Letting Loose

by Joanne Skerrett

  Now that I’ve given you the third degree, I’ll answer your questions: I moved back to Dominica because I felt a sort of responsibility to my homeland. The migration rate here is unbelievably high—understandably, most of the young people want to be in the UK or US, where there is more opportunity. But I guess the way I see it there are never going to be any opportunities here if our best and brightest never return. This may sound a bit egotistical, but I’m hoping to start a trend, a mass homecoming, if you will. I think if we can just get some more talented folks here, then the country would be a better place for future generations. (Awww…)

  OK, I’m done with my political speech. As you can tell I’m passionate about this stuff. I enjoyed living in the US, but I got bored with making and spending money and not making any real difference. So, while I do miss Falcons games, the Hawks and Knicks, Burger King Whoppers, etc., I’m happier here and definitely more fulfilled. (How fully evolved!)

  I may have asked you this before, but here I go again. Anytime you’re in the area, come down and visit. I’d love for you to come talk to some of the high-school students here. They absolutely idolize American culture and I think they’d be really impressed with you and would most likely listen to you more than they would me or any of their other fellow Dominican teachers.

  I read and reread it several times. Yes, he does sound like someone whom James and Kelly would hit it off with. He shared their idealistic view of the world. But he didn’t sound like a protest freak. I mean, he was using his money to improve his country. It wasn’t like he was spreading communism or building a madrassa. He just sounded like a good guy. A good, solid guy. And I liked that. I mean, he was great-looking, smart. Okay, I’ve gone over this list way too many times. There has to be a flaw. He knows I’m, er, Rubenesque. He did see my picture. There has to be a catch. But I decided to put that out of my mind. Why did there have to be a catch? I remembered the words of a famous preacher whose book I’d snapped up at Barnes & Noble. He said that if one doesn’t expect great things to happen, then great things won’t happen. There. I will put this into practice. I will expect something great to happen from now on.

  So what to do? I couldn’t write him back right away. That would seem too eager. But I wanted to know more and tell him more. But I had to wait. The way I felt now I’d probably pour out my heart to him. Telling him how much I wanted to escape my life and just live in someone else’s for a while. No family. No roommates. No students. No freezing cold, snowy winters. I logged off instead.

  The thing is, I kind of liked my life. Improvements were possible, but if it stayed this way forever it wouldn’t be too terrible. At least I wouldn’t end up like my mother, drunk, angry, and afraid to face the world, or Gerard, who seemed to be staggering onto the edge of some metaphorical cliff. I was better off than a lot of people I knew.

  It was time to make dinner. Maybe I’d make deep fried chicken and oven-baked fries. Heck, I’ll fry the fries. Why fake it?

  Chapter 7

  My last period class was angry with me again. I’d been so preoccupied with Drew on my mind and trying to drown out their insolence that I’d forgotten that I was the reason their beloved Treyon was suspended and would not be providing the entertainment this week. A part of me felt sorry for them. They had me right after History with Lashelle Thompson, who always gave them the “black perspective,” regardless of the assigned text. One of the kids, Tina, I think, had asked me once why we didn’t read more books by black authors. That had really hurt because more than half the books were by black, Asian, and Hispanic writers. But she didn’t consider García Márquez relevant to her experience. How could I explain to her that I wasn’t Lashelle, and more importantly, that the education that would take her to college was not necessarily the one that would bring her the most satisfaction or vindication. Instead, I gave her a list of books that she could borrow from the library and read on her own time, but I suspected that she would never follow through. Why did I give up so easily? I didn’t know. Sometimes I thought that I didn’t care enough anymore to be doing this. These kids were wearing me down into an apathetic, disillusioned mess.

  I asked if anyone wanted to discuss The Grapes of Wrath. Not one hand rose. Twenty-nine resigned faces glared at me. I couldn’t take this today.

  “Okay, guys. Let’s talk about anything you guys want to talk about for just ten minutes. Just ten minutes, then we’ll go back to the book.”

  At first there was silence. I’d been warned against doing this, it could backfire in so many ways.

