4I moved to Somerville in the middle of third grade. We moved because my dad wanted to be closer to his family up in New Jersey. Being new in the middle of the school year definitely wasn't easy. Even though we were only nine years old, we all had out own cliques. I didn't belong to any of them, except the D group. The D group consisted of five people, before I came as the sixth. We were loaners; "squares" they called us. It's not that we weren't ever interested in anything the other kids were interested in. We just had different opinions on a lot of things.
Moving had a huge impact on my life - moving from Charleston, South Carolina to Somerville, New Jersey. Charleston was a big, active city that everyone's heard of. Somerville was a quiet, boring, and low community in New Jersey. I would move back to Charleston in a heartbeat. But I was only nine, so I had no choice.
In sixth grade, another "square" came to Somerville Middle School and became lucky 7 in the D group.
"Who wants to go to Ostro's and get the new 'Crystals' record?" asked Carolyn, the founder of the D group.
"Who wants to listen to those flakes? Let's get the 'Jan and Dean' record instead! Anyone got fifty cents?" asked Pete, number two to join.
"Why would I spend my week's allowance buying a record when I could just go in there and take it off the shelf?" That's Nancy, the lucky 7 of the D group.
There was Carolyn Amerman, the girl who knew the answer to anything you wanted to know. She was brainy, but also had the most personality out of all of us put together. Sandra and Linda Stone, identical twins, were attached to each other. Not literally, one did whatever the other did. If you saw Sandra without Linda, you'd call the "Fuzz", or the police to search for her. James McNulty was the shy, quiet kid in the back of the room who never opened his mouth. Not much to say about him. There was Pete Berman. I have no clue why he was in the D group. Everyone loved him, he played every sport, and he was perfect. He fit in. There was me, Larry Andrews. Don't know what to say for myself. I thought I was normal. Last, there was Nancy Ciurleo. The rebel; almost like the bully of the D group. She never did what anyone told her to do. Nancy did her own thing. She was from Camden, one of the slummy towns in New Jersey. Her parents were divorced. I think she was the only one in the entire school with divorced parents. Nancy had one sister, Anna. Anna and her mother were both heavy drinkers, while Nancy was caught in the middle. She wasn't allowed to visit her dad ever again. She never told us why, either. We thought maybe her dad was some mass murderer in another state, and that was why Nancy was how she was.
The next day was Monday. I lost my 35 cents to buy lunch with, so I got Nancy to steal me some milk and a hot dog. She did come in handy once in a while. Those lunch ladies weren't too smart. You could give them only a dime, the cost of milk, and they wouldn't even notice. They wore those disgusting hairnets, which were pointless. All of their gross gray hair got in the pork and beans, anyway.
We had an awful table at lunch. It was small, circular, and had only six seats. We couldn't wait to go to Somerville High School. They could go anywhere they wanted for lunch! We knew we would go to the Candy Kitchen as much as we could, as soon as we got raises in our allowances. We would each spend a dollar a day getting a meal. For each of us, that's $5 a week. My allowance was only $1 a week, and I knew I couldn't live on that for long. I had a few jobs over the summer to make some money, such as mowing lawns and delivering papers, but I had no time to do either of those during the school year. I was caught up in tennis and track all seventh and eighth grades I had no time for anything else. I spent that money fast, anyway.
It was a Saturday afternoon, which meant one thing to us 14-year-olds. American Bandstand! Every Saturday we went to someone's house to watch the best show ever. It was our turn to go to Pete's house, so Sandra called Nancy to tell her we were getting her on our way there.
"What's her number again? RA-8-2089?" Sandra picked up the phone to dial.
"Larry! Mrs. Miller's on the phone again! Tell her to get off!" screamed Sandra from the living room. I rushed over to the phone.
"Mrs. Miller? It's Larry. We need to use the phone. It's an emergency."
"Oh, Larry! I'm sorry! I'll be off in a jiffy, sweetie!" said Mrs., Miller, my neighbor. We had party lines then. Four houses shared the same phone line. It was a pain. Your neighbors could sit at home and listen to your phone conversations all day! That meant you really had to watch what you were saying.
Sandra called Nancy and told her we would be there in ten minutes. When we arrived at the Ciurleo house, it was nothing different than anything else we see there.
