The Teacher's Secret

by Suzanne Leal

  Once she is gone, there is a shift in the room, a loosening almost, as a roomful of eyes stare up at Nina.

  ‘Right,’ she says, ‘I think we’ll take the roll.’ To her dismay, there is a quiver in her voice. She tries to cough it out. ‘Normally when we take the roll, I’d like you just to say present. But today, because it’s our first day together, I thought we might do something a bit different.’

  There’s a slight rustling. This has generated some interest.

  ‘As you can see, the classroom has changed a bit. That’s because I’ve divided the class up into teams. Each team will be on the same table.’

  When they hear this, Kurt and Ethan start to poke each other.

  ‘So today, when I take the roll,’ she continues, ‘I’d like you to say present then listen for your table number.’

  When she calls out ‘Cody Archer’, the skinny blond boy beside Ethan calls out, ‘Present,’ in a high voice. When she gives him his table number—table two—he struts across the room, half performing, half self-conscious, his head turning back to look at his mates as he takes a seat.

  When Elsie Burnett is also sent to table two, Cody points a finger to the side of his head like he’s taking a bullet then slumps down in his seat. Nina is about to reprimand him, but Elsie doesn’t seem perturbed. Instead, with a pleasant, vague sort of smile, she ambles up to the table and sits beside him.

  Kurt Ward is directed to table one, which is closest to the front of the classroom. Cody seems disappointed by this, but Kurt himself makes a victory sign. ‘Number one,’ he says loudly, ‘that’s got to be me.’

  And when Ethan Thompson gets sent to table one, he’s beside himself. ‘Yes,’ he hisses to the ceiling, eyes closed, fists clenched. ‘Yes.’

  Jade Maxwell is also on table one, and as she slips into the seat beside Ethan, she gives him a tickle on the back of his neck. Nina sees that she’s wearing a necklace with the letter E. They’d be better separated, she thinks.

  Beside Bridie Taylor’s name is an asterisk. Laurie says she’s the one to keep an eye on, so Nina has put her on table one too. When she calls out her name, a tiny scrap of a thing puts up her hand. Nina is dumbfounded. Surely not, she says to herself. Surely not a little thing like her?

  For their first lesson together, Nina hands out a maths sheet. Nothing too difficult, just something to get them started.

  Immediately Kurt’s hand shoots up. ‘Miss,’ he says, ‘why did you take down all our paintings and that?’

  This makes the rest of the class look up.

  She isn’t prepared for the question so she just tells them the truth. ‘I thought it would be good to start afresh this term.’

  Kurt keeps his hand up. ‘What do you mean, miss?’

  ‘I thought it would be a good idea to start again this term, to decorate the room together as a new class.’

  Kurt shakes his head hard. ‘But we didn’t ask to be a new class, miss, we just wanted to be the same one. We just wanted to keep on being 6P and that. That’s what we wanted, miss.’

  Kurt has a pleasant voice, melodic and casual, but Nina feels like he’s just slapped her. ‘Well, Kurt, I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. You’re in 6F now, not 6P. And even though it’s a different name, you’re all still together, aren’t you? You’re all still in the same class.’

  ‘But, miss, how come we got you now, instead of Mr P? How come Mr P left?’

  She does have an answer to this question, one that she and Laurie nutted out together. ‘Well, Kurt, Mr Pritchard has reached an age where he doesn’t have to work anymore, so he decided to retire.’

  While the others mull this over, Ethan rails against it. ‘But he told us all this stuff he was going to do so we’d be good for high school and that. So, I mean, why wouldn’t he wait until then? Why didn’t he wait and retire next year?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nina says softly. ‘I don’t know about that.’

  Elsie puts her hand up. ‘Why don’t you ask him, miss? Why don’t you ask him and then you can tell us what he said?’

  There is murmuring, then a nodding murmuring, and Cody calls out, ‘Yeah, miss. You could ask him why he left.’

  Nina feels cornered. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, faltering. ‘I don’t know where he lives.’

  Little Bridie holds up a skinny hand and her voice, soft and high, wobbles as she speaks. ‘I’ll ask my nan,’ she says. ‘She’ll know.’

