It’s quite possible I was a little nervous, too; a little intimidated by the big series of tomorrows in my path, but all I can remember of that particular day was my belief that I had found a way to do something about George without actively intervening in his life. And it would be educational for everyone. I could not wait to begin it. Intellectually, I’m sure I must have understood that I should not put too much faith in this work, this business of being a teacher who influences his students to conquer iniquity. That day I got them writing about God was a case in point. I had gotten them to write a lot on the subject—some of them angrily—but one real ghastly result from that assignment was that many of them wrote long-winded, boring, simple-minded essays about the savior and God and how unbelievers should suffer.
As excited as I was, the thought of having so many individual personalities waiting for me to do something was unnerving and even, at times, threatening. I wanted so much to believe that I was in the right place, doing the right thing, working out a real future for myself. At some level, perhaps I wanted to sharpen my moral blade for the time when I would face the more advanced students in a college classroom. Even if I went to law school someday, it would serve me. The grandest mistake any person or culture can make is to lose sight of the difference between what is law and what is right.
All of these kinds of things probably went through my mind at one time or another after that day, but the one thing that really got me going was the certain belief that I was about to make a difference in George’s life, and teach the rest of them something pretty amazing, too: that evil is real, and sometimes it is human and often looks like it ought to be good. Why else would it attract so many people?
9
Introducing Hitler
The school only had one video machine: a twenty-five-inch color TV strapped to a five-foot stand, with a videotape player on the shelf below it. But nobody ever used it. Bible called it a “new-fangled contraption” and when he wanted to show a film, he used the school’s film projector. So I had the video machine to myself. (When I first dug it out of the closet in the back of Mrs. Creighton’s office, I could write my name in the dust on it.) I showed videos to every class. Not just documentaries, either. I showed them The Sorrow and the Pity, Night and Fog, The Twisted Cross, but I also let them see The Diary of Anne Frank, and Judgment at Nuremberg. My subject matter was simple: human cruelty. Nothing else. I didn’t get into politics, or political systems; I didn’t talk about democracy, or fascism; just human cruelty.
I rented the videotapes from the Fairfax County Library which had an enormous collection. I didn’t care how long the films were, either. My classes all took one hour, so I would begin a film and let it go as far as it could in an hour, then at break between classes I’d rewind it and start over. At the end of the day I’d leave it where it was, note the number on the counter, and the next day, at the first class, I’d play it to the end, then rewind to that number and start it there for the next class. My method worked perfectly. I don’t think my students missed more than a frame or two of any of the films. And, I have to admit this: I realized while they were watching films, I had pretty much nothing to do. It was a nice way to give myself a break for a solid two or three days each week.
I don’t think those kids had any idea what was happening to them. Some of the girls cried and cried. Even a few of the boys got fairly teary when they saw the films of the bodies and the camps. I heard one of the kids talking at break, and I got a bit of a scare when I heard the words, “dirty movie.” But how could anybody call any of those films “dirty.” If anything on earth could be said to have extreme “redeeming social value,” it would be films like that. So I made up my mind not to worry.
I did the holocaust film project for everybody. I wanted all of them to know. But I kept my eye on George, hoping to see some evidence of enlightenment; of new understanding. Surely, I reasoned, he would begin to recognize the cruelty of his own father if he saw how it operated when it was official and government-sponsored. I am not suggesting that George’s father was as bad as the Nazis, but only that he was cruel—and that if I made George an expert in methods of human cruelty and madness, he would begin to see that his father was in the same arena: a cruel and brutal bastard.
During the several days that I was showing these films, it rained. Every day. A long, soaking, drippy, sad rain. One day early in that drenched week, just after I had parked my bus in the back and raced to my classroom to keep from getting wet, I saw Leslie Warren hop out of a blue Ford Escort and start up the sloped driveway to the back entrance of the school. She tried to run, carrying a lot of books and notebooks in one hand and holding a newspaper up over her head with the other. Near the top of the driveway she slipped on some wet leaves and fell to her knees hard. She tried to get up, then sank back down again. I ran out to her, skating and skidding up to her myself. It was very hard to be sure-footed on that slick asphalt.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She looked at me. She had a dark bit of leaf on her chin. “Help me up.”
I leaned down and took her hand. Her books were scattered at her feet, and mud and black leaves clung to her legs and her skirt. I said, “Did you hurt yourself?” I reached out and gently removed the black leaf from her chin. “You’re not cut are you?”
“I’m all right.” She brushed the front of her skirt and then she screamed, “Fuck!”
It’s possible my feet left the ground.
She started gathering her things and I leaned down to help her. The rain increased and I felt the icy stab of each drop on my back as I picked up her papers. When I handed them to her, she smiled. I touched her arm to steady her and started to try to move us the rest of the way up the hill. It was very slippery, so she held onto me as we walked. When we got to the back door of the school, she stopped and looked at me. “You’re new aren’t you?”
