If You Follow Me (20 page)

SPRING

kieru:
(
V
.)
to disappear; to vanish; to go out; to be extinguished

A
s usual, the senior technical boys are practically naked when we enter their classroom this afternoon. Often at the start of the period we find a few boys still changing out of their red nuclear power plant jumpsuits and into their school uniforms. But today all thirty are wearing nothing but saggy boxers or dingy briefs. It's a rainy April day and their skin is puckered with gooseflesh, nipples hard and pursed. They sit at their desks in a parody of model pupils, smirking. “Please get ready for English class,” Miyoshi-sensei says, his voice shaky. He spins around to write the target sentence on the board, but he can't hide the blush staining the backs of his ears or steady the tremble in his handwriting.

The factory foreman gets around: by car, on foot, in an airplane.

Once his back is turned, the boys resume doing whatever they were doing before we arrived: texting each other on their cell phones, playing video games, leafing through catalogues of sports cars, hairstyle magazines, and pornographic comic books. The comic book splayed in front of a kid named Nakajima shows a naked woman dangling from a meat hook, her legs spread and cuff ed, about to be penetrated by an advancing subway car. “
Mazui
,” I say, that's disgust
ing! I grab the book and clap it shut, but the boy just opens it again, calmly flipping the page.

Nakajima is the senior technical class ringleader. While the other boys' bodies are awkward works-in-progress, still puff y with baby fat or gawky, stretched out but not yet filled in, he alone looks finished, hard. He has no excess flesh, but oddly he's the reigning high school sumo champion of Ishikawa. He looks like the figure on the gold trophy he won in last year's competition—the lone trophy in the lobby display case—his skin tinted an orangey shade of brown from tanning lotion. Nakajima is also the reigning class
ganguro
, or “blackface,” with a perm the size of a football helmet and a gold medallion that nestles between his pecs, spelling out his “blackface” name in zirconium-studded pyrite:
MCNakaG
. His bolder classmates like to copy him, especially his habit of lingering in his underwear to delay class. I'm sure today's prank was his idea.

“Please put on your uniforms,” Miyoshi-sensei says. “There's a woman here,
ne
?”

“We can't,” says a bulky kid named Sumio, one of Nakajima's minions, who has Band-Aids covering his crusty nipple piercings.

“Why can't you?” Miyoshi-sensei asks.

“Kieta
,” says Nakajima without looking up from his comic book. They vanished.

Lots of things have been “vanishing,” ever since Miyoshi-sensei and I started team-teaching the senior technical boys in late February.

The boys aren't supposed to be coming to the high school anymore. After taking their prefectural exams, they were scheduled to spend the last two months before graduation putting their technical training to use at Shika's nuclear power station. Then the prefectural exams were scored and the scores averaged for each class. In English, Shika's technical class averaged 4 percent, an all-time low for
Ishikawa, according to the front-page headlines of the local paper. In her article, the reporter happened to mention that the senior technical boys were the only students at Shika High School never to have studied English with the native speaker. They alone had no idea how fun and useful English could be.

Those were the same words the principal used when he summoned Miyoshi-sensei and me into his office. Parents had been calling, and he had to placate them. So up until graduation, the boys would be returning from the plant every day after lunch, for a special English class with the two of us. We could teach them whatever we wanted, but our lessons had to be fun and useful. Miyoshi-sensei looked pale as he translated these terms in the hallway. “I thought I was through with them,” he said. “I have no fun or useful ideas. What will I do?” His dread was palpable, but I was almost glad for it. I still sensed a distance between us. He was perfectly polite, but that was the problem. This was the first time we'd spoken candidly in months. I told him not to worry, that I could bring in all of the fun worksheets and games I'd made for our other classes. “These boys are like wild animals,” he scoff ed. “Would you expect a tiger to fill in some worksheet? A gorilla to perform your skit?” I laughed and he groaned. “I
wish
they were tigers,” he said. “Tigers can jump through hoops. Gorillas can sign,
ne
? These boys are like fish. Cold and slippery. Impossible to hook.”

