Carthage (43 page)

It had not occurred to her, how easy “fractions” were to understand, if you drew, for instance, a pumpkin, and divided it into sections. At least, the more elementary sort of fractions.

Seated at opposite ends of a small table, pupils between them, Cressida and Rhonda worked together companionably. It was a surprise to both girls, tutoring was
fun.

Nine students, all dark-skinned, of whom six were girls, three boys. The boys were more restless than the girls, but laughed more readily at Cressida’s lighthearted little jokes. All of the students seemed serious—hopeful. Cressida was touched by their reaction when they were told that, at the conclusion of a problem, their answer was “correct.”

Close-up, the young students fascinated Cressida. They were just enough younger than she was to be physically smaller, and unmistakably childlike. (Though the largest of the boys, whose name was Kellard [?], was Cressida’s height.) Their skin colors were so
various
. Gradations of dark: smoky-dark, cocoa-dark, buttery-dark, eggplant-dark, dark-dark. Their hair, their eyes, their facial characteristics—fascinating to Cressida who had always seemed by instinct to recoil from her own kind, and to avoid eye-contact with them, as if fearing invasion.

It was a revelation to Cressida, tutoring her pupils for ninety minutes with scarcely a break, that working with others, in such a setting, could be so easy, and so pleasurable.
Teaching
—a way of life?

Zeno had always said that he wished he’d gone into teaching instead of law.

Except of course in the law, Zeno continued, you had a chance to direct public policy. Coming of age in the aftermath of the great revolutionary decade in twentieth-century American history—the 1960s—Zeno understood that if you wanted to lead reform, you had to take direct action; the life of a teacher is indirect.

Yet, the Math Squad seemed to Cressida an encounter with the Good. She’d liked working with Rhonda who was a quiet good-natured girl and while smart at math, not quite so smart, or so quick, as Cressida, so that Cressida was made to feel good about herself; she liked it that the young pupils clearly admired her, and were eager to learn from her. And even the other Math Squad students—her classmates at Church Street—who ordinarily would have annoyed her with their chatter and laughter on the bus, seemed likeable to her.

And Mitch Kazteb, more than just likeable.

“So, honey, how’d it go this afternoon? ‘Tutoring’ math?”

Cressida told Zeno she’d liked it very much.

At dinner, Cressida wore her shiny yellow smiley-face button. It was a joke—yet not exactly a joke.

As she told her family about the Math Squad session at Booker T. Washington she saw her parents exchange a glance, one of those enigmatic glances parents exchange at such times, in the presence of their children, and had to smile—she knew that, over the years, she’d been the daughter about whom it had been said that she had difficulty “relating” to others.

She supposed that they’d been concerned for her, surprised that she’d volunteered for a program of the sort Juliet was always volunteering for, and Zeno, in his mayoral role, was always trying to promote under the rubric
community outreach.

The following Friday, the second session went well also. Though two volunteer-tutors from Church Street School were absent, and probably wouldn’t return; and the older boys in the program, including the boys at Cressida and Rhonda’s table, seemed to become more quickly restless after concentrating on a few problems, and were more easily discouraged than the girls. Yet, Cressida was able to win them over, she believed, with her clever cartoon drawings and her light, droll sense of humor, and praised them when they did something—(in fact, anything)—“correctly.”

It was mildly discouraging to the tutors, that the majority of their inner-city pupils seemed not to have retained the modest math-skills they’d learned the previous week. Mitch Kazteb said that was to be expected—“Math Squad just keeps plugging away, and helping whoever wants to be helped, and anything that’s an improvement is good. Got it?”

Cressida pointed out, Mitch was wearing his shiny yellow smiley-face button upside down.

Again Cressida was surprised at how relaxed she was, as a tutor; how well she got along with the other tutors, and particularly with Rhonda; several of the pupils she’d come to like very much, and was quite fascinated by them—their large, quick-darting eyes, dark-brown like her own; their way of smiling, shyly at first, then laughing, as if permission to laugh had to be granted by their tutors. And she’d memorized all their names, which were, to Cressida, exotic names—

Opal, Shirlena, Vander, Marletta, Junius, Satin, Vesta, Ronette, Kellard.

