Don’t know why I am all about the recollections today. Not even my own recollections…
They Just Put the Aww in Awesome!
This is a story related to me by mom, but I think it is just as relevant today, as it had been then. And the outcome — well, you tell me?
Marina was a star student. Funny, smart. Not a cheerleader material, she was a little too studious to fit right in — but if she wanted to, she could have.
Bit of a late bloomer, but towards the end of 9th grade, all the prerequisites were there: blond tresses, statuesque, toned, the laugh that could charm a tail off a donkey.
She was slated to graduate with top honors and go…well, who knew? Her best subject was math, but the rest weren’t far behind.
Now, interestingly enough, a lot of kids did well in math in mom’s school. No, nothing in the water the government put in to artificially raise IQs. Simply, there was a teacher in the upper classes that was… You know, how they say, when you can’t do, teach? Well, he could — he just CHOSE to teach, because that’s where his heart lay.
He had been married once, quietly divorced, no kids, and he was slowly rolling towards the late side of of 40′s. Bachelorhood didn’t sit badly on him. It was what it was, and he was a stoic. He was, basically, a teacher you never feared, though, mom said, when he did make cutting remarks — entirely for not APPLYING oneself, not for messing up where he could tell one was genuinely trying — he put Simon Cowell to shame. His wit stung, but his easygoing nature immediately soothed.
Towards the December of her last year of school, Marina developed what was initially thought of as senioritis. Well, why not? She had been long overdue. She mercilessly cut classes. Came in looking like she JUST dragged herself out of a wild part-ay. And though her grades remained stellar as could be, her volleyball skills and actual participation took a decided nose dive.
The thunder struck after the winter break. She never came back from her vacation. The principal was canned. If parents weren’t gunning for his ass, it’s only because they concentrated their attention on the equally dismissed (with EXTREME prejudice) bachelor math teacher.
That is to say, not so bachelor any more. Or, at least, not a very lonely one.
Did you guess where this was going? In the mid 60′s in a rather repressed society, it must be said?
Yep. Sexual harassment. Inequity. Sin. Teen pregnancy. Everything from rape to child molestation to…well, you name it.
The school board instituted draconian laws. Every teacher who even looked at a student with anything less than a scowl would have been put before an Inquisitor had it managed to raise one from the dead. The principal, a hero of WWII, well, he did find a job. If my mom knew right, supervising something vaguely zoo-related. Nope, not kidding.
The teacher? Well, he was never to work again, not in anything remotely profession-related. His victim just turned 18, so, no criminal charges were brought to bear. However, if a society like the one mom described, being blacklisted was a lot worse than not being invited to the better parties.
But did he end up regretting this? I don’t know. Something tells me, if he did, it wasn’t at all for the reasons his detractors suggested.
Because Marina put her foot down and married the man. And though abortion was legal until the end of 5th month at the time, she had decided to bear her baby. By all accounts, she had been happy as a lark. She, at least, never did have cause to regret her decision.
Neither the cause nor the time. Something turned horribly wrong during labor. Among students, the rumors had been rampant whatever the problem was, it had been man-made.
Mom didn’t think so. Her father had been a doctor acquainted with Marina’s ObGyn. He told mom the man, an upstanding man and a competent physician to the best of my grandfather’s knowledge, never said anything of even being pressured into anything illegal.
Things happen. Occasionally, horrible things. Marina’s death happened to be one of those.
The child lived, a healthy little girl. Her father named her Marina.
Her grandparents tried to take the baby away on the pretext of her father’s amoral behavior, and the disgraced teacher bundled his little girl up and one day, left the city. He hadn’t really crossed the law, so, there had been no APB, no road cross points.
What became of the family, my mom hadn’t known. At least, not for a good long time.
But decades later, she’d met this beautiful young woman many-many plane miles away, that was the mirror image of her high school classmate. The girl had been accepting a prestigious applied mathematics award and she had thanked her father, passed away a few years since, for working his butt off, taking the multiple low-paying jobs to get them by — and yet, always finding the time to spend with her and pass on everything he knew himself.
Married already, she had her handsome young husband’s — a colleague of hers — last name, and mom never came to her and asked what had been her maiden. But she had chosen to believe this had been the same Marina.
So, that’s it. Like I said, I haven’t a clue to to how to categorize the ending.
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