by Sean Oliver
Moore walked away from them and stood in the doorway to finish his report.
“Little girls,” he mumbled. They turned away from him.
“I definitely put my laptop in my coat closet yesterday,” Trisha said to Deanna
“You lock it?”
“Yes. I’m careful, Deanna.” She sounded like she was pleading, making a case.
“You don’t have to defend yourself to me. Come on, don’t spend your prep period in here with this dick.” She pulled Trisha by the arm and walked out the door past Moore, who was still writing on the clipboard.
Once they passed, Deanna stopped and turned back.
“Hey, Detective, make sure you write down that Trisha locked up the laptop, and the only people with keys other than her are the main office and security.” She flashed a smile and a wink. Trisha bugged her eyes into saucers and dropped her mouth open as they turned and walked away. Deanna always did what Trisha could not.
“She’s trouble.”
“I don’t remember her,” Deanna told Trisha. “You sure I had her?”
“That’s what her little sister said. Janelle—girl with the purple braids?”
“Right. I was gonna try that look on Saturday when I go to Carla’s salon. I told her I was hovering between balayage and purple braids. Still thinking about it.” Trisha laughed as the two made their way down the second-floor hallway.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Trisha said.
“Damn. Guilty of cultural appropriation again.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, you got me. But you’re not allowed to eat a gyro ever again or I’m throwing the penalty flag on you.” Trisha was smiling. She was laughing just a few seconds ago, too. She wasn’t there two weeks and she was already on shaky footing. But she swallowed it.
“Which essay are you bringing down to the workshop?” Trisha asked as they walked.
“Whichever one was on top of the pile. Hope it’s good.”
“Doesn’t sound like that guarantees exemplar writing as requested.”
“These won’t be exemplar workshops,” Deanna said as she opened the door to the teacher’s lounge. There were a handful of teachers in there who went silent as the two friends entered the room. Trisha motioned to the single-stall restroom door.
“You go first,” she said to Deanna.
“Good morning,” Deanna said as she passed a table of stoic women. They all returned a pleasantry, then returned to silence. A couple of them had food in front of them. Cousin Arlene was flipping through a magazine, one of the outdated contributions to the community room, dropped off by a teacher. Grace Pappas, a grade-level partner of Trisha’s, looked over to her and smiled.
“Hi, Grace.”
“Hello.” Still smiling. A banana sat before her on the table. Her hands were on her lap, though.
Wow. Welcome to Uncomfortable Town.
“You select your essay for the workshop yet?” Trisha asked.
“Yes,” Pappas said, smiling and nodding. Trisha nodded back but had to avert her eyes. How the hell did people stare at someone that long? Faces were pretty boring, as faces went.
C’mon, Deanna. Please don’t do your eyebrows after peeing.
Arlene also looked up to Trisha. A smile, then back to the magazine.
Trisha liked the building on the whole. Her best friend was there, her best friend’s fiancé, as well. Fat George, as Deanna called her dad rather terribly, was principal. Should be a cushy gig. Kids could be tough, sure. But the structure at P.S. 21 should’ve been ideal.
The students were mostly the same all over the district—the failing district, as the local papers liked to remind everyone. Failing, if you used state test numbers as the sole gauge, of course. Trisha finished each day at her previous school feeling like she’d been someone significant to her students. To some, she was solely a teacher, imparting information about the use of commas, capitalization, and why Pluto was a planet, then not, and why it’s kinda back in the fold beside its eight other friends. A dwarf planet, they’d conceded to calling it.
Many times she was someone more important, especially to those that needed the emotional hug and words of praise that were absent in their troubled, broken homes. She was someone else still to others who needed saving. And to many, she was just the shining example of a woman who woke up, dressed nicely, and came to work every day. Far too many of the thousands of students in the Carson Public Schools came from homes without anyone like that, betrayed by a host of circumstances.
Trisha and so many of her counterparts didn’t feel they were failing at all. The relentless rotation of new curricula and expensive online programs were part of the work that had to be done on the endless treadmill called the Carson Board of Education. If the magic wand were ever to be found, it wouldn’t need to be waved at a textbook or teacher to remedy issues in educating children in such a district. Aiming at the home would turn most of the depleted soil rich.
So it should stand to reason that the real-life superheroes who drove past the graffitied gang signs into the thirty-odd public school buildings should all feel part of a brotherhood and sisterhood. But it just wasn’t to be. Teachers were still a guarded, defensive lot.
So Trisha just stood and waited for her pretty friend, who no doubt prioritized a mascara faux pas over her friend’s bladder. Still, Deanna was the best. Can’t you admire a singular commitment to self? Trisha knew she could use a touch more of that. Balls, some might call it, though not her. But Deanna would.
She came out of the bathroom and Trisha was provided the reprieve that had overtaken even her need to relieve herself. On her way in she made eyes at Deanna, and while in the restroom she heard no discussion outside the door. She assumed Deanna had left the teacher’s lounge.