  No! Nina wants to shout. Not you, not any of you. And especially not you. But that’s not what she says. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she tells them. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  After school, she stops by Laurie’s office. ‘Do you have a moment?’ she asks.

  Laurie frowns at the computer before she looks up. If there’s a look of irritation on her face, it’s only a momentary thing. ‘Sure,’ she says.

  ‘The class want to know what happened to Terry Pritchard. They want to know why he left so suddenly.’

  This time the irritation settles on her face. ‘I thought we’d dealt with that. He retired, simple as that.’

  ‘But he promised to see them through the year. They want to know why he didn’t.’

  Laurie shrugs. ‘That’s too bad. All the students need to know is that Terry Pritchard has retired and you’re their new teacher. Nothing more than that.’

  The answer doesn’t satisfy her. ‘But they feel let down because they don’t understand what’s happened.’

  Laurie frowns again. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s not the last time they’ll be let down in their lives. And anyway, getting rid of Terry Pritchard is the best thing that could have happened to them, we both know that. In the long run, they’ll be thanking us for it.’

  The next day, Laurie is at the classroom door again. This time, she has a boy with her; a boy whose skin is so dark it’s practically black. He’s new to the school, Laurie tells her. His name is Sebastian, Sebastian Chuma.

  He’s wearing the school uniform but there’s something odd about it. It takes Nina a moment to work out what it is. It’s the socks. He’s wearing knee-length socks. None of the boys wear knee-length socks.

  Sniggers come from table one. Nina fixes on Ethan Thompson and slowly shakes her head at him. It doesn’t do any good. Instead, in a whisper that carries over to her, he says, ‘You speaka de English?’ That sets off the rest of the table again.

  ‘Ethan Thompson,’ she announces, ‘I’d like you to move over to table two.’

  He looks at her in disbelief. ‘What do you mean, miss?’

  ‘Just what I said, Ethan: I’d like you to move your things over to table two.’ It’s the only table with a spare seat. And if Ethan moves there, she’ll kill two birds with one stone: she’ll separate Ethan and Jade and she’ll have the new boy close by if he needs any help.

  But Ethan doesn’t move. He just screws up his face and stays where he is.

  ‘Ethan,’ she says, more sternly this time, ‘please move to the seat next to Cody.’

  This time, Ethan does move. In fact, he moves so forcefully, his chair scrapes hard along the floor. His face is thunderous as he scoops everything up from his desk. Carrying it all in his hands, he takes it over to table two and dumps it on the spare desk.

  Nina tries to keep her voice modulated as she turns to the new boy. ‘Sebastian,’ she says, ‘I’d like you to sit in Ethan’s old seat.’

  The boy hesitates then slowly makes his way to the seat. When he sits down, he looks so uncomfortable she starts to regret what she’s done. Especially when she sees Kurt staring at him strangely. When she looks more closely, she sees that he has turned himself cross-eyed. Sebastian doesn’t seem bothered by it; in fact, he’s just smiling at Kurt. And that spurs Kurt on, it seems, because when next she glances at him, he’s still cross-eyed, but this time he’s stretched his mouth wide and stuck out his tongue.

  He looks so ridiculous she’s tempted to laugh. Instead, she raises her voice. ‘Kurt,’ she says, ‘that
’s enough.’ Then she turns to Jade, who is in the seat beside Sebastian. ‘I’d like you to make Sebastian feel welcome,’ she says.

  Jade seems pleased to have been given the job and immediately moves a little closer to him. She is not as fair as Bridie or even Elsie, but next to Sebastian, her skin seems extraordinarily pale. This is something Jade has to have noticed too, because now she’s lining her arm up against his so that they are almost touching. ‘Look at that,’ she whispers to him, and Nina isn’t sure whether to silence her or let her go. The boy doesn’t seem upset; he just looks. It’s true the contrast is great: he is so very dark, she is so very light and they are both so very beautiful. ‘Do you burn, like in summer and that?’ she asks him. When he shakes his head, she stretches her arm right out. ‘I do,’ she says, ‘and sometimes I peel and that.’ She is leaning over close to him now, her mouth close to his ear, even though her voice still carries across to Nina.

