Ms. Hempel Chronicles

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  Fame and success: did that count as revenge? The seventh grade had a lively sense of justice. They wanted to see Dwight pay for all that he had done to Toby and his mother, for all the pain he had inflicted. They longed for a climactic, preferably violent, showdown between the boy and the stepfather. Barring that, they wanted Dwight to suffer in some specific and

  rolonged way. The fact that he had to live with the meagerness of his own soul—this was not considered punishment

  enough.

  “He’s probably read the book, right?" Will Bean asked.

  “And he knows that Toby’s a famous writer?”

  They relished this idea: Dwight as an unrepentant old man, hobbling down to the liquor mart, pausing by the brilliant window of a bookstore. And there’s Toby. Mustached, mischievous Toby, the same photograph from the back cover, only much larger. A careful pyramid of his books is pointing toward the sky. number one bestseller, the sign reads. Through the plate glass, the old man can hear the faint slamming of the cash register. He can see the customers taking their place in line. And he can make out, even though his eyes are old and rheumy, the title of the book that they hold in their hands.

  “If he’s read it, he knows that millions of people now hate him, right?”

  Which would mean, of course, banishment from the Elks Club. Divorce papers from his latest wife. Bushels of hate mail thumping against his screen door. Furtive trips to the convenience store, his mechanic’s jacket pulled up over his head.

  “Well,” said Ms. Hempel. “I think he’s dead already.”

  A howl filled the classroom.

  “Usually writers don’t publish this type of book until the main characters have all passed away. So people’s feelings don’t get hurt.”

  Dwight, cold in the ground before the book even reached the stores. It was the greatest unfairness of all.

  “And Rosemary? She’s dead? She didn’t get to see how good a writer her son is? She didn’t get to see how well he turned out?” This, too, struck them as terribly unjust.

  “No, no,” Ms. Hempel said. “Rosemary is still alive. I think. Look in the front pages of your book—he thanks her, he says that she corrected him on certain facts, on the chronology of the events"

  “Good.” The class looked relieved. “Okay.”

  An opportunity for moral inquiry presented itself. "If you were writing a book about your life,” Ms. Hempel asked, “and you cast a person in an unflattering light, would you wait until that person died? Before you published your book?”

  The kids didn’t see her point. ‘‘I couldn’t write a book. I don’t have enough to write about,” Simon Grosse said.

  “That’s not true!” said Ms. Hempel. “Each of you could write a book. Several books, in fact.” She tried to remember what Flannery O’Connor had said on the subject. “Anyone who’s made it through childhood has enough material to last them until the day they die.”

  “We haven’t made it through yet,” Henry Woo said.

  “But you will,” said Ms. Hempel. “And when you do, you’ll have lots to write about. Everyone does interesting things when they’re kids.”

  “And bad things, like Toby?”

  “And bad things. Everyone has, even if everyone won’t admit it.”

  The kids waited for a moment, as if they needed, for politeness’ sake, to make a show of digesting this information. “Did you do bad things, Ms. Hempel?”

  She should have expected it.

  “Well. Be logical. Everyone includes me, doesn’t it?” Greedily the kids leaned forward. “What kinds of bad things?” The back legs of desk-chairs rose into the air.

  Ms. Hempel heaved an enormous sigh of resignation. She let her arms drop heavily to her sides. "You really want to know?” she groaned, as if she were finally, under great duress, capitulating to their demands. "You’re really going to make me do this?” In truth, she loved talking about herself. Especially to her students.

  All heads nodded vigorously.

  "I watched TV when I wasn’t supposed to. And sometimes 1 stayed out past my curfew.”

  The back legs returned to the floor. "That’s it?”

  “I wasn’t always considerate of my parents.”

  David D’Sousa offered her a wan smile.

  “And I pierced my nose with a sewing needle,” Ms. Hempel said. “My mother turned her face away every time I walked into the room, like she does when she’s watching a violent movie. She was furious at me.”

  “Caroline Pratt pierced her belly button,” Adelaide observed. Caroline was an eighth grader. “She didn’t even use ice.”

  Ms. Hempel shuffled through her collected misdeeds, trying to find ones that she could, in good conscience, share with seventh graders. “I used to like skateboarders. I would help them dye their hair—it made my hands all blotchy. And I was always getting in trouble for breaking the dress code at my school. Once I wore—”

  “Ms. Hempel, did you always want to be a teacher?”

  It startled her, the conversation veering off in this direction. But then it made sense to her: they believed they already knew the answer. Of course she had always wanted to be a teacher. They were giving her a way out. A way of explaining her unremarkable youth.

  “No!” she said. “I certainly didn’t.”

  “Why not?” And the question sounded reproachful. “You like teaching, don't you?” Because suddenly there was th possibility that she didn’t. "You like being a teacher. And you were good at school.’'

