April 1, 2006--Saturday Story: "Give Him A Treatment Boys!"

"Give Him A Treatment Boys!"

Mr. Emile Tron was well named—Emile signified his Frenchness; Tron his fearsomeness. Both critical characteristics for someone attempting to teach French to a class full of restless tone-deaf eighth-grade boys. Actually, as I reflect back on his class, this ability to strike fear in our hearts, was decidedly the more essential.

We were all in a special science program and the school decided that all subjects should have science as themes. These academics were being avant-garde (to use one of the few French phrases I remember) in attempting to make the curriculum relevant. And so our English class spend a great deal of time reading Galileo’s notebooks; our art class was substantially devoted to poring over Da Vinci’s notebooks; and our French class, alas, used as its text a chemistry book one was in wide use in chemistry classes all over France.

This meant that rather than having us focus on day-to-day French, things such as “Comment allez vous?” and “Je m’appelle Etienne,” we were required to read in French about how by doing something with electrodes to water you could break it down into its constituent parts—hydrogen and oxygen.

All well and good, but there was one significant problem—none of the boys, none of us had as yet studied chemistry in English and thus we didn’t even know what hydrogen was. Oxygen we knew—that was in the air that we breathed so we wouldn’t die.

As you might imagine, we stumbled forward slowly. The class at first was devoted to reading the text out loud, working on our pronunciation—we were taught not to pronounce the “e” at the end of any word (chimie, our subject, would be something like shemi); not to pronounce the “h” at the beginning of any word (hydrogene was I recall to be pronounced eye-drojean); and so forth.

Bennie Cohen had a sister who was a French major at Brooklyn College and from her we learned that if a French word ended in a “c” (diagnostic), “r” (distiller), “f” (charbon actif), or “l” (ethanol) we should pronounce it. And the best way to remember these letters was to use what she called a “mnemonic,” a memory device. In this case the letters to be pronounced were all the consonants in the word “careful.” Luckily Charley Rosner was in our class and he already knew a lot about consonants. So we learned what to pronounce and what should remain silent.

However, in spite of learning this—even leaving off the final “e’s” and “a’s,” our rote French still sounded as if it was being pronounced by guys from Brooklyn and not garcons from Paris.

This drove Monsieur Tron crazy. He tried as best he could to transform us into Francophones, pacing about the room like a caged tigre (with the “e” not pronounced). He became even crazier when after about two weeks of this, Melvin Leshowitz screwed up his courage and, while slumped in his chair to avoid eye contact, croaked, “Monsieur Tron, I think the reason we are having so much trouble with French is because none of us knows anything about chemistry.”

Mr. Tron wheeled on him and with eyes blazing, pointing at him with a finger that looked like a spear, screamed “Give him a treatment boys!”

We froze in our seats. We had seen him frustrated and on edge but never raging.

Plus, none of knew what a treatment was that we were supposed to give Melvin.

“I said give him a treatment boys! But since you don’t seem to know what I mean, let me show you,” he spat, racing down to aisle to the back of the classroom where Melvin had slid under his desk.

When he reached Melvin’s desk, he punched him in the chest! Yelling at us, “That’s a treatment boys. Now give him a treatment.”

Which we proceeded to do, at first tentatively but in a moment with Mr. Tron’s encouragement, much more vigorously until the three of us closest to Melvin were pummeling him as with a vengence.

Giving treatments soon became a classroom routine, as familiar as the Oral-Aural exercises. With the exception of Aaron Bernard who was actually from France, none of us made any discernable progress in reading; understanding what we were reading (the Periodic Table was a special torture); dictee, where Mr. Tron read to us at a mile-a-minute clip, with him displaying pride in his proficiency in rolling “r’s” and we had to write down in a frenzy what he was saying; or in pronunciation.

Pronouncing even the simplest words was my particular nemesis, which guaranteed that I would get weekly treatments. So many in fact that I stopped wearing short sleeve shirts at home for fear that my mother would see my bruises, none of which I could explain without turning my life into even more of a nightmare as she would insist on bringing it to the attention of the principal who I suspected in turn would stand by his best language teacher who then would make sure that I really got it.

* * *

Another innovation, in addition to the tarnished effort to make learning relevant to students who were more interested in after school activities and the life of the streets, was Home Room—that once-a-day time when a group of us would meet with a teacher who would begin by taking attendance and rushing a list of absentees down to the principal’s office so he could sic truant officers on the missing and drag them back to school if they were cutting. After that we would proceed to something our Home Room teacher Mrs. Schwartz called “Contemporary Issues.” This at first appeared to be about current events—what was happening in the city and around the world--but it was in fact an opportunity for us to talk about things “that were on our minds.”

We were all boys and it was assumed that in the benevolent and non-threatening presence of the youthful Mrs. Schwartz, she was only about fifty, we would be willing to talk about girls and dating and maybe even about our emerging experiences with . . . “physical love.”

No chance of that. We did not trust anyone associated with that school, even Mrs. Schwartz, certainly not on any subjects that we wanted to keep private or only talked about and lied about among ourselves. But we kept things moving so as not to disappoint her. Heshy could always be depended upon to fill much of those daily fifty minutes sessions.

