Your sister had an abortion when she was in high school. You are the only one who knows this.
There was not an equation in the world that could answer this question. There were simply too many variables, each of which raised further questions. For example, did the baby’s father even look up when you told him the news? Or did he just keep staring at a football game on TV and then ask, as if he’d had this conversation before, So, what are you going to do? And where will he be when your daughter is ten years old, with a birthday during football season?
Maybe at your classroom door, while you wait for a pregnant teenager to finish crying on the desk in front of you.
“Sorry,” Coach Ray called in from the doorway. “I can see you’re busy.” He gestured toward Jennifer, who had picked up her head at the sound of his voice and was wiping her eyes on her sleeve. No one wanted to cry in front of a football coach.
“No, I’m not busy. I mean, I am, but…” Maybelline hesitated, unable to discuss the topic in front of Jennifer. “Did you read my e-mail?”
“I did, but you know football. Take an hour off during championship season, you give the other guys an hour to get ahead of you.” Coach Ray glanced at Jennifer, switching to the voice adults used when they thought they were obscuring their meaning from nearby children. “So, unfortunately, I can’t make it to the birthday party.”
He pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to Maybelline. “I was going to buy her a present, but I figured at this age she probably wants to go shopping herself.” He offered an apologetic smile. Then he left.
As the door closed behind him, Jennifer’s eyes filled with tears again.
Maybelline pushed her own frustration aside. “Sorry, Jennifer.”
“That’s okay, miss. I think I figured out what I’m going to do.”
“Are you sure?”
Jennifer nodded.
“Okay. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”
“Don’t worry, miss. You were.”
MEMBERSHIP
HERNAN HATED WHEN kids left garbage on the ground for the custodians to pick up. It wasn’t because he was Mexican, okay?
Well, maybe it was because he was Mexican. Every summer since eighth grade, he had worked for his father’s landscaping company, grooming flowers around golf courses and fancy hotels.
Meaning he’d picked up his share of other people’s garbage.
One morning in particular had lodged in his memory. It had been late May, graduation season. Hernandez Landscaping had gotten a job with a hotel near a private university. The job itself was a standard one: Pull weeds. Mow the lawn. Edge the bushes into neat rectangles. When they arrived, however, they found the courtyard littered with beer cans and plastic cups. They’d spent several unpaid hours that day bent over in the Texas sun, picking up the celebratory trash of college graduates.
I don’t care how much school a person has, Hernan’s father said. A person with education knows to pick up his own garbage.
“He rubbed his back as he said it. Like this.” Hernan stooped as if in pain, rubbing his own back to demonstrate for his students. “Then my friend realized that of course his father’s back hurt: he was decades older than the kids who threw the garbage on the ground in the first place. He’d been doing this job since before they were born.”
When he told personal stories in class, he always pretended they’d happened to a friend. It seemed wrong to burden students with his memories. Every year, however, there came a moment that brought this story spilling out. It was usually a day like today, when he’d opened his classroom door to find the hallway littered with what seemed like a whole vending machine’s worth of plastic bags.
The kids sat quietly until LaQuandrea Jackson broke the silence. “Mr. Hernandez, stop playing. You know your ‘friend’ is really you.” She shaped her fingers into quotation marks as she said the word friend.
Hernan forced out a small laugh, trying to take focus away from the observation. This was the first time a student had figured this out. But then he stopped. “Yeah, LaQuandrea. It was me.”
“So why don’t you just say it’s you, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Hernan. “I just don’t.”
A boy behind her chimed in. “He doesn’t want us to know he had to pick up garbage, stupid.”
“No, that’s not it,” Hernan said. It was strange how he spent so much time frustrated that students were not listening to him, only to get nervous when it seemed they might be listening too hard. “There’s no shame in a job where you have to clean.”
LaQuandrea swung around in her chair to address the boy. “I’m not stupid, your mom is. And he probably didn’t tell us because that’s not the point. He just wants us to stop leaving our trash.”
“I think it’s time to get back to learning about DNA,” said Hernan.
Hernan’s father had moved to the city to do landscaping work from a town in Mexico where everyone moved to Texas to do landscaping work. Most of them had variations of the same plan: They’d save money, offer their children slices of American opportunity. Then maybe they’d retire back home one day, newly rich in a town that would always be poor. This was the idea, at least. There were enough grandfathers still stooping painfully in the sun to show this wasn’t how it always worked out.
To this churn of immigrant dreams, Hernan’s father had brought one tiny adaptive edge. As a teenager, he’d worked in La Huasteca National Park. There he had learned enough about plants to make them grow where no one else could. He passed this knowledge along to Hernan, who began experimenting with selective breeding, helping his father grow hardier plants and, over time, a bigger business. By the time Hernan’s younger sister, Leticia, was old enough for high school, the family owned a plant nursery with a greenhouse and a home in a working-class suburb.
Lety would go on to study communications at a local university. Their older sister, Mayra, who’d become a citizen long after the prospect of college had passed, worked in a salon. Both sisters hated gardening.
Hernan, on the other hand, had spent his high school years assuming he’d take over the company. Hernandez Landscaping and Plant Nursery had become a business some men would have been proud to pass on to their sons.
