Heidi's Guide to Four Letter Words

by Tara Sivec

  “It’s definitely pretty humid out here tonight. You sure you’re okay?” Brent asks again in a kind voice that makes me want to melt into a puddle of goo.

  I quickly start grabbing at leaves and branches, the entire bush shaking and swaying as I pluck whatever I can get my hands on just to try and prove that I was, in fact, out here pruning my hydrangeas at 10:00 at night.

  “Yep! I’m super. Thanks for asking! You should probably go on inside now, since you have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

  I hear Brent chuckle softly, and I can’t stop the low groan that comes out of my mouth, realizing I just completely screwed up any attempt to make him believe I was not actually listening to his conversation with Laura. I should probably pay attention to my mother more often when she says, “Liars never prosper.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll leave you to your pruning. Have a good night, Heidi.”

  My hands immediately stop their manic plucking of hydrangea leaves when I hear my name come out of his mouth again, all soft and sweet. I clamp my lips closed as tightly as possible while I listen to him walk away, so I don’t do anything else embarrassing like sigh loudly or giggle again.

  Spreading a few of the branches apart with my hands, I watch Brent walk back over to his yard, jog up the stairs of his front porch, and disappear inside his house.

  One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to talk to that man without making a fool of myself. As soon as I figure out what in the world I’m going to do about getting a new job before my mother finds out and marches into the principal’s office with fifteen dozen of her famous brown butter sugar cookie bars to try to guilt him into giving me my job back, that’s going to be my top priority.

  Chapter 2

  “Did you try Southview Elementary?” my mother questions, as we stand out on the front lawn of our church after Sunday service.

  The rest of the congregation is gathered in small groups all around us, chatting about life and the sermon we heard today, which coincidentally was about picking yourself back up when you’ve been knocked down.

  “Yes,” I reply, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

  “Bayview?”

  “Yes.”

  “Laketown?”

  “Yes. And before you even ask, I checked every elementary school within a fifty-mile radius. There’s a hiring freeze in schools all over the state of Minnesota right now. No one is hiring new teachers, especially ones without tenure,” I remind her.

  We’ve already had this discussion at least ten times in the last week since I was let go from my teaching position at Trinity Lutheran Elementary. My phone was ringing off the hook before I could even pull all of the hydrangea leaves out of my hair when I scurried back into my house after my disastrous interaction with Brent. As much as I would have liked to keep this news from her for as long as I could, not only was it impossible in this small town we live in where everyone knows everyone else’s business, but it was also hopeless. My mother is a retired kindergarten teacher from Trinity Lutheran. She still keeps in touch with every single teacher employed there and also has a standing lunch date every month with the vice principal, the secretary, and the guidance counselor. My father plays poker with the principal and my former boss of Trinity Lutheran. The same Trinity Lutheran whose lawn we are currently standing on, where we attend church every Sunday.

  “Did you try St. Joseph Catholic School?”

  “Oh, hey now, Margie!” My mother scoffs at my aunt, who turns around to join our conversation after saying hello to one of her neighbors. “We’re Lutheran. We don’t work in Catholic schools. Ever heard of the Reformation?”

  “Fine. Then who gives a rat’s patootie what she does, Peggy? Let the poor girl take some time off and figure out what she wants to do with her life. There’s no rule that says she even has to be a teacher,” Aunt Margie states.

  Right about now, I’d love to give my aunt a hug and tell her how much I love her, but going by how red my mother’s face is getting, I’m just going to stand here watching their conversation like I’m at a tennis match, with my head bouncing back and forth between them. My aunt and my mother are like two sides of the same coin and often get mistaken for twins. They’re both slim and stand around 5’4”, and both go to the same hair dresser like clockwork every six weeks to get rid of the grays and clean up the ends of their dark brown, chin-length bobs. The only difference between them is my Aunt Margie’s mouth. She tends to be a little more… colorful than my mother. She’s also always on my side, no matter what the subject matter may be.

  “Heidi is a teacher. Heidi will always be a teacher. It’s in her blood. It’s what she was always meant to do,” Mom says passionately. “It’s bad enough she’s still single and hasn’t given me any grandbabies yet. When I was her age, I already had tenure and had been happily married to her father for seven years, God rest his soul.”

  “Dad’s not dead,” I interject quietly.

  “He will be if he doesn’t convince Lou to give you your job back.”

  The three of us turn and look behind me where my dad is currently talking to his poker buddy and my former boss, Principal Lou Shephard.

  My mom lets out a sigh of frustration when the two of them throw their heads back and laugh, clearly not having a heated discussion about my teaching position like she had hoped. I can’t help but feel a little happy that my dad isn’t on the same crusade my mother is to get me my job back. I keep that thought to myself as I turn back around, and my aunt and mother continue with their argument about my future employment.

