Looking Back

              “Deborah, I want you to return to school and get your degree,” she heard the Lord whisper in her heart’s ear. 

“Lord, I’m thirty-six years old! I’m too old to go back to school!” she silently answered Him.

“Besides, it is even more expensive today than it was years ago when I went to University on a scholarship. I never should have dropped out, but the truth is that I was homesick and immature. I have a good job now, even though they have reduced me to part-time and I live with my parents. How in the world would I pay for the education?” Deborah protested.

“I think you know Me well enough by now to know that I have and always have had a plan for your life. This next step is critical to what will be happening in the future. And, I will see that you have not only enough money to pay for schooling, but I will provide all your needs. In other words, I will pay for everything. All you have to do is go back to school and get your degree. Trust Me,” He answered.

On the way home from work that afternoon, Deborah considered the enormity of what He was asking of her now, to return to school after eighteen years. When she decided to drop out of college after one year, she had promised herself that she would go back and finish at some point in the near future. But life had not allowed that possibility.  She began to consider what it would take to do as He had instructed her. She could probably still live with her parents and work a part-time job. That would take care of the cost of living anyway. But her issue was the nagging fear that she would not be able to keep up with all the younger kids that she would be in class with. Actually, it was deeper than that. She rarely thought of what life had been like growing up in Villa Sites, a six square block area in her city where the poorest of the poor existed while calling it living. Located in the inner city, there was no running water in the shacks but a pump outside. No indoor toilets but a john out back. Memories of living in Villa Sites and going to school came flooding back. 

“You’ll never be more than a ‘C’ student,” she remembered Miss Cecil, her second-grade teacher, saying to her. “You live in Villa Sites. Everyone knows that students from Villa Sites aren’t very smart. Go back to your seat please.” Deborah had been bullied by other students since kindergarten, but she’d never dreamed that the teachers would do that also. As she returned to her seat, embarrassed, she had fought back the tears then and, remembering, she fought back the tears now.

Life had been tough in school. Not because of the subjects or reading or assignments, she loved those and had thrown herself into them after what Miss Cecil had said to her.  In the sixth grade, her school principal had tried to deny her the opportunity to take an extracurricular French class with other select students, saying, “That class is only for those with a ‘B’ average or above.” She’d challenged him to pull her file. When he did, his face had flushed a bit and he had said, “I’m sorry, Deborah. I guess I just assumed you wouldn’t be eligible because you come from Villa Sites. You have an ‘A’ average and are eligible to join the class. But it will cost you six dollars. Can you pay that?” She had said, “Yes.” She had spent that next week working hard to earn the money. She began that class with the other youth who attended for two weeks, then dropped out. When the principal, who was also the French class instructor, approached her in the hall asking, “Why haven’t you been to French class?” She had looked him in the eye and replied, “I hate French. I love Spanish.” He was taken aback a bit and said, “Then why did you insist on being in the class?” Deborah smiled, “Because you assumed, I couldn’t meet your requirements since I’m from Villa Sites.” At that point, she had turned and walked away from him leaving him in the hall to think about her answer. 

As she sat in her car at a red light, her thoughts flashed to her Home Ec. teacher in the eighth grade, Mrs. Sullivan. The ‘why’ of it she never understood, but it seemed that when Mrs. Sullivan wanted to teach the students what not to do, she’d hold up one of Deborah’s projects and say, “Class, don’t sew this like Debbie Ann,” or “Class, come taste this and remember to not do it the way Debbie Ann has done it.”

People’s attitudes toward her intellect and abilities because of where she lived had challenged her instead of causing her to feel defeated due to their assumptions. Nope, as difficult as those times had been, the toughest part had been the bullying by the kids that she had grown up with. Those that did not come from Villa Sites.

She remembered how there were three boys that delighted in following her through the halls at school making farting sounds, laughing, pointing at her, and holding their noses. She remembered them doing that in the classroom and even though they were disrupting the class, the teacher never corrected them. She remembered the first (and last) dance that she went to as a freshman. It was after a football game at the high school. She was trying to dance along with some of the other girls and suddenly the ‘three stooges’ showed up and began their routine. Many kids stopped to see what they were doing, looked at her, then laughed. Humiliated, she had left the dance and never returned. She flashed to remembering the pain when she found out that her brother, Tom, who was only a year younger than her and went to the same school, denied that he was related to her. Her only salve for all those soul-wounds had been throwing herself into learning to make sure she was as good or better than the others. When she graduated high school, she was thrilled to discover that she ranked twenty-fifth out of around a hundred-fifty students. She was granted a scholarship and had used it to go to a University about 3 hours from Villa Sites.

She took a deep breath snapping out of the memories. Surprised, she realized she was sitting in the driveway. She had been so engrossed in those memories that she didn’t even remember the drive home. She turned off her car and went into the house. There were calls to make and logistics to work out if she could stare her fears in the face and do as the Father instructed.  She swallowed hard.  “I’m going back to school at the age of thirty-six! Am I going to be able to keep up with today’s kids?” she asked herself as she walked into the house.