by JoAnna Novak
I stabbed into my wrist with the paper clip, right where the channel between two veins ran parallel. It hurt. Instant, luxurious—not painful. Not painful enough. The Xerox machine squealed. I clenched my jaw as I pulled the metal across my skin. I could exercise, I could eat crumbs (my day was on course for five hundred calories), but I couldn’t promise Lisa I’d get help. What was help? Help enrobed you in fat. Turned you into a traitor against your best friend.
Harder harder harder harder. I wanted to sever the soft wrong stuff smothering my veins, gloppy blood vessels, sinuous muscles, the gritty particles of my unlikability, the pestilence. What Lisa hated. What made me me.
The Xerox machine was spewing its last copy. Though I’d gauzed my wrists to be suggestive, I’d never actually cut. The pain felt like nothing. I wasn’t even good at self-injury. Twisting, drilling a hole, I tried one last time. I winced at the thought of my veins roiling, a chef’s knife cutting off my toes, my body, the bones highlighted like words on a computer screen, spread eagle, swallowed by flames in front of Lisa. Stop, Elliot! She’d cry. Ellie.
The paper clip’s damage was no worse than biting your own arm.
This was my wrist: scratches circled with pink covered my veins; in two eyelash-sized places, blood. I sheaved the Real Talk. The words—my handwriting, my plans, my words—marched across the page like ants. I bent the paper clip back into shape and replaced it in its compartment to pass on my skinny germs.
“Elliot?”
I spun and got dizzy—the books in the library were slanting, tumbling off their shelves. Right there, Ethan Suva was ticking the scuffed red wheels on his skateboard, which stood beside him like a dog on two legs. Its owner wore a baggy Pearl Jam T over a gray Henley and black jeans cuffed with sidewalk salt.
“Whatcha doin’, mang? Writing Dave Grohl a birthday card?”
His proximity and his lax address made me bashful. I looked down. He was barefoot. His toes were very clean, the color of a peach crayon. Mine were lavender, from crumby circulation. I was grateful for shoes. Had he seen the Real Talk cover? Had he heard the paper clip, excoriating like a secret, the residue of how much I knew about him, Suva the Youngest, brother to two gerbil-nukers? He’d been a vegan since forever and loudly declared it, throwing a skinny, blonde wrench into first-period advisory doughnut parties; he honed a grungy style, band Ts, the grinning Nirvana one I especially loved, riddled with Pog-sized holes.
I collected my Real Talk from the tray. “Who?”
“Dude. Negative snaps.” He laughed to himself, and a smile rippled over his face. “So what are you doing?”
I pulled my sleeve over my wrist.
“Working on a thing. Just … makin’ like … copies.”
“Der dud der. Makin’ copies. Makin’ copies, with Elliot-meister. Elliot-a-rino?”
“What?”
“I can’t actually fault you for not knowing Rob Schneider, but dude.”
My heart was somersaulting. I couldn’t stop seeing his feet. “Yeah?”
He raised an eyebrow, Jack Nicholson’s Joker. He bunched up the sleeve of his Henley and tapped a finger on his wrist, at the spot where I’d paper clipped. Then he reached over and tapped the same place on me.
“Slice and dice?” he said under his breath.
My hand dove into my pocket. I stared at his wrist. I didn’t have boy-clients. Ethan’s body was another city. In Spanish, I’d noticed the three Xs he Sharpied on himself, but I’d never been this close. I could see faint outlines on his flesh. He’d scrubbed so hard it looked like a swipe of pink highlighter. “It’s cave girl, all right?” I started walking. “Primitive coping. Whatever, it’s my first time. Verdict’s out. It doesn’t close the curtain, but it gets the actors on stage.”
“Well, what play? Romeo and Ghoooooooul-iet?” he said.
“You can use the copier now. Sorry.”
“Dude, why are you sorry? I’m in no rush. You wanna finish up?”
My eyes suddenly felt too big for my skull. I didn’t know where to look when I looked at Ethan. He was sorta smiling, half at the floor, half at my feet.
“No, it’s … um. All yours,” I said. I kept walking. “I’m done.”