"Get out of this house, Nancy Ann Ciurleo! You don't deserve to live here anyway, you little -!" yelled Nancy's mom. We knew her mom had been drinking; by the way she yelled, by the look on Nancy's face, and the way Mrs. Ciurleo threw a beer bottle at Nancy as she ran out of the house in tears. Nancy tried to suck it up and look tough again so we wouldn't ask her any questions.
"Hey, where are we going today?" asked Nancy, about to bawl.
"My house," said Pete, "just watch out for my dog, Max. His doghouse got flooded from all the rain there's been, so he's been living in the house.
"That's the least of my worries," mumbled Nancy, hoping no one would hear her. All six of us wanted to help Nancy somehow. We just didn't know how to approach her. We couldn't just go up to her and say, "Are your mom and Anna still alcoholics? Do you want us to help?" We knew Nancy would eat us if we asked that. We had to get into a conversation on that topic some way. But how? Who knew the answer? We all thought Carolyn, of course. But for once, she was clueless!
"Maybe we could get one of our teachers to get on the topic of alcohol and child abuse! And to tell us to always go to a trusted adult for help!" suggested Linda. Even Sandra knew Nancy would never tell a teacher anything going on in her life. Nancy simply had no one to call a "trusted adult". Her averages were always in the "D" range, a 65 to a 69, so no one thought to highly of her, either. At least she wasn't failing!
After American Bandstand, we all walked to Candy Kitchen for some food. We tried to get Nancy to tell us what was happening at her house. How did she feel? If this kept going on, what would she do? What would happen to her? What would I do if I were in her position? I was clueless. In my opinion, I had the ideal family: a mom and dad that were married, a sister, a dog, money, a nice home, and anything else a perfect family had. I couldn't relate at all to what was going on in Nancy's head.
After the girls went home, only the guys were left. James got the phonebook to look for the number for AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. It was, and still is, a place for alcoholics to go and get help on how to stop drinking. We got the number and called.
"MA-1-1249", said James as he dialed. "1-12-49. January 12, 1949. Isn't that Nancy's birthday?"
That was odd. The number for AA was Nancy's birthday! Was that a coincidence, or was this a sign of some sort?
"Alcoholics Anonymous, how may I help you?" answered a man on the other line. James froze, so he gave me the phone to talk to the man.
"Hi my name is Lawrence Andrews. My friend's mother and sister are alcoholics. Our friend won't let us help them. Can you give us some advice on what to do for my friend's family?"
"Well, Lawrence, this topic is never easy. Did you try sitting down with your friend and talking to him or her about it?"
"Yes," I said, "And my friend's name is Nancy. She's not the easiest person in the world to talk to."
"I see. Just keep trying to talk to Nancy and see if she breaks through to tell you." That was all the advice the man gave us. We were on our own.
Sunday, May 3rd. It was a beautiful, warm spring day. Seemed like nothing could go wrong, until we saw Sandra and Linda running as fast as they could towards my house.
"Nancy's in the hospital!" screeched Sandra.
"Her mom hit her in the head with a beer bottle!" added Linda.
We rushed to the Emergency Room to see how Nancy and her mom were. All six of us ran into the waiting room and looked at Mrs. Ciurleo sobbing. She looked pathetic. Smelled like beer, too. How could she hit her youngest daughter like that? We were disgusted. Everyone walked into Nancy's hospital room to check on her, except me. I stayed and talked to Mrs. Ciurleo.
"Hello, Larry," said Mrs. Ciurleo. "You must think I'm horrid for being ignorant enough to hit my daughter like that."
"Well, you hit rock bottom. Something was bound to happen soon. Ever hear of Alcoholics Anonymous? You can go there for help on how to stop drinking. I suggest it. I also suggest bringing Anna." I explained.
"Yes, I was going to call them right when I got home. What date is your graduation, again?"\
Nancy was perfectly fine. The beer bottle only made her unconscious. Nancy was back to her old self by the next day. Well, not to her old self.
Mrs. Ciurleo and Anna went to AA twice a week. Wow, that did them good! I wasn't hearing of anymore fighting going on in that house. Nancy's spirit brightened tremendously. She even got a 91, her first A ever, on her Arithmetic test a few weeks later.
On the night of graduation, we were all surprised. Where was Mrs. Ciurleo? You could tell Nancy felt her world crumbling all over again. But when Principal Hickley called for Nancy Ann Ciurleo to get her diploma, we all saw Mrs. Ciurleo in the very back with Anna. We could see they were cheering on Nancy, the D group, and the rest of the graduating class of 1963.
Please review and make my friend happy!