I wonder what that is.
April 17
I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams.
Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind.
I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank.
Dr. Strauss says that it means I've reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering.
It's a wall between the present and the past.
Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what's behind it.
Like this morning.
The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports.
In the dream I sit down to write but I can't write or read any more.
It's all gone.
I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me.
But when Miss Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they've got dirty words in them.
When I get home Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report.
When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into lace valentines with blood all over them.
It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate.
Bakery… baking… the urn… someone kicking me… fall down… bloody all over… writing… big pencil on a red valentine…a little gold heart…a locket…a chain…all covered with blood… and he's laughing at me… The chain is from a locket… spinning around… flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin…watch the chain…all bunched up and twisting and spinning… and a little girl is watching me.
Her name is Miss Kin—I mean Harriet.
"Harriet. .. Harriet... we all love Harriet."
And then there's nothing. It's blank again.
Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports over my shoulder.
Then we're at the Adult Center for the Retarded, and she's reading over my shoulder as I write my composishuns compositions.
School changes into P.S. 13 and I'm eleven years old and Miss Kinnian is eleven years old too, but now she's not Miss Kinnian. She's a little girl with dimples and long curls and her name is Harriet.
We all love Harriet.
It's Valentines Day.
I remember…
I remember what happened at P.S. 13 and why they had to change my school and send me to P.S. 222.
It was because of Harriet.
I see Charlie—eleven years old.
He has a little gold-color locket he once found in the street.
There's no chain, but he has it on a string, and he likes to twirl the locket so that it bunches up the string, and then watch it unwind, spinning around with the sun flicking into his eyes. Sometimes when the kids play catch they let him play in the middle and he tries to get the ball before one of them catches it. He likes to be in the middle—even if he never catches the ball—and once when Hymie Roth dropped the ball by mistake and he picked it up they wouldn't let him throw it but he had to go in the middle again.
When Harriet passes by, the boys stop playing and look at her.
All the boys love Harriet.
When she shakes her head her curls bounce up and down, and she has dimples.
Charlie doesn't know why they make such a fuss about a girl and why they always want to talk to her (he'd rather play ball or kick-the-can, or ringo-levio than talk to a girl) but all the boys are in love with Harriet so he is in love with her too.
She never teases him like the other kids, and he does tricks for her.
He walks on the desks when the teacher isn't there. He throws erasers out the window, scribbles all over the blackboard and walls.
And Harriet always screeches and giggles,
"Oh, lookit Charlie.
Ain't he funny?
Oh, ain't he silly?"
It's Valentine's Day, and the boys are talking about valentines they're going to give Harriet, so Charlie says,
"I'm gonna give Harriet a valentime too."
They laugh and Barry says,
"Where you gonna get a valentime?"
"I'm gonna get her a pretty one.
You'll see."
But he doesn't have any money for a valentine, so he decides to give Harriet his locket that is heart-shaped like the valentines in the store windows.
That night he takes tissue paper from his mother's drawer, and it takes a long time to wrap and tie it with a piece of red ribbon.