I nodded, let go of her arm and stepped back a bit. Her voice was smooth—only slightly low-pitched—like sweet, low notes on a piccolo.
“You teach English, right?”
“I do.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about you.” Now she had a wry smile on her face. I was finding it hard to believe anyone could find the nerve to talk to her, much less be sharing gossip.
“I hope you’ve heard good things.”
“I bet you’ve heard about me too, haven’t you?” The look on her face was so expectant, so completely innocent—but she knew what people were saying about her. I tried to avoid letting her see anything in my face, but I said, “No, I haven’t heard anything much.”
She laughed sweetly, knowingly. “I bet it’s all bad.”
“Do you think you’ve been bad?”
“I try my best.”
I laughed nervously.
“It was nice of you to help me,” she said. “I hope to be in your class next year.”
I couldn’t take my eyes from her face, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to say anything. She smiled again, and I nodded again, and then she went on inside.
The rain came and went all that week. It would clear a bit at night, and the wind would pick up a little energy, herd a few leaves across the moonlit parking lots and empty driveways, and then before midnight the moon would vanish and the rain would start up again—pouring for a time, forcefully and with apparent purpose, as though the heavens wanted to rinse the earth clean of anything not cemented to the ground. In the morning it would stop, then begin to drip, mist up, and swiftly turn again to a steady leak from above. I thought the weather was a perfect backdrop to what we were studying, since it made everything appear black-and-white—like the footage we were all watching on the screen—and for more than a week, the sky remained as gray and light as un-brushed steel.
George was in my first period class. And one day, when we were pretty well finished with all the videos I could find on the subject, I began the all-important discussion I had been building up to. It was still cloudy outside, but now it wasn’t raining, and perio
dically, the sun would break through the gray dome and send scattered beams down through the leaves. I started by asking one question: “Why cause other human beings to suffer?”
Of course, the answer I hoped for was, “It must be hate.” What I got seemed only slightly off the mark. One student said, “War.” Another said, “It’s politics.” We talked about racism for a while, and then finally, somebody said it: “Hate.”
I said, “What about love? Can a person love you and still make you suffer on purpose?” I waited awhile, looking at all of them, and then I said, “George?”
His eyes seemed to enlarge and he stared at me for a moment, but not as though he was thinking about how to answer the question. His head was tilted slightly, his hands splayed out in front of him on the desk. His eyes went right through me, really, and weren’t seeing me at all.
“George?”
Now he focused on me. “What?”
“What do you think?”
“What was the question again?”
He hadn’t even been listening. I repeated the question for him, and this time without hesitation he said, “No.”
“No?” I said. What was I supposed to do then? Could I say, “What about what your father does to you?”
Happy said, “Sometimes people do things because they love God. They torture or kill people over it. Right?”
“That’s right,” I said, and the class went on. I realized the whole experiment led to nothing with George. He sat there, quiet, appearing to listen to what everybody was saying. I made one more stab—a direct attempt to hit the mark, without naming names. I did not look at George as I spoke. “What about parents who beat and abuse their children? Is that hate? Or love?”
George said, “It’s anger.” He did not turn away from me, and his face was expressionless, but it still broke my heart. “It isn’t love or hate. It’s just anger. Children need to be managed …” he stopped.
“Yes, but …”
“They have to be made into good people. It’s just discipline.”
“But it doesn’t have to be abusive,” I said. “You don’t mean that …”
Happy said, “It shouldn’t be torture.”
“What’s any of this got to do with the holocaust?” George said.
“Well, we were talking about cruelty,” I said. “Is it cruel for parents to physically harm their children?”
They all agreed it was. Even George. He was smiling now, looking around the room as everybody talked. He didn’t know I had focused everything toward him, that he was the impetus for everything we’d done for the past week and a half, and his ignorance of that fact made me see him as even more vulnerable; I think I may have been embarrassed for him. I know I suddenly felt exquisitely sorry for him.
I don’t remember if I thought my effort was a failure—it was, after all, only the beginning of what I hoped would be a sort of awakening on George’s part—but I am sure it was not a smashing success. Still, what I tried to do for him became sort of emblematic of a trend in my teaching over those two years. It was always personal with me. Most of the time, what I taught was aimed at somebody in particular.
The holocaust project drew praise from Mrs. Creighton and the other teachers. It had certainly given my classes something to talk about, to think and write about. I couldn’t wait for Parent–Teacher night. I thought I was doing pretty good, to tell you the truth.
I read almost all of the journals after the first week of the holocaust project.
(George) folded
11/06/85
Sometimes I wish I was dead. I’m so stupid. Those stick figures in the movies, those dead people getting piled into mounds of white skin and bone made me sick to my stomach. I don’t like people. I really don’t like people.
