The Fifth Circle

by Tricia Drammeh

  When I told my mom I wouldn’t go back to school, she just shook her head. “It’s up to you, honey. You can always get a GED.”

  The idea of a GED depressed me, but not as much as the idea of going back to school.

  On the balmy second week of May, Mr. Chalmers called me, his tone irritable as always. “My condolences.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Why haven’t you come back to school?” he asked.

  “I…I don’t think I can handle it. It’s too hard to face everyone…”

  “Nonsense. That’s just an excuse. You’re going to drop out right before graduation? That’s ridiculous.”

  I began to cry.

  “Stop that,” he snapped. “Now, we had a meeting—your guidance counselor, the principal, and the other teachers. You’ve missed a lot of school, but most of it was review for the finals. Since you have a high A in almost every class, most of your teachers were in favor of letting you off the hook with a B in each class.”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “I talked them out of it. We agreed you should take your final exams. You won’t be penalized for any assignments you missed, but if you want to graduate, you need to take the initiative and study for your exams.”

  So, that’s why he called? To gloat? To tell me how close I’d come to getting off easy before he ruined it?

  “Finals are officially scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday. You’ll come in on Wednesday and meet me in my classroom. You can take all your exams in private.”

  My eyes began to water. He wasn’t completely heartless—hard-ass perhaps, but not heartless.

  “Thank you.”

  “You won’t get higher than a B in my class, Alexandra. Not with the C you received on your paper. Not unless you ace the final. No one aces my finals.”

  That was true. Mr. Chalmers was notorious for crafting the impossible final. Few received an A in his class, but that was okay. I was willing to scrape by with a C. It didn’t matter. I was pregnant and college was not in my future. Should I tell Mr. Chalmers? No. He’d just complain. After all the trouble he’d gone through to help me graduate, I didn’t want to disappoint him.

  I didn’t want to disappoint my other teachers either—especially the ones who wanted to let me off the hook without even taking my finals—so, I decided to study. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. Studying helped get my mind off my other troubles, so I threw myself into the comforting routine of memorization. With a strict study schedule in place, I could almost forget my life was over.

  The hallways were empty when I arrived at school the following Wednesday. Lockers were cleaned out for the most part. Some hung open to display a crumpled piece of notebook paper, or an abandoned writing utensil. My sneakers shuffled toward Mr. Chalmers’ classroom and with each step, I was reminded I’d never really belonged there. I’d never been popular or well-known. Now everyone knew me—just not in a good way.

  It was a teacher’s workday—a day for teachers to grade finals and time for the administrators to get ready to shut down the school for the summer. With the graduation ceremony planned for Saturday, teachers were rushed to finalize grades for the Seniors. As I continued down the hallway, I passed a few harried teachers, most of whom turned to stare at me as I walked by. Yes, I was famous now. Or, infamous.

  My heavy backpack weighed me down. Half my textbooks had been in my possession at the time of the murder. The other half resided in my locker. My locker was in the Senior hallway, and therefore right outside Mr. Chalmer’s classroom. After emptying the contents of my locker, I took a deep breath and prepared to perform the last ritual of my high school career—my final exams. There’s no way I’d attend the graduation ceremony. The office would have to mail my diploma.

  Mr. Chalmers peered up at me from a towering stack of papers the moment I approached the doorway. He motioned for me to have a seat. I chose one in the middle of the front row.

  “Pick your poison,” he said, rifling through one of his numerous stacks.

  “Sorry?”

  “Which final do you want to take first?” he asked.

  “Um, how about Pre-Cal?”

  “Good choice,” he said. “We’ll save my final for last. Your math book, please.”

  I traded my text for the final, and without any expectations at all, began solving equations. Forty minutes later, I swapped my math final and AP American History text for my history exam paper. Mr. Chalmers disappeared to deliver the math final to Mr. Everly. History was easy—all memory, and no skill. Mr. Everly popped into the classroom just as I was finishing up.

  “Nicely done, Alexandra,” he said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “You’ve earned an eighty-six percent on the final and a ninety-three overall.”

  An A. I’d earned an A in Pre-Calculus. I tried to fight back my emerging smile. It seemed silly to revel in a grade which in time would mean nothing. I couldn’t tell Mr. Everly that college was beyond my reach. He seemed so pleased with my meager accomplishment.

  “Thank you, Mr. Everly,” I said politely.

  “Good luck. I’m not your teacher any longer, so I can tell you I’m praying for you,” he said while Mr. Chalmers scowled from across his desk.

  “What next?” Mr. Chalmers asked.

  “Chemistry.” My worst subject.

  “Well, since I couldn’t convince Mr. Connelley to lend us his blessed chemicals, I suppose we’ll have to forgo a lab final. Your text book, please.”

  My chemistry book had spent the past three weeks in my locker, so I wasn’t prepared to do well on the text, but I scraped a low B. The welcome news was delivered just as I completed my Psychology final. Choir and Leadership were both an automatic A, so all that remained was the dreaded English final.