“I was thinking, Mrs. Schwartz, what if the Russians really decided to attack us. Don’t you think they would bomb Washington because that’s where the President is?”

“I don’t know about that, Harold, you know New York not only has the Brooklyn Navy Yard but also Times Square and Wall Street.”

“But do you think they have enough A Bombs to do that—bomb both New York and Washington? I think if I had to choose I’ll drop a couple on Washington.”

“That’s an interesting thought, Harold. What do the rest of you think?” We were all staring down at our desks.

But we could count on Larry Diamond who was also good at killing the time, especially since he was the last one to want to talk about girls—we were beginning to suspect he was actually more interested in other boys. “I think we should be more worried about the Red Chinese,” Larry mused, “I don’t think they have The Bomb yet but they have billions of people who I saw in a movie attack in Human Waves. That’s scary. You run out of bullets killing them and they keep on coming and then they cut your throat.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that Larry because how would they get here?” Mrs. Schwartz also taught Geography, “They would have to cross the Pacific Ocean and come a long way, at least eight thousand miles before they got to California. And then there are still 3,000 miles more before they would reach New York.” She smiled, feeling assured that she had calmed our anxieties, at least about the Chinese.

“Anyone else have an issue they want to discuss?” We all ducked so as not to catch her eye. Undeterred, she took a chance, “Harold, I understand that you may have a new girl friend. Do you have any issues about this that you want to share?”

Heshy did in fact have a new girl friend, maybe even two new girlfriends, plus Carol Siegelstein, but instead of taking up Mrs. Schwartz’s offer to share some of the issues, he asked, “Can I have the bathroom pass? I need to go.” He grabbed it and raced out of the room, leaving the rest of us with still twenty more minutes to fill.

One of Mrs. Schwartz’s techniques when we became silent was to remain silent herself—to make it feel as if time itself had halted and that we would have to remain there for eternity. Counting on how unendurable this would be for us, hoping someone would break down and bring up a real issue about which she had been trained to deal.

Nothing. Just a lot of shuffling in our seats and shifting of notebooks and paper. But she was good at this. She sat on the edge of her desk, sweeping her eyes from Melvin to Bennie to Charley to Larry to Aaron to me.

Under this pressure, Aaron finally relented. We could see his hand inching up to where it locked in a half-raised position. He had never participated before. He was shy and we suspected a little self-conscious about the remnants of his French accent.

In a barely audible voice he said, “I think we should talk about our French class.”

Mrs. Schwartz hopped off the desk and moved toward the side of the room where Aaron sat. The rest of us froze in place, holding our collective breath—what was he up to? What kind of trouble would he get us into?

“You can talk about that, Aaron. And any of the rest of you can join in.” No chance of that either.

“Well, Monsieur Tron (his pronunciation was impeccable—an accent I would kill for) he is a very complicated man.” We began to breathe again—complicated we could deal with.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Schwartz was almost whispering seemingly as a way to encourage Aaron and the rest of us. By bringing such a hush to the room we felt she was implying that this was to be a private conversation that would go no further than the eighteen of us.

“He is very passionate about the French language and it is so upsetting to him when the boys,” and he meant the rest of us, “when the boys make mistakes. He even gets angry with them. At times,” he paused and leaned forward in his eat, he too was now whispering and just to Mrs. Schwartz, “at times he becomes tres angry.” He paused to gather himself, “Violently angry.” Blood was now throbbing in my ears.

“What do you mean Aaron?” It was as just the two of them were in the room.

“He has something he calls the treatment.”

“The treatment?”

“Yes, he makes us give each other treatments when we make a mistake, when someone mispronounces a word.”

“And he . . . ?”

“He makes us punch each other. When Melvin or anyone makes an error he has the rest of us beat him up. That’s a treatment.”

“And you do?”

“Do what?”

“Beat each other up?”

“Yes,” and he turned toward me. “He got a treatment this morning because he failed the dictee.” I had leaned back in my chair so I could better study the light fixtures that hung from the ceiling, noticing that a bulb in one had to be changed. “Go on, Etienne, roll up your sleeve and show Mrs. Schwartz what he did to you.”

“Yes, please Steven, show me.” She had now come over to where I was. I reflexively pointed up at the glass globe that wasn’t lit. “It’s OK, you can show me.” She put her hand gently on my shoulder. “Please.”

Aaron had followed her to my desk and stood next to her. “Do Etienne. Show Mrs. Schwartz. We have to do something about this. We have to stop what he is doing. He has made us turn against each other. He is only giving the orders, ‘Give him a treatment boys’; but we are the ones doing the punching.”

I sat there trembling in fear. He turned to the rest of the class and addressed them, “You know that I grew up in France but you do not know what my life was like. You know that I came to America after the war. You know that my mother and father are both dead and that I live with my aunt and uncle.” We knew all of that.

“Well, you do not know why my parents are both dead.’ We did not know that but knew he would tell us. I thought I now knew.

“They were killed. By the Nazis. In Auschwitz. I was there too.” And with that he pulled up the left arm of his sweater.

As the sleeve rose on his arm to show us the numbers tattooed there, I at the same time rolled up my shirt sleeve to reveal my welts and bruises.

And I got up to stand by Aaron and we proceeded to raise in the air our battered arms as a defiant salute.