Ms. Hempel Chronicles

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  "Does this mean I can call you Beatrice now?” Sophie asked, and Beatrice said yes, thus ending the search. The dimpling and disdainful child—the person—was nowhere to be found. This clean young woman was standing in her place.

  “Finally! Beatrice. It’s funny, because I always kind of thought we should call you that, and now that I can, it sounds completely strange.”

  "You thought of me as a kid?” Beatrice asked, brushing off some bagel crumbs that had found their way to the front of her shirt. "Inexperienced, maybe? Or just lacking authority?"

  And as much as it might have sounded like a question she would have asked in her past—-a question frankly in search of assurances or compliments—she was asking it now because she was simply interested, and felt nothing but a cool curiosity, as if she were inquiring about a person quite separate from herself.

  “No," said Sophie, "you were like a real teacher. That wasn't why.” She paused to think. °I guess I felt that way because we were close to you.”

  Beatrice looked up, stunned by this kindness, but Sophie appeared to have taken no notice of it.

  “I don’t know why I even asked. As if I could ever get used to calling you anything but Ms. Hempel. That’s ironic, isn't it? We still think of you as Ms. Hempel and we're almost the same age you were when you started teaching us.”

  Could that be possible? Was she really that young? Of course, at the time she had felt washed up, nearly ruined. Her first birthday in the faculty lunchroom: staring dolefully at a little tub of rice pudding and sighing, “I can't believe I’m turning the big two-four,” and Mrs. Willoughby, upon hearing this, hooting with laughter.

  “Not quite the same age,” Beatrice said. “In a few more years.”

  “Well, close enough. We’ll be there soon. The point is I was over at Jonathan’s and we were all sitting around talking—"

  "Jonathan?” Beatrice said. “Jonathan Hamish?”

  “I know. Weird. There’s sort of a group of us—Elias, Roderick, Julia Rizzo—how random is that? And Robert Levy. Cohen. He goes by Bob now. Remember how quiet he used to be all the time? Well, it turns out he’s crazy. Completely hilarious...” Sophie smiled to herself, and began drifting once again toward that dark, blank space that Beatrice realized she did not in any way wish to see further illuminated. Whatever they were up to in their newfound adulthood, she did not want to know. The dusky parks, the shifting neighborhoods, the old bedrooms and kitchens, emptied of parents____

  She found herself wrapping her cardigan more tightly around her in some sort of feeble precautionary measure. Meanwhile, Sophie made her way back to the bright sidewalk. “You know, when everyone graduated, it was like we couldn't wait to get out of there, to meet actual new people. But then after the first year or so, the first few years, we all started coming home and hanging out again. It's not as pathetic as it sounds. Did you know that his mom got remarried? Jonathan’s. Their place is huge."

  When was the last time she had laid eyes on Jonathan Hamish? Years and years ago, as he was being carted away by the police. No, she shouldn’t even think that, not even jokingly. But that was the look he had about him—slouching, defiant, richly amused—as Mr. Peele escorted him back inside the school building. He’d been causing trouble in the courtyard.

  Eighth period, American history. Whap! Whap! The sharp sound of cracking, of something possibly being broken. Ms. Hempel wheeled around from the blackboard and glared. “Brad .. she said ominously, and the boy held up his hands with the indignation of someone who for the first time in his life has been wrongly accused. The class was gazing at the window, the one next to the dusty air conditioner, and Lila put down her pencil and pointed. “It’s coining from out there."

  Ms. Hempel went to investigate. Whap! She flinched. The window shuddered. Down in the courtyard, the varsity track team were milling about as they waited to board the school bus, fuming at the curb, that would deliver them to some faraway campus for their meet. Draped in their glossy warm-up suits, the boys loped elegantly about the yard, their long bodies leaning to one side, weighted down by their voluminous gym bags. Some were pulling cans from the soda machine, others stretching themselves across the steps. Occupied and blameless, as far as she could tell. Then, whap! A face squinted up at her from below. A hand hung suspended in the air.

  She slid the glass open. “Jonathan?”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Hi.”

  “Enough with the window-breaking," she said. “We’re trying to do manifest destiny up here."

  He looked at her blankly, iff “Cut it out, okay? It’s dangerous." She was too far away to see what was happening in his eyes. “Okay?”

