When it came my turn to go inside, she said, “Excuse me, Pete, where are the other teachers?”
“Oh.”
In fact, I’d failed to contact any of them. What can be said about this?
“I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
Lamely I blurted, “To call them.”
“I don’t believe this.” Her fury was exquisite. She was livid, actually scowling. “You might at least have washed your face and brushed your teeth. They’re green.” She turned, seashell necklace clattering, and marched inside to make like a hostess with the refreshments. I slunk in after her and chugged some coffee myself, taking care to wash it around like a rinse. Kids were exploring the downstairs, and moms were expressing gratitude for our selfless dedication, etc., etc. No one missed me when I took a moment to rush upstairs and tie on a bright red “first day” bow tie (a previous year’s); it took a while to get the knot right—I like a tight, precisely defined knot, with a certain soft, wrinkly flare in the wings of the tie. I don’t go for a lot of dandyish, straight-out wing extension. I had to do several retyings, because my hands were trembling and my fingers were sore from cuts. I believe it’s important to look as together as possible for the start of the year; it’s a small gesture, though not trivial; it engenders respect and makes me feel ready to do my job. I think of it—putting on the tie, adjusting it just so—as analogous to an actor’s preparations for the stage, an athlete’s warm-up before the game.
On my way downstairs I stopped off in the bedroom and purloined our digital alarm clock/radio. What’s a school without a bell? And in the front hallway I exchanged perfunctory farewells with the parents. I’d wanted to get a moment alone with Jenny, if only to admire her beautiful, sandaled feet, but she was already gone, driving away. Little Jane, weeping as usual, had to be coaxed from her mother’s skirts. The girl called Hope was hiding beneath the kitchen table. I called out instructions. “Okay kids, fall in. Make a single-file line and follow me. No pushing or shoving on the stairs.”
Down we went. The basement was cool and damp. It felt like a subterranean bunker hideaway. Matt and Larry, piling down the steps and noticing the dungeon model on its table, exclaimed, “Wow. Cool.” I went in search of a wall socket. There was one behind the furnace. I set the alarm for the time on the display and plugged it in, and it erupted like a siren in the hollow concrete room, scaring Jane into fresh tears. The infant Tim, who was being carried down the steps by his older brother, also let out a howl. I said, “This is the bell. When you hear it you will assume your seats and take out paper and pencil.”
“Can we sit anywhere?” asked Susy Jordan, racing to claim a place at the head of the class. She hurled herself onto a trunk and announced, “This is my seat.”
“Fine. You sit there. Brad, go sit next to your sister.”
“Do I have to?”
“Brad,” said Susy. Brad skulked over and settled onto the edge of the trunk. His sister pinched his arm, scolded him in low tones, “Don’t make trouble, brat.”
“Don’t call me brat.”
“Don’t be one.”
“Hey, hey,” I said. Susy beamed. “I apologize for my brother, Mr. Robinson.” It cheered me to know that at least one potential discipline problem would be taken in hand without intervention on my part. The other problems, it seemed clear, would be Matt and Larry Harris, who remained over by the dungeon, picking up pieces of the model, holding them aloft in the bare-bulb light, saying things like “This is nothing. I could build this shit.”
“Guys, put that stuff down and come over here behind Susy and Brad.” I didn’t want these two in the back of the class—the traditional place for class clowns, spitball throwers, and general fuckups.
“What do we do with these?” asked one, displaying his powerful longbow. “Under the stairs,” I told them. “That goes for everybody. All toys in the cardboard box beneath the stairs. Pronto.”
One by one, the kids came forward and consigned their playthings to the box. Jane’s toy, it turned out, was the stick she’d been using, earlier, to draw dirt pictures of fish. This sad fact earned from Sarah, of the wet red mouth and dog-faced shoes, the harsh comment “That’s your toy? A stick?”
More sobbing from Jane. I had to step in and say, “One of the things I hope to teach you this semester is the importance of tolerating diversity. Who can tell me what the word ‘diversity’ means? No one? Diversity means difference. We’re all different people, with different beliefs, different styles of clothes, different toys and hobbies. And what are some of our special hobbies? Anyone?”
