Educating Esmé (10 page)

Once they were here, it was no big deal. We ordered a pepperoni pizza. Leesha had a bubble bath. B. B. brought his recorder and played a song for me. I read
them some stories. Made eggs for breakfast. They were completely well mannered.

I told the school counselor the next day, just to cover my behind, in case B. B.'s mom got any bright ideas. The counselor cried and shook my hand. Most importantly, she said she wouldn't tell Mr. Turner.

At conflict resolution meeting, Zykrecia confronted Kyle.

“I didn't like it when you said you were going to take me doggy style. It made me feel angry and upset.” The class, of course, roared, but collected themselves so rapidly, I did not even need to settle them down. I was proud of them, controlling themselves.

“I never said that!” said Kyle. Lying, but again I didn't participate. Selena broke in.

“It doesn't matter what you think you did,” she articulated. “It matters what Zykrecia thinks you did. Use the information to change what you do in the future.”

I was floored.

“What do you want in the future?” mediated Rochelle.

“I guess I just don't want you to say anything at all to me in the future. Don't speak to me.”

The class looked at Kyle. His face was pained, devastated. Denial, his exit door, had been blocked off. He looked bloodless, shocked, leaning forward on his knuckles. The class waited.

“In the future, I won't speak to you,” he squeaked. His face contorted with a certain shame, his mouth pulled tight in agony. It was profound. I held back, observed.

“Conflict solved?” Rochelle asked.

“If he does what he said, it is,” said Zykrecia.

The class clapped. Then Zowela said, “I have a comment.” She was recognized. “That must have been embarrassing for Zykrecia to say in front of everyone. I applaud her for saying it.” All the girls clapped again. Poor Kyle looked shot. I thought of interjecting something in his defense; perhaps he didn't know. But really, there's no defense. And now he knows.

Kids were keeping their distance. They let him cry at his desk without interfering. He was angry. He
said he was mad at me. I couldn't think why. Then I thought,
He's mad because I let this happen to him. He's hurting. He's hurting, but he's going to be accountable now.

Kyle cried a lot today.

We went on a field trip to the Historical Society. Sluggish, friendly old white man with a hearing aid was our tour guide. My kids asked great questions, nodding in recognition at certain information. It's refreshing to see them in an out-of-school context, knowing stuff. Funny to hear them, too. Sometimes they parrot my phrases, my syntax. When the tour guide said, “These bullets from the American Revolution are made of lead,” Valerie raised her hand and enunciated, à la Madame, “Doesn't it stand to
reason
, then, that King George would choose to tax lead?”

Also, when B. B. was getting out of line, Melanie leaned over with a warning index finger, “Is that
wise
?”

My girlfriend Lucy went with me, thank God. The
parents so rarely come to help. Lucy got a hankering for the kids' potato chips at lunch, so she said, “I'm Queen George, and I'm giving you a potato chip tax, five per table.” She collected.

A lot of stupid stuff has happened, but I'm getting a better sense of humor about it. Here's something really weird:

As I was leaving the school at 4:30, Ms. Coil said, “Do you have to go home right away?”

To which I replied, “Why?”

“I need some help moving furniture at my house.”

Well, I started to laugh, because I thought she couldn't be serious. I moved closer, in case I had misheard her.

“Can you?”

“I have to meet my friend in an hour,” I lied.

“I'll have you back by then.”

Oh, shit, roped into another one. What else is new. So I got into her fancy car. “This would be my
downtown
apartment,” she begins and goes on to explain
how this apartment is just for writing her
doctorate
, having the necessary
privacy
to do so,
away
from her
husband.

“Virginia Woolf would be proud of you,” I said, trying to be polite. “Do you like to write?”

“I like to cut and paste from the works of others,” she explained flatly, without the humor that should have accompanied such a statement. She continued, rather indignantly, “My form of creativity is not considered a valid way of writing in my doctoral program; I could lose my chance at this degree, and I've come too far, too far. So I'll just have to force myself to create their way.”

