The Water Is Wide: A Memoir

After finding a movie projector in a closet at the school, Pat begins showing films to his students. Mrs. Brown objects, arguing that the films are a waste of time when “these children need the basics” (105).

The films invigorate the children. A discussion about The Wizard of Oz leads to “one of those rare moments generated by chance, planned by no one, spontaneous and joyful, transcending the need for a teacher or a classroom, and making me once more thinking of education as something alive and helpful” (107). The children attempt to explain the story, “each adding their own peculiar interpretations, each emphasizing a different part of the story, and each feeling perfectly free to combine incidents from the Wizard of Oz with incidents that occurred in other television programs” (109). Recording their efforts on a tape player, Pat ends up with “the story of Oz as it [has] never been told before—a new Oz, a land that Judy Garland had never entered” (110).

Pat also has the children record their name, address, and grade onto the tape recorder. The children are delighted to hear their own voices, and one of them, Top Cat, dances and sings a remarkable rendition of a James Brown song. Others join in. After school, Mrs. Brown insists that even though the children love to sing, it is a waste of time. She warns that the children “gonna be just like their parents if you don’t watch out. Drinkin’ and singin’ and sinnin’ on Saturday night” (121).

Two young men start volunteering on the island as part of a new program at the University of California, provoking the “stormy and vehement disapproval of the island troll, Ted Stone,” who complains that “all of them are Communists trained in Havana” (110). The men are initially distant with Pat, assuming that “all southern white [are] incorrigible racists who [love] to eat grits, smell magnolias, and lynch blacks” (111). However, they and Pat soon become friends.

One of the program’s aims is for the young men to help in the school, but Mrs. Brown refuses to allow them in the classroom. She insists that “these boys have no credentials” and so will “hurt the reputation and cree-dentials of this school” (115).

Conroy admits that “[w]hite guilt, that nasty little creature who rested on my left shoulder, prevented me from challenging Mrs. Brown on this or any other point” (115-14) and that “a black man could have handed me a bucket of cow piss, commanded me to drink it in order that I might rid my soul of the stench of racism, and I would have only asked for a straw” (116). When Pat confronts his understanding of race relations, he notes that “[it] dawn[s] on me that I came to Yamacraw for a fallacious reason: I needed to be cleansed, born again, resurrected by good works and suffering, purified of the dark cankers that grew like toadstools in my past” (116).

When Pat learns that the children do not celebrate Halloween, he declares, “That is un-American and is completely ridiculous. Halloween is one the truly great parts of being a kid” (128). His wife, Barbara, suggests that he bring the children to Beaufort for the night. A teacher invites the children to a Halloween party at a school in Beaufort and promises to find them families to stay with through the PTA.

When Pat tells Mrs. Brown about the trip, she refuses permission. However, Pat insists: “Those eighteen children are my responsibility and since it is up to me to decide how best to educate them, I am going to take them to Beaufort for Halloween” (130).

The children’s parents and guardians also object to the proposed trip. Edna Graves, grandmother and guardian of four of the children, admits that she will not let them go because she is afraid of the boat ride across the river. She eventually agrees to let her two oldest grandchildren go. “By winning Edna, [Pat] won the island” (140), and the other guardians agree to let the children go on the trip.

Despite poor weather, transportation issues, and a fall that necessitates taking one student to the hospital for a badly cut knee, they make it to the Halloween party. Pat speculates that the white children and their parents “were expecting the Yamacrawans to paddle over in their dug-out canoes, chanting in the unknown tongue of the wind god” and are “disappointed because [the] children did not wear bones in their noses, or carry spears to drive away enemies” (148). The children, however, are warmly welcomed and a “spirit of good-will seem[s] to reign over the proceedings” (149) as the children take part in a Halloween parade followed by trick-or-treating.

The next day, the weather is worse, making it impossible to cross river back to Yamacraw. They spend the night on mats at the elementary school. Pat fears “parental retribution” for keeping the children an extra day, but the children’s enthusiastic reports about their trips mollify their guardians.

Mrs. Brown, however, reports that one of the children wet the mat that he slept on, and she fears that the same child probably wet the bed at the house where he stayed the night before. She insists that the responsible child stand up and apologize for wetting the mattress. When no one owns up, she grows angrier. Pat has forbidden the children from telling on each other to Mrs. Brown, so they all remain silent. Pat jokingly thanks the children for “not telling Mrs. Brown that it was me who wet the wrestling mat” (156). Yet, he recognizes that while he can “neutralize the effect of Mrs. Brown’s speeches on the surface,” he can “never be sure how much damage she [is] inflicting under the surface, where it count[s] most, in the soul” (156).

Pat believes that “no man or woman has the right to humiliate children” (156). Thus, he feels that a confrontation with Mrs. Brown is inevitable. Although the “old demon, white guilt, [can] control [him] for a while” (156), he is learning “a liberating, important universal truth: because a person is black does not mean that he or she thinks black or is proud to be black” (156). Moreover, he insists that even though “society [has] corroded Mrs. Brown’s image of the black man, I [do] not feel sufficiently compelled to allow Mrs. Brown to infect my students with her malady” (157).

The trip to the mainland “prove[s] a pungent stimulant for class activity and awareness for many months” (158). Pat comes to appreciate “small victories” in the children’s academic progress, but he also realizes that “no matter what happen[s], my struggle and efforts [cannot] eradicate the weight and inalienable supremacy of two hundred years: the children of slaves [cannot] converse or compete with the offspring of planters, the descendants of London barristers, the progeny of sprawling, upward-climbing white America” (158). Pat sees this as “a crime, so ugly that it [can] be interpreted as a condemnation of an entire society” (160).

Pat realizes that the children hate Mrs. Brown. Furthermore, he notes that they are “not merely venting their frustration on a figure of authority, but that they [hate] with reason and justification” (161). She regularly criticizes and berates them. Pat does not take her speeches seriously until he realizes that the children do take them seriously and are suffering as a result.

Mrs. Brown is not only critical of the children at the school, but also of the other black people on the island. She describes them as “some of the meanest, dirtiest people in the world” (167).

In addition to berating the children, Mrs. Brown beats them with leather straps: “One of them she called Dr Discipline; the other she called Professor Medicine” (161). Pat does not agree with corporal punishment, but he is hesitant to confront Mrs. Brown about it.

When Pat asks Mrs. Brown to “be less abrasive when addressing the kids, to be a wee bit more diplomatic, and to have a greater concern for their feelings” (162), she gives a “long, rambling, antagonistic, and evasive” response, concluding “by saying twice, ‘I am the principal. I am the principal’” (164). Eventually Pat decides that he must “choose sides” against Mrs. Brown; as a result, “total war rage[s] through the two-room school” (166).

Although he does not believe in corporal punishment, Pat acknowledges that “these children [have] known the leather strap too long to be controlled by the threatening modulation of the vocal chords” (171). For a while, he arm wrestles the boys when they act up, but he finds that isn’t sufficient. He settles on a form of pinching called “milking the rat,” which he uses “to break up fights, rebellions, or mutinies in class” (175).