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Jane Hammons BOILING THE DOG'S HEAD
Fall 1969 became words in my vocabulary. I study the processes by which these substances are created.Igneous In 1969, I am not sure what kind of science I am interested in, but I like thinking about cell division, looking at things under a microscope, and saying words like flagella and cytoplasm.Formed by fire Before this time, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a teacher and maybe a writer. Previous to my junior year, biology teachers had always been football coaches. My sophomore biology text had opened with a discussion of how God created the earth. We were assigned worktables where we spent a lot of time working, mainly on our social skills. We took multiple choice tests. We watched filmstrips.Spring 1998 The new biology teacher is a short, fat, plain woman. She has just graduated from the University of New Mexico, the school I plan to attend. Where has she gone wrong? Why has she ended up being my high school biology teacher? I imagine her imagining herself in a white lab coat doing research or perhaps performing groundbreaking surgeries. I imagine myself holding a beaker overflowing with heretofore-undiscovered elements. She asks us to put away our biology textbooks and begins the class by showing us a movie about a trip she took to Africa. At one point in the movie, someone dressed in a gorilla suit appears alongside the car. No one laughs. Did she want to say something about evolution? Is she in the gorilla suit?Memorable Ones: sperm wriggling their This teacher, whose name I do not remember (Mr. Garcia, the football coach, I remember: very cute), has gained permission for two students to watch open-heart surgery on a dog. Quickly, I raise my hand. What was the appeal, I now wonder? An excuse to get out of class? It was easy enough just to cut her class. Being new and fresh out of college, Ms. Biology Teacher wasn't good at enforcing rules. The girl next to me at the worktable raises her hand, too. Together Ellen and I go to a room at the Roswell Inn, fanciest hotel in town, and watch from an observation deck as a team of doctors pull heartworms out of a dog's heart.Even now, as a teacher who has those Why the Roswell Inn, Ellen and I wondered. Did the scientists think we didn't have hospitals in Roswell?Turnaround point when dragging Main. Having attended many as an adult, I
That same fall, a small branch of Eastern New Mexico
State University opens in my hometown of Roswell, New Mexico. ENMU-R
it is called. When people say its name, they say E-N-M-UdashR. My
mother thinks it would be a good idea for me to do my freshman year
at ENMUdashR and live at home my first year of college. I disagree.
Roswell, New Mexico:
ENMUdashR offers high school students the opportunity
to enroll in special courses and receive college credit for them.
While I like this new biology teacher, this woman, this real biologist,
I am excited about taking a course for college credit. I imagine myself
in a laboratory somewhere, preparing slides, lighting the flames under
Bunsen burners. Doing science. I enroll in the course along with Ellen.
The biology teacher understands. She encourages us. The college teacher,
the naturalist at our hometown museum, the biology lecturer at ENMUdashR
is less encouraging. He scrutinizes us. He drills us. Why do girls
want to take Biology for College Credit?
We are accepted into the class along with the other students, all of whom are boys, most of whom play football.Confusion: Is the class just offered to Instead of going to biology class every day for 50 minutes, I go to class two evenings a week for two hours--like a real college student--in a large barracks of a building near the campus of the New Mexico Military Institute, Roswell's other institution of higher learning. My mother is disappointed and nervous. Our farm is much closer to the abandoned grounds of Walker Air Force Base, now the campus of ENMUdashR. She doesn't like the idea of me driving alone to the north side of town to attend a college credit night class.Confusion: Do coaches and athletes have a Never having attended college herself
The first night of class, we are required to skin
cats. I'd seen my father skin a catfish, which is where, I think,
the term "skin the cat" comes from. The college biology teacher, whose
name I do not remember, wants us to peel the fur off a cat's carcass.
These are no chloroformed-rubber-chicken-like cats stored in tubs
of formaldehyde. These are fresh cats, straight from the pound. They
are still warm. I imagine the dogcatcher unloading a paddy wagon of
dead cats.
