What Has Become of You

by Jan Elizabeth Watson

  Cecily-Anne exchanged a glance with Autumn, and both of them giggled. Vera had the feeling they were laughing at her. “Well, I bought the Marc Jacobs bag I wanted,” Cecily-Anne said, “but it was a really good buy.”

  Deciding to leave that one alone, Vera turned to the whiteboard and wrote down a word in large, slanting letters: EGO. She began to discuss what ego meant for the adolescent—how it represented the struggle of base, primitive urges against the expectations of society. The battle of what you should do versus what you want to do, deep down. There was a great, mushrooming silence that she interpreted as borderline hostile; she had probably used up the last of the students’ goodwill for the day. They probably once again wished they were back with their regular teacher, Mrs. Belisle, woodenly reading lines from Macbeth out loud. Feeling almost perverse as she did so, knowing the students were not warming to this topic, she ended by assigning them a freewrite on the subject of ego.

  “Are you going to collect these?” Chelsea Cutler asked.

  “Yes, I am going to collect them. Your responses will be part of our discussion next time we meet.”

  Amid some noisy sighs and the sounds of loose-leaf paper being torn from notebooks, the girls began to write. Vera walked along the desks at the five-minute mark to check on the girls’ progress. Some had written only a couple of sentences; others had filled nearly a page and showed no signs of stopping. Jensen Willard sat quietly in her chair, her head bent over her notebook but her pen held slack, the sheet of notebook paper blank before her.

  “Thinking?” Vera asked her in a low voice.

  “I have a hard time with freewrites,” Jensen whispered. “I can’t just think of things on the spot.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered back to the girl. But perhaps it wasn’t quite fair to the others, allowing Jensen to just sit there while they worked. Her conscience getting the better of her, she added in her regular tone, “Just have it ready to turn in to me on Monday. Class is almost over now.”

  A few minutes later, Vera told the girls to complete the sentence they were working on. “That’s all the time we have for today, but please—don’t leave without me collecting your journals. And please make sure you’ve noted the reading assignment I’ve put on the board. Thank you, and enjoy your weekend. Looks like I’ll be spending most of mine elbow-deep in reading.” Lest this sounded like a complaint, she added, “I can’t wait to see what you’ve written for me this week.”

  As though by some mechanism, the students mentally shut off as soon as the words That’s all the time we have were out of her mouth. More than half of them were already out of their chairs, waving their journals in front of them; some were already dropping them on her table before she’d finished speaking. Amid this upheaval, Vera pretended to be intent on putting some papers back in her suitcase, all the while crouched on the floor in an awkward way, given that she was wearing an above-the-knee skirt. When she glanced up, she saw Jensen still in her seat, reading something with what looked like absorption.

  When she looked up a second time, Jensen was gone.

  Between the journal submissions and the freewrites, Vera’s first-period folder was now bulging with papers. She felt a mixture of anticipation and dread—dread because she knew that reading these works and composing her painstaking written feedback would be an exhausting undertaking. But what would she do, if denied that undertaking? She loved having too much to do. She no longer wanted to remember what it felt like to have empty weekend hours that left her feeling unmoored.

  Watching the girls pass by in the hall, Vera opened the folder again and took out the first paper on top of the pile. It was Kitty Arsenault’s. Her previous writing samples had yielded nothing of interest, so Vera had no real opinion formed of her yet; she looked at the freewrite exercise in front of her and slowly picked her way through the spiky, messy, smudged penmanship that filled up most of the loose-leaf page.

  EGO, by Kitty Arsenault

  In THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, Holden is egotistical. He lies to make himself sound better, and he talks about himself constantly. I don’t think I am as egotistical as he is. Even when my teachers ask me to, I don’t really like writing about myself because I am not sure that I am that interesting really. I should probably tell more lies so that my stories will sound more interesting, but I’m not sure how to do that. I think I only lie when I’m trying to spare someone’s feelings. Like if someone gets a haircut and it looks awful and they ask me if it looks awful, should I tell them Yes or No? If they’re really sensitive, it doesn’t do any good to tell them “Yes, it looks awful,” because then they’ll just obsess over it and feel worse. And I don’t see the point in making people feel worse when I could make them feel better. I am not sure if I have done this freewrite correctly?

