September 1995
September 1995
Charlie Kate Murphy was completely and utterly terrified.
At five years old—almost six, she reminded herself—she was entering the public school system for the first time. She had watched her older sister Kelly and brother David pass through these hallowed halls before her. But right now, clutching her mother’s hand as if she were being dropped off at a battlefield instead of bubbly and bright Room 201, she wasn’t so sure she was all that excited about going to kindergarten.
She had spent the better part of last night tossing and turning, her nightmares riddled with scenes of bullies and evil chocolate milk cartons and showing up to school in her underwear. As her mother edged them forward towards the threshold of the classroom, she stayed rooted in her spot. Her mother smiled, turned slowly on her toes, and knelt down in front of Charlie Kate. When they were eye level, Mom’s fingers brushed her rosy cheeks.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Linda Murphy began, her smile more forced than anything. After all, this was the last baby she would send through the doors of Countryside Elementary. She had a right to be at least a little melancholy. Charlie Kate stared determinedly down at her shoes, avoiding her mother’s gaze at all costs. If Mommy cried, she would cry, too.
“You’ll make friends in no time. There are plenty of little boys and girls in there who are just as nervous as you are. Why don’t you go in there and make a new friend?”
It was this moment that Charlie Kate feared the most. Not learning how to read, or braving the lunch line, or fumbling through adding and subtracting. No, she was already pretty good at all of that. She had, after all, watched her parents put two children through the learning ringer already. If anything, she was ahead of the other newbies. It was making friends that worried her the most.
Being the youngest of three, her childhood up until this point had been largely spent with her family, playing together in the yard, going on vacations, and watching the Red Sox. Naturally, David and Kelly were her best friends. Although she often played with the neighborhood kids, the comfort of her close-knit family coupled with her siblings’ overprotectiveness had shielded her into a little bubble of safety that was about to be popped. She had never had to make friends before. They were handed to her, just like the hand-me-down clothes that were once Kelly’s. But now, even with David and Kelly somewhere down the hall, she was about to be truly on her own for the first time.
“Charlie Kate.” Her mother’s soft voice shook her from the cat and mouse chase happening inside her head. Tentatively, she met her mother’s gaze, which mirrored her own tear-brimmed eyes. “Everything is going to be okay. I just know it. Kindergarten is where you go to meet your very best friends.”
“Promise?” Her voice, so small and trembling, almost broke Linda Murphy. But she knew that she had to be strong, if not for herself, for her daughter.
“Pinky promise.”
A smile finally tugged at the little girl’s lips, as she jutted her small finger out to meet her mother’s. As she linked them, Linda pulled her daughter’s forehead in for a kiss.
“Have so much fun, sweetie. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mommy.”
As she watched her daughter take a deep breath, Charlie Kate’s tiny fists clutching the straps of her purple Jansport backpack, her honey-colored pigtails bouncing as she took the first steps into her future, Linda let out a breath. A few stray tears bounded off her smile on their way down.
“I can do this,” Charlie Kate muttered to herself.
She quickly found a cubby brandished with an ABC sticker that said “Charlotte Murphy,” tucked her things carefully away as all of the other children were doing, and pattered tentatively to a circular table filled with coloring sheets and buckets of Crayola crayons. A boy with a blonde bowl cut occupied one of the four chairs gathered around the table, scribbling sloppily and outside the lines. He reminded her of David. Safety. Not removing her eyes from the boy, she slid a coloring sheet to her spot, grabbed a purple crayon, and sat down.
“Hi, what’s your name?” she asked, beginning to add color to the dress of the little schoolgirl printed on the paper.
“I’m Charlie,” the boy responded, not bothering to remove his concentration from his picture. His brows were furrowed, and his bottom lip was pulled between his teeth as he continued scribbling.
“That’s my name, too!” Ecstatic, Charlie Kate’s eyes lit up for the first time since arriving in the strange new place.
But then, for the first time since she sat down, the boy stopped coloring.
“Well that’s stupid. Charlie’s a boy’s name.”
