by Susie Bright
I turn on my phone to call the campus police but stop after the area code, my index finger hovering over the number. Frank knows where I live, and if he got in trouble, he could come to my house. And even if the police took his description of the stabbing seriously and arrested him, he could always send someone else.
I pace around the house. It’s too small for my belongings, and I don’t have time during the semesters to clean. Each week of the sixteen-week semester it gets messier. Now, eight weeks into the fall term, dishes sit on the floor under my futon with dried pasta noodles, the recycling bag overflows with yogurt containers and diet soda cans, a flow of dirty clothes erupts out of the open drawers of the small dresser I picked up at the Abbot’s thrift shop in Felton. I stare at a pile of clothes on the floor. I imagine a bleeding man being kicked over and over again by a heavy boot.
My ex-husband Ben is a lawyer, and our daughter Zia is in law school. I want to call them both to ask advice. But I can’t get them involved. The paper might be evidence of a crime, and they would want to report it to the police.
I’ll just pass Frank. That’s it. He doesn’t want anything else from me. I’ll tell him his descriptions are good in his paper and leave it at that. It’s none of my business what he’s done. It’s between him and his conscience. Besides, he never actually says he stabbed anyone, just “because stabbed him.” Without a subject in the sentence, anyone could have done the stabbing. I imagine the grammar lesson I could give with Frank’s sentence—I stabbed him / You stabbed him / They stabbed him / Frank stabbed him.
I reply to his e-mail: I got your note. I understand. I add, No problem, in an effort to sound casual.
* * *
Frank is absent the next class. I spend the three hours of class time working on run-on sentences, fragments, and paragraph organization, while eyeing the classroom door for any sign of him. Jorge, a dance major with thick, beautifully shaped eyebrows, asks if you can begin a sentence with “and.”
“Sometimes,” I say unhelpfully.
Jorge writes down my answer. He is a diligent student.
Yesenia, who is studying to become an occupational therapist, asks if you can begin a sentence with “because.”
“Of course.” I catch the curt impatience in my voice, but I’m too nervous to speak gently. “You begin sentences with ‘if,’ don’t you?”
Yesenia looks down at her desk. “I was just wondering. My other English teacher said you can’t.”
“I’m sorry; let me show you how to do it,” I say. And then I try to demonstrate how to begin a sentence with “because,” but my purple whiteboard pen gets fainter and fainter and disappears entirely at the end of: “Because the cat was hungr—”
“Sorry,” I repeat, “I’ll e-mail you a handout about all this.”
My students look back at me, blank and disbelieving.
At the end of class, I collect a new batch of papers and add it to the file folder bulging with last week’s papers.
On the way home, my steering wheel starts making a moaning sound, punctuated by a sharp squeal on tight turns. The steering gets less and less responsive as I make my way past the stoplight by the Ben Lomond Market and onto Love Creek Road. My headlights catch the red memorial toy box at the mudslide where those little boys died in the 1980s and were never found. As I pass the memorial, I see that someone has arranged a group of dolls in a semicircle as though they are holding a little class. I leave the paved part of Love Creek behind and rumble along the narrow stream canyon, my steering column bleating and my car bottoming out on the dirt road.
The house smells of old milk. I put half a burrito I saved from lunch in the microwave and check e-mail. In the four hours since I last looked, I’ve received forty-three new messages, mostly about campus events and items—a flash drive, a stack of papers, a jacket—left behind by faculty in classrooms. I have the usual absent-student-excuse e-mails, and then I see a subject line, Probation Check—Important.
It’s Frank’s probation officer, a woman named Lindsey Johnson, doing a “routine evaluation.” She asks me to answer a few questions:
• Has Mr. Gonzalo missed any classes? If so, how many? (Please provide dates.)
• How would you characterize Mr. Gonzalo’s behavior as a student in your class?
• Finally, do you have any concerns about Mr. Gonzalo that you would like to share?
