12.38 Educate Brenda 3

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38. Educate Brenda 3

Brenda is a junior in High School. During her freshman and sophomore years she was below average; played hooky from school much, setting out for school in morning but ending up, with other hooky girls, getting the screamy-meemies over Frankie Sinatra's singing on stage at the Paramount Theater, downtown New York City.
   Then came her big bang which, Dr Stan confided to Ali, had the affect of disconnecting her from old bad study habits and making Brenda's brain a tabula rasa, or blank slate for Ali to write her educate program on.

Several weeks later, both sit in Ali's 1A apartment, Brenda on sofa and Ali facing her, in a brown wood rocking chair just bought from Victor’s Used Goods on Jerome Avenue.

   “Bren, the change in you is getting more each week. Do you remember how you felt before about reading books and that kind of stuff?”

   “Gee Ali, I'm not sure. Now I am reading more but maybe I could have before and just didn't know how much fun reading is." Brenda stops as if something just occurred to her. “Oh yes, one thing I notice: I'm real curious now; I’m like a snoop, I search my house for old newspapers and I look in my dad's room and bookcase. My mom scolds me because she caught me looking in the desk in their bedroom. She asked me if I was looking for condoms. My dad keeps a supply in one drawer. But I wasn't. I am just real curious about everything.”

   “Did you find anything interesting, Bren?”

   “Yes.” Ali notes with pleasure that Brenda no longer says,Yeah.

   "In the closet I found a set of old books, real pretty with inscribed-in-red leather covers and gold page-ends. You know, my pop was born in France and I can read in French though I don't usually. Pop spoke it to me since I was a tot so I don't need to learn the grammar and sentence structure because it's all in my head. Well, on the covers is Collected Works of Honore Balzac. You know who he was, don't you, Ali?”

   "Sure, Bren, I'm trying to write my first novel, and this guy Balzac, he was one of the greatest. But I never read him. He's not pop in English. I think his dates are 1799 to 1850 and he wrote a huge number of novels in a short life about everything that went on in France in the years between the two Empires.”

   “I got this huge urge to read this Balzac. And, Gee, it's crazy but I can't stop. At first my dad was happy I am reading French but then, when I start taking the book with me and reading as I walk with my folks in the street he began to think I might be going bonkers, like - Y'know? - crazy. My folks worried about that after the accident. I've now read the first six novels. And - Y'know? - he writes each novel about a different kind of work. Like he has one about a lawyer, another about a banker, another about a doctor. And then he has this one young guy, Eugene, who appears in a lot of the books and has his own novel.
   "What I want to say about this reading is now I really begin to see life because of Mr Balzac. And now I know it's more than you and I on the sofa, or me and Moyshe in the movie seats, or the kind of chitchat with the other girls that used to make me happy. This Mr Balzac, he introduce me to the life I don't know.  And I want more, Ali. Can you help me?”

This conversation signals Brenda's new mindset and her thirst for knowledge. It starts a crash program and in 2 weeks, Ali teaches her secrets of memory that allow Brenda to recall 20-digit numbers at a glance, to get the ideas from a page at one reading; also secrets of mathematics that make her a wiz at figures and set her up to be top student in the third year high school course that introduces Calculus and Trigonometry.
And Brenda discovers chemistry. The Bronx high schools introduce science in freshman year with what is called the General Course on history of science, in second year the kids get Biology and in third, Chemistry. Brenda, like almost all girls then, hated science. But something strange is happening in her head and it is stimulated by her first encounter with Mrs Greenberg  the new chemistry teacher, an attractive 40-year-old intelligent mother type whose lectures make chemistry come alive for Brenda.

The result is Brenda's asking her father to buy her a Chemistry set, an unheard of request by a daughter of a father. Mr Borden scratches his head and thinks to himself, Maybe she did get crazy from that bang on the head. But I guess it's a good crazy.  So he buys her a set and immediately Brenda is blowing up her bathroom with experiments.

Thus Ali's Educate Brenda speeds the swerve in Brenda's mental life brought on by her big bang.  For next, click 12.39 Dan's Alone Day - Life at the End of Its Te...