by Simone Vlugt
Count to ten. Just count to ten before sinking your nails into his face. Jasmine is quicker.
‘Don’t be stupid, Hans. You know those boys are provoked by anything these days. If I remember right, Bilal accused you of being racist because you wouldn’t bump up his exam mark by ten per cent.’
‘And then I explained that marking the exams didn’t have anything to do with racism. You just have to know how to handle them.’
‘Oh, and I don’t know how to?’ I flare up.
‘Looking at someone’s crotch isn’t the approach I’d recommend.’
I feel myself flushing. How does Hans know that? Who’s helped that rumour into the world? Hans and Nora leave – her expression has turned sceptical.
As Luke and I walk to our classrooms he says, ‘You look worried.’ He’s broken into my thoughts – I’d forgotten how perceptive he can be.
‘I’m worried they’ll be waiting for me at my car.’
‘I’ll walk with you,’ Luke promises. ‘It’s not a problem. From now on I’ll go everywhere with you if it’s necessary.’
I hesitate, but not for long. I’m not easily frightened, and I don’t like accepting help – being helped feels like a kind of failure. I’m used to solving my own problems. Nevertheless, Bilal’s predatory gaze follows my every step.
‘Okay?’ Luke asks. He knows me by now.
I give a very slight nod.
18.
I wait at the door for my students before each lesson, making comments, cracking jokes or telling one of them off for misbehaving. This afternoon I’ve got a pleasant but restless class of first years.
‘Saïda! How long have you been wearing a headscarf?’ I ask as she walks past me and into the classroom.
‘Since now,’ she says, raising her chin.
‘Was that your choice or did your parents make you?’
‘I decided myself.’ She responds fast, too fast.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘As long as that’s the case.’
‘Don’t you believe me or what?’ Saïda asks, annoyed. She takes out her mobile and checks her make-up in the reflection of the screen.
‘Of course, if you say so. Put your phone back in your bag, please.’
Saïda rolls her eyes, punches in a number and walks to her seat, phone to her ear.
‘Yeah. What’s up? I’ve got Dutch now. Yeah, with her. Shall I send a photo?’ She watches for my reaction out of the corner of her eyes.
I tap the board, the lines the previous class were given as punishment and Saïda hangs up. Not straight away, but still, she hangs up.
I’ve got a difficult relationship with Saïda. She’s precocious, assertive, not openly rude, but cuttingly scornful. Her group blocks me by speaking their mother tongue – Turkish.
As I begin the lesson, Saïda says something to her friends. All four of them burst into loud giggles.
‘Saïda, please repeat what you just said in Dutch.’
‘You wouldn’t want to know what she said, Miss,’ Zahra says.
Saïda gives her a poisonous look and immediately gets one back from Zahra. I let out a silent sigh. At moments like these I’m fed up with teaching, tired of being by turns prosecutor, defendant, educator, referee, confidante and enemy.
‘The next person who speaks any language other than Dutch, gets fifty lines. I’ve got a thumping headache so please bear that in mind.’
They’re quiet. I don’t hear a peep out of them for the rest of the period. I give them a reading assignment so that they can work independently, and walk between the desks, offering assistance here and there. Looking at their bowed heads softens my mood. Even Saïda is working hard, and every now and then one of them will look up at me, as if to check that I’m all right.
I’m always filled with satisfaction if I can keep my students under control without raising my voice. My classes used to be chaos. I’d get the kids quiet only for them to be disturbed a few minutes later by latecomers. After a lot of backchat, I’d send the latecomers to get a note, and then they’d return ten minutes later and disturb the class all over again. One way or another, I could never keep them fully quiet, but I got used to the gentle murmur which always hung in the room and which could blow up into a storm at the most unexpected moments. The art was in circumnavigating the storm or quickly dampening it. During my first year of teaching, all my energy went into maintaining order.
My father was responsible for the turnaround. One day I’d gone over for dinner, exhausted and burnt out, and had poured my heart out to my parents. If there was anyone who’d understand, it was them.
