Educating Esmé (6 page)

The kids like the Greek myths. We've been studying them for a few weeks. They were impressed that Cronus ate his children. I think some of them have fathers who have dispositions like Cronus. They loved the story of the kidnapping of Persephone, especially when I ripped open the pomegranate, fruit of the dead, and red juice dribbled down my wrists. Ohhhhhh!

They are tracing and cutting out the shape of their bodies and coloring them in—creating themselves as their favorite gods. This dispelled some of their anger that none of the Greek gods were black. In the middle, they are attaching compositions of who is the god they can most relate to and why. I am waiting for a parent to accuse me of having them worship false idols. Mr. Turner walked in as all thirty-one kids were
on the floor, laughing, cutting, and coloring in a fabulous mess. They didn't stop because he entered.

“There's no control!” he mourned.

“There absolutely is!” I raised my thumb, which is the signal for attention, and like a magic trick, within twelve seconds every mouth was closed, thirty-one thumbs were in the air to show they got my signal, and all eyes were on us.

“Just checking,” I explained. The kids went back to work.

It's not that I'm so great or that they love me so much. It's just that I'm consistent, and they know if they do not follow my guidelines, I will be a dragon lady. Still, I loved seeing Mr. Turner's face just then.

Solved the keeping-track-of-my-classroom-library conundrum, since it is a pain to count the books each day, and the kids become stressed when there's a mis-count. Now, to look at one of my books during free reading, the kid must offer up some collateral; preferably a shoe. I figure they won't leave without their
shoe, which they get back when they return the book. The kids thought this was very funny and fair.

This will work great, I think. At least until we have a fire drill.

Santa Claus is coming to town, but you wouldn't know it here. The kids have been maniacs, and I find myself running more of a charm school than a fifth-grade classroom, in a Sisyphus-like effort to keep them from the bloodshed, slander, and creative abuse that so titillates them. I don't know how such poor, underprivileged children can be such spoiled brats, but there it is.

I broke up a huge fight between two eighth-grade girls I didn't know. It was the kind where kids are rolling and fingers are so entangled in one another's hair that it verges on intercourse. Well, everyone was standing around, grown-ups included. I jumped over the hedge and by the grace of God somehow broke it up. I was holding two furious children, nearly my height, by the scruffs of their puppy necks. They were still growling at each other. “Get Mr. Turner,” I implored, but nobody
moved a muscle to help me or get help. When I saw that, I just put the kids in their lines and gave warnings in a low, psychotic, burning-fuse tone that I am perfecting. Additionally, I squinted my eyes with one of them kind of twitching. It's quite intimidating, I'm proud to say. The girl started giving me an attitude, but I crazy-squinted her into submission like a real Svengali. When I was walking my line of kids in, a lady said, “Wow, that was some fight you broke up!”

“I could have used some help!” I barked. What the hell are grown-ups for, anyway?

Shira heard “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” as I was trying to find something on a cassette. She came out of a fetal position and started to dance in front of the whole class, shaking and everything, with all these Polynesian-like hand movements. All of us watched in utter astonishment. When she finished, we went wild with applause. She did it again and again and again, crying and laughing at the same time. It was the weirdest thing. Then she hugged me. It was like she
had a rebirth experience via “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” She has not gone into a fetal position since and does not cry as much and is making all sorts of friends, smiling all the time.

“It's like Helen Keller's ‘
wa-wa
,'” JoEllen observed.

It is the weirdest thing.

Some kids broke into our room while we were out at the Christmas assembly practice. The front of the room was in disarray, but the only thing they stole was my Happy Box, the pretty box I decorated when I was a teenager and decided I wanted to be a teacher. I kept stickers and erasers and Gummi Bears and junk in it to reward kids who had a clever moment. Now it's gone. I felt sad and sentimental but said I was just glad to know it wasn't one of my students.

Ruben wrote me a letter.

“I hope you feel better about the Happy Box. I feel real good about you not losing your temper. You are the best teacher I have ever had.”

God! His writing is improving!

I offered a reward over the intercom for the return of my box. Till then, some girls made me a new one from a pencil box. That was nice.

