Miss Tunker's Rules

Digital Collage by Stella Kalaw

Every afternoon at a quarter to three, Miss Tunker would open her tub of Nivea and warm up her hands with the thick cream, its scent triggering us to put away our books, pencils and papers, and to sit up straight with our hands folded neatly on our desks, knowing once she “could hear a pin drop” we’d be invited to the little carpet at the back of the classroom.

There we huddled around her, no longer conscious of the smell of salami entrenched in Johny’s sweater, or that mean Judy had stolen our skipping rope at recess or of the threat of our hair being pulled by Aris. We leaned in, holding our breath waiting for Miss Tunker to open the book and let Wilbur and Fern and Charlotte back out.

“Of course animals can talk!” I remember saying at the family dinner table later, “We just have to listen!”

Fifty years later, I remember Miss Tunker’s red suede midi skirt and those shiny black boots with the square toes because I sat as close as I could so as not to miss a word of Charlotte’s Web, so as to be close to the pictures when she turned the pages. If I were closer maybe I could magically disappear into the book.

“No! Keep reading!” we’d shout when the chapter ended. But Miss Tunker never kept reading, she’d close the book, clap her hands and signal us back to our desks just in time for the bell. We’d follow her rules because we knew that the next afternoon, the tub of Nivea would re-emerge, and we’d be invited back to the little carpet.

One day, Miss Tunker looked out at the class without inviting us to get up and come over to the little carpet. “Children,” she said, “It has come to my attention that someone in this class went to the public library and not only took out Charlotte’s Web but finished and returned it. Now that you know what happens, there is no reason for me to keep reading.” Those couldn’t have been her exact words, but I can still feel the sting in my heart and the stunned silence of our entire class. We must have all yelled “NO, KEEP READING!” but Miss Tunker, who liked rules, did not finish Charlotte’s Web.

Her punishment must have bonded us because I remember Aris and Judy and Johny and the other children talking and wanting to get their hands on that book, even though we knew that Wilbur would be saved, that Charlotte would die and that Fern would move beyond the barn. In the schoolyard, we grieved together. Soon after, Miss Tunker forgave us and began reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We followed her rules and we made sure that when the library edition became available, Judy’s sister took it out for us and Miss Tunker never knew.

I read Charlotte’s Web again in elementary school, then when I became a teacher, then as a parent and every time Charlotte’s death touched me. When I go to our annual county fair and see piglets, I kneel down and whisper to them and think of Wilbur, when I see spiders I think of wise Charlotte and understand why my grandmother taught me never to kill them, and I talk to my dog thinking she understands.

By the sixth grade, Jaws was making its rounds in the classroom less because of the killer shark and more because of the sex scene. The book travelled from desk to desk, the specific pages marked. Did Mrs. Capon know about the secret reading that was going on in her classroom? I’m guessing she did and simply ignored what she knew she couldn’t control. And maybe, maybe, she knew it was a good thing. We were sharing, we were bonding.

Years later, I was teaching prepubescent teens in an ESL classroom in Switzerland. They were far more interested in how they could score with each other or some weed than in learning about the difference between the present perfect and the present conditional. So I introduced The Outsiders as our class novel, thinking S. E. Hinton’s classic might be a good fit. It was a tough start.

One Monday, a group of students told me they had watched the movie on the weekend and oh how they loved it and poor Ponyboy and wasn’t Dallas gorgeous and Darrell— what a hunk—and could we hurry up and begin reading the book? I was stunned; all my lesson plans were now surely useless given they knew the outcome. But, I must have remembered that tub of Nivea because I forced myself to smile and say, “Didn’t you just love it? We will watch it again when we finish the book.” And then there was magic: I read aloud, we talked and we cried, first when Johnny died, then when Dally died and then all over again when we watched the movie together.

Miss Tunker just hadn’t gotten it.