My father asked what kinds of punishments I gave and I explained that I sent students out to fetch a note from the deputy head – later they’d be made to mop floors or pick up rubbish, that sort of thing.
Neither of my parents thought this was a good idea. ‘Doing chores just earns a troublemaker respect from their friends,’ Mum said. ‘You’d be better off punishing them by taking away something that’s dear to them – their free time.’
‘Detention?’ I said with little enthusiasm. ‘That takes away my free time too.’
‘Lines,’ my mother said. ‘Give them lots of lines.’
I tried not to let my thoughts show – their approach seemed old-fashioned and backward to me. My father read my mind, though. He gave me a book, which turned out to be recent, not from the 1950s. It argued for the return of the authoritarian teacher. No more negotiating, no more endless discussions with mouthy students, no equality between students and teachers –instead teachers who set clear boundaries.
How antiquated, I thought, as I read the book. I’d been used to calling my teachers by their first names at my secondary school. My students didn’t do that, but the things they did say sometimes rendered me speechless.
But I read the book and gave out lines. I had nothing to lose. After a couple of weeks I was convinced that the approach worked. No more softly-softly. Lines! Fifty times: I must not call anyone a bitch because it is unnecessarily crass and insulting and comments like this don’t achieve anything.
It worked. They found writing lines such a waste of time that they cut their losses and shut up.
Even with this new-found quiet, I never quite manage to get through the curriculum. There’s always something going on in Rotterdam that affects the children from immigrant families, and if it isn’t Rotterdam, it’s Amsterdam: a disturbance involving Moroccan kids, a bag-snatcher who gets run over, Theo van Gogh’s murder. There’s always something to be discussed. And these discussions are the reason I went into teaching in the first place.
19.
The afternoon drags on, filled with lessons and breaks and, as an encore, a drawn-out departmental meeting. No one mentions the incident with Bilal. I bring it up a couple of times and Nora, the department head, cuts me off and says that there’s not much that can be done about it.
‘Why not?’ Luke steps in. ‘As a school we could speak to him about it.’
Nora looks at him over the rim of her glasses. ‘I think it would be wise to ignore Bilal Assrouti as much as possible. There was an incident, it’s been resolved now, let’s move on to the business of the day. There’s no point blowing it out of proportion.’
My mouth falls open. ‘And if I was to tell you that he was loitering outside my house last night?’
‘Was he?’ Nora asks.
Everybody looks at me. ‘There was someone there. He had the same build and height as Bilal,’ I say. ‘And he was standing there staring in such an obstinate way…’
Nora raises her eyebrows ever so slightly.
Luke comes to my assistance. ‘There’s no proof it was Bilal, but you’ll have to admit that it’s not implausible. It was certainly no coincidence that he was hanging around outside the school, I can assure you.’
Nora pushes her glasses up higher on her nose. ‘And? Did he do anything? Make any threats?’
For a moment I almost wish we could say that Bilal was waiting
for me with a knife. The fact that he was there at all hasn’t made any impression on my colleagues.
Jasmine shrugs, to make it clear that she supports me but can’t do anything about it. I notice that she doesn’t try to either. Nora taps the paperwork with her pen and announces that we’re moving on to the official agenda.
At three fifteen, I push my chair back. ‘I have to pick up my daughter from school.’
‘Just a little longer, Lydia. We’re almost done, another five minutes,’ Nora says, raising her hand.
‘Sorry – we’d set aside an hour for this meeting, it’s now gone on for more than an hour and a half and I don’t get the feeling that we’re going to make any major decisions in the next five minutes, so I’m off. See you all tomorrow.’
Hans mutters to the person next to him. A few others also have something to say about it.
‘Wait a minute, Lydia. I was going to walk you to your car.’ Luke’s voice breaks through, calm and decisive. He looks around the circle and says, ‘You’ll cope without us, won’t you? I want to make sure no one’s hanging around the car park.’
To my surprise, Nora nods.
‘Wow,’ I say as we walk along the corridor. ‘No comeback?’