We had our Christmas assembly. It was supposed to be an international theme, so I had my kids do a “Cajun Christmas.” I chose a zydeco song, in French, which, translated, goes something like “My darling, my dear, you little flirt, nobody does it like you do.” It had nothing to do with Christmas, but based on the amount of idiocy I've contended with, I surmised that nobody would notice.

I was ambitious in the choreography of the dance routine. It had many complicated parts, but under the threat of death and homework my thirty-one charges learned them meticulously, baring their teeth in a mandatory smile all the way. I'm exaggerating; I know they kind of enjoyed the rehearsals, the anticipation of performance and success. They know I would never let them fail. That's why they do what I ask, no matter how much they complain.

I had the children make their own costumes in class. All the boys and some of the girls were going to be alligators from the bayou and would dance with girls in red dresses with poinsettias in their hair. Christmas colors, red and green, get it? Meanwhile, a large, twinkling Christmas tree would sway in the background.

I gave Vanessa, lolloping and clumsy, the special task of introducing our festive fiasco. The line was, “Here come the good times, Cajun style!,” which she said the first multitude of times as “Here come the good times, Asian style!” This caused me a lot of chagrin, thinking then that people would mistake our alligators for Godzillas. I tried to impress upon her the importance of word choice in this case, to which she suggested I assign another girl to the job. I declined, insisting nobody could do it as well as she could, if only this small detail could be perfected. She sighed and rehearsed, evolving into “Here come the good times, Haitian style!” and then to the correct “Cajun style!” under the mercy of our Maker.

During practices, the beams beneath the stage, well, I could see them buckling under the weight of 1,500 jumping pounds. I laughed to myself, imagining
the scene of the entire stage being smashed, children cracking through the plastic floor so ungenerously afforded them, parents shrieking and knocking each other over in the path of rescue, Mr. Turner and his girlish look of terror—the one he gets whenever anyone mentions litigation. I laughed to myself, vowing to roll with the punches, to enjoy all catastrophes upon their arrival either in reality or in my imagination.

Reality, though, was a success! My class was the most attractive, most festive, most ambitious, most original, and noisiest. They were the most smiling, most intricate, most cooperative. They made me proud. They made themselves proud.

About fifteen of their parents attended. Some came up afterward, to congratulate them. I received no hellos or merry Christmases. I received no cards from parents and very few from the children. At 1:45 a posse came up to me and demanded angrily, “So, where's our presents?”

I have a silly job.

“There is no life I know

to compare with Pure Imagination.

Living there, you'll be free,

if you truly wish to be. “

—
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka

in
Willy Wonka and the

Chocolate Factory

The time machine! Really, an old refrigerator box covered with aluminum foil, with a flashing police car light rigged at the top and various knobs and keyboards screwed and glue-gunned on. Inside, a comfortable pillow for sitting and a flashlight attached to a curly phone cord. Maya helped me install a bookshelf inside the box with a power drill. She is such a quiet, good girl, the kind present teachers send to fetch coffee and future husbands will send to fetch beer. Of course, she loved driving the screws.

The idea: time travel through books.

I left the machine in the classroom, buckled and locked closed with lots of signs all over it: “Top secret!”
“Under construction!” “No peeking, this means YOU!” “Danger! Highly radioactive!” and the like to build anticipation. The big question buzzing: Is it real? Does it really work?

A tricky question. I recollect clambering over laundry bags in the back of my parents' closet, eyes clamped closed, one hand groping, praying that I might enter C. S. Lewis's Narnia. Or, moving forward delicately, eyes closed once again, toward the mirror in our dining room in the hopes that I might go through like Alice managed in
Through the Looking Glass
. Alas, my head bumped the back of the closet, my fingers could not penetrate the glass. This did not negate that such adventures were possible, only that I was not among the lucky ones to be so enchanted.

“Yes, it really works,” I offered, acting slightly perturbed that they would ever doubt me.

In the weeks before winter break, children from other classrooms have popped in to deliver messages or borrow things, and they stared bug-eyed. “Is it real? Does it really work?”

“Yes, of course,” the children sniffed, now annoyed at the skepticism.

