Ms. Hempel Chronicles

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  “Your breasts are lovelyGreta leaned over and squeezed Beatrice’s leg. “You should show them off.”

  “Absolutely,” Kate said.

  This type of flattery—excessive, heartfelt, slightly barbed—was their favorite activity. They served as each other's most passionate advocates: no one, in Beatrice’s mind, was as intelligent and beautiful and kind and brave and talented as Kate and Greta. And Kate and Greta, in turn, would insist the same of Beatrice. It was puzzling, then, that together they had managed to collect such a number of men who seemed less alert to these qualities. Amit was a departure in this regard. And Beatrice wondered if she might be a disappointment to her friends, not because she was getting married, but because she had stopped falling in love with men who were childlike, or ill-tempered, or flat-footed, or unkind. Or maybe simply indifferent.

  Which was not at all what they had planned when they were in high school. These plans had imagined graceful men with slim hips and luminous skin. At least that was what Greta described. The fact that he might be gay to begin with would only make his conversion all the more remarkable. Kate wanted a looming, overpowering man, one who could make her feel petite (for once) and envelop her entirely. And then? A nighttime wedding, with Japanese lanterns. Quails and asparagus. A honeymoon in Prague. Nearly every lunch period was spent in this fashion. Pushing their trays to one ide, they huddled over the table and spangled their futures with intrigues and travels and children and accolades. For the sake of realism, they threw in obstacles: a callous lover for Kate (she eventually comes to her senses); Beatrice’s close call with pharmaceuticals (from which she emerges chastened, but stronger). Then they liked to skip far ahead and picture themselves on a porch, widowed, delighting in each other’s company once again.

  Now, having arrived at the future, they liked nothing better than to recall their days around the lunch table. They exclaimed over their miscalculations. Holding up their tearoom selves and measuring them against their lunchroom selves, they tried to account for the discrepancies. How did wild-eyed Beatrice become a teacher? How did she succeed in getting engaged before anyone else? The trajectory was not at all what they had predicted.

  “Who would have thought,” Greta asked, loosening a strawberry from its stem, “that you would marry Amit Hawkins?”

  “Can you imagine,” Kate said, “sitting there in practice and knowing, That penis, one day, is going to penetrate our beloved Bea.”

  “I bet he never would have dreamt it,” Greta said.

  “Did he?” Kate asked, excited. “Did he notice you then?” Beatrice had asked him that very question, even though she felt it vain and somewhat despicable to do so.

  "Oh no, not in that way. He was scared of me.”

  “He was?” Kate and Greta laughed.

  "Yes!” Beatrice said. “I can see why.”

  Her infected nose piercing. Her scarlet bra straps. Her eagerness to take off her clothes: for the spring play, for the

  advanced photography class, for any tedious game of Truth or Dare. Her fits of weeping. Her steel-toed boots. Her term papers on “Edie Sedgwick: Little Girl Lost and Get Your Motors Running: The Rise and Fall of the Hells Angels.” A quote on her yearbook page from the Marquis de Sade.

  “But who could be scared of Ms. Hempel?" Kate asked, cheerfully.

  "Speaking of which—we have a present for you!” Greta said and dove beneath the tea table.

  Kate cleared a space in front in Beatrice: "Whenever you wear it, you must think of us."

  Greta resurfaced, beaming, and brandishing a box.

  “Open it!”

  Carefully Beatrice tugged at the bow, lifted the lid, burrowed through the crackling tissue paper.

  "What is it?” she asked.

  "Keep going,” Kate said. “It's in there somewhere."

  She felt something slippery and grabbed it. -"What can it be?” she asked, as she imagined, very clearly, a silk nightgown. She pulled her present from its box.

  Greta and Kate shrieked. “Do you love them?” ,

  Beatrice nodded.

  “Crotchless panties!" they cried, and clapped their hands, as if applauding all the stunts she would perform while wearing them.

  They weren't at all silky. Beatrice brushed her cheek against them: 100 percent polyester. And smelling of something sweetly, sickly rubbery.

  The saucers rattled. Greta leaned forward, dunking her lovely beads into her cup. "Do you like them? Really?”

