Long Division Page 18
Guilt is a kooky thing, really. While I was guilting it up and feeling like I was a part of some collective consciousness that molded Lynndie England into a ripe little terror, I started to realize something. Maybe I’m projecting my own guilt about my own problems onto these external issues. It’s easier to blame the guilt on the horrible photos on the television than it is to properly attribute it to my own real-as-dirt sins. I also think it’s easier to tie the guilt to an incident that happened in a flash than it is to identify the guilt as belonging to a set of feelings that have slowly (practically unnoticeably) sneak attacked me over time.
Bam, the pictures on the screen! (Hello, Mr. Guilt! Come right in!)
OR
Little by little, Miss Harper has been changing her mind. (Oh hey, Mr. Guilt. How long have you been cowering in the dark corner?)
Here I am, just another dishonest memoirist. This whole project has got to stop. I have so obviously failed at writing/living an honorable story. Dishonorably discharged from my own writing assignment. No medals. No flags. All shame. It’s not a memoir to share anymore. I feel guilty for being
and also for
So that’s that. Good night, moon.
Okay, so I’m going to try to continue writing. It’s been another week. Project Wartime Alone Time Memoir-Fem War has been officially abandoned. I can’t expect anyone to be interested in a woman whose aspirations to inspire, commiserate, and inform have plummeted into the moral murkiness of run-of-the-mill infidelity pangs. My only audience now is Miss A. Harper. My only hope now is to see what I can possibly save by the act of writing and the reflection it provokes.
What can be saved, class?a. My relationship with David Peterson
b. My friendship with Gus Warren
c. My dirt-stained soul
d. All of the above
With only a week of school left, I start to get really sappy. This has happened each of the three years I’ve been teaching and even the semester in college where I student taught for a mere twelve weeks. It stops raining so much in mid-May and I notice the shirtsleeves of my students creeping up and up. Suddenly someone who could barely read out loud is rattling off the last stories in our class reader with a mature adult voice and a storyteller’s cadence. About two weeks before the last day, everyone gets their teacher assignments for the next year. There’s a bunch of yesssssss-ing from all the lucky ducks who get Mr. Alvarez for fourth grade. He has a class iguana107 and coaches baseball, which constitutes more cool points than I can ever hope to muster. The rest of the class is stuck with Mrs. Donahue—a sweet lady, though dreadfully conventional and hopelessly boring—and so they bond together in solidarity, relieved that at least they have a few close friends with whom they can whisper below the radar of her hearing aids.
I start to imagine what kinds of teenagers my students will become. For some, like Max Schaffer, it’s easy to envision the upward curve of his academic success. But then I worry. Will he be a hopeless dork? Will raging acne obscure his ability to woo girls with his scientific knowledge and adorable curiosity for life? I can’t help but imagine Caitlin Robinson growing chubby and getting pregnant in eleventh grade. Lacey Atkins will star in all the school musicals but take a college scholarship to study physics. In a way I feel like this has been my best class yet. Like they’ve helped me through these last eight months108 of loneliness and (gag, gag, gag) self-discovery.109
On the last day of school, I hand back the students’ final science reports. Toward the end of the year I allow them to go off on their own tangents and write a four-page report (with at least three illustrations, one of them hand-drawn) about whatever they want. An animal. Rockets. Penicillin. Earthquakes. It’s a good way to gauge how I’ve presented the curriculum throughout the year. If everyone writes about rattlesnakes and no one writes about the human body, I know I need to give the digestive system and the chambers of the heart a little more pizzazz the next time I present them to a class.
Max Schaffer wrote a beautiful paper on the mating habits of spiders. At first I was a bit alarmed that mating was the topic of a nine-year-old’s research, but Max has always been mature for his age. And spiders do woo each other in such fascinating ways! Shaking webs. Emitting fancy hormones. His essay even goes into the several species that eat one another after fornication. Max printed several photographs off the Internet and pasted them on an amazingly intricate hand-drawn web. As I reach his desk to return “Spider Parents” Max tells me that he doesn’t need it back.