When he mentioned this, however, his father gave him a look that ended the subject. “I don’t work in people’s backyards so my son can work in a backyard. I work so you can study. You want to work with plants? Study plants.”
Hence the biology degree, and the science-teacher gig, and the students building DNA strands from beads and wire as the day advanced toward lunchtime. When the bell rang, Hernan grabbed his container of leftovers from the small fridge behind his desk. He left the usual crew of quiet misfits behind in the room and walked as fast as he could, hoping to beat the microwave line.
* * *
The teachers’ lounge of Brae Hill Valley High School wasn’t big enough for much actual lounging. It held one small table, a fridge no one used, and a machine that sold the same selection of (BAKED!) Reetos and (WHOLE GRAIN!) Fudgelicious products as the student vending machines. The biggest draw was the microwave. When Hernan arrived, Lena was already there, heating up her food. She offered him a sorry you have to wait smile that only increased the irritation he’d felt toward her since happy hour. He turned his attention toward the other people in the room. Coach Ray and Kaytee stood along the wall, holding their own lunches and watching the microwave eagerly.
Mr. Weber, who sat at the table, was the most promising source of distraction. He stirred clumps of Wake Rite instant coffee into a mug and frowned from under furry eyebrows as Hernan greeted him. “Hernandez, you still don’t want to be a union member with everything that’s going on?”
“Trust me, you’d be the first to know.”
Mr. Weber never got tired of warning Hernan that if he didn’t join the teachers’ union, his students would drink the chemicals in the science lab, or he’d be accused of rape, or Texas would lower
teaching salaries to three dollars a day—and he’d be on his own. “Okay, well, I just hope you don’t get tired of teaching test-taking skills every single day.”
“I don’t teach test-taking,” said Hernan.
The microwave beeped, and Lena withdrew her lunch. “Never?” she asked, disbelieving.
“Never,” confirmed Hernan. “I teach actual science.”
“Well, I’m sure you can fake it when you have to.” Her voice held a note of concerned reprimand, as if she were some type of expert on the topic of faking things and had noticed a shortfall on his part.
Then again, he thought with renewed irritation, maybe she was. He remembered the way her voice—even her grammar—had changed when she’d talked to Nex Level in the club. “I don’t have a reason to be fake,” he said, with more edge than he’d meant to.
Lena looked at him for a moment in silence, her eyes a question mark.
He held her gaze.
“I don’t know about y’all,” said Coach Ray, “but I got to be in the union. If a kid gets hurt on the field, I’m the first one they’re gonna look at. Plus, they saved my ass on that Gerard Brown thing.” He withdrew his lunch from the microwave and left the lounge.
Lena followed him out.
Mr. Weber, sensing he might now command more of Hernan’s attention, returned to his theme. “I’m just looking out for you, Hernandez. Being in the union’s like having car insurance: you hope you don’t need it, but you get it just in case. It’s different for the people who are just gonna leave after a couple years.” He nodded toward Kaytee. Mr. Weber made no secret of his feelings about TeachCorps recruits.
“I told you already, I’m not going anywhere.” Kaytee pulled open her frozen box of Low-Cal Cuisine with more force than necessary. “I just feel like we should focus on working for kids, not on contract rules that only benefit adults.”
“Hey,” said Hernan, addressing Mr. Weber before he could answer, “I heard your favorite movie’s coming out over Christmas break.”
“You mean How the Teachers’ Union Stole Christmas?” Weber glared. “Don’t tell me you’re going to see it.”
“Nah,” said Hernan. “Looks boring.” The movie’s actual title was How the Status Quo Stole Christmas. It was a documentary about Nick Wallabee’s changes in the district, described in trailers as “the story of one man’s heroic efforts to beat the odds and save a city’s schools.” Hernan couldn’t imagine a worse way to spend vacation time than watching a documentary about work.
“Well, I am going to see it,” said Kaytee, addressing Mr. Weber. “Because as a teacher, I care about why our education system is broken.”
The microwave beeped, and Hernan moved toward it, but Kaytee’s lunch was one of those things you had to stir and put back in. The way it was looking, he’d be lucky to make it back to his room and scarf down his food before the bell rang.
Mr. Weber ignored Kaytee. “Just wait, man. You’re going to wish you’d joined.”
“Look,” said Hernan, “I’m not into politics. But you have to admit, there are some teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom, and y’all do make it hard to fire them.”
“Exactly!” Kaytee retrieved her lunch, started to leave the lounge, and then turned back toward the vending machine.
“If you’re talking about Comodio, they could fire him at any time. They just have to make sure they go through all the steps.”
Finally, Hernan put his lunch in the microwave. “Well, I’ll start worrying after that happens. As long as Comodio’s around, I’ll assume I’m safe.”
He was about to hit the Start button when Maybelline Galang rushed into the lounge. She was holding a stack of papers in one hand and a still-frozen lunch in the other, an insulated bag dangling from her arm. She looked at the clock, sighed, and started to back out of the door.
Something about the expression on her face, however, made Hernan say, “Hey, go ahead.”
