Freeze tag
Joan Hawkins
Everyone my age and older
has an assassination story. “Where were you? What were you doing,
thinking, wearing, when you heard that John Kennedy had been shot?” That story.
I was a child, so my assassination tale
begins on the playground and ends in my parents’ living room. And because I was a child, my story is tangled
up with memories of girl culture, 5th grade crushes, Catholic
School-- all the other falls from innocence.
It was November. And in November, the game was freeze tag;
sometimes called “statues.” We played in
teams. If a member of the opposing team
tagged you, you “froze” and stayed motionless in place, until a member from
your team set you free. All the 4th, 5th and 6th
grade girls played, and at the height of the game we spanned the entire
courtyard. Running or frozen in place,
we dominated all recess play. Every
year, the boys tried to hold their ground; every year they retreated.
That particular November,
they surrendered quickly. On the first day we played, Michael Sarotto picked up
his team’s kick ball and whistled to the other captains. Pushing and shoving as
they walked across the courtyard, they retreated to the lower level where they
knew we would not go. The yard was ours.
Freeze tag had a
complicated structure. There was a
captain and a chief tagger and someone who led the rescue operation for every
team. These positions shifted daily,
determined at the start of every game by a counting ritual. “One potato, two potato, three potato, four;
five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.”
We counted down 5 times, as we streamed out into the yard. Five times.
Then we knew what to do. Between All Saints and Thanksgiving, we played
every day. Before and after school. At recess.
At lunch. Saturday afternoons.
And we learned exactly how to throw our voices for maximum effect in the wide
open schoolyard. “One potato, two
potato, three potato, four.” Just like the witches in Macbeth.
It was near the end of
the season, the Friday before Thanksgiving break. The fog had rolled in early and clung to the
purple iceplant hills surrounding the schoolyard. Damp, thick-grey and cold, it called for
different play tactics. Different freeze
tag strategies. And that’s what I was thinking about. Heresy, since I was in
Church. The last school Mass before vacation, and Father was taking his time.
He had lit the censer and the sweet smell of frankincense
filled the overheated chapel. “In nomine
patris et filii et spiritus sancti,” he chanted, making the sign of
the cross over his fidgety congregation.
And then the Church doors swung open.
I remember how welcome the blast of fresh air felt; how we knelt a
little straighter at the promise of something new.
Sister Joanna, strode up the center aisle of the
Church, moving so quickly that her rosary beads chattered at her side. She did
not take Holy Water; she did not genuflect in front of the Tabernacle. We children started looking around, turning
our heads to catch sight of our friends. Something was clearly wrong.
“Father!” Her voice was sharp. It was her schoolyard voice. The voice she used to break up fights and
restore order. Not the deferential voice
she habitually used when addressing a priest. “Father! President Kennedy has
been shot.”
They say that time slows
down when you’re in shock. For me, that
came later—the suddenly slow-mo depression of time. At the moment I heard the news, everything
seemed to speed up. I remember hearing
someone gasp, hearing someone else bump against a pew. Father must have
questioned Sister Joanna because I recall scattered phrases, all delivered in
that crisp staccato tone. A mother had
called. Yes, she had checked the news; Walter Cronkite, hospital. Jackie is
okay. Johnson.
Handing the incense
burner to an altar boy, Father knelt down in the Church aisle, and asked Sister
for her rosary. “The Sorrowful
Mysteries, children.” His voice twisted so with grief, we could barely
understand him. “The First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden.” On the
left side of the Church, we girls fumbled for the prayer beads we always
carried. Taught by Dominicans and
Jesuits, we had learned mystical skepticism. We could say the rosary at a
moment’s notice, but we weren’t always convinced it would work. On the right
side of the Church, a group of 5th grade boys nervously cracked
their knuckles as we worked our way through the prayer cycle. One Our Father, ten Hail Marys, one Glory be
to the Father.
“The Second Sorrowful
Mystery. The Scourging at the Pillar.”
