“I always say football is for boys whose mothers don’t love them!” said Lena’s mother, laughing. She did, in fact, always say this when the topic of football came up.
“It’s really a sport that exploits kids whose parents don’t have high-paying jobs and can’t afford to—”
The waitress was heading toward the table again.
“Can we talk about something else?” begged Lena.
“How’s everybody doing here?” said the waitress.
“Just talking about football,” said Mr. Wright, with a wink at his wife.
“Oh, yeah?” The waitress brightened, this time in a way that seemed genuine. “My son is a wide receiver at his high school. I told him, Boy, you better get some scholarship money off that, because college is expensive.”
“She teaches high school!” said Lena’s mother, pointing to Lena.
“Really.” The waitress’s smile seemed to cool back into potential-tip-inspired enthusiasm. “Where do you teach?”
“It’s in Texas,” said Lena, relieved that she did not teach in Philadelphia—in addition to the city’s having a notoriously broke school system, this would have left her at risk of actually meeting one of her students’ parents under these circumstances.
“In the inner city!” added her mother.
Lena tried to mentally compress Nex Level’s hologram, as if forcing a genie back into a lamp. She could not let the reality of this moment touch the memory of their last night together. Near the end of the night, she’d finally made some comments on the poem. She’d been conscious of his eyes on her as she spoke, and wondered if he sensed, as she did, the possibility of their combined energy onstage.
You’re smart, you know that? And you got a beautiful smile.
Thanks… I try.
Did you have braces?
“Texas”—the waitress’s voice pulled her back to the restaurant table—“didn’t they just make a movie about the schools down there?”
The look Lena gave her parents said, Please don’t.
Finally, they finished dinner and stepped out onto the snowy sidewalk.
A driver picked them up at the corner and wished them a merry Christmas, though Lena sensed that he might not celebrate Christmas, either.
She checked her phone again, more out of habit than hopefulness. But this time, a new message glowed at the top of the screen. Her heart jumped. She must have been in such a rush to get out of the restaurant that she hadn’t felt the vibration.
Hope ur having a great time in philly. love ya.
Love? He’d said love!
He probably didn’t mean it exactly like that, of course. And she had no intention of saying it back. Or, if she did, she’d say something borderline, like You, too.
Anyway, there was time to think about it. After hours of waiting on her end, it was Nex’s turn to wait for an answer. She put the phone back in her purse.
But still, he’d said love!
The inside of the car was toasty as the Wright family glided through the evening snow. They were far from the restaurant now, and Lena felt something wash over her that felt almost like holiday spirit. Love.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said to her parents, “and happy Day After Jesus’s Birthday!”
She caught the driver’s eye as he looked at her in the rearview mirror.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31
JESUS HAD BEEN conspicuously absent from the Hernandez household during Christmas. Hernan’s older sister, Mayra, had made repeated phone calls, leaving drunker and angrier messages each time. Your son is here waiting for you, she’d yelled into the phone, in case you care! There had been no response.
But on New Year’s Eve, Jesus returned. With a giant blue bottle of tequila in each hand, he slid open the door from the backyard, letting in a draft of cumbia, loud voices, and air bursting with the smells of grilled chicken and meat.
“What up, Jaime Escalante!” Jesus thought it was hilarious to compare Hernan to the balding, middle-aged math teacher from the movie Stand and Deliver.
“What up, Speedy Gonzalez.” Jesus had once been pulled over for speeding on the way home from traffic court, where he’d been handling another speeding ticket.
As Hernan’s nephew ran in from the living room to greet his father, Hernan went to the kitchen, where Mayra was washing dishes. “Speedy Gonzalez is here. Did you know he was coming?”
“Yeah,” said Mayra.
“Okay, then.”
Mayra’s wet hand grabbed his sleeve as he turned to leave the room.
“Listen,” she whispered, “don’t say anything about Christmas, okay? It was a misunderstanding. We squashed it already, and Jayden’s really excited to see him.”