  Beatrice smiled bravely. “They’re perfect,” she said, though they absolutely weren’t. They were woefully inadequate. Not up to the task.

  “I hope they won’t shock Amit,” Greta said, as Beatrice gently returned them to their box. She looked up from the present at her two best friends, her two talented, brilliant, unintuitive friends. They had no idea.

  If someone had asked, Beatrice might have described her notion of sex thus: warm bodies in the dark, sighing and rustling, then arcing up in perfect tandem, like synchronized swimmers. Amit’s concept involved something much more strenuous and well lit and out of the ordinary. His requests often alarmed her. She knew the crotchless panties would strike him as silly, or simply beside the point. This thought made her feel sad, both sad and spooked.

  Even worse, she felt duplicitous, as though she had worked on him an unforgivable deception. He now carried about with him a baffled, slightly disappointed air. But she couldn’t help it: how her body clenched, how the alarm was raised, how her every muscle responded with a panicked shout of Sodomy! He had mistaken her for something else entirely, and who could blame him? The scarlet bra straps, the Marquis de Sade. The fondness for acrobats.

  She wondered at what point his appetite had turned. As far as she understood, an interest in anal sex was not something one was born with. She imagined an early, unsuccessful coupling; flickering filmstrips; a summer spent in Europe. All it took were some crooked signposts, some conspiracy of events and influences. Because he couldn’t have always wanted this. Why hadn’t she stopped the car? Why hadn’t she sprung out of the station wagon and loved him then? When a kiss was a surprise, the introduction of tongue an astonishment. When a small, black-haired boy would have swooned at the though of her underwear. Would have died, nearly, at the touch of he hands, her chewing gum breath, her permission to enter ft would have been enough; it would have been the whole world then.

  So much more was asked of her now. Stamina, flexibility, imagination (or, perhaps, a quieting of her imagination). A willingness to endure, and to enjoy, what she feared would be a rupturing pain. It all made her feel exhausted and very fgr away from him, as if he were standing atop a flight of stairs and she were stranded at the bottom, too breathless to climb up. Even though he waited there, full of love, full of patience, full of expectancy, she wondered how long it would be before he stretched out his hamstrings, took a deep breath, and bounded off

  But maybe she was remembering it all wrong; maybe there was never a time when a kiss could stun and astonish. Maybe, if she aligned the years correctly, she would discover that while Amit was devoting himself to cross-country running, Greta was contorted (the true contortionist) over the stick shift in her mother’s car, offering an illustration of how to manage a penis inside one’s mouth, and Beatrice was sitting in the backseat, watching very closely. Greta, who now leaned across the tea table and grasped Beatrice’s hand and said, suddenly, “We love you so much, Bea.”

  To Beatrice’s surprise, Amit liked the crotchless panties. He wore them on his head and danced around the apartment. All of me, he sang. Why not take all of me.

  He sang and danced with his eyes closed. He snatched her up, and held her close, and, with a snap of his wrist, unfurled her. She dangled out in space, teetering on her tiptoes, ready to crash into the snake tank—but then he spooled her back in again- Together they danced wildly. They dipped and spun and almost knocked over a lamp. He tried to lift her off the floor, but he wasn’t quite tall enough, so she gave a little push and folde
d up her legs, and it was nearly the same as being swept off her feet. Can't you see, he sang. I’m no good without you.

  She hung on to his neck and they waltzed over her pop quizzes. And into the bookcase, where he stumbled, and books toppled, and he pulled away from her, doubled over. She stooped down to help and suddenly he shot up, taking her with him, slung over his shoulder like a squalling child. She flailed and shrieked. Staggering about the room, Amit huffed, You took the part that once was my heart.

  With a thump, he deposited her onto the sofa. So why not take all of me?

  He then twirled around and lurched down the hallway and out the door. To buy them two bottles of ginger ale.

  Beatrice lolled on the sofa and hummed a coda to his song. What luck! What fortune! A thousand blessings had been bestowed upon her. A springy sofa, a clean apartment. A pile of pop quizzes that could wait until morning. A dancing fiance. An airborne Beatrice. A pair of best friends, and a beautiful bridal shower.

