by Lea Geller
“But we call him Fart, and you can, too.”
“Really?” I asked, looking at Art.
“Yup,” Art said, his face blushing to match his hair. “Because of my name.”
“That’s not the only reason,” said the freckles.
“Oh, and because I fart when I’m nervous,” Art admitted. “Think you can call me that?”
I refused to miss a beat. “Nice to meet you, Fart,” I said. Hell, in preschool we let some kid wear a tutu and a pilot’s cap every day. The least I could do was call this kid Fart.
“And you?” I asked the freckles. “You’re Caleb?”
“Yup. In the flesh.” He ran his hands through his thick black hair until it stood up on its own.
“OK, then, Caleb,” I said. “Tell me about your superpower.” I looked right at him, right into his very green eyes.
“I’m a mind reader,” he said.
“Oh, really?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Well, then,” I said. “Tell me what I’m thinking.”
Caleb’s large green eyes narrowed. “You can’t believe you left sunny California to spend your days with losers like us. You’re stuck here with us and these dumb writing prompts that aren’t gonna make any of us good writers.”
I blinked at him. Was it the pain of the paper airplane hitting me earlier, or did this kid just verbally smack me in the face?
“You’re wasting your time with us,” said Art.
“Yeah,” echoed the short, skinny, spectacled kid I’d seen in the hall on the first day. His voice cracked, and he looked at me nervously.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
His eyes grew wide. “Um, Guy . . . ?” Was he asking me or telling me his name?
The chubby kid who had been with Guy in the hall, the one who had assumed that because he’d heard I was from California I’d be really hot, so hot that he needed to cup his hands to his chest, chimed in. “I’m Davey, and we think teachers who pretend to like us are lame.” He took extra time with the last word, stretching it out—laaaaame.
“It looks like you’ve been voted off the island,” Caleb announced, his eyes staring right through me. “Pack your bags and go home.”
As if, I thought, staring back at the boy who, just yesterday, had been my only ally. As if I could leave this muggy hole, with its bugs and its smells and these kids who didn’t even want me here. I’d have done anything to click my heels and go back to California, to have woken up from this awful, interminable dream. I felt sick and scared and almost naked in front of them (or as naked as you can be in underwear that practically reaches your chin).
“Fine,” I mumbled. “Do whatever you want. I’ll just sit here.”
“Huh?” said Guy.
“Go for it,” I said, not looking at them. “Check your phones, watch a movie, I don’t care.”
Guy’s face crumpled. “Are you mad at us?”
These kids made no sense. I wanted to run, to get out of there. But I knew better than to walk out on a paying gig. So I just sat with my head on the desk. I could hear them, and occasionally I could sense a couple of them hovering near me, whispering, “Is she OK?” I didn’t raise my head until the bell. When it finally rang, I raced out before a single one of them could stop me, pulling my bag close to me to cover as much of my backside as possible. I remembered I had a sweater in the bag, so I pulled it out and tied it around my waist. As soon as I got out of class, I ran down the hall and leaned against the wall, my eyes closed: Stay put. Before I knew it, Stacey Figg was upon me.
“Rough class?” she asked, jingling. Her arms were elbow-high in bangles.
“Kind of,” I said. I was annoyed with the boys, but more annoyed with myself for not being able to take it. “I think I could’ve handled it better,” I added.
“You get used to it,” she said knowingly. “Kind of like the smell.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I don’t know what happened, but you’ll see soon enough.” She leaned in as if letting me in on a secret, except that she didn’t whisper. “These kids are awful.” She looked around then back at me. “Awful,” she breathed.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just laughed nervously.
Stacey didn’t need me to say anything. She kept talking. “These are the kids that other schools didn’t want, so we took them. Congratulations. Your first class is bad, but you’ll see soon enough. Your others won’t be much better. You just won yourself a troop of disruptive, disrespectful private-school rejects.” She snapped in my face when she finished her sentence.