  She drew back into the room and tugged down the sash. No sooner had she closed it: Whap! The class, hunched forward in their desk-chairs, ecstatic with the distraction, let out a breathless little laugh. Whap!

  “Jonathan,” she sighed, and reopened the window.

  She saw that he had an endless supply: the pool of gray pebbles out of which a sad, spindly tree had been trying for ages to grow. Jonathan’s one hand was cupped, heavy with ammunition, while his other hand had found the deep pocket of his tracksuit. *

  She gazed down at him. “What.”

  “Is it true that you’re leaving?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. "I was wondering. I just wanted to know.”

  “And it couldn’t wait."

  “So it’s true, then. You’re leaving.” With a softly spilling sound, he released his handful of pebbles back into their small enclosure. Then he glanced up, as if struck by a sudden thought. “You shouldn’t leave, he said.

  “I’m going back to school.”

  “School?” he asked, incredulous. “What for?"

  “I’m not going to yell it out the window!” She could hear the happiness in her own voice. “Couldn’t you have asked me in the hallway? Or some other place where people have

  conversations?”

  But he wasn’t even looking at her anymore. His attention had already roamed elsewhere, and here she was leaning halfway out the window, hollering. She straightened at once, hands back on the sash, and as she declared, “I’m trying to teach right now,” she saw the mass of bodies in the courtyard part neatly along the middle, and Mr. Peele come bearing down on him.

  He would be missing his meet that afternoon. And if he was still anything like he used to be in the eighth grade, she knew this was the one punishment that devastated him. Absurdly, she felt the fault was hers. And though she was certain there must have been other sightings before the year ended, this was the last time she could actually remember seeing him—his brave, shuffling walk up the steps in the shadow of tall Mr. Peele.

  “So the man his mom married,” Sophie continued, “makes bank. He started a company and then he sold it. Technically I should call him Jonathan's stepdad, but seeing that he came kind of late into the picture, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of parenting left to be done. So we just call him Jeff. Or sometimes Jrfe, but really only Bob calls him that." Beatrice felt grateful as she half listened to Sophie’s sweet and inscrutable chatter, grateful that Sophie was the stranger she happened to be following from the station, and not another child, not Jonathan. “Jeffs very interested in technology," said Sophie, “and he subscribes to all of those magazines, and they’ve turned the whole garden level into—his word—a media center. It’s completely gorgeous. It’s like being inside a movie theater. But he won’t let you go down there holding even so much as a soda. Can you believe that? It’s criminal: an entire media center gone to waste. So we’re stuck up in Jonathans room, everybody trying to fit on his bed, and there’s nothing to do except watch the guys play Grand Theft Auto on the little beat-up TV that used to be in his old house."

  “That is criminal,” Beatrice murmured.

  “Julia will play sometimes, but I can't stand it—those games make me sick. They give me headaches. So I have to entertain myself. And the other night, I
’m poking around and looking at all these pictures he has taped up on the door of his closet—and I shriek, literally, because there is a photo of Bessie Blustein!” Oh, Bessie Blustein—Beatrice winced— that tortured soul whose name was as wrongly bovine and placid as her appearance. She had left the school after the eighth grade to reinvent herself as a gothic Elizabeth. “It was a picture from that day at the courthouse—she was wearing her choir robe, too. And whoever said that black is slimming—well, they never saw Bessie Blustein dressed up as a Supreme Court justice. I know, that’s really mean of me. I bet she’s lost a lot of weight by now. But in the picture she’s this big black smudge in the middle. To be fair, the photograph is pretty blurry. And I say to Jonathan, ‘What are you doing with a picture of Bessie Blustein on your wall?’ and he says, without even looking up from the game: fuck Bessie Blustein, it’s a picture of you. Meaning you, Ms. Hempel. And he says it with this voice like, you idiot. Meaning me. So I look more closely, and sure enough, there you are! Up in the corner, way in the background, trying to fix Ben Vrabel s tie.

  A slow warmth suffused Beatrice's face, her body—she felt as if she’d been set alight.

  “And that’s when we started talking about the whole Constitution thing we did. Which is why it was still on my mind when I was talking to my friend. Don't worry, you don’t know him, he didn't go to our school. But here’s what I was trying to say: we still called you Ms. Hempel! We sounded like a bunch of little kids. Right in middle of a serious discussion about the war, presidential powers, civil liberties, all that stuff Completely incongruous. But that’s what I mean: you’re Ms. Hempel forever. At least to us."

