The Teacher (16 page)

“Okay,” she said and he
could hear the hope rise in her voice. “I will make sure all the forms are in
the front office for you. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Ms. Hewitt, for
everything,” he said.   

“Please, Mr. Lewis, you can
call me Emma.”

“And you can call me
Marcus.”

Chapter
Twenty

The library was as gloomy as a mausoleum.
An early morning meeting had been called for all teachers. Emma stared at the man
talking. The more he talked the more she equated him with the grim reaper.

“It’s important you not show up on these
days,” Mr. Deeds, the union rep, said as he pushed up the sleeves of his black
turtleneck sweater and adjusted his rimless glasses, which immediately slid
back down his long shapeless nose. His hollow cheeks began to flush, as he rushed
through the delivery of the district’s demoralizing news—budget cuts.

The district, finding itself once again
low on funds, had elected to scratch seven days off the school calendar from
now until June. Most of the days were non-contact, days the students already
had off, like teacher workdays and conferences. Fewer days translated to less
pay for everyone.

“We have to send a message to the
administration that if they won’t pay, then you won’t work.” Mr. Deeds snaked
his paper thin body through the tables and chairs handing out a half sheet of paper
as he made his plea.

Easy for him to say
,
Emma thought as she waited for him to reach her side of the library. Neither his
job nor his students’ learning was at stake. If she didn’t get her report cards
marked or her lessons prepared it wasn’t the administrators it would impact,
but her and her students. She would work longer hours, to make up for the cut
days, and get paid less just like everyone else in this room.

Emma looked down at the paper Susan slid
across the table to her outlining the effects of the pay cuts. The biggest cut
came in June and Emma wondered, staring at the reduction, if her check would be
enough to cover the month’s rent and bills. She was probably going to have to
dip into her savings again—and start looking for a summer job. The thought was
discouraging and depressing. She wished Seth was home this week so she could
whine about her latest plight to him, but he was in Sacramento. Instead, she
would bake a deep dish of fudge brownies when she got home and eat them right
out of the pan. That might boost her spirits.

With five minutes remaining before the school
doors opened, teachers started shuffling out of the library.

“That was a great way to start the
morning,” Emma said, walking into the hall with Susan.

“Yeah, remind me why I went into
teaching again, because it wasn’t for the money was it?” Susan waved the small
paper in front of her.

“We don’t do this job for the money,”
Mary Ellen said, suddenly materializing next to them. “We do it because we make
a difference in children’s lives. You can’t put a price tag on the value of the
knowledge, confidence and abilities we foster in our students.” Mary Ellen gave
her head a sanctimonious shake before picking up speed and heading for her
classroom.

“Well, that won’t help me pay for Junior’s
college education,” Susan said to Mary Ellen’s back. She rubbed her growing
bump fondly and parted ways with Emma as they reached their classroom doors.

Emma hoped her day would get better as
she unlocked her door and turned on the lights. But fifteen minutes later her
hope was snuffed out when Carl and his mother came into the room. The short,
stocky woman with dark corkscrew curls hanging down to her ears marched across
the room to Emma and trapped her into a confrontation.

“Why is it Carl doesn’t want to come to
school anymore?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her ample chest. She
tapped the toe of one foot and waited for an answer as every student and parent
in the classroom looked her way.

Emma, stunned by the bluntness of her
question, stammered and tried to come up with some sort of an answer. “I’m
sorry, I have no idea why he isn’t excited about coming to school right now,”
she finally offered.

“Well, it’s pure torture for me to get
him in the car and off to school these last few days. I’m just wondering what’s
been going on here. I’m going to talk to Mrs. Wolf about having him put in Mrs.
Katz’s class. His brother was in her class last year and we all really liked
her. I think it might be a better fit for him.”

“Oh,” was all Emma could think to say.
She knew Mrs. Wolf wouldn’t support a classroom change, but wasn’t about to
start a debate with this woman. As far as she was concerned if she wanted to
change teachers Emma would gladly pass this mother onto Mary Ellen, but she
would miss Carl. He was a sweet child.

“Well, it’s either that or let him stay
home all day and play his Xbox,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air as
if there were no other plausible solutions.

Carl’s eyes zipped to his mother and
then back to his puzzle.

Ahah,
the Xbox, I
think we have our answer now.

“That’s right,” Emma said. “Carl
mentioned getting a new Xbox for his birthday last week. I’m sure he’s still
excited about the new games and would rather play them, than come to school.
Hopefully, the novelty will wear off soon. I’ll keep a close eye on him this
week and maybe we can follow up on this next week at our conference.”

Carl’s mom gave a quick nod and stomped
out of the classroom as the bell rang and the children began to clean up.

Talk about a red-letter day. It wasn’t
even nine o’clock and Emma wanted to head home. She pictured herself dipping
into a warm luxurious bath while the brownies baked tonight.

Things started looking up when Brayden
joined the class at the carpet immediately following recess. He sat at the back
with his legs crossed, elbows propped on his knees, and chin cradled in his
hands. His head bobbed as carelessly as Emma had ever seen it while she read
from the big book resting on her easel. Brayden’s minuscule amount of
involvement with the class was a tiny thread of silver lining in her dark day.

The classroom door opened quietly and
Dave stepped inside. His worn Birkenstock clogs, khaki shorts and tropical
print shirt made him look like he had just stepped off the beach. The blatant
rain falling outside, however, told a different story.

Dave must have been ready to start his
testing with Brayden, since Mr. Lewis had signed his consent on Monday morning.

“Brayden, someone’s here to work with
you,” Emma said, pointing to Dave.