“I have a copy for myself at home, Miss Harper. I want you to keep that one.” If I ever, by the power of my own nature and nurture, rear a child as precious as Max Schaffer, I’ll have finally done something worthwhile in this universe. By being his third-grade teacher I already felt this huge sense of accomplishment. I tear a little as I accept the gift.
“Why thank you, Max. It’s a wonderful paper. I’m glad to keep a copy for my reference library.”
I hand out the large paper grocery sacks that I’ve been saving since early spring, and I play Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume II while the kids duck into the bowels of their desks and scoop out a year’s worth of clutter and artifacts. Fortunate ones find candy. That eraser that was lost back in January. A Yu-Gi-Oh card they accused someone else of pilfering. Someone makes fun of the music: I didn’t know you were so old, Miss Harper. I am old, I tell them. And I’m your teacher for three more hours, so shush. I collect the readers and the math books. I ignore the dog-eared copies that are slumping off of their cardboard spines. I pretend not to notice pencil scribblings of robots in margins and blatantly obvious initials scrawled along bindings.
We play a last game of Heads Up Seven Up and I let Jessica Marquez110 supervise the game—watching for peekers from my desk—while I squeeze into hers and play along. I love Heads Up Seven Up. I delight in the girls who are too uncomfortable guessing that a boy has selected them. The boys who thrust their skinny arms out into the aisle, begging for attention, for selection, to take the front stage of the classroom. The squeak of the desks when the heads go down. The soft slap of rubber sneakers trying to make careful, stealthy laps between the rows of buried heads. Oh! And there’s occasionally that one darling kid who’s either sleep-deprived or borderline narcoleptic and doesn’t respond to the first “Heads up, seven up” and is left drooling on his desk until someone really pokes him good.
It’s a normal game this last time, though the kids are noticeably tickled that I’m participating as one of them. I’m selected more than my fair share of times, and I make a huge show of correctly guessing that it was Marco Antolini who had twice flicked my thumb. Heads Up Seven Up is a game where one tries to deceive: to throw off the one you chose by affecting aloof and unsuspecting postures and expressions. But ultimately, it’s a game where if you’re accused and you’re guilty, honesty is the only choice. With seven choosers and seven chosen, process of elimination forces direct confessions.
Garrett, you picked me.
Nope.
Danielle?
No.
Marco Antolini?
Yep!
Everyone comes clean in Heads Up Seven Up! No emotional betrayal in this game!
When the time comes to say goodbye, I give a stupid little speech. I told myself not to make a speech, to just let them breeze away into summer vacation: basketball camp and that magical ticking sound of a lawn sprinkler. But like I have mentioned, I am a hardcore sap. I can’t help it.
“I just want you guys to know that you’ve been a great class and that I’ve had such a fun year teaching you and learning from you and getting to know how wonderful you are. And I hope that you’ve liked third grade. I think it’s the best grade of all. Look at me, I’ve found a way to stay in it year after year. I just played Heads Up Seven Up! Do you know any grown-ups who do that as part of their job?
“The only downside of staying in third grade is that I have to say goodbye to my students each year. And though I’m really sad to say goodbye to y
ou, I’m simultaneously so proud of you and know that you’ll all be rock stars in the fourth-grade classroom. And every year after that. Now don’t forget your shopping bags. Have a great summer. Come visit me next year. Thanks for being such a stellar class.”
And then I sigh. Look at the clock. The class follows my gaze, and we watch the last ten seconds pass together. When the bell rings, I stand by the door, accepting thank yous, hugs, and a few homemade cards. I love the hugs. They’re so full of energy and excitement, nothing like the wimpy boyfriend-in-Iraq hugs that I’ve received so many of. Those pity embraces, damp and flat like a wet ponytail. These hugs—the on-to-fourth-grade hugs—are hugs with potential, hope, and future. Hugs powered by Popsicle sugar and revved by a baseball card clipped to the shiny spoke of a bicycle.