“Hey.” Hernan held up his hands like a player avoiding an out-of-bounds ball. “That’s your business.”
“Speaking of business, did Papi tell you about the bluebonnet thing?”
“No. What?”
“Ask him. You know I don’t know nothing about plants.”
The two siblings fell silent as Jesus entered the kitchen. He put the tequila bottles on the kitchen table and waited for Mayra to turn around, but she had started scouring dishes with great concentration. Chito, the Hernandezes’ pit-bull-mixed-with-some-smaller-dog, came into the kitchen and pressed his face into the side of Hernan’s leg.
“Damn, Hernan,” Jesus said. “Y’all still got that Chihuahua-wannabe pit bull?”
“You know it,” said Hernan, scratching behind Chito’s ear.
“Surprised they even let you in the dog park with that thing.”
“Surprised they let you come back over the border with that much cologne on.”
Mayra let out a laugh without turning from the sink.
“I see someone’s in a good mood.” Jesus turned his attention to Mayra and wrapped his arms around her from behind. Then he kissed the side of her head and spun her so she could see the two bottles on the table. “I brought a little something back from Mexico for you, mi amor.”
Mayra leaned into his embrace noncommittally. Hernan sensed that she wanted privacy and started to leave again, but Lety was already on her way into the kitchen, accompanied by her blond skater-dude boyfriend, Geoffrey.
“Whassssuuuuuuppp!” said Geoffrey.
“Hey, Gee-off,” said Hernan.
“Hey, Gee-off,” said Mayra.
“What up, Jerk-Off?” said Jesus.
“What up, homes?!” Geoff reached out to Jesus for a proactive bro hug, which Jesus headed off with a fist bump.
There were a number of things Hernan and Mayra found irritating about Geoff, the first being that he verbally pronounced both the E and the O in his name. Even more annoying was his habit of flitting around Jesus like a fruit fly near a ripe banana.
“Bro! I’ve been meaning to talk to you about… that thing.” Geoff thought he was very secretive about the fact that he bought weed from Jesus.
Mayra scrubbed aggressively at a pan in the sink.
“Okay, but later,” said Jesus. “I’m with my lady right now.”
“Yeah, man. Yeah. Sure. No hurry. But later, right?”
“He just said that, Geee-off,” said Mayra.
“Cool.” Geoff looked around the kitchen. “Hey, who brought the tequila?”
“I did.” Jesus was warming to the distraction. “Straight from Meh-hee-co.”
“Hell yeah! Is there a worm in it?” Geoff adjusted his man headband excitedly.
“Tequila doesn’t always have a worm in it, Geeee-off,” said Mayra.
“Sometimes it does.” Lety’s voice tightened with baby-sister defensiveness.
Geoff was too focused on the tequila bottles and Jesus’s attention to be fazed. “So, we getting started on some shots or what?”
“Why not? It’s New Year’s Eve, right?” Jesus unwrapped his arms from Mayra.
Lety got out glasses and cut a lime from a bowl on the table. Jesus poured portions of clear liquid into the glasses.
&nb
sp; “Saludos! ” said Geoff as he held out his glass to Jesus.
Mayra raised an eyebrow at him.
“Hey, remember my friend Maritza?” Lety asked Hernan, changing the subject. “From when we used to throw parties at Club Seven? I saw her the other day, and she asked about you.”
“The one with all the Hello Kitty stuff?” asked Hernan.
Mayra nodded. “And the Precious Moments collection.”
“Who cares?” said Lety. “She’s pretty. And I think she likes Hernan.”
“If she’s cute, who cares?” said Jesus. “That’s your problem, Jaime Escalante. You’re too picky.”
Geeee-off laughed a bit too enthusiastically.
Mayra shot Jesus a chilly look.
“Just trying to help,” said Jesus. “We got to get Jaime Escalante here a girlfriend.”
Geoff cackled as he grabbed a tortilla chip. “For real, homey!” A piece of the chip fell on the floor as he bit into it, and Chito scrambled over to retrieve it.
