Want

by Lynn Steger Strong

  I run four miles instead of eight and am rushed and anxious after. Our four-year-old has wet the bed and the two-year-old is crying, holding on to all my limbs, screaming that she hates my job, that she wants me to stay with her, pulling on my sweater to wipe the snot off her nose and lips and chin.

  I have to go to work, I tell her. People have to go to work, I tell her. So they can live.

  Just go, my husband says, packing their lunches, making breakfast, cleaning up the four-year-old in the bathtub, changing her sheets. Let go of your mother, he says to the baby.

  I want to come to work with you, she says. Nurse, she says.

  You have to go, says my husband.

  I hold the two-year-old another minute, wiping her face with my sweater, reminding her to breathe.

  I’ll see you tonight, I tell her. This isn’t true, though, I remember just after I say this. It’s Thursday and I won’t be home until long after she’s asleep. I try not to do this, tell them I will be somewhere when I won’t be. I try not to ever promise things to them that I can’t give. But it’s too late now and I have to go and she won’t stop crying.

  The four-year-old is still not wearing any pants and she comes out of her room and I pick her up to find her underwear and leggings, still holding the baby. You’re going to be late, says my husband. I dress the four-year-old and kiss her, hug her, give the red-faced baby to my husband. I hug them one more time and miss my train.

  * * *

  I have been called into a meeting with the principal and wonder briefly if the twenty-four-year-old has reported me. I’ve been leaving at least twice a week. I don’t think anybody sees me, but I also don’t work very hard to keep my leaving a secret. I walk out with my bag and coat on, usually while classes are going on so there aren’t many people in the hallways. When I pass coworkers, I assume they think I’m going out for coffee or a late lunch. Twice, the twenty-four-year-old has messaged me on the Google chat when I’ve been on the subway or already back in Brooklyn, and I’ve made things up about my kids.

  Three times, I’ve had to ask my co–homeroom teachers to cover for me. I blame my children. I lie to my co–homeroom teachers because they’re just as frustrated with this job as I am but they don’t leave.

  I see the twenty-four-year-old lingering, close to the principal’s office, just before I’m led in by his admin assistant. I brace myself for the look I’ll get at home when I tell my husband I lost this job and it’s my fault. I imagine what response I might give to excuse it, but I leave because I want to, which is not, I think, a reason I should say out loud to try to keep my job.

  The principal appears, though, not to know about my midday leaving. Instead, he explains calmly to me that it’s time for test prep, that the portion of the year in which the kids are meant to be doing anything but test prep has long since passed. I am not, he tells me, trained in test prep and so will no longer be teaching the students I’ve been teaching since the fall.

  I remind him I spent years as a test-prep tutor.

  But you haven’t been trained by us, he says.

  The teachers who they’re bringing in are coming from the middle school.

  Middle school? I say, obviously disdainful.

  You’re not being generous, he says to me.

  I’m not.

  He eats the whole time we talk, hot soup with a hulking piece of bread that he dunks into the soup and then into his mouth. He sits back in his chair, his ankle on his knee, and each time I talk he smiles.

  But they’re learning, I say.

  I realize that I might start crying, but I refuse to cry in front of this man whom I think of as a child.

  He tells me that this was not his decision. The network, he says, smiling. Nothing I could do.

  I love my students and am sad and angry, even though I know I leave sometimes for no good reason and that makes my love for them questionable at best. I tell my boss I think this is the wrong decision, and he stares blankly at me and doesn’t speak. He takes a bite of his bread and a clump lands briefly on his chin. We both pretend that I’m not crying. With all the things I hate about this job, the students are the only reason that I stay.

  Teaching, I say, is ninety percent buy-in.

  He nods.

  They’re bought in, I say.

  I try to tell him that they’re thinking and that they’ve been enjoying thinking. I try to tell him that he told me when he brought me on that he cared about helping them think.

  He tells me he is grateful for my investment in the children and the vision. I will teach different kids now, kids who, he says, also need me—kids upon whom, I think, they have already given up. I’ll teach the seniors, who have already gotten into college or they haven’t, who have already taken all the tests there are to take.

  I’m no longer crying, and I smile at him. I imagine he thinks I’m smiling because he’s managed to convince me of this plan I don’t agree with, but really he has spilled soup on his shirt and tie and, the way his face looks anxious and earnest at once now that he’s trying to convince me that everything is fine, he reminds me of a kid in our daughter’s pre-K class whose toes she stepped on while they stood in line for lunch because, she told me later, she did not know how else to make him be quiet like the teacher asked.

  * * *

  I leave the principal’s office and have to do my hall duty. Hall duty means sitting at a table in the hall as students walk back and forth between the bathroom and class. Sometimes students stop to talk or flirt and I have to tell them to move on. The ones who know me loiter and we talk about the classes that they’re taking, the social dramas that I know of. I’m trusted as much as the most trusted white teachers, which is to say kindly, generously, joking often—but also warily.

  Twenty minutes in, the chat says that Kayla’s missing. I check the third-floor bathroom and see her shoes, the toes turned in again.

  Kayla? I say.

