The Teacher

by Gray, Meg

  Donald hung up his coat and backpack before walking over to Brayden. He waved his hand inches from his classmate’s nose and said “hi”. Brayden said nothing—he never did. Donald, unfazed, walked to the carpet, sat down next to Naomi, gave her the same greeting as Brayden and turned his attention to the story.

  Naomi curled her lip up at Donald and scooted away from him. Emma was about to give Naomi her stern teacher look when a movement in the back of the room distracted her. Brayden walked to the carpet and squeezed into the tiny space between Donald and Naomi. Not wanting to skip a beat or lose her students’ attention, Emma turned back to the story.

  Closing the book Emma asked, “Does anyone know what an earthquake is?” Three hands shot up into the air. “Yes, Hillary?”

  “It’s when the ground moves and things fall down.”

  “That’s right…”

  “Yeah, and it breaks the windows and things smash on your head,” interrupted Lyle, who made explosion sound effects and smashed his hand on his own head. The other boys joined in, making sound effects and producing the subsequent screams that would follow their perceived injuries.

  “Um, yes, well.” Emma raised her voice, trying to regain her class’s attention. “That’s why it’s so important to know what to do, so we can be safe and not get hurt.”

  She showed them how to get under their little tables, hook an arm around a table leg and cover their head with the other.

  The real drill commenced with the principal, Debbie Wolf, saying, “This is an earthquake. I repeat this is an earthquake.” The woman made a poor attempt at trying to sound alarmed and calm at the same time.

  The children screamed and squealed as they dove under tables. Emma walked around saying the words, “duck and cover” to remind them to protect their heads.

  “What about you Ms. Hewitt?” Little Mariah’s tiny worried voice asked.

  “If it was real, sweetie, I’d get under there with you, but this is just pretend and I need to make sure everyone is safe first.”

  Two minutes later, “all clear,” came over the intercom and Emma had her students clean their tables before lining up for recess. From the large metal doors that led to the playground, Emma stood and watched her students file out into the cool gray day. Susan’s class was right behind hers.

  “Are you going out?” Emma asked Susan who was wearing a black fur-lined coat.

  “No,” she said, turning back down the hall with Emma when the last of her class was out the door. “My room’s freezing, so I’ve been wearing my coat all morning.” Susan pulled a snack size plastic bag out of her pocket and offered a pretzel to Emma.

  Emma took one. “Thanks. Why’s your room so cold?”

  “I’m airing it out,” Susan replied, turning a little green.

  “Why?”

  “Vincent threw up.”

  “Oh no,” Emma said. “I’m guessing you sent him home?”

  She nodded and chewed a pretzel. “And his sister.”

  “Really?” Emma asked. Susan had mentioned Vincent and Valarie before, the twins whose mother insisted the two be in the same class because they were so connected, but also fought like cats and dogs.

  “Yep,” Susan smiled. “’Cuz he threw up all over her.”

  “You’re kidding,” Emma said horrified and then laughed. “That’s awful.”

  “I know.” Susan giggled. “But now my room smells like vomit covered in disinfectant. It’s quite the combination.”

  “Well, I hope it’s better by lunchtime,” Emma offered.

  “Me too,” Susan replied as they each turned into their classrooms.

  The long shrieking sound of the recess whistles blew as Emma walked back outside. Mary Ellen already stood on the bright yellow star painted on the pavement and waited for her class to line up. Emma took her place on the red star. Susan followed behind her to stand on the blue star. The kindergartners came running finally aware that the sound of the whistle meant recess was over.

  During the first weeks of school, getting the kids off the play equipment and into a line took effort. While Emma stood on her star and waved the children over, the recess aides would chase the stragglers with outstretched arms and guide them into line. “It’s like herding cats,” Susan had whispered to her. But today all of Emma’s little kittens were lined up and ready to walk inside—even Brayden, who stood at the end with his arms crossed and eyes downcast.

