Teach Me

by Olivia Dade

  After the divorce, she’d assumed that would cease. That they’d turn on her, as almost everyone else in Barton’s social circle had. Instead, they invited her to dinner at places where the menus had no listed prices. Suggested shopping trips to stores she could no longer afford and offered to pay for everything. Made their advocacy of her and her career clear to the upper echelons of the school system.

  At some point, she’d started accepting a few of those dinner invitations, because Annette and Alfred said they liked good food, and they knew she did too. They said hundred-dollar entrees seemed a small price to pay for such excellent company. They said they might only be first-generation rich because of early, lucky investments in now-giant tech companies—a fact their social circle never allowed them to forget—but they had more than enough money for a few plates of truffle risotto. So occasionally Rose swallowed her pride, along with a glass or two of excellent wine, and let them pick up the check.

  A few times a year, she agreed to shopping trips too, because Annette needed someone other than those well-coiffed, ill-intentioned piranhas at the country club telling her what suited her coloring and slight frame. But despite Annette’s pleas to buy clothing for them both, post-divorce Rose only accepted gifts on her birthday and at Christmas. She’d rather take impeccable care of the clothing purchased during her marriage and scour consignment shops in expensive neighborhoods than accept charity.

  She’d never bothered fighting her former in-laws’ attempts at professional protection, though. Margie Owens hadn’t raised a fool. Without the Buckham family at her back, Dale would have driven her to a different school district long, long ago. After the first time she ignored his boorish attempts to belittle her. Or maybe when she told him if he hugged her one more time, she’d neuter him where he stood.

  Plus, the only time Rose had ever mentioned to Annette and Alfred that she could perhaps handle her own work difficulties, their faces had dropped in unison.

  With wounded dismay in every quavering syllable, Annette had whispered, “Rose, my dearest, Barton may no longer be your husband, but we still consider you our daughter. Please let us help you.”

  And yes, Rose noticed that Annette’s stick-straight back suddenly acquired a decided hunch, and Alfred—who ran 5Ks in his spare time—wavered and reached for the back of a nearby chair as if he required a cane. They were incorrigible, and she’d called them on their shenanigans more than once over the years.

  But if she’d tried to respond to Annette’s words with more than a nod, she’d have wept, not laughed.

  They’d served as her protectors for over a decade now, and she had to assume they’d continue to perform that role until the moment they died. Dale could only push Rose so far, and then her former in-laws would push back.

  Martin tilted his head, still holding the car door. “Couldn’t those influential friends have helped you keep your Honors World History prep and at least one planning period in your own classroom?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She hadn’t told her former parents-in-law about either affront. Such powerful weapons as the Buckhams had more impact when sparingly used. Furthermore, she was a damn adult. She’d solve her own problems, as long as those problems didn’t involve her having to change school systems.

  And above all else, she wanted to stymie Dale’s latest machinations on her own, and she wanted him to know she’d done it on her own, no outside help needed.

  Martin eyed her curiously, but didn’t pursue the topic. “I’ll see you Monday?”

  Only because I have no other choice. “Of course.”

  Enough. She tugged the door shut, clicked her seatbelt into place, and started her car. He wisely stepped aside as she pulled out of her space. Then she drove home, where a bottle of good Riesling, a wedge of Grana Padano, a crusty baguette, gossamer-thin slices of prosciutto, and a well-worn paperback mystery awaited her return. All the supplies required to help her erase this misbegotten afternoon and repair the stupid, stupid breach she’d made in her own defenses.

  Come Monday, those defenses would be as impenetrable as ever.

  The Owens girls might take a few punches, but as long as they drew breath, they didn’t stay down for long.

  Two weeks later, the first intra-department observation assignments arrived via e-mail.

  She got Martin. Naturally.

  Eventually, of course, she would be observing every other teacher in her department for half an hour at a time, and they would do the same. And she understood the goals behind the initiative—exposure to new pedagogical methods and potential connections with other teachers and across subject areas—but still. Now? As her first observation?

  She needed more time with Martin like she needed to sponsor another student organization in addition to the social studies club and the literary magazine. Which was to say, not at all.

  To her continued befuddlement, he’d reinstituted his early-morning and late-afternoon visits to her classroom. Sometimes to drop off materials for the next day, sometimes to make certain she knew about some important last-minute meeting or memo, and sometimes for what appeared to be no reason at all.

  He just…loitered. Talked in his usual quiet, thoughtful way about his students or his lesson plans or even his daughter. About his impressions of UVA and Charlottesville. About his former student Kevin’s grief-stricken decision to earn a GED instead of returning to Marysburg High.

  The chatter wasn’t overwhelming. Martin was comfortable with silence—which was fortunate for him, since she didn’t respond much to his conversational overtures. He also seemed to know when she really needed to concentrate, departing from the room promptly and with a quiet click of the door behind him.

