The recent dust-up between David Letterman and Sarah Palin has faded from the news, perhaps happily; in many ways, such behavior is a blip on a world screen of more important issues.
The incident, apart from political sides, however, did get my hair up; there is no excuse, in my mind, for sexualizing the behavior of a fourteen-year-old; even if Letterman meant the 18 year-old daughter—there’s no excuse for attacking her, either. It’s more than that Letterman lived for years with a younger woman, only recently his wife, or that he “knocked up” the mother of his own son out of wedlock. It is, instead, the acceptance of trivializing the exploitation of children, especially girls, for cheap, often sick laughs.
Very often, sometimes without provocations like Letterman’s slurs or the latest inhumanities against women from some ethnic group or even just some ‘loving’ partner, I think of two of the saddest three cases I’ve seen during my time teaching elementary students.
The first, when I’d only just begun teaching first grade, was a strikingly beautiful little girl. I’ll call her Faith; her real name was another human virtue that unfortunately has probably gone unrealized for the past sixteen or so years.
Faith wasn’t a good student, although she clearly was a smart little girl. As in most cases, it was not as much Faith’s fault as her mother’s; the child missed frequently, fell asleep when she did come, and seldom brought homework. In spite of struggling academically, she was funny, sweet, and popular with her classmates—a joy to have in the class, mostly. Her Halloween costume that year was a pretty princess gown, and she wore shiny little shoes that I let her take off after the parade, because she couldn’t walk in them. Halloween was Tuesday that year—I remember because Faith didn’t come back until the following Monday, and I had to refer her after the third absence.
When she came, she explained with the innocence of childhood that her mother wanted candy to sell in Nuevo Laredo, and that they had trick-or-treated for hours; even on Monday, her feet still hurt.
Later that year, though, she missed again—a number of days. When she returned, she was clearly upset. Her mother explained that her brother, Faith’s favorite uncle, had been murdered in front of the family. The school counselor saw her for the rest of the year, and she squeaked by, and went on to second grade.
I saw Faith next, except for glimpses in the hall or cafeteria, when she was in fourth grade. One afternoon, as I straightened up to leave, she came in and perched on a desk. We spoke about a school for a minute before she told me her family was moving to Dallas.
When I said I was sorry, she shook her head. “I’m glad,” she told me. “I’ll finally be able to get revenge for my uncle.”
I asked what she meant, and she just shrugged. “I know who did it. They live in Dallas.” She was so matter-of-fact, and her next words still chill me. “I already know what men want. All I have to do is give them that, and I can get revenge.”
I didn’t know what to say, I suggested she speak to her counselor again, I spoke to her mother—who was having her seventh child, all by different fathers—but I knew that Faith was lost to me, and probably to the world.
To this day, though, I wonder—pray, sometimes—that she managed to save herself from the life I fear she found.
Only a year or so ago, I ran into another young girl that would become a constant presence in my mind. Carmela was a retention, a girl who had gone to first grade the year before but was still unable to read or write. She was tall for her age, and outspoken to the point of rudeness—for the first few days, she and I didn’t get along. She’d been told she was stupid, she had no interest in learning—and I was tough on her until she started trying.
Her mother came a couple of times, when I hounded her—she expressed no interest in Carmela’s lack of effort, just nodded at me when I explained that she needed help. She needed glasses, too, and had since Kinder—when I showed the mother the nurse’s referrals over more than a year, I was told that when the welfare check came, she’d get glasses.
Carmela often missed, like Faith, and when she didn’t miss, she came in late. I referred, and the truancy officer reported being unable to find the mother and daughter at the address listed. I figured that Carmela, like many of our local students, actually lived “across” in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. I warned the mother that if Carmela didn’t start attending, I couldn’t be sure the school would continue to let her come; for some time, she attended regularly, but continued to come late.
One day she came in with her sandals in one hand, and ragged shorts and a night shirt; her mother, also barefoot, just dropped her in front of my door and raced off. Carmela told me that her stepfather kicked them out of the hotel room they were living in, because he and his friends needed the room to “do what they do.” My colleague, who had Carmela the year before, told me that the stepfather was known to deal drugs—that she had seen him once in an expensive truck, with gold jewelry, at a pizza place—and here was Carmela, in rags, because she was worthless to him.
Carmela finally started reading—and like many, couldn’t stop. As she began to succeed at school, she became one of my best students—smart, and curious, and determined to make up for lost time. She was student of the month, top reader for one six week period—she was nothing like the “stupid” girl she’d been told she was, apparently all her life.
Meanwhile, her mother disappeared from the picture, and she was shuttled between her stepfather’s mother and her mother’s mother, received counseling, never got glasses—everything that could go wrong at home did, it seemed.
Towards the last few days of the year, Carmela became unusually quiet and unhappy. She finally told me that her grandmother didn’t want her, and as soon as school ended—she was being taken to her stepfather in Nuevo Laredo. I asked hopefully if she’d be back in the fall, and she told me, tearfully, that she would not; her mother and stepfather were going to continue to send her older brother, but that her mother wanted her to help out around the house.
Last fall, I saw her brother on occasion—rude, a discipline problem—but safe and at school. God only knows where or how Carmela is—but knowing the type of people surrounding her, I fear for her well-being. I would give anything to find out that she was allowed to go to school, that she’s not being abused—even just, given the drug wars in Nuevo Laredo, that she’s still alive. No one should have hope snatched away from them, and she did.
So how are two six or seven year olds from impoverished, unhappy family situations like Sarah Palin’s daughters? They’re little girls who deserve to become healthy, hopeful women. They deserve respect and protection—as do all girls, all children.
Two weeks from now, I return to a classroom full of first-graders. Hopefully not one of them will haunt me in future years, as Faith and Carmela do. And hopefully, at some point in time, I will hear some crude “joke” about young women, and not wonder what’s funny about a life of dead ends and suffering.
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