When they’re gone, when the last little voices slam inside of minivans and when the last bus111 zooms away, the quiet is overwhelming.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
I putz around for an hour. Weeping a little. Humming a little. Windexing the surface of each precious desk, hoping that its ex-occupant has a shiny, shiny future.112 As I’m polishing the second-to-last desk, the static of the intercom interrupts the squeaking and I hear Barfley’s serious, football-announcer voice crackle through the speaker above my door.
“Attention educational professionals of Franklin Elementary. This is your principal speaking. A contingent is forming in the teachers’ lounge to make its way toward Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant for Taco Tuesday. Buy a margarita, get free tacos!” He pauses for a moment and the formality slips away from his voice. “Come on, everyone. You know you need a drink.” Pause. “I mean, a taco.”
It’s nice to go out with my colleagues. There are several of them whom I rarely see and whom I never would have expected to know the difference between Cuervo and Patron. Las Palmas is greasy and dim, even at four P.M. After a few drinks Carrie flirts with one of the waiters and Mrs. Donahue (I am sooo pleased and surprised she came) asks if the place has a jukebox. It doesn’t. Mrs. Petrucci,113 who teaches kindergarten and is only two years my senior and who should totally be my friend, finds a paper cup of crayons tucked between the napkin holder and the hot sauce on our table. She starts drawing hearts and stars on her paper placemat.
“Christ, Jennifer. Haven’t you had enough?” barks Maggie, one of the secretaries, when she notices the cutesy, colorful artwork developing on the table. Jennifer looks up, innocent and flushed in the cheeks.
“I’ve only had two drinks,” she says, and we all laugh. Maggie snags the crayons away from Jennifer and orders her another drink. We end up turning the back room of Las Palmas into an awkward, drunken dance party. Barfley’s wife shows up and they grind inappropriately like teenagers and we all make fun of them. I steal Carrie away from her new boyfriend and we have a heated showdown on the dartboard. The stakes are high: tequila shots. I end up taking three! All night I keep thinking about how glad I am to be there. As my head lightens I start to ground myself by hugging. By telling the older teachers what great role models they are and by reminding the younger ones that we need to do this again sometime. And it’s funny because we don’t even like each other all that much. No one is super close and no one relies too heavily on anyone else during the school year. Our school is a fairly decent one, so the solidarity amongst the teachers doesn’t run that deep. We conduct our own independent universes, occasionally seeking a colleague when a black dry-erase marker runs unexpectedly pale gray. But it’s the last day of school. We’ve shed our broods of children. We’ve waved them off and set them free, and we’re on the brink of three months of quiet. We need a last surge of spirited company. At least I do.
Once I’ve over-tequilaed myself, I wander into the hallway by the restrooms for a moment of quiet. I get out my phone and scroll through the list of contacts. I stop at Gus. And I want to call him. It’s a very base, drunk instinct. I want to call him and ask him to pick me up because I am drunk and because I know he will do it. He will walk me into my house and make sure I have a glass of water or two. Will he remove my loafers and lay me out on the bed? Will he remove the elastic that’s holding together my ponytail because he will notice that it is oppressively tight? Will he leave a sleeve of saltines on the bedside table? Will you, Gus? Will you do it for me because I am your best friend ever? Will you do it for me better than David would do it? Will you do it for me better than you would do it for anyone else? My finger is hovering over the send button, and even in my sloppy alcohol brain fuzz I realize that this is the first time since seventh grade that I have ever hesitated to contact Gus Warren. And so I don’t do it. Jennifer Petrucci’s husband drives the two of us home. And though I’m a crumpled wad of booze-soaked cotton in the backseat—not saying more than a squeaky “thank you” the whole way to my house—I am awful thankful for the Petruccis’ company.
And the next day, I’m not entirely alone either. I’ve got this bulbous-nosed troll of a hangover.
Under my contract as an employee of the Tacoma public schools, I’m obligated to work five days after the last day of school. Those three days are always a weird mix of depressing and liberating. I wear flip-flops and the kinds of sleeveless dresses that Barfley would never deem appropriate for the classroom. I blast loud rock or hip-hop music that is riddled with unabashed profanities. I fill out final report cards and tear down bulletin boards. I take inventory of supplies and pride in the fact that none of my students will be repeating third grade.