  They said it with confidence. They treated it as a commonplace, an assumption that needn’t be challenged. But the fact that they had said it, the fact that the issue had arisen, H the midst of this tour through Ms. Hempel s offenses, suggested that somewhere, in some part of themselves, they knew differently. It was astonishing, the efficiency with which they arrived at the truth. This was probably why children were so useful in stories and films about social injustice, like To Kill a Mockingbird. But Ms. Hempel didn’t think that this ability was particularly ennobling. It was just something they could do, the way dogs can hear certain high-pitched sounds, or the way X-rays can see past skin and tissue down to the ghostly blueprint of the bones.

  Ms. Hempel sighed. A real one, this time.

  "My school—it was demanding, academically. They had very high expectations of us."

  “So you were a really good student?”

  “No,” Ms. Hempel said. “I wasn’t.”

  And this, finally, impressed them.

  "I did well on all the standardized tests-—like the ERBs?—I scored very high on those. Anything with bubbles I was excellent at, or multiple choice. Even short answer. But it was hard for me to develop my ideas at length. You know, stick with an argument, weave different threads together.

  "And my school placed a lot of emphasis on that. On essays, term papers, the final question on exams. It’s not because I didn’t have anything to say or because I didn’t have any ideas. I had lots of them, too many of them. My papers were hard to make sense of.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have lots of potential?

  But that you aren’t fulfilling it? That's what I heard all throughout high school.

  “So I would get terribly nervous before a paper was due.

  I would tell myself, I’m really going to fulfill my potential on this one. I’m going to make an outline, do a rough draft, write a paragraph a night. I’m going to plan my time effectively.

  And I would spend two weeks telling myself this, and there I’d be, three o’clock in the morning, the paper’s due in five hours, and I can’t get my ideas to sit still long enough for me to write any of them down.

  “That’s why,” Ms. Hempel concluded, “I make you turn in your outlines. And your rough drafts. Even though you hate me for it.”

  But the attempt at levity went unremarked. Her class gazed at her soberly.

  “So how’d you become a good student?” Cilia Matsui asked. “How did you get into a good college, an
d become a teacher?”

  “I don’t know,” Ms. Hempel said. “Worked harder, I guess. What do they say?—I buckled down.”

  It wasn’t until high school that all of this unfulfilled potential was discovered; up until then she had been simply great; great kid, great student. A pleasure to have in class. But beginning in the ninth grade, she felt her greatness gently ebbing away, retreating to a cool, deep cistern hidden somewhere inside her. I think it’s there! her teachers hollered down into the darkness. It is there! her father insisted. But where? she felt like asking. Because there was something faintly suspicious, faintly cajoling, about the way they spoke to her, as if she alone knew the location, and was refusing to tell them for the sake of being contrary.

  Dear Parents,

  You recently have received an anecdotal about your child. Although it might not have been immediately apparent, this anecdotal was written BTyour child, from the perspective ofone of his or her teachers. In response to the students’ entreaties, I did not include a note of explanation. They wanted to explain the exercise to you themselves, and / hope you have had a chance to talk with your children about the letters they wrote. At this point, though, I would like to offer my own thoughts about the assignment and provide a context in which to understand these “anecdotals.”

  The assignment was inspired by a passage from the memoir we currently are reading, This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. When this passage occurs, Toby is longing to escape his abusive stepfather and the dead-end town he lives in. When his older brother suggests that Toby apply to boarding school, he becomes excited about the idea, but then discouraged when he realizes that with his poor grades, he will never be accepted. Help arrives in theform of his best friend, who volunteers in the school office and supplies Toby with all the official stationery he needs to create his own letters of recommendation.

  "Ifeltfull of things that had to be said, full of stifled truth. That was what I thought I was writing—the truth.

  It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed that I was an Eagle Scout, and a powerful swimmer, and a boy of integrity.

  These were ideas about myself that I had held on tofor dear life. Now I gave them voice....

  "I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself These were their letters. And in the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face*

  I had hoped that through this exercise students could give voice to their own visions of themselves, visions that might differfrom those held by teachers, parents, or friends I wanted to give them a chance to identify and celebrate what they see as their greatest strengths. During this crucial stage of their development, kids need, I think, to articulate what they believe themselves capable of.

  The students approached the assignment with an enthusiasm that overwhelmed me. In their efforts to sound like their teachers, they wrote at greater length, in sharper detail, with more sophisticated phrasing and vocabulary, than they ever have before. Spelling and grammatical errors instantly disappeared; drafts were exhaustively revised. They felt it important that their anecdotals appear convincing.

  The decision to mail these anecdotals home was fueled by my desire to share with you these very personal and often revealing self-portraits. When I read them, I found them by turnsfunny, poignant, and, as Tobias Wolff writes, full of truth. I thought that you, as parents, would value this opportunity to see your children as they see themselves. The intention was not, as I think a few students have mistaken, to play a joke.

  I hope that this assignment has offered some meaningful insights into your child, and I deeply regret if it has been the cause of any misunderstanding or distress. Pleasefeelfree to contact me if you havefurther questions or concerns.