  The rest of the day passed quickly. When everyone was gone, Emma sat down at her desk and ran through her mental checklist of students. Did everyone get to where they were supposed to today? Did Donald get on his bus? Yes. Did all seven kids that stay for the after school program go there and get checked in? Yes, Adam, Brayden, Hans, Maria, Naomi, Petya and Savannah all walked with her to the gym. Hillary went home with Maria, yes. Was Carl picked up by his grandma? Yes. And everyone else was met by either a parent or nanny, yes. They were all accounted for.

  Emma pulled out the stack of progress reports from her top drawer. She finished them yesterday, except for one. Brayden’s comment section was still blank.

  Picking up her pen, Emma looked down at the progress report. She tapped her pen on the paper. Her old standbys of wonderful things to say about students like; a pleasure to have in class, enthusiastic about learning, has made tremendous progress, is well liked by others…didn’t exactly fit with Brayden. She could easily fill the section with her concerns, but she prided herself on looking for the positive in each of her students.

  She opened his work sample file and flipped through the first few pages. Most projects were incomplete, some never started. She picked up the pictures of the pumpkin plant he was supposed to have cut out and glued down in sequential order from seed, to sprout, to vine, to pumpkin. The pictures were colored nicely, but the pumpkin was torn in half. He started cutting on the lines and then got frustrated. Emma remembered how he yelled out that he couldn’t do it, threw the scissors on the floor, crumpled the rest of the papers, and stomped off to his locker. Emma salvaged the project and tucked it into the folder as a “talking point” for conferences.

  Next, she turned through the pages of his writing journal. Today, he’d drawn a picture of the classroom with broken windows, broken toys on the floor, and something falling on his head. Earthquake, Emma assumed. Flipping backwards, she looked at the pictures he’d drawn of the firefighters after they visited last month.

  Brayden retreated to his coat locker when the firefighters walked in. He watched their presentation with an intensity Emma had never witnessed from him before. The rest of that day, he’d been more irritable than usual and got into a shoving match with two of the other boys when they lined up to go home. Throughout the next two weeks drawings of firefighters putting out fires in cars, trees, houses, and schools showed up on every page.

  His conception and the details in his drawings were advanced for his young age. Quickly she jotted down: Incredible aptitude for drawing. After another several minutes of pen drumming she added; shows interest in making friends and has an amazing sense of awareness about his surroundings.

  Now she needed to pare down the laundry list of concerns she had formed in her mind. Finally, she wrote: Concerned about academic progress and social integration into the classroom. Let’s discuss ways to help Brayden be more successful. There, now she was done. She stacked up all the progress reports and took them to the copy room. Tomorrow she would sit down with Mr. Lewis at the parent-teacher conference and finally start getting somewhere with Brayden.

  She wasn’t going to let Mr. Lewis leave her classroom without giving her some idea about how to work with Brayden and answering some of her questions. Emma scoured Brayden’s registration material during the first week of school, looking for any clues to help her learn about her new student. She was disappointed to find the only emergency contact listed was the mild-mannered receptionist she left messages with at Lewis and Sons Law Firm. She had more questions than answers about Brayden.

&nb
sp; Through a brief conversation with Marjorie, the school secretary, she learned Brayden spent one day during the first week of school in a classroom at Portland Christian Academy before he transferred to Fitzpatrick. That explained his late start, but Emma was curious about what led to the transfer.

  Marjorie, being the wonderful resource that she is, looked up the number and passed it on to Emma. Her conversation with the other kindergarten teacher was brief and all she learned was that Brayden behaved the same as he did in her class—sitting alone, glaring and refusing to follow directions.

  “We simply cannot tolerate that kind of disrespect from our students. It is disruptive to the learning environment.” An utter lack of compassion encased the other teacher’s words. Emma gently agreed and thanked her for her time before hanging up.

  She would get her answers and start filling in the blanks on Brayden tomorrow. Mr. Lewis’s secretary assured her the messages about their conference had been received and he hadn’t called to reschedule.