I am overcome, for a moment, by a sense of relief, as though I had been in a dark room but found, finally, a rectangle of light around an unlocked door. I’ll unburden myself to Lindsey Johnson, a sensible-sounding person—a professional—who will know exactly what to do about Frank’s paper, about the pressure he’s putting on me to pass him, about his intimidating e-mail.
But then I remember Frank’s gang. I can’t tell Ms. Johnson the truth.
I click out of her e-mail and scan my inbox. I have an e-mail from Frank. Dear Miss Janet, I need to talk to your office hours ASAP that is about some new issues.
The smell of my microwaved burrito turns sickeningly sweet. I throw it away and stare into the garbage. My mind scurries through a pile of thoughts—a man being stabbed, Frank e-mailing me, Frank coming to my office hours, what it would feel like to be stabbed in the stomach. I think the word “spleen” and feel like throwing up. I wonder if it would hurt, or would it just feel wrong and . . . final?
Too agitated to go to bed, I start cleaning the house. Things keep slipping more and more out of my control. If I could just get organized, I’d be able to think clearly. I do the dishes. I try to take out the garbage, but the bag rips when I remove it from the bin, leaving a pile of to-go containers and toilet paper rolls and coffee grounds on the kitchen floor. I can’t find another bag to collect the spilled garbage, so I shovel it into small plastic grocery bags which drip as I carry them to the bin outside. I mop up the drips with my last few paper towels and a handful of bunched-up toilet paper and give up on cleaning. I sit down to grade papers.
* * *
I wake up with my neck in knots. I’d drifted off sometime in the early morning with the lights on. Essays are scattered around my chair. A few are graded. I hear songbirds outside and a squirrel chirruping some argument. Through the window, cobwebs of fog are dissipating around the redwood branches. The sun is already up.
I check my phone. It’s 8:48, and I’ve missed my Cabrillo class. I call the division office and tell Ana Ling, the division assistant, that my car broke down on the way to campus. I hate lying to Ana, and her friendly voice over the phone makes me want to cry. For the first time this semester, I wish I were in my class teaching that day’s lesson on proper use of citations.
I take a long shower and make coffee before turning on my computer. In my e-mail is another message from Frank. This one says: Please call when you can earliest convenience. He includes his phone number.
I call. He answers with an out-of-breath, “Hello.”
“Hi, Frank.” I try to sound friendly and casual. “What’s going on?”
A low bass thumps in the background. A dog yaps. “Be quiet,” he calls out to—I assume—the dog, which keeps barking. “It’s just . . . so, I need some help,” he says. “You know how hard I’m trying to better myself, you know, for my family, and for being an example and everything, and, you know, getting out of the group and getting on with my life. I want to be a citizen, productive—so what I’m saying is, my probation officer, Ms. Johnson, she’s always on my ass—my butt, if you can excuse my language—and I need you to just tell her I haven’t missed any classes because of all of my medical emergencies—she doesn’t buy it even though I have doctors’ notes.”
I stare at the papers on the floor. “So you want me to lie to your probation officer?”
“Well, it’s not really lying because I have been in class when I’m not having a medical emergency. It’s just my stomach, I need to go to the bathroom with that, and I can’t come to school. But she doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’m off doing something else. And
I have to account for my time with her because of the level of supervisory situation I’m under with the probation office . . . Are you on campus right now? I can meet you to talk about this furthermore.”
I tell him about my car.
“Oh, yeah, I know, I saw you had that old Honda—Accord, 1992? I figured it wouldn’t last much longer. You need a new car? I can find you one, I know a guy.”
“No, I don’t need a new car. It’s just the steering.”
“Okay, you know, I have a buddy over on your side of the hill in Live Oak. He has a lot of cars he fixes up.” The dog erupts again into a scream of barks. “Baby,” he calls out to someone, “can you get her to shut up? Okay, sorry about that. So, I just need you to tell her the truth, tell her I’ve been a good student. Just don’t tell her I was absent.”
* * *
I leave my car with my mechanic in Felton and walk to the White Raven café. I feel dizzy and cold. My neck aches from sleeping in my chair and my fingers tingle. I wrap my sweater tightly around my chest. This is the first time all semester I’ve had time on my hands—time to kill. I laugh, because it really is a funny phrase.