Out of the library, I sighed so hard I made a sound. Anna called breathing like this prana. For the past three and a half years of junior high, I’d had a crush on Ethan, but I’d never been brave enough to even pick him for my team when we played Taboo in Headways, Park’s gifted class. I wished Lisa weren’t sick so I could meet her at her locker and tell her. He’d touched me—that was nothing I’d ever daydreamed. I’d imagined a whole saga: us getting older; having the same AP classes in high school, the good ones, Psych and Art History; one day becoming friends who rode the Metra downtown, hoofed it to Michigan Avenue and walked around the Museum of Contemporary Art, bumping ulnas in front of Andy Warhol’s Jackies. We’d joke little, talk less. In my fantasy, my Uncle Marky and his partner, Fernán, were out of town, and I was housesitting for them, and Ethan and I would cab over to their West Loop loft. No big deal, I’d say, when I unlocked the door and led him down four steps to the sunken living room, where I’d float onto the deep, velveteen couch, my ribs peaking like the remains of a spiny prehistoric creature, and prepare for him to smother me.
5 ·· ANNA
WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS, I DON’T remember students. No one from last semester, save Rot.
When I began, I didn’t expect to forget so instantly. After all: Ms. Urben, Mrs. Cross, Ms. McCarthy, Mr. Brady, Mr. Eldrige, Ms. Atwater, Ms. Friefel, Mrs. Gorman, Mr. Slade, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Lanthrop, Mrs. Cook, Mr. Richie, Mr. Reid and Mrs. Reid, Mr. Murphy, Mrs. Connor, Ms. Matusiak, Mrs. Koenig, Mrs. Sharma, Mr. Jaffe, Mr. Brown, Mr. Page, Mrs. Singletary, Mme. Blanchot. I could go further: Dean Andrews, Professor Kasser, Professor Macal, Dr. Greenberg, Dr. Javadi, Noel, Peter, Haivan, Hannah, Annemarie, Annalise, Arlene, Jim.
I could tell you more, about any of them, at random. Here: Ms. Matusiak, sand-blasted, after her Peace Corp years Jeeping through the savannah. The Dixie plates she gave us to draw sine, cosine, tangent guides. Her son, newly brain-dead. Second grade: I filed papers for Mrs. Sharma (Dorothy Hamil hair, schnauzer named Butchie). College: Noel paid me for some light cat sitting, taught me to make arancini stuffed with cubes of smoked mozzarella.
No, the transitive property doesn’t apply to teachers and students. Just because you remember someone doesn’t mean they remember you. A rule of love, too. One party’s feelings don’t guarantee reciprocity. But this was news to me, especially the first couple years of my career, when I wasn’t even certain what I was doing—having survived college with a transfer out of an authentic Ivy to an almost in the Midwest; having—solely on the empowered heels of receiving an A and effusive marginalia (“this is why I teach”) on my To The Lighthouse term paper—applied to graduate programs in English literature in a spirit of I write poems in my diary and why not. When I wasn’t certain of anything, let alone a career or whatever being a teaching assistant in a lowly master’s program foretold, I was so stunned to be the body in what I thought was an adult chair that I couldn’t fathom forgetting my students. (Now I realize it was no different than any other chair—it was only industrially upholstered.) They were humans! With real, albeit tentatively founded, beliefs and occasionally surprising backstories! They broke out in sebaceous cysts and poison ivy, dyed their hair and angled their bangs and whispered during class. They wrote odes to the same idols they bore on their T-shirts or sewed onto their backpacks, patches, Depeche Mode and U2 and Kraftwerk and The Smiths and Lou Reed—they really liked music. They sat on the same side of a table as me, in Holmes Lounge, so together we could inspect, dissect, and resurrect their poems. And back then, I was not so different from them: twenty-three to their eighteen. I had a shoebox of mix tapes in the backseat of my sky-blue Nova. I still smoked, feverishly. My exercise didn’t go beyond drunk Thighmastering. That first year, I’d had a senior, Priya, pre-med, her last semester, finally allow
ing herself one “fun” elective. I was her teacher: six months her junior.
Now, for ENG 101, spring semester 1999 (dolt suburbs: last week we started on-schedule despite a foot of snow and temps of -13°F and sixty-some reported deaths), I am delusionless. I’m whatever’s between jaded and ardent. Realistic?
