Up the Down Staircase

by Bel Kaufman

  He swaggered towards me, but he did not sit down. He stood above me, leather jacket unzipped, rocking slightly on his heels, looking down at me, but not looking at my face.

  I sat holding my Delaney Book like a shield against my breast, with all those cardboard names on it, last first, printed in ink. He knew what I was after, he said. He recalled my every act of kindness to him, from the first day, when I had covered for him with McHabe. And about the wallet, he said, and when they found the knife on him, and the midterms, and all that talk, talk, and asking him all the time to see me alone. Well, we were alone now.

  The drilling on the street must have stopped for a moment; I remember it had begun again, more loud and insistent. I felt my heart beating against the hard, wine-red cover of the Delaney Book. He must try to understand, I said. He must believe that I wanted only– – I wanted– –

  He wasn’t listening. He was looming above me, the years between us swiftly reversed, while I sat, an unsure school girl, reciting a tentative lesson. My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window.

  You know how you move under water, heavy and graceful? By this time I was standing. I had somehow got up. I remember how carefully I had placed the Delaney Book on the arm-desk of the chair, balancing it so that it should not spill out all those name cards. Disarmed now, empty-handed, I was standing before him. I became aware of the deserted building enclosing us, the empty room, the empty chairs, silent and abandoned as grave-stones; of scraps of paper, valueless now, scattered on the floor; of books leaning, top-heavy with words, on the splintered shelf; of papers on my desk, bulging with words. Slowly I began to step back; slowly he moved towards me, relentless as a shadow.

  After a while I felt the wall at my back; there was no further place to go. I heard my words running down like a defective phonograph record, until there was silence. The drilling on the street had stopped again. He was very close. I looked at him, and with a mild shock of recognition, I saw him, as if I had known him only through photographs before, and now saw him in person. Yes, of course.

  Someplace a car honked. I think he made a move towards me. Maybe not. I looked at him, and there were no words left with which to ward off feeling.

  I reached out blindly. I touched his face. There were no words for the terrible tenderness. I wanted to comfort him, as if he were a child, for everything that had been done to him. I wanted to say, like Persephone in hell: My dear, my dear–It is not so dreadful here. I wanted to tell him, I wanted him to know. There were no words for this, only my hands on his face.

  I don’t know how long we stood, motionless, enfolded in silence. One moment his face was hard against my hands, the next, it seemed to shatter at my touch. He looked as if he were about to wrench himself away, but he didn’t. Fists clenched, he watched me like a boxer poised to spring.

  His eyes read me like Braille. This was the moment he had been testing me for. What was he asking me to do? Undo?

  He had come for a purpose. He thought (he made himself think) it was my purpose too. It was the only way he knew to human closeness. It was also the way to diminish me, to punish.

  His life outside this room was alien to me. I could not imagine or even guess it. Yet I knew him. His face told me all. The silent struggle, the clash of feeling on feeling: contempt and longing, helplessness and rage. All that he knew of good. The need to cling and to repel, to kneel and to defile.

  He waited for a sign.

  What could I say to show him that to survive, love was as strong as hate, and could be trusted? His world had taught him well, long before me.

  Only my touch could speak. I care, it said, I do care.

  His eyes grew hard. His lips moved.

  “Damn you to hell”–he turned and bolted out of the room. The door opened and closed behind him, and there was the drilling on the street, loud now, and the desk and the papers and time. For some reason, I looked at my watch.

  Was he crying?

  If he was, he will never forgive me.

  But it was I who cried. I sat down at my desk; I put my head on my arms on the desk, and I cried.

  Why?

  The question and answer period will come later; multiple choice, True or False, my own “probing question”; and the explanations, the interpretations, the distortions I will inevitably make.

  For already, hours later, I think that what I felt for Ferone, and what I am feeling now, and what I am putting down on this paper, and what you will see when you read it–are all quite different.

  “What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. But jesting Sylvia will stay and jest the truth away. I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance. And distance, for all my apparent involvement, is what I had kept between myself and my students. Like Paul’s lampoons, like Lou’s ha-ha’s, it insulated me; it kept me safe from feeling.

  I will probably, in my very next letter, or very next paragraph–see once again “the funny sides”; I may allow memory to turn flippant. But for a moment, or hour, or whatever measure of time it takes to grow, we reached each other, Ferone and I, person to person.

  For love is growth. It is the ultimate commitment. It imposes obligations; it risks pain. Love is what I wanted from all, from A (Allen) to W (Wolzow) in my Delaney Book; but I had never really loved back. Oh, love me, love me back! they all cried–Alice and Vivian, all of them. And maybe now I can.

  Ferone taught me. Our roles became reversed. He had reached me; I was the one who needed him, to make me feel.

  What to do with it? I had once seen a girl’s memo book on the Lost & Found shelf in the office, and on the cover–a warning in crayon: Do Not Touch!!! Or Look!!! Personal! Private! Penalty!!! The penalty for touching is too great. The burden of love for all the Ferones waiting for me in the classroom is not to be borne. Better by far to stand at a lectern and read my neat notes at Willowdale.

