Educating Esmé (12 page)

“We don't want to lose you. You're so young and creative. If you can't handle it, take a day off.”

“It's not a question of whether I can do my job. It's a question of whether you can do yours.” He looked at me, offended, but I didn't look away, because I felt real mad. “I believe there's a discipline code in this board of education, and I'll expect you to hold to its guidelines.
Same as white suburban kids have rules, these black kids can have rules. If they can't, maybe the union can explain to me why not.”

B. B. was suspended.

So why don't I feel like I won this one?

I've been really nervous about B. B. coming and shooting me. I don't know why I've been so nervous. I know the gang involvement is there, and there's so much about it that I can't understand, so I fear it. I repress it as best I can, but sometimes it surfaces. Will I be shot by a student? So many of them have guns at home. Why will I be shot? For suspending, scolding, letting someone cut in line, for giving too much homework? Ismene was right. School is different now, it's not like you can come in and teach that Columbus sailed in 1492 and 2 + 2 = 4. I also have horrific day-mares of my students being shot or shooting themselves. The idea will flash across my mind, sometimes just during a quiet moment in class. I push it out of the front of my mind, but it quivers in the back with
an eerie hum, like strings on a bow that has just shot a poison arrow.

I feel a certain ill ease about the human race and its unpredictable nature, its folly, its abuse of children. I look around and see that even grown-ups are really children, making mistakes and needing love. Does being wrong make you weaker? Does being needy make you weaker? I find myself praying, wishing for God, wishing for someone who sees everything that's happening, someone who cares what's happening. Maybe it's because it's so hard being the only grownup in the room all day long.

Dear God. Make me a better person. Allow me the luxury of abhorring that which is bad. Help me to look shocked.

I never look shocked. Only annoyed.

The older teachers don't seem to have this problem. They seem to look annoyed only when talking about their ex-husbands or sex. They are so magnanimous with the children, like sows with a million teats. They talk about the children's home lives. They inquire. They want to know.

What is there to know? That they are beaten? That
their parents are illiterate, in jail, turning tricks, making them turn tricks? That they are hungry, filthy, that they watch their brothers and sisters late into the night? That they are living in the shelter? That the gangs are recruiting them, that they brought a gun to school?

All a bunch of gossip. But bend an eyebrow here and there, let out little breaths, then it is concern. Then it is love.

Dear God. Help me to love the little children.

Well, B. B. didn't shoot me, and he came in with his mom, Rowisha. She went into the details of his father's spiraling decline. Things are really hard at home. So if he starts acting out, she explained, it would be a big help if I didn't call.

I told her I felt sympathetic and wanted to help, but this is a school with lots of kids and lots of problems, and he is only welcome here insofar as he can be kind and safe. I told her that getting into a fistfight and calling me a bitch is neither kind nor safe.

At this point Rowisha turned around and started
pounding B. B. with both fists until he fell to the floor, right there in the hall. It reminded me of when Twanette was beaten in front of me. Why are the children who are beaten the ones I end up fearing the most?

B. B. shriveled and whined. She screamed about his behavior and gang involvement and how she's-not-even-going-to-think-about-it-I'll-just-have-your-ass-hauled-into-juvenile-next-time-you-do-any-such-bullshit. I pulled her off of B. B. She stormed off, disappearing around a corner. B. B. was hysterical, so I picked him up and hugged him and kissed him on the forehead and stroked the top of his head and told him it was going to be all right. Then Rowisha came back and hollered, “Don't
baby
this son of a bitch, his stupid ass doesn't deserve it,” and punched him once more. I still tried to help him get it together. In ten minutes he was going to have the Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills administered to him.

Ozzie's grades are plummeting. When I called the mom in to talk about it, she started to bawl. She told
me a lot of stuff I didn't know. Her old boyfriend was a drug fiend who set the transient hotel they were living in ablaze, burned it to the ground last Thanksgiving. Then she and Ozzie and Ozzie's four-year-old brother, Mohammed, were homeless for a couple of months. Then she got Ozzie a new stepfather, or whatever, who beats her up and calls Ozzie a pussy whenever he cries over it. He won't obey the restraining order. Ozzie put a gun to this stepfather's head, but she talked him out of shooting it. I was very surprised Ozzie did this. He isn't that way. He's gentle. He was pushed. Why do these dumb fucks keep guns around the house? They make the world as ruinous as they imagine it is. But that's another story, or another chapter of the same one. Ozzie's mom says Ozzie cries for me at night, wanting to talk to me, that he feels alone in the world. Everyone is so unhappy. I wonder if I can rise to the challenge.

Storyteller's Workshop is going well. I got a small grant. After school a couple of times a week, I train
about a dozen children to give dramatic performances of folktales. I specifically picked children who are particularly shy or challenged in reading or speaking. We went on a field trip to see a professional storyteller, and they all own copies of the books they are going to perform. For the past six weeks I've been training them, modeling for them, and—to some extent—pressuring them. I had them go “on tour” to other classes during school hours to help them gain confidence and to get feedback. We are hosting a school-wide storytelling festival in less than two weeks.

Maurissa didn't want to perform for the fourth grade. Her dark skin paled to the color of ash, she was so afraid. I sent her with Ruben and Latoya, to watch and support her. She begged me not to make her go. Secretly, I wondered if she would throw up. But I literally pushed her out the door anyway and told her not to return until the mission was accomplished, that I knew she could do it. She came back fifteen minutes later—I should say leapt in—smiling broadly, her color back to normal.

“I did it! I did a beautiful job.” She burst out laughing and crying at the same time, and we embraced.

Rochelle, another shy girl I sent out, returned breathing heavily. “You were right! The kids did join in on the repeated lines.” I'm so proud of their successes. I know in the face of the wide world these are small victories, but sometimes a little song is sweet to hear, even if an orchestra is more accomplished.