“Helping my mom in the kitchen.”
“Superb hobby, Susy. Uh, let’s see. Steven. Steven, do you have a favorite hobby that you like a lot?”
“Snorkeling in the pool.”
“Another fine hobby. David, how about you? What do you do for pleasure and amusement?”
David, still cradling Tim in his arms, said, from the back of the class, “My mom and dad hardly ever come home, so I have to spend most of my time taking care of my brother. Does that count?”
“Well, actually, no.”
From overhead I could hear Meredith’s footsteps, the creaking of the floorboards. Meredith was probably cleaning juice glasses and coffee cups in the kitchen. Or setting out napkins and plates for lunch break. After a moment she came partway down the basement stairs—interrupting the Harris twins’ Byzantine tales of neighborhood bow-hunting expeditions under cover of night—and said, “Excuse me a moment. Pete, the drain’s clogged again.”
“Be right up, hon.” I went to the metal tool cabinet and got out the plumber’s snake. I coiled the snake like a whip and instructed, “No one leaves his or her seat. There will be no talking. If I hear a single sound from down here, you will all be held accountable.”
Upstairs, Hope was still hunkered down under the table. Chair legs caged her. I hadn’t even noticed her absence from the class. Meredith said, “She won’t come out. Poor baby.”
I pulled back a chair and crouched down, got eye level. “Hope, don’t you like school?”
“No.”
“All your friends are here. We’re going to have a swell time. I have a lot of fun games planned for later. Won’t you come downstairs?”
“Leave her be, Pete. I’ll stay up here with her. She’ll be okay. Look at this drain.”
Sure enough, it was backed up to the rim; piled cups and glasses loomed like a crystal city submerged beneath soapy water that stung my wounds when I reached in for the food trap. I cleared space around the drain and slithered the flexible copper snake into the pipe. It went a foot. I could not force it farther.
“Fuck.”
“Not in front of children, Pete.”
“Right. Sorry.”
I administered a couple more futile plunges with the snake. Meredith watched over my shoulder. Whatever was in there, it was really in there.
“Do we have Drāno?” I asked.
“You’re not supposed to pour Drāno through standing water, I don’t think.”
“Hmn. Maybe this’ll drain out over time. We can pour Drāno in later.”
I re-coiled the wet snake and bent down to peer at Hope beneath the table. She’d gathered herself into a ball, pale child’s arms tightly wrapping dirty knees. Her staring eyes were wild.
“Don’t make me drag you out of there.”
“Pete!”
“Okay, okay. Relax. I was only kidding.” And then, to Hope, this warning: “If you get behind in your lessons you’ll have take-home makeup assignments.”
On the way downstairs I made sure to shut the basement door, locking the bolt securely from the inside, to prevent any more intrusions.
The kids, all nine, were sitting quietly on their trunks. All except Tim, who was still in his brother’s lap, rocking, whimpering.
As I came down the creaking steps David raised his hand. “Mr. Robinson?”
“Yes?”
“I need to change him.”
“Can it wait?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
How very tiresome. “All right, go ahead.” David hoisted his brother and headed for the stairs, but I blocked his path. He said, “It’s best if I do this in a bathroom.”
“I don’t mind if you do it here. You can rest Tim on top of the furnace. The rest of us will continue with class, and you can listen in.”
David didn’t look enthusiastic about changing his little brother on the furnace, but I insisted it was okay, he didn’t have to be squeamish, it wouldn’t distract the rest of us in the least. Finally he gave in and retired to the back of the basement, where, in dim, forty-watt light, he unsnapped Tim’s jumper. I took my place behind the podium. I kept the plumber’s snake by my side. Susy and Brad sat at attention in the first row, ready to jot notes. Matt and Larry hunched forward like hoodlums in their seats. Steven and Sarah, sharing the trunk behind the Harrises’, made a sweet couple. Next came Jane. Near her feet the bison mascot rested on its sunk-in drain grating. I exclaimed, in my best oratorial style, “Everybody, repeat after me. Diversity! Tolerance!”
