The New Girl In The School

By Renie (Szilak) Burghardt

Recently, my granddaughter was telling me about a new girl in her school.

"She doesn't speak good English, and most of the kids think she is strange, Nana," Nichole told me. "But the teacher asked me to try and be friends with her. The teacher says the girl, her name is Maria, needs a new friend to show her around. "

"Your teacher is a wise, caring person, and I hope you will try to do as she suggested," I said. "Maria probably feels pretty strange, being the new girl in the school. It's hard being the new girl, especially if you don't speak the language well. Put yourself in her shoes, and see how you would feel, if you were the new girl." And then I told her about being the new, strange girl in my school, a long time ago.

When I started school in my new country, the United States of America, in January of 1952, I was classified as a Displaced Person. And at fifteen, "displaced" described both my legal status and my fragile self-esteem. My family and I had lived through World War II, in our country, Hungary, followed by four years in a refugee camp. The relatively carefree life that our new country presented us with took some getting used to.

So there I was, a mousy, shy D. P. girl who spoke with a thick accent, and was barely acknowledged by her beautiful American peers. For beautiful is what they were to me, those girls with their pony-tails, bobby-socks, and carefree, laughing ways, and I longed to be just like them. But I was different; my past still haunted me.

The school I attended was an all-girls school run by nuns, and girls who attended came from all parts of the city we lived in, the older girls driving their cars to get there. We lived in a small rental house near the school, so I walked to it. I was aware that it was a great sacrifice for my grandparents to send me there since money was still scarce in our household, and the school had a tuition, and uniform and book expenses. And I felt lucky to have been accepted, since my English was still not up to par. One of my Hungarian friends had not been so lucky, and had been placed back into the sixth grade. Mortified, she soon quit school and got a job in a sewing factory.

By the time June rolled around I had been in my new school six months. I was still shy and mousy, and barely noticed by the other girls, but despite my poor academic performance, they passed me to the tenth grade. I was relieved. I spent that first summer in America working part-time at our local dime store and hanging out with other new Hungarian friends at the beach.

Good things always end much too soon, and in September of that year it was time to don the old blue and gold jumper and white blouse again and go back to school. Of course, I entered the building with trepidation, and although some of the girls greeted me cheerily, I had not turned into a swan over the summer, and I was quite aware of that. Then I walked into Sister Mary Ann's sophomore English class, and soon everything changed.

Sister Mary Ann had the bluest eyes, a smile that lit up the classroom, and a gentle, symphatetic, understanding mannerism. She recognized my pain, and began asking me about my life in front of the class. It was so that my classmates could better understand why I was different from them, she explained, and gently implored them to put themselves in my shoes, and see how they would feel in them. My mind soon concluded that an angel had come into my life! Then the good sister gave us our first assignment of the new school term.

"I want you all to write an essay of at least four pages about something memorable that has happened to you. It will be due a week from today." When we left her classroom, I wasn't too sure I knew what an essay was, but for the first time at that school, I put my heart and soul into an assignment.

I wrote about being crammed, with hundreds of other hopeful refugees, on a ship taking us to our new country. I wrote about Dave, the young American who befriended me and brought me my first Coke. I wrote about my first sight of the Statue of Liberty, and about being tagged and ushered for processing to the main building of Ellis Island, an enormous hall filled with throngs of bewildered people. And I realized that I liked writing.

The day after we handed in our essays, Sister Mary Ann had me read mine to the class. To my big surprise, my classmates gave me a big hand when I finished. Then I was sent to read it throughout the school and got the same reaction. Suddenly, girls mobbed me in the hallway telling me how much they liked my essay, asking me questions, paying attention to me. Suddenly, I was more than just that mousy D.P.Girl, I was being accepted as one of them. Because of a caring teacher, the culture shock was broken, and to that gentle soul in the blue and white habit, I shall always be grateful.