Poor plagiarist! “Must be hard on you,” I sighed.

“Do you know that the doctor Martin Luther King cut and pasted?”

“Did ‘the doctor,' indeed?”

“You see, it's not a sign of lacking.”

“Not at all. You're like . . . a rapper. A sampler of sorts, taking bits and pieces to create your own. Is that what you're trying to say?”

“Well, not like a
rapper
,” she qualified. Of course
not. Rappers, what was I thinking? This woman has a degree. Pish-
posh!

Anyway, I didn't say much more the whole ride. She was talking, overflowing with personal information: her marriage, her children, her education, how she recently failed a test for the first time, her dreams, her feelings about her work.
Why is she putting herself in such a vulnerable position?
I wondered.
Why is she sharing all this with me?
I listened closely for clues. I still couldn't fathom that she actually expected me, at hardly over a hundred pounds, to move furniture. I figured there was something she needed to say to me that she felt too weird saying directly, so she concocted this bizarre front.

I went to her high-rise building, and her apartment, sparsely decorated with tasteful, expensive furniture. Any item of brand-name fame was duly noted, and pricey pieces were tagged in detail. Of course, I was not impressed. Who am I, the insurance man? But I was polite. She came to some big photographic portrait of a little girl, modern, nondescript, overlaid in blue. “Not many people have art like this,” she said. I
didn't know what she meant, so I just posed like I was scrutinizing it. “It spoke to me, though. Not many people would have this kind of art,
black
art.” The little girl was black.

“What do you want moved?” I cut to the chase.

It was a glass table with movable metal legs. “Does it look better here . . . or here?” She moved the legs, literally, a distance of three inches. I just stared, so she did it again. “Here . . . or here?”

“It looks the same to me.”

“Look closer. Here . . . or here?”

“Come on, Ms. Coil, you've seen my classroom. You know I don't have that kind of attention to detail.” I forced a laugh.

“Here, you try moving it. Move it from the legs, under here. Let me see.”

So I was under the table on my knees, moving the table legs a distance of three inches, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and backandforth—I mean, a lot of times, way too many times for someone to move something within a three-inch radius, and there was just no end in sight. The thought occured to me:
Nobody in the whole world knows where
I am, and Coil is acting kind of crazy. She could kill me, blow my brains out right under this table. Maybe the last thing I'll do in this life is move Coil's fucking table backandforthandbackandforthandbackand forth -and . . .

I stood up. “Looks fine,” I said. “Now I've got to go back. Now.”

“Are you sure it looks right?”

“Yes.”

“What about these pictures?” They were pictures of her daughter. “Like this or this? This . . . or this?”

“Just put them where you can see them well,” I said, “if they're of your family.”

Somehow, under the mercy of God, we left. When we neared my apartment, she said, “Are you staying at the school?”

I saw no need to show my whole hand. A bluff was in order. “I'm undecided,” I answered. “Depends on whether I'm offered a job at another school.”

“And what are you going to do about the ‘Madame' thing? Mr. Turner really has a problem with it.”

Jackpot.

“It'd just be a shame if you lost your job over it.”

“Well, if he chooses not to retain me over something so minor, I'll be just fine, and I think we all know whose loss it'll be.” I smiled over my shoulder as I stepped out of the car. “And you can tell him I said so, when he asks you how it went.”

Very weird, surreal, inappropriate. I told Mrs. Rae, who does a mean Ms. Coil imitation. She laughed uproariously, teasing. “She has a crush on you!”

Feh! Well, if Coil thinks we've bonded, she's got another thing coming. I'm not buddy-buddy with show-offs having midlife crises.

Mr. Turner came into my room yesterday when I was alone, around 4:30.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I'm here for us to have a casual conversation. We can have a casual conversation, can't we?”

Now, I haven't had too many casual conversations begin like that. I gave him a fishy look, I think.

“Have a seat then, Mr. Casual.”