  Abruptly, she stiffened. For where was her present? Still perched atop her fiance’s head. Preening itself. And ruffling its polyester feathers.

  And where was her fiance? Walking down the avenue, with a small lilt, a small stutter, in his step.

  Beatrice retrieved her shoes from beneath the sofa and ran out into the street. She looked both ways. She saw a dumpster, a dark alley, and a brand-new van with a voluptuous woman painted on its side. She didn’t see Amit. She didn t see anyone on the street, as if she had rushed out of their apartment and into her own bad dream.

  Her nightmares took a truly frightening turn when she was ten, and her father began to appear in them, to save her. But she always knew, through the inevitable logic of nightmares, that her father would be destroyed, that he would struggle valiantly but to no avail, and that his knees would crumble and his eyes would dim and he might try to speak a few loving, gurgling words to her before he expired. She knew it with an awful, churning certainty. It didn’t matter what shape the menace took: sometimes it was a sticky pink substance that came bubbling under the door; sometimes it was an infernal drug lord, disguised as her principal, who was trying to bring her school under his narcotic control. These terrors were acute, yet relatively benign, as long as she was battling them by herself. Once her father got involved, the nightmares would escalate: for what was more paralyzing than the sight of your father, corroding in acid, pinned down by a pitchfork, drooling and drug addled? In one dream she sat in the back of his car and watched his eyes in the rearview mirror as he slowly melted into his seat.

  Beatrice hurried down the street. She passed a ladder, a trash can, a pool of broken glass.

  In her dreams, death always took her father by surprise. Even up until the very end, he’d remain convinced of his immunity. With this same conviction he would, in real life, pick fights with fellow motorists, climb up onto the roof rather than call the handyman, and disappear into the wilderness for whole days at a time. Beatrice found these weekend excursions particularly infuriating. What better way to court calamity

  than canoeing? She had seen movies; she knew about the dangers. The willful rapids, the bears snuffling about the camp-te the invisible parasites infesting the water. Not to mention the belligerent, banjo-picking locals who would immediately recognize her father for the city-slicking, fancy-pants doctor he was. She would try to tempt him with alluring alternatives: “We could go to the mall,” she’d say, "get some of those soft pretzels that you like.” Or she would volunteer to help him load up the car, and then tell him mournful stories about a girl in her class, whose grades—due to her father’s death in a tragic canoeing accident—had experienced a precipitous decline. But these tactics rarely worked.

  Her mother didn’t want him to leave, either. She would not make him sandwiches to eat on the road; she would not smile; sometimes she wouldn’t even appear in the driveway to say good-bye. On the weekends that Beatrice’s father went away, she and her mother would catch glimpses of one another as they each stalked about the house in an undisturbed rage. But when the telephone rang, her mother, answering it, would say gaily, “Oscar? He’s off canoeing!” And somehow, the way she said it—in a bright, emphatic tone that left no room for further questions—made it seem as if Beatrice’s father were right there with them, uttering the words himself. She spoke in the voice he always used when asserting what was most obviously untrue. The effect was strange—hearing this voice come out of her mother. Then, with a slight shrug, she would return to herself, her face slackening, her pen circling the telephone pad, and Beatrice, confronted with the mystery of her father, the mystery of her mother, could only write repeated^, in ever tinier cursive, Canoeing is a perilous outdoor sport. She wrote it five times on the last page of her science notebook, stopped, remembered herself, and neatly tore out the page- at the end of every two weeks you had to turn in your notebook for a grade.

  By Monday morning he would be back again, in time to make Beatrice breakfast and deliver her to school. She soft, ened at the sight of him standing there in the kitchen, flushed and rumpled and stubbled, placing her favorite antique spoon on the table. The wilderness had released him, had given him back. And, just like that, all her fury would be snuffed out. Any irritation was now redirected at her mother, who upon his return had camped out in her bathtub, listening to NPR at a deafening volume. She should come downstairs! Beatrice would silently fume. She should come fluttering in, full of kisses and gratitude and relief!

  Disaster had been held off once again. Wasn’t that cause for rejoicing?