How different this experience was from Cressida’s relations with her classmates at Church Street Middle School—in fact, with her classmates since kindergarten. As a child Cressida Mayfield had learned to move among her peers with a pose of indifference; if they didn’t see her, she didn’t see
them.

Again at Friday-evening dinner Cressida spoke warmly of the Math Squad session. This time there were dinner guests, old friends of her parents, who plied her with questions; this was a couple who’d known Zeno and Arlette before their daughters were born, and had not always felt quite comfortable in Cressida’s company. Clearly now, the Masseys were impressed with
the smart one!

Then, the third Friday. Which was to be Cressida’s final Friday.

Abruptly the romance ended—as entering the school room with her fellow tutors Cressida saw at a little distance one of her boy-pupils nudging another boy, saw their covert but derisive expressions cast in her direction, and heard, unmistakably—
You got the homely one has you?

Though she’d been listening to something Rhonda was saying yet Cressida heard this remark, shot like an arrow to her heart, and would have stopped dead in her tracks except the momentum of the situation carried her on, and forward—of course, she was too proud to acknowledge that she’d heard the childish insult, or that she’d been wounded by it.

In the next instant both boys had turned away, Kellard had ducked his head (guiltily?) giggling and slip-slid into his chair at their table with a clatter. With a guileless expression the boy would greet his white girl-tutors as if nothing were wrong.

Cressida’s head pounded with shame, mortification. She was reasonably certain that Rhonda hadn’t heard the boy’s remark but she had a sick, sinking sensation that Mitch Kazteb had heard.

(He hadn’t so much as glanced at her, since they’d entered the room. Of course, he was embarrassed for her. The lighthearted repartee between them would die, irrevocably.)

And so, the third and final session at Booker T. Washington. Bravely if resentfully Cressida managed to get through it.

Only just glancing at Kellard, and at the others. For it seemed to her now obvious, they all disliked her. A spiteful voice pounded in her head.

Hate hate hate you. God damn hate you. You are homely—ugly—too.

Poor Rhonda must have noticed that her friend Cressida was far less involved in the lesson this week than in previous weeks. Cressida Mayfield who had a reputation for being moody and unpredictable now participated only minimally, without enthusiasm; she allowed Rhonda to do most of the talking; she, who’d entertained their pupils with her deftly drawn cartoons, didn’t joke or draw a single cartoon this week.

The pupils, too, sensed that something was wrong. Kellard sat a little apart from the others, shifting in his seat, frowning and gnawing at his fingers, aware that Cressida ignored him, and did not praise him once.

On the bus back to their neighborhood in a northern, hilly section of Carthage, Rhonda asked Cressida if something was wrong and Cressida shook her head
no.

Rhonda remarked disapprovingly that two or three more tutors had dropped out that week. Rhonda seemed about to express a hope that Cressida wouldn’t be one of these, the following week, but Cressida, slumped in her seat, staring gloomily out the window, said nothing.

How unfair it was! She knew, Kellard had liked her—as she had liked him. Yet, he hadn’t been able to resist saying what he’d said—and now she despised him, and could not bring herself to look at him.

And the other pupils—she knew, of course they were innocent. The little girls particularly, whom she’d liked so much. But now—it was over. Nothing could bring her back to Booker T. Washington School ever again.

That evening, at dinner, Cressida was sullen-faced. With some hesitation her parents asked her how the afternoon had gone and Cressida said, with a bright, blithe smile of indifference, “It was OK. But I’m not going back next week.”

“Not going back? Why?”

“Because it’s a waste of time. The students don’t really ‘learn’ anything—they memorize. And then they forget.”

“But—you enjoyed tutoring so much . . .”

Cressida shrugged. For her, the subject was closed.

“You thought you might like to be a teacher, you’d said . . .”

And Juliet protested, “But, Cressie! You and Rhonda were having such fun, you’d said. Maybe you should give it one more try?”

