Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  I put the question to Lissa. “Is this how we are? Humans? Because if it is, I think I want to be something else.” Anything but an overeducated, overconditioned human being. Anything at all.

  Lissa doesn’t answer my question, not right away. Instead, she flips open a notebook, the old steno kind with the wire loops on the top, and starts writing. When she’s done, she leans forward a little, elbows on her knees. “You know what I think? I think I’ll take being a human.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Lissa puts one hand up to stop me. It isn’t a harsh gesture, or a domineering one, so I let her go on. “You see that bug? The one in the corner?”

  I can’t help but see it. “It’s a silverfish.”

  “It is. It’s a creature. Conditioned to do what it needs to do to survive.” She stands and goes to the far wall where the silverfish’s tiny tapered carapace fishtails back and forth, scrambling for purchase on a wall it can’t climb. “See how he runs from my shoe? He’ll run from other predators. Centipedes, spiders, whatever. But he won’t run from another of his kind.” Lissa’s mouth smiles in a crooked way, one side up and one side down. “Well, unless he’s running from a female during a mating ritual, but that’s a different kind of running.”

  This bug is mesmerizing. For a long minute after Lissa comes back to sit next to me on the lumpy couch, we’re still in the semidark, watching its iridescent form swish and scuttle, hunting for food, safety, a mate. I know that if I were to get up and walk over to it, the bug would fear me. I wouldn’t need to threaten or harm. The bug would run for its life in the opposite direction, seeking out others of its kind.

  I was never a bug, but I was a kid once. I guess in the same way there are bug politics, there are kid politics. He’s got blue eyes; she has brown. Go with the one most like you. She’s fat; he’s thin. Go with the one who looks more like a mirror image. He’s Irish; she’s English. Identify with the known. Humans have been engaged this way for thousands of years: Romans and Greeks, Muslims and Christians, Aryans and Semitics, Brahmins and Dalits.

  My question still lingers. Are we born like this? Or are we taught? Either answer is horrible in its own way.

  “You want to know my theory?” she asks. There’s conspiracy in her voice, like we’re a pair of Cold War spies trading state secrets and cash in the back room of an East Berlin bar.

  “Sure.”

  “I think we all have some of the creature in us. Some hardwired instinct that tells us to beware of anything too strange or different from us. That’s part of what made us fit to survive. But.” She raises a finger before I can agree or disagree. “I know we can turn off the xenophobia switch if we want to. It’s one of the aspects of humanity. Does that answer your question?”

  It answers one of them. I have more. I want to know what Lissa’s writing, why she’s continually clicking her pen in that obsessive-compulsive way, what brought her here, and why she didn’t flinch at the scene of misfits in the cafeteria tonight at dinner. I want to know what the colored armbands mean and why Alex Cartmill is here. But it’s late, and Lissa reminds me we need to be in the dining hall at seven thirty for breakfast, so no more questions for now.

  I stay in the common room with only the red LED light from the television for company, and I think about mating rituals, and creatures that run from the strange, and my dreams of dancing Qs whose tails wrap themselves around children, carrying them away.

  I think about Freddie and wonder whether she’s crying herself to sleep tonight.

  Like I know I will.

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee are not at their desk when I leave the common room. I check the double doors leading to the faculty building’s vestibule, which is more Checkpoint Charlie–type inspection room than lobby. Open.

  The main doors, however, are not. A sign on each of them warns again that an alarm will sound if any attempt is made to open them between the hours of nine and seven.

  My watch shows eleven forty-five when I let myself into the apartment. One glass with a quarter inch of clear liquid sits on the kitchen table. I pick it up, sniff at it, and recoil. It smells like fire. Corn-flavored fire.

  What the hell, I think, and I drain the glass before shedding myself of my heavy gray shell and pulling on pajamas. Cotton never felt so delicious.

