High-resolution, full color images available online
Search, browse, read, and print yearbook pages
View college, high school, and military yearbooks
Browse our digital annual library spanning centuries
Support the schools in our program by subscribing
Privacy, as we do not track users or sell information
Page 28 text:
“
Oh, Emmy! Are you badly hurt? Let me seef' Emmy wrapped the bundle tighter, looked at the floor reminiscently, then said, Sure was some storm, all rightf' CYNTHIA BROOKS Form VI Yes, Doctor T THIRTEEN the elevator stopped with a jolt. Watch your step, said the elevator operator mechanically. I wished he woulcln't keep saying that. He'd said it ever since I'd been in the second grade, and it irritated me. I turned down the corridor and opened the second door to the right, the one with Orthodontist written across it in large black letters. After all, last year he had said I would have my braces off soon, and just last month he had said I was coming along fine. Good morning, sang the nurse, pausing in her typing. The doctor will be ready for you in just a moment. I sat down on the green chair in the corner to the left of the magazine table. The same magazines: Playmattf, November, Playmate, December, Playmate, January, Child Life, November, Child Life, January. The December issue was missing. I took up a puzzle. I couldnit put the little lead quintuplets into the pink baby carriage. I didn't care anyway. The doctor will see you now, called the nurse over the tapping of her type- writer. I walked ing the doctor smiled with a mechanical jerk as if the corners of his mouth were worked by strings, like puppets. Caught any snakes, lately? he asked. He asked me that every time I came. Not latelyf' I answered. 'lThat must have been four or Hve years agof, I sat down in the dentist's chair and opened my mouth. I couldn't tell anything by his face, it always looked the same. He tightened something and then washed his hands, and I got down. You're coming along just fine. Come in again for a checkup in about a monthf' Yes, Doctor, I said, starting out the door. Don't forget your appointmentf, called the nurse. I went back and got it. She always called me back. Main floor, said the elevator operator mechanically. Watch your stepf' CYNTHIA DAVIDSON Form V The Finger of Time TURNED the corner, and there it was-exactly the same. I was somehow surprised that it should be the same-three years had seemed like such a long time-three years since I had read the tragic notice telling of the school's failure and had wailed, But where will I go to school now?', I drew closer and looked in through a broken window. The room that I saw was bare and dusty, glass from the windows and bits of plaster covered the floor and streamers of curling, gray paper hung from the ceiling in ribbons. Time had, after all, left its ugly mark, for this had been the kindergarten, the sunny, noisy, cheerful kindergarten. As my eyes again swept over the depressing vacant room, they fell upon the only remaining clue of its former existence: a picture of Washington hung on one bare wall gazing sternly out across the litter of glass and plaster, and I thought absently how strange it was that it had been left carelessly be- hind and was now the sole reminder that here had once been a school. On an impulse I gripped the top of a window, swung myself through, and, ter- 22 THE FLAME
”
Page 27 text:
“
LITERARY Emmy AY, ther,s a storm comin' up. Think I better close the upstairs porch windows?', Oh, is there, Emmy? I've been reading, and I hadn't noticed. Is it bad?,' l'Well, never can tell, y' know. Good thing, though. Hope it'll break this heat spell we been havin'. Well, I'll go close 'em then. She padded over to the stairs and began to climb, pushing hard on her upraised knee to swing herself to the next step. She always wore flat slippers with holes cut in the sides through which one unavoidably saw her baby toes. M' feet gets hot, my bein' on 'em all day like I am, and m, bunions hurt. These here are the only things I feel easy in. I had known the storm would have to be fairly bad in order to merit Emmy,s anxiety, but when I turned and looked out across the lake, I ran upstairs two steps at a time to help her with the porch windows. Oh, Emmy, hurry! It's comin' fast, and it looks pretty badf' she said with a grim, head-shaking vigor, her mouth turned down and in at the corners. I could tell her emotion by the way she slammed the windows shut with even more than her usual decisiveness, so that I heard the light, ironical tinkle of a breaking pane. She stopped for a moment to look at it, then said, I-Iumph. Wind's comin, up pretty strong. Suddenly a deep roar, which had before been so distant that I had only subcon- sciously realized it, was with us in the porch, so demanding and overpowering that only part of me watched an oak tree crash into the porch, bringing with it part of the roof. Gawd! This was the first time I had ever seen strong emotion on Emmy's face or heard her express it. I did not actually hear this but read her lips, because the wind was crushing out all other noises to delight in its own tantrum. Emmy's emotion was not fear, only surprise. She grabbed my arm above the elbow and tried to open the door into the house, but the tree had fallen upon it, and it was immovable. Emmy paused for a moment, then grimly and wordlessly plunged her free fist through the remaining panes of glass and tore away the frames to make room for us to go through. There was a heavy dic- tionary on a table beside the door, I tried to hand it to her, but she knocked it un- seeingly out of my hands. When she had made a considerable space, she swung me around in front of her by the arm which she still had hold of and pushed me through so hard that I fell on the other side. Next, ignoring the hand I held out to her for support, she laid her own on a raw edge of glass and heaved herself through. She didnlt realize that her hand was cut, but the blood gave me sudden and surprising hysterics. Grabbing me again by the arm, she dragged me up off the floor, down the stairs, through the wrecked living room, and downstairs again to the basement. Here she stood still in the gloom for a moment, just a moment, then she slapped me with a barrel-house swing. At this I wailed at the top of my lungs, but Emmy must have felt that it was no longer an hysterical noise, for she ignored it completely as she went over my body for broken bones, taking up my arms and legs in her huge, flat hands with quick, convulsive grips. 