Her eyes fell to her picture, a distinct purple now wavering outside the lines.
“It’s just my nickname,” she began, breathy and nervous as sweat began to form on her brow. “My real name is Charlotte, but my daddy calls me Charlie Kate—”
“But you’re a girl. Your dad must be stupid if he gave you a boy name.”
She wanted to leave, wanted to pick up and find another table with a different child who wasn’t so rude. But she was frozen to the spot. Cheeks reddening by the second, she put her head down, concentrating now on salvaging the picture that she had begun. While she finished filling in the dress, and the tension slowly began to waver, she took deep breaths. A new student seated herself at the table then. She was wearing a purple dress, and her chocolate pigtails resembled Charlie Kate’s. There was hope yet.
“Hi,” the little girl began, waving a pudgy hand in the air.
“Don’t talk to her, she has a boy name,” Charlie interrupted, pointing his red crayon at Charlie Kate, his eyes passing threateningly between her and the new little girl.
Charlie Kate’s lip was quivering now, but true to her brother’s words that morning before he bounded down the hall to second grade, she wouldn’t cry.
“Kindergarten’s easy peasy, Charlie Kate. It’ll be okay. Just remember, nothing in kindergarten is worth crying about, okay? You’re smarter and tougher than all of those other kids. Be brave.”
As two other boys joined the table, gathering around the culprit of her taunts, she clenched her teeth, balled her hands into fists, and stomped off to another part of the still unfamiliar classroom.
At recess, she found herself alone on the playground, underneath the jungle gym, with her knees pulled up under her chin. Despite David’s advice earlier, as soon as she stepped foot outside, she let tears trickle down her cheeks. With her eyes focused on the ground to count the wood chips, a pair of light-up Power Ranger shoes blinked into her line of vision.
The shouts and laughter of the other children disappeared around her as she realized that the shoes were there for her. Her eyes followed the shoes upwards, running over a pair of jean shorts and a Red Sox t-shirt, before finally landing on the round face of a little boy whom she recognized from her classroom.
She wiped her eyes with the backs of her fists, noticing the way his head cocked and his eyebrows furrowed. She prepared herself for more taunting and teasing.
“Why are you sittin’ all by yourself?”
As she wiped the last stray tear from her cheek, the boy settled himself next to her, pulling his knees up to mimic her position in the wood chips. Before she could answer, he spoke again.
“I think Charlie Kate is a nice name,” he began. “I’m James.”
She found his eyes tentatively. After the cruelty of the morning, she didn’t want to be belittled twice before lunch.
Shrugging, she offered him a simple, “Thanks.” Then, after a beat, feigning indifference, she said, “My real name is Charlotte. Charlie Kate’s just a stupid nickname.”
She fumbled with her fingers, her gaze fixed on her knees as she looked away from James. But as she picked at the purple nail polish that her mother had freshly applied the night before, his sweet voice suddenly perked at her ears again.
“I like Charlie Kate better.” The smile that he passed was a lopsided, goofy grin, creeping up the left side of his face. The warmth and sincerity lifted a weight that had been building on her shoulders since she had walked through the classroom doors that morning. She smiled back small at first, but her lips nearly reached her pigtails by the time James stood and outstretched his fingers towards her, saying, “Come on, you can play with me.”
She stood with him, their hands clasped together as they wound their way out from under the jungle gym. He broke into a run as soon as they were free.
“My dad just taught me how to pump by myself on the swings. I can teach you if you want!” he called over his shoulder.
Mounting a pair of swings, and watching as the little boy with chestnut hair demonstrated how to gather your momentum and pump your legs, Charlotte Katherine Murphy found herself laughing for the first time that day. And it certainly wouldn’t be her last.
Later that day, after her teacher had introduced the different centers to the class, Charlotte took up shop at a table that mirrored the one she found herself at earlier; it was covered in blank sheets of paper and had markers galore. She was hesitant at first, noticing the snickering eyes of the kids who had teased her earlier. It wasn’t until she felt James by her side that she felt confident enough to take a seat.