  ‘Thank you, Jade,’ she says, ‘but perhaps you can leave the talking until after school.’

  Jade keeps quiet until the bell rings. Then, instead of making her usual run for the door, she waits for Sebastian. ‘How come you’re wearing girls’ socks?’ Nina hears her ask. ‘You should push them down,’ she advises as they walk out together, ‘or everyone’s going to think you’re a faggot.’

  Sid

  There’s that much commotion going on outside, he can’t ignore it any longer so he puts down his hammer and hurries out. But even getting to the door has become a problem now that Terry’s rug is propped beside it. There’s not enough room for a rug that size, but what was he supposed to do, just toss it on the rubbish heap? Terry’s beaut rug? As it was, he’d got the shock of his life to find it outside the classroom, together with the rest of Terry’s things, the whole lot of it ready to be thrown out. He couldn’t believe it. Just couldn’t believe it. But it was the note on the rug that had really got to him. Please dispose of this rug, it said. Well, that was easily fixed, wasn’t it? He just screwed up the note and put it in the bin.

  Then he’d walked into the classroom. That’s when he found himself completely lost for words; he could only look around and wonder what the hell had happened. And as he stood there, staring at the scene in front of him, a picture of Elsie Burnett suddenly popped into his head. Not like she is now but when she was still a little tyke. Six or seven, something like that; when Trina and Len were still together. That day—the day that’s in his mind now—Elsie was hanging on to Trina’s hand as they came through the school gate, her little head down, eyes to the ground. Which wasn’t like Elsie, who was always a head-up, looking-around sort of kid. So Sid had looked a bit closer, to check she was okay. Only then did he see what had happened: her head had been shaved, shaved so she was practically bald, so she looked like a mangy old dog.

  When he’d looked around at Terry’s ruined classroom—everything gone, everything destroyed—that’s the only thing he could think of: poor little Elsie’s shaved head. And when he couldn’t stand gaping at it any longer, he’d had to leave. But he’d taken the rug with him, hadn’t he? He’d hauled it right down the stairs and past the hall. In the end he’d even had to drag it along the ground. Almost killed him. But he’d done it.

  Outside, the commotion is getting louder. He’s not surprised to find Ethan at the centre of it. What does surprise him is seeing him with a kid he doesn’t recognise. Black as night, he is, so black Sid can’t stop himself from staring.

  ‘Keep away from her,’ Ethan is yelling at him. ‘You hear me, you stupid arsehole? You just keep away from her.’

  It’s not the sort of language Sid likes hearing and if Ethan’s not careful someone else will hear it and he’ll be getting himself another detention. So he hurries over to see if he can’t calm the whole thing down.

  But things are worse by the time he gets there: they’re so bad that Ethan is almost hoarse from screaming. Fuck, he’s saying, fucking this or fucking that. Fucking something, at least. Sid can’t make it out exactly.

  Still yelling, Ethan inches closer to the boy until their noses are almost touching. Sid feels a shot of admiration for the new boy; Ethan’s a tough one and it takes some spunk to stand up to him.

  ‘So what are you looking at, huh?’ Ethan taunts the boy.

  The boy doesn’t move. ‘Actually,’ he says, and he sounds almost British, ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at.’

  It’s then that Ethan launches himself at the boy, arms right around him as he tries to wrestle him to the ground. But the boy won’t fall; he just stays planted to the spot.

  It’s time to step in, Sid thinks, and he grabs Ethan by the collar. ‘That’s enough now.’

  But Ethan is still struggling. In fact, he seems almost out of control. ‘You fucking fuck!’ he yells. ‘You fucking fuck fuck,’ as his voice dissolves.

  With an almighty effort, Sid lifts him up so that Ethan’s just about dangling in front of him. With his free hand, he waves the other boy away. ‘Just go,’ he tells him, keeping his voice low. ‘Just go.’

  And to his relief, the boy does. Eyes wide, he turns and walks away.

  Only when the boy’s well out of sight does Sid let Ethan go. ‘What in the world was that all about? What would Mr P say if he saw you carrying on like that?’

  Something in the boy’s face stiffens. ‘Well, Mr P can’t say anything, can he, because he’s not even here. He’s not here so he can’t do anything about it. So who cares?’

