Schooled

by Anisha Lakhani

  I could hear her breathing, but she didn’t answer.

  “Bridgette?”

  “Forget it, Anna. Another time.”

  “Yes, another time for sure, I really want to meet him,” I begged, lying down again. “And Bridge, I really appreciate it. Honest I do.” It was then that Bridgette asked a terrible question. It would repeat itself over and over in my mind until I eventually had the courage to confront it.

  “Anna…why’d you fight your parents so hard last summer? I mean, if ultimately it was all about the money?” Then she hung up the phone.

  I really hated her at that moment.

  Now unable to nap, I trudged across the room to my answering machine. The first message on my answering machine was from Dottie Parker:

  “Ms. Taggert! This is Dottie Parker. Jennie just texted me from school. She received an A on her assignment for Mr. Richards’s class! She has never received an A in his class! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! What a godsend you are!”

  I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. For a few seconds, even Bridgette’s nasty question ceased to bother me. The next twenty messages, however, were like a succession of daggers, all aimed at my head.

  “Anna? This is Lynn Briggman. Max called me from school today quite upset. Apparently you have assigned a quiz tomorrow? Don’t you think one day’s notice is a little…daunting? Please call me back as soon as you get this.”

  BEEP.

  “Anna? This is Lara Kensington. How are you, my love? I hope everything is just wonderful! Benjamin is a bit perplexed as to what you mean by a reading quiz. Is there any part of the chapter he should concentrate his attention? I thought you were one of the few teachers at Langdon who didn’t believe in causing the children unnecessary stress?”

  BEEP.

  “Ms. Taggert, this is Madeline’s mother calling. As you know, my daughter is prone to anxiety and often suffers panic attacks. She called me from school today about your quiz. I must warn you that due to her anxiety she feels like she cannot produce for you in class the same quality of work she is able to do in the comfort and solace of her bedroom at home.”

  The messages went on. I was ten minutes late for my tutoring, but found myself rooted to the spot. I hadn’t gotten these many messages since…since I had actually been teaching. For the last several months I had followed Randi’s guidance and simply given basic assignments that were to be completed at home. Coupled with the trips to the library and a few movies thrown in during class, the Langdon mothers had been silent. Now the sharks were surfacing again. My quiz was like fresh blood in the waters. I wouldn’t be home till midnight again that evening, so there was no way I could call all these women back. And I didn’t want to. I was giving that quiz tomorrow. Popping two Advil, I quickly slipped on a pair of jeans and a tank top and walked out the door.

  By the time I got to Keith Morgan’s house, I was cranky and miserable. It was 9:15 P.M. I could have been at Mr. Chow’s meeting my future husband. Instead, I was sitting with a pimply-faced junior who didn’t know the first thing about why World War II broke out. I wanted to kill him.

  “Keith,” I said as patiently as I could, “what exactly does your history teacher want this paper to be on?”

  “I’m not sure.” He shrugged, one eye on his cell phone. He was still wearing his soccer jersey, which meant he hadn’t even bothered to shower when he came home. That explained the sickening odor in the room.

  “Well, think hard,” I pressed. “Or can you call someone?”

  I watched him disdainfully as he put the phone to his ear. Not only had he left this paper for the night before it was due, he didn’t even know what it was on.

  “Hey, bro, it’s K-Morg, what up, man?” He got up from the desk and started pacing around his room. His voice was completely different. Gone was the nervous teenager. “So, listen, man, I’m doing this freakin’ history paper. What’s the topic again?”

  9:25. I could have been ordering appetizers and falling in love.

  “Yeah, she’s so hot…,” he drawled.

  “Keith!” I barked.

  “Sorry, dude. Yeah, that’s my tutor. Yeah, so, I gotta go and all…you sure that’s what it’s on? Okay…thanks, man.”

  He hung up and faced me. “So we have to write a five-page paper on one reason we think World War II broke out.”