Her markers glided carefully across the page, reds and blues and browns and greens coming together as neatly as she could to form the body of the boy who was scribbling wildly to her right. Using her free hand to cover her gaze, she snuck glances at him, realizing quickly that he was so focused on his own drawing that he wouldn’t notice that she was drawing him.
In the end, her wobbly marker lines showed his mop of brown hair next to her bright yellow curly pigtails. She wasn’t so great at the trademarked Boston B that her brother practiced so diligently, so she settled for a red shirt with a blue baseball. After, she gave herself a purple dress and matching shoes, linking their peach hands in the middle. The top of the page read Charlie Kate and Jams Bst Frns in kindergartener style blocky handwriting, fit with backwards “e’s” to boot.
She carried the picture gingerly to her mailbox, sliding it carefully inside and triple checking that the picture stayed put before returning to the table.
“DONE!”
As she took her seat next to James and slid a fresh piece of paper in front of her spot, James dropped his green marker dramatically to the table, beaming at his picture.
“What did you draw?” she asked, pausing her own marker above her paper to peer at his, that was nothing but a mess of green with random black lines and backward numbers.
“It’s the Green Monster. Duh. Hey, what’d you make? I didn’t get to see yours.”
Her cheeks blushed.
“Oh, I messed up. I threw it away. I started over.”
“That’s cool. I’m gonna draw Fenway Park next!”
She giggled as he picked up the green marker again, indistinguishable blobs filling his page that was beginning to look, unsurprisingly, just like his previous picture. She settled her sights on drawing a butterfly, focusing on the symmetry as James colored to her right, and made occasional comments like Look at this, Charlie Kate, I put Troy O’Leary in the grass! and Your butterfly is pretty! Maybe you could give it a Red Sox jersey.
When it was time for pick-up, she made sure that her picture from earlier made its way safely into her take-home folder before she joined the car rider line. She smiled as James took her hand on their way out the door.
When they met their moms in front of the building, he dropped her hand to take his mother’s, turning to wave and offer her the half smile that she was growing so accustomed to.
“Bye, Charlie Kate! See you tomorrow!”
When she got home, she made a beeline for the basement playroom, setting up shop at the craft table with a fresh piece of lined paper and a bucket of markers. The first day of kindergarten had a fictional tale brewing in her head all day, starring main characters James and Charlie Kate, with a bully to boot. Told in mostly pictures, Charlie Kate and James defeated the bully with the help of the Red Sox, and remained best friends forever and ever.
After stacking the papers neatly and in order, she adorned the edges with staples, sealing the picture from school at the top like a cover. Her grin was wide and growing as she flipped through her book, one of many that littered the Murphy household, each of them with By Charlie Kate Murphy written proudly at the bottom, just like David had taught her to do. This story, she decided, was her best yet.
It was then that her brother came bounding down the stairs, whipping his backpack at the couch and heading straight for the PlayStation. As the machine booted up, he joined his sister at the table, ruffling her hair as he bent down to her level.
“So, how was your first day of kindergarten, squirt?” had barely passed by his lips before his eyes caught the thick packet of papers she had been working on. “Hey, what’s that?”
Before she could answer, he snatched the book from her grip and began mocking her pictures out loud. All of her hard work was suddenly reduced to belittlement by her big brother, who could really be a jerk sometimes.
“Oh man, Charlie Kate,” he chuckled, “do you love James?”
“No! David, give that back!”
She reached for her book, but he held it above his head, dangling it just out of reach no matter how high she jumped.
“Charlie Kate and Jaaaaames sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
She was crying now, her face as red as a tomato as her small fingers curled into fists at her sides. Once the noise caught mom’s attention away from making dinner, David was scolded and her book was returned, and she fled to her room, clutching the now wrinkled paper to her chest. Though she diligently tried to flatten out the wrinkles, creases still remained. It was then that she made the promise to keep her stories inside of her head. No one else needed to read them after all.