  Ruby Jo is sprawled diagonally on the lower bunk bed, one leg hanging off the mattress, red curls lying in thick ropes on her pillow. If the mound of blankets weren’t rising and falling on top of her, I’d think she was dead. Lissa, on the other hand, already snores softly in the twin bed opposite. She sounds like a content kitten.

  And me? I’ve never been so wide-awake.

  I climb the wooden ladder near Ruby Jo’s feet, bump my head on the ceiling, and tumble onto a mattress that falls somewhere between rock and iron on the spectrum of uncomfortable. Above me, the plaster is close enough to feel like the lid of a coffin. Terrific.

  Wide-awake and buried alive. I can’t think of a worse fate.

  And I’m still awake.

  Sleep eventually comes, and the last thing I remember seeing is the wall directly above my head, white as ignorance and solid as steel.

  I need to bust through the damned thing.

  And I need to see my daughter. I need to tell her everything is going to be okay.

  The problem is, I’m not sure I believe it.

  FORTY-SIX

  An alarm sounds in a room I don’t recognize, and I bump my head on the ceiling. Again. Not an auspicious start to the day.

  Lissa is already up and dressed; Ruby Jo is in the kitchen rinsing out the glass of moonshine while I shake off a bad night’s sleep and pull on my gray uniform.

  On our way to the dining hall, we speculate about the meaning of the colored bands.

  “What color did your girl have on?” Lissa asks me.

  “Purple. And Freddie hates purple.”

  The dining hall last night was full of purple bands, some new like Freddie’s, others faded and frayed at the edges. I make a mental note to look more closely during breakfast.

  What a strange thing, that purple used to be the color of royalty. Now, if I’m right, it’s the color of failure. Bomb your test, win a purple band.

  “Only one boy had a dark blue one,” I say, redrawing the postdinner exodus scene in my head. “The boy in the wheelchair.”

  “So maybe that means handicapped,” Ruby Jo says. “And the pregnant girl wore red.”

  Get knocked up, win a red band, I think, the twentieth-century scarlet A.

  “What about orange? A few of the others are wearing orange,” I say, remembering a couple of girls whose backs were to me.

  Lissa checks her notepad. “Haven’t figured that one out yet.”

  We walk the rest of the way in silence, our foreheads creased in thought. Really, there’s not all that much thinking to do. The colors have meanings. Terrible meanings, like the mark of Cain. Or the scarlet letter.

  My grandmother detested things like this, any sort of badge or button that defines a person. As a girl, I only thought she was being mean when she tore off the green shamrock I came home with on St. Patrick’s Day, when she tossed the little Mexican flag our Spanish teacher gave us on Cinco de Mayo into the kitchen trash bin.

  “Don’t wear those, Leni,” she said. “Don’t ever wear them.”

  We never had symbols in our house. No crosses or crucifixes, no flags, nothing like that. A few of the girls at school wore pendants—a silver cross, a gold star, a shiny crescent. They seemed cool, but when I pointed to one in a shop window, Oma whisked me away.

  “Not for you, Elena. Never for you.”

  At eight, I didn’t understand. Green shamrocks and Mexican flags were what you pinned on for holidays. Sparkling jewelry, what you got to celebrate a first communion or a bat mitzvah or the end of something called Ramadan. For the ne
xt three years, I wore what I wanted during school, making sure to hide the forbidden things in my book bag before the bus dropped me off in front of our house.

  The fourth year, I stopped wearing them. It was the year Oma sat me down and told me about the colored patches.

  Yellow patches. Star-shaped patches. Pink and purple and brown and black patches in the shape of inverted triangles. Bars for repeated offenders.

  Lissa snaps me back to the present, to the dining hall now filled with children. “Remind you of anything?” she asks.

  Oma’s words ring in my ears. Where do you think my great-uncle Eugen got the idea?

  It doesn’t matter anymore whether Oma’s stories are her own or someone else’s. What matters most are the ideas that take hold, that move through cultures and time, repeating themselves with the help of people like Madeleine Sinclair. And Malcolm. And Sarah Green and everyone else, including me. I feel a sense of disgust when I think about humans turning against humans, one cold shoulder and one “my kid is better than your kid” at a time.