“Diversity. Tolerance,” said Susy Jordan.
“All of you. Diversity! Tolerance!”
“Diversity. Tolerance.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing. Louder now. Diversity! Tolerance!”
“Diversity. Tolerance.”
“Much better. Again with feeling. I want to hear you. You too, David. Raise the rafters. Together now. Diversity! Tolerance!”
“Diversity! Tolerance!” the youths chorused.
“Excellent. That’s your class motto. Learn it and don’t forget it.”
It was also, I’d decided, a perfect centerpiece slogan for the mayoral campaign. Listening to those kids chant gave me such a high.
“How’s it going, David?” I called to the boy performing childcare at the back of the room.
“Almost finished, Mr. Robinson,” waving a soiled disposable diaper in the air. Its sweet, rotted-fruit smell filled the room. The Harris twins, having gotten a whiff, held their noses and trembled with church giggles. Getting Matt and Larry to hush was easy—all I had to do was make a reproachful face and subtly caress the copper tail of the plumber’s snake dangling like a live thing over the leather edge of the upended trunk/podium. Meanwhile David was searching in vain for a place to dispose of brother Tim’s used diaper. Missing from the basement was a garbage can. The one available cardboard box was in use as toy storage. I told David to please fold the diaper neatly and slide it beneath the furnace.
“Mr. Robinson?”
“Yes, Susy?”
“What are those spots on your arms?”
She was right. The cuts and scratches, formerly reddish, light abrasions, had, over the course of the night and the early morning, blossomed into purplish volcanic flowering splotches. Had the thorns responsible for these welts contained some malevolent toxin? The pain, now that I paused to think about it, to consider it, was acute. I grimaced, told Susy not to worry, it was nothing, an allergic reaction perhaps; and she said, “There’s a big one on your neck.” Then suddenly Tim was crying again, unintelligible sputtering howls that charged the basement air with anxious chaos. I shouted at David, “Would you mind keeping him quiet?” David stuffed a pacifier in Tim’s face. Sarah, who’d been watching, over her shoulder, the entire changing operation, reprimanded David for his lack of gentleness.
“Mind your own business,” he told her.
Sarah turned to me for support. She was an ace flirt for a toddler; she had those enormous eyes, that moist, father-seducing grin. I think it is fair to say that the feelings she aroused in her teacher are best left, in the interests of seemliness, undiscussed. I said to her, “Generally, methods of child rearing are considered to be discretionary. Who can tell us what ‘discretionary’ means? Anyone? Yes, Susy?”
“Private?”
“Close enough.”
Sarah pouted. Under her breath, yet loud enough to be heard, she growled, “Monster.”
The whole class tensed. You could feel it. The silence was immaculate, breathless, complete. Even Tim quit his yowling. It broke my heart to have to exercise discipline on a cutie like Sarah. I had no choice. I addressed the class in a sonorous voice, “It is my sad burden to advise you all of the consequences of calumny and slander in the classroom.”
They looked nervous. This at least was gratifying. I waited awhile in order to let the kids worry sufficiently (a tried-and-true discipline technique—abject silence), before continuing, “Sarah, please rise and come forward.”
She got to her feet. Attempted unsteady progress toward the head of the class. She was, obviously, unnerved. I encouraged her to please get herself moving, and I asked her, “What do you think we ought to do with you?”
She gazed floorward. Her shoulders were trembling. Sarah’s soft lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Class, what should we do with Sarah?”
It was only a matter of time before a hand went up. Then another. And another.
“Steven?”
“I think Sarah should apologize.”
“Thank you, Steven. David?”
“Let her stay late after school and write a hundred times or something?”
“Make her do blackboard-washing duty,” offered Jane, though there were no blackboards to wash.
Leave it to Susy. “Expel her.”
