“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” 1 Samuel 16:7
I remember Jessie.
I remember her so well that she still lives in me even though I have not spoken to her since the end of the sixth grade. I met her when I entered Field Elementary School in South Minneapolis. I had just transferred from another school and was very conscious of everyone around me and how they perceived me. Furthermore, I had just arrived in the United States not more than a year before. I still had problems adjusting to the new country and my self-esteem was very low. I was afraid of a lot of my new classmates and almost everything else. The only people I trusted at that time were the people in my new foster family.
However, I quickly realized that I was not the one whose attention was focused on the most. It was Jessie. It was obvious that she was nothing like the rest of us. She sat in the last row with her nose centimeters from the pages of her book. She rarely looked up and never participated in any classroom discussions. The first day I was there, I studied the various students and it was obvious who the popular child in the class was and who her followers were.
The first day I was there, I sat in the back row of the class and nervously observed the day unfold before me. I said not a word, and no one said a word to me except my new teacher, Ms. Stephan. Ms. Stephan was an amazing teacher. She commanded respect while lovingly teaching us the three R’s. The most unique thing about Ms. Stephan was that while she was a little girl she had lost her right index finger. Her father had accidentally chopped it off with his ax. Since she didn’t have her index finger, she often used her middle finger to point at things and that always made us giggle.
As the year went on and as I got to know more of the children and began to make friends I realized that Jessie was not making any friends. In fact, it seemed she was the butt of all jokes. This puzzled me. I watched her choose her place far from everyone. I listened to what the other children said about her and it became all too clear why she was where she was. She was almost blind and she wore really thick glasses which made her eyes look like bulging fish eyes. I thought she looked different but I didn’t think anything of it.
One day our teacher, Ms Stephan, read us a story about a boy and his love of music. Ms. Stephan asked us what our favorite pieces of music were. A lot of the children shared Top 40 songs as their favorite until she got to Jessie.
“Jessie, what is your favorite song?” The class all stared at her as we intently listened to her answer.
“Amazing Grace. My church sang it last night during the midweek mass and I loved it.”
“Why do you like it?” Ms. Godwin asked.
“Because there is a line in that hymn that says, ‘I once was blind but now I see.’” Jessie
responded.
“Oh, you like that because you want to see clearer?” Ms. Godwin asked.
“No, it has nothing to do with me seeing.” Jessie replied.
“Oh, then you like it because of the music?” Ms. Godwin asked.
“Yeah.” She replied.
As she answered, I studied her. She had straight, long jet black hair. Her hair fell down to her shoulder blades and it was true; the glasses made her eyes look like fish eyes. She was not the most beautiful girl in the classroom. That title went to Stephany. Stephany was really beautiful. Everyone liked her and so did I.
As the school year went on, I was moved to a desk beside Jessie and this gave me the chance to observe Jessie more. Jessie never really had the chance to watch us. She was too busy trying to keep up with us while we were reading out loud from our text books or looking for things for the next project. In order for her to read, she had to place her nose only centimeters from the pages and slowly scanned the text through her ultra-thick lenses.
I looked at her with total sympathy and pity. I wondered how someone like her can continue to attend the school that was giving her so much personal anguish and pain. I could only imagine her going home after school each day begging her mother to have her home schooled. I imagined her hating getting out of bed each morning to face another day with more taunts and hurtful monikers. Coming from such a dramatic experience as the one I endured in Vietnam, I was very sensitive to the hardship she was enduring in order to keep up with the class. Despite all the abuse she seemed to receive from the other children, I never saw her cry. She must have resolved to be thick skinned and treat everything with indifference.
As the school year went into the New Year and the teasing turned into hateful epithets, I resolved to do something about it. Anything that was considered bad was thought have been infected by the Jessie Cooties. None of us wanted to have our jackets hang next to Jessie’s jacket during the winter months because it might be infected with the Jessie Cooty. We didn’t want to brush up against Jessie in case we become infected with her cooties. The Jessie Cooties was the excuse for all the children in the class and around the school not to want anything to do with Jessie. She became the symbol of everything gross and bad. If we didn’t like someone, we called him Jessie Lover. If we didn’t approve of something, we called it Jessie Crap. Everything that was associated with Jessie became something disgusting. Isn’t it ironic that we often think of innocence and childhood together when sometimes the reality is far from it. In the case of my classroom at Washburn Elementary, innocence was nowhere to be found, only deep seeded insecurity and a lot of evil from all of us.
I was torn about all of this. I understood completely what Jessie must have been going through. I had just experienced all of this only a year and a half before and now I was at a crossroad. I wanted, so badly, to stand up for Jessie but I also deeply desired to be liked by everyone in the class and especially the cool kids.
Finally, I couldn’t handle denying the real truth. I was denying my desire to befriend her because I felt I understood her situation. What I experienced in Vietnam was so bad that I wanted to forget it, but every day that I was in school, all my personal mistreatment came back to me via Jessie. I realized that the only way to stop my past from haunting me was to face the mistreatment of Jessie.
I began hanging my winter jacket beside hers. I sat with her at her table during lunch and conversed with her. Soon, I knew that what I was doing was right and that made me feel better about myself, better than anything I could possibly do to deny my pain watching her go through this.
Every day during lunch, if we did not like what we brought in our lunches, we could offer it to the classroom by placing it on the teacher’s desk. Often times, cartons of milk and little bags of vegetables were offered. A lot of times, these items were taken by the other children and rarely was there anything left when lunch ended. Occasionally, Jessie would offer something of hers for the classroom, and when she walked up to the teacher’s desk, everyone took notice of her items and made sure not to take them. The things she offered always sat on the teacher’s desk until the teacher came back from lunch and took it back to the kitchen. Never once did any of the children take her products. That is, until I decided to take them.
I waited for her to return to her seat and I walked up there defiantly and took her milk or carrots and consumed them. Every time I did this, there was always a look of amazement in the other children’s eyes. They sincerely thought I would die from contacting her cooties or become really sick like her. Every day I came to school I was the same person that I was before. I overcame the Jessie Cooty scare!
As I got to know her, I began to realize that she was a fun person. When she finally opened up to me, she was a caring soul. I don’t remember much about the specific details of her life. However, I remembered one thing that caused her so much pain and that was also the reason I endured such misery in Vietnam - Appearance.
The school year progressed with Jessie and me losing the friendship battles with the other children in the classroom. I didn’t care. I had been alone before and anyway, I actually had a friend, something I had never had in Vietnam. I had one true friend. I helped Jessie out as much as I could with reading and writing. I continued to sit with her during lunch and even spoke to her when I was not playing football at recess.
The school year came to a close at the end of May that year. On the last day, everyone cleaned out their desk, and I having already done so went over to help Jessie, who couldn’t manage to do it all alone. When we were done, she looked at me through her thick black eyeglass framed glasses that made her eyes look like fish eyes. She smiled at me. It was the first time I really saw her smile and then she said to me, “Thanks for being my friend.” I smiled and said, “Anytime.”
“No, I mean thank you for seeing more of me than my glasses,” she made sure I heard her.
“Anytime,” I shyly responded.
I never saw her again that summer and the following year she was in a different class. I never really had the chance to strike up our friendship again. On the evening of the last day of my life at Field Elementary before heading for junior high school, she called me and again thanked me for being her friend during our fifth grade year.
I never spoke to Jessie again. But I’ll always remember Jessie.
Prayer: “Dear Lord, may we never lose the ability to see the heart of every of one of your children. Amen.”
