The Mortality of Hope and the Cruelty of Musical Chairs
On the eve of my 49th year, I happened upon an obituary, which — though I had not seen nor heard from its subject since I was 18 years old — brought tears to my eyes.
I met Pauline as a fellow freshman on the first day of high school. She was one of a couple hundred students who had attended the small elementary schools scattered across the bean fields of southern Illinois that fed into our local high school district. I had never seen her before. It hadn’t even occurred to me, as an incoming freshman, that there would be students from other places besides the junior high school, within the city limits, I had attended. The feeder school Pauline had attended was a small Catholic elementary/junior high school in Todd’s Mill, with maybe 40 students on the rural fringe of our far-flung, sparsely populated high school district. It was an area heavily-settled by Polish-American families beginning in the middle of the 19th century, whose descendants mostly farmed, or — if they were lucky — got time and a half overtime and full union benefits at one of the local coal mines.
Most of the students who rode the bus from Todd’s Mill seemed like the kind of kids you’d expect would spring forth from honest, hardworking rural parents. They were self-assured, but not aggressively so; social, but not in a popularity-contest, “look-at-what-I’m-wearing” kind of way — more of a family clan, “let’s-play-pinochle” or “let’s-go-to-the-K of C Hall-dances-with-our-parents” kind of way. And they were well prepared for the academic rigors that lay ahead — better than us — but humble in their expression of it.
Pauline caught my eye on that first day of school. Slouched nervously in my chair with the attached desk toward the rear of the classroom, I noticed a girl sitting in the front row, ready to dig in; a girl who just knew she was going places; someone who would not be denied an exciting and fulfilling high school career and an impressive trajectory beyond. She confidently raised her hand at every opportunity — and had the correct answers. She arrived that day with obvious attention paid to wardrobe and grooming, and she seemed utterly determined to put her best foot forward through each doorway she would step. I noticed her because of these things, and said so to my best friend on the walk home from school that day. He eyed me with a crinkled nose and raised eyebrow like something was growing from my forehead. What I failed to notice was that social discrimination was already in play, and Pauline was its victim. She smiled broadly that day, though through lipstick and make-up applied by a girl who had not consulted with her girlfriends, assuming she had any. I hadn’t noticed, but she was apparently not wearing the appropriate uniform of a 14 year-old girl, either. Or so said Kevin, my friend. And she was not ‘gifted’ in the myriad methods of teen pretense. What you saw was what you got with Pauline, and what she gave, she gave through a kind of socially tone-deaf delivery. And that’s not the sort of thing that moves you up in the only list that matters to an unfortunate number of high school freshmen girls: the popularity index.
Like a game of musical chairs, the cruel selection process of who would be aligned with whom had begun, and for Pauline, alliances were hard to find. Maybe she hadn’t received the fashion and makeup guidance of the other girls, or maybe she didn’t appear quite vulnerable enough for the boys to want to rescue. And maybe the taunts in gym class or in the hallways took their slow, certain toll. I’m not sure, but the bright button I noticed on that first day of class as a freshman took on a noticeably diminished glow by the time we approached high school’s final stage in cap and gown.
I don’t know with any real certainty that Pauline failed to connect with a supportive social circle, or that the resistance she faced in that crucible of adolescence actually stymied any plans she had for her life, but that was my feeling then, and again today, as I read of her last days — alone — in a small over-stuffed house 250 miles from Todd’s Mill in Rantoul, Illinois.
The fire and rescue teams were unable to enter through the front door because of the piles of personal belongings that littered the small home’s interior. I imagined countless evenings spent alone with nowhere to go and nobody to go there with. No dinners out; no romantic evenings in. No friends to have over for wine and gossip; only a lonely soul who never found a chair when the music stopped.
Her neighbor, who was interviewed by the local media, said that when she and her family were struggling during the previous year — around Christmas time — Pauline quietly delivered a handful of lottery scratchers and a $700 pile of gift cards she would never use, expecting nothing in return. I imagined the envelopes with gift cards to places like Applebees and Cracker Barrel from co-workers or family members back home arriving on birthdays and such, each stuffed with good intentions, but far-short of the kind of personal recognition befitting someone they might have taken the time to truly get to know. The neighbor said she barely knew Pauline, but was crying — head-in-hands — over her passing. She was found by the firemen, having succumbed to smoke inhalation, just inches from a back door that held her salvation.
I wonder, was she that close to making it, on that bright September day when we first met back in 1976? But for the gesture of someone — maybe me — unafraid to reach out and claim her as his or her friend, things might have turned out differently for Pauline Frances Suchomski.