  I am tired.

  I had set out to tell you exactly what happened. But since I am the one writing this, how do I know what in my telling I am selecting, omitting, emphasizing; what unconscious editing I am doing? Why was I more interested in the one black sheep (I use Ferone’s own cliché) than in all the white lambs in my care? Why did I (in my red suit) call him a child? Am I, by asking questions, distorting something pure? The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.

  You’ve read my letters from the very beginning, from the first day at school. How callow I must have been, how impatient and intolerant and naive and remote and gullible and sure of myself. And how mistaken.

  It is almost morning; the alarm is set for 6:30. I have been writing and writing. “Words are all we have,” I once said. Wrong again. Whatever the name for love, and there are many, it can be as silent as an unspoken word, as simple as a touch.

  I must try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is our topsy-turvy day, when teachers turn into kids, kids into teachers. A fitting climax.

  All my love,

  Syl

  P. S. Did you know that 50% of the time I’ve been barking up all the wrong trees?

  S.

  INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

  FROM: H. Pastorfield

  TO: S. Barrett

  Dear Sylvia–

  Isn’t this fun?

  Have you got a Teacher for a Day kid this period? I get a bang out of turning the classes over to the kids and pretending I can’t spell cat!

  Would you like to join the party in my room? Bring your kids! We’re having a “Tables Are Turned” ball!

  Henrietta

  * * *

  INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

  FROM: 508

  TO: 304

  Dear Syl–

  How are you doing? You looked awful this morning! Don’t let the tumult in the halls rattle you. The wild giggles, the dunce caps, the screams for late passes are mostly high spirits.

  But som
e of it is malice. This is the day for vengeance. I understand Loomis got a zero in Math. One of his kids had spent weeks laying the foundation: a tough question he got from someone in Graduate Math Dept. at Berkeley.

  How did your interview with Ferone go yesterday?

  See you at Faculty Frolic this afternoon!

  Bea

  * * *

  Dear Miss Barrett,

  Joseph Ferone of your official class is absent today, but you neglected to fill out Postal card #1 (Reason for Absence).

  Sadie Finch

  Chief Clerk

  * * *

  Dear Sylvia,

  Do you happen to have an aspirin?

  Please send it to nurse’s office–they got me to cover it while she’s lying down.

  Mary

  * * *

  FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  DURING TODAY’S ABNORMAL SCHEDULE TEACHERS SHOULD KEEP DISRUPTION AT A MINIMUM.

  THERE WILL BE A SERIES OF THREE BELLS REPEATED FOUR TIMES TO INDICATE EARLY DISMISSAL.

  FACULTY FROLIC WILL BEGIN PROMPTLY AFTER THAT. TEACHERS MUST NOT PUNCH OUT BEFORE THEIR REGULAR TIME.

  JJ MCH

  * * *

  Sylvia!

  May I borrow your phonograph? School phonograph doesn’t work.

  Also–stage curtain is stuck. Can you spare a couple of tall kids to be curtain-pullers?

  I hope you like the show. All is madness down here. Music, lights, props, costumes–nothing works. Manheim forgot all his lines, Yum-Yum is absent, and there are hoodlums (not ours) lurking in the auditorium.

  It augurs well– –

  Paul

  * * *

  FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  DUE TO UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES THERE IS NO ONE PATROLLING THE HALLS AND ENTRANCES TO CHALLENGE UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS. TEACHERS WITH FREE TIME ARE TO REPORT TO THE OFFICE FOR PATROL ASSIGNMENTS.

  JJ MCH

  * * *

  Sylvia!

  Urgent! Can you get from one of your kids a Japanese fan and some hair lacquer? If no fan is available, a Ping-Pong racket will do.

  Hurriedly,

  Paul

  (Will you come backstage to help with makeup?)

  * * *

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  Please ignore previous instructions about today’s bell schedule. There will be a series of four bells repeated twice to indicate early dismissal.

  Three bells repeated four times indicates fire drill and we wish to avoid confusion.

  Sadie Finch

  Chief Clerk

  * * *

  Sylvia!

  Can you spare two more boys (husky) to hold up backdrop? It got unglued. Also need an obi–ask around. We’ll be ready in a few minutes. Be sure to yell: “Author, author!”

  Paul

  (Or any wide sash)

  * * *

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  Please disregard bells. There has been a delay in the Faculty Show. Keep students in rooms until further notice.

  Sadie Finch

  Chief Clerk

  * * *

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  Please disregard previous notice about disregarding bells, since most students are now in auditorium.

  Sadie Finch

  Chief Clerk

  * * *

  FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

  TO: ALL TEACHERS

  BECAUSE OF UNRULINESS IN CLASSROOMS, TODAY’S EARLY DISMISSAL TOOK PLACE EARLIER THAN ANTICIPATED. TEACHERS ARE TO PROCEED TO AUDITORIUM AT ONCE.