Cressida shook her head,
no.
No more delusions!

She’d tossed her Math Literacy Squad smiley-button into the trash.

HOMELY ONE
.
With the passage of time she would come to believe the boy had said
Ugly.

Thinking it was just as well, she’d learned beforehand how stupid and cruel young students could be. Before she’d made some idiotic, idealistic mistake.

And discovering, too, how shallow she was, herself—how easily wounded, defeated. Like a drawing by M. C. Escher that is all surfaces, dazzling and clever, ingenious, lacking depth and heart.

ON THE BUS
moving north. The last time she’d glanced out the window the terrain was rural, hilly. They’d left Florida behind—and Georgia—and were now in South Carolina, unless already it was North Carolina.

In a paralysis of dread she was being borne north.

Thinking
Maybe they have forgotten me, truly. Maybe I was correct all
along.

And thinking
Maybe the bus will capsize. Maybe—in “flaming wreckage on I-95.”

In her seat she’d slept huddled. No one had asked to sit with her.

How badly she missed the Investigator! Even the man’s disgust with her, his sharp disappointment with her, she missed.

Yet he was correct: she’d betrayed his trust, she was of no possible future use to him. And she was fifty years younger than the man which made any relationship apart from a professional relationship ridiculous.

Still, she hadn’t lost the ring. Turning it around her finger, and around.

If they will forgive me, I can return to him. If he will have me.

She’d been sleeping in her clothes for what seemed like a long time. A nasty dream of Booker T. Washington School—though the labyrinthine building in her dream hadn’t resembled the actual building, much.

The dark-skinned children hiding from her. Laughing at her, and rushing at her.
Ugly ugly ugly girl! Why don’t you die.

She’d behaved badly there, too. She’d known even at the time.

Mitch Kazteb had tried to convince her. They were all discouraged with tutoring, sure some of the kids were God-damned little brats, he’d been insulted too, more than once. But you kept going, Mitch said, just kept slogging forward, and it turned out OK—or better than OK.

He’d called Cressida, when she’d failed to return for the fourth week.

A boy calling Cressida Mayfield! A senior boy, who spoke to her as if he liked her, or liked something about her.

She’d been attracted to
him
—but only at first. Only when things had gone well.

Feelings like cobwebs. Nothing durable about them. Her feelings, at least.

And Rhonda had called her, saying she missed her. Begging her to return, try again.

Cressida had been deeply moved, that Rhonda and Mitch had called her. How could she possibly confess to them
I can’t risk it again, I am too easily hurt.

Thinking of these blunders of adolescence she’d begun coughing in the chilly bus-air. Other passengers had complained to the driver about the gusty air that was much too cold, now that they’d left south Florida.

Her throat was beginning to feel raw and scraped. Her skin, hypersensitive as if she were becoming ill.

A fear of being sick in so public a place, and so far from anything like home.

SHE WAS
THE
smart one
.

God damn she knew it:
the smart one.

Slamming out of the house on Cumberland Avenue by a rear door.

Not caring if anyone inside saw, or heard, her leave.

Not caring if she ever came back.

Inside her was a clockwork mechanism wound tight, tight, and ever tighter—ticktickticking close to bursting.

“Hate you all. Wish you were all—”

But she could not quite utter the word
dead.

For of course she didn’t mean it—
dead.

Why so angry, why her heart beating so hard. Why the hot-beating pulses in her head. Why this wish, so lately powerful in her, as, in another girl her age, a wish to be touched, to be kissed, to be made-love-to, to
vanish
?

For as long as she could remember, Cressida was uncomfortable with being looked-at, assessed in the eyes of others. But lately the sensation was growing stronger.

Since the trouble at school with her geometry teacher Mr. Rickard who’d said such stupid cruel unforgiveable things to her after she’d taken him into her confidence and shown him her portfolio of drawings—“Hate
him
. Wish he was
dead
.”

Fear/revulsion—being observed by others.

Usually it was strangers from whom she wanted to shrink, make herself small and
disappear.