Beeks had told me that St. Norbert’s was the kind of place kids went when they ran out of options, but I was still surprised to hear Stacey talk this way.
“Don’t be fooled by a good day, and don’t be manipulated by some kid you think is sweet. None of these kids are sweet.”
I guess I didn’t look convinced, because Stacey took another step in, so that our noses were almost touching. “These poor, ‘misunderstood’ kids,” she said, crunching her fingers in air quotes, “these kids do things like set off fart bombs in the lunchroom and take embarrassing pictures of us while we’re teaching, doctor them, and send them around to the whole grade. These kids break into supply closets and even hack into our email accounts. One got into mine and sent a fake email to his parents about how well he was doing here. The thing is, not one of these kids is doing well here.” She paused to catch her breath. “The secret is boundaries and consequences,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to remember that. I guess you can tell I’m new to all this.”
“Yeah,” she said with a nod, pulling back. “That’s why we have the teachers’ lounge. That’s where we all go to commiserate.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I think I’ll be needing that.”
“Honey,” said Stacey, putting a hand on my arm, “you can come and talk to me anytime. We teachers need to stick together.”
“Gavin mentioned the lounge in an email,” I said. “I just don’t remember where he said it was.”
“Gavin.” She sighed girlishly, flashing me a big, garish smile and shivering in delight. “Such a hero to come here and lead us all. You should have seen what it was like before he got here.” She shook her head and looked down.
I needed to get out of the hall before the boys came out and saw me, and I wasn’t sure I could hear much more of her singing Gavin’s praises. I made an excuse and backed away from Stacey. As I walked off, she called out, “Remember, you can always come to the lounge! There’s popcorn on Fridays!”
If Stacey Figg was right about these kids, I was going to need a lot more than popcorn on Fridays to get me through the week.
-9-
I tried to recharge at home that night. Dinner with Grace was hard. She rejected whatever I fed her, pursing her lips and turning her head. If I could manage to shove in a single spoonful, she sprayed it out all over the two of us.
I sat at the table coated in chicken and pea mush, which, I had noticed, was the color of neither chicken nor peas, and I willed myself not to think about my former life. If I wanted to puree food for Grace, I wouldn’t know where to start. Even if there were farmers’ markets in the Bronx, I was in no shape to go looking for them. Besides, I hadn’t brought the machine Alma used to make the food. Hell, I didn’t even know what that machine was called. I quickly shut Alma out as well, banishing all thoughts about how glorious it had been to call her name and have her take over whenever I ran into trouble or felt the need for a break. I wondered about those tired-looking moms in baby group. This is relentless, and this is why they all looked so damn exhausted.
“Just one more bite,” I begged. With the jar of food in one hand, I waved the spoon around, made some frenetic airplane noises, and rammed it into her pursed lips.
“Gracie, eat!” I yelled, slamming the jar of food down on the table and cracking the bottom. I looked at the jar. Could the mush inside b
e salvaged, or had the crack released minuscule shards of glass? I had no idea. I just knew I’d wasted a dollar fifty on something that would never get eaten.
I started to cry, and because I’d just yelled, Grace cried along with me. At some point I gave up on dinner and let her eat Cheerios and suck down a bottle of formula, Santa Monica be damned. I needed to collapse on the couch, and I couldn’t do that if she was awake. I bathed her and put her to sleep, both of which seemed to take forever. Once she was down, I thought about getting myself in the bath, a grim-looking tub that Jack would have had ripped out and replaced with a newer, glossier, whiter model. Instead, I took a long, hot shower and sat in pajamas on the little brown couch. It was still muggy, even inside.
Stacey Figg had been right. The town house had no central air-conditioning. Instead, each room had a hulking air-conditioner box attached to the outside of the window. The boxes were ugly and blocked out what little light managed to sneak in. They made a loud blowing noise and dripped puddles of water onto the floor. I could not believe these things even existed anymore.