On through the Passion we prayed, until we reached the Crucifixion. This
was the part of the Rosary we said at funerals and wakes. The most sadistic and
brutal part of the liturgy, it was supposed to speak to us of redemption. But we kids understood it as pure horror; and
that Friday we all hoped Father would continue, would move on to the Glorious
Mysteries which begin with the Resurrection.
He did not. He blessed us and let us go with the death of Christ.
“Is the President dead?”
Vicky Stringer asked me as we left Church.
“I don’t know,” I answered. Yvonne
Fernandez was still praying the Rosary—whispering in Spanish—when Sister Ramona
shooed us back to our classrooms. We
were to get our coats and go out into the playground for lunch.
Nobody could have had a
drearier picnic. Seated on the benches
that framed the schoolyard, we shivered against the fog and watched the gulls
swoop in. They were aggressive birds and
we had learned to eat quickly and defensively, guarding our sandwiches as
ferociously as wolf pups. But this particular Friday, we had no heart for the fight.
One of the older boys threw a rock. The birds scattered and we clutched our unopened
lunches until the first bell rang— The signal that we could get up and go play.
This was the moment I had
been looking forward to. The moment when
we girls would stream into the courtyard, chanting “one potato, two potato, three potato, four.” But that
afternoon, the schoolyard was quiet. A
few of us got up from the benches and huddled together for warmth. Maria Sarotto had some Italian chocolate, so
we nibbled squares of Perugina, the only lunch I remember eating that day. Some boys from the Honor Guard paced
nervously around the flagpole, in case they were needed. It was a relief when the second bell rang and
we could trudge back to our classrooms.
That particular year, my
classroom teacher was Mrs. O’Rourke. One
of the few lay teachers at Our Lady of Mercy School, she was popular with the
students. She wore eyeliner and pointed
high heeled shoes and smart, sheath dresses that just barely grazed the top of
her knees. She was strict as hell. But she had been
places and read things, and when she opened her purse we saw cigarettes and
theater playbills inside. When we
studied the Constitutional Convention, she told us about The Enlightenment,
writing the arch-heretic Voltaire’s name on the blackboard in large, backward
sloping letters. In the Dominican-Jesuit rivalry that frequently split our
school, Mrs. O sided with the Jesuits. She was fundamentally a political
creature. Or perhaps just a renegade. In October, she had brought her portable tv
set from home so the class could watch Sandy Koufacs pitch the World Series. “Physical education,” she told us, with a wink
and a smile. If anyone could help
us make sense of that terrible day—could weave the events into a story that had
drama and reason-- it would be her.
She was leaning against
her desk-- smoking, listening to the radio, and our arrival startled her. Tamping out her cigarette, she replaced the
butt carefully in the red box still open on her desk. For a moment she didn’t
say anything, just stood quietly. We
always prayed when we came in from recess, and when she didn’t speak, we
thought she was trying to find the right formula, the appropriate “help us
through this assassination” prayer.
Because in the few minutes that we had been in the classroom, we had heard
just enough from the tinny school radio.
President Kennedy was dead.
Several children began
crying. Mrs. O closed her eyes a moment,
and then finally spoke. We would not be having lessons that afternoon, she told
us. She expected that we would be dismissed early. Until then, we would listen to the radio. We
could say our prayers silently to ourselves.
If we needed something to do, we could draw quietly, or read, or—write
something.
Then she walked behind her
desk and sat down. Turning her body away
from us, she faced the windows and closed herself up like a fan. I think she
poured some coffee out from her thermos, because the dark thick smell of it
mingling with the cigarette smoke reminded me of home. Calmed me a little. Some
girls took out their rosary beads and began silently praying. Cindy Sarubbi
twisted her long thick hair into a braid, and frowning seriously began an oil
pastel drawing of a strange, beautiful bird.
Every time the radio announcer said that President Kennedy had died, she
returned to the beak and sharpened it with quick, savage strokes, turning her
bird of paradise into a predator. My friend Maria was crying.