We are given bright, shiny tools. We are instructed on how to slice the furry skin, peel away the epidermis, and find muscle.But, in fact, the naturalist must have I like the weight of the instrument in my hand. Having grown up on a farm, I am not particularly squeamish about dead things, nor do I have any illusions about the value of an animal's life. Pets--cats, dogs, rabbits, chickens--come and go. I have never been attached to a pet, especially since they occasionally turn out to be dinner. But Ellen is looking a little green. She has a kitty waiting for her to return from class. She hopes. Her eyes water. I play the tough girl. Make the cut. Peel away flesh. Examine the bright, pink, slick, thigh muscle, and vomit out the open window. Ellen cries. In the movie version, boys make fun of her. But in 1969 these boys in their letter jackets slice and peel. Cut muscle, saw bone. The teacher, the naturalist at the museum, comes over and laughs at us. What, after all, had he expected? In fact, he offers us the opportunity to create an alternative course of study so that we do not have to participate in the cutting and gutting. It turns out that Ellen is truly interested in plants and bugs. She is determined to go to college and major in biology.Who’s to say how they really felt? The naturalist and Ellen agree upon her project. It turns out that I don't know what I am interested in. Nursing, the naturalist suggests, or perhaps speech therapy.She did. Neither of those things sounds interesting to me. I still have a picture of myself in a laboratory, thinking about cells, thinking about DNA, thinking about genes and chromosomes.Fall 1996 I have no alternate plan. I have no plan. I pick up the instrument and make the cuts, peel the flesh, and don't vomit again.Summer 1984 After we mutilate the animals as a way of learning about muscle tissue, the naturalist collects the bloody messes in a large garbage can.At the University of California, San Bones, he announces. Next week, bones.This does not go back into the trunk of The following week, the naturalist provides us with freshly decapitated dogs, squirrels, cats, foxes, and skunks. The only bones we are going to look at are skulls. Before we can examine the skull, however, it has to be cleaned. Excavated. He places a stunned head in front of each of us, except for Ellen who is humming while examining the delicate egg cases of ladybugs. He gives us a tool. We strip the animal's face off. Then we scrape out the contents of the animal's head as best we can. The eyeballs, brains, tissue, tongue, go into the garbage. Bones are all we are interested in. We are each provided a Bunsen burnerWhy hadn't I made a plan? and a canister in which we are to boil water. Once the water boils, we are to drop the mutilated head into it. This last stage allows us to easily remove any bits of flesh left on the skull.A Bunsen burner at last! The stench in the room is unbearable. We are reprimanded for not thoroughly cleaning the skulls. It is not the remaining flesh that stinks, the naturalist says, it is we who stink. We have failed to properly remove the goo. It is true that I have done a poor job of emptying my dog's head. The eyes are still in. Brain matter clings frantically to the skull. I put the dog's head down on the table in front of me, fight off the impulse to vomit, and wonder where I am going to get by boiling that dog's head.Objective: a smooth shiny skull Maybe my Spanish teacher was right. As a sophomore, I had been her best student. I loved listening to Spanish. I was an excellent triller. I could write long eloquent speeches in Spanish. It was a language I had been listening to all my life, in the fields, in the grocery store, on the school bus.Mrs. Hillhouse: Senora Casaloma You could be a stewardess, she stopped
I am 16 and have never been on an airplane, have never
traveled farther east than Texas, no farther north than Oklahoma.