  From the moment I could talk, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted be a teacher just like my mother. She’d be standing right there beaming the whole time, and it wasn’t until later that I wondered if that was the real reason I gave the answer I always did. By then, I’d gotten my degree in elementary education, and after student teaching and getting my certifications, I immediately went to work at the same place where my mother had spent thirty years molding the minds of five-and-six-year-olds. I don’t even know when things changed, really. All I know is that within the last six months or so, every morning when I got up to get ready for work, I did it with dread. I dragged my feet and I grumbled and moaned through my morning routine, pasting on a fake smile as soon as I walked through the school doors. Don’t get me wrong; I love children. I adore them. I want to have my own children someday in the distant future. But being in charge of other people’s children for eight hours a day just didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Dealing with angry parents who yelled at you because they thought you weren’t doing enough, yelled at you because they thought you were doing too much, or just yelled at you because they had no one else to yell at when their son or daughter was struggling in school wasn’t what I signed up for. Neither were the politics or the gossip or the stress of not being allowed as much creative freedom as I wanted, since every decision I made on what to teach and how I taught it had to be approved by someone else.

  I wasn’t passionate about my work, and that made me sad. Shouldn’t you love what you do when you spend more time at work than you do at home with friends and family? I spent four years going to school, another year getting certified, and then taught on my own for two years. And I can’t remember one single moment during that time that I was absolutely confident this was what I was meant to do. So many of my childhood memories are filled with my mom talking about her day at work. The excitement on her face, the animation of her entire body as she told us about a particular lesson she was working on, her hands waving around while she bounced on the balls of her feet. I wanted that for myself. I wanted to be excited.

  But then I feel guilty when I think about my father. He worked as an electrician for more than thirty years. I know he didn’t particularly love his job. There were no animated conversations at the dinner table about a light fixture he installed. But he still went to work every day. He showed up without complaint no
matter how much he might have hated his job, because that’s what his generation was taught. You went to work so you could pay your bills, put food on the table, and keep a roof over your family’s heads. It’s what I was taught. And here I stand, completely rejecting the morals they instilled in me.

  I am the absolute worst.

  “When I was Heidi’s age, I was footloose and fancy free,” Aunt Margie sighs with a wistful smile, pulling me out of my thoughts. “She’s young, she’s smart, and she’s got some money saved to keep her afloat for a while until she figures out what she wants to do. She doesn’t need to be married and popping out babies. If I had her adorable face and cute little figure, I would have kissed a lot more handsome men than I did back in the day before I settled down with Harold; mark my words. As soon as I met Harold, I had to hang up my necking in the backseat of the car shoes.”

  “Shush now, Margie! We don’t talk about that,” my mom scolds, quickly looking around to make sure no one heard.

  Aunt Margie leans in close to my ear and whispers, “It’s true. I had necking in the backseat of the car shoes. They were red leather platform wedges and they drove the men wild, let me tell you. I still have them in my closet if you want them.”

  I feel my cheeks blush and I laugh uncomfortably, shaking my head at her.

  Then I think about Laura Newberg and the red stilettos she had on the night she went on her date with Brent and I wonder if I should take my aunt up on her offer. My mother interjects before I can even gather up the nerve to maybe ask her what size the shoes are.

  “Can we please get back to discussing the important matter at hand? Heidi needs a job. A teaching job. She can’t just be unemployed. That’s not how we raised her. Children need to be self-sufficient. She needs to earn her keep by making an honest living, and there’s nothing more honest than being a teacher. What are we going to do about this, Margie?”

  I hate that everyone is always talking around me when I’m standing right here. Being my parents’ only child, I’ve always felt the pressure of being the perfect daughter and never straying from the path that made them happy. My job gave my mother something to brag about to her friends. It put a big smile on my father’s face whenever he’d ask me about my lesson plans. But ever since I started feeling so blah about my job as a teacher, I wondered what my life would be like right now if I’d thought more about what made me happy when I planned out my future. Would I stop letting people talk about me like I’m not even here? Would I have told Brent by now that I have a crush on him? I doubt I’d be so bold as to mention the… you know… thing in his pants or… what I wanted to… do with it, but who knows? If I would have spoken up years ago, told my parents that I wasn’t sure if being a teacher was the right path for me to take, who knows what kind of a woman I’d be right now? Well, now it’s time for me to take charge of my own destiny. I already took the first step of making a decision without consulting my mother about it first. Now it’s time to take the second. Telling her about it.

  “Mom, I need to—”

  “I haven’t made Lou my tuna hotdish yet. Maybe that’s the problem,” she muses.

  “I actually have a—”

  “If you’re going to make him anything, make him your lutefisk with bacon,” Aunt Margie adds, interrupting me again. “That’s how I always get Harold to say yes to anything,”

  “There’s no need to—”

  “You remember Sherry, from high school? Her daughter, Melanie, the poor thing who had scoliosis and trouble pronouncing her Rs. She became a big shot lawyer and moved to New York. Broke Sherry’s heart, it did,” my mother says with a shake of her head, resting her hand over her heart. “She moved back to Waconia a few months ago. Lives in that big house out on Hilliard Road with her husband who started some sort of investment company. You remember that house, the one with the white siding and blue shutters with the koi pond and fountain in front?”

  Aunt Margie makes the “speed it up” motion with her hands, something I’ve always wanted to do when my mother goes on one of her long-winded tangents before she finally gets to the point of her story.