I couldn’t deal with the noise, so I opened a window, even though the air was heavy and thick. I closed my eyes and took a sip of the wine I’d bought over the weekend. The local grocery store was narrow, grimy, and only seemed to have one of everything. I’d bought the only bottle of red wine on the cramped shelf, officially depleting the store’s reserves. I had been waiting all day for a glass, but it tasted to me not like a glass of dry red wine, but more like I was sipping from the Wall of Axe. I would have cried then and there had I not leaped three feet into the air when an enormous shiny roach crawled over my foot. I screamed and kicked and the creature landed on its back, flipped over, and scrambled under the couch. Honestly, I can’t say for sure if it was a roach. I’d seen some roaches before, but this thing was the size of my hand. Each of its evil antennae was spinning in a different direction, and its shell was so thick and shiny it looked almost lacquered. I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Windex, and began to spray under the couch. As I did this, I was 100 percent sure that this enormous persevering bug was not going to meet its end at the hands of a bottle of Windex.
I didn’t see the roach again that night, but I shoved a towel under the door, closed all the windows, and slept with the Windex next to me. If those things were coming in from the outside, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
-10-
This is how I spent my first days at St. Norbert’s: I taught, or at least, I’d try to teach. Often I’d be wearing something wildly inappropriate, like a sundress with a cropped jacket on top and leggings underneath. Most of my sundresses were apparently completely sheer, and I thought it best if the giant underwear were for my eyes only. Sometimes I’d wear a brightly patterned wrap dress with a cardigan, pinned shut, because I quickly learned that middle school boys won’t pay attention to you if they can see even a hint of your cleavage. I hadn’t gotten a paycheck yet, so I didn’t have any money for new clothes, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to buy anything, anyway. Buying a teacher’s uniform would mean that I had accepted this new reality. Still, I made a mental note to ask Stacey Figg when and how often we got paid.
Living paycheck to paycheck was neither new for me nor hard. My parents had believed their best defense against a lack of money was a near-religious commitment to organization. They knew exactly how much money was coming in and how much was going out, and it was all written down in a spiral notebook we kept in the kitchen. And here’s the thing—as an only child, I had a seat at the kitchen table. I knew what was in that notebook. I knew how much and when they got paid and what we spent on things like rent, food, and clothing, as well as what we had in our emergency fund, a stash of money we kept in a jar under the sink.
Our weeks were organized by our commitment to the spiral notebook. On Sunday mornings, we’d cut coupons and make a meal plan for the week based on what coupons we’d found. On Sunday afternoons, we shopped for the whole week and rarely went back to the store to refresh. My parents were never short and were seldom caught by surprise, because they always made sure they were one step ahead of their money. But all their devotion to planning, all their lists—none of it had protected them from the car crash that ended their lives. None of that had kept them, or me, safe.
Still, in those first few weeks, I was thankful to my parents for teaching me how to stay on top of my money, what little there was of it. Instead of a notebook, now I kept all my information in my phone, and I made note of everything I spent. No, living paycheck to paycheck was not a problem for me. I knew how to worry about money. Some mornings I would wake up and wonder if my life with Jack had even existed or if it had all been a dream. But then I would hear Grace’s voice on the monitor, and I would know. It had all happened.
Grace. She and I technically had fewer hours together, but we had so much more time. At the end of each school day, I’d pick her up and we’d spend our evenings together, evenings that were fulfilling but also exhausting.
Often, we’d see a bug. Sometimes we’d see more than one. Once I’d done my kabuki dance with the front-door lock and all the windows, I’d fall asleep, but never before I’d checked in with Don, hoping to hear news of Jack. Don was pretty much sending me variations on the same text:
Jack is fine.
Stay where you are.
Do your job and wait.
Don was nothing if not consistent. Circular and consistent.
I kept calling Jack and leaving messages. One night, the voice mail lady was no longer there. Instead, there was just another message, from another detached lady, possibly a cousin, announcing that the number was no longer in service. Funny, I thought when I first heard the message, Jack isn’t, either.