  Vera smiled to herself, took out her pen, and wrote a few notes at the bottom of Kitty Arsenault’s journal. Poor girl, she thought—nice and considerate of others, if a little dull. How lonely it must feel to be a nice, considerate, relatively ego-free teenager.

  Next in her pile was Loo Garippa’s freewrite.

  I think the idea of ego is pretty cool. Especially when you think about ego identity and how we add stuff to our personalities or take stuff away in order for us to figure out who we really are. Like Holden putting on that people-shooting hat and taking it off again. I guess my version of a people-shooting hat would be how I’m always trying to change up my appearance. My hair is purple right now, but I’ve had it blond, blue, black, and pink. I’ve had it buzz-cut, Mohawked, and dreadlocked. I’d like to get lavender streaks but first I have to wait till more of it grows back because I’ve fried it from dyeing it so many times. My dad always says: “How come you have to keep changing? What’s the matter with the looks God gave you?” But life is all about changing, and now is the time to do it, right? I don’t want to be an old lady of thirty still trying to figure out who I am or what looks good on me or what I enjoy doing. I’m glad this is a time for me to explore my ego identity.

  Vera read the entry again, running her hand over her face. Not terrible—some of the connections Loo was making were decently observed—but it was not the sort of depth she had been hoping for. She decided to put this entry in the back of the pile until she could think of a suitable comment to write; she moved to the shorter entry on the next sheet of paper, only half covered in Sufia Ahmed’s looping script.

  I am not sure I understand concepts of Ego. In my culture you think of the community. You think what is best for everyone not just what is best for myself. Thinking “What is Best for Myself” is Western thinking. I think of my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters and how I can make them proud. I do not think Ego needs to exist. I think Ego only leads to bad and evil things like things you speak of in class.

  “Miss Lundy?”

  Vera looked up from her reading and saw a student from her later afternoon class standing there, looking sheepish. It was Kaitlyn Fiore, a girl who always had an anxious, scrunched face and had already started emailing Vera to ask her lots of unnecessary questions about the readings and the assignments. “Miss Lundy, I just wanted you to know I typed my journals, but I couldn’t print them out for today. My ink cartridge ran out. I hope I don’t get late points taken off for this because it really wasn’t my fault.”

  Vera took a few moments to negotiate something that would ease the student’s distress. She had finally sent her on her way and was about to return to the journals when another face appeared in the classroom doorway—that of Sue MacMasters. She looked blonder than Vera remembered. Was Vera supposed to acknowledge this? Compliment it? She had no sense of etiquette when it came to such matters.

  “Vera! How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, Sue, thank you. Reading the first major writing assignments. The first ones they’ve written for me, I should say. That’s always an interesting experience.”

  “A bunch of us from the Englis
h department are going to get a bite in the cafeteria at twelve thirty. Why don’t you meet us over in the teacher’s lounge, and we’ll all go over together? We’d love to have you sit with us.”

  Just like high school, Vera thought, though in high school no one would have professed to love to have her sit with them. She had, in reality, spent most of her high school lunch periods hiding in a bathroom stall. Sue’s tone and phrasing didn’t seem to suggest that Vera had a choice in the matter; the bathroom stall was not going to be an option this time around.

  “I’ll come by,” Vera said weakly.

  “It’ll be a good opportunity for you to get to know some of the other teachers in the department better,” Sue said, “and for them to get to know you. See you then.”