  “Anyhoo, I ran into Melanie at the grocery store the other day after I stopped by the doctor to get a refill on my bursitis medication. There was construction on County Road 10, so I had to take 102nd Street to Little Avenue. She’s got the most adorable little boy named Carter who she just put in Sunday school, so I’ll just have a little chat with Pastor Bob and that will fix everything.”

  “Cheese and rice, Peggy, how will that fix anything?” Aunt Margie asks with a roll of her eyes that makes me struggle to contain my laughter.

  “We’re going to need another Sunday school teacher, Margie. Pay attention! It’s not a paying job, but at least it will keep Heidi’s teaching skills sharp. I’ll just go over there right now and put the bug in his ear and get the ball rolling,” my mother states, starting to turn away from us.

  Before I lose my nerve, my hand shoots out and I wrap it around her arm, stopping her from walking over to our pastor.

  “You don’t have to talk to Pastor Bob or make anyone food, because I already have a job interview for tomorrow that I’m really excited about, and it’s not a teaching job, but it pays pretty well, and there’s no need to worry, because everything will be fine!” I gasp for air.

  “Oh, Heidi, that’s wonderful news. See, Peggy? I told you she was a smart girl,” Aunt Margie smiles, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and giving me a tight squeeze.

  “What job interview? Where is it? What will you be doing? Why didn’t you tell me about this? Is it safe? Who will you be working for? What do you mean it’s not a teaching job?” Mom asks rapid fire in a panic.

  “It’s a newer company in Eden Prairie and they need an administrative assistant. I saw the ad in the paper, I sent them an email, and they called me right away for an interview,” I tell her, not wanting to give her too many more details in case she gets it in her head that she should go down there with a basket full of baked goods.

  “Okay, but what do they do there? Can you work your way up to a teaching position?”

  “Give it a rest, Peggy. Our girl has a job interview and she’s going to knock them dead, aren’t-cha, kiddo?” Aunt Margie encourages.

  “I certainly hope so,” I reply as butterflies start flapping around in my stomach when I think about tomorrow.

  The only thing I know about this company is that it’s called EdenMedia, and they do some sort of audio recordings there. It’s something new and exciting, and it’s not teaching, which scares me a little bit, but this is what I want. Something different. Something out of my comfort zone that will help me decide what I want to do with the rest of my life if I’m not going to be a teacher. And it’s a job my mother has no part in helping me get, which makes it all the more enticing.

  “Call me when you’re on your way, and then call me as soon as the interview is over so I know you’re okay,” my mother demands. “And give me the address, and the name of the owner. I’ll drop off a pan of my lemon bars tomorrow afternoon.”

  Chapter 3

  “You’re hired.”

  I blink rapidly and my mouth drops open in shock when Jessica, the hugely pregnant woman standing next to me behind the receptionist desk of EdenMedia, winces and rubs her hand over her belly.

  Our interview has only lasted five minutes, where she quickly listed off all of the things they were looking for in an administrative assistant, and the only question she asked me was, “Do you think you can handle all that?”

  “Oh, jeez, are you okay?”

  She takes a few deep breaths as the pain leaves her face and she shoots me a huge smile. “You betcha! Just some Braxton Hicks contractions. I no longer have ankles; I wouldn’t be able to see them even if I did. My back hurts, I’m tired all the time, and my husband told me if I didn’t start my maternity leave now and get some rest before the baby comes, he’d hide my car keys and stop stocking the freezer with mint chocolate chip ice crea
m. And he’d do it, believe you me.”

  I return her smile, not really knowing what to say to that, since I’ve never been pregnant and mint chocolate chip ice cream isn’t my favorite. Jessica leans down with a groan and grabs her purse from the bottom drawer of the desk, sliding the strap over her shoulder.

  “So, like I said, you’re hired. You only really need organizational skills to do this job, and since you were a teacher, I’m sure you’ve got those in spades. You seem sweet, you’ve got a great smile, and you dress professionally. Everyone here is super nice, and they’ll help you out if you have any questions,” she explains, moving around the desk toward a long hallway.

  She waves to me with her hand, indicating I should follow her, and I quickly scramble around the desk to catch up to her.

  “I’ll just show you around really quick and introduce you to some people before I head out. You said over email you’re able to start immediately. You’ll be fine sticking around for the next couple hours, right?” she asks as we pass by a few dark, empty offices.

  “Um, sure,” I tell her, not exactly sure I’m sure, but I don’t want to be rude and tell her I’d much rather start after I’ve gotten the lay of the land and actually know what I’m doing.

  EdenMedia is located in an office park where it’s one long, single story building filled with a bunch of different businesses that all share the same parking lot. My mother and a bunch of her friends all go to the dentist that is located right next door, which should ease her fears about where I’m going to be working and whether or not it’s safe.

  “Don’t worry; there’s not much going on today aside from one recording in progress. You’ll just need to answer phones and check on the narrator who’s here today. See if he needs anything to eat or drink, that sort of thing,” Jessica explains as we get to the end of the hallway and turn a corner, stopping right in front of a huge glass window.