Rose's Teaching Career Dies A Quick Death

Rose loved Gymnastics as a young girl. I believe she liked it so much because she liked feeling special. She would practice tumbling whenever she could. When she was tumbling she felt she was the center of the world. And as difficult as this is to admit for me , Rose was actually quite good at it. Before we had moved to Cambridge she had won a few ribbons and awards for it.
Geno and John felt she had taken it up because it made her a harder target to hit with the sling shots.
Whatever the case when we moved to Cambridge she stopped because there were no local tumbling meets in the area at the time. Then when I started in the Cub Scouts Rose got very jealous that I was getting all the attention. (She's irrational that way), and demanded that she get to do some tumbling. Dad told Rose he wasn't going to be driving her an hour back and forth to the nearest meets.
My sister is very persistent when she wants something and won't give up easily. She put her every thought into figuring out how to return to tumbling. Rose decided that the quickest way to start tumbling in our area was to increase demand among her classmates. Rose also thought it was a quick way to raise some easy cash. She put up some fliers offering tumbling lessons after school.
In early October of 1973 Rose got her first student.
She was a pretty girl, a year or two younger then Rose. She was taller then Rose with long brown hair and perfect white teeth. I had just gotten back from a cub scout meeting when I saw her in the backyard with Rose. I was 8. She was 10. Normally that's the kind of age difference that's hard to get past in third grade. But one smile from her and I was smitten.
I sat outside in a lawn chair and watched Rose try and teach her the basics of tumbling on a mat she had spread out in the back yard. Rose was not a nice teacher. Every time this girl would do what Rose told her Rose would yell and say, "No, no, no. That's all wrong." Then Rose would do exactly the same move. As far as I could tell with my unpracticed eye she was doing exactly what Rose was telling her. If anything the fact that she was a good student was making my sister upset. All I could make of it was Rose thought this girl was going to be competition if they ever competed.
At one point Rose went in the house to get a bottle of pop. The girl walked over to me and said, "Your sister's not very nice is she?" Wow. This girl was great. Not only was she pretty but she was a good judge of character as well.
I decided that this was the time to make a good impression. I looked over at her and tried to say something smooth. However I found I couldn't look her in the eye without giggling. She looked at me like I was insane and moved away. I felt very embarrassed. Geno could have done a better job of impressing her then I did.
Rose came back outside and the lesson began once again. I watched a few moments more and went into the house and grabbed a bottle of pop out of the fridge. I went into the living room where Mom was talking to the pretty girl's mother. Mom was now looking very pregnant. Her due date was a little over 2 months away. I asked where Dad and my brothers were at. Mom told me that Dad was work, and Geno and John were doing something after school. I walked back towards the kitchen and looked out the window at Rose's new friend. Rose was still yelling at this girl that she was doing it all wrong.
I felt very sorry for this girl and thought I'd go outside and offer her a pop. I was also hoping that I would redeem myself for laughing every time I looked at her.
I went outside holding a bottle of root beer. My plan was to wait for the next break and offer it to her. Before I could Rose told her to try another flip. Just as she was in mid flip she became off balanced and fell. Her knee impacted hard against her mouth and knocked 3 or 4 of her front teeth out. Blood poured out of her mouth.
Much screaming then commenced. The poor girl and Rose ran past me into the kitchen. Mom and her mother came running from the living room. Rose's friend was screaming incoherently. They grabbed some towels and put it over her bloody mouth. Everyone was screaming and crying except me. I just stood there holding the bottle of root beer not sure of what to do or say. We all got into the (formerly) pretty girl's mother's car and raced off for the nearest emergency room.
Mom kept telling the other mother it was going to be ok. My Mom always tried to make other people feel better in a bad situation. It's one of the things I love most about her. Rose looked at the poor girl holding a towel up to her bloody mouth. Her crying seemed to bother Rose who said, "This is why you have to pay attention. Next time pay attention." The girl sobbed even more.
Not knowing what to do I offered her some root beer. My only response was more tears.