  “What’s your reason?” I asked meanly. Usually I would give my students some slack, maybe offer a list of reasons and allow them to pick one. I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Well, like…give me some reasons and I’ll pick one,” Keith said, not meeting my eyes. Had this kid even been to his history class? I had serious doubts. I looked at the clock again. 9:43 P.M.

  That’s when it happened. I officially snapped.

  “I don’t know any,” I lied.

  Keith stared at me, open-mouthed.

  “I can help you write this paper,” I continued crazily, “but I’m not going to write it for you.”

  I didn’t know what had come over me. Maybe it was the missed date. Bridgette’s comment. Dottie Parker’s voice message. The ones that had followed it. I felt recklessly self-destructive. Keith was looking extremely uncomfortable.

  “Look, Anna, I don’t know, okay? That’s why you’re here. You think I would have a tutor if I knew stuff like this?” His right eye started twitching.

  “Keith,” I glared at him, “do you even know what a tutor is supposed to do?”

  “Dude! What’s gotten into you! You’re usually so cool!” he yelled, pushing his chair back. “Yeah, I’ve had tutors for years. They help me with my homework. Can we have this convo, like, next week? This thing is due tomorrow!”

  “That’s your problem,” I replied calmly. It was strange. Just saying that had lifted a huge burden off my shoulders.

  “Anna, look, you’re being so weird. Can we just please work as we normally do? This is my term paper. I’m a junior. If I don’t hand this in this could seriously hurt my chances at applying to Brown in the fall.”

  “Brown. What a joke,” I laughed. I was sick of whoring my brain out so I could keep some fancy apartment that I never had time to be in anyway. And after seeing how ridiculous Ashok Mehta looked with all his designer labels flashing in every direction, I was quite certain I never wanted another article of overpriced clothing again.

  “Anna, are you leaving?” Keith was now standing, blocking the door. His eyes were wide with alarm and I could see that he was starting to perspire.

  “Yeah, I’m leaving. I’m done. I quit.”

  Not just Keith. With all of them. Even Jennie Parker. Because even though I had actually taught her, she wasn’t my actual student. She was someone I got paid an obscene amount of money to help prepare a lesson that I was certain this Mr. Richards would still have preferred she do herself.

  “If you walk out tonight, my parents are going to fire you,” Keith threatened. “They’re not home right now, but wait till I call them.”

  “You can’t fire someone who quits,” I pointed out, still maddeningly calm. I picked up my Chanel bag. Had there really been a time when I thought that spending time tutoring kids like Keith was worth a bag with a huge C on it? Which, I was now certain, could only stand for chump?

  “ANNA! What the fuck! Please! Don’t do this!” Apparently this was Keith’s new tactic. Outright begging. I softened a little. Just because I was suddenly seeing the light didn’t mean I had to take it all out on poor Keith. After all, I was guilty of writing several assignments for him. It wasn’t completely his fault that tonight was the night I was finally rediscovering both my morality and my dignity.

  “Listen, Keith. This is not about you. I’m just exhausted. I don’t feel well. Look up the policy of appeasement, okay? It was because of that policy that so many world leaders turned a blind eye while Hitler grew increasingly powerful. You can do it. It’s only five pages. You’ll be expected to do a lot more at Brown, I can promise you that.”

  I left Keith s
peechless and rushed down the hall to the front door. Gone was the eerie calmness I had felt moments before. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of this building. A part of me couldn’t believe what I had just done. Even if I wanted to keep my other clients, once Keith’s mother reported to Francine what I had done, I would never get another referral again. Did that matter? For a fleeting second I thought about going to Mr. Chow’s, but instead I hailed a cab and went home. I had a new life to plan. Or, rather, an old self to rediscover. I didn’t even bother to reply to the e-mail that was waiting for me:

  Date: Monday, May 14, 2006 10:15 PM

  From: “Clarissa Morgan”

  Ms. Taggert,

  Your quitting does not preempt the fact that Keith’s father and I fire you. After all this money we have thrown at you, your decision to leave our son at such a critical juncture in his junior year strikes us as entirely selfish. Because of your decision, you may be destroying his chances to attain many of his hopes and dreams.