Some of my colleagues really adore teaching; this is news to me, bad news, every time I hear it. My poor colleagues, so ready to give away themselves, so ready to see only good. I don’t subscribe to the gospel of specialness or youth. Mostly my spring students are repeat offenders: they didn’t pass ENG 101 in the fall. Some are adults, whose college careers didn’t begin right after high school: children, almost always children, diverted their lives. Take Barbara, this semester, the one student older than me, and older by a lot: she must be sixty. She had her first baby when she was sixteen, she told me, in her Literacy Profile. Now she’s a grandmamma. Okay, honey, she says, when I announce homework. Like that, in the middle of class: okay, honey. Her tone—patronizing, servile, buttery—aggravates me.
Also, she’s fat. A circus act. Big Bertha.
As I approach the classroom, I hear voices. A girl groans. A boy yells, Can it. Someone, mirthfully, idiotically, says don’t be gay. A pen zips along the corkscrew binding of a spiral. Maybe Barbara is reviewing her blue ballpoint notes, a wobbly and old-fashioned cursive. The hallway is copy-toner and apple-cinnamon scented something. My heart louds. Nervous isn’t the right word; self-conscious isn’t either. More, I feel as though my face has been replaced with a fishbowl of vomit, my pants dusted with coke. Is that disgust or revulsion? The real me?
See Sartre: “I have it, the filth.”
So I go. I pause outside the door, cringe—and enter.
And, like that, they shut up.
Silence in a classroom is a physical thing, inert but infectious, like gas. (Chemistry, too, not a strength.) Silence in a classroom is different than silence in my home, where Elliot and I are often contemplative or occupied, where silence allows the air in the living room to circulate more freely, a mesh for our thoughts, a well-stretched muscle, limber and lean. In a classroom, silence barricades distractions; silence is militant; silence is order, ridding rascals from the ranks. Well. I do not intend to be imposing, but my degree and title and tenure must affect my comportment. That, and my all-black: wool suiting pants, licorice loafers, chewed nails.
The left index and middle’s polish, I’ve already touched up, the minute I had in my office. I collected my roster and blue books, did a quick re-lacquer. Still wet, I think, as I walk across the room. I feel student eyes on me: I want to bat them off. I remind myself not to do anything with my hands.
“Attendance,” I say. “It’s as much for you as for me. Meet one another. Become acquaintances. After all, this classroom is a writing community.”
No one snickers—at least, not out loud. Some of these words are familiar to students; all of them are familiar to me. I’ve been teaching nearly fifteen years: I could write a script.
“Of course today you’ll work independently, but, in future discussions, I prefer you use each other’s names.”
It’s only our fourth meeting, I remind myself, the second week of the semester. They’re not watching me, expecting fireworks yet. Oh sure, they’re still watching: teachers are celebrities with training wheels. All students begin with some misguided thought about their professors. That’s why they watch: they’re watching my legs cross when I sit atop the desk in the front of the room, they’re watching my breasts when the thermostat is wonky and my nipples protrude, they’re watching me watch them—how long will my eyes hold contact with theirs? Do I have a lazy gaze, a sniffling problem, a tendency to lick the corners of my mouth with my tongue—something to mimic, pounce on, taunt? They’re still figuring out my sense of humor, my chalkboard handwriting, my interest in conversing after class. Barbara, for instance, I’ve tried to mentally tell, buzz off. Will I acquiesce, linger on a cinderblock just beyond their temples? They’re not watching my technique; they’re watching my body, my person: I am still a new specimen to them. They’re watching to prove themselves right or wrong.
I’m still figuring them out, too. That’s why today, after attendance, now that I’ve spent a day reading over the syllabus and another day facilitating introductions and another day proctoring the mandatory Nelson-Denny reading test, I distribute the standard-issue blue books and a half-sheet of paper with a simple, reflective prompt.
“I’ll read this out loud.”
I pinch a prompt with my dry hand. Of course I don’t tell my students that even this act is a gift: in case anyone is illiterate, here’s their chance to know what they should be writing about. I clear my throat (still foul-tasting). I feel world-weary and bored, but I try to sound fetchingly blasé. I think about the coke in my pocket. I think about Rot, sitting in the back right corner where, all last semester, he watched me.
“‘The pressure essay is the first entry in your writing portfolio, a collection that will grow during your time at COCC. By the time you graduate or transfer, you’ll be able to observe trends in your writing, as well as, hopefully, celebrate improvements. This essay also constitutes your first grade in ENG 101. It’s worth fifty points. Describe a place where you experience total contentment. What makes the place special? Is it a physical or emotional place? Is there a story behind it? How do you get to this place, and do you already feel content when you arrive there or does the location itself calm you down? Use evocative details to show your reader this place and use reflection to explain its personal significance.’ Does anyone have any questions?”
