Among Schoolchildren

by Tracy Kidder

  If she caught you passing a note, because you wanted to tell Kimberly that the new boy liked Arabella, and it was Monday, Mrs. Zajac would probably take the note and put it in her skirt pocket, but you could get away with notes and a lot more on Friday, and especially on a Friday before a vacation. Fridays were the best times, not as funny and crazy as some of Miss Hunt's lessons when Clarence was talking back, but peaceful and happy, like reading aloud, which was another good time, when, after recess, Mrs. Zajac would sit on the front table and read stories or books, and you could listen and write letters or draw pictures or organize your desk, as long as you didn't bother anyone else.

  Judith was the smartest in the class, Claude announced one time, and Mrs. Zajac said, "Thank you, Claude, for deciding that for me." She asked Claude, if he did his work and studied for tests, wouldn't he be as smart as Judith? Claude said he guessed so. Of course, everyone knew Judith was the smartest, but Judith appreciated what Mrs. Zajac said. Mrs. Zajac praised her a little too much for comfort, but not the way some other teachers had, not by saying to other kids, "Why can't you do as well as Judith?"

  Mrs. Zajac had a high temper, and she yelled at Clarence and Robert. "It makes things not so nice," Judith thought. But, all in all, Judith approved of Mrs. Zajac. "I think she's one of the best teachers I ever had," Judith had decided. "She's really nice, and she's up front. I like blunt people. They take after me. You don't have to wait for her to be blunt with you. She just tells you. Sometimes kids might get mad, but that's the way it goes. She's kind, but she's strict. And she's fair." Judith did some Sunday school teaching herself. "That's one thing I admire in a teacher, being able to control a class like ours and still be fair," said Judith.

  5

  Al came by the room and said, "It's ho-ho time, Chris." He meant that he wanted her to change the bulletin board outside her door, and that Christmas vacation was near. For Chris, the period just before vacation was the happiest so far this year. Pam's practicum was over. The interregnum had ended. Chris missed Pam, but she had missed her class more. She thought she could count some real gains, in all subjects, by most of her students. She had vowed in the fall that this year she would get the parents more involved, and she'd had a good turnout at the first parent conferences, which is to say that a little more than half of the parents had come. The many notes she'd sent home doubtless encouraged some parents. Others came at the urging of their children. Felipe had told his father that Mrs. Zajac was strict, but that it was for his own good—of course, Felipe knew his father would like to hear that. Mariposa had talked her mother into coming; she'd told her that Mrs. Zajac was nice. And Julio's stepfather had come. Here was a man who worked two jobs and still could make time to visit his stepson's teacher. So much, Chris had thought, for one favorite theory of certain white Holyokers: that all Puerto Ricans came to town to get welfare.

  The deficiency lists on the upper right hand corner of the board did not vanish, but Clarence behaved remarkably well, for Clarence, in that period just before Christmas. At lunch in the cafetorium, among his buddies, Clarence would talk knowingly about girls who liked to "rap." Once he pointed to a sixth-grade girl and said, "She smoke reefer, bro." But no one is sophisticated about everything. Chris overheard Clarence talking about Santa Claus. Clarence said he wanted a new dirt bike. She figured he didn't want her to tell on him to Santa Claus.

  The windows were closed now, and the heater under the window ran all the time. Its hum replaced the sounds of the factories outside. Clarence had discovered that a piece of paper would levitate if he put it down on the heating vent in the counter under the window. Snow had come, gone, and come again to the landscape outside. In early afternoon light, the snow on the playground made the colors of the small factories look bleaker, especially that one hospital-green wall of Laminated Papers, which opened periodically to let in trailer trucks. But in the morning, sun streamed through the half-lowered blinds on that east-facing window, which stayed clean because it was too high up for graffiti. The children's coats in the morning and after recess were sachets full of the thrilling smell of winter air. Over the window hung the class's pictures of Famous Patriots. Felipe's portrait of John Hancock looked down on the room with a small, smug smile, as if that gentleman were still pleased with himself for having signed the Declaration in the boldest hand.

