Ella Beat the Odds: South Paw
Short Story
Barbara Dell Hobbs
Once upon a time, Ella had a low self-esteem,
cause she was left-handed and was teased,
most of her life for that reason.
Even worse when she got in the third grade,
her grades were extremely poor,
because her third-grade teacher, Miss Mennis,
couldn't understand Ella's terrible handwriting.
Twas in 1952, Ella lived in the country,
twenty-five miles east of Waco, Texas.
There was only one small brick school for Negro
children first through the eighth grades.
The school was so very small, till two grades
were situated in the same classroom.
The third and fourth grades were situated in Ella's
classroom.
She was in the third grade and had a
mean teacher, whose name was Miss Mennis.
Miss Mennis always walked around in the little,
classroom with her robust chest sticking out,
a mean look on her face, and carrying a 12-inch
leather strap on her left shoulder.
If one of the pupils couldn't read or write when told to do so, she'd grind her teeth,
stand over the little ragged-wooden desks, and
beat the pupils across their shoulders or on their
hands, till each one cried out loud!
When Miss Mennis started teaching her third graders,
how to do cursive writing, Ella had a hard time
because she forced Ella to write with her right hand.
She literally stood over poor little Ella and made sure
that the pupil was using her right hand,
rather than her left hand. Poor little Ella was extremely
jittery, afraid that Miss Mennis was going to start
beating her if she tried to use her left hand.
One day, Miss Mennis gave her third-graders
a geography quiz and when she graded
Ella's paper and handed it back to her,
Miss Mennis had put a big fat red F
at the top of it with a big red X
marked across Ella's terrible handwriting.
Ella got up from her desk and threw her paper
in the trashcan near Miss Mennis's desk.
Boy, what did Ella do that for!
Miss called Ella over to her desk and
harshly commanded her to hold out her fragile hand.
Spontaneously, Ella held out her tiny thin left hand.
Miss Mennis beat it with her leather strap so hard
that Ella's little bony hand started swelling and Ella began boohooing in front of the class.
All the kids were laughing--
That made Ella cry even harder!
When Ella got back to her desk,
Miss Mennis dared her to keep on crying,
else she was going to give her another beating.
Ella went home that evening and
did not tell her daddy anything about this
terrible episode that happened in the classroom
between Miss Mennis and her.
Unfortunately,
Ella's mother had died two years earlier
leaving six children behind with their daddy.
Unlike Ella's late mother, her daddy never helped
his children with their homework, but expected
them to do well in school and obey their teachers.
He was one of those
types of parents who believed everything that
the teacher said. So there was no point in Ella
reporting Miss Mennis to him.
Ella was so glad when the school year ended,
because that meant that Miss Mennis would
no longer be her teacher. The best thing Miss
Mennis ever did for her was promote her to
the fourth grade.
But even after that, one day in
the summer, Ella and her little playmates saw
Miss Mennis driving down the little narrow
dirt road in her big blue car. Ella thought about
the hard time that Miss Mennis had given her
because her handwriting was very bad.
So, Ella angrily yelled: There goes that ole
mean Miss Mennis! Miss Mennis summoned
Ella to her car, grabbed her by her little thin ear,
and twisted it till Ella started screaming and
crying!
When Ella got in the fourth grade,
she had a much younger teacher whose name
was Miss Kindred, tall brown-skinned well-
groomed lady around age 22. She gave the
fourth graders handwriting exercises. One day
she asked Ella to stay in the classroom at recess time.
Ella was shaking in her little run-over brown oxfords,
because she thought Miss Kindred was going to scold
Ella about the bad handwriting and beat the devil
out of her if she showed any signs of defiance
like she did in Miss Mennis's class.
Miss Kindred pulled up a chair and asked Ella to sit down at the corner of her desk
and write a few words with her right hand.
Then she had Ella to write a few words with her
left hand. Ella looked up at her when she finished
writing, and the teacher had a warm smile on
her face. What a relief for poor little Ella!
Then Miss Kindred gave Ella a writing exercise
to take home and a note sealed up in an envelope
to give to Ella's daddy. Ella gave him the note,
and he stood there reading it with a somber look on
his face. When Ella sat down and began doing her
homework, her daddy sat on his big rocking chair and
watched her as she was writing with her left hand.
He coaxed her, favorably saying that she was writing well.
Ella became very proud of herself. She could now
feel free to write with her left hand.
Ella started enjoying writing, and her grades improved
superbly. Whenever the fourth graders had a spelling
test and Ella made an A on her paper, Miss Kindred
always put a gold star on Ella's spelling paper.
When Ella got in the sixth grade and her father
moved to the big city, she moved in with her
grandparents. Her grandmother could read and write.
but her grandfather, a Korean War veteran and a
wheelchair victim, only got to the fourth grade.
He could read but could not write. Whenever he needed
a letter to be written, he had Ella to write for him.
That made Ella feel good about herself!
Ella's grandparents earnestly asked her to write letters
for the elderly neighbors who could not read and write.
Though they could not read or write,
they knew how to make Ella feel proud.
In high school, the English teacher sometimes asked
the students to go to the blackboard and write short friendly letters.
(Out of the whole school, there was only one English teacher.)
Ella's fellow classmates were astonished to watch her left hand
move smoothly and swiftly across the black board.
Sometimes they would laugh and tease, saying:
Ah, look at ole Lefty, now!
Ella laughed inside along with them.
Her confidence was rooted and grounded within herself.
Ella graduated from high school with honors
and went to a college and later to a university--
receiving three college degrees and becoming a published
writer.
Ella Beat the Odds: South Paw© COPYRIGHT 2005 Barbara Dell Hobbs.
Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author.
06/21/05