  And at least a couple times a week, he somehow figured out when she was about to leave for the night. Because she’d reach for her classroom door handle, purse and briefcase on her shoulder, and voilà! Like magic—the bad kind, where the magician reached into his hat and produced a rubber cockroach instead of a cute baby bunny—Martin would appear, ready to walk with her to the parking lot.

  She could have refused his company. If she did, she knew he’d promptly leave.

  But…well…

  As far as his classroom visits, she refused to let him know they—he—affected her in the slightest. A request to end the visitations would reveal too much. And when it came to their parking lot walks, the days were getting shorter, and the lot did need more overhead lights.

  Plus, when her briefcase got heavy with books and grading, he wordlessly held out his hand for it. Hefted it for her. Set it inside her car and waited until she left the lot before he did the same.

  Again, she could have denied him his gallantry. She lifted weights at the nearby gym before school three days a week, after all, and she’d been walking alone to the parking lot for umpteen years.

  But whenever she handed over her burdens, he didn’t become bowed by them. Instead, his shoulders seemed a bit straighter. Whenever he walked beside her, his stride loosened and lengthened.

  So she’d let him be chivalrous. But she still wasn’t chatting.

  Once burned, twice no-way-in-hell.

  That resolution became harder to maintain once she saw him teach, however.

  During her planning period, sitting at her own desk, she watched him greet his AP World History students at the door with a smile, just as she did. Direct them toward an itinerary listing the day’s activities, just as she did. Get them going on a start-of-class activity, just as she did.

  He’d prepared for the lesson, clearly. His notes rested in front of him, all the other necessary materials close at hand. His laptop lay open, prepared to project images onto the interactive whiteboard. Again: exactly as she’d have done.

  The bell rang, he opened his mouth to discuss ancient Egypt, and that was where the similarity ended.

  Where she would gesture with her hands to emphasize a point, he went still.

  Where she would get loud, gaining students’ att
ention with liveliness or a bit of sarcasm, he got quieter. More intense. He leaned forward, and his class mirrored the movement.

  He was sincere. Knowledgeable. Passionate. Compassionate.

  The students were mesmerized. And for good reason.

  Martin Krause was a fucking phenomenal teacher.

  At the sight of such brilliance, such unmitigated competence, she had to shift a bit in her desk chair. Martin had never, never seemed sexier to her.

  It really sucked.

  And as she soon discovered, so did her reaction to the day’s main lesson.

  Once he’d finished the class’s introductory activities, Martin projected an image of a large granite sphinx onto the board, complete with a human head, a lion’s body, and a long, false, angular beard.

  He let the students study the image before speaking. “This ancient Egyptian sphinx was made to represent someone named Hatshepsut. Simply from looking at this image, what can you tell me about that person?”

  They raised their hands instead of shouting out answers, a sure sign of a well-managed classroom. Those hands belonged to all types of kids, too. Good.

  The young woman he called on tilted her head as she eyed the sphinx. “He must have been powerful. I mean, someone built this for him. And doesn’t the lion indicate strength?”

  “It does, and you’re right. This sphinx represents someone very powerful.” Martin smiled at her. “But you made an assumption just then, without noticing. Can you figure out what that was?”

  Several other hands shot into the air, but he gave the girl a chance to think.

  It took her a few moments, and then a smile slowly broke across her elfin face. “That sphinx isn’t a man. It’s a woman. With a beard.”

  “Well, technically, a half-woman. Don’t forget the lion bits.” When Martin grinned, the class laughed. “But you’re right. Hatshepsut was one of several female pharaohs. She ruled from 1478 to 1458 BC, and her reign began a lengthy peaceful, prosperous era in Egyptian history. After a few early, successful battles, she concentrated on forming international trading relationships and overseeing building projects that advanced Egyptian architecture so much, no other country in the world could match it for a thousand years.”

  His students jotted a few notes, only to glance up when Martin spoke again.

  “Now let’s compare two other images of her. One from early in her reign, and one from later.” The image on the board changed. “This is a statue of Hatshepsut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Another picture. “This statue was made later. What are the differences?”

  More hands. Lots of them.

  “In the early statue, she doesn’t have a beard.” The young man hesitated. “And she kind of has…uh…”

  Martin took pity on him. “She has noticeable breasts.”

  “Yeah.” The boy exhaled. “In the later statue, she’s a dude.”

  “How is that represented?”

  “The beard. And she doesn’t have”—the boy gestured at his upper body—“those.”

  Martin nodded. “Other things are different, too. Her chest is broader, her proportions more traditionally masculine. So tell me this: Why do you think the representations of Hatshepsut changed over time?” The image of the pharaoh as a sphinx reappeared. “Why show her like this later in her reign? And why aren’t there more images of her as a woman?”

  A hand shot up in the back of the room, the student no longer slouched over the desk. “Maybe Hatshepsut was transgender.”

  “That’s an interesting thought, Sam.” Martin contemplated the matter for a moment. “Transgender people have certainly existed throughout history, although I haven’t heard any evidence in support of Hatshepsut transitioning to become a man. That said, historians can overlook things they don’t expect to find. They’re products of their era, just like the people they’re studying.”