After that I didn’t hazard calling on the Harris twins for their suggestions. There’s a limit. I pointed to a musty unlit corner of the basement, where fungus carpeted the floor and web-enshrouded water pipes plunged down through holes in the ceiling. The straight-backed chair, the one from the living room, sat facing a wall.
“Go over there and sit down, young lady. When you’ve decided you feel ready to behave, maybe you can come back and try to be a member of this class.”
Sarah walked to that chair like she thought it was electric. Her auburn-curled head bobbed low; her arms hung at her sides as if drained of life. I couldn’t help noticing how the basement’s lamplight cast Sarah’s shadow onto the dark far wall: as Sarah walked away from the light, so did her shadow—diminishing, rapidly, in height—walk away from us; it was as if a phantom Sarah were speeding away on a long journey. It was heartbreaking. It was too much for Jane, alone at the back of the class, to bear; she broke down sobbing. Tim spit out his pacifier and joined in. The noise became gruesome. I shouted, “Hey! Hey!” as the wailing swelled to higher and higher intensity. Sure enough, the knob of the basement door at the crest of the stairs began rattling, and Meredith’s muffled voice tumbled down from on high. “What’s all that crying? Pete! Why is this door locked?”
“It’s okay, honey. No problem. No need to worry. Everything’s under control,” I called, merrily.
And, to the kids: “Let’s all settle down. All right?”
Then, loudly: “Listen up and I’ll tell you about a time before democracy was born. A time when affliction and suffering were the bread and water of daily life. Ignorance and rampaging diseases governed men’s lives. Diversity in all its forms was punishable by death or imprisonment, and you were guilty until proven innocent.”
Well, the children did listen. They craned forward on their storage trunks. Their eyes opened wide, their weeping diminished; they wore studious faces. Sarah, her face to the wall, even little Sarah seemed to tune in—you could see it in her hypererect posture. Of course, that might’ve been the chair. For my part, I was in the groove, gathering steam and rolling through the terrible centuries, telling tale after tale to the finest audience in the world.
“And then what happened?” the kids would eagerly demand whenever I paused for breath.
“He received the tongue screws and never was able to utter a word again, but using blood as ink, he wrote a diary of his dying days in a worm-plagued prison cell, and was declared a martyr,” I would tell them.
Or:
“They took hold of her and viciousl
y tore the flesh from her sides, only to discover that her smile grew, and she was in ecstasies for her pain.”
Or:
“Flames leapt into air, licking the tender soles of their feet, and yet they sang on, a great chorus of voices offering exaltations on high.”
Later, during a generalized discussion of fortified castle keeps, I brought forward the 1:32-scale model, which I carefully showed around, in order to point out salient features of bastille design.
And when we got to the rack—when we got to the rack, I knew, before the familiar queries had barely flown from those six-, seven-, and eight-year-old mouths—I knew the very questions the students would ask:
“Did the torturers leave the people on that thing for a long time?”
“Did you get taller?”
“Could you get torn in half?”
“One at a time,” I implored, raising in the air a steady if scarred hand. I wanted to savor the moment. Those upturned faces before me seemed the faces of angels; pure and spirited, they radiated light. It’s a light every teacher lives to bathe in: the luster of the young soul.
“Mr. Robinson?”
It was Sarah. She was sitting in her chair, forsaken. She seemed so far away. Her head was turned to face her peers, and her eyes were full of longing.
“Yeah, Sarah?”
“I think I’m ready to join the class now.”
“Are you?”
“I think.”
“And what makes you think you’re prepared to come back and be one of us?”
All eyes regarded her. We waited. It was a tense moment before Sarah, whispering, explained, “It’s dark here. I don’t like it.”
What we were witnessing was nothing less than a practical demonstration of the plight of the pariah. I took the opportunity for a brief discussion of caste, class, and the thorny social problems surrounding taboo violation and the exclusion and/or integration of individuals and groups according to religion, ethnicity, and “lifestyle.”
After which Susy raised her hand and suggested, from the front row, “Make her prove she’s ready!”
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel Page 14