Fall 2007

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: DOWNLOAD

“Ich Weiss Nicht.”

by Jack Funk

February 26, 1933 was my sixth birthday. We didn’t have a party. I didn’t expect one. We weren’t a party kind of people. Mom gave me a scribbler and a pencil with the big eraser on one end. I was ready to start school in the fall.

I wanted to start school. I badly wanted to read. I knew that books were great places to get information. My sister, Katie, read me many stories of exciting events set in exotic places. I figured learning to read shouldn’t take more than a day or two. Maybe two weeks, if the teacher wasn’t very good.

Like many immigrants, my parents were very keen on education. My father’s school experiences in Russia had been especially bitter. In those days being left-handed was considered an evil disability. A natural southpaw, many teachers tried to make him into a righteous right-hander. He vividly recalled the many times his hand was tied behind his back or to his chair, the many times he had his knuckles rapped until they were swollen and bleeding. The staff and other students teased him mercilessly.

Eventually, his teachers succeeded in forcing him to write with his right hand. Instead of one of learning, my father’s life at school was an experience of abuse and torment. He learned to distrust teachers. By grade seven he quit in despair and went to work in a store. He wanted better for me.

Even though my mother wanted desperately to learn to read and write, she was taken out of school in grade three and sent to work as a maid for a wealthy family. After working for six months she was sent home with the magnificent sum of one rouble for her efforts. Her father immediately confiscated her wages to buy tobacco. She found it hard to forgive him. She had wanted to buy a headscarf with her earnings.

“I remember how badly I wanted to learn to read. But my father would not let me go to school. He sent me away to work, and when I brought some money home he took it and bought tobacco.” She too wanted better for me.

My sisters, Annie and Katie, made it their mission to teach me the true facts about school—silence, work, study, staying in after school and, most ominous of all, THE STRAP. They filled my mind with images of red, swollen hands. They gleefully told me how students gathered in the hallway, just outside the principal’s office where the dreaded deed took place. They counted the whacks of the strap and listened to see if the boy cried. (It was always a boy.)

I can still hear my sister Annie saying, “Just you wait, Jakie Funk, just you wait! You’ll be sent to the principal’s office and he’ll give you the strap. Then you’ll be sorry for all those mean things you said to me.”

Eager as I was to start school, I was equally apprehensive. On the appointed day, Frieda, my eldest sister, took me by the hand and off we went to school. In Blaine Lake, grades one and two were in a separate building, off to one side from the main building.

She took me there, said goodbye, and left me with my fears, my thoughts and about a dozen other dazed new students. We milled around in the porch waiting for someone to tell us what to do. Eventually the teacher, Miss Nelson, invited us into the classroom and told us where to sit.

Once we were all settled, she asked each of us our names.

The boy seated in front of me gave his name and then it was my turn.

The teacher said, “Next.”

I said, “Jakie.”

She wrote something down on a sheet of paper and asked, “You wouldn’t know how to spell that, would you?”

I thought to myself, “Here I am, only six years old going on seven, my first day of school, and she wants me to spell!”

This threw me and when I got rattled, I reverted to German.

“Ich weiss nicht,” I blurted, which in English means, “I don’t know.”

Behind me, I heard a snicker and the comment, “Listen to that dumb immigrant. He can’t even speak English.”

Miss Nelson asked, “What did you say?”

Now I really lost it. I could only repeat, “Ich weiss nicht.”

She said, “What did you say?”

I said, “Ich weiss nicht,”

And that’s how it went, back-and-forth, back and forth, like a pendulum—mindless, relentless and without mercy.

I was frantic. All I could think of was the strap. In my imagination, I could see the principal, standing in the door of his office with strap in hand, slowly and methodically banging his open hand. He fixed me with a stern, suspicious look and demanded, “What did you say?”

In a rising crescendo, I could only reply, “Ich weiss nicht. Ich weiss nicht. Ich weiss nicht!”

I was on the verge of tears when suddenly, Walter, the boy beside me, started to pee his pants. As the wet yellow circle spread out from his desk, I realized I had been saved from certain disaster. With all the fervour my Mennonite heritage could muster I whispered (under my breath), “Hallelujah! Thank you, dear Lord, I’ve been saved!”

In evangelical meetings at the Mennonite Brethren Church we attended there was much talk about being “saved.” People wept with joy, shouting hallelujah as they declared themselves saved by grace, by the blood of the Lamb. I now knew what they must have felt like. I had been saved, “by the piss of Walter.”

Earlier that week, with Frieda’s help, I had memorized an unusually long Bible verse for Mrs. Wiens’ Sunday School class in the Mennonite Brethren Church in Laird. When Mrs. Wiens took attendance we were expected to reply with a Bible verse. If I just answered “present,” or “here,” the other children looked at me as if I were a spiritual moron, or even worse, a lost sinner on the road to Hell. Normally, I used the shortest verse in the Bible—“Jesus wept.” But on this day, I was glad I’d made an extra effort. It was like paying for something before the bill came due. Coincidentally, the Bible verse I’d chosen explained what happened to those who “by morning light pissethed against the wall.” They were “smitten.”