  * * *

  The morning’s conferences were more enlightening than Emma anticipated. She learned Avery’s parents were getting a divorce and every other Friday her dad would pick her up so she could spend the weekends with him in Vancouver. Maria’s mother’s girlfriend was moving in with them and needed to be added to all of Maria’s emergency contact information. Oscar would not be at school next week. His mother was having a hysterectomy and he’d be staying at his grandmother’s house. Hans’s family planned to move back to Germany at the first of the year and Nicolai’s father had taken a job on the east coast. Emma noted every change, so she could keep track of all of her students.

  At half past three o’clock that afternoon, Emma sat and waited for Mr. Lewis to show up for their conference.

  At three forty-five, she called his office and spoke to the receptionist.

  “This is Ms. Hewitt. I had an appointment scheduled with Mr. Lewis today at three thirty. He isn’t here and I will need to reschedule with him. I only have two times available tomorrow, so please have him call me as soon as he gets this. Thank you!”

  By the time she closed and locked her classroom door on Friday, she hadn’t received a return phone call. Monday morning Emma photocopied the samples of Brayden’s work she intended to show his father, sealed them along with the progress report into a manila envelope, and put it in Brayden’s cubby. That afternoon she made another phone call to the law firm, explaining that the progress report was in Brayden’s backpack. She asked Mr. Lewis to call her so they could discuss it. Once he looked at the progress report and saw how Brayden was struggling, he would call. She was sure of it.

  Chapter Four

  Thursday morning Emma was in her classroom dropping ten kidney beans into small paper cups while her class was in the library. Suddenly, a distraught looking Brayden dashed back into the classroom. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.

  “Brayden, what is it?” Emma asked.

  “I forgot my library book and Ms. Simmons says I can’t get another one if I don’t bring it back.” Worry lines creased his forehead as he stomped to his coat locker. He pulled his coat from the hook and threw it on the floor before sitting inside.

  “Brayden,” Emma said, calmly walking over to him. “Did you put your book in the library basket this morning?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.

  “Let’s check your backpack. It might still be in there.”

  With his arms still crossed, he moved out of his locker. Emma reached for his backpack and slid the zipper open. Brayden reached inside and extracted his library book. The anxiety slackened in his body and the scowl left his face. Before Emma zipped the bag closed, she noticed a manila envelope inside—the manila envelope she’d sent home. She pulled it out and turned it over. The seal wasn’t broken. Emma’s heart sank as she pulled the zipper shut, manila envelope in hand. She followed Brayden out of the classroom and walked him back to the library.

  “Brayden,” she said when they turned down the main hallway. “Does your dad check your backpack at night?”

  “No,” he replied shaking his head.

  “Who picks you up after school?”

  “My dad.”

  Emma nodded and held the library door open for Brayden. She waved to Ms. Simmons letting her know Brayden had returned. Internally Emma fumed. If Mr. Lewis was too busy to return her calls or check his son’s backpack then she would confront him. A plan began to formulate in her mind. She was going to hand deliver the envelope to him. Today.

  At the end of the day, Emma dismissed her class and walked her students to the after school club in the gymnasium. The kids hung up their backpacks and coats in the janitorial closet turned coatroom and checked in by inserting a wooden craft stick into a library card pocket with their name and picture on it. She found Miss Lisa, the college student, who ran the program.

  “Hi, Ms. Hewitt,” the petite dark haired young woman said.

  “Hi, I was wondering if Brayden’s dad would be picking him up today.”

  “I’d assume so,” she said. “No one else is on his pick-up card.”

  “What time does he usually pick him up?” Emma asked.

  “Six o’clock, if we’re lucky,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes he’s even later than that and we’ve had to call him.”

  “Well, then I guess I’ll be back at six,” Emma said. “I have some papers to give him and I’d like to talk to him about Brayden.”

