I consider myself lucky growing up. There was never any censorship in our house with regards to what I could read. Aside from the odd MAD magazine or comic book my parents deemed distasteful and intellectually lacking, they allowed me free rein to read anything I pleased. They knew I was already reading beyond my grade level by the time I entered the second grade and they encouraged my passion for literature in all its forms, from newspaper articles to science fiction novels to fairy tales. Books were a common gift at birthdays and holidays. My grandfather had been a writer in his native Czechoslovakia. His work had been heavily censured, and sometimes even banned, by the ruling communist regime following the Second World War. I suppose this may have defined the freedom I enjoyed at home. As refugees, my family was thumbing their noses at the injustices of communism and censorship.
School, on the other hand, was another story. Being a child, I was not privy to the PTA conferences or the school council meetings or the one on one parent-teacher interviews that were supposedly for my own good and that my parents rarely attended. I was stunned to learn that The Powers That Be had prepared a list of censored books—although they didn’t call them that. Instead, they used the euphemism “challenged books” a much more genteel description but censorship is still censorship, no matter what you may call it.
I was astounded to learn the calibre of titles that had made it to the no-no list. Judy Blume’s Forever made it to the top. But Judy Blume wasn’t alone on the school’s list of forbidden reading materials. Classics such as Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which in my home was not just condoned, but encouraged, was there, as were some popular best sellers at the time such as Alex Haley’s Roots and basically anything not classified in the Young Adult genre. At the time my mind couldn’t even conceive of such a thing. I had been raised to believe that reading was benevolent, educational and good--and there certainly could be no such thing as a bad book.
I first discovered Judy Blume in the fifth grade. The school library offered a wide assortment of her novels; I’d often seen other girls my own age reading them and talking about them so I thought I’d give one a try. I chose Blubber, intrigued by the cover illustration of a chubby girl being tormented by her classmates while wedged in the aisle of a school bus. Being one of those unfortunates often singled out in the schoolyard for ostracism and ridicule, I could certainly relate. And relate I did. I gobbled up Blubber in a single weekend, followed by Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret and Deenie and It’s Not the End of the World. No other author so encapsulated my own pre-teen angst with such perception and wit. It was as though a new best friend was sharing with me the deepest, most personal thoughts and feelings radiating from her own heart. I could finally understand what that clique of girls so enchanted by Judy Blume was talking about.
By the sixth grade I had devoured all of Judy Blume’s books. But I was still blissfully unaware of Forever until word got around the schoolyard that Judy Blume’s latest book had been banned by The Powers That Be. The subject matter was scandalous, filled with graphic descriptions of teen sexuality and—gasp! Birth control! Making it unsuitable for our innocent minds. Of course, that only made us want to read it all the more.
I don’t know who it was that got her hands on a copy. It certainly wasn’t Melody, my best friend since the fourth grade, whose passion for Judy Blume was lukewarm at best. It certainly wasn’t the class brain, Karen Wong, whose mother packed her spaghetti and meatballs in a thermos every day for lunch, despite her Chinese heritage. It certainly wasn’t Kathy Morrison who fancied herself the intellectual of the group despite her mediocre grades. And it certainly wasn’t me; thanks to my meagre allowance, I couldn’t afford to buy my own copy; even if the public library in town stocked it, they would have refused to loan it out to someone my age. I had to cajole and argue and get special permission from my parents just to sign out a copy of The Prince of Central Park by Evan H. Rhodes just a year before.
Eventually, word got around that a friend of a friend of a girl from one of the other classes had procured her very own copy and the book was making surreptitious rounds in the schoolyard. Bingo! A day and time were set. We would meet this unnamed girl in the corner of the schoolyard during lunch hour recess, giving us plenty of time to pour over the more lascivious chapters and find out exactly what the fuss was about.
I had no idea what to expect. At that age, I had little knowledge of love and sexuality. Sex Education wouldn’t be taught for several more years and when it did, the curriculum would only address how a fetus forms during pregnancy. After all, this was suburban Canada in the 1970s. I had no idea what people did under the sheets. Though I had a pretty fertile imagination for an eleven year old girl, I could not even begin to guess what went on “down there”. I knew babies came from their mothers’ bellies after a nine month period of bloat called a pregnancy, but it never occurred to me how the babies got in there in the first place or how they got out. Besides, making babies and having sex seemed so remotely apart I couldn’t imagine what one would have to do with the other.
The day of the meeting, I gulped my sandwich and school-issued milk as fast as I could before heading out to the schoolyard. A handful of girls had already collected around our hostess by the time I arrived. Most were acquaintances whose names I never learned and if I did, they have long since been forgotten. I knew Kathy Morrison and the chubby and freckled Tammy; Karen Wong was noticeably absent, as was Melody.
