apply to Suzanne. That note literally reeked of privilege.

Marilyn, by contrast, was the sort of bookish, introspective girl I had imagined as my ideal student when I first became a teacher. She reminded me of myself at that age with her love of reading and daydream air. She had excelled at Prep for Prep. Her parents were Jamaican. She loved to read and wanted a dog like Lassie. That was all the information I had received about my new student. She did not sit with the other girls from Prep from Prep but off on her own by the window, where the leaves from the poplar trees outside cast shadows in the classroom. 

That year I had ordered Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings for my class. The books arrived, and I was excited in particular for the Prep for Prep students to explore Angelou’s seminal work. But at the last minute, an order came from above; a parent had objected to the choice. Instead, I was told to teach The Giver by Lois Lowry. It was a perfectly fine selection except that I wanted students like Marilyn to see themselves reflected in the works we read.

As far as I knew, Suzanne and Marilyn had never interacted. That’s why I was so surprised by the violence of that note. I had confiscated many notes in my classroom, but none so vicious. Stunned, I asked Suzanne to leave the classroom and to wait outside in the hall. I tried to continue my lesson, teaching vocabulary words for the PSATS, but I could not concentrate. I couldn’t forget the awful perfume from that purple ink, even as Marilyn, oblivious to the note’s content, happily copied the words from the blackboard into her notebook.

Outside, Suzanne was doodling in her biology book with that same purple marker. I asked her to join me to meet with the headmistress, a stern looking woman with short grey-cropped hair whose oversized tortoise-shell glasses brought to mind an owl. I gave the headmistress Suzanne’s note. She read it carefully. She placed the note on the desk and sighed deeply. Suzanne, who looked perfectly at ease in her chair, was gazing at the framed photographs of athletic girls on the wall in their lacrosse and field hockey uniforms.

“Suzanne,” the headmistress began. “Did you write this note?”

Suzanne nodded her head.

“Please read the note aloud to us.”

Suzanne picked up the note and, in a monotone, said, “Marilyn stinks. She makes me want to puke. Throw her in the trash. Throw them all in the trash.” Her voice was disinterred. She appeared completely unabashed.

“Why did you write this?” the headmistress asked.

“Because it’s true.”

“What’s true, Suzanne?”

“Marilyn stinks.”

I started to protest but the headmistress gave me a warning look. “I know Marilyn well,” she said calmly. “She does not smell. And who are the “they”?

I took a deep breath, trying to contain my anger. It was so like Suzanne to tune out the headmistress, to refuse to face consequences. There she sat in her too-short skirt with her unbuttoned Oxford. These were violations of the dress code, but of course such rules didn’t apply to Suzanne.

Suzanne turned her attention back to a photograph on the wall. “Is that Alexandra Gardner?” she asked. “We went skiing together in Aspen last winter.” 

The headmistress stood up and turned to me, indicating the door.  “Thank you,” she told me in a loud whisper. “Let me handle this and I’ll get back to you.

I nodded. I felt confident the headmistress would handle the situation appropriately. She was known for being strict. I imagined a severe lecture followed by disciplinary consequences, a meeting with Suzanne’s parents. But none of that happened. The note was never addressed again. I waited for there to be a faculty meeting so that my colleagues could discuss Suzanne’s behavior or see if other Black students were being bullied. But it was if the incident never happened. 

Whenever I asked to meet with the headmistress, I was told she was busy.  

I wondered if I was imagining things, except that when I confided in other teachers, they told me I was treading on dangerous ground. Suzanne’s parents were apparently the biggest contributors to the school. A new pool in their name was being constructed. I felt the slap of my own naiveté. I had known, of course, that certain families had power, but I never imagined that the rules would vary so much—that Suzanne’s note would go ignored. 

Meanwhile, I thought of Marilyn. Her mother worked at Macy’s; father was on disability leave from his job. I knew Marilyn would never use purple marker for her homework or wear skirts that were too short. She commuted ninety minutes on the subway to school, unlike the students whose chauffeured cars deposited them at the front gates—gates that had been closed to Jewish families until recently. The Prep From Prep girls were considered tough and street smart. They would survive. As far as the school was concerned, they required no accommodation.

