I Wish For You A Mrs. Jaquith

Musings from the Middle

I Wish For You a Mrs. Jaquith

by Cathy Allie

When I was a high school freshman, the coolest person in the world entered my life…at least that’s what I thought at the time. Her name was Wanda Jaquith, and she taught English, and in my 14 year old opinion, she was the epitome of what I wanted to be.

She smelled of Jean Nate, a 70’s mass produced perfume, and she wore it well. She had perfected the tallest hair I had ever seen with a secret styling technique (which I shall later reveal), and she wore Aigner low heeled pumps and carried a matching clutch, along with her plaid skirts and cashmere sweaters over an oxford cloth button down.

She sported silk scarves around her neck in the most interesting and challenging knots. Her charm bracelet was literally heavier than her bony arms, and it held the intrigue of a well-traveled life, although looking back, she could have been no more than 25 or so in those years. She enthralled the boys and the girls alike with her Southern drawl and studied ways.

She began the year by introducing us to rich literature, the likes of which I didn’t even know I was hungry for. We spent un-airconditioned fall days reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and to this day, I can still hear her reading aloud the toughest of chapters, when Atticus tries to explain to his young children the injustice of a man wrongly accused of a terrible crime. We wrote about the characters, we developed thesis statements, we bantered, we discussed, we outlined, and we mourned when the verdict in the story was not one we had anticipated, all under her watchful eye.

I wouldn’t have missed a day of Mrs. Jaquith’s class if my life depended on it. I pleaded with my mother to schedule orthodontic appointments around her class, and even when my grandfather fell very ill, I didn’t want to make a trip to Missouri with my family because it meant missing out on what Mrs. Jaquith would have to say that day.

Her class felt like an opportunity and like a promise. It felt like my favorite flavor of ice cream in a bottomless bowl with any topping I wanted. For a while, I believed her to be a wizard of sorts, having cast a spell over all of us, as boys who never behaved always behaved and girls who never cared for reading but much more for socializing, were all held in her magic grasp.

During that time and for many years after, when anyone asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to be a writer, and I imagined myself creating beautiful prose that would hold future awkward ninth graders spell-bound. But I never dared imagine myself a teacher, because frankly, I doubted anyone could compare to Mrs. Jaquith.

We moved on to many more years of English classes, but none,

including those I took from a variety of professors in college as ironically, I trained to be a teacher, would ever compare to those magical days in ninth grade English. Surely she did not know that she was setting the standard for my teaching in years to come.

It wasn’t until I taught To Kill a Mockingbird to my own students many years later that I would realize why some chapters Mrs. Jaquith chose to read aloud and others she let us handle alone. She wanted to gauge our responses, to find teachable moments, to show us that even though Maycomb was a fictional town with fictional characters and a fictional plot, that injustice was present and it was wrong. And each time I read it, I always channeled Mrs. Jaquith and the meaning she gave the story, as well as the respect she showed her students, believing that just given a chance we would figure it out.

Once a few years ago, I started to try to find her, hoping that she would be on social media, maybe still teaching away at some idyllic little private college in the South. But I stopped myself because the memory of her was so good that I feared tarnishing it. Had I found her, I would have thanked her, and then maybe shared with her my one really visual, visceral memory of her.

My mom and I went to the A&P, our local grocery one winter morning. Saturday shoppers were mobbing the place, and as we entered the store, I caught a glimpse of Wanda Jaquith. At 14, I suppose I had never considered the fact that teachers had lives and had to eat and thus shop just like the rest of us. But something wasn’t quite right about Mrs. Jaquith that day.

As we turned the corner and came face to face with her, the secret to her very tall hair was revealed. Wanda Jacquith had carefully wrapped her hair around about 10 or 12 miniature orange juice cans, the 6 ounce cardboard variety that hold concentrated juice, and held them in place with bobby pins and Dippity Do, a favorite hair gel of the day—her own self –created rollers---and tastefully covered all of it by placing one of her beautifully printed scarves on top of her head.

No doubt Mrs. Jaquith’s image took a little hit that day, but she recovered on Monday, when she winked at me as she greeted students at the door that day and said conspiratorially, “It was so nice to see you and your mother on Saturday. I had just stopped in to the A&P to buy some juice. My husband so loves a little glass of juice each day, ” as she reached up to gently brush her hair with her hand.

As they begin their school year, I wish for all students a Wanda Jaquith, someone whose ‘realness’ is on display in juice can rollers so they can understand teachers are people, too. Someone who makes them swoon, and makes them think. Someone who eagerly anticipates his or her students’ reactions and seeks to help them through the rough spots. Someone who evokes a fond memory many years later, of a time and a place where learning was magical.

Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.