  For there Amit was, waiting in the checkout line, his small black head shining above the magazine racks. No crotchless panties in sight. Beatrice stood on the sidewalk and watched him pay for the two bottles of ginger ale. What luck, she felt. What extraordinary fortune.

  The eighth graders were less fortunate. The next morning dawned drearily, with assurances from the weatherwoman that the sky would remain overcast. The sky was always overcast on Trip Day, the one day out of the whole year when the eighth grade took a very long bus ride to a rather grimy beach. They showed no signs of discouragement, however. Even at the stoplights, the school bus rocked back and forth crazily.

  “Rule Number One!” Ms. Hempel hollered, before she let them disembark. “Don’t go in past your waist. There’s only one lifeguard on duty. And don’t forget to wear sunscreen. Those ultraviolet rays will burn you up, even though it's cloudy!”

  "And don’t talk to clowns,” someone shouted from the back.

  "Right," Ms. Hempel said.

  The eighth grade clattered off the bus and, without await-ing further orders, stormed the beach. Ms. Hempel and the three other homeroom teachers trudged grimly behind, trying to balance between them the poles for a volleyball net Yelps could already be heard from the water.

  As they cleared the boardwalk, Ms. Hempel saw her students frisking bravely in the surf. It was still very cold out Some girls wore cheeky little two-pieces flecked with polka dots and daisies; others skulked about in their fathers' T-shirts. The boys were already immersed up to their necks, their sleek heads bobbing atop the waves. “It’s freezing!” the girls wailed. “Ms. Hempel! It’s freezing!”

  Ms. Hempel held their towels in her outstretched arms and rubbed their backs when they scrambled, dripping, up from the water. The girls clustered about her, reaching out their trembling hands and pressing them against her cheek: “See?” they asked. “See how cold I am!”

  “Brrrrrr!” Ms. Hempel said, and rubbed them harder.

  The girls then arranged their towels into a beautiful mosaic on the sand. Dropping down upon their knees, they dug into their beach bags, emerging with plastic containers and painted tins and shoeboxes lined with waxed paper. These they gravely placed in the middle of the mosaic. Julianne circled about them, distributing paper plates, while Keisha handed out Dixie cups half filled with soda. One by one the lids were removed, revealing jerked chicken, fruit salad, crumbling banana bread, couscous, fried plantains, sesame noodl
es, sticky little rice balls. The girls fell upon the food. "We organized a pot. luck,” Sasha explained, forking a pineapple wedge and making room for Ms. Hempel. “Please help yourself.”

  Meanwhile, the boys had straggled up onto the beach and were now huddled around the school cooler, peering down into sodden paper bags. They consoled themselves by clap, ping their sacks of school-issued potato chips and making them explode.

  “They thought a potluck was stupid,” Alice said, with profound satisfaction.

  A family of seagulls and the three other homeroom teachers patrolled the area. Ms. Hempel shouted out, “Everything’s okay over here!” and accepted a lemon square, reminding herself that her presence was required. She would make sure that no paper plates were left in the sand. She would apply sunscreen to the girls’ shoulders, and provide an adult perspective on their discussions. Drowsily, she gazed out at the ocean. “I can't believe you went in,” she murmured.

  The morning passed slowly. Swimming and lunch had already taken place, and it wasn’t even eleven yet. No one dared return to the water; common sense had set in. And the volleyball net kept collapsing. The girls wrapped themselves in their towels and asked Ms. Hempel personal questions. Was she wearing, underneath her sweater, a one-piece or a two-piece? Did she propose or did he? But everything she said seemed only to remind them of something more urgent that they needed to say. Each one of her answers was interrupted, and then abandoned, as the girls hurried from one new topic to the next: discriminatory gym teachers; open-minded parents; plus-sized models. The animated nature of the discussion kept them warm. When they wanted to make a point, they threw off their towels, baring themselves like superheroes.

  Ms. Hempel found herself noticing a group of boys off in the distance, bending themselves to a task with a suspicious degree of concentration. "What do you think they're doing?” she asked.

  "Who knows?” Gloria sighed.

  "Maybe I should go check on them,” Ms. Hempel said.

  ‘‘They’re fine," Julianne said, a bit sternly.