The moment had arrived. The hostess reached into her schoolbag and pulled out a copy of Forever. Having never seen a banned book before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Perhaps some monstrous volume filled with pictures of all kinds of wild sexual deviations that would give me nightmares for weeks. Surely I would hear ghostly malevolent moans issue from the pages as the book was opened, screaming “Beware! Beware!” I was a little disappointed to see its size and shape looked like any ordinary paperback on the library shelves. Its cover illustration was of a locket opened to reveal a wistful portrait of a young girl. This book could be about anything. If I had seen it in the library and not known it was authored by Judy Blume, I probably would have passed it over, thinking it was just another one of those garden-variety coming of age stories that bored me to tears but were permitted by the Powers That Be.
Our hostess opened the book to a page she had marked with her thumb and began to read. The protagonist’s name was unimportant. I believe it was Katherine and her romantic interest, the boy of her dreams, was named Michael. Beyond that, we just wanted to get down to the truly naughty parts; the plot was unimportant.
I couldn’t believe some of the things she read. I knew boys had penises—but that? And some of the things those two were doing to each other, like touching each other “down there” elicited a series of “Eeews!” from the group until our hostess had to pause until we composed ourselves and quit giggling. We couldn’t help squirming and tittering during the scene where Katherine loses her virginity. So that was how it was done! And the act was supposedly glorious and romantic and a little scary. Our hostess relished the spotlight like a diva, pausing every now and again for dramatic effect.
We were so engrossed in our nefarious behaviour that we failed to notice a teacher approach. She was an older lady, short and plump, and though I didn’t know her name, I knew she was a teacher from one of the primary grades. Back then, the staff that supervised the schoolyards didn’t wear those bright orange vests that make them look like construction crew workers like they do today. The teachers blended in with the rest of the crowds around the swings and tetherball courts and were often difficult to spot, especially when your attention was occupied elsewhere.
“What’s going on over there?” the teacher demanded.
We froze. There were six of us by then. I’m sure everyone else’s hearts seized in their throats like mine.
“We were just reading a book,” our hostess replied with a feigned innocence that would have put any Oscar award winning actress to shame. She must have been through this sort of thing before.
“It’s really good,” piped in another girl.
And then Kathy Morrison had to add, “It’s about having sexual intercourse!”
“Let me see that.” The teacher extended her hand, fully expecting our hostess to hand it over.
That was it. We were cornered, busted, trapped like rabbits in a snare. So we did the only logical thing our collective minds could think of in such a situation. We bolted.
Our hostess and two other girls from the Judy Blume clique scattered to the nether regions of the track field. Tammy and I dashed to the girl’s bathroom, too terrified to even glance back to see if we were being pursued by a posse of school administrators brandishing torches and pitchforks. We holed up together in one of the vacant cubicles and remained locked in there and huddled against the toilet, panting in terror.
We didn’t feel the least scrap of guilt for throwing Kathy Morrison under the bus. After all, it was her big mouth that got us busted in the first place. How could she do that? How could she blurt out such an embarrassing thing in front of a teacher, risking us all?
Tammy and I crept out of the cubicle when the bell finally rang fifteen minutes later. We rarely spoke again for the rest of the year. I spent the next week terrified of being summoned to the principal’s office for sentencing and punishment, too ashamed to even tell my best friend Melody about the incident. And what if my parents found out? I would be in big trouble not for reading a prohibited book but for defying a teacher—a far more serious crime. But that never happened; Kathy Morrison may have had a big mouth, but at least she wasn’t a snitch. Kathy told me she received an after school detention, followed by a stern lecture in the principal’s office and a phone call to her parents. It was a punishment she took in stride, joking good naturedly about it in the following days.
I learned a lot from my experience that day. Not only about the intricacies of the sexual act, and what the Powers That Be considered to be naughty and nice, but also that the anonymity of being unpopular could have its advantages.
I never did find out what the teacher did with that book. For weeks I had visions of the teachers gathered together in the staff lounge with steaming mugs of coffee in their hands, Forever opened before them, alternatively giggling and groaning as they took turns reading the particularly decadent passages aloud. Another scenario showed them dressed in Puritan garb as they gathered round a raging bonfire, Forever impaled on the tines of a pitchfork and raised in triumph over their heads as they shouted “We got one!” before hurling the book into the flames. As an added touch, a moaning demon face rose through the smoke to be exorcised forever.
I know neither of these scenarios occurred. The book was probably slipped onto a shelf in some dusty storeroom or the janitor’s closet to be forgotten. It probably ended up in a box of donations to the Sally Ann years later. I like to think that perhaps it found its way into the hands of another young girl like me: a poet, a writer, ravenous reader, someone who refuses to allow censorship into any aspect of her life. Kudos to her.
Caroline Misner’s work has appeared in numerous publications in the USA, Canada, India and the UK. She has been nominated for the prestigious McClelland & Stewart Journey Anthology Prize for the short story “Strange Fruit”; in 2011 another short story and a poem were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in the beautiful Haliburton Highlands of Northern Ontario where she continues to draw inspiration for her work. She is the author of the Young Adult fantasy series “The Daughters of Eldox”. Her latest novel, “The Spoon Asylum” was released in May of 2018 by Thistledown Press and has been nominated for the Governor General Award.
(link to amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Misner/e/B00MOSOFD4?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_5&qid=1586677632&sr=1-5_)