  Breakfast displaces my disgust, or at least transfers it. I wait in line for runny eggs (they must be powdered), orange drink from a mix (also powdered), and toast so dry it turns into powder when I try to butter it. The meal is a far cry from the offerings back at my silver school, where faculty and students happily dined on organic greens and free-range chicken.

  We take our seats at a free table, and no one joins us. I work on ignoring cold stares from the other teachers and audible whispers designed to reach my ears. That’s her, sure enough. That’s the one married to Mr. Education Reform. Serves her right to get demoted to this place. All the while I’m searching for Freddie at the long table of girls. She’s there, and I smile at her because it’s all a mother can do. Like the last time, Freddie brightens for a quick moment, and the light disappears from her face as she faces forward, head down, eyes on her plate.

  I don’t want to see her like this. I can’t.

  I want to see her in the high chair I took out of the attic. I want to see her smiling through a mask of puréed peaches, reaching out with a tiny hand for the Peter Rabbit spoon I bought before she was born. I want to see her happy and innocent, a baby who hasn’t yet been crushed with the weight of our world.

  “It’s a money thing,” Lissa says, bringing me out of the memory. “It has to be.” She takes a pen from her breast pocket, clicks it twice, speaks a few words into it. “Accounting. And document colors.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Never mind.” Lissa puts the pen away and pushes some rehydrated egg around her plate, the way Freddie sometimes does until bits of meat and vegetables morph into shapes and symbols.

  When Anne was younger, she taught Freddie the alphabet during dinner. Julienned carrots became As and Ls; strands of spaghetti curled into Cs and Qs and Ss. Malcolm, of course, hated the girls playing with their food.

  “They all learn differently,” I said while Freddie practiced.

  “She can learn with a pencil and paper.” Malcolm took away the plate and replaced it with a notepad. Freddie asked to be excused.

  It’s these small things that make me wonder what I ever saw in him, and why I let him tear me away from Joe, who would have let Freddie practice her letters on a rare Hepplewhite credenza if that’s what floated her boat.

  “Can I borrow your pen?” I ask Lissa.

  She does a funny thing. Instead of giving me the pen she’s holding, Lissa fishes out a spare from her purse and hands it to me.

  Ruby Jo watches while I scribble two simple sentences on a paper napkin. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Writing a note to Freddie.”

  I’ve barely spoken the words when Lissa’s hand clamps around my wrist, blurring the ink on my note. Her grip is strong, and it hurts where the band of my watch digs into flesh. She eases up when I wince, but doesn’t let go.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Why the hell not?”

  Lissa checks left and right and, apparently satisfied that Mrs. Underwood is preoccupied with watching over her flock, whispers, “Because I think our headmistress has a sadistic side.”

  “I can deal with it,” I say.

  Lissa shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. She might not take it out on you, but you ain’t the only one here. Look.”

  I follow her gaze to a line of girls carrying their breakfast trays from the serving counter toward a table close to where we’re sitting. Ruby Jo does the same.

  “Do you see? Freddie’s right wrist?” Lissa says as the girls walk away from us.

  I see. But I don’t see my daughter’s delicate wrist. I see the ugly purple bruise circling it.

  My stomach cartwheels.

  For a long moment, all I see is red. The furious, blistering red of an anger I’ve never experienced and don’t know how to handle. A gash of anger; an open wound of absolute rage. Freddie’s my daughter. My daughter. Mine. There’s no method I have to process the idea of anyone laying hands on her perfect little body for any reason.

  “She’s so pink,” Anne said in the hospital room, moments after a nurse brought baby Freddie back in to me. They do that—take your babies away and, I don’t know, clean them or measure them or inject them with genius serum. I missed her in those few moments, and when the nurse laid her against my skin, I felt normal again.

  Anne traced a finger down her sister’s arm. “So pink and tiny and perfect. It’s crazy when you think about it.”