  I cannot think of anything worse than a human being who would leave an innocent child to write his paper the night before it’s due by himself. BY HIMSELF!

  Be assured we will be reporting your actions to Ms. Gilmore. Moreover, his father and I will take every measure to spread the word and make sure you never tutor in Manhattan again.

  Clarissa and Spencer Morgan

  29

  My class was seated and eerily silent when I walked in the next morning. The kids looked nervous, and Jacob Stein looked like he was about to pass out.

  “We’re not really having a quiz, are we?” Benjamin asked. “My mom said you never called her back.”

  “You’re right, Benjamin, I didn’t call her back. I didn’t call any of your parents back,” I replied calmly. “I had you read a chapter last night. ONE chapter. I’m going to ask you one question in class today. If any of your parents find that unreasonable, you can tell them I don’t care. Now. I would like you all to take out a piece of paper and a blue or black pen. Or a pencil. Not a gel pen. Not a glitter pen. Not a marker.”

  “You’re acting different,” Max commented. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I feel great,” I retorted. “I’m not starting until everyone has done what I just asked. So whoever is not ready is wasting everyone else’s time.”

  There was a frantic scampering as the seventh-graders rushed to “borrow” pens, pencils, and papers. It never ceased to shock me how the request to take out a piece of paper and a pencil could produce outright panic in a seventh-grade classroom.

  “I need to go to my locker. I didn’t bring anything,” Charlotte whined.

  I ignored her. How could anyone come to class with absolutely nothing on them? Students who have been accustomed to going to the library or the Guggenheim for ice cream, a voice in my head answered.

  “Okay,” I began, “here’s the quiz. It’s fairly simple. I want you all to use the rest of class to write one paragraph that covers what, in your opinion, are the three most important events in last night’s chapter. That’s it.”

  Once again, I had apparently asked them to do something completely unreasonable.

  “Does spelling count?”

  “Should we double-space?”

  “Is it just opinion?”

  “Can we look at our books?”

  I held up both my hands to stop the barrage of questions. “Hey!” I ordered sternly. “I’m not repeating myself. You decide how you want to go about doing what I asked. And no, you may not refer back to the book. No more questions. That’s final.”

  I retreated to my desk. From the corner of my eye I saw some of my students starting to write. Benjamin was eyeing Madeline’s paper hungrily.

  “Eyes on your own paper,” I announced, looking straight at him. He opened his mouth to protest but I raised a finger in warning. Reluctantly, he picked up his pen and started writing.

  It had taken me twenty minutes to get my seventh-graders to write, but finally they were all quiet and at work. I used the opportunity to open my laptop and write an e-mail to all the parents of the children I tutored. I had thought long and hard the night before about what I wanted to say, but in the end I decided to keep it short and simple. I figured if anyone wanted an explanation or was truly upset, they could call or e-mail me back. It took me under two minutes to write, and under ten to send to each of my families.

  At that moment, Randi burst into the room.

  “Hi, guys! Do you want to join my class? We’re g—”

  Fifteen heads looked up, startled out of silence.

  “Shh!” I hushed in annoyance, then gestured to the table where the kids were writing. “They’re taking a quiz.” She gave me a curious look and shrugged her shoulders.

  “She’s being so mean,” Benjamin muttered for her benefit, but returned to his paper immediately after I glared at him.

  Giving me one last lingering look, Randi left the room. A minute later I saw her class fly past my door screaming about going to Central Park. I got up and shut the door, ignoring the tortured expressions on my students’ faces.

  Toward the end of class, they wordlessly came to my desk to turn in their paragraphs. The looks I received went from accusing to outright betrayal. Only Michael Worthington smiled as he handed in his paper.