I get a text from Frank: “Please remember what we discussed in this morning. And please keep my paper contents conference.” I assume he means “confidential.”
I pass a group of teenage girls huddling over a phone in front of Redwood Pizza. They’re wearing knotted hemp jewelry. One looks up and smiles. I see how I must look to her, so old, with my long gray hair wisping around my head, my baggy clothes. She has no idea that she’ll be old one day too, if she’s lucky. Like everyone else over fifty, I have been lucky.
I order a bagel and tea at the café. When I return to my table, I have a voice mail from Frank.
“Hi, Professor Janet—” I can hear the dog again in the background. It sounds like a poodle or a Maltese. “I was wondering if you could forward me the e-mail you send to Johnson so I can make sure she tells the truth about it. Sometimes she lies about—Hey, can you shut that dog up?” His voice is sharp and piercing.
I hear a woman mumble something softly, then a painful yelp.
“Yeah, sorry about that, so Johnson sometimes lies about me to her supervisors about what I’m doing, and I don’t want to get in any more trouble.” The barking turns into a whining with a pitiful rhythm to it, like the dog is trying to sound out words.
The White Raven is playing Peruvian pipe music, and the place smells like incense and French roast. The contrast between the world I’m sitting in and the one I just heard through my phone makes both seem unreal.
I take out my laptop and compose an e-mail to Lindsey Johnson:
Dear Ms. Johnson:
Frank Gonzalo is a student in my English 280 (Basic Writing Development) class. He is in good standing. Below are answers to your questions.
• Has Mr. Gonzalo missed any classes?
No, Mr. Gonzalo has perfect attendance.
• How would you characterize Mr. Gonzalo’s behavior as a student in your class?
Mr. Gonzalo is a good student.
• Finally, do you have any concerns about Mr. Gonzalo that you would like to share?
I have no concerns about Mr. Gonzalo.
I send the e-mail, then copy and paste it into a separate message to Frank. I don’t want to risk forwarding it and having him accidentally reply to Lindsey Johnson. I check my sent mail to make sure both went out. Relief. This is not my problem. Frank’s story is not my story. I have my own life to deal with.
I call my mechanic for an update. The repair will cost $360. I’m down this semester to seven classes from my usual eight, and my credit card balance has crept above $4,000, close to my limit. I start calculating the rest of the month. I get paid again in six days, and I should still have a couple of hundred left in credit after I pay for my car. And there’s a little cushion left in checking if I pay my PG&E late.
I eat my bagel and order a salad. For the first time today, I’m famished. Before I leave the café, I get a cookie.
* * *
On the way home from my afternoon class, I check the mailbox at the base of our driveway. There’s an overdue notice for my Visa, though I’m sure I paid it online. There is also a white envelope with my address lettered in gold. Inside is a Safeway gift card for $200 and a note that says, “Thank you for you’re help. Sincerely, Frank.”
I can’t take a gift in exchange for lying to Frank’s probation officer. I remember my diminishing checking account balance and think about what I could buy at Safeway with $200—some good cheese, wine, salmon. It dawns on me how humiliating it is to be bribed by a gang member with food.
I’m supposed to catch up on grading, but I waste time reading the Huffington Post’s “Wellness” section, which has two articles on lifestyle choices that reduce stress. Dogs and exercise, and exercising with dogs, are supposed to be helpful. I think about the squeal of the dog crying in the background during Frank’s last voice mail. I click out of the article.
Before I settle in to grade, I check e-mail. Lindsey Johnson has written to thank me for the information I sent her about Frank and to ask to set up a phone appointment for “a few follow-up questions.”
I make a quick decision to delete the e-mail. I did what I needed to do. I sent the e-mail Frank wanted me to send. I didn’t tell anyone about his paper. I don’t need to do anything else. Before I can change my mind, I go into my deleted mail and delete Lindsey Johnson’s e-mail one final time. I then delete her original e-mail, my reply, and all of the e-mails from Frank.