I contemplate that dog's messy head. Why hadn't I made an alternate plan? The naturalist stands behind me. He doesn't even want an explanation. He asks me what I am going to do for a grade in the class since I have failed at everything I have been asked to do. I start to cry. He suggests that I make an oral presentation. I agree to.It would be four more years before I Class is over, and I am sitting in my boyfriend's car. Actually, it is his mother's Lincoln. The leather is burgundy. He has been escorting me to class and home. While my mother detests him, she gives in to this arrangement because from the very beginning she has sensed danger. When I am with him, I am not out alone. We are listening to The Doors, drinking rum and coke. My boyfriend is describing in great boring detail his latest acid trip. I am sitting with Burgundy Leather wondering what in the hell I am going to do my presentation on. I know that I have to discuss it with the naturalist. I go to the museum the following day. The naturalist has an office with his name on it. I am afraid to knock. I am not intimidated by the museum. I've been coming here since I was a small child. My grandmother is a docent. I knock but can not enter. I am afraid of the naturalist behind his door. I imagine dogs, cats, skunks, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, mice--an entire room full of things waiting to be skinned, beheaded, boiled, and mounted.I will drop LSD for the first time on the The following week, I am in tears again. You figure it out, he yells at me. You figure it out! I can't do your presentation for you! Boys are polishing their skulls. Ellen is pinning the wings of a Monarch to a styrofoam board. Her final grade will be based on her display, which looks pretty junior high science fair to me. But at least she had a plan. The naturalist has saved my unfinished dog's head for me. Frozen. Ice has crystallized on the ragged bits of flesh and organs that I failed to scrape away the week before. The eyes look like cracked marbles. He hands me a small hammer and chisel and I begin to demolish the pitiful creature.Freeze the marbles; plunge them into Summer 1970
Finally, I leave that dog's head defrosting on the
table in front of me. Despite the freezing, it seems to have rotted.
The frozen odor is worse than the boiling odor.
The naturalist is putting the skulls in a neat row next to Ellen's perfectly mounted butterflies. I have nothing to offer, nothing to show, except a soggy dog's head. When I tell the naturalist that I need help with my presentation, he goes to his briefcase and pulls out a filmstrip. Here, he says to me with disgust, show this. Obediently, I take the filmstrip and a little booklet that tells me what each frame contains. When I get home, I see that this is a filmstrip on dinosaurs, something he must have been showing to elementary school children.The stench in the room is the smell of The next week on the last day of class, we have a party. Everything in the room is alive. No bloody carcasses await us. The teacher has provided Cokes, chips and dips. Because I have not submitted a final project, my filmstrip is to be the grand finale. After about an hour, the naturalist sets up the projector. I begin the filmstrip, reading the caption for each picture to my baffled audience. Tyrannosaurus rex was an impressive creature that roamed the earth for 70 million years.Tyrannosaurus rex. On and on, clicking throughI bet nobody ever boiled his head. After six frames, I begin to weep uncontrollably. I wipe snot and tears on my blouse. I show two more frames before the naturalist angrily dismisses the class, telling the other students to call him for letters of recommendation if they ever need them. No one looks at me. The projector is panting warm air through its little vents.Brontosaurus Well, says the naturalist, pulling his chair close to mine. What are you going to do about your grade? Your grade? he asks again, panting warm air through his little vents.Silence. My head has been scraped, the Though I am almost 17, I am
A research paper, I sob.
He scoffs. I whimper.Boil the dog's head! A dog barks. Burgundy Leather who has come to fetch me is standing in the doorway. He is a skinny boy with hair past his shoulders, hair that is considered long in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1969. Angry at this intrusion, the naturalist twists my arm sharply and bangs it on the table where the projector whirs. He easily shoves my boyfriend aside as he storms out of the room.Flee! Take your head and run! On the wall behind me, the projector
On the campus of Roswell High School, home of the
Howling Coyotes, no
one--not Ellen, whose best friend is the school gossip; not the football players, young men with great power--no one speaks of my oral presentation. No one ever speaks of Biology for College Credit. May 1971 June 1972
December 1974
I am a senior in college, home on Christmas break. I have been taking Women Studies courses and trying to reconcile a genuine interest in teaching with the politics of the day. Teaching is women's work. Low status. Low pay. I struggle to imagine myself in med school. I am passing biology, failing chemistry. Summer 1996 June 1973demoralized. The naturalist calls me at my mother's home where I am staying for the summer before my junior year, working in an accounting office, trying to earn money to finish school. The naturalist claims he saw me out dancing at a bar and remembered me from Biology for College Credit. He would like to take me out on a date. I assure him that it is a case of mistaken identity. In 1973, I am only 20. I don't go to bars. He thinks perhaps I don't remember him, and reminds me who he is by retelling the story. In his version, I am a spunky kid who refuses to boil the dog's head. I do not correct this misperception. I do not go out on a date with the naturalist who insists that I am who he thinks I am. But I am not mistaken. how these substances are createdigneous embeddedformed by fire exposed examined and revealed
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