‘She probably thinks it’s better to ignore it.’
‘I don’t understand why the others don’t get involved.’ Even I can hear the disappointment in my voice. ‘This affects us all. We should present a united front.’
Luke sighs. ‘No one wants to rock the boat. Things aren’t going that well for Rotterdam College, Lydia. We’ve had fewer enrolments than last year and I’ve heard on the grapevine that they’ll be cutting jobs.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Dan. He overheard a conversation between Jan and Harry.’
Harry van Zuylen is the deputy head. He’s a nice guy and, at thirty-eight, quite a bit younger than Jan, but he has the same narrow-minded attitudes.
‘Do the others know there are going to be redundancies?’
‘I can’t believe I’m the only person Dan would have confide din.’
‘He didn’t say anything to me.’ I’m slightly piqued.
‘You weren’t in the danger zone until now. The new teachers and the ones who can’t keep their classes under control will be the first to go.’ Luke holds open the cloakroom door.
‘Nora then,’ I say. ‘And Hans, and you?’
‘And you too, if you keep going on about Bilal.’
I pull my coat on. ‘But what should I do then?’ My fingers fumble with the buttons.
‘Stop talking about it,’ Luke says. ‘That’s if you want to continue working here.’
I wait for Luke in the corridor, his words troubling me. Is it worth it? Should I carry on? Through the window I see a group of fourth years. One of them spots me and waves. I smile and wave back. There’s my answer.
Tarik is a Turkish boy who came into my first-year class three years ago. He was very intelligent, but didn’t lift a finger at school and fell asleep in class. One day I came across him in town, sitting on a wall in the pouring rain. I bought him a coffee and began to get a picture of what was going on in his life. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to figure out that he had trouble at home; he was covered in bruises.
I invested a lot of time in Tarik. It would have been easier to refer him to social services, but I spoke to his father instead. The man turned out to be a real emotional mess. His wife had left him a couple of years previously, he was having difficulty settling into Dutch life and he vented his sorrows on his son. I organised for Mr Kaplan to be seen by a psychologist and other professionals, and little by little things improved for Tarik. Since then I’ve had a special bond with him.
Luke and I pass Tarik and his friends in the playground.
‘Miss!’ Tarik walks over, his hands in his pockets, cap down over his eyes. ‘Miss, I just wanted to say I think it’s terrible what happened. I mean, that shit Bilal pulled. It’s unreasonable, man!’
‘Thank you, Tarik.’
‘I’d watch out if I was you, Miss,’ Tarik says, with concern. ‘Bilal is really angry. He says he’s going to get his revenge.’
His friend Ali breaks away from the group and nods in agreement. ‘That guy is flipped, man.’
We keep walking. I have no idea how to react to their warnings.
‘It’s all bluffing,’ Luke reassures me. ‘Bilal’s been boasting to his friends to save face.’
Perhaps, yet still the blood races through my body. What if we’ve misjudged the situation? What if Bilal really is out for revenge?
‘You’ve gone pale,’ Luke says, touching my arm. ‘Maybe it’s not too late to tell the police.’
The car park lies abandoned in the afternoon sun. There are only a few cars left and I spot mine instantly. Not because it’s conspicuously red, but because of the damage.
The broken antenna.
The smashed side window.
The scratches in the paintwork.
A broken sound falls from my mouth. I don’t breathe, I can’t move. My brain has trouble processing and interpreting what I’m seeing.
‘Shit,’ Luke says quietly.
He walks ahead of me and after a moment my body reactivates and I follow him with leaden steps. I survey the damage in silence. The paint on the bodywork has been treated with a sharp implement and the mirrors have been snapped off. The word WHORE is scrawled large across the bonnet.
20.
The short journey home is dreadful. I can’t help but think that the damage, the word, is glowing like neon, apparent to every driver, cyclist and pedestrian around me. Even though that may not be the case.
It’s only once I’ve parked in front of the door that I realise I shouldn’t have driven like this and that I’ve forgotten to pick up Valerie.