* * *
Monday is Halloween. I wake up long before dawn. I sip coffee and browse the news, which is peppered with local ghost stories. There is one about Love Creek Road, but it’s just a reminder of the mudslide tragedy, not a ghost story.
In the San Jose Mercury News “Crime & Courts” section is the headline, “Gang Leader Arrested for Probation Violation, Weapons.”
Local gang leader Frank Gonzalo was arrested on November 6 at his home in the Blossom Hill neighborhood of San Jose. Deputies searched Mr. Gonzalo’s home after his probation officer reported a number of violations. Mr. Gonzalo was found to possess drug-manufacturing paraphernalia and illegal weapons, including two Daewoo Telecom K7s and a sawed-off shotgun. He was charged and released on bail pending a preliminary hearing.
Frank’s mugshot looms over the article. His hair looks greasy. His round face wears a slight smile.
I close the computer and turn on my phone. I have a text Zia sent to me and Ben. She made it to the top percentile in her torts exam. I text back, “Congratulations,” then pace around my house. I could call Frank to tell him I saw the article, offer sympathy, let him know I tried my best to help him with his probation officer. Or I could contact Lindsey Johnson and confess my lie. But I decide it’s better to act like nothing has happened. Lindsey Johnson can’t help me with Frank. No one can.
I watch the sky lighten outside. I figure Frank thinks I did everything I could to protect him from Lindsey’s suspicions. He has no way of knowing that I ignored her request to ask me more questions.
* * *
My classes are sparsely attended. Some of my students show up in full Halloween costumes, a few wear fuzzy ears, funny hats, face paint. Colleagues at all three schools joke and gossip by the mailboxes, but I avoid them.
A few of my evening students at SJCC are excited to talk about an essay I had them read about why so many people believe in ghosts. The conversation digresses when Yesenia, wearing fuchsia wings and twirling a glittery wand, tells the class about an episode of Ghost Hunters where they record a voice saying, “They killed us all.”
“It’s not a belief,” Yesenia says. “It’s a real event.”
Jorge, whose first essay attempted to prove the existence of God, tells Elena that ghosts aren’t in the Bible and are against God.
George, a cigar and science-fiction enthusiast, whispers, “They killed us all,” and laughs.
One of my stud
ents, Neda, a young Baha’i woman from Iran, says, “It’s why there is freedom of religion. Yesenia can believe in ghosts if she wishes.”
“Yes,” I say, “I believe that’s true.”
Tatiana, who has slept through most of the class, lifts up her black-hooded head and asks if I’ve given back the papers yet.
“No,” I say. “Sorry.”
She rolls her mascara’d eyes. “When will we get our papers back?”
“Soon,” I say.
* * *
The moon is a dim shard over the parking lot. A faculty member dressed as Willy Wonka walks past me and waves with his top hat before getting into his car and driving away. Mine is the last car in the lot. I hurry toward it, and another car pulls in and drives slowly toward me.
“Miss! Miss Janet!” It’s Frank calling from an open window. I can see his thick hand waving.
I pretend I don’t notice him and toss my books, my papers, and myself into the car. My tires squeal as I pull out of my parking spot and then make a sharp turn onto Moorpark. I take the freeway entrance so fast I feel the car pull to the left. I slow down and look in the rearview mirror. All I see is the usual anonymous flow of white lights behind me.
My GPS insists I take Bear Creek Road, so I exit Highway 17 and begin the winding journey up the mountain. A tailgater appears behind my car with its high beams blinding me. Frank’s following me, I think. But I remind myself that I am usually tailgated on Bear Creek. The driver will probably turn off any minute.
The tailgating continues. I speed up. The driver behind me speeds up. I see a small road up ahead, pull out onto it. The tailgater speeds past me. I start on my way once more.
In a few minutes, I’m being tailgated again. The driver slows down and brakes, then careens forward toward me, off again, then forward. I look straight ahead to ignore the brights that keep rushing my bumper. The driver stays behind me till Boulder Creek when I pull over at the New Leaf Market parking lot and let the car pass.