I didn’t want to make light of God’s infinite wisdom, but what was happening made my verse strangely appropriate. Much as I didn’t want Walter smitten, what he had done was unforgivable. It is true he didn’t piss against the wall. He did much worse. He pissed on the floor and watched the yellow circle spread. He had that dumb look on his face that tried to say, “Oops, it just happened.” I was sure that he would be strapped.

Miss Nelson took Walter into the cloakroom. I thought, “Maybe students get the strap there on their first day of school, instead of in the principal’s office.” I listened for the whacks and the cries of anguish. But after a short and silent time, they returned. Walter had on a clean pair of pants. They were a little on the big side but they were dry. His hands were not red and puffy. No tears glinted on his cheeks. Walter had not been strapped.

I could hardly wait to confront Katie and Annie. I didn’t even wait for Frieda to pick me up. As soon as she emerged through her school doors, I waved in her general direction and took off. I used every shortcut I knew. I jumped over MacDonald’s fence, ploughed through their garden, and ran down the alley by the doctor’s office. I dodged through the space between the drugstore and the hardware store, and sprinted across the street. I dashed in the front door and out the side door of Green’s Garage, and across the street in front of our house. I vaulted over the fence. Who had time to open the gate?

As I burst into the house, Mom looked at me in alarm and asked, “Warum bist du so ausser Pust? Bist du gelaufen? Wer jagt dir nach? Was fur grosse Neuigkeiten hast du? (Why are you so out of breath? Have you been running? Who’s chasing you? What’s the big news?)”

Totally out of breath I shouted, “The girls were wrong! Walter, whose desk is next to mine, pissed his pants. He peed all over the floor in a big yellow puddle. And Miss Nelson just changed his pants. She didn’t bawl him out and he didn’t get the strap!”

And how did Mom receive this astounding news? She said, “Du sollst das Wort nicht sagen! Es ist nicht schon. (Don’t say that word. It isn’t nice.)”

That was Mom—always concerned about unimportant details. She missed the important point entirely.

When Katie and Annie got home I told them what I thought of their deceitfulness. “You girls are full of it. I’ll never believe anything you tell me again!” Annie just gave me her withering look and said, “That’s because today was the first day. Just wait until tomorrow, Jakie Funk!”

Apparently, Miss Nelson had stopped Annie after school that day, hoping to clear up the confusion about my name. Eagerly Annie had asked, “Did you give Jakie the strap? He really deserves it. He’s very mean to me.”

Miss Nelson had just smiled and said, “No, Annie.”

But my sister wasn’t one to give up easily. In a more hopeful tone she had asked, “Will you give it to him tomorrow? You should see what he did to me today!”

Again, Miss Nelson had said, “No. There’s no need for the strap. I just want to know how to spell his name. To me, it sounded like ‘Jacques,’ but that’s French. You people aren’t French, are you?”

Annie had replied, “No, we’re not French. We’re Mennonites from Russia. My brother’s name is Jakie, and that’s all I know about that. But I do know he deserves the strap. Just yesterday, he spilled milk on my clean dress.”

Annie had been deeply disappointed. She had left, pleading, “Are you sure Jakie won’t get the strap?”

Miss Nelson had been sure.

But for some reason known only to herself, Annie neglected to pass this information on.

My sleep that night was filled with nightmares. A vicious Miss Nelson pointed at me, her finger enlarged like a balloon. In a voice from hell thundered, “Go to the principal’s office!” With all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner, I dragged myself to the place of execution. As I hesitantly inched my way forward, the principal came at me from all directions, waving the biggest strap imaginable—at least ten feet long and two feet wide with a big spike in the end.

The next morning I got up in a turbulent state of mind. Enthusiasm wrestled with dread. Mom had saved me my favourite part of the porridge, the burnt crust that formed on the bottom of the pot. But that morning I ate with little enthusiasm. At last, Frieda took my hand and we left.

I went into my classroom, not knowing what to expect. Miss Nelson greeted everyone with a smile and asked us to sit down. What came next, I wondered? Was this the day I was going to learn to read?

But no, out came the enrolment paper again. Once more with the names, but this time she asked for our middle or second names. And I didn’t have one. Middle names were not used in Russia. My sisters had a second name but it was the same for each of them—Jacovlena, which meant “daughter of Jacob.” I didn’t know how to say “son of Jacob.”

Each student in turn recited his or her middle name. When Miss Nelson came to me all I could say, again, was “Ich weiss nicht.” With a few variations, we repeated the song and dance of the day before. I felt increasingly desperate. Who was going to tire of this game first?

Miss Nelson finally asked, “Jakie, do you have a second name?” In relief, I replied, “No.” And once again someone behind me snickered, “No middle name. He’s definitely a dumb immigrant.”

Miss Nelson announced, “I’ve decided to spell your name this way: J-A-C-K-I-E.” From that day on, my name was written “Jackie,” even though it was pronounced “Jakie.” In 1933, a teacher’s word was law. Teachers were always right even when they were wrong—but they were never wrong.

It took longer than two weeks but I did learn to read. I never did get the strap.