(Jaime Nichols) folded
11/08/85
those nazis were really mean. They didn’t care about anybody at all except themselves i’m glad the united states went over there and beat them. It’s a good thing they were stopped and didn’t get to come to the united states. So many families killed and in awful ways. I wish I didn’t know about all this now. I think Mr. Jameson, if your reading this, and I bet you do read these folded pages too. Their the only pages I would probly read myself if I had to go through so many journals. I bet your reading this right now and if you are, I’m sorry you decided to show us so much death and destruction and all by those people of the old times in England and Germany. That’s what I think, and I don’t care if you read it, but I’m going to fold this page over anyway just in case you dont’ really read the folded pages. But I know you do. Jaime.
(Mark Talbot) folded
11/08/85
I think Jaime Nichols has a crush on Mr. Jameson. She never takes her eyes off him. She’s as dumb as a paper clip. She didn’t even know who Hitler was. Leslie Warren likes her sex and especially when she’s had a little pot. Last Saturday I took her to the mall and we hung out for a while, got stoned, then we went down to the Presbytarian church and down the basement steps to the little cubby hole there by the back door. I made out with her. I touched her cunt and she smiled and then she was breathing really heavy. So fast and heavy I couldn’t keep kissing her. She put her hand in my pants and grabbed my cock and started pulling on it and all. I’m going to really give it to her this weekend. We’re going to a party in my friend’s house and his parents are out of town. It’s going to be sweet. She was begging me to rub her cunt and put my fingers in between the lips of it and all. She was so hot and wet, and breathing and panting so much she started begging me to fuck her. You reading this, teach? Got a hard on? I got you, didn’t I?
I hoped Talbot was a liar. I didn’t like the idea that he was with Leslie in that way. I felt as though he dishonored her, defaced her. Perhaps he was only trying to trick me into revealing that I was reading the folded entries. Not that I was jealous or anything. I just hated the suggestion that she would lavish her affections on such a sloppy, gangly fellow. I didn’t think he was worthy of her. Nor was the behavior he described with such relish.
(Happy Bell) folded
11/8 /85
Mark Talbot’s an asshole. He asked me for drugs. I told him to fuck off. He’s always trying to do drugs and all. Asking me for ludes and angel dust and stuff. He knows all the words and talks like he knows all about it and he don’t know shit. He begged me to give him celophane yellows and blues. Nobody, mr. fuckwad, gives that stuff away no more. Anyway, nobody in this place has the nerve to fuck with that stuff. the drug game is totally bogus in this jaile. All these rich fucks and they can’t score a little coke even from their mommy and daddy. Don’t worry if your reading this mr. J. I dont do drugs. I’m going to make something of myself.
My eleventh grade class was memorable because of George, I suppose—but Jaime, Mark, and Happy helped it along, too. Most of the dreary entries in the journals of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old children kill brain cells at an alarming rate, and no one should ever be forced to read them. The only interesting entries, predictably, were the ones they did not want me to read, but even those were usually feral and utterly boring. Still, I realized I could keep track of some things I was not supposed to know about—although many of my students never did trust that I would not read the folded pages. I ignored them, did not respond to their suspicions and I suppose for some, I earned a measure of trust over the days and weeks of the school year. I didn’t know what to do about the drugs, though. I knew they were testing me with references like that, but I couldn’t just ignore them. For a long time, I watched them vigilantly, but eventually they stopped talking about it, and I never did find any drugs to speak of. I think most of my students were pretty smart and some were smart alecks. (One day Happy showed up with a paper lunch bag taped under each eye. I said, “What’s that supposed to be?” and he said, “I’m really tired. I haven’t slept at all. Do I have bags under my eyes?”)
I think George trusted me, at least. But I could not penetrate his innocence; I could not break
through his naive belief that his life with his mother and father was normal. Since I couldn’t break through to George without, as Bible said, making him “an enemy,” I decided I would have to arrange a talk with his parents. I knew that’s what Mrs. Creighton would want me to do, but I never got a chance to ask her to arrange it. What happened was that a meeting with George’s mother was sort of inadvertently and unwillingly thrust upon me. I was, to put it bluntly, ambushed on Parent–Teacher night.
10
Ambush
I’d never been to Glenn Acres School at night. The ceiling lights were dull and bald, like the lights in a prison, and they made eerie shadows on the walls and on the faces of people. The whole event turned into a long, tedious, impossible sea of faces and names, hands reaching in to shake mine, eyes brimming in really inadequate light. The building was so crowded, it was like a teen party raided by unruly parents, everybody milling around. At one point I was talking to one of my seniors, with her mother and father standing right there, and this little shadow seemed to filter into my space; it was a presence that suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision, right next to me, small and below my belt level, and I turned reflexively to see what it was. I was leaning away, too—as a sort of defense, really, since I thought it might be a large dog or some other animal with significant teeth and a tendency to slobber—and this little gnome-like face, with too much hair around the nose and mouth, stared up at me from the shadows with eyes like small black beetles. It said something that only registered as a deeply troubling snuffle. I jumped back, raised my arms in an instinctive way, and let out this helpless, miniature scream that sounded like, “Eeek.”
“This is my grandmother,” the student said.
In the Fall They Come Back Page 8