  Beatrice was smiling uncontrollably.

  “I know! Incongruous. You taught us that word,” Sophie said. "I still use it all the time. That, and precarious

  Beatrice didn't know what to do with herself, with this ridiculous feeling of joy, so she threw her arms around Sophie for another hug. “That’s about the nicest thing anyone has ever told me,” she said into a curtain of slippery hair. All she wanted to do now was float away, or at least travel the remaining two blocks to the park, where in the shade of its enormous plane tree she could unwrap the story and gaze at it quietly by herself. What a reversal—usually it was the young person itching to get away from the old—and here was puffy, aching Beatrice, making polite excuses to the most beautiful of girls.

  “I need to pop into the store, anyhow," said Sophie, untucking her orange purse. “I know, don’t give me that look; I know that it’s a disgusting habit. But it’s mine now!” she said cheerfully as she pulled an almost-empty pack of cigarettes from her bag.

  "Kisses,” she cried, and stepped away, while Beatrice panicked, not knowing what she could give in return.

  "You look breathtaking, Sophie!” she called. “Did I tell you that? You look glorious. All the way from the station 1 was walking behind you and thinking, what a beautiful, beautiful person..."

  “Oh. Thanks,” Sophie said vaguely, as though she’d received this tribute so many times that it had ceased to mean anything at all. “That’s really sweet.”

  Now it appeared as if she were the one who suddenly longed to get away.

  “And I meant to ask,” persisted Beatrice, “whatever made you turn around? Because I’m so glad you did. Otherwise I never would have realized it was you, and we never would have had this chance to talk. But isn’t that an unusual thing?

  I almost wondered if you could hear what I was thinking. Because that’s odd, isn’t it—to just turn around as pure walking down the street?"

  A short, brittle laugh burst out of Sophie “I’m not going to bore you with the long version, but needless to say, there’s a guy involved.” Famously, she rolled her eyes; but this time there was more than just contempt in the gesture, there was also weariness, and maybe something else. “Put it this way; it’s my new habit. Being aware of my surroundings. You know what I mean?”

  Oh yes, fear. That’s what it was. Beatrice weakly held up

  her hand in a wave. "Well, be careful,” she said pointlessly. She pulled her sweater closer as she watched Sophie disappear inside the grubby store.

  The two blocks that separated her from the park now struck her as an impossible distance. This happened more and more often, the abrupt onslaught of exhaustion. If she were to sink right down onto one of those worn stoops, would they let her stay? She realized she hadn’t even told Sophie—who probably just assumed she’d grown fat. And she didn’t remember to mention that she had a new name. No one, not even the solicitors who bothered her on the phone, called her Ms. Hempel anymore. And other new names were likely to come, among them Mama, most strangely. Or Mom. Something her students would on a rare occasion call her when they were deeply lost in concentration—an accident, of course, and they would blush.

  She had been having such dreams—a common phenomenon, said the books—but how could dreams like these be considered in any way common? She’d wake up late in the morning, throbbing with surprise and pleasure, aghast at what ha* subconscious was capable of. It seemed a good argument for sleeping even more than she already was. And that particular night, as might be expected, she dreamt once again of school, not one of the fretful dreams that used to dog her, even long after she had stopped teaching, but a gentle dream, a beautiful dream. When she woke her face was wet, and there was only one fragment she could remember: the long hallway outside her classroom, and the eerie light coming through the mottled glass of the doors that swung at the end of the hall, and the feeling of moving down the passageway very slowly and deliberately. There was someone beside

  her, also moving. A child—no taller than her shoulder, half a step behind, breathing hoarsely—whom she loved. Together they were walking down the hallway, headed toward some bright, severe place where they didn’t really want to go. It was her role to take the child there and then return; she could hear the muffled roar of her classroom at their backs, and all the kids stirring around inside, waiting. But for now she was alone with the child she loved, walking farther down the hall, deeper into the silence, the strange glow ahead of them, the child slipping his hand into hers and she holding it lightly, the whole dream filling with her wish that their steps would grow slower, and the passage grow longer, so that they might never have to reach the place where they were supposed to arrive.