“Mrs. DeBetta! Something terrible’s happened.”
November 1963
We probably thought Vicki was a gypsy, or had voodoo powers; there was something different about her. For one thing she spoke unabashedly to adults. True, she would begin her sentences, “Mrs. Debetta, do you know what?” like many kids might when speaking to their fourth grade teacher. But what followed had such confidence, worldliness and a just-between-us ring to it that we just couldn’t trust her, and Mrs. Debetta had more disdain for her than she had for the rest of us.
“Mrs. Debetta, do you know what? I read that interracial marriage is illegal in some states. Isn’t that ridiculous? It may be a sin but it shouldn’t be illegal for Pete’s Sake!”
“Vicki, we are in the middle of a class discussion about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.”
We figured Vicki just had to be full of it to be our age and talk like that, and plenty of times, she was. No one presented schoolyard superstitions as assuredly as Vicki did. She absolutely, positively, without a doubt KNEW a girl who had broken her mother’s spine when she stepped on a line. She swore that one on her mother’s grave, and that was very serious because then if you were lying, your mother would come out of the grave and trade places with you.
“You’re a liar, Vicki!” I told her.
“No, I’m not. I’m not a liar. I swore on my mother’s grave. How could I be a liar? Do you think I want to trade places with my dead mother? Do you think I’m crazy? ‘Cause I’m not. I went to school with the girl who broke her mother’s spine when I lived in
“Did her mother die?”
“No, she did not. You don’t die if you break your spine. You spend your life in a wheelchair. You’re trying to test me, aren’t you? You can’t test someone who is telling the truth. It’s against the Bible.” She genuflected solemnly.
She was like a human version of the National Enquirer. We left her alone, but she wouldn’t be left alone. And one day God picked her to deliver the worst news in our lifetime.
We were outside. Mrs. Debetta had us out on at the handball court just before lunch. The playground was empty except for our class. She was no one’s favorite teacher-- if she wasn’t pushing and battling us she didn’t feel she was doing her job—but at the moment we were at peace. Jay Johnson was unbeatable at our volleyball version of handball, but at the moment not even that bothered us. We waited our turn calmly while Jay worked his way through the entire class, methodically calling out the final score of each game and mercifully not calling out, “Next!” which we wouldn’t have faulted him for if he did but for which we were grateful that he didn’t. Vicki didn’t play. She told the teacher that it wasn’t a day for her to play. “I think you know what I mean, Mrs. D.” This was apparently sufficient. Vicki sat at the end of the bench with no regard for Jay Johnson or any of us. She had a turquoise transistor radio, which she kept pressed against her head. Radios weren’t allowed, but Mrs. Debetta, who lived by the letter of the law most of the time, let it slide this time.
“Mrs. Debetta!” Vicki cried out in a voice that was hers but unfamiliar, “Something terrible’s happened.”
Jay ignored her and hit a perfect slice a half an inch off the ground, but his opponent leaned down and picked the ball up. He wanted to hear what it was.
Mrs. Debetta was annoyed with the interruption. She turned to Vicki.
“What is it? You’re not supposed to have a radio in the first place. Give me that.”
But Vicki held her one free hand up like a cop stopping traffic. We waited.
“Mrs. Debetta. The president’s been shot.”
“Vicki. You shouldn’t make things up like that.” But I could hear that she doubted her own accusation. She wrested the radio from Vicki and tried to listen, then shook it in disgust as if it were bad. “I can’t hear anything on this!” she cried.
“Mrs. Debetta, I swear, that’s what they said. I’m not lying,” she said, and I realized that the unfamiliar quality in Vicki’s voice was that she was being sincere and was telling the truth. In the next moment, Mrs. Debetta face, which had been wincing from the frustration of trying to hear, suddenly changed to a look I had not yet seen on an adult. It was shock and horror.
“Return to the room, immediately.” We looked at her. “Go! Now!” she shouted.
I don’t remember going back to the room. I remember all of us sitting in that room without a teacher for over 10 minutes. No one spoke. No one knew what to do. When she returned she was a different person. Her rock-solid demeanor had visible cracks. “The president’s been shot,” were her first words. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t know if they sent us home or if we finished the day.
The last thing I remember of that day was sitting at the dinner table where we were all deeply quiet, Dad murmuring over and over that he just couldn’t believe it. Nighttime seemed darker that night; the view through the kitchen window where we sat seemed black instead of dark blue.
In the spring of that school year a busload of musicians drove by our playground playing Dixieland music. We ran along the fence, following the bus as far as we could, shouting and waving. At that very moment at the opposite end of the campus, a man with a pistol walked in to the cafeteria and stole the money in the register, a little over one hundred dollars. We believed that the musicians and robber were in cahoots, that they played music to distract us so that their partner, the robber, could get the hundred dollars. We knew this. We didn’t need Vicki to figure it out. We were the post-Kennedy generation now. Conspiracies were afoot everywhere we looked. Somebody killed the president, and then someone killed the man accused of killing him. Questions were left unanswered or answered shabbily. The world changed, and we had entered it.
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