  Ms. Hempel distributed the letters, each of which she had signed by hand. "Please,” she said. “It’s imperative that you deliver these to your parents. First thing tonight, before you do anything else. Its contents are extremely important.” Though she had omitted certain details: the glee with which she had brandished the school stationery, pulling it out from beneath her cardigan; the instructions she had provided as to perfecting her signature, the way she had leaned over her students’ shoulders and adjusted the loops in their Ls. How they had jigged up and down, and laughed wickedly, and rubbed their palms together in a villainous way. How she hadn’t the heart to tell them that their anecdotals, so carefully fashioned, would be, upon first glance, apprehended as false.

  They didn’t sound quite right. And the signatures were awful.

  Ms. Hempel had contemplated forgery, once, when she was still a student. Her school instituted a new policy: throughout the semester parents had to sign all tests and papers, so that when final grades were sent home, there wouldn’t be any unwelcome surprises. In accordance with the policy, she left her essay on her father’s desk, with a little note requesting his signature. The essay had earned a C+.

  Later that evening she was lying face down on her bed, air-drying. Her skin was still ruddy from the bath, and as she peeked over her shoulder, surveying the damp expanse of her own body, it reminded her, in a satisfying way, of a walrus. But the comparison wasn’t very complimentary. She amended it to a seal, a sleek and shining seal. She imagined a great, gruff hunter coveting her pelt.

  But then she was interrupted: the sound of something sliding beneath her door. Disappointingly, only her essay. She padded over from the bed and bent down to retrieve it.

  It was horrible to behold. Her father had written not only at the top of the essay, per her instructions, but in the margins as well. His firm handwriting had completely colonized the page. The phrases were mysterious—No, no, she’s being ironic—agitated and without context, like the cries of people talking in their sleep. Upon closer inspection, she realized that his comments were in response to what her teacher, Mr. Ziegler, had already written. To his accusations of Obscure, her father rejoined: Nicely nuanced. When he wondered how one paragraph connected to the next, her father explained: It seems a natural transition to move from a general definition to a particular instance. The dialogue continued until the final page, where her father arrived at his jubilant conclusion: that this was an essay unequaled in its originality, its unpredictable leaps of imagination, its surprising twists and turns. On the bottom of the page, he had printed, neatly: A-. It was protected inside a circle.

  “Your name!” she bellowed down the staircase. “Why is it so hard for you to just sign your name?”

  Back inside her bedroom, she heard the methodical stamp of her father’s feet, climbing the stairs. “I don’t want any part in this!" she yelled, tucking the essay inside her binder, though she would apologize to Mr. Ziegler; she would say, My father lost it.

  She stood up and spoke through the crack in the door: “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” her father said, his voice muffled. He was right on the other side. “But I can’t promise you I won’t.”

  It was at that moment forgery first presented itself as an option. But instead she decided to ask, from then on, for her mother s signature. It seemed much easier than fraud. And she knew, anyhow, that even if she did try, she would inevitably get caught. Teachers were alert to that sort of crime.

  Ms. Hempel thought that parents would be, too. They were supposed to be vigilant. They were supposed to reprogram the cable box, listen to lyrics, sniff sweaters, check under the mattress. Or, at the least, distinguish between Ms. Hempel’s prose and that of a seventh grader. She had read every one of the anecdotals herself, yet she could not account for the lapse.

  Some were panegyrics, plain and simple: Adelaide is without a doubt the most outstanding French student I have ever encountered in my 36 years of teaching. Some were recan
tations: Please ignore my phone call of last week. Matthew is no longer disrupting my class. Some suggested publication: Elliott’s five-paragraph essay was so superb, I think he should send it to Newsweek. Some recommended immediate acceleration: Judging by her excellence in all areas, 1 think that Emily is ready to take the SATs, and maybe start college early.

  Some anecdotals did everything at once.

  Dear Melanie Bean,

  lam writing to you about your son. He has been doing exceedingly well in English class. He has gotten a perfect score on every test or quiz we have had in English. He is completely outscoring, outtalking, outparticipating everyone in the class. I look forward to spending my time elaborating his mind in his field of expertise. I would like to consider moving him up to the eighth grade level, which I think would be more suited to his ability. Even though he would miss Spanish every day, 1 think that Spanish is an inferior classfor any person of his mental state, and is simply

  ruining his skills. I haveframed many of his works and find them all inspirational, especially his poetry. William is an inspirational character and 1 will never forget him. I suggest that you encourage him to use his skills constantly. Sincerely,

  Beatrice Hempel

  Will Bean looked nothing like his mother. He was small and impish and pale, and had assumed the role of a friendly, benign irritant, someone who pops up from behind desks and briskly waves. His greatest joy was a series of books about a religious community made up of mice, voles, and hedgehogs. They had taken the Benedictine vows, and created a devout but merry life for themselves. Will frequently alluded to them. He produced a radio play in which he performed all the parts: the sonorous voice of the badger abbot, the tittering of the field mice, who were still novices and had to work in the monastery’s kitchens. He pestered Ms. Hempel into borrowing a tape deck and making the whole class listen to his production. In anecdotal terms, he could be described as whimsical, or inventive, or delightfully imaginative.