  “You have a high B in my class right now. You can earn an A, but only if you get one-hundred percent on my final. There are two parts: the multiple choice section and a five paragraph essay. Each section is worth fifty percent of the exam grade. Your text?”

  I handed over my remaining text, my final tangible link to high school. No way would I nail an A, so the pressure was off. I filled out each bubble on the test form and within twenty minutes, I was finished with the first half of the test. I waited patiently while he graded it.

  “One-hundred percent,” he said. “You’re just one essay away from earning an A.”

  Suddenly, I wanted that meaningless, useless A more than anything in the world. I’d never received a B in English—never. Even though I knew my grades would mean nothing—that my future was an empty chasm of doom—I wanted validation. I wanted to feel smart, worthwhile, better than average. Throughout my life, I’d never felt I was any of those things. Only my report card stood between me and utter hopelessness.

  Mr. Chalmers stood up and approached the dry erase board. “What was the single most significant event of your life? Why?” He read each word it he wrote it. My face burned in rage and shame. Was this the topic he assigned to every Senior in his class? If so, why couldn’t he have chosen a different topic for me? Something a little less personal. If he’d handpicked this topic just for me, well he was just cruel.

  As if reading my mind, he sat back down behind his desk and said, “This was the topic I’d assigned to each student. You’re no exception. I could have let you slide. I could have followed the crowd and done what some of the other teachers suggested. I could have let you slide by with a B, but I would have done you a disservice.”

  “Do you know why I made you come in here and take your finals?”

  I sat in silence, afraid to open my mouth. With great difficulty, I held back my tears and merely shook my head in response.

  “I bet you thought I was a jerk for forcing you to come in here. Maybe I am. We let you get away with not attending your final classes. I was okay with that because I believe in giving folks a hand-up if they need it, but you had to meet us halfway. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I
nodded. I did understand. At first, I thought he was a jerk for forcing me to take my finals, but as I settled back into routine of studying, I discovered I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, I enjoyed it. Studying gave my mind an outlet, a different track to follow besides the circle of guilt and fear I’d been running since the day Sean killed my father.

  “I could change your essay topic, but I won’t. I refuse to because the older you get, the less often folks will give you a break. No one is going to make things easy for you, Alex. Let that be your final lesson in this class.”

  Glancing away, I pulled a notebook from my backpack and opened it to a clean sheet of paper. What was the single most significant event of your life? Why? I thought back to the day of my father’s murder and how it never occurred to me that my life could change so drastically.

  The most significant event of my life was the day my boyfriend killed my father…

  I’d just begun to place the tip of my pen to the paper when Mr. Chalmers spoke again. “If I asked anyone in this town to write your essay for you, I know what they’d choose to write about. You don’t have to let that one event define you. You choose what to write about. Take all the time you need. I’ll be here all day.”

  What should I write? If I didn’t write about the murder, what topic should I choose? I could write about my pregnancy and how my life was over because of it, how I refused to have an abortion because I couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing my unborn child or the hoards of pro-lifers who would certainly be there to protest my decision. But, really, my story started long before then.

  The most significant event of my life was the day Sean Droste became my best friend…

  I could write about the day I met Sean, a day that set events in motion which would lead up to the eventual murder. Was that the most significant event? It certainly changed everything. Our friendship led to our eventual involvement, which led to my pregnancy, which led to my father’s murder.

  What if I reached back further to a time before I met Sean? Or, what if the most significant event in my life had nothing to do with Sean, but everything to do with how I ended up with him? Layers of myself were peeled away as I sat at my desk, deliberating over what to write. Tears fell down my cheeks and onto my paper when I thought of writing about something that would shock Mr. Chalmers to his core. How would he react if I wrote about my father and what he did to me?

  The most significant event of my life was the day my father began molesting me…

  His abuse changed everything for me. Because of him, I never developed the ability to cope with life. I was emotionally crippled, unable to form trusting relationships with men, unable to make decisions. Depression enveloped me and I allowed life to carry me along because that one area of my life where I’d lost all control set a pattern for every other life event.

  The most significant event of my life was the day I stopped saying no…

  I wasn’t talking about the abuse, because even in my emotionally damaged state of mind, I never blamed myself for what my father did. I was referring to all the occasions I succumbed to passivity and refused to stand up for myself. Like the day I decided to give myself to Sean…it was a decision I’d never really made, but just fell into. As I recalled, I never said yes. I just didn’t say no.

  How about all the times I went with the crowd? I’d never had enough friends to really have to worry about peer pressure, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I always worried about how others viewed me. I didn’t want to stand out, or be different, or disappoint anyone. As a matter of fact, my inability to say no was part of the reason I sat in the classroom on the day after the last day of school, alone, taking my finals.

  There were so many life-changing events, each one occurring at various intervals, each one contributing to the eventual definition of my character. How far back into the past should I reach in order to find the most significant event? Birth? The first step? First word? Where does it begin?