Would no one befriend her in the entire building? As unlikely as that was, she’s been there for over a week and there seemed a speak-only-when-spoken-to rule enforced around Trisha. No one was rude; everyone answered Trisha’s questions and hallway greetings. But she was never once invited to have lunch with a colleague, other than Deanna. Come to think of it, she didn’t notice staff throwing themselves into Deanna’s path to make small talk, either.
Trisha reasoned that the staff’s distance from her was likely due to her closeness to Deanna, the boss’s kid. Distrustful of administration as teachers are, that could be enough to shut a social door. Don’t want the things said in the teacher’s lounge passed down to the principal. And Deanna and Trisha could be conduits to the main office. Every criticism and complaint about the building could find its way to Principal George’s ears.
That was probably it.
Trisha came out of the restroom and, to her surprise, Deanna was still in the lounge. She was standing at an empty table, leafing through the day’s newspaper. She hadn’t said a word to the group in the room, nor them to her, for the duration of Trisha’s bathroom visit. Trisha had listened for voices to measure the tone. But there was nothing.
She strode up beside Deanna, who was still flipping pages.
“Okay,” Trisha said. “Ready?” Deanna closed the paper and looked to the group at the table as she and Trisha walked to the door.
“Gonna eat that, Arlene?” Deanna said. Trisha looked over and saw a yogurt sitting on the table in front of one of the cousins. Upon second glance, Trisha noticed all the teachers that had food in front of them when she and Deanna first came in the room hadn’t touched any of it. Arlene’s yogurt was sealed, the banana still in front of Pappas, her hands on her lap.
“Not time yet,” Arlene said, motioning to the clock above Deanna who was standing at the door.
“Almost though,” Grace said to Arlene.
“Yes,” she replied.
Deanna turned to the clock and folded her arms. She leaned against the wall. 9:59 a.m.
“Now I’m excited,” she said, prepared to wait out the minute. Trisha was amused, but this was all a bit much for her. She’d rather have left and not e
ngaged the room. But it was Deanna—ball busting.
Click. 10:00 a.m.
Grace began peeling the banana. Arlene smiled and bopped in her chair a bit as she unsealed her yogurt.
“Yay,” she sang in a playful falsetto.
Trisha motioned to the door—let’s go.
“I don’t know, Trisha.” Deanna looked to the table. “Can we go? Or do we have to wait for 10:05 a.m. for that?”
Arlene and Grace glanced at each other. Oh, that Deanna.
“Go, silly,” Grace said, smiling.
Deanna opened the door and headed out with Trisha in tow, who turned and waved good-bye to her grade-level partner.
“Good-bye, Trisha,” Grace said.
SIXTEEN
DEANNA HAD BEEN buried in shit work in the days since Trisha’s laptop went missing. She’d kept to herself, compiling required data for midyear reports and her classroom door stayed closed. Trisha hadn’t mentioned any other problems with staff. Didn’t mean they didn’t happen. Sometimes the girl got so introverted she didn’t share things with Deanna until later, like the time she broke up with that waiter and only mentioned it when Deanna asked why he hadn’t been around in a month. She wondered if Trisha would have told her about the laptop if she hadn’t walked in on Moore writing the report.
Deanna’s break from paperwork came in the form of another professional development session with Albrecht. She found herself in the library for the third week, thinking about nothing but the quarterly assessments the kids had to nail by week’s end. But that also meant February was on the other side of that door. Halfway done.
“What do you know about this student, based solely on their essay you just read?” He was looking at Mary Edison from the front of the library. He stood beside the digital SMART board’s screen before an empty Venn diagram. Teachers filled the room, all seated at long tables of six, each with an essay before them.
Deanna had chosen a pretty shitty one to bring to this workshop, she was realizing. Angel’s two paragraphs about his trip to New York City last week were devoid of detail and any singular point. He had the chronology of events correct, at least.
“I think she’s having difficulty deciding which side she’s taking in the argument,” Mary answered. “It was assigned as a persuasive essay, but she’s kind of persuading both sides. She missed the point.”
“Her essay isn’t serving its purpose, to be sure,” Albrecht said. “But, Mary, stop being such a teacher and just listen to my question again—what do you know about that student from reading that essay?” He waited and Mary went back down into the text.
“Nora can be an indecisive person?” she guessed. Albrecht pointed a finger at her.
“Bingo.” He looked around the room, seemingly taking his time to find every set of eyes in there. “That detail is more valuable to us than the correctness of her persuasive essay. Because it’s a look inside the head of that girl—into the soul of Nora.” He sat on the edge of a desk. The room was sitting ever attentively.
“I want you to look at your chosen student essays again, not from the perspective of a teacher looking at genre, gauging whether they served that master. But rather just find out what they’re telling us about themselves. Just hear the soul of that child in front of you telling you their secret message. They have all given you a message. Did you know that?”
He stood and lumbered through the room, passing all the tables, watching the teachers read the essays again with new purpose.
“Rodriguez,” he said as he passed a male teacher, graying at the temples. “You had the boy with the invention, right?”
“The digital homework machine, yes.”
“Funny idea, right?” Albrecht asked as he continued to pace the perimeter of the room. “Creative, bold.”