I wanted Marilyn to feel encouraged rather than ignored. I tried to talk to her, but she was shy. I sensed she was uncomfortable with me talking to her alone in the classroom. She would glance at the clock above the door, willing the minute hand to move. Perhaps she was worried about getting in trouble. Maybe she simply wanted to get home. What could I say to her anyway? When I praised her, I worried I sounded condescending. When I inquired after her, I sensed her reluctance to talk. What I really wanted to tell her was that I was sorry that this was a school that chose to ignore racism. She had been told that she was one of the very lucky few to have a free scholarship to such a prestigious institution. Her mother at our teacher meetings had tears in her eyes because she was so grateful that her daughter did not have to attend the horrific high school in their neighborhood that was filled with gang shootings. 

For weeks, I wondered what became of that note—if it was crumpled up and thrown away by the headmistress or pushed to the back of some drawer. Like those copies of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, it was shoved out of sight. All of Suzanne’s issues were relegated to a similar drawer. There were so many things the school chose to ignore. 

But then something very terrible happened.

The news made all the networks and the headlines in every paper. Suzanne’s father had been found brutally murdered in his mansion in Long Island. A local contractor, who was having an affair with Suzanne’s mother, had been arrested.  She had paid him a million dollars to commit the crime.

Suzanne abruptly vanished from the school. There were TV cameras at our gates and reporters clamoring to talk to us. A faculty meeting was immediately arranged to discuss how to control the situation. Had Suzanne been aware of the friction in her family? Had she been a witness to any violence? She and her brother had been sent to a distant state to stay with a distant relative, removed from the world. Had any of the teachers noticed an abnormality in her behavior in the classroom? Other teachers remarked about failing grades, the inability to pay attention. But that was all. When I raised my hand to discuss Suzanne’s note about Marilyn, the headmaster did not call on me, refusing to meet my glance.

The case proved to be a national sensation. There would be countless newspaper articles, a book, then a made-for-television film. My students seemed drawn to this horrible murder and subsequent trial as if were a daily soap opera. The administration was on defense; worried its sterling reputation would be tarnished, for this was the sort of tawdry event from which its students were supposed to be sheltered. I wondered if the swimming pool Suzanne’s family had promised would still be built and what it would be called. Marilyn and her friends paid the event no mind. They continued to endure their long subway commutes and to turn in their homework in blue and black ink. The school term ended. I decided to take a break from teaching. I couldn’t shake the events of that year.

I knew that if Marilyn had ever broken a rule, the situation would have been handled quite differently. This was of course deeply unjust, yet I thought about the fact that whatever Marilyn’s family may have lacked in resources, they did not lack in concern for her daughter. If Marilyn had been called to the headmistress’ office, her parents would have been notified, yes, but more importantly, they would have cared. I doubt this was a form of attention Suzanne had ever known. I suspected her scratched arms and too-short skirts were a plea to be noticed—not by an expensive psychiatrist, paid a high hourly fee to make the problem disappear, but by her parents.

Decades have passed since I confiscated that note from Suzanne. I never knew what happened to her, but once during a visit to California I recognized Marilyn’s name on television network as a reporter. She came across as an intelligent, thoughtful woman who cared deeply about political issues. Did attending an elite white private girl school shape her character or influence her decisions?  I thought about contacting her, but what would I write? That I once confiscated a racist note from a girl whose mother murdered her father? Did Suzanne truly mean what she wrote or was she channeling what she witnessed at home into some sort of twisted hatred against another girl?

What I will remember is this: Suzanne’s note was written in purple ink. I can still feel that piece of paper in my palm; smell the ink with its offensive odor. The stink had nothing to do with Marilyn, of course, and everything to do with racism and privilege. It is a smell that still stings my nostrils, never to be erased from memory.

_____

PENNY JACKSON IS THE AUTHOR OF THE AWARD-WINNING NOVEL BECOMING THE BUTLERS PUBLISHED BY BANTAM PRESS AND THE SHORT STORY COLLECTION L.A. CHILD POLISHED BY UNTREED READS. HER STORIES, POEMS, AND ESSAYS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN MANY MAGAZINES HERE AND ABROAD INCLUDING STORYQUARTERLY, THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, THE ONTARIO REVIEW, LILITH, REAL FICTION AND THE PUSHCART PRIZE ANTHOLOGY: BEST OF THE SMALL PRESSES. PRIZES INCLUDE A MACDOWELL COLONY FELLOWSHIP AND THE ELIZABETH JANEWAY PRIZE IN FICTION FROM BARNARD COLLEGE. JACKSON IS ALSO A PLAYWRIGHT AND SCREENWRITER. WWW.PENNYBRANDTJACKSON.COM