Geoff squinted at the dog. Then he turned to Hernan with a flash of inspiration in his eyes. “Bro! For real, though, you know what you should do? Get a skateboard and have your dog pull you down the street on your skateboard. Any chick will fuck you if she meets you while your dog is pulling you on a skateboard.” Geoff glanced over to gauge Jesus’s reaction.
“Don’t curse in my parents’ house, Geeeee-off,” said Mayra. “I already told you that before.”
“Sorry. Tequila’s kind of kicking in. This is some good shhh… stuff.”
“And how do you know that, anyway?” asked Lety. “About the skateboard?”
“My friend told me,” said Geoff. There was a careful architecture to the word friend, leaving just enough room for the possibility of air quotes.
Hernan took his tequila to go, making his way through the rest of the party. Even with an uncle in Iraq and two cousins in Afghanistan, the Hernandezes had an overflowing New Year’s Eve crowd. Texas’s winter weather was the payoff for its sweaty summers, and the temperature was perfect. Music played. Meat sizzled. Eyes and teeth sparkled under the lights that lit the yard.
Hernan found his father in a folding chair against the fence, laughing at a joke someone had just told. His face turned weary when Hernan asked about the bluebonnets. For Hernandez Landscaping and Plant Nursery, the first few months of each year bustled with orders for the flowers, which bloomed in March and reached their full, blue-violet glory near the end of April. Lately, though, rust-colored dots had begun appearing on the saplings, growing into larger circles until they hollowed out the leaves and shriveled the stems. When crews rushed out to replace the flowers, the new ones soon developed the same tiny spots. It wasn’t just the Hernandezes, either. The infection was spreading fast, threatening to make the year a brutal one for Texas gardeners.
Hernan promised he would try to help, though he wished he’d learned about the problem earlier in the holiday break. With more time, he could have buried himself among the rows of plants, sampling leaves and studying them under the microscope he kept in the nursery office. But school started in two days.
As it was, there was barely enough time to get his lesson plans in order. He’d also promised to help his nephew with the compare-and-contrast packet his third-grade teacher had given him, which in reality just meant circling the keywords listed in the packet.
A paragraph that compared was likely to contain the terms alike, all, also, both, have in common, share, similar, the same as.
A paragraph that contrasted would say contrary, even though, however, opposite, on the other hand, unlike, yet.
Anyone who found enough of these terms, the test-prep logic went, would know what kind of paragraph they were reading. They’d figure out the rest from there.
* * *
On the last night of a break, teachers often reported similar dreams. Common themes included showing up to school in pajamas or bathrobes, waking up late, or completely forgetting how to get to the school, taking a string of wrong turns in unfamiliar terrain.
Another shared nightmare involved schedule changes. In these, teachers learned they’d be teaching classes of several hundred students in enormous, irregularly shaped rooms, or on open fields where even the loudest of voices would be lost in the wind. In time, they would all settle back into their familiar routines. Their shared dread would recede as they realized they had not, in fact, forgotten how to teach over vacation. Still, on that last night they would all sleep fitfully, checking their clocks in panic and twisting their sheets into ropes. Most would wake the next morning in similar states of crankiness, powering through the day on coffee and adrenaline.
Hernan, on the other hand, experienced exactly the opposite. Unlike his colleagues, he slept soundly and woke the next morning remembering no dreams at all.
WHATEVER IT TAKES TO WIN!
THE LARGE CHAIR in which Dr. Barrios sat probably looked comfortable on camera. Next to him, on a decorative end table, rested a pitcher of water and an empty glass. They mocked his thirst, daring him to pour himself a drink. Not a chance. He could already imagine the headline: “Failing Administrator Drinks as Students Thirst for Knowledge.” Underneath would be a photo of him holding a glass of water, leaning back in this too-soft chair, on this too-bright stage, in front of these too-excited audience members selected by the Education Sensation TV producers.