A few minutes after we left Dad pulled into the driveway. He got out of his car and walked towards the door. As he was about to open it he noticed blood on the steps. Dad carefully opened it and stepped around the blood , only to greeted with more blood. There was a blood trail leading towards the sink. Bloody towels lay on the kitchen table.
"Good God ", he mumbled to himself , "What have they done to Tom this time?"
Dad shouted out to see if anyone was home. Only silence greeted him. He walked over to the stairs leading upstairs and shouted a second time. Still nothing. Mumbling curse words under his breath he headed for his den. He sat down at his desk and called his mother. Dad asked her if she had heard from my Mom.
"No", Grandma said."Why?"
Dad told her what he had come home to.
" What happened to Tom?"
(I still find it a source of great amusement that whenever their was any sort of accident in my house , it was always assumed I was on the losing end of it.)
Dad told his mother that he didn't know what happened but that he'd call her back as soon as he found anything out. He hung up the phone and sat in his office wondering what to do. He thought of calling the local emergency room , but decided against it.
Dad was still sitting behind his desk when he heard a noise. A creaking sound, like someone walking around upstairs. At first he didn't think anything of it. Then he thought to himself, "Someone's home." He got up from his desk and walked to the living room. Dad listened. It sounded like someone walking around in his bedroom.
"Helen , is that you?", he shouted.
Nothing.
"Who's up there?"
Still Nothing. Dad walked up the stairs . As he stood in the hallway he saw someone standing outside my bedroom. Dad later told me it was what Rose had seen in the kitchen that night a few weeks earlier. Dad said she was just standing there staring at him intently. He didn't jump or scream when he saw her. Dad didn't run away. He stood there himself looking right back at her. Dad said she didn't look ghostly or see though. Her hair wasn't blowing in some ghostly breeze, and there wasn't a weird glow surrounding her. However, Dad took one look at her and knew she was our"ghost". I later asked him how.
All Dad told me was that he walked down the hallway slowly towards her. She just stood there watching him. When Dad got close to her he carefully reached out and tried to touch her.
Before his hand reached her, she vanished.
Dad said he stood there for a couple minutes more before he turned around and walked down the stairs.
When we came home from the emergency room we found Dad sitting outside in a lawn chair. He had a very funny look on his face like he was lost deep in thought. In his hand was a beer can. Mom was still apologizing to the girl's mother when we got out of the car. With hardly a word back to us they drove away. Rose was still insistent that it was all the other girl's fault. Mom yelled at Rose to go in and clean the kitchen up. It was getting dark so Rose made me go with her.
Before we did we all went over to Dad and told him what happened. At first it seemed like Dad wasn't paying too much attention to us. When Mom told him that we were paying the emergency room bill he suddenly became very aware of what we were saying.
Dad's face lost that far away look and he shouted," Why am I always coming home to find out my kids are running up new bills?"
Not wanting to be around Dad when he was mad Rose and I ran into the kitchen . For some unknown reason I felt sorry for Rose and helped her clean it up. While we were in there, Geno and John came home. They asked what we were doing and why Dad was outside screaming. Rose told them what happened. They were upset they weren't around to see it.
During dinner that night Dad told us that he was thinking about finding another house for us. His reasoning he said was that with the baby coming we would need more room. Mom seemed happy with the idea. The rest of us were not happy. The school year had just begun and we didn't want to leave. Dad told us he would try to find a house in the Cambridge school district. We tried to protest some more but the look in Dad's face told us it was no use.
That was the end of Rose's teaching career. Dad couldn't afford anymore Emergency Room bills.
I only saw that girl a few more times. She never appeared as pretty to me as she did that first day. At eight years of age I didn't have to many rules about what sort of girls I liked. But a big one was that they didn't wear dentures.
I often wonder if somewhere that poor girl still thinks about my sister. I often picture her living in some dark apartment filled with notebooks all about Rose. Inside the notebooks are written stuff like, "Saw Rose at Walmart today. Rose must die. Watched Angel last night on TV. Rose must die. Had a headache this morning. Rose must die."