How Mrs. Higgins Lost Her 6-inch Nails

[sd gross]

:cheerleader::cheerleader::cheerleader:
HOW MRS. HIGGINS LOST HER 6-INCH NAILS
(A Tale of Courage))
by Stephen D. Gross

"Bernardo O'Higgins", she'd wheeze, not unlike a whale exhaling through its blowhole "was my great-great grandfather, you know" . Of course we knew - it was the third time that week that she had invoked the name of the Chilean freedom fighter from whose loins she'd eventually trickled down. Then, pointing her porcine snout toward Polaris, she would turn her head hard to the left and crack her neck. This kinetic exclamation point always made her lacquered and moussed bouffant quiver, and served to aim her chin at Herzog and Schechter seated in the last row. The two, six-foot-tall ten-year-olds would jump as if stuck with a pitchfork, and then they'd look at each other and cackle in relief.

Mrs. Higgins, wasn't a bad teacher, just obsessively vain, stuffy and full of herself, and with an occasional tendency to be a tiny bit sadistic. She was imposing; not necessarily fat, but pre-Raphaelite - what the Jews call Zaftig. Tightly corseted in tailored outfits from Saks and Bergdorfs, she found ways in which to contain her bristling mass with quiet elegance. Her heavily rouged cheeks and the juices in which she continuously fermented gave her an overripe appearance.

She would take us on field trips to the Museum of the City of New York and the American Museum of Natural History not just so she could point out those historical events which she found most stirring, but because they were only a mile or so from where she lived. Easily managing to conscript Angelo, our afraid-not-to-please bus driver, she would get him to go out of his way and drive through heavy midtown traffic in order to offer us still another view of the imposing palace off Central Park West wherein she lived. Most of us hadn't lived anywhere but the worn out lower-middle class neighborhood called Washington Heights, and none of our families could ever afford to live in an apartment house like hers. Our ancient, weather-stained six-storeys all bore numbers (unless they had peeled away or been transformed ), but her house had a name - like, "The Kensington" or "The Fotheringay", or "Rosewall Court". (They always had Anglo-Saxon names lest it be thought the wrong kind of people lived there). According to the information unofficially circulated by members of the P.T.A., Mrs. Higgins had inherited a lot of money and was "very comfortable". She was making sure we wouldn't forget that.

"Turn left on 89th, Angelo watch those creatures crossing there, Look out! look out! ", she'd cry, gesturing wildly toward a human stick figure being dragged into traffic by a brace of brainless Afghans some three blocks away. She would bellow and point at sidewalk montages that looked like caricatures from The New Yorker, which she envisioned as leaping in front of our onrushing schoolbus - as if they'd been waiting all day for us to come along and happily transport them, Pomeranians,Palsied and the Walking Dead, into the Next World.

"Head toward the Park, Angelo, careful of that squirrel", Higgins admonished waving toward the top branches of a hundred-foot high Sycamore disappearing in the rear-view mirror, "and watch out for those horse-leavings" (she was compulsive and suffered from syndromes not yet named).

Angelo, who had warmed himself with brandy before clambering aboard the bus, had, after years of flirting with disaster, learned to ignore her badgering. Taking Higgins' hysterical warnings seriously had resulted in a few close calls and had caused him to become distracted and allow his focus to slip. He had grown use to her frothing however, and with an accommodating grin, kept his attention on his driving.

Higgins abroad was not nearly as intolerable as Higgins contained by four walls. In retrospect, I believe she was one of those Lady Mac Beth types who suffer from compulsive-obsessive behavior which drives them to stubbornly cling to habits which the rest of us find unbearable. She must have believed that her body had an unpleasant smell, because she worked hard to cover up her imagined stink. It wasn't that she was unclean - she confided that she scrubbed and showered several times a day - told us all about her imported soaps and shampoos, too - but she believed she generated a "feminine" odor which she eternally strove to cover up. She would do this by employing various unguents, lotions, perfumes, and deodorants which, by themselves were nauseating enough. But she would concoct from them strange mixtures, which was not always a good idea.

Higgins would become very parochial whenever one of us erred in her classroom, and casual chatter was absolutely prohibited. She was very strict about this and would not tolerate superfluous conversation in her domain. But we were fifth-graders, prone to exchanging unpleasantries, and we were full of ourselves and not to be intimidated. Our class was made up of the brightest students in the school, and we all knew it and weren't apt to let Mrs. Higgins forget that.