He put on a big phoney smile and sat in one of
those hard plastic chairs next to my desk, where the bad boys who need a heart-to-heart usually sit.

“Where do you plan to be next year?” opens Mr. Casual.

“Mmmm . . . haven't given it much thought.” I tilted my head and looked diagonally, like a cow chewing cud who hears a bell ringing; I really thought of that and tried to imitate the bovine gesture. It was the only thing that occured to me that would keep me from giving him a juicy Bronx cheer. After a moment of behaving like a distracted cow, I said, “I guess I'm prepared to roll with the punches. I mean, I know you have to do some minority hiring, ‘life with the board' is so up in the air. I wouldn't mind staying here. I work well with the children. But if I can't stay, I'll work well with children somewhere else.” I shrugged and smiled my best hippie-drifter girl smile.

“For a first-year teacher, well, you outshine teachers of three, four years!” (I love his qualifiers. Charming. He is right to be frugal with his compliments; he wouldn't want to run out, after all.) “But sometimes your attitude . . . it's like you don't want to play by the rules. It makes me peevish.”

Flashback in my mind. Reading
Aesop's Fables
to the children. “And the fox said, ‘I've heard you have the loveliest voice of all the birds in the forest! Dear Crow, how I long to hear you sing! If only you would release that cumbersome piece of cheese from your beak.'”

I laughed a girlish
ha-ha-ha.
“It seems to me that playing by the rules has not gotten the children of our city too terribly far. But that aside, I realize—and don't envy—the difficulty in your having to work with someone with such a stubborn adherence to principles.” (In retrospect, I wonder if he confused “principle” with the homonym “principal.” You know where I'd lay my bet.)

“You are stubborn,” says he, “but in a lovable way. No matter what you do, I can't seem to stay angry.”

“I envy that quality.”

“I just wish you would understand. Rules made for one are for everyone . . .” blablablablaBLA. Whose rules? His rules? Michael Jordan's rules? God's rules? I thought,
I wanted to teach so I could lead, not follow.
I kept my trap shut.

“The bottom line is, I'm going to retain you. What do you think of that?”

“That's very nice,” I lied. “I look forward to staying. I must be honest, though, that I am pursuing my instructional media endorsement and will leave in the event that a library accepts me.” I have been secretly dreaming of becoming a school librarian, so I can have my favorite part of the day all day long: reading aloud.

“See, you're always
learning
, always moving
forward.
Makes you an
asset
, part of the
core
here. Now, there's going to be some
changes
, some
upheaval
, some teachers will have to go, but I don't want you to be nervous. You are going to be retained.” He looked giddy and cheerful and got up. I extended my hand in a gesture of infinite generosity, which of course he overestimated and hugged me. Serious gross out! Then he left.

My pose upon his departure was that of pure maliciousness, as Snow White's stepmother looks into her mirror with squinting, plotting, viperous eyeballs. I have no intention of staying at this silly crap hole, with this silly man who tells us we don't need a metal detector, the kids are just bringing the guns in to
show
. So I am left my to own meager devices to screw him!
screw him! screw him! Yes, keep me here, long enough to collect health insurance, a decent first-year assessment, you dick! Keep me here to learn about Ms. Federman's Big Fight, to prove the cliché that what doesn't kill me will make me stronger!

Besides which, even if my retention were welcome news, how could I be happy when it is accompanied by the insinuation that a lot of teachers are in for a lot of heartbreak?

“Some change, some upheaval . . .”

“The race is not always

to the swift, nor the battle

to the strong
—
but that's

the way to bet.”

—Damon Runyon

Yet another teacher's meeting. Mr. Turner has someone from the board giving us workshops, an educational chiropractor here to “align our curriculum.” He had us write our “unit titles” on big pieces of newsprint, and then we hung them up in a row, so everyone could see how everyone's teaching fits in with everyone else's teaching. Basically, we were making lists of what our kids will know by the end of the year, by topic. I thought my list was pretty basic, with units including objectives like kids being able to write letters, count and manage money, locate all the states . . .