  Chris had her class back and under control. She often grew weary of the role of disciplinarian. She'd say at the end of a bad day with Clarence and Robert, "It's exhausting being a bitch." But she never wearied of what discipline brought her. It allowed her to teach.

  Of all the subjects, Chris liked teaching social studies most. She had loved social studies ever since her college course in American history, when she had discovered that it was a story, and didn't even resemble the boring lists of dates, the names of good guys and bad guys, she'd had to memorize at Holyoke High. She had not read deeply in history, but she had read some, and had concocted most of her own lessons. She used the social studies text mainly as an outline. Chris thought the book both too hard and too boring for most fifth graders to read.

  In Room 205, the Revolution began just before Christmas. Chris had begun reading them a novel about the Revolution, from a boy's point of view. The first day she warmed them up. "We are not—and some of you will be disappointed—going to get into the blood and guts of the war. We're going to get into why there are wars and, in particular, why this one." She talked about taxes, about the distance between England and its American colonies, not lecturing exactly, but, as was her custom, asking such questions as, "What are taxes? Felipe?" with a note in her voice that seemed to say she wondered, too. (One of the best teaching manuals says you should ask a question first, then name the child you want to have answer it. That so the other children won't lose interest. Chris always questioned that way, but for a different reason: so that the child she was going to call on wouldn't have time to get scared and forget every thought.) She mentioned such figures as King George III, saying, "He's going to be an important character in our story." She wondered out loud, "What was the Boston Tea Party?" and answered, "That's one of the things we'll find out." These were all by now familiar ploys, but applied with such vigor that Clarence actually blurted out, "It sounds like a movie!" That was high praise.

  The next morning, just before lunch, Chris went to the board and wrote, CAUSES. She turned around so swiftly that her skirt swirled, and she sashayed toward their desks. "What name did they call the war between the English and the Americans? Clarence?"

  He had been gazing toward the window. Now he turned and grinned at Chris. He seemed to be in high spirits today. She was going to make use of Clarence.

  "If you don't know, Clarence," she said, "you'd better pay special attention." She began to pace before the class, her hands in her skirt pockets. "All a war is, is a gigantic argument, and how many of you have ever been in an argument with someone?" She stopped and folded her arms. There were lots of responses: "I have!" "Me, too!"

  "And as with all arguments, there are two sides," she went on. She made both arms flow out to her right, her hands cocked with the palms toward her, until her arms were fully extended, whereupon she rolled her hands out flat, like the tongues of party favors. "You think one way, and your friend thinks the other." Her arms flowed out to the left. Then she repeated the movements in abbreviated form: hands to the right, palms on edge, set like facing walls, then hands like walls to the left. "And if the fight goes on, sometimes you hit each other." Her hands chased each other in a circle, divided, and then came back, one over each shoulder, the thumbs up, like an umpire's declaring an out. "When you were younger. I hope you're not doing that now."

  Clarence was watching her intently, mouth slightly ajar. "Yup," he said, and he grinned.

  "Is there one person that's always right in that situation?"

  "Yeah!" said Felipe. The hand-raising rule was tacitly suspended. Many of the girls were shaking their heads.

  Chris let her tongue lo
ll out briefly and lifted her eyebrows. "Felipe, if you have an argument with your sister, you're always right?"

  "No! She is! Because I always get in trouble all the time!"

  But with the assent of Dick and the girls, Chris insisted that in a war no side was completely right. "Also, you don't just go up and punch your friend for no reason," she said, suddenly advancing, with a fist readied, toward Julio, who looked up from the pens he had been fiddling with, shied away, and grinned.

  Clarence threw a punch at the air. "Pow!" he said.

  "You have reasons," Chris went on, glancing at Clarence. "And we're going to talk about them."

  They had reached the issue of the colonists' desire to become independent. Chris told them that her baby daughter had recently decided she wanted to feed herself. Chris described her baby in the high chair, pushing away her mother's hand. "She wanted to be ... what's the word? I, n..."