  She’s in the large handicap accessible stall and opens up the door and motions for me to come inside. I look back and forth, not sure if I’m supposed to do this or if I care if I’m supposed to do this. I’m not super invested, in this moment, in keeping my job.

  You okay? I say.

  She nods again for me to come in with her. There’s a bandage around her arm and it has slipped.

  I come through the door and she locks it behind me. I sit down on the floor next to her. Are you okay?

  She nods.

  What’s this?

  She tells me that her mother saw the bruise on her face from where her boyfriend hit her and when she told her what had happened, her mother took her to a doctor and had a birth control device implanted in her arm.

  I hit him back, though, she says. My mother lets men put their hands on her, but he won’t do it to me again.

  May I? I say, nodding to her arm.

  I unwrap the bandage slowly and roll it in my hands. I hold it up above the mark where the device has been implanted and I slowly wrap it, asking, with each rotation, if the pressure is too tight.

  Fine, she says each time, so I keep it extra tight, watching her face.

  Okay? I ask, when I have finished.

  Fine, she says another time.

  * * *

  I text the Chilean writer three days in a row and she doesn’t answer and I get frantic. I call her and I email and I’m afraid both that she is not okay in some bodily unsafe way and also that I’ve accidentally scared her off. I’m so sorry, she emails on the fifth day. My son was in town and we got busy. Everything all right?

  * * *

  The next Thursday, I leave work early because I leave early even more now; he’s taken my students from me and, I figure, if I’m caught now, I’ll have something to say.

  I go up to the campus where I teach my night class. I’m early and am hoping to find an empty office where I can read. In the small café, at the foot of the stairs, leading up to the department offices, I see the girl who emailed, weeks ago, asking to meet.

>   Kate, I say, grabbing her arm. Honey, I say, more like a mom than I meant. We never met.

  She reddens—on her shoulders, bare like always, on her round cheeks.

  It’s not a big deal, she says.

  She’s with friends, a thin boy with too-big glasses and a tall, dark girl I’ve never seen. They look back and forth between us. I’m often mistaken for a student, not because I look so young but because I don’t assert much authority, because no one knows who I am or why I’m there. I slip in and out and teach my class and am not around besides that, because I’m not sure why anyone would or should listen when I speak. I felt the same when I was a student at this vaunted institution, like I didn’t quite deserve it, like any minute, someone would come and ask me to leave.

  Come up, I say to Kate. I’m getting an office; come with me.

  She looks at her friends and the small boy looks down at his shoes.

  Come catch me up, I say.

  She has a coat slung over her arm and a big bag that she drapes across her body. There’s something sloppy about her that I admire, not unlike Sasha. She’s always seemed to take up space unapologetically.

  I ask the kids behind the desk for an office, though I’m early. I tell them that I’m sorry. For the first hour that I’m required to hold office hours, I am in one office, then someone with tenure takes that office over and I’m switched to a smaller one with random extra chairs piled in the back for the remaining hour.

  Either of them free? I say.

  The girl who always makes my copies and who is always kind smiles, gets up. She was a lawyer before this.

  413, she says. This is the bigger office, without broken chairs. I smile at her, grateful.

  * * *

  What’s up? I say, when the door’s closed and this girl has slung her coat across the seat, her bag still hung across her chest and on her lap in a heap.

  You know, she says. Busy.

  Her skin begins to splotch again and I wonder if she’s even younger than I think, teenaged, some sort of prodigy.

  You wanted to talk? I say.

  It’s nothing, she says. I wanted. This weird thing happened the other day.

  Okay … I say.

  She tells me she was at a party with other students from the program.

  I was drunk, she says, and looks down at her bag, still in her lap.

  Okay … I say.

  I was talking to this guy, she says. And he asked me about my dissertation advisor, about what I study. I told him, and he told me he had this guy I’d heard about.

  She says: I’d heard about, like it holds within it more than the words mean.

  She says: I told him I’d heard he was an ass to girls.

  Okay … I say.

  It’s just … Her shoulders are red again and she grabs hold of the hair behind her ears and starts to twist it.

  I heard the guy was creepy, and I told him, she says. And he told me that wasn’t a thing, that he’s sort of a flirt but it’s all fine because the guy has a kid.

  I laugh then, though probably I shouldn’t.

  The office that we’re in is small and the books on the shelf behind her were all written by another, much older man who teaches here, who has tenure, who isn’t ever here.

  I was just so pissed off, she says. Like he didn’t care, you know? Like a guy being an asshole to girls is fine with him.

  I both do and don’t know. She’s ten years younger than me and, if this were me, when this was me, if I had spoken to this guy, I would have thought about it for weeks, for months, but I would not ever have recounted the experience out loud to someone else. I would have decided not to like this guy right after. I would have noted to myself that we would not be friends. I would have been quietly embarrassed by my sensitivity and discomfort. I would have felt very small and very sad throughout.

  I tried to push him on it, she says. And he shut me down.

  She is doughy, sweet and soft, and I want to tell her everything will be okay and to just not think about this. I don’t want to be one more person telling her what she says doesn’t matter, but I’m also not sure it does.