  And then he starts crying. Just like that. Sid can’t believe it. And the tears keep on coming, they keep pouring down his face, until his nose is running, too, and he’s crying so hard his whole body begins to shake.

  Sid puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, mate,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. Why don’t you just tell me what’s got you so upset?’

  Ethan doesn’t answer.

  Sid keeps a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, mate, what’s the problem? Why did you get stuck into him?’

  His eyes on the ground, Ethan shakes his head.

  But Sid keeps pushing. ‘Come on, Ethan,’ he says, ‘tell me what happened.’

  And eventually he does. ‘Well, how would you feel,’ he bursts out, ‘if you got moved from your proper table and someone else got your seat just because he’s new? And he didn’t even say thank you for me moving and now he’s going to be friends with all my friends and they probably won’t even be my friends anymore. Well, how would you feel about that?’

  At first, Sid doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just gives Ethan’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Well,’ he says slowly, ‘if something like that happened to me, I think I’d feel confused. Angry, probably, too. I’d say that’s how I’d be feeling. That how you’re feeling?’

  The boy doesn’t answer him.

  ‘The thing is, Ethan, maybe you could give him a bit of a chance. I mean, it’s not his fault he got your seat, is it? I mean, it wasn’t his decision to sit there, was it?’

  Reluctantly, Ethan shakes his head.

  ‘So even if you don’t really like him that much, you can’t really blame him for that, can you?’

  Again Ethan shakes his head.

  Sid gives his shoulder another squeeze. ‘Off you go, then, mate.’

  As he watches the boy scamper off, his heart goes out to him. A bad business for the kids, having Terry up and go in the middle of the year like that. And because no one’s told him anything about it, he’s none the wiser. And Terry’s not answering his calls. It’s all a bit of a mess really. Tania blames Laurie Mathews—she’s made that clear—but she doesn’t seem to know much about it either. So they’re all in the dark. And if they’re all left in the dark, how are they expected to carry on as though nothing’s changed? Because it has, hasn’t it? Because without Terry, everything’s different.

  This is what he’s thinking about when Laurie Mathews walks up to him. That’s a first in itself; she’s not usually one to seek him out.

  ‘Sid,’ she says
, ‘just now, there was a lot of shouting.’

  He nods. ‘Just a bit of an argument between a couple of the kids.’

  ‘More than a bit,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard it.’

  ‘Ethan can get a bit hot under the collar, that’s all. He’s calmed down now. He should be all right now.’

  She looks unconvinced. ‘Well, quite frankly, I was appalled by what I heard. Absolutely appalled.’

  The language. She’d be talking about the language.

  ‘And to speak like that to a child of colour, that’s what I can’t believe.’

  Sid’s a bit confused by that: swearing’s swearing in his book, doesn’t matter if it’s at a white kid, a brown kid or a black kid. ‘He shouldn’t be speaking like that,’ he agrees. ‘I told him as much.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be taking it very seriously, I can tell you that much.’

  She’s getting herself worked up now. Sid doesn’t really get it. Give the kid a serve, wash out his mouth, but in the end, it was just a bit of bad language; he’s not sure it deserves to be a hanging offence. Then again, he’s not the boss, is he?

  Mel

  The next afternoon, Mel leaves home late and finds herself almost running to get to the principal’s office on time. With Diane, there was never any beating around the bush—she’d just come out with it, whatever it was that Ethan had been caught doing that particular time. This one’s different.

  ‘It’s about Ethan,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid his behaviour has been unacceptable.’ Her tone sounds like she’s about to send him off to jail.

  Mel waits for more.

  ‘Completely unacceptable,’ she says. She’s about to say something else when there’s a knock at the door. Before she can say anything, the door opens and in walks Adam.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. I was on a job and couldn’t get away.’ He gives Mel a shamefaced smile. ‘Sorry, babe.’ There’s an empty chair beside her and he plonks himself down on it.

  Laurie—Ms Mathews—Mel’s not sure what she’s supposed to call her—continues talking. ‘As I was saying, Ethan’s behaviour has been unacceptable today.’