I couldn’t pray or
draw. And I certainly couldn’t write
anything. Turning around in my desk, I
looked out the classroom windows and tried to concentrate on the radio. But there were so many words that I didn’t
understand. I glanced over at Mrs. O’Rourke.
Long black ribbons of mascara snaked down her cheeks. She was looking out the windows toward the
sea. I was sitting parallel to her, but
I wasn’t looking at the ocean. I was
looking in the opposite direction, watching the flagpole. The captains of the Honor Guard were standing
there, talking. The Honor Guard were the
boys who raised and lowered the flag every school day, brought it in when it
rained, and folded it with great ceremony out on the Courtyard. They had a protocol for everything. I watched out the window as they finally put
on their tricolor sashes, bowed their heads, crossed themselves and said a
prayer; then they lowered the flag to half-mast. Even then I knew that Greg
Santini, the senior captain, had made up that ceremony on the fly; because
nobody teaches an 8th grade boy the proper flag ritual for a president’s
murder. That’s when I began to cry.
I don’t know how long we
stayed like that. I must have dozed a
little, because the crackle of the classroom PA system startled me. Then Sister Joanna’s voice, tired and raspy, announced
that school would be dismissed early. Mrs. O’Rourke stood up, and began erasing the
blackboard. “No homework this weekend,” she said. Then looking directly at me,
the one latch key child in the class, she asked if I had somewhere to go. “It’s my mother’s day off,” I told her
quickly. That was a half-lie. My mother was often called to work on
Fridays. But even if Mom weren’t home, I knew I’d be fine. On that most terrible of days, Maria’s family
would gladly take me in; and I couldn’t bear to have Mrs. O’Rourke and possibly
Sister Joanna fussing over me. I wanted to leave.
Usually we walked home in
clusters of twos and threes. But this
particular Friday a large group of us girls banded together, walked down the
school stairs and through the empty cul-de-sac.
As we turned onto the first real street leading away from the school, we
saw worried mothers standing in their doorways.
Cardigan sweaters draped over their shoulders, they were looking toward
Our Lady of Mercy. Mrs. Sarubbi and Mrs.
Perez were standing together. “Finally!”
I heard Mrs. Sarubbi say. “What were
those women thinking?” And then calling after me, as Cindy went inside—“J! if your mother’s not home, come back.”
One by one, my friends
peeled away, reabsorbed into the close muffled world of suburban childhood. After Yvonne’s house, Maria and I walked
quietly together. We lived next door to
each other, about two miles from the school.
As we cut across the Protestant neighborhood, the streets seemed
strangely silent. The public school children
were already home, and no mothers stood in the doorways calling anxiously to
their kids and to one another. Then I heard the sound of Michael Sarotto’s
bicycle. I knew it was his, because he’d
stuck a playing card in his back wheel, so his bike made a funny clicking
noise, like the wheels of chance at the Church bazaar. Maria and I slowed down, but didn’t turn
around. Just let him pull up beside us. Michael was Maria’s twin brother, and usually
he would have ridden past with a rude comment or a thump on the shoulder. But that particular day, he coasted to a
stop, and walked with us in that easy, loose-jointed, shuffling way he had. Pulling us back into the Catholic quarter
where we lived.
As we turned the final
corner leading to our street, we heard our fathers’ trucks. The roaring sound
of standard transmissions pulling big equipment. The sudden cut-out as someone’s
dad shifted up or shifted down. Our fathers were Italian-American, Hispanic, and
Irish-American men who worked two, sometimes three jobs so their families could
live in the suburbs and their children could go to Catholic School. They never took a sick day; in fact, they
were rarely home. They left early for
work and came home late. We kids saw them at dinner sometimes, on Saturday nights
and Sundays. Occasionally on Friday
nights. Never in the middle of a
weekday. Not even on Christmas Eve or
Good Friday. But now all the men were coming home, in one long mournful
procession. And the entire neighborhood seemed to rumble under the sound of so
many trucks. I stopped walking. I must have looked worried, because Michael
gently punched my arm.