  Sam nodded, looking…not happy, but something close. Affirmed, maybe?

  Whatever it was, Rose wanted to kiss Martin for it.

  “Any other ideas?” Martin looked around. “Dante?”

  “Did she figure out she had to dress like a man to be taken seriously?” The boy frowned. “You know, because of the way people thought about women back then?”

  “Another great thought.” Martin acknowledged Dante’s comments with an approving tip of his head. “There are certainly many times and places in world history during which a convincing male appearance would have afforded women more power and authority.”

  His forehead creased in thought. “One thing you’ll notice over the course of our year together, though, is that history isn’t an inevitable march toward greater freedoms for women and various marginalized groups. Rights can be granted and then removed, and then given again at some point in the future. Or not.” He swept a glance over his class. “At this point in Egyptian history, women owned their own property, worked outside the home, received equal pay for equal work, and had equal status under the law. Ancient Egyptians didn’t even prefer the word mankind. They used humankind, written with both male and female figures.”

  More frantic notetaking by his students.

  He spoke slowly and clearly. “In its simplest terms, representing Hatshepsut with a false beard and a male form followed tradition. All pharaohs wanted to resemble Osiris, as a way of emphasizing their connection to him and their power as rulers. Also, evidence shows pharaohs were cleanly shaved, so even male rulers tied on their beards.”

  A brief pause let his students catch up to him and shake out their cramping hands.

  “But many representations of Hatshepsut as a woman didn’t just disappear of her own volition. They were razed after her death and replaced by images of her dead husband, who’d been pharaoh before her.”

  His voice lowered even further, and even the normal shuffling of feet and papers ceased. “Throughout world history, for a variety of reasons, people have erased powerful women, both literally and figuratively, both during their lifetimes and after their deaths. In Hatshepsut’s case, her late husband’s son did it by destroying her statues. Literal erasure. Other female pharaohs remained undiscovered for centuries because archaeologists assumed they must be men. Figurative erasure. One could even argue that Hatshepsut erased herself in the later statues she commissioned, although I think the issue is more complicated than that.”

  As his students scrawled once more across their notebooks, Martin bowed his head in apparent thought. Then he looked up and spoke again with quiet emphasis, conviction in every word.

  “Which brings up a related point. Sometimes, powerful women throughout history have altered their appearance—in person, or in art.” Martin’s blue eyes were solemn. “They want to send a certain message. To reinforce their authority. To protect themselves or their legacy. To erase or curate some aspect of themselves to prevent being erased by others.”

  She refused to look down at her clothing.

  The sharp heels. The unrelieved black. The lustrous fabrics. The impeccable tailoring.

  “What does curate mean?” one of the kids asked.

  “If you curate something, you’re choosing what to display and considering how others will see it. You’re making sure what gets seen has the intended effect. Does that make sense?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Men do the same thing, of course. Appearances are important to pretty much everyone,” Martin told his students. “But my larger point is this: Powerful women—some famous, some not—have always existed in world history, just as they exist today. There were influential women in every culture, in every time.”

  He closed his laptop. “In my class, I don’t save discussions of women for women’s history month, because if we don’t talk about women, we’re not addressing half the population. If you don’t know what they were doing, what rights they did or didn’t have, how they affected their culture and government and economy, you don’t know history. Period.”

  After letting that declaration sit for a few seconds, he
continued. “The same principle applies to other marginalized groups. History is written by those in power, but those deprived of power deserve to be seen too. For the sake of their humanity, but also because their stories are crucial in understanding world history. Our job this year is to see everyone, not just great leaders. Even leaders as great as Hatshepsut.”

  In that moment, Rose definitely felt seen by Martin. Whether she enjoyed the feeling or not was less certain.

  When her thirty minutes of observation ended, she slipped out of the classroom and returned to the social studies office. She typed a brief but glowing observation report and e-mailed it to Keisha and Martin. Then she pulled out a stack of grading and stared at it, green pen motionless.

  She’d just watched Martin—who knew full well she was observing him that particular period—walk his high-school class through a well-considered discussion of gender, power, and the historical erasure of women and the marginalized. Heard him declare with quiet passion that their stories mattered.

  That, by inference, her story mattered. That she mattered.

  Brandi Rose Owens. Born female and poor. Unlikely to appear in any history textbook.

  She understood her own worth and power. The choices she’d made to honor the former and preserve the latter.

  Now she knew he did too.

  But what he’d intended by the lesson, she hadn’t the slightest idea.

  Seven

  The Marysburg High School Seasons’ Greetings Festival, as far as Martin could tell, was experiencing a full-fledged identity crisis.

  On the one hand, the mid-December gathering featured an inflatable Santa, a giant wooden dreidel, and a colorful, beaded unity cup, not to mention all the baked goods one would expect from a winter fundraising festival. Fudge, fruitcakes, rugelach, sugared doughnuts, sweet potato pies, and more types of cookies than he could count.