  "Impossible!" yelled Felipe.

  "Well, she is that," said Chris.

  "Independent!" yelled Felipe.

  "Yes, she wanted to be independent."

  "You let her?" asked Clarence.

  "Yes," said Chris. "Maybe the colonists started like babies. When you were a baby, your parents did everything for you. But as you got older, you wanted to do more things for yourself. Jimmy, pay attention. I'm going to be asking you questions about this."

  When they came to the issue of the trade laws, and discussed the ones that favored the colonists and the ones that didn't, Chris called Arabella to the front of the room.

  (Arabella usually wore glasses in class. She didn't have them on. As she passed Clarence's desk, he hissed fiercely at her, "Wear your glasses.")

  Chris whispered in Arabella's ear. Then she turned Arabella around to face the class, standing behind the girl, her hands on the girl's shoulders. "Arabella is French. I'm English. Now, all of you colonists out there, I'm offering you a hundred and fifty dollars for your tobacco. We got a deal?"

  "Nope," said Clarence.

  "I'll give you two hundred dollars," said Arabella to the class, and, having delivered her lines according to Mrs. Zajac's whispered instructions, she covered her mouth and giggled, and sat down.

  "I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars, and Arabella just offered you two hundred. Who you gonna sell it to?" Chris asked the class.

  "Her," said Clarence, pointing at Arabella.

  "Yeah, her," said many other voices.

  "You can't," said Chris. "I just made a law that says you can't."

  "Awww!" said Clarence. He was pouting.

  Many others groaned, as if she had just announced, "Homework."

  She let the groans die down and asked, "How do you feel?"

  "Mad," said Clarence. "Sad," he added.

  "Sad and mad," said Chris pensively. "Well, too bad. You have to sell it to me."

  Judith was smiling, watching Clarence, then watching Mrs. Zajac. Smiling as if at herself, Judith added her voice to the many that were saying, "No way!"

  Julio piped up, at England, "You wish!"

  "Too bad!" sang Chris, arms folded on her chest now, a stance rather like Al's imitation of the Colossus. Her eyes were partly closed. She shook her head. "You have to sell it to me. Because I own you!"

  "But that's not fair!" cried Felipe. "That's like prejudice!"

  "I'm paying you," said Chris. She made a face and shook her head at them. "You like the trade law I made that said I can't sell anybody else's tobacco in England, I can only sell yours." She made such a face as mothers of teenagers often receive. "Oh, you people in the colonies want it all your own way."

  "So?" said Clarence angrily.

  Ashley was vigorously shaking her head at Mrs. Zajac. Felipe had taken up the cry of "You wish!" Jimmy, cheek still resting heavily on his hand, looked annoyed, but at the noise, not the unfairness of England. But most of the rest were denouncing King George, in the person of Mrs. Zajac, and the Revolution was launched with perhaps greater fervor than some patriots had felt. Chris had to raise her voice to be heard over the hubbub. "All right. I'm just trying to make you see how England felt." She added, "The colonists, on the other hand, felt, 'Hey, it's our tobacco. We should be able to sell it to whoever we like.' "

  She brought them down gradually and told them to transcribe the list of causes she would write on the board. Later on, she'd administer a quiz, which for once nearly everyone would pass, even Clarence, Julio, and Pedro. Retiring to her desk right after that lesson, Chris glowed. Her face was flushed. She called that method of instruction "Rambo social studies." She was very glad to have seen Ashley, Pedro, and Julio engaged in the lesson, and wished that Jimmy, Kimberly, and Blanca had been, too. Felipe was marvelous, and as for Clarence, she wondered for that short, sweet moment how she could ever have thought of him as difficult.

  Clarence was difficult during the Christmas party, the last afternoon before vacation. He turned up his nose at the McDonald's gift certificates that Chris gave each of them. "What's this? I don't want this." Chris felt a little sad, but that was not the time for a lecture on manners.