  “Why you ain’t married?” This from Shanae, a cute but obviously nosy girl, with the most insanely multicolored braids I’d ever seen.

  I cleared my throat. “I haven’t found the right person yet.”

  “You got a man?” asked David, a 6’3” jumble of awkwardness who’s one of my better writers and known to be one of the school’s best rappers.

  “Not really. I’m too busy. Listen, let’s move on. Has anyone read anything lately they’d like to talk about?”

  “I read about Beyoncé and Jay-Z on vacation in St. Tropez.”

  I cringed; celebrity gossip was not really my forte.

  “Where St. Tropez at?” Tina asked.

  Oh, God. Where was St. Tropez again?

  “All right. Let’s find out,” I said, looking on the worn-out cabinet for an atlas. There wasn’t one. That really irked me. The freaking globe was broken and there was no atlas at all in a freaking classroom. It was bad enough that I found myself bringing in my own supplies…

  I had no idea where St. Tropez was and there was no atlas in the room to at least make it look as if I was trying to teach the class a lesson. I cursed the stingy Massachusetts Department of Education and racked my brain. I’m not stupid, I’m just scatterbrained. The entire class was looking at me as I stalled in the cabinet, pretending to look for something that I knew wasn’t there.

  Then I focused. I pictured a map of the world in my head and started mentally drawing in the continents. Okay, I thought. St. Tropez must be warm, and since Beyoncé and Jay-Z, those two paragons of ostentatious consumerism and hedonism, went there, it must have been expensive. Hmmm…South in some European country, France or Spain or Italy. Tropez. Lord help us, but I’m going to go with France. Okay, here we go, class.

  They were nonplussed by my answer; they had already moved on. My performance thus ended, I decided to stop trying to be super teacher. Back to the text.

  Everyone hated me again when I asked about the Joads. It was sad that our little rapport had ended so abruptly. But I couldn’t take the chance of them asking me another question I couldn’t answer. So, I was back to being Mean Ms. Wilson. The world was back in balance.

  I couldn’t wait till I got home. I hurried, ran, really, to the teacher’s lounge to use one of the computers there. I had broken down late last night and written him a reply as long as a New Yorker short story. I gave him the family history—just the facts without too much of the ugly truth. Told him that I liked to read, cook, and watch movies; that I wasn’t too athletic, though I did like to dance and was beginning to enjoy my cycling class (that was stretching the truth a bit); and that there wasn’t much more to me than that. It sounded spare but I had to be honest because that was me. I wasn’t like James and Kelly, who had ten billion hobbies and interests. You would not catch me climbing a mountain in New Hampshire on any given Saturday afternoon, nor would I be running any five-mile races or 10 K’s. Give me a good book and a cookie recipe and I’m happy for a week. At least until I weighed myself again. Then I’d answered his questions. What made me truly happy? When my students show some interest in literature, spring, memories of my father before he got sick, great shoes. What made me laugh out loud? My brother’s dirty jokes, though he makes few of them these days. What made me angry? The fact that poor kids got so little from public education in one of the richest states in the country. That my relationship with my mother will always be full of conflict. That I can’t seem
to bring myself to care about much anymore. Or did that last one just make me sad?

  At the time I’d clicked send, I realized it had been too much. But I’d been feeling melancholy. I’d eaten too much at dinner again. Pasta with shrimp in marinara sauce. Three plates of it. And then Healthy Choice chocolate chip cookie ice cream for dessert. I could hear James and Kelly going at it in their room and I felt lonely and a little sick from overeating. So I poured my heart out. Now I had to do e-mail damage assessment. Either he wouldn’t write back or he would with some reason why he suddenly became very busy and probably wouldn’t be able to write much anymore.

  There it was, his e-mail, at the top of my in-box, right on top of one from Whitney with only exclamation marks in the subject field. I didn’t really want to know what that was about, though I knew it would be something that ultimately would involve Max, her Tunisian.

  Here goes, I thought, as I opened Drew’s e-mail. It was long, as long as mine.