  • • •

  Lunch period found Vera seated with nine other English teachers and Sue MacMasters. The women had all greeted her politely, but after a full round of introductions, Vera found that she could not tell her dining companions apart. She recognized Karen Provencher, the eleventh-grade English teacher whom she saw in the hall sometimes, but the others, despite their wide range of ages, all had a similar manner—bright, alert, cool, privileged. The woman sitting next to her, a ninth-grade teacher who looked as though she had just graduated from college, was wearing an earring-and-necklace set that probably cost more than Vera had earned at Dorset Community College in the past year. Vera picked at her salad, willing some of it to disappear. She hated eating in front of people she didn’t know very well. She had grown so accustomed to having her meals at the little table in her studio, eating messy foods with barbaric abandon, licking her fingers while downloading TV programs on her laptop.

  Sue’s insistence that the English department would love to have her at lunch had been an overstatement, by Vera’s estimation. Once the faculty had looked Vera up and down and asked what college she’d gone to and whom she’d studied with, they seemed utterly finished with her and even started asking Sue, “Have you heard anything about Melanie and the baby yet? Are they going to induce labor?” Melanie was Melanie Belisle, the pregnant teacher whom Vera had replaced.

  “Do you have any children, Vera?” the woman sitting across from her said. Before she could curb the irrational response, she felt the same mild sense of affront that she always felt when asked that question. It wasn’t that she was sensitive about not having children; rather, she always felt insulted when she was mistaken for someone who did have them. “No,” she said, “I don’t.” And maybe some of her irritation had showed in her face because the woman turned to Sue MacMasters and changed the topic altogether.

  As the conversation turned to summer vacation plans, the ninth-grade teacher sitting next to Vera said, “Melanie and I used to check in with each other sometimes. I always like to know how my ninth graders are doing as they move forward into tenth grade. You have a lot of my former students now. How do you like them?”

  “Oh, I’m impressed with them. They’re outspoken and seem to pick up things quickly.”

  “How is Cecily-Anne St. Aubrey doing? She was a favorite of mine. Melanie’s, too. She and Autumn Fullerton are both really exceptional—so wonderfully driven and sensitive. Oh, and of course there’s Jamie Friedman, too—she’s quite special also. I know Melanie felt bad about having to just up and leave them.”

  Vera wanted to laugh. She could understand, at least intellectually, why Jamie Friedman would be held up as a model student; her conduct and work ethic were always impeccable. But she found herself hard-pressed to say something equally glowing about the other two girls. “Cecily-Anne and Autumn are a striking pair, aren’t they?” she said diplomatically, spearing a sliver of carrot. She wondered if perhaps she had been unfair in her judgments of the two glamorous students, or perhaps Melanie Belisle had seen something she hadn’t seen. Thinking for a moment, she asked the teacher next to her, “What about Jensen Willard? Did you have her as a student?”

  The teacher wrinkled her brow. “Willard? Oh, no, I don’t remember Melanie mentioning her specifically. I believe she transferred to Wallace just this year. On scholarship.”

  The way the woman said on scholarship made Vera decide to push it no further. She kept quiet for the rest of the lunch period, keeping a faint, interested-looking smile on her lips and trying to follow what the other women said to one another. When the women gathered up their plates to return them to the cafeteria line, Sue MacMasters brushed past her, poked her in the arm, and said, “Look at that plate! No wonder she’s so skinny!” in a voice loud enough for all the other teachers to hear.

  • • •

  Vera’s studio apartment seemed quieter than usual that night. Taking out Jensen Willard’s latest journal entry, she glanced at the title—“You Don’t Do One Damn Thing the Way You’re Supposed To”—and at first thought it was meant as a direct hit, a pointed critique of her classroom methods. Then she remembered that Holden Caulfield’s roommate had said those exact words to him. Interesting title choice, Vera thought, trying to suspend judgment until she had read more.

  You Don’t Do One Damn Thing the Way You’re Supposed To: Journal Entry #3, by Jensen Willard

  Hello again.