He stopped when he arrived back at the SMART board. He took a pen from the tray and wrote above the two circles of the Venn diagram: Resistant and Pliable.
“I want to populate this diagram with qualities we find in those essays that tell how receptive a student is to new ideas. This circle gets the words that suggest resistance, and this circle here gets words that tell us that this is a student who’s open to our suggestion.”
“So my indecisive student would go where?” Mary asked.
“You tell me,” he said. “Focus on that word—indecisive. What is she telling you?”
Mary thought. Albrecht turned to the room, opening up the question.
“Anyone?”
“She needs guidance,” Cousin Ellie said.
“Yes. Mary, this student is begging you to tell her where to go, what to do. She will trust you. She will follow your lead.” He wrote Indecisive in the circle labeled Pliable.
Deanna squinted through her confusion. This was the second day of these workshops and it seemed they were off the rails already. How was this test preparation?
Albrecht looked over and saw her face. He smiled.
“You look confused,” he said.
“Am I the only one?” She looked around. Blank faces surrounded her. She shook her head in frustration.
Albrecht made his way over to Deanna and stood above her. His unwavering gaze looked into her. A calm washed over her, a safety. She was perplexed and annoyed a moment ago, but it suddenly flushed from her, opening a space for the peace that now filled her.
“Miss Anastas,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” He nodded. She just looked up at him, more blankly now. “I know it seems weird. I should be handing out test booklets, right? Practice versions of the state test. We should be dissecting it, finding tricks—ways to trick the tricks played upon the children.” Some controlled laughter from the room. “Talk about a slippery slope. Miss Anastas, we are going to focus on the power of the mind in these sessions. There is a force more powerful than citation of evidence and summative, concluding sentences that you need to look for in your students.”
He paused, but kept looking at her. Then he turned and paced the center of the room, looking down, measuring his words.
“Friends, I want you all to work to engender the absolute trust of your students. Study their words, their clues, and find each of their hidden messages. They’re all talking to you. They need you, and we them.”
SEVENTEEN
CALHOUN WAS OUT of her library for a change.
Fifty empty chairs faced the SMART board, which glowed in the empty room. It felt weird being in there again, the room now sapped of all the energy it held just a couple of hours ago.
Deanna pushed her way through the aisles, clogged with displaced chairs skewed at all angles. The tabletops were clear. That room was the last place she remembered having her lanyard that held her keys. She squatted and looked under the long table beside her. Nothing. She knelt all the way down, nearly pressing her cheek to the floor, and scanned the entire surface. She looked down the alleyways and gaps made by the chair legs, and saw nothing but dust and a few wayward sheets of composition paper.
Keys jingled on the far side of the room. Calhoun? Ugh. Deanna would now be forced into another meaningless conversation. That’d be the price for having lost her keys. Would it be a recap of the session? Maybe Doris would share her favorite moments from the workshop. Certainly, she had some.
But Deanna popped up to see Albrecht instead, standing in the doorway of the library. He was dangling her keys, the lanyard swinging on his outstretched index finger.
“Looking for something?” he said with a smile.
“Yeah, actually.” She remained where she was. Her mind was on its way to the keys but her body was planted in place. She stood in the center of the room, a sea of tables between her and Albrecht.
“Wisdom?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“People that find themselves here are all looking for different things—guidance, wisdom, information. It is the library, after all. Or have we come simply for keys?” They remained across the room from each other.
“Just keys,” Deanna said. Her heart was revvin
g up. She stood scared, like a kid caught peeking in the teacher’s drawer. She’d done nothing wrong; she just lost her keys. Why was she skittish?
“Ah. That’s easy then.” He looked down at the keys dangling from his outstretched index finger. “Here.” He didn’t walk to her.
Fuck this. She would go first. Deanna pushed off her heels and started toward him, finally breaking through her wall of paralysis. She kept on toward her keys.
“Thanks,” she said when she arrived at them. She swiped the lanyard from his hand and prepared to keep her pace right out of the library, but he remained in the doorway, which he filled. She had no choice but to stop before him.
“You’re bored,” he said. Deanna was taken aback.
“I am?”
“In my sessions, I mean. You seem disinterested.”
“There’s just a lot to do upstairs. These things take us out of the classroom.”
“Where otherwise you’d be…?” He waited.
“Teaching.”
“Ineffectively.”
That snapped Deanna to attention. Her forked tongue was ready to jab out of her mouth, but it didn’t. It wasn’t some exercise in self-control stifling a reply—she just couldn’t find one. Her brain was simmering with everything every teacher wanted to say to expensive experts brought into schools under the implication that the teachers needed fixing. She had a thing or two to say about the belief that the teachers were so without direction that a few sessions with someone reared in the womb of suburban schools could reanimate the war-torn teachers in districts like Carson, New Jersey, where announcements of budget shortfalls and pension cuts were frequent. She wanted to say it all.
She couldn’t. She stood there and watched his face, a pleasant, intensely interesting face. His goatee was meticulously manicured, and his small, sharp eyes didn’t shift from Deanna’s. As she looked at him, the fluorescent light above his head began to flicker. Just a quick in and out, every couple of seconds. Then it stopped.