Then, the next biggest question: Who would be the first daring hero to risk his or her life in the contraption? In the interest of fairness, this seemed best left to chance, even at the risk that some terrible realist like B. B. was chosen, who I imagined would announce, “It's nothing but a box full of books! It's a fake!”

It turned out that JoEllen was chosen. We sent her off with much fanfare, with me pressing buttons and turning knobs feverishly, double-checking for accuracy that the medieval period was properly set, making her promise that her mother would not sue me should something . . . unexpected . . . occur.

“Like what?” asked JoEllen.

“Being eaten,” I ventured.

“Oooooh!” The class crooned enviously.

“Yes, I hear that dragons possibly existed,” I began, “though people may have believed that due to the inexplicable presence of dinosaur remnants found during the period. Still, if you'd rather give up your spot . . .”

“I'll risk it,” JoEllen said quickly.

“You're on school time,” I reminded her. “In the event that you return in one piece, I expect a full report on what you saw.”

In she went. The doors closed. On went the police car light. “Back to work.” Silent reading time.

In a half-hour, I retrieved her. She came out, breathless. “What did you see?” Everybody wanted to know. JoEllen paused. For thought? for effect? I'll never know.

“A joust.”

“A what?”

“Two guys. Fighting on horses. Their armor clanging as they rode. Even the horses wore armor on their heads. The guys carried two big sticks. Everyone was watching and cheering, like a sport. One of the guys died, ran through with a stick . . .”

The class was impressed. “Write it in your journal before you forget,” I suggested. “Who's next?”

For the rest of the day, the kids took turns in the time machine. So far, nobody has said, “It's just a box full of books.”

After school, I shut the lights to leave and saw the machine with its red light still carouseling around. “Their armor clanging as they rode,” I remembered. The words, the detail, they seemed different from what JoEllen regularly produces. I couldn't help
squinting suspiciously at the silver box before turning it off.

This whole week at school has been very good. I kept waiting for something bad to happen, but nothing did. The only kind of bad thing: It was snowing so beautifully outside, first snow kind of snow, powdery, glittering, ivory, the neighborhood was frosted and perfect. So I took all thirty-one kids outside, just around the square block, to see which trees were deciduous and which were coniferous. I told Ms. Coil that I was going, but she didn't mention it to anyone. We left from the side door and tried to re-enter from the front door, but it was locked. Mr. Turner happened to be near the door. Wow! He spazzed that we were outside. The liability! etc. He comes goose-stepping over to the door. His face was all crumpled, his forehead in a pulled seam.

“Here comes that faggot,” Vanessa remarked upon seeing his approach.

“Don't insult faggots,” I countered.

I got reprimanded but played dumb. Ha-ha! Sky's the limit, since I bet this will be my only year teaching.

Today was especially cool. I got my Happy Box back, for one thing. Some kid said he found it in a public park, under a bush. I gave him the five dollar reward. The other teachers said I shouldn't have given him squat, that he probably took it in the first place. Even if he did, I think he's learned a valuable lesson about extortion, and that deserves to be rewarded.

The other fab thing was that the Slick Boys rap group came and did a Just Say No assembly at our school today. They had huge amps and “hoochie girls” rubbing their crotches and oscillating. It was great, of course, but I couldn't help thinking that school assemblies sure have changed since I was a kid. They did all their hip-hop dancing and blabbing incoherently into the microphones. Music was blaring at a deafening volume, but hey, rock and roll! They brought kids onstage to dance as they performed. I tried to get my kids into it. I was in the aisle, getting kids to clap along and root for them or whatever, when one of the rapper guys brought me by the hand onstage. Wow, the kids went bananas to see a teacher with the Slick Boys.
A roar went up, so I totally kicked it and did my
Soul Train
thing like I do at home! My class was laughing so hard, to see me do the “Humpty Dumpty”! Zykrecia shouted, “Madame Esmé got the moves! She got it going on!” and hopped onstage with me. When they saw us enjoying ourselves, a lot of other kids followed. It was my dream come true, I was an R&B pedagogue. I was very happy. The other teachers were kind of shocked, but what the hell! You only live once—in Western culture anyway.