Before our first class, I couldn't stop thinking about how the boys had sexually harassed their last female teacher, something the newspaper article failed to mention. I imagined them leering at me, making innuendos, maybe even groping me as I maneuvered between their desks. But the boys barely looked up when I entered their classroom. They didn't stand or return my greeting. Not one of them filled out my self-introduction worksheet. They acted like I was invisible, ignoring Miyoshi-sensei too.

We're still invisible. This doesn't seem to bother Miyoshi. He simply ignores the fact that they are ignoring him, reading from the textbook for no one's benefit but his own. I can't stand it. An almost existential case of futility overtakes me every time we recite a dialogue from
English for Busy People
(“busy people” being a euphemism for laborers), our voices drowned out by their digital din. I keep thinking about those movies where an intrepid teacher transforms the difficult kids from apathetic thugs into model citizens, using spoken word poetry or ballroom dance or math. Of course I know that this is a Hollywood fantasy, but those movies always claim to be based on a true story. Maybe if I could find the thing that interests these boys, something they like doing and are good at, I could break through the wall and reach them. But every time I suggest that we try something different, from bringing in rap music to baking chocolate chip cookies in the school kitchen, Miyoshi-sensei shuts me down. “These students are eighteen years,” he reminds me. “Almost men. Probably we should stick to the textbook. Discourage any kind of…risky behavior.” Those words, “risky behavior,” are the same words he used in reference to the night we kissed. I always let the subject drop.

“Are they ready?” Miyoshi-sensei asks me, still facing the board. For some reason, the one thing that gets under his skin is when we find the boys undressed.

“No,” I say. “They're still naked.”

I walk up and down the aisles, peering into the backs of their desks to see if any uniforms might be wadded up inside. Inside Nakajijma's desk I see something square and silvery, something that looks a lot like my Marina bank.

The boys actually paid attention the day I brought in this bento box, filled with photocopied “Marina dollars,” my grinning face collaged over George Washington's. I gave out freebies while Miyoshi-
sensei reluctantly translated my explanation for how they could earn more: by saying hello, making eye contact, asking or answering questions. Basic politeness. “What can we buy with these Marina dollars?” one boy wanted to know. It was the first question any of them had ever asked me, and I peeled off several bills, telling him there would be an auction before graduation. “What will you auction off?” another boy said. “Cool things,” I replied vaguely. “Like what?” he pressed, earning more Marina money instead of an answer. The truth was, I hadn't thought this far ahead, and it didn't take them long to figure out that I had nothing to offer them, nothing fun or useful, because they stopped asking questions, stopped answering mine, even stopped accepting the Marina dollars I doled out as obviously empty bribes. I stopped bringing it to class. I hadn't even realized that it was missing until now.

As I reach into Nakajima's desk, my arm brushes his hot torso.

“Look what I found in Nakajima's desk,” I say to Miyoshi-sensei.

“His uniform?” he asks hopefully.

“No,” I say. “My Marina bank.”

He turns around and scrutinizes the object in my hands, tilting his head to one side.

“This is the most common bento box,” he says, “available at 100-Yen stores everywhere. How can you be certain it is yours?”

“Because mine is missing,” I say, frustrated by his reluctance to take my side.

“Nakajima will graduate soon,” he says. “Probably he would not risk expulsion, stealing something he has no real use for. He has no real use for Marina money,
ne
?”

Instead of answering, I pry open the lid and turn the box upside down. If this were a movie, Marina dollars would flutter in an incriminating pile at our feet. Instead it spills a half-eaten rice ball, a banana, and a sparkly lavender cell phone. Without a word, Miyoshi-
sensei crouches to retrieve these things, returning them to the box and the box to Nakajima.

“Did your uniform really disappear?” he asks the boy in Japanese.

“Obviously,” Nakajima snaps at him.

“Then why don't you put your plant uniform back on?” he suggests.

“No way,” the boy says. “It's soaking wet.”

“Please,” Miyoshi-sensei says. “There is a woman here.
Hazukashii desu
.”