  Wow, it’s really hard to find a woman who’ll admit to liking to cook in the 21st century. You’re part of a dying breed. (Okay, he has a corny edge to him that needs to be shaved off.) I have to say I’m enjoying getting to know you. You sound like such a down-to-earth person. (Oh no! The equivalent of a woman describing a guy as “nice.”)

  And so on and so forth. He didn’t understand why I didn’t get along with my family. That’s probably because I left out the part about our little drinking problem. He also liked to read but prefered history books and biographies. (Hmm…only really smart people read stuff like that.) He said he was angry, too, at how the American government tended to “misallocate its vast resources” when it came to educating its youth. Yeah, I agreed with that, though I couldn’t have said it so eloquently. He wanted to talk, he said at the end of his e-mail.

  It would be nice to have a voice to match with the picture and e-mails.

  I had been thinking that, too, though I worried that my little fantasy could blow up into a thousand pieces if he ended up sounding like Pee-Wee Herman or that rapper who yelled all the time. But what if he sounded like Mekhi Phifer? Oh, then I’d be in big trouble. Then I’d have to get on the next American Airlines flight to that little twenty-nine-square-mile island.

  He’d left a number and said to call collect. What kind of a person did he think I was? I would wait as long as I could. Maybe all week if I could stand it. In my heart, though, I knew I wouldn’t make it through Wednesday—unless someone managed to destroy all the phone lines that got into my path.

  “What you up to, sis?” a voice came from behind me, and I jumped in my chair. I’d forgotten where I was.

  “Hi, Lashelle. How’s it going?”

  She smiled and sat next to me. Lashelle was cute. But she had a huge butt. All the male students loved her because of it, plus she loved to show it off. But that ghetto booty just bugged the heck out of me. It was always up in everybody’s face. I mean, she wore tight skirts and too-small pants and her behind just hung out there. I didn’t think it was cute. Not that I have anything against big butts. I have one myself. But in relation to the rest of her, Lashelle’s butt was just proportionally disturbing. But what do I know? Whitney has told me time and time again that I can be a self-loathing sister. And Whitney, with her perfect size 4 butt, is up on those things much more than I am.

  I minimized the screen. I didn’t want Lashelle to see Drew’s e-mail. She was more plugged in to the gossip network than I was, and I didn’t want to become the subject of it.

  “So, I heard you and Treyon got into it on Friday.”

  “Nah, it wasn’t all that. You know he’s got a mouth on him. I just wasn’t in the mood for his crap.”

  She laughed widely, exposing her silver fillings. “Girl, you gotta learn to ignore those boys. They’re gonna act that way, you know.”

  I liked Lashelle for the most part, but she tended to be a teacher in and out of the classroom, even when she was around other teachers. I didn’t need her telling me how to interact with my students. I certainly did not tell her that she needed to be less familiar and friendly with hers. So I ignored her advice.

  “Anyway, a bunch of us are thinking of going to Mexico, Cabo San Lucas, for spring break. I just realized that we forgot to ask you.”

  Oh, give me a break! They didn’t forget to ask me. I was the newest teacher there, and I was still being hazed, it seemed, a year later. I’d been snubbed at lunches, ignored in hallways, you name it. The principal, my only ally, said that was the way they broke in the newbies. I guess I should have felt relieved that she was asking me on this trip. Maybe I was finally in the club. But I wasn’t going to Mexico with a bunch of people I already spend too much of my life with. Besides, who wants to go to Mexico on spring break along with all the other college students in the country?

  “Oh, I wish you’d told me sooner,” I said, trying to fake remorse. “But I’ve already made other plans.” Spring break was a month away. That was enough time to come up with alternate plans. But Lashelle would not be rebuffed that easily.

  Her penciled-in brows went up. “Oh, really? Where are you going?”

  I had to think fast. St. Tropez? No one would believe that.

  “Dominica,” I said quickly. Oh, I’m an idiot.

  “The Dominican Republic?” She looked incredulous.