'QHumph, she said, satished. What,re y' bawlin' for? Y' aren't hurt. But then she saw the blood left by her hand all over my body, and this time the emotion on her face was fear. She had pulled half my clothes off before I could make her under- stand by pointing to that awful hand that it was she, who was hurt. She looked at it with curiosity for a moment, said, Humph! and wrapped it in her apron. Mother came in a little while, and she was surveying the damage, after having re- assured herself as to my safety, when she noticed the blood dripping from the bundle Emmy had made of her hand and apron. TI-IE FLAME 21
”
Page 29 text:
“
rified lest someone should see me, hurried out the kindergarten door. In the little hallway beyond, the musty, underground odor that always seems to pervade deserted buildings met me as I ran up the steps and opened a familiar door. For a long time I stood looking in. This had been the miniature room. It was here that there had been the little semicircle of tiny desks cluttered with papers writ- ten in big lopsided letters. Here had been the piano with the middle CU which always stuck and the little round table covered with fascinating books about Disneyish animals and runaway streetcars. On the walk above the absurdly low blackboard had been pictures-streaked crayon and scrawled grotesque figures. There had been charts, too. The cat saw a mouse. The mouse ran away. The cat could not catch the mouse. There had been neat writing on the blackboard: Janey Lou is monitor for the week. Freddie is plant-waterer for the weekf' There had been sunlight streaming in through the windows, leaving golden streaks on the sand pile and the plants and the multipli- cation table and the goldfish bowl. None of these were left. The splatterings of sunshine sifted in through dusty windows to an empty, desolate room and left mocking patterns on the bare boards of the floor, the dingy walls, the swept, unfriendly black- boards. Depressed, I walked slowly from the room and up the stairs where I had raced so often between classes, clutching stacks of books or a dripping ice-cream cone bought at the corner store. The other rooms were all the same, bare and silent, smaller than I had remembered them, and all with the same shut-in smell. The math room alone had not changed much. The rows of stiff uncompromising desks were still there, and my eyes fell on a sheet of paper lying on a seat. The writing looked strangely fa- miliar, I snatched it up, excitedly blowing off the thick layer of dust. Progress Test IX--Comprehension and Grammar-Shirley Wright. Absurd to be sentimental over an old paper, but it was rather strange that it should be there-the only paper in sight. Strange and eerie, I thought, shivering. I looked through the other desks hoping to uncover other such souvenirs but found nothing but a dusty note: Jean's O. K., but her hair makes me sick. Why the heck doesn't she do something with it? I turned it over and read the terse statement, She had fleas. Putting them both in my pocket, I crossed to the closetiand opened it, half expecting to uncover a corpse but was re- lieved to find only several forgotten school books and some hangers. There didn't seem to be anything more to see, so I plunged downstairs to the gym. The locker room was deeply and frighteningly silent and so cold that my breath came in white clouds. I was stooping down to look at the curls of paper peeling from the walls when I first heard the cries. They were faint, as if from a long way off, and for a frozen second it seemed to me that I heard shadowy voices calling to each other in basketball, then the illusion faded, and I knew them to be only the shrieks of children somewhere outside the windows. But I hurried into the gym with a chilly feeling in my spine and the pit of my stomach. The gym, too, seemed somehow smaller, and the floor boards had warped sharply upwards in places, giving the appearance that the walls had stealthily grown closer together and pushed the boards before them. The baskets were still up, hanging limp and useless--no ball had touched them for three years. Suddenly I had to get out of there-out of the cold, hostile bareness, and I stum- bled up the stone steps as if pursued. Once outside in the glaring sunshine my fear melted, but an undefinable depression lay heavily on my mind. At the corner I turned for one last look, but some apartments had already hidden the old schoolhouse from view. SHIRLEY WRIGHT Form IV THE FLAME 23
Are you trying to find old school friends, old classmates, fellow servicemen or shipmates? Do you want to see past girlfriends or boyfriends? Relive homecoming, prom, graduation, and other moments on campus captured in yearbook pictures. Revisit your fraternity or sorority and see familiar places. See members of old school clubs and relive old times. Start your search today!
Looking for old family members and relatives? Do you want to find pictures of parents or grandparents when they were in school? Want to find out what hairstyle was popular in the 1920s? E-Yearbook.com has a wealth of genealogy information spanning over a century for many schools with full text search. Use our online Genealogy Resource to uncover history quickly!
Are you planning a reunion and need assistance? E-Yearbook.com can help you with scanning and providing access to yearbook images for promotional materials and activities. We can provide you with an electronic version of your yearbook that can assist you with reunion planning. E-Yearbook.com will also publish the yearbook images online for people to share and enjoy.