  Everything that happens to you causes a ripple effect. Everything. Was it possible to stop the ripples? To reverse them, or even change the pattern of the concentric waves of your life? Maybe it wasn’t a life changing event that was the most significant, but the choices you make based on that event.

  With trembling hands, I leaned over my paper and began to write.

  The most significant event of my life was the day I took my Senior English final. In light of recent events, I never thought I’d view a routine final examination as a life-changing experience, but my Senior English final altered my existence in the following ways: the assigned five-paragraph essay forced me to evaluate life, helped me change life-long patterns, and gave me hope for the future. How could a seemingly insignificant assignment plant a seed of change and hope? Sometimes the most important events in life are not those which happen to you, but those you make happen.

  When I first began to consider the question, “What is the single most significant event in my life?” I looked back on every major event that had occurred over my lifespan: the day my father began molesting me; the day I met my best friend and future boyfriend, Sean; the day I found out I was pregnant; the day Sean murdered my father. It was difficult to choose from such a vast store of life-altering moments. As I considered each event, discarding and disregarding as I went, I was forced to face each memory head-on. A wise man once told me not to let a particular event define me. By refusing to allow each memory to serve as my single defining moment, I reclaimed my memories—and my life. With evaluation came reclamation.

  From the moment I chose to take my memories back, to empower myself with my past instead of letting my past take power away from me, I discovered I’d changed the pattern of my life. Like ripples in a pond, each memory started at one catastrophic place in time, then spread out over the course of my life, pushing and distorting everything in its path. I threw a new stone into the pond; I created new ripples, stronger ripples that overpowered the others, thus changing the surface of the pond. Sometimes ripples run deeper than the surface and create patterns that go beyond what the eye can see.

  With evaluation and the changing of patterns, came hope for the future. I agreed to take my finals because I felt like I owed it to my teachers, not to myself. I had every intention of walking out of Saint Edmunds High School, never to return to the halls of academia again. With my old patterns in place, my apathy draped over me like a shroud obscuring the light of hope for the future, I planned to drop out of life altogether. I would give birth to my child—the child of my father’s killer. I would rely on a combination of dead-end jobs and public assistance for survival, lock my mind away, and perhaps meet an abusive man to take up where my father and Sean left off. Were these my actual plans? Of course not. I couldn’t have been bothered to make actual plans, but this would have happened nonetheless because when you wait for life to happen to you, life takes control. Well, I’m here to tell you, I’m taking control of my life.

  Today, the day of my Senior English final, is the day I’m changing the pattern for my life and my pattern for the future. It would be easy to write a generic paper, collect my B for the class, and forget everything I’ve learned today. It would be easy—and comfortable. There’s comfort in consistency, and if there’s one thing in my life that’s been consistent, it’s been my die-hard adherence to a pattern of avoidance. I’m making a promise to myself: I’ll never forget the question scrawled across the dry erase board on the day I planned to end my education. The day of my Senior English final—the moment I sat down to write this paper—was the single most significant event of my life.

  P.S. Mr., Chalmers,

  I know why Dante chose to put the wrathful and the sullen together in the Fifth circle of Hell. It’s because they followed the same pattern. Wrath created the ripples and the sullen chose to sink instead of swim. Is that right?

  My eyes were dry when I handed in my paper. Mr. Chalmers looked at me for a moment, and then said, “Why don’t you go down to Mrs. Steven’s room and see i
f she’s finished grading your Psychology final? I’ll grade this while you’re gone.”

  With feather-light steps, I floated down the hallway, my head held high. Mrs. Steven’s room was upstairs, so I jogged up the steps with a ghost of a smile forming at the corner of my lips. For once, I didn’t care what my grade was—not because I’d given up, or because I’d lost my ambition, but because my grades no longer defined me. I was more than a letter grade or a percentage in red ink at the top of a paper. I was more than an abuse victim or the girlfriend of a murderer. More than a teenage pregnancy statistic. Only one thing stood between me and being all these things: action.

  Chapter 26- Sean

  Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again

  When I direct my mind to what I saw

  (Canto XXVI, lines 19 & 20)

  My lawyer hissed at me to be silent. “Stop complaining. Now, when the judge comes in, she’ll call everyone to order and she’ll read the docket. I have about twenty clients in here, and not all of them are incarcerated, so this isn’t all about you today.”

  Bullshit. The courtroom was packed to capacity and everyone strained their necks to get a look at me. People pointed, whispered, one lady even took a picture with her cell phone, causing the bailiff to reprimand her.

  Where were the reporters? I figured this would have been televised. I tried to scope out the spectators’ area without being too obvious. I couldn’t see my mom. Maybe she couldn’t get in. If my lawyer would just listen to me for a second, he’d know what I was trying to tell him was important. I needed him to the hallway outside to see if my mom was out there. Then, I needed him to make the bailiff find her a seat.