Already, he had submitted to a coating of heavy, chalklike powder in the makeup room. Now he sat next to the other two panelists on the stage, a teachers’-union representative and one actual teacher, avoiding eye contact with the camera.
Host Melinda Morningside was still reading from the teleprompter, her head straight, her torso angled slightly forward. “If you’re just joining us, this is Education Sensation TV, and we want to hear your voice. Please tweet to us at @EdSensationTV. Again, we have a tweet here from someone who saw the documentary and says the status quo is unacceptable! And here next to me is a teacher who agrees with that completely.”
It was not, in fact, clear what the teacher thought of the tweet. Melinda had cut her off as soon as she’d begun speaking. “Actually, that’s not exactly—”
“But now we want to hear what you have to say!” If Melinda Morningside noticed the interruption, she hid it well. “We’ve equipped each seat with a computerized voting clicker, generously provided by Global Schoolhouse Teachnology! Thanks to Global Schoolhouse Teachnology, everyone in our audience can vote on the question on this screen: How important is our children’s success?”
The audience fumbled with the gadgets next to their seats. A crowd-participation reporter put down his microphone to help those with their hands raised. The teacher was crossing her arms, clearly frustrated, but Dr. Barrios did not feel sorry for her. He hoped his own time in the spotlight would be equally short. Please, he thought, let Melinda Morningside cut me off. No follow-up questions. No chances to make the crowd angry.
The whole setup reminded him of the megachurch TV programs his mother had watched when he was in high school, after she got sick. Sinners, nonbelievers, and people with all manner of afflictions would climb to the stage, where the famous preacher would release the Holy Spirit into their bodies. The force was always so strong they fell backward, into the arms of strong men who stood waiting to catch them. It had seemed like a lot of pressure. What would happen to the one person whom the Holy Spirit did not knock off his feet? Did he just have to stand there, unsaved, in front of all those hopeful people? But they always fell. The crowds always broke into euphoric applause. His mother always smiled weakly at the TV, nodding as she smoothed the blanket over her knees.
Several more Education Sensation staff members were now in the audience helping with the voting clickers. A man with headphones held up three fingers, counting down silently as Melinda swiveled back to the camera.
“While we’re waiting for our audience to weigh in on this important question, let’s hear from our next panelist”—her smile disappeared and she
shook her head slowly, narrowing her eyes—“a representative from the teachers’ union.”
A round of boos came from the audience.
Unshaken, the union rep smiled and leaned her own torso toward the camera.
Melinda Morningside’s face, meanwhile, had become a photogenic mask of disgust. “It looks like everyone here is wondering why your union is willing to rob children of their futures just to defend the status quo.”
“Melinda, I’m glad you asked, because if there is one thing our union definitely cares about, it’s kids! That why it’s more important than ever to say no to one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter solutions and save public education.” She shoveled in the last phrase before anyone cut her off. Then she smiled, back straight, like an Olympic gymnast who’d just finished a perfect routine.
Dr. Barrios marveled at her composure.
Melinda Morningside had turned so far away from the union rep she had to speak into a different camera. “So, I guess the real question is, do we care more about the rights of adults or the rights of our students to get an education? We know what this union representative thinks”—here, she paused and made the most ladylike version of a gagging noise Dr. Barrios had ever heard—“but I think it’s time to hear from you, our studio audience. Thanks to Global Schoolhouse Teachnology, your survey votes have been counted. Let’s see here.” She looked up at a screen above Dr. Barrios’s head. “It looks like ninety-eight percent of you said our children’s success is either important or very important! Wow, this is an audience that cares about kids! Please, everyone, give yourselves a hand for caring about kids so much!”
They did.
Dr. Barrios snuck a look at the teleprompter, which said Pause for level 5 applause. Even the audience’s reaction was part of the script.
And just like that, Dr. Barrios understood why the union rep looked so calm. She already knew how this worked. She’d said her lines, and now her part was over. His could be over, too, just like that.
Adequate Yearly Progress Page 17