  Then Clarence and Felipe nearly wrecked the party by getting into a fight during the game of Seven-Up. But Chris didn't scold them.

  She pretended not to hear when Robert, after giving her a box of candy, said to anyone who wanted to listen, "I got her the two ninety-nine. I coulda got her the three ninety-nine, but she ain't worth that much."

  Chris sent them away for vacation with smiles all around and many cries of "Have a nice vacation."

  She grinned at the empty room. It had turned into just a room. It had lost its power over her. "This is freedom!" she cried. She foresaw Christmas carols, gingerbread, Christmas parties, leisurely mornings with her own children, who had only normal problems. She'd start to feel that life was too serene a few days before she had to come back, and when she returned, the children would look new to her again, and all of them really would be a little different. She knew that at least one morning she'd wake up in the dark, look at the clock, cry out, "Oh, God, I'm late!" and then, feeling doubly relieved of her duties, fall back to sleep.

  Sent Away

  Chris had been one of the model pupils whom teachers use as surrogates; the principal put her in charge of the school office for a day in sixth grade. She could still remember every time when a teacher had reprimanded her. Chris thought of her childhood as very happy, but also as constrained. She felt that she'd lacked confidence as a girl. She grew up obeying the many voices telling her what not to do, such as those of the nuns at CCD.

  One of Chris's grandmothers was the sort of person whom people describe as saintly, a woman too kind and even-tempered to fit the usual profile of a real saint. Chris remembered hearing someone ask that grandmother why she went to confession. What could she possibly have to confess? "Angry thoughts," her grandmother had said. Recalling that line, Chris exclaimed, "Angry thoughts? I'd be in confession for a week!"

  It seemed as though there was a part of Chris that felt pent up, and that her classroom was one place where she could let it free. In the classroom, she could be aggressively good.

  Among other adults, Chris had a shy, reflexive way of turning aside compliments. She'd try not to smile and would utter a self-deprecating remark, as if to say she appreciated the compliment but didn't think she deserved it. Some people who'd served on committees with her thought she could be a little blunt, but when she spoke bluntly to adults whom she didn't know well, Chris often added a patter of laughter to her voice, as if hastening to say, "I don't think my ideas are better than yours, and I could always take them back if they offend."

  She was different in her room. There, she had great physicality. Her friend Mary Ann, tall and blond and slightly dreamy-looking, would stand behind a girl in the hall and chat with Chris while braiding the child's hair. When Chris touched children, which was often, she would put them in bear hugs and head locks. Whether scolding or comforting or merely making sure that a piece of work was understo
od, Chris got very close to the children. Sometimes, leaning over them, she'd almost touch her wide, changeable eyes to theirs. They could smell her perfume, hear her breathing, and some, such as Felipe and Jimmy, would go all squirmy, like kittens rubbing their flanks against their master's ankle, while Clarence might even relax his vigilance and fail to see a stranger at the door. Chris could be squeamish. The day back in the fall when she spotted a cockroach skittering across the carpet, she cried, "Somebody kill it. Please!" and for the next half hour scratched at her arms. A few children carried in strong odors, which bothered her, but she denied none of them her close presence.

  In the room, her confidence seemed unlimited. One day she stood beside her desk, holding aloft and shaking a sheaf of social studies quizzes on which none of the class had done well. She told the children they had to study harder. Then she declared, "Mrs. Zajac wasn't a very good teacher to you yesterday." So saying, and with a wild-looking smile, she tore the quizzes in half and dropped them in the wastebasket, throwing her fingers open to let the papers fall. She left her fingers splayed wide above the basket for a long, dramatic moment.

  And when laughter came over her in her room, at something a student said or did, it wasn't at all nervous-sounding, but deep and raspy, erupting under glowing cheeks and widely opened eyes from a place in the throat where laughter can't be manufactured. In the room, all shyness left her, and her voice had the booming ease of carnival barkers and other practiced, shameless exhibitionists who love to work a crowd. Chris felt very comfortable in the classroom. For all her tricks, she felt almost completely honest with children.