Specialists dropped into Emma’s
classroom all the time to pull kids out. The speech pathologist came twice a
week taking kids to work on speech articulation. The nurse would drop in from
time to time to take kids out for hearing or vision screenings, or to check for
head lice whenever there was an outbreak in the school. The English as a second
language teacher came once a week and took all of Emma’s non-English speaking
children for forty-five minutes to work as a small group. The reading
specialist came three times a week and pulled low achieving readers. It
happened so often that it was considered a normal part of their classroom
routine. A very small number of children had never been called out, Brayden was
one of them.

Today it was his turn and for some
reason she expected him to stand up and leave with Dave on her command. She returned
to her book and the next time she looked out across the faces of her students
Brayden was still sitting there, looking at Dave.

When the boy turned back, a dark mask
covered his young face, all the buoyancy in his body had turned to stone and
Emma knew there was no moving him now. Dave seemed to understand and instead of
insisting Brayden join him, he pulled a half-size plastic chair up to the
carpet behind Brayden.

For the remainder of the lesson Brayden
sat as still as a statue, his back rigid and square, only his eyes shifted from
side to side as his attention was acutely drawn to the person he couldn’t see
sitting behind him.

Brayden made a wide circle around Dave
when he walked back to his seat, reading assignment in hand.

“Brayden, this is Dave,”
Emma said as she knelt next to Brayden in his seat. “He has some work for the
two of you to do together,” she added softly. Brayden’s hand moved quickly and
recklessly over his page as he scribbled with a red crayon.

Emma sighed and walked over
to Dave.

“I guess, I’ll try again on
Friday,” he said, walking toward the door.

Brayden, with his head
slumped over his work looked sideways, out of the corner of his eye, as Dave
left the room. He remained distant and withdrawn the rest of the day. There
went her silver lining.

A pint of ice cream made it onto her
list of comforts for this evening.

The day tumbled on and came to a rapid
halt when the bell rang in the afternoon. Emma thought, as she walked back to
her classroom, that with the school day over she would be safe from any more
pitfalls. But when she walked through the door she found Carl and his mother
waiting for her. She couldn’t help the feeling of dread that crept in and
wondered,
what does she want now
?

Emma didn’t have to wait long, because the
woman’s gel-crisped curls immediately started shaking as she wagged her head
back and forth demanding to know now why she received two weeks’ worth of lunch
charges in the mail today.

“His lunchbox comes home
empty every day, so why do I have all these lunch charges to pay?”

“I’m sorry,” Emma
apologized. “There could be an error in the cafeteria books. Stop in at the
office and ask them to take a look at it for you.”

“I already did that,” she
said flippantly. “And I talked to the lady in the cafeteria. She said it was
correct and that I needed to pay the charges. She said Carl has been getting
lunches the last two weeks. Why is he getting lunches when I already pack one
for him.”

Emma furrowed her brow and tried
to think of an answer. She had no idea why Carl was eating his lunch from home
and buying a lunch from school. She decided the best way to get an answer was
to go straight to the source.

“Carl. Are you eating school
lunches?” she asked.

He nodded.

“And are you eating the food
your mom packs for you?”

Carl hesitated and then
shook his head.

“Yes, you are,” his mother
snapped at him.

“No, I’m not,” he said,
turning to her and then back to Emma.

“You better not be throwing
it all away,” his mother snapped again and Carl didn’t respond.

“Carl,” Emma said. “What do
you do with the food your mom packs for you?” Carl’s mother settled her hands
on her hips and waited for a response.

“I give it to Charlie,” he
said in a voice as quiet as a mouse.

“To who?” his mother asked,
leaning forward.

“To Charlie,” Carl said
again, adding volume to his voice this time. “In Mrs. Reed’s class.”

“Oh,” Emma said. Susan shared
at lunch today how she’d just learned that Charlie and his family were living
out of their car after losing the lease on their apartment.

“What are you doing giving
your lunch away?” Carl’s mother cried out.

“He doesn’t have one,” Carl
told her, visibly resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “His family doesn’t have
any money, so I let him have mine, and I get the school lunch. We have money right
Mom?” he asked, showing sudden concern.

“Of course, we do,” his
mother said, finally understanding the situation. “Of course, we do,” she
repeated and reached over to pat Carl’s head.

“I’ll talk to Mrs. Reed and make sure
the other little boy gets a lunch. So, Carl you can go ahead and eat yours from
home now, okay?” Emma asked.

He nodded and his seemingly satisfied
mother led him out of the room.
Why don’t you try talking to your child
,
Emma wanted to call after the woman, but resisted and closed the door behind
them. She mentally added a glass of wine to her list for tonight as well.

She rested her back against the door and
surveyed her room. She wanted to get out of here as fast as she could before
some other soul-sucking, confidence-zapping incident occurred, but she had one
more thing left to do before she could clean up and go home.

She picked up the phone and dialed
Marcus Lewis’s office. She left a message with Gretta because Mr. Lewis was on
another line.
Struck out again
, Emma thought and hung up with an audible
sigh. Make that two glasses of wine tonight.

She pressed the button on her CD player
and sifted through her students’ work from the day.

*     *     *

“Your boys didn’t show up,
Marcus. They couldn’t sink the threes,” Gregory Sharp, a senior partner from
the Seattle office, taunted him over the phone. After discussing the terms of a
construction contract the conversation had diverged to the devastating loss the
Blazers suffered the night before.

“Tell me about it,” Marcus
said, leaning back in his chair as he propped his feet on the desk. “It was a
disgraceful showing. I admit.” He laughed into the phone when the door opened. Gretta
walked in with a pink message slip. She handed it to him and left.

Marcus dropped his feet to the
floor as Gregory made another remark about the game, but he didn’t hear it,
because the pink slip in his hand had all his attention. Ms. Hewitt’s name was
neatly printed at the top. A mix of pleasure and dread welled up inside him.