“If Miss Marina is so shy,” Nakajima says, “then why does she always stare at us?” Miyoshi-sensei glances at me and bites his lip. If I refuse to look away when the boys are changing, it's only because I don't want them to think that they can intimidate me as easily as they intimidated their last female teacher. I wait for him to come to my defense. “She's always staring at us,” the boy continues. “It's perverted. Make her turn around. Then we'll do her stupid English lesson.” His friends laugh and Miyoshi-sensei clears his throat.

“Miss Marina…,” he hesitates. “Maybe…do you think…could you please turn to look at the board?”

“Are you serious?” I say, feeling my own face heat up, my own hands begin to shake.

“I think Nakajima feels kind of shy to have his uniform off in front of a woman.”

“Really?” I say. “Then why doesn't he put it on?”

“Kieta
,” he replies. It vanished.

“Why do you let them get away with it?” I say.

“Get away with it?” he repeats.

“We let them walk all over us! I'm not the one who gets embarrassed every time they show a little skin. Who cares if they're undressed?”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “You are kind of frantic. I can't catch much of this. Why don't you read today's target sentences? Then you will appear to have some purpose here.”

I spin around, crossing my arms. The boys hate to be made examples of, so I insert Nakajima's name into the target sentence.

“Nakajima gets around,” I bellow. “
By
bus,
on
foot,
in
a plane.”

“Mo ichi do
,” Miyoshi-sensei says.

“NAKAJIMA GETS AROUND!” I yell, so loud that my words echo off the portable classroom walls. When I start to laugh, Miyoshi-sensei asks me what's so funny. In Japan, it's considered rude to have a private joke. Someone might think you were laughing at him. I explain that “gets around” means “sleeps around.”

“It means he is sleepy?”

“It means he has sex. A lot of sex. With a lot of different people.”

“Ah,” he says. “It's American joke. I should share with the class,
ne
?”

To my surprise, the boys actually laugh, all except for Nakajima, who is scowling at his cell phone, studying the screen as it registers an incoming call, the ring tone a digital rendition of Roberta Flack's
Killing Me Softly
.

I heard he sang a sweet song…

“Nakajima sleeps around!” I yell even louder.

“Nakajima sleeps around,” Miyoshi-sensei alone repeats after me.

“Shut up homo,” the boy mutters.

“What did you say?” I ask, leaning over his desk. We're close enough that I can see the dandruff salting his Afro-perm, the blackheads studding his nostrils, the sleep encrusted in the corners of his eyes.

“Shut up homo,” he repeats, maddeningly calm.

When I raise my hand, he doesn't duck, doesn't raise his own
hand or call out to Miyoshi-sensei, who has his back to us now as he erases the sentence on the board. He just looks right at me, his eyes like two black holes, daring me to go ahead and hit him, knowing that I won't. I'm not that brave or that dumb. I'm not going to hit a student. But I can't do nothing, either. To do nothing would be like going into a bank, waving a gun around and then making a withdrawal from an ATM machine. On his desk, the cell phone starts to ring again. I grab it and drop it into my pocket.

 

Miyoshi-sensei and I walk in silence around the red rubber track back to the high school. He is carrying his slippers in a plastic bag. I'm wearing mine, in flagrant violation of school rules. My socks wick up moisture from the puddles. He doesn't say a word. He never corrects me anymore. He's given up, decided that I'm a lost cause. He opens the door to the faculty locker room and lines his own slippers at the threshold, then bends down to take off his Converse, stepping out of them and into his hoof slippers. I wonder when the soles of his feet last touched the ground. I wonder if he showers with his eyes closed, gets ready for bed in the dark.

“Did you hear what Nakajima-san said?” I ask at last, when I can't stand it anymore.

“Nakajima is very athletic,” he says, sliding the door shut behind us.

“So what?” I say. “He's an athlete, so he can say whatever he wants?”

“What I mean is, Nakajima's talent is not English. Speaking in English, he can't understand the meaning of his words.”