Maybelline looked shocked. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” He took his lunch out of the microwave and held her stack of papers so she could put hers in.
“Wow. Thanks.” Maybelline set the microwave for four and a half minutes.
Mr. Weber looked at the clock. “I guess you’re eating lunch cold.”
“Sorry,” Maybelline mumbled to Hernan.
“Don’t worry about it. I can eat my lunch cold. You can’t eat yours frozen.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Mr. Weber. “That’s another thing: kids can come to our classes at any time and act however they want. But try getting back to your room even one minute after the lunch bell as a teacher.”
“Well, on that note…” Hernan left the lounge, lukewarm leftovers in hand.
When he reached the end of the hallway, the floor outside his door was spotless.
ATTENDANCE
“STOP TAPPING YOUR pen.” All morning, Lena had paced the room like a panther in a cage, infuriated by behavior that should have been merely irritating. They’d just finished two days of pre-tests followed by two days of pre-test review, and she’d promised her students a guest speaker as a reward.
The speaker was Nex Level.
Or at least it was supposed to be.
He’d agreed to come when she’d asked him, but following up had felt too much like nagging. Instead, she’d waited until the night before to check in with a casual text, and then had woken up several times during the night, alternating between excitement about the visit and worry that it wouldn’t happen at all. In the morning, she’d sent another text with directions to the school.
But Nex hadn’t answered either message, and now Lena checked her phone with increasing frequency, her anxiety edging toward panic.
There was a knock at the door. She lunged for it, but it was only a student, who handed her a pass that said he’d been taking a makeup test. Then he looked around the room, confused. “Miss? I thought you said we were having a guest speaker.”
“We are. I think. Just have a seat for now.”
Nex Level is not coming.
She let the full sentence play in her head, forcing herself to feel its finality before a small, hopeful whisper from her subconscious added, Well, probably not, but…
But nothing.
It was time to accept the situation: she had no lesson plan and a class full of increasingly restless teenagers. There was already some hopeful rumbling about having a free day. “Okay, um, for now, we’re going to talk about symbolism in Of Mice and Men. Take out your study guides from yesterday.”
“Yesterday, miss?”
The class giggled.
“I mean—not yesterday. The study guides from the class before the pre-test, okay? Is that better?” Lena offered a smile to show she was joking at her own expense. This wasn’t her students’ fault, after all. It was she who had promised them a guest speaker. Now instead, she had them digging in their backpacks for long-forgotten worksheets, trying to regain momentum on a novel the week before Thanksgiving. The least she could do was be pleasant.
A hand went up. “Yes, Luis?”
“Miss, the date is wrong on the board.”
Lena breathed deeply. She could handle aggression, attitude, and attention-deficit disorder. Whining, though, she could not take. And Luis Alfonso was a whiner. Worse still, he was a whiner who luxuriated in correcting his teachers.
“Okay, Luis. Go ahead and change that while everyone gets their study guides out.”
“Miss, did you know your ‘quote of the day’ has been up for three days?”
“Luis. Your study guide.”
Luis shuffled through a folder until he found the page of questions. Then he beamed at Lena as if he expected her to scratch him between the ears.
Lena focused on the other side of the room to avoid looking at Luis. “Rico, where’s your study guide?”
“I didn’t get one. I wasn’t here that day.”
“Were you going to say something about that or were you just going to sit there?”<
br />
Before she could further pursue this topic, the classroom phone rang. Lena tried to restrain her hope that it might be the secretary from the main office, voice brimming with female approval, calling to tell her a handsome visitor was on the way down the hall.
“Okay, Rico.” Lena crossed her fingers as she picked up the phone. “Just grab a copy of the packet off my desk. Right there… Good morning, Ms. Wright’s room.”
It was not the main office. It was the school’s reading coach, rounding up students for makeup pre-tests.
“You know we just missed four class periods in a row for these things, right?”
“I know. Trust me. But Scamphers keeps coming in here, and the OBEI office is already on us because attendance was so low on the test days.”
Lena sighed. “Okay. Who do you need?”
“Can you send Kendrick Bridges, Rico Jones, and… I’m not sure how to pronounce this one—last name Brooks.”
“Rico, Kendrick, Djedouschla, you need to see the reading coach to make up your pre-test, so just put your papers in your binder—in your binder, Rico. Don’t just stuff it into your backpack.”
The three test-takers stepped into the hallway, where Rico immediately crumpled his study guide into his backpack.
“Okay, where were we? Your worksheets. Okay… There’s a lot of hand-related imagery in this novel. What do hands symbolize?” She always felt a little like she was forcing things when she asked these types of questions. What were the chances the author was really sitting there going, Hey, let’s add some hand symbolism in here so English teachers have something to put on a worksheet!
“Miiiissssss?!” Luis Alfonso waved frantically, cutting off her mental reception.
“What, Luis?”
“For the last homework, did you want us to write the questions? Or is it okay if we just number them?”
Lena inhaled deeply, the air pressing against her lungs. Suddenly, she wanted badly to hurt someone’s feelings, and now there was Luis, with that look on his face. Something inside her reared up like a cobra, ready to strike.
Adequate Yearly Progress Page 13