  “No, it’s another…a small island in the West Indies. Former British colony…” I was beginning to sound like I’d memorized the data from the CIA World Factbook.

  She sniffed. “Oh, I see. What’s down there?”

  “Um…well…a friend of mine. We’re gonna do some hiking and…”

  She got up from the chair. “That sounds like fun.” She patted me on the shoulder and walked away. I was 100 percent sure she was off to spread the gossip.

  Oh, well. All I’d have to do was hunker down in my room during spring break so I wouldn’t run the risk of running into anyone who might spill my little secret. Hiking? Was I losing my mind?

  Chapter 8

  There were times when I felt totally beautiful, smart, content with all the decisions I’d ever made, and generally at peace with my life. Those times were very rare. For Whitney, however, the issue was when didn’t she feel that way? She wore optimism like her skin. I just didn’t get it. She didn’t have the right because her stuff was just messed up. Messed up!

  We waited forty frigid minutes before we were seated at an okay table at Stephanie’s. The place was very popular, on Newbury Street, and thus jumping on this Saturday night. Fine by me because the crackling excitement in the room was charging up my sputtering mood.

  Whitney was positively glowing and happy. The sex was that good, she said.

  Hmmm…Good sex. I’d stopped talking about sex with Whitney once things got out of control with bête noire. By out of control I mean once I’d started sleeping with him. I hadn’t planned it. But that’s what all adulterers and their coconspirators say, right? He was a stay-at-home dad who picked up and dropped off his boys every day at the school. He’d left the corporate rat race to stay home with his kids and pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He was living my dream. Although, I’ve never really written anything and I probably never will. But I like to think that if I ever got myself together that I could maybe someday write a great novel.

  We chatted about his son Trevor at first. Trevor was highly intelligent and belligerent, so there was much to talk about. Before I knew it, we started to talk about more personal things. Then every extramarital affair cliché one could ever dream up happened to me. I felt like I was living in a Danielle Steel novel. I let him lie to me, stand me up, make a fool out of me for a year and a half. Then his novel was published. The school, the surrounding neighborhood, everyone began to gossip about who the “temptress teacher” character could possibly be. It didn’t take long for them to figure it out; I was the only black female on the staff. The school asked me to leave because they were cutting back on costs, but I knew it was because the scandal was ju
st too embarrassing. His wife left him temporarily and then came back once she threatened to beat the hell out of me and I apologized to her and vowed that I’d never go near him again. That had been my last brush with good sex. I really don’t miss it that much.

  “What are you going to have?” Whitney asked, frowning at the menu. She once had a slight weight problem. In her typical single-minded and focused way, she decided that she was going to lose weight and just up and did it. Six months later, she’d gone from a size 12 to a 4. I don’t think I ever heard her complain about being hungry or being sore from exercise.

  “I don’t know.” I looked around the restaurant. Everything was shimmering gold against black or deep brown. I loved the décor. People were laughing, eating. The food smelled delicious. I love Stephanie’s. I think I once saw Woody Allen in here, though I wasn’t sure.

  “So, anyway, he’s just so passionate about human rights. It’s a huge turn-on,” Whitney said.

  I sipped my virgin frosty drink. I got it that Max, the Tunisian, was passionate about human rights. What I didn’t get was the part that she’d quickly glossed over while we were sitting at the bar waiting for a table: The part about him personally protesting the PATRIOT Act by not reporting to Immigration as our paranoid government requires all Arab men to. To Whitney, this added to Max’s allure; it made him so brave, and “passionate.” To me, that was a bit too out there. And I would know. My roommates have not missed a hell-raising protest since I’ve known them. They burned Bill Gates in effigy in Seattle, slashed tires on a Ford Denali in Detroit, laid in coffins in Times Square before the Iraq invasion. I was quite familiar with civil disobedience in the name of political passions, but Kelly and James were U.S. citizens; this Max guy was on a student visa. For crying out loud, he was a frigging scientist at MIT. From Tunisia! Profile, anyone? I’m sorry, I told Whitney, he fit the terrorist stereotype to a T. She glared at me.