  JJ MCH

  December 22

  Dear Ellen,

  I’m writing this from the hospital, where I am bedded down with a fractured foot; nothing serious, but a nuisance, since I’ll be laid up during the busiest time of the term: the holidays!

  I was wounded in the line of duty. I might even say above and beyond. I was felled by an unhinged door with a pagoda on it.

  I was not attacked or knifed; I fought no issue; proved no point. I had merely gone backstage, in the auditorium, to help Paul during the Faculty Frolic.

  That whole afternoon was as macabre as a newsreel Mardi-Gras bobbing towards its grotesque denouement. Harry Kagan, as Clarke, prissy at the lectern; teachers in blue jeans and sneakers licking oversize lollipops or ostentatiously pulling bubble gum from their mouths in an exaggerated attempt at playing the good sport. Remember what’s-his-name at Lyons Hall–the professor who used to perch on the wíndowsill in shirtsleeves and suspenders, munching a sandwich to show that he was one of us? Here was the same kind of phony camaraderie–only it got wilder and wilder. Teachers with skipping ropes, balloons, yo-yos; teachers in Japanese kimonos, pencils stuck in their lacquered hair, singing and dancing in a kind of parody of a parody: the Barringer “Mikado,” to the stamping and whistling of kids jammed into the auditorium; and a separate, desperate whistle from McHabe. That was during the garbage-throwing.

  I must explain that some outside kids–from a neighborhood gang, or students on suspension, or dropouts–who somehow got wind of the fact that there was a show going on, gained entry into the auditorium with contraband garbage, which they proceeded to throw around. They must have aimed it at the stage, but it landed on the audience: our kids. Naturally, ours threw it right back; they threw it back at ours; and so it went, back and forth, for a few rank moments. The auditorium, being windowless, and overflowing with the overflow of both X2 and Y2 kids, was already stifling. Eventually, the visitors were ejected, the garbage was trampled until it got lost, and the show went on.

  I’m sure the songs were clever; it was impossible to hear because of the commotion. By this time I was backstage–that’s when the pagoda fell on my foot. Or rather, the backdrop, which was a door, painted black with a red and gold pagoda on it. I don’t know where it had originally been hinged–possibly a bank; it was heavy as metal. It hurt like hell.

  The doctor says I am lucky. I could have had a crushed instep, instead of “a simple fracture of the base of the fifth metatarsal.” My foot will be in a cast for a few weeks, but I’ll be well in time for the new term at Willowdale.

  Right now I’m in a kind of limbo: Because of clerical errors and snarled red tape, I’m not officially out of Calvin Coolidge, nor officially in Willowdale. The only thing I’m sure of is that I am in the hospital, lying brazenly in bed in broad daylight, while someplace bells are ringing and classes are changing and kids are waiting. Kids in schools all over the city, all over the country, pledging allegiance to the flag in assemblies, halls, classrooms, yards–hundreds of thousands of right hands on the heart, hundreds of thousands of young voices droning the singsong: “ … one nation under God in/divisible …” Someplace kids are taking a test, frowning, clutching pens, chewing pencils, thinking, thinking in a kind of silent hum. Or arguing in bus or subway about something they had discussed in class. Someplace a solitary kid sits absorbed in a book in a library.

  It’s absence that makes me so nostalgic. For I must remember, too, the drudgery and the waste. Frustration upon frustration, thanklessness, defeat. The 3 o’clock exhaustion; the FTG fatigue (The Sophomore Slump, the Senior Sorrows). And getting up for early session; in winter, dressing by electric light to punch in before the warning bell, to erase the obscenity from the board, to track down the window-pole, to hand in before 1, before 2, before 3 …

  And “misunderstandings of feelings.” (How often I find myself quoting a student!). And the gobbledygook, and the pedagese, and the paper miles of words.

  One wordless moment with Ferone, one moment of real feeling, and I had toppled off my tightrope, parasol and all.

  And Ferone–where is he and what is to become of him?

  I wonder how he himself will tell it, or recall it. “I had this teacher, see, and once, on a winter afternoon …”

  I keep remembering what he had said to me. “What makes you think you’re so sp
ecial? Just because you’re a teacher?” What he was really saying was: You are so special. You are my teacher. Then teach me, help me. Hey, teach, I’m lost–which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.

  So am I.

  What is it that I wanted? A good question. Interesting, challenging, thought-provoking, as required in the Model Lesson Plan. A pivotal question, “directed towards the appreciation of human motives”–and eliciting answers I may not like.

  I wanted to make a permanent difference to at least one child. “A Teacher I’ll Never Forget”? Yes.

  I wanted to share my enthusiasm with them; I wanted them to respond. To love me? Yes.

  I wanted to mold minds, shape souls, guide my flock through English and beyond. To be a lady-God? That’s close.

  I wanted to fight the unequal battle against all that stands in the way of teaching. To blaze a trail? Indeed.