With my hangover troll snoozing heavily in the space between my eyes, I rip down the giant mural of the water cycle. The cumulus clouds, fat with cotton balls, the rain drops of silver tin foil, and the river of blue-tinted plastic wrap. I love the water cycle. So efficient and orderly. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, you get used to the water. A week or so without rain will occasionally make me uneasy. Like something isn’t right with the earth. Like there’s a glitch somewhere in the rotation. Liquid. Steam. Ice. It’s all the same thing. Oh, to be something that can manifest itself in three different ways, but still be essentially, chemically, beautifully the same! As I’m ripping off the blue paper sky, I start to think about what the fuck I’m going to do for the summer. Last summer I worked for a month at a YMCA day camp and spent a lot of time preparing elaborately grilled meals114 for David. I missed the deadline for the YMCA thing, and as of last week all the spots were filled. Could Teacher Annie gracefully transform into a line cook at a homey diner? Could she evaporate into a steamy cocktail waitress? Or should she freeze up in front of her television and wait for that hott hott day in early fall when her boyfriend will be home to rekindle a love once vibrant and melt her back to normal again?
I’m standing still with a wad of crumpled paper in my hand when I hear a knock at my classroom door. I toss the paper in the trash and walk over to the door. It’s Gus!
“Hey. I thought you’d be here.”
“Yep. Here. All alone!” I lift my arms to point out the empty space, the lack of braided pigtails and dirty sneakers. “What’s going on, Gus?”
“Well.” He says this with Excitement, and it’s nice to have the big E back in my classroom after a day’s absence. “I have something for you. I’m really stoked about it. And I have to give it to you right away.” Gus is smiling, breathing a little heavy, and reaching for the satchel/ man-purse that hangs from his shoulder. He pulls out a book. It’s a slim beige paperback with a sepia-toned font on the cover. It looks like a literary magazine from a college campus, printed on an expensive woven paper afforded by a generous university budget, and chock-full of youthful attempts at highbrow literature. My first thought is that Gus has had something published and that he’s here to present me with a copy. But then, he’s never been one to toot his own horn.
“What it is?” I say moronically as I take it from his hands. And then I read the cover: Annie Harper’s Journal. What?!! “Whaaaa?” I say, stunned by the look of my name in such a dignified typeface. I momentarily and absurdly assume
that Gus has hacked into my computer, found this, my giant tapestry of rambling words, and printed it out and had it bound at the local Kinko’s. But the volume is a little too stately for Kinko’s. And for another pathetic moment I wonder if Gus has written a journal he wishes were mine and filled all the pages with gushing romantic fantasies about him. What a lunatic I have become. As I open the cover, he starts to explain.
“It’s a real published book, Annie. About this woman named Annie Harper who lived in Mississippi during the Civil War. Then I notice the subtitle: A Southern Mother’s Legacy. “I just got it in the mail yesterday, so I haven’t read much, but it’s her account of home life during the Civil War. A historian stumbled upon her handwritten journals and turned them into this book. Isn’t it incredible?” I don’t know if Gus means that the book itself is independently incredible or that it’s incredible because I am also Annie Harper and I am also a woman on the home front and I am also trying to write about it.115 I decide he must mean the latter. In a way.
“But I’m Annie Harper.” My voice is meek and quiet, and suddenly I feel like a fraud. Like she’s already done it, but with larger risks and more sophisticated prose. With a sharper understanding of the political situation and with a courage that’s comprised of more than goofy humor and self-pity. AND WITHOUT ALLOWING HER RELATIONSHIP TO DECOMPOSE. Before I even read it, I know that I am the weaker, stupider, more annoying, more boring Annie Harper. I flip past the title page, the acknowledgments. I don’t even stop at the stuffy photographs of Annie Harper the First posed in her starched high collars and boned bodices. I skip right to the first page of the introduction, and stuck in the middle of the editor’s commentary is a snippet of Annie Harper’s prose.