The testing continues. I had to proctor for the Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills in the other fifth-grade room. I found them to be a surly bunch. Mrs. Jones still has up a winter scene and February's calendar. After two hours in her room, I felt depressed and bored. The children ignored simple directions and were vicious and insulting to each other. Many of them smiled at me, although they constantly defied me. I didn't see the need to lay down my iron fist; I knew I'd be leaving them shortly. Even though we have our share of problems, I breathed a sigh of relief to return to my own room with its colorful mess and cheering children, who clapped when I entered and all talked at once to tell me about their testing experience.

Mrs. Jones once cried in front of her class. A girl came running up to me in the hall after I had dismissed my class, saying, “Come comfort Mrs. Jones.” I didn't know what she meant, but it sounded bad.

When I got there, Mrs. Jones was at her desk sobbing, mascara running Tammy Faye Baker–style, weeping, “I've lost my craft, I've lost my craft.”

I dismissed her class and tried to comfort her because she felt so embarrassed. I told her it would be good for them to see that teachers have feelings, too. She cried because some kid gave her the finger.

Asha brought her two-year-old brother to school. No mama, no note, no nothing. I was concerned. It seemed illegal for the baby to be in my care with no parental permission. I tried to call Asha's apartment, but she admitted to giving a false number, that there was no phone. So I walked around teaching with a baby in one arm all day. That's a long day for a two-year-old. I kept expecting, though I knew it was naive, for the mom to show up, but she never did. Asha's father
is still under in-house arrest. He came on parent night, though. He told me I had nice hair and that he'd beat Asha when he got home, she's due for it. He also asked me where Asha goes after school. He seemed very angry when I told him I really didn't know.

In retrospect, I should have told the administration that there was a baby in the building, but I was afraid they'd make Asha feel bad about it or do something weird—I don't know what, they overreact so. What else could they have done other than what I did?

I
DON'T INTERFERE
much. I shouldn't be so anthropological about it, but I am. I just let them live out the awfulness of childhood, like I lived it out, and try to advise them to make choices that they can live with later on. I'm so exhausted, run down, every day. My whole life is different. When someone asks me, “How was your day?,” I never know what to answer. I have thirty-one days every day, a different day with each child. A good day with Ruben, a rough day with Billy . . . it's too much. They talk about rewards and gratification in teaching school, and there is a share of it,
but they don't tell you it's like joining a monastery or going to hell or sleepwalking or being afraid, afraid as you were when you were small. They don't tell you how it feels when you get dizzy in front of a room full of children, or what it feels like to tug at the tense bodies of children lashing, hating, fighting, spitting, scratching. They don't tell how it feels to hear “I hate you!” or how it feels to say, “That's okay, I still love you.” They say now, in the education classes, “You have to be everything to them: counselor, mother, friend . . .” on and on: The List. I hear the ones who have been teaching for many years run it off with a certain pride. Well, I don't think it's anything to be proud of. I don't want to play mama, I can't play mama. They need a real mama. And they need a real teacher.

Yesterday was the storytelling festival. I've been working like mad to prepare for it all week long. I was very nervous about the kids doing a lame job, even though I've been training them for six weeks. I was mostly
nervous because people from the grant foundation were coming to observe. But the festival was, I thought, a great success.

The kids and I set up two performance areas in the library, one with mosquito netting and big foil stars hanging like a starry night, and the other covered with gold sari material and a big cardboard smiling sun. We set up a bake sale, and the bookstore where I used to work let me use books for a book sale. I finally got to use some of my ideas from my old Fairy Tale Festival proposal. I made a carnival game, “The Three Billy Goats Gruff Toss,” with a little basketball net, that kids could play for free and win bookmarks or chocolates. The performances were after school. Kids could come of their own accord. Over a hundred showed up. As they entered, they were alternately given a paper butterfly or a paper smiley face. They enjoyed the peripheral attractions. I had divided the performers into two groups, so the performances would be suitable length for younger children's attention spans. I announced for the kids holding butterflies to go to the sun stage and kids holding smiley faces to go to the star stage.
That way, both sets of performers had a pretty equal audience.

By God's mercy, the children quieted down quickly. I had two MCs to introduce the performers. I didn't have to do anything. The performances were in full swing when the grant women arrived. I was free to greet them warmly and maneuvered them back and forth between the stages to watch the strongest performances. At the end, each of the performers got flowers and a certificate and much-deserved applause. The grant women were delighted. They told me to apply again next year, that they would remember my name. Meanwhile, there were children everywhere, involved in everything.

The grant women asked me if my administration was supportive. Before I could answer diplomatically, in walked Ms. Coil and Mr. Turner, after the fact. Mr. Turner was visibly appalled at the liveliness and began pleading noisily for the gratuitous silence that he so adores. He said, first thing, “Don't you think we should have had this in the Commons Area instead of the library?”

“No,” I answered flatly. Mr. Turner and Ms. Coil stared over the scene, unimpressed, until the grant women were introduced and they started
ooohing
and
ahhing.
Then Ms. Coil said, “Can't you do it over so we can videotape it and send it to the Jordan Foundation?” This made me extra mad, because I had asked them to videotape it earlier, and they didn't. It also proved they didn't understand or appreciate what had occurred; over one hundred kids had been sitting quietly watching ten at-risk kids perform, and perform well, without any prompting whatsoever. The stages had been taken down, the bake sale and book sale were being cleaned up, didn't they see?

“It was a happening,” I shrugged, “but it's already happened.”

I really hate them.

The other teachers were supportive. Mrs. Rae was the best, helpful and encouraging. She said, “This was amazing!” I kept thinking of her saying that, and the way she lent a hand without my even asking. Her support felt so good, like a little warm glowing coal inside of me.