One Friday afternoon in late spring, Johnny Konstantinis (he went on to get a law degree at Yale), was busily flirting with Dorothy Brodkin and whomever else's attention he could snag, when he was busted by Higgins. His indiscretion was such that a myopic deaf mute could have nailed him.

Higgins led much too busy a life to ever consider keeping us after class, so instead, she would order violators to the front of the room, and have them stand beside her. None of us could bear her "Old Ambergris" very long, so we edged as far from her as we could. She would reproach us and order us to close the gap, however, and then she would grip us by the biceps to ensure we didn't try our distancing maneuver again. Reacting to this painful intrusion, we would again attempt to move away, but she would dig in and hang on.

Johnny, having a hard time suppressing his mid-Friday giggles, aimed himself toward the room's corner but Higgins snared him and pulled him close to her. His normally-straight Greek nose wrinkled with displeasure and he made another effort to put distance between himself and Higgins' viselike grip. After years of torturing pre-adolescents, Higgins knew how wriggly they could be, and she used her amazing spikey six-inch nails to their full advantage. Johnny's embarrassed grin soon clouded behind his discomfort and he did something no one had successfully done before - he forcefully tore himself from her needling embrace and pulled away. Glancing at his skinny, tanned biceps he shot Higgins not a hostile, but a triumphant look and ran out of the classroom.

Amazed as we all were at the intensity of this student-teacher confrontation, we were even more stunned at Johnny K.'s hasty (and totally unauthorized) departure. After staring at the door through which he had exited, we all turned our eyes on Higgins who popped her neck a couple of times and then smirked victoriously. We didn't see her smirk very often, thank God, because it was one of the most hideous masks we'd ever seen - worse even, then the authentic New Guinean shrunken heads and the Haida and Tlingit masks we'd ogled at the Museum of Natural History.

As one, we silently contemplated Johnny's fate. Public humiliation, suspension, or worse, a physical reaction by Johnny, Senior, who was a head-waiter in a famous Greek restaurant and probably kept his underlings in line with the jawbone of a goat. We half-expected Johnny to sheepishly crawl back through the door, repentant and ready for his punishment, but he didn't return.

Toward the end of the day, with us all wildly speculating, Mr. Baldwin, the Assistant Principal poked his complacent mug through the classroom door and asked Mrs. Higgins to please stop by Mr. Rothman's office before she went home. "This is it!", we all shuddered, "poor Johnny - what are they going to do to him?"

I called The Konstantinis house a few times that evening, but the line was always busy and I was almost glad it was - I didn't want to push it. Maybe it was better if I waited until I was among my classmates before learning of Johnny's horrible fate.

He was already seated and holding court when I walked into the classroom the next morning. Grinning and joking animatedly with other early-arrivals, Johnny couldn't wait to tell me what had happened.

After wrenching himself from Higgins' incisive grip, Johnny had run out of our classroom and directly into the office of Mr. Rothman, our ram-rod straight principal. Squinching up his face as if trying to hold back the tears, Johnny rushed up to Rothman's desk and held his upper arm under Rothman's nose. Ringed by pink, crescent-shaped indentations, Johnny's maimed bicep looked like it had been subjected to some form of medieval torture. Rothman couldn't believe it when Johnny told him how the marks had gotten there. That anyone would suffer one of his students to endure this kind of corporal punishment was beyond his ken. He'd known Johnny since he was a babe, however, and had never known him to lie. So, although his face registered disbelief at what he was being shown, he didn't for a moment doubt Johnny's story.

During the next week, almost all of us who had suffered similar indignities were invited to Mr. Rothman's office to tell our tales. Before anyone could say "oh my" Higgins became the subject of an inquiry. And to our immeasurable delight, it was she who had to report to Mr. Rothman's office - and answer to the entire P.S. 98 school board. She wasn't fired -she had tenure - but she was severely disciplined and reprimanded, and made to apologize not just to Johnny, but to Johnny's parents and everyone in her fifth grade class, as well.

She never touched any of us again, but none of us ever took advantage of her diminished powers. Her haughtiness, like a balloon raked by eagles, had swiftly deflated but it wasn't our nature to gloat over her departed pompousness, her vanished arrogance.

As far as we were concerned, the sixth grade was around the corner, and Higgins would soon be history - but we knew that students that were destined to endure the foppery of Bernardo's great-great granddaughter would never again be treated to the ignominy of the haughty Mrs. Higgins and her six-inch nails.