All is well that ends well

1.                         All is well that ends well

Maria lived a few doors down from me.  Our street swept down into the town in a wide-sloping 

curve that overlooked the brown and green mountains ahead of us.  Since then a childish sense of joy comes up at the sight of mountain ridges and the face of a girl who loved the rain and sparrows and poppies.

“This is an agreeable place to live, once people get to know you” she would say about our hometown when I complained about the boredom and tedious atmosphere of such a confined place.

Maria was convinced that luck could be passed from neighbour to neighbour like biscuits and chocolate and that she was born lucky then  I was lucky too. 

Maria looked older than her age of 10, she was already stunning with her cascading blond her, her white creamy skin and she had deep blue eyes which would stay blue and had toned legs. 

She usually wore designer sportswear, tight tops and short skirts and looked more like a teenager.

Her body language changed whenever a group of young boys approached to admire and check her which they did without fail. 

This was her milieu, she walked about like an Italian princess, a bit stuck up and snob. And oh boy, Maria was spoilt, undisciplined and unruly, she felt privileged and acted as if the world owned her everything, she took everything she wanted and took everything for granted.

One thing I learned from that time up there is that if you stay somewhere long enough people will get used to you. I would cater to Maria. I would always come to her rescue every time the other kids picked on her and they did often. I did because it was obvious that no one else would and after all, I was the one to find a dead mouse on her doorsteps and get rid of it.

When we started school we came home in tears because the kids called her stuck up and troublemaker. She was otherwise fearless, except for our teacher.  There existed a common hate.

between these two I was often caught in the middle.

Maria would act up in class and she would often get the strap and made to stand in a corner of the classroom with her face turned to the wall

I always felt for Maria and was terribly protective of her and our teacher suggested I tutor Maria in her assignments. Maira was smart, whenever at home with me she could solve math problems,  recite poetry by heart, and know her geography and history, when she practiced at home with my help she was in her element and was even brilliant but back in the classroom like amnesia she seemed to forget everything she had learned,  she would freeze in front of the blackboard,  become speechless, bite her lips, bite her lips and then break down and cry.

Our teacher was frustrated and mean and often engaged in corporal punishment to punish misbehaving and slow children.  Back then there were broad rationales for the use of corporal punishment. School beliefs, based on traditional religion, that adults had a right, if not a duty to punish misbehaving children, a philosophy that corporal punishment built character and was necessary for the development of a child’s conscience and their respect for adult authority figures.I t was believed that teachers needed and had a right to punish children physically and specifically corporal punishment was essential to maintain order and control in the classroom.

Our teachers picked on Maria constantly as she was usually disruptive.  She would use the strap and beat her up in each and which way possible, causing her a lot of pain. On one occasion she grabbed Maria by her hair and smashed her forehead against the blackboard. 

Maria however got good results in writing compositions,. and so she made up her mind then to have it at go at writing stories for children.

However, problems linked with exposure to violent acts began to show.  Whenever children are exposed to traumatic events, their responses may vary.  Maria was no exception. She became moody and fearful over time.  She preferred to stay at home and had trouble sleeping and concentrating. Her appetite changed too, and she often complained of headaches, stomachaches and other vague symptoms and even minor changes in her daily routine could upset her terribly.

Children who are exposed to violence on a regular basis often experience the same symptoms and lasting effects for a long time sometimes for the rest of their life. Maria could feel emotional and physical ‘aftershocks” for months or years.  She could relive the event again and again in her mind and be able to function less normally in her day-to-day life..she could even become 

aggressive, violent and self-destructive.

Even though Maria was experiencing violence in many settings, at school by our teacher, bullying and harassment by peers in the schoolyard and what I also suspected at home by her oldest brother who might have been sexually harassing her, Maria still felt privileged and got off to being her natural self and centre of attention.

One day she confessed that the assignment she handed in class was not hers. She didn’t need to work so hard, she said, the truth was that she copied her older sister's compositions and handed them in as her own.   She turned to me expecting admiration and approval and I was stunned instead and replied quietly:

“You are to earn your marks like everyone else. I didn’t know you were a cheat!”

“It’s not cheating when everyone else is doing it”

“That does not make it right and everyone else is not doing it”

“People aren’t going to tell you are they?”

I wondered if our friendship could overcome her cheating on top of her superego but her telling me explained why she could watch an entire series of Rin-tin-tin the night before the composition and still get an A for her work. 

She wasn’t really bad, she was lively though she kept getting the strap for being disruptive in class and fighting with our classmates.

 “It wasn’t me mommy” she would say” It wasn’t me” Whenever she got in trouble, she blamed the other kids.