It is a simple task, one I stole from a fourth-grade assignment of El’s.
Barbara, unsurprisingly, raises her hand. In front of her, a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Already, there is a damp circle, the size of a pie tin, in the ivory polyester covering her armpit. The room is not hot. It is not nipple-hardening cold, either, but it is brisk. Cook County: cheap old dive, a community college, with barely a budget. Environmental comforts are not a priority.
“How long should it be? I think your sheet forgot it. Did you say, hon?”
I clear my throat. None of my evaluations have mentioned favoritism, though I pick and choose. It is like paging through a catalogue: want, want, no, no, maybe, hell no, murder me. I disapprove of Barbara’s manner so much that I’m bluntly evasive.
“As long as it needs to be.”
Her chuckle sounds like clucking. “Well, I don’t know quite what that means.”
“Write as much as you’d like to complete the prompt. I’m not going to say something prescriptive like five paragraphs or six paragraphs or nine. That’s arbitrary.”
Now that she has the floor, she no longer raises her hand. “What do you mean by arbitrary, hon? We’re simple humans here. You can speak to us in English.”
I smile tightly at Barbara, trying not to grow frustrated. I’ve experienced worse. Two years ago, another older student, Griselda, slicked-back ponytail and jeans with fringe at the flared cuffs, stood up in front of all five students in the smallest section of Developmental Writing I ever taught, and went on a fifteen minute tirade, the thesis of which boiled down to—and I quote: you [I—Anna Egleston] don’t know nothing about where I [she—Griselda Santander] been. I’d stood silently until she finally left, announcing her withdrawal from the course to our class, and then I’d taken a deep breath, blinked back involuntary tears, and explained the two beautiful ways to use a semicolon.
“Arbitrary—ah, capricious, wanton, or, just a decision that’s random.” I extend the fingers of my left hand, the way I plant my palm and my knuckles into my yoga mat, to feel the ground radiating through me as I settle into downward dog, pedaling my feet, breathing into my hips. I would like to pedal my feet into this woman’s spongiform stomach. What is so charming about simplicity? Plain speech? A clear answer or path? Sometimes, I think I’m in the wrong profession. “It’s up to you, up to your personal choice, wh
ich may as well be random—how long the essay is. Does that make sense?”
Barbara shakes her head. On the first day, she announced that she’s almost retiring but for now she’s still a nurse. I would hate to be on her floor. “Whatever you say, hon.”
I scan for hands. “If there’s no one else, we’ll start. You have the next seventy minutes to complete the essay. Feel free to outline on a page, just label that—”
“What do you mean, outline?” Barbara says.
“Plan. Free write. Take notes.” I hear my voice sound curt. “Brainstorm. All right. Seventy minutes. If you finish before the period ends, you’re welcome to leave early. There’s no homework this weekend.”
The knock startles me—and the class. The students cock their heads, chew their pencils, swallow, tuck hair behind their ears, make a show of studying the prompt. I want to believe. Through the door’s window, the crosshatched glass, I need to believe Rot’s clover-green puffer coat is out there, the hot pink ski tag shouting off the zipper. My head swims out from the purge. I remember when students said excellent, radical, tubular, right on. When they wore jean jackets, Starter jackets, windbreakers, color-block blazers, flannels, canvas coats with Keith Haring scribbles. Lately, the trouble looks respectable. That green coat—was there even a knock?
“You gonna get that, hon?” says Barbara. “I think there’s someone at the door.”
“Get started. I’ll be one minute.”
··
Context, I teach my students, is everything. Use slang in a white-tablecloth restaurant, and there’s a good chance your request will be viewed as uninformed, inappropriate, at best overly casual. What you say changes depending on where you’re saying it, to whom you’re saying it, what you’re trying to accomplish by speaking. At hypothetical, white-tablecloth restaurant, say, “Yo, get me a spork,” and, if your aim is to receive a utensil, your request will likely be met. However, if, as the speaker, you were trying to demonstrate that you understood the mores and conventions of fine dining, you would be unsuccessful. “Pray tell a fork may be procured for thine hand,” isn’t any better, I assure my students, lest they confuse challenge with competence.