I let my forehead sink onto the wheel. It’s gone half three, school has finished. If I went on foot, I’d be even later. There’s no other option, I have to get Valerie in the car.
Valerie is waiting at the school entrance with her teacher. I toot and she runs across the playground towards me, her coat open, her hair coming loose from its pigtails. The teacher glares at me then disappears into the building.
‘Sourpuss,’ I mutter.
I’m not that keen on Valerie’s teacher. Yvette is in her mid-fifties and I’m guessing that she longs for retirement. But Valerie loves her, so she must act differently towards children than she does towards the parents. Or towards me. That might be due to me ‘parking’ my child in lunch –care, as Yvette calls it, or because I never volunteer to help with the craft lessons or after-school parties.
At one parents’ evening, Yvette made a few sly digs at parents whose behaviour ‘demonstrated a worrying lack of involvement or interest in their child’s development’.
Anger flared up in me. In front of everyone, I told her what I thought. A toxic silence fell over the room. Later, a few cowardly parents came over and said that they absolutely agreed with me.
‘You should have said so, then,’ I told them.
Since then I haven’t been that welcome in most of the playground mafia circles. Not that it bothers me.
‘Hi Mum,’ she says, climbing into her car seat. ‘What happened to the car?’
‘It’s a bit damaged. Do up your belt and we’ll go.’
Valerie fastens her seatbelt and looks for her teacher out of the window so that she can wave.
‘Oh, she’s already gone inside,’ she says. ‘Why?’
‘Why is she inside?’
‘No-ho, the car!’
‘One of mummy’s naughty students did it,’ I say light-heartedly and hope that’s enough information. It is.
‘I was in a play,’ Valerie tells me. ‘Do you know what I had to be? A cat!’
‘Oh, how nice,’ I say, relieved. ‘Tell me about it.’
She talks about it in great detail until we arrive at home. She gets out of the car miaowing, and once I’ve opened the front do
or, she crawls along the hallway.
‘Get up,’ I say. I know what’s coming next. After seeing Aristocats, Valerie pretended to be a cat. She was a cat that wanted to lap up saucers of milk rather than eat her greens. And a cat that wanted to lie in the sun in the sitting room. As I fetch the post from the doormat, Valerie crawls into the kitchen on her hands and knees and, when I offer her a glass of cordial, she shakes her head, miaows and points at the milk.
I roll my eyes, and put a glass of milk on the table. The cat can get to it and sticks her tongue into it. Naturally this works for exactly five seconds before the glass gets knocked over and milk streams all over the table.
‘Oh Valerie, please!’ I restrain her when she goes to lick the milk from the table. ‘It’s been a difficult day, the car is broken, I’ve got a headache, please try to behave. Get a cloth and help me clean up.’
The cat fetches a cloth, mops up the milk and sorrowfully says, ‘Miaow.’
When Raoul gets home, I’ve laid the table and the potatoes and cauliflower are cooking. I wait for the inevitable outburst from Raoul when he sees the car. But the door opens, closes, and Valerie crawls over to his legs, miaowing.
‘Hello poppet,’ Raoul says. ‘We’re back at that again, are we?’
‘She was a cat in a play,’ I call out from the kitchen. Spatula in hand, I join them in the sitting room and look out of the window at my poor, battered car.
‘Have you seen it?’
Raoul puts Valerie back down on her feet. ‘What?’
‘My car. Haven’t you seen what’s happened to it?’
Raoul looks outside in alarm. ‘Have you dented it again?’
‘What do you mean “again”?’ I snap. ‘I’ve never damaged the car.’
‘I didn’t really pay any attention to your car.’ Raoul walks over to the window and shouts out, ‘Jesus!’ He runs outside.
I turn down the gas, get rid of the spatula and follow him outside in my apron.
‘Would you look at that! Covered in scratches! Who did it?’
I shrug. ‘It happened at school.’
Raoul takes a deep breath. It seems he’s on the verge of saying something, but doesn’t.