  I know I said I’d make more of an effort to include literary analysis of The Catcher in the Rye in these journal entries, but I’m having a really hard time focusing on that. Truthfully, I’m still kind of obsessing over the last phone conversation I had with Bret—I’ve got to make sense of all that first and foremost. But please, if it gets to be too much, just let me know, and I’m sure I won’t have a hard time coughing up something else to write about. I can write about anything once you get me started.

  One other thing I’ve still been thinking a lot about lately is that girl who got murdered. Angela Galvez, the one they found in the Dumpster. She was strangled. Such an ugly word, strangled. It sounds almost exactly like what it is. Like onomatopoeia. I remember the first day of class, someone brought up Angela, and you looked like someone pooped in your shoe. I guess I can’t blame you for not wanting to talk about it. But I hope you can’t blame me for not being able to stop thinking about it—for not being able to stop wondering.

  Specifically, I wonder what it’s like to be eleven years old and to know someone is killing you. I wonder what an eleven-year-old’s last thoughts are as she’s dying.

  I overheard Chelsea Cutler talking about something her aunt had told her—that Angela had claw marks on her neck, marks from her own nails where she had tried to remove Ritchie Ouelette’s hands. And the nails were broken off. She tried to fight, but what chance did she have, being that small and young?

  One of her purple shoelaces was missing when they found her. She’d had two laces, one on each shoe, when she left the house, her mother said. Purple laces, and the sneakers were silver. You have to wonder what happened to the other one or why anyone would think that was a good trophy to keep, out of all the trophies one could take.

  Vera looked up from her reading. What was it about these lines that didn’t sit well with her? It was the word trophies, she decided, looking at Jensen’s last paragraph again. That was a police word—a word she didn’t think Jensen would know to use in this context. Then again, how well did she really know Jensen? Just because I didn’t peg her as someone who watches CSI or reads crime novels doesn’t mean that such things aren’t known to her, Vera told herself, and brought herself back to where she’d left off in the journal.

  I knew Angela a little bit. That is, I babysat her and her little brother, Jared, once. Annabel used to do it on a regular basis, but one night she wanted to go to a roller-skating party and recommended me to the Galvezes instead. Big mistake. I’m an awful babysitter. It’s not that I mean any harm, but I always end up being way too lenient because I figure, how is a few hours of leniency going to hurt anyone? And Angela was really too big for a babysitter anyway, but her parents were overprotective. Fat lot of good that overprotectiveness did for Angel
a in the end.

  The Galvez kids were brats the day I sat with them. I know you’re not supposed to say a dead little girl was a brat, but it’s true, and that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry about how she died. These kids wanted to play Truth or Dare out in the yard, and at one point Angela dared me to take off my bra and throw it up into the branches of this oak tree they have out back. So I did it. I didn’t let them see my bare chest or anything—I turned around and maneuvered the bra out from under my shirt and pitched it in the air. You could tell they weren’t expecting that I’d actually do it, which is why I did it. But then the bra was stuck hanging from a high tree branch, and the kids apparently told their parents about it later, because Mrs. Galvez called my mother that night and said, “Your daughter is the worst babysitter I’ve ever had, and I’m going to tell all my friends who have children.” Which was kind of a relief, because I’ve never had a good babysitting experience yet.

  Even though I wasn’t sorry to lose a prospective babysitting job, I was sorry to lose the money. And I don’t need Mrs. Galvez running around talking about me to half the town. For a little while, I really hated that kid.

  Still, I thought about sending the Galvezes a card when Angela died. Just because they don’t like me doesn’t mean I shouldn’t let them know I was sorry for what had happened to their daughter, but when I looked at the sympathy cards in the supermarket, they all seemed wrong. All these pictures of birds flying in clouds with gilded letters spelling out inspirational quotes about dying and the afterlife. Angela’s death didn’t seem to fit a card like that. Even my mother said, “Oh, we should send a card,” but I don’t think she ever sent one. Maybe she had the same problem I did picking one out.

  This is making me sad. Sadder. Maybe it’s time for me to talk about Bret now. But first, a snack. I feel like peanut butter crackers. Don’t go anywhere.