My dad’s car was in the
driveway, and the kitchen was brightly lit.
Both my parents were home. Michael
swung his right leg back over his bicycle bar.
“I’m serving Mass tomorrow,” he told me.
“Ask your mom if you can go to Church.”
Then he was gone. Maria nudged me
and smiled. “J and Michael sitting in a
tree,” she chanted. Then she veered off to her own house.
In the kitchen, my mom was
at the stove, heating tomato soup and making coffee. Her face was startlingly
pale and there were dark smudges around her large green cat’s eyes. Everything
about her sagged, the way it did when she’d worked a double shift.
Taking my soggy lunch bag,
she smoothed my hair back from my face and kissed me. “Did you eat anything at all?” she asked
me.
“A little chocolate.”
“I’ll fix you a mug of
soup,” she said. “It’ll make you feel
better. Go wash your hands and change your clothes.” I went into the living
room first, to kiss my dad. Hunched
forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, he was watching the news. When I
came in, he leaned back and opened an arm for a hug. “Hi Baby,” he said, pulling me close. “The public school kids were home an hour
ago. What kept you?”
“I don’t know, Dad.” I
breathed in the smell of him—aftershave and cigarette smoke and a dark pungent
smell that I associated with work.
“I don’t think they knew what to do.”
That was verging on disrespecting a grown-up and I knew it. But he didn’t yell. Just pulled back a
little, and looked at me. “None of us
know what to do, Honey. Go take your
coat off, then come sit with me.”
Tossing my book bag and
coat on the bed, I kicked off my shoes.
Then I lay back across the chenille bedspread and looked at the star
chart my mother had finally allowed me to tack up on the ceiling. When I think of that afternoon now, I’m
reminded of the scene in Vertigo
where Madeleine stands in front of a redwood tree. “Here I was born and there I died.” Maria and I had stumbled on the film while
watching TV one rainy afternoon. We immediately
recognized it as contraband and turned the volume down as far as we possibly
could, scooting up much too close to the TV set into the zone our mothers said
would hurt our eyes. The end scene—Judy’s
death and a nun ringing the Church bell—haunted us for weeks. “You let him change you, didn’t you?” we
would whisper to one another, barely understanding what Scotty meant, but getting
the shuddery jealous tone of it all right.
My pet turtle began
thumping his head against the terrarium. I usually gave him a treat when I came
home from school. A lettuce leaf or a little
raw hamburger my mother had saved from the previous night’s dinner. I didn’t want to go back to the kitchen—so I
just gave him a little commercial pet food and stroked his leather-hard head. “When we eat dinner,” I whispered, “I’ll
bring you something good then.” Carefully replacing the screen covering his
terrarium, I went back into the living room.
Mom had brought out a
tray with coffee, crackers and mugs of steaming hot tomato soup. Some ginger ale for me. As though I had stomach flu. I sat
cross-legged on the floor by my dad’s chair.
I remember he turned his lounger and wrapping his legs around my body,
scooted me across the hardwood floor, so that I rested right in front of him,
nestled cross-legged between his knees.
My mother scolded me for not changing out of my school uniform, but
there was no heart in it, and I knew I could just stay put. She handed my dad a cup of coffee and some
soup. And then reminding me to be
careful, set my snack down on the floor. Balancing the tray like the
experienced waitress she was, she walked over to the couch and stretched out
her legs.
I know that later that
evening there must have been dinner. I
would have put on my pajamas and gone to bed.
And the next morning there would have been breakfast. Perhaps I met Michael at Church. But between that afternoon and the Monday of
John Kennedy’s funeral, I remember very few details. Just that image—Dad in his chair, me sitting
cross-legged, sipping soup at his feet.
Mom stretched out on the sofa. All
of us frozen in place, watching TV.
Waiting, it seemed, for someone from our team to come set us free.