I fell back into the couch and threw down my phone and spoke to someone who wasn’t just not here, but who wasn’t even available. “I don’t know what I did to let you think that this would be OK with me, that you could send me here, make me wait, and not send a word. But it isn’t OK. None of it is.”
After a few days, Stacey Figg abandoned the pretense of bringing me vegetables, and I agreed to let her inside one evening.
“Want company?” she asked, standing on my doorstep.
I did want company. I just wasn’t sure I wanted hers.
“Sure,” I said. “Come in.” I stood back and let her walk into the foyer.
Like a dog sniffing out a new home, she quickly began working her way through the first floor.
“This couch,” she said, pointing at the brown couch. “You should call facilities and see if they have something better.” I did not want to tell Stacey Figg that I was not going to be sticking around long enough to need better, so I just smiled and nodded.
“When will your husband be here?” she asked, walking into the dining room and eyeing the mess on the table.
“Soon.”
“How often does he go away?” she asked, continuing on into the kitchen, as though this were her one and only chance to see the inside of my house and she had to make sure to see as much of it as possible. I trailed behind.
“It’s hard to say,” I said.
She stopped and turned to look at me. Her eyes narrowed. “When did he last see Grace?”
“July,” I mumbled.
“July? And you’re OK with that?”
No, Stacey Figg. I am not OK with that. I am not OK with any of this. I am especially not OK with you leading yourself on a self-guided tour of my home and interrogating me in the process.
“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “End of story.” I shrugged and walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room. I fell back onto the brown couch and waited for her to come in. She wasn’t done asking questions, but she was smart enough to shift gears.
“So how long have you been teaching?” she said, sitting next to me on the couch, putting her hands on her lap.
“A few years.”
“Why English?”
“I
t was always my strongest subject, so it seemed like a no-brainer.”
“Why did you choose middle school?”
“I didn’t. It kind of chose me.”
Stacey Figg kept coming back and peppering me with questions. I got better at answering without really answering. At some point she relented and went home.
I had been dodging calls and texts from Beeks. After two weeks of classes, I finally answered one of her calls.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But you have once again found me in the laundry room.”
“You called me,” I said, but I appreciated that she was giving me the chance to pretend I’d called her. Beeks was generous this way. No hard feelings.
“It’s early for you to be doing laundry,” I said. I knew from Beeks that laundry usually happened after bedtime.
“Yeah, well, let’s just say I didn’t have a choice this time. The little boys tried to prank Stevie by putting plastic wrap on his toilet seat. He’s a teenager, so he’s completely irrational and impulsive and was therefore unable to stop himself from pouring an entire jar of crushed garlic all over their bunk beds. And by ‘all over,’ I mean even inside their pillowcases.”
“My God,” I said. “That’s insane. How do you even live with that? And why don’t you sound angrier?”
“That, my dear, is an excellent question,” she said. “Remind me to ask my therapist that.”
“Well, when you see your therapist, maybe you could also ask her a few questions on my behalf,” I said, not joking at all.
“How is it?” asked Beeks. “How are you?”
“Jack is nowhere,” I said, eating a handful of spinach-and-apple puffs. “The job sucks. The kids hate me. It’s muggy, even though it’s the middle of September. Everything around me is dirty, and the bugs are huge and mean.” I stopped myself because I knew where this was going, and then I went directly there. “I want to go home, Beeks. I’m done.” I hadn’t said any of this aloud yet. I missed Jack desperately, but I couldn’t say that to Beeks, not now. I couldn’t tell her that the only way I fell asleep at night was by closing my eyes and imaging our bedroom in Santa Monica and conjuring Jack in bed beside me. I’d been waking up each day and plodding along, sleepwalking through the motions and waiting for it to get better. But it wasn’t getting any better. Saying the words to Beeks, hearing them come out of my mouth, it was all too much. Before I knew what to say next, I was sobbing.