THE SANCTUARY OF SCHOOL Lynda Barry
In her cartoon strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” which appears in a number of newspapers and magazines,
Lynda Barry looks at the world through the eyes of children. Her characters remind adult readers of the
complicated world of young people and of the clarity with which they see social situations. In “The
Sanctuary of School,” Barry tells a story from her own childhood. As you read this essay, note how Barry
relates her personal experience to a broader issue.
I was 7 years old the first time I snuck out of the house in the dark. It was winter and my parents had
been fighting all night. They were short on money and long on relatives who kept “temporarily” moving
into our house because they had nowhere else to go. My brother and I were used to giving up our
bedroom. We slept on the couch, something we actually liked because it put us that much closer to the
light of our lives, our television.
At night when everyone was asleep, we lay on our pillows watching it with the sound off. We watched
Steve Allen’s mouth moving. We watched Johnny Carson’s mouth moving. We watched movies filled
with gangsters shooting machine guns into packed rooms, dying soldiers hurling a last grenade and
beautiful women crying at windows. Then the sign-off finally came and we tried to sleep.
The morning I snuck out, I woke up filled with a panic about needing to get to school. The sun wasn’t
quite up yet but my anxiety was so fierce that I just got dressed, walked quietly across the kitchen and
let myself out the back door.
It was quiet outside. Stars were still out. Nothing moved and no one was in the street. It was as if
someone had turned the sound off on the world.
I walked the alley, breaking thin ice over the puddles with my shoes. I didn’t know why I was walking to
school in the dark. I didn’t think about it. All I knew was a feeling of panic, like the panic that strikes kids
when they realize they are lost.
That feeling eased the moment I turned the corner and saw the dark outline of my school at the top of
the hill. My school was made up of about 15 nondescript portable classrooms set down on a fenced
concrete lot in a rundown Seattle neighborhood, but it had the most beautiful view of the Cascade
Mountains. You could see them from anywhere on the playfield and you could see them from the
windows of my classroom—Room 2.
I walked over to the monkey bars and hooked my arms around the cold metal. I stood for a long time
just looking across Rainier Valley. The sky was beginning to whiten and I could hear a few birds.
In a perfect world my absence at home would not have gone unnoticed. I would have had two parents in
a panic to locate me, instead of two parents in a panic to locate an answer to the hard question of
survival during a deep financial and emotional crisis.
But in an overcrowded and unhappy home, it’s incredibly easy for any child to slip away. The high levels
of frustration, depression and anger in my house made my brother and me invisible. We were children
with the sound turned off. And for us, as for the steadily increasing number of neglected children in this
country, the only place where we could count on being noticed was at school.
“Hey there, young lady. Did you forget to go home last night?” It was Mr. Gunderson, our janitor, whom
we all loved. He was nice and he was funny and he was old with white hair, thick glasses and an
unbelievable number of keys. I could hear them jingling as he walked across the playfield. I felt
incredibly happy to see him.
He let me push his wheeled garbage can between the different portables as he unlocked each room. He
let me turn on the lights and raise the window shades and I saw my school slowly come to life. I saw
Mrs. Holman, our school secretary, walk into the office without her orange lipstick on yet. She waved.
I saw the fifth-grade teacher Mr. Cunningham, walking under the breezeway eating a hard roll. He
waved.
And I saw my teacher, Mrs. Claire LeSane, walking toward us in a red coat and calling my name in a very
happy and surprised way, and suddenly my throat got tight and my eyes stung and I ran toward her
crying. It was something that surprised us both.
It’s only thinking about it now, 28 years later, that I realize I was crying from relief. I was with my
teacher, and in a while I was going to sit atmy desk, with my crayons and pencils and books and
classmates all around me, and for the next six hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and
stable world. It was a world I absolutely relied on. Without it, I don’t know where I would have gone that
morning.
Mrs. LeSane asked me what was wrong and when I said “Nothing,” she seemingly left it at that. But she
asked me if I would carry her purse for her, an honor above all honors, and she asked if I wanted to
come into Room 2 early and paint.
She believed in the natural healing power of painting and drawing for troubled children. In the back of
her room there was always a drawing table and an easel with plenty of supplies, and sometimes during
the day she would come up to you for what seemed like no good reason and quietly ask if you wanted to
go to the back table and “make some pictures for Mrs. LeSane.” We all had a chance at it—to sit apart
from the class for a while to paint, draw and silently work out impossible problems on 11 × 17 sheets of
newsprint.
Drawing came to mean everything to me. At the back table in Room 2, I learned to build myself a life
preserver that I could carry into my home.
We all know that a good education system saves lives, but the people of this country are still told that
cutting the budget for public schools is necessary, that poor salaries for teachers are all we can manage
and that art, music and all creative activities must be the first to go when times are lean.
Before- and after-school programs are cut and we are told that public schools are not made for baby-
sitting children. If parents are neglectful temporarily or permanently, for whatever reason, it’s certainly
sad, but their unlucky children must fend for themselves. Or slip through the cracks. Or wander in a dark
night alone.
We are told in a thousand ways that not only are public schools not important, but that the children
who attend them, the children who need them most, are not important either. We leave them to learn
from the blind eye of a television, or to the mercy of “a thousand points of light” that can be as far away
as stars.
I was lucky. I had Mrs. LeSane. I had Mr. Gunderson. I had an abundance of art supplies. And I had a
particular brand of neglect in my home that allowed me to slip away and get to them. But what about
the rest of the kids who weren’t as lucky? What happened to them?
By the time the bell rang that morning I had finished my drawing and Mrs. LeSane pinned it up on the
special bulletin board she reserved for drawings from the back table. It was the same picture I always
drew—a sun in the corner of a blue sky over a nice house with flowers all around it.
Mrs. LeSane asked us to please stand, face the flag, place our right hands over our hearts and say the
Pledge of Allegiance. Children across the country do it faithfully. I wonder now when the country will
face its children and say a pledge right back.
Reacting to the Reading
1. Underline passages that describe Barry’s home life in negative terms and her school life in positive
terms.
2. In the margins of the essay, note the specific features of the two places (home and school) that are
contrasted.
Reacting to Words
1. Define these words: nondescript (paragraph 7), fend (20). Can you suggest a synonym for each word
that will work in the essay?
2. Look up the word sanctuary in a dictionary. Which of the listed definitions do you think comes closest
to Barry’s meaning?
Reacting to Ideas
1. In paragraph 10, Barry characterizes herself and her brother as “children with the sound turned off.”
What do you think she means?
2. List the ways in which Barry’s home and school worlds are different.
*3. What is the main point of Barry’s essay—the idea that she wants to convince readers to accept? Is
this idea actually stated in her essay? If so, where? If not, do you think it should be?
Reacting to the Pattern
1. Paragraphs 9–10 and 19–22 interrupt Barry’s story. What purpose do these paragraphs serve? Do you
think the essay would be more effective if paragraphs 9 and 10 came earlier? If paragraphs 19–22 came
after paragraph 24? Explain.
2. What transitional words and phrases does Barry use to move readers from one event to the next? Do
you think her essay needs more transitions? If so, where should they be added?
Writing Practice
1. Did you see elementary school as a “sanctuary” or as something quite different? Write a narrative
essay that conveys to readers what school meant to you when you were a child.
2. In addition to school, television was a sanctuary for Barry and her brother. Did television watching (or
some other activity) serve this function for you when you were younger? Is there some activity that fills
this role now? In a narrative essay, write about your own “sanctuary.”
3. What role does college play in your life? Write an article for your school newspaper in which you use
narration to tell what school means to you now that you are an adult.