  “She’ll get her scars, like everyone else. A half hour on her first bike and goodbye pink and perfect,” I said, still dopey from the drugs. “You can’t protect everyone. Not forever.”

  Anne had grown into big-sister role overnight. “I’ll protect her, Mom.”

  I smiled. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’m not even able to protect her myself.

  Before I know it, I’m running out of the dining hall, up one flight of stairs, and fifty yards down a hallway to the closest bathroom. Its white tile pattern spins in circles around me, and I fall to my knees. I’m not seeing the perfect pink skin of my baby anymore, only the marks of someone else’s angry hand on my daughter’s wrist.

  My daughter. Mine.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  All I can think while I take my morning class through two of the three Rs is what I’m going to say to Malcolm when I call him this afternoon. And I will call him, even if it means sucking up to Alex Cartmill to get access to a phone.

  I saw my daughter’s arm. I saw the bruises. Malcolm might be in the running for Shittiest Father of the Year, but he’s still Freddie’s father. He’ll have something to say about the manhandling.

  It’s a temporary distraction listening to these kids take turns dissecting the short story we’ve just read through, a reminder of what I love about teaching. Or what I would love about teaching if I spent more time in front of a classroom actually doing that instead of preparing for monthly tests. My group this morning is a dozen sixth-graders, only a few years older than Freddie, and they’ve got questions.

  “It’s like the dog was smarter than the guy,” one boy says. “I mean, at least he knew enough to move on to another place and look for something better. And what kind of idiot goes walking alone in fifty degrees below zero anyway? Jeez.”

  The conversation about Jack London’s man and wild dog reminds me of the silverfish in the common room yesterday evening. Humans make choices; animals act on instinct. I wonder which species will survive.

  Mostly, I wonder what these kids are doing here. They’re too smart, too insightful, to have chances taken away from them. An image of the girl from the Starbucks flashes in my mind.

  “Miss?” the boy says. “What do you think?”

  I think you shouldn’t be here. “Well, I think it’s complicated, but you might be onto something.” What I want to say is, What kind of an idiot walks out on
one daughter to go find another? Jeez.

  There is no knock on the classroom door, no warning, only the squeak of hinges, and Mrs. Underwood’s voice dismissing my students and telling me to come with her.

  Immediately.

  On goes my coat.

  I follow as many paces behind as I dare to as she leads the way back through the grounds, away from the education building and into the admin building. She’s muttering about work never being done and if it’s not one damn thing, it’s another. When we reach her office, two men are waiting in the hall. Underwood nods to them, offering the slightest of frowns.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Doctors,” she says. Then her door swings open and she inserts her mountain of a frame into the chair behind the desk. She tells me to take a seat, and I do.

  “Are we going to have a problem?” she says, sighing. “I told you I can’t make exceptions.”

  Probably. Most likely. Definitely. I don’t say any of this. After Lissa’s warning to stay on Underwood’s good side—or at least on her less bad side—I only smile and shake my head.

  School principals—which is all Martha Underwood is, whether she prefers Headmistress or Queen Bee or She Who Must Be Obeyed—fit neatly in the hard-ass, take-no-prisoners category. I’ve seen it. No kid wants to be hauled into the dreaded principal’s office, and most parents groan at requests to “come in to chat about your child.” Age of the audience aside, the school principal is usually not a pal, as the old spelling mnemonic went.

  But I do know this: You don’t take a head-of-school job because you hate children. Not usually.

  While Underwood goes on about rules and enforcement in her little corner of the world, I register her office. It’s a cold place, all polished wood and steel file cabinets, twin hard-backed chairs facing the broad desk that separates her from visitors. I stretch up in my chair and have a discreet peek at the area behind that desk, to check if there’s a platform or other method of raising her up. The two pieces of art on the walls are not the ubiquitous school-office motivation posters, Hang in there! or If you can dream it, you can do it!, but dark oil paintings of a fox hunt in progress. In one, the hapless fox is already cornered, baying hounds radiating from him like spectators at a gladiator match.