  I had two hours until my next class, and instead of Starbucks with Randi, I found myself blissfully free. Free! I could do whatever I wanted! Eagerly, I sat at my desk and began to read over the paragraphs I had just received. I had never been more interested to see what my students had produced because for once I was certain that what was in front of me was their own work. Jacob’s was on top because he had been the last to finish. I could have sworn he looked like he was about to burst into tears as he had left the room.

  Lord of the Flies is a very intersting book about boys on an island. All the adults die and the boys have to suvive. They make houses and Jack is really mean. Last night I read this chapter called present for darkness. It was so intersting that I couldnt put it down. It was also scary because who gives a present to the darkness? All in all the three things that happened were that the boys were scared, the night made it worse, and the present was mysterius.

  All year I had had a sense that tutored-in-six-subjects Jacob was not reading and writing at a seventh-grade level, but I had never actually seen anything he did on his own. Without the help of any of his other tutors, this was what Benjamin was capable of producing. I felt sick. Here was a child who would be protected, helped, and then sent to a prestigious Ivy League school where he would continue to be protected and helped, much like the college students I tutored over winter break. Then he would graduate and probably be placed in some important position in his parents’ company where he would spend long days golfing while his team did all his work. And because he never knew better, he would most likely perpetuate the cycle with his own children and provide them with a team of tutors. Disgusted, I moved on to Madeline’s paper. She was another student I suspected was not writing her own papers. Well, now I would know for sure…

  “A Gift for the Darkness” was a deeply symbolic chapter. After cutting off a pig’s head and placing it on a stick, Jack offers it as a sacrifice to an unnamed beast on the island. This gesture is noteworthy because it allies Jack and all who follow beneath him with an evil force on the island. In addition, Ralph and Piggy’s continued resistance to Jack signifies their attempt to cling to a semblance of sanity. Finally, the imaginary conversation Simon has with the pig’s head foreshadows future devastation. The pig warns Simon not to interfere with Jack and threatens to end Simon’s life if he does. Therefore, the creation of the pig’s head, Ralph and Piggy’s resistance, and the warning Simon receives at the end stand apart as the three most significant events of the chapter.

  Wow! So Madeline had been handing in her own work all year. Did her parents know how bright she was? What had I told them at the conferences? I couldn’t even remember. By now
all the conferences had blurred together in my mind. Flipping through the papers, I pulled out Michael’s and read it quickly. His was just as well written, and even raised the point that Simon’s imagined conversation with the pig’s head was probably a result of his epilepsy. I wished I had paid him more attention! As I read the rest of the paragraphs, I discovered that there was an honest range in the class. Michael and Madeline were clearly the best writers, and Benjamin’s paper actually proved decent when I compared it to Jacob’s and Max’s appalling paragraphs. But in between these extremes were average papers that indicated a real need for lessons on how to write topic sentences and proper usage of commas. Maybe even a lesson on transition words…

  “Anna?” Randi was standing at the door, hands on her hips. “Are you okay? I just passed a few kids in the hall and they said you were acting crazy today. You’re just sitting there staring into space! What’s going on?”

  “Randi, come here and look at this,” I said urgently, ignoring her question. I shuffled through for Madeline’s and Michael’s paragraphs. “Read these,” I ordered, thrusting them at her.

  Randi scanned both paragraphs briefly and then grinned. “Some people’s tutors are sure working overtime!”

  “That’s just the thing!” I was more excited than I had been in a long time. “They just wrote them! Here! In class! These two kids can actually write like that! Did you know that?”

  She immediately stiffened. “You had them write in class?”

  “Uh huh. And look at this.” Bravely, I gave her Jacob’s paragraph. I watched her face closely as she read his paragraph. Aha! She looked as disgusted as I had felt! But when she finally looked up, she directed her disgust…at me.

  “What’s your point, Anna?” she asked coldly.

  “I’m not attacking you,” I said quickly, speaking fast. “It’s just that this is the first time I had the kids write in class. It’s amazing what the range is. I feel like there’s so much I want to cover! For the first time I know for sure that this is their work!”