Her parents drummed into her to behave well st at all times and although her mother regularly marched from school to school to complain, nothing ever was resolved.

One time I was waiting for her at the school gate and saw two older  girls pick on her and push her around, Maria didn’t fight back, and brave little I rushed towards the girls but Mr. Pasquariello, our principal got there first, he grubbed Maria by the cuff of her blazer and marched her into the school building, while the bullies laughed, grabbed their bags and walked scot-free out of the gates

While I preferred to play mommy to my doll Maria preferred outdoor games, something children nowadays seem to do less enamoured as they are glued to their computers and video games as a fact kids today want the iPhone 11. We just wanted the Crayon 64 pack with a built-in sharpener when we were kids.

Maria often initiated games to get the frustration out of her system.

Her favourite games were hopscotch, tug of war, Catch Me if you can, jump the rope, fetch the frisbee and badminton.

In Tag of War, she would organize the kids into two groups. Each team attempted to pull a long rope towards them from each end and then all team members drew the rope together.

In Catch Me if you can one kid had to catch the other and whoever got caught first ran and 

catch the others like cats and mice.

In some instances, Maria would get creative whenever the game got boring. In Take part in ballon tennis for instance she would inflate the balloon and demonstrate how to put it up in the air and over towards you and you put it back and see how long your balloon “rolly” would last.

At one point Maria decided to use a washing line as a net. As the kids became engrossed in the game, Maria thought of making rackets out of two wire coat hangers and a pair of thighs. She removed the tight leg, bent the coat hangers into a diamond shape and squashed the hook into a short handle. Then while holding the handle push the rest of the coat hanger beneath the tight leg so that the nylon extended over the cord, she knotted the remaining tight leg around the handle, padded with cotton.

But ultimately it didn’t matter which game we chose to play what mattered was the quality of time we spent together and the memories we made. We were living happiness personified, the children jumping for joy, feeling the exhilaration of the chase and being chased. Looking backwards, then we were expressing joy unconfined.

Maria wrote in her diary at 10 years old that she was brimming with vivacity and heading towards a wonderful life that stretched gloriously before her.

One chilly evening during one of our sleepovers while lying in her new single bed in the wee hours wrapped in her duvet Maria exclaimed:

“I have never kissed a boy!”

“But you will” I replied “But you will kiss lots of boys when we are grown up”

“But I don’t know how I won’t know what to do”

“I am sure it all comes naturally”

“Can I kiss you”

“Maria!”

“Just once. And I’ll never ask again”

“I don’t think that is a good idea, I’m not a boy”

Then she turned towards the bed. By the glare of the night lamp, she took my face in her hands and brought it close to hers. As our lips met, I closed my eyes and we kissed.

 And itt was the greatest adventure of my tenth year.

 Thanks to books and music Maria survived those times. In music, she went to lose her mind and find her soul.

Eventually, she moved from our hometown to Milan to work as a correctional officer or prison guard till her retirement at 65.   During those years, here in Canada, I often thought back on Maria and  I often felt guilty for not having done enough for Maria, done too little of what was abuse. When I went back to Italy our teacher had died.

“It couldn’t have been soon enough” was Maria’s comment.

“There is life after past trauma.  There are ways to thrive.  If someone mistreats you, just remember there is something wrong with them, not you. Normal people don’t go around destroying other human beings.”  she said.

 I asked Maria what made her decide to become a prison guard and what it felt like to be a prison guide.   I was mainly asking because of the obvious immersion in constant negativity and conflict in such an atmosphere. And yes I did believe that such a profession is a bit susceptible to attracting the wrong kind of individual.  I wondered why Maria after having experienced such violence as a child would want to work in such an environment She said she had wanted to help and wanted to make a difference and help the prisoners. 

“ The short answer is how does it feel like to be a prison guard? “ she continued 

“Sometimes it’s disgusting. Sometimes it’s violent on occasions brutally so. It’s always stressful and sometimes tragic to the point I sometimes felt like it was leeching away at my soul.  But it can be hilarious and occasionally uplifting.  Above all, it never ceases to surprise, ,  it’s a front-row ticket to the weirdest show on earth and to borrow a phrase it ain’t for the faint at heart, but I wouldn’t trade the years I have spent as a correctional officer for anything.

 Being a prison guard I gained much greater insight into human behaviour, and became a much better observer of behaviour. I saw how criminals aged and the damage the lifestyle did to them and their families.  I lived it all  I saw it all, I cannot begin to tell all that I have lived, but I’ve learned to be receptive to all kinds of individuals no matter their walks of life, I’ve learned to accept people as they are and if they show respect toward me I can accept anybody for what they are.