The year 1960, which commenced on a high note, began nearly a decade of decline as our family secrets slowly revealed themselves. With each new revelation, I lost a bit of my childhood. By the time I was twelve, I had to behave like an adult and accept grown-up responsibilities, although my emotional maturity remained that of a teenager.
The first secret came to light one gray March day in 1960 when I was in sixth grade. That year I was assigned to Miss Frannie Focken’s class. Miss Focken was a young, thin woman with dishwater-blond hair, worn in a page boy, and watery blue eyes shielded by wire-frame glasses. She was kind, but stern and serious most of the time, and she wore no makeup and dressed conservatively in a straight skirt with a tailored blouse and jacket most days. I liked her and knew that to do well in her class I just had to follow her rules.
Most of us did, but one or two students always seemed to cause trouble. Celia was one of them. She had a chip on her shoulder and was not particularly popular. When she became angry, she did terrible things. One morning she placed a thumbtack on Miss Focken’s chair during recess.
At lunch I asked, “How could you do something so mean?”
Celia replied with a sneer and a taunt, “I know something about you that you don’t know.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re adopted!” she screamed.
“You’re wrong,” I yelled back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I ignored Celia for the rest of the day, but it was a blur. I could not concentrate on anything except her stinging words, “you’re adopted,” which echoed through my mind.