  “Good luck with that,” Lisa said. “He hardly gives anyone here the time of day. He takes Brayden and gets out of here as fast as he can.”

  “Well, I’ve got to try,” Emma said, forcing a note of optimism into her voice. “But thanks for the heads up.”

  Emma worked for the next hour cleaning up the classroom, sorting through the kids’ work from the day and stapling handprint turkeys on the bulletin board outside of the door. Emma flipped through her lesson plan book, noting which activities Mary Ellen had not yet prepared for her and headed to the copy room. The faint smell of cologne met her at the door and she felt her knees go soft. Alec Martin, the young special education teacher, stood at the copy machine.

  “You need this?” he asked Emma when she set her papers on the workbench behind him.

  “Mmmhmm,” she answered, drinking in his good looks—the blond hair and muscular build.

  He pulled his papers from the tray and flashed a smile. “It’s all yours,” he said before leaving the room. Emma ran her copies and cut strips of construction paper until the entire workbench was covered with her projects.

  At five-thirty, Emma’s stomach grumbled as she piled her stacks of papers and projects up in an alternating fashion. She lugged her work back down to the classroom and wondered if Seth was home yet.

  Seth was working from the Portland office this week and Emma enjoyed spending the evenings with her roommate. Last night they sat on the couch eating take-out from Styrofoam boxes.

  Her stomach grumbled again.

  Emma set her projects down, fished her cell phone out of her coat pocket, and dialed Seth’s number. He didn’t answer, so she left a message that she was still working and shared the idea of ordering in Chinese food. She hoped her offer would keep Seth from popping another one of those frozen dinners in the microwave that made the whole apartment smell like a school cafeteria.

  Emma organized her projects on the counter top behind her desk. From here, she had a clear view of the front of the school. She looked up when Mr. Martin left the building, carrying his bike down the steps. Once on the road Mr. Martin pedaled away.

  At precisely five fifty-seven, Emma saw the tall lean, well-dressed figure of Mr. Lewis cross under the street lamp in front of the school. She snatched up the envelope sitting on her desk and hurried down the hall. Her name badge and keys attached to the maroon colored lanyard around her neck bounced against her chest, making a clanging sound. She felt like a cow ringing her bell to let the farmer know she was
coming. She pressed her hand to her chest to stop the noise and turned the corner falling into step right behind Mr. Lewis.

  “Mr. Lewis?” she called.

  No response and if she wasn’t mistaken it seemed like the man’s pace just increased.

  “Mr. Lewis,” she said, a little louder this time and he stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I found this in Brayden’s backpack today.” She presented the envelope as she came up beside him, but he didn’t look at it.

  Mr. Lewis stared down at her, his posture commanding and intimidating. Emma backed off a step, feeling a sliver of discord wedge between them.

  “What were you doing going through my son’s backpack?”

  Emma startled at the tense accusation in his voice and watched as his hands balled into fists.

  Emma opened her mouth and then closed it again. She wasn’t prepared for his line of questioning. Her confidence wavered. She wanted to turn and run, but couldn’t. Finally, she had the attention of Brayden’s father and she wouldn’t let it slip away. Assuming a stance that was marginally as strong and intimidating as his, she took a breath to regain her composure.

  “I was helping him look for his library book,” she said, lifting her chin. She wanted to show him she couldn’t be bullied. “And I found this.” She pushed the envelope toward him again.

  “In Brayden’s backpack?” he clarified, taking his eyes from her for only a moment to grab the envelope.

  “Yes, and I can see you haven’t had a chance to look over Brayden’s progress report yet. I left you a message on Monday that I was sending it home.”

  “Well, I’ve been busy,” he said, showing no shame or apology.

  “Please,” she said. “Take the time to look it over.”

  Mr. Lewis glanced down at the yellowish brown package in his hands and she waited, hoping he’d say something, ask her anything. She watched him, looking for some sign of interest in his son’s progress, but there was none.