  I called a friend of mine who goes to another college where he used to adjunct. She says her friend’s friend said he tried to kiss her during office hours.

  Another of their friends was his babysitter, she says. And he tried to kiss her too. Asshole, she says, more to herself than me.

  I think I’m supposed to only listen, but she’s stopped talking now and looks at me.

  That sucks, I say.

  I don’t want to tell her it’s expected. I don’t want to tell her that this is how things are, although it is.

  It’s tricky, I say.

  This was wrong, and I almost tell her that I’m sorry.

  My friend says, she says, he shouldn’t be allowed to teach.

  Can I help? I say. Do you want to tell me his name?

  She says it and I think a minute and then place him, his perfectly shaven face, his short, squat frame. This man has health insurance from this job—a temporary appointment, but more solid than my own, and I wonder briefly if this is how I might take his job from him.

  He didn’t do anything to me, she says. I’ve never talked to him.

  I think of all the stories that I heard when I was a grad student, how we only ever whispered about them later, how embarrassed I was that none of them belonged to me.

  Do you know anyone who has experience of this firsthand? I say.

  The women in his class don’t like him.

  I’m not sure— I say.

  Never mind, she says.

  I don’t want— I start.

  How can I help? I say.

  I just wanted to say to someone how awful it feels.

  It sucks, I say, for the three thousandth time.

  Why did that kid think it was okay?

  I don’t know, I say.

  If someone that you know knows more, you guys should tell someone, I say.

  She nods, her shoulders red, folding her coat on her lap, waiting for me.

  I am someone she has told.

  Let me think about this, I say. Email me, I say, if there’s any way at all you think that I might help.

  * * *

  After my class, I find Melissa, who is older, whip smart, head of the department. She somehow willed herself into this job, which feels miraculous still now. She gave me this job. Each semester, I email to ask her if I can teach the next semester, and each semester she gets right back to me and says Yes, of course; I’ll find something.

  Come in, she says. She’s always here. She holds extended office hours always. When I was a student here I came to see her once a week.

  How’s class? she says.

  I want to tell her about the thing with my student, but I’m not sure what I’d say, what there even is to tell her.

  I’m tired, I say.

  They need so much, she says.

  I think of all the emails that I wrote her when I was a student, asking her for coffee, but really, asking her to tell me I could do this, it was worth it, I was special, everything would be okay.

  How are you? I say to her. I think about how I’ve maybe never asked her this and how awful I’ve been for not asking. I’ve asked her this, but never wanted or expected a response.

  She smiles. She has a thin-lipped, wry, large-eyes-closing-at-the-corners smile.

  She has red, curly hair, tied up, but loose, random wisps around her face.

  She looks down at her hands. Her fingernails are dark blue and she has a large black opal ring on her right middle finger. She wears a dark blue turtleneck and black pants. She smiles again, but this time her lips fold in toward her teeth.

  When she looks up the smile’s gone.

  My fucking dog is dying, she says.

  I cross my legs and clasp my hands around my knee. I’m sorry, I say.

  She shakes her head.

  You’re the first person today to ask me how I am, so now you’re pay
ing for it. She’s twenty, she says. Old, she says. Ancient for a dog. She looks at me and lets out a sort of laugh. I understand that she’s a dog and I’m not supposed to be so sad.

  She works harder than any other person in this program. She writes the most letters of recommendation, the longest comments on student papers, theses. The day I defended my dissertation she took me out for coffee and put her hand on my hand and told me she was proud of me.

  She’s the longest-lasting relationship I’ve ever had.

  She’s fifty-something, I think, maybe early sixties, never married.

  She has cancer, she says, arthritis. All the bad things, she says and laughs again. She’s really fucking old.

  I still have my coat on and I unzip it slowly so she doesn’t think I want to leave her.

  The vet wanted me to put her down two weeks ago, she says.

  She looks past me toward the door and I look out the window so she doesn’t have to worry she might look me in the eye.

  I’m torturing her because I can’t fathom coming home and her not being there.

  * * *

  The next morning I sleep past my alarm again, but then run the distance that I want to run and then have to shower and change after the children are awake.

  Mommy, yells the four-year-old as she stands in the bathroom and I shower. Mommy, she calls, can you wipe?

  She has pooped and hates to wash her hands so always asks someone else to wipe so she can skip that step.

  I lean out of the shower and get a piece of toilet paper and I wipe her. She kisses my wet cheek, then makes a face and stares at me, her face hard.

  You’re all wet, she says.

  * * *

  My mom calls early on that Sunday morning. It’s the first I’ve heard from her since the bankruptcy. We haven’t been to Florida since the four-year-old was a baby. Three months before our second baby was born, I told my parents we needed to stop talking, and they were hurt and sad.

  Before that, for a long time, there was no talking without fighting. We’d get on the phone, and then I and whichever of them had gotten up the courage to try to call me would spend the whole time trying to win. We didn’t know how to talk if it wasn’t about winning: who knew better, who’d been hurt more and for longer, who’d tried harder when the other person didn’t try at all. I was pregnant and already had a toddler and I was sick all of the time; I had four jobs. I told them that they needed not to call me for a while.