Ms. Hempel Chronicles

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  But they didn’t look fine. They were crouching over something- Maybe they had found a stash of hypodermic needles, washed up by the tide.

  "I had better go see,” Ms. Hempel said.

  "Ms. Hempel...,” the girls called, but she was already on her feet and walking away from them.

  Upon closer inspection, she saw that the boys were absorbed in a fairly harmless activity. It involved one boy lying down on his back, the other boys heaping sand on top of him and patting it down, and then the boy heaving himself up and lumbering to his feet. The boys took great care to smooth out the sand so that when the body began to stir, the grave would crack and fissure in a dramatic fashion. She wasn’t sure where the pleasure lay: in burying a classmate, or in freeing oneself from the sand. They attacked both roles with equal gusto. She stood to one side and watched them.

  When it was Jonathan Hamish’s turn, the boys began to add, at his behest, anatomy to his burial mound. As they shaped two sandy breasts, they glanced over at Ms. Hempel, to see what she would do. Their glance both defied and invited reproach, a look with which she was very familiar. She smiled at them permissively, then rolled her eyes to show how

  unflappable she was. An argument arose as to the size of th outcroppings: some boys, among them Elias and Theo felt they should be round and realistic, while others, like Roderick, wanted to keep building the breasts until they sat high and pointy on Jonathan’s chest. “That’s not what they do” Elias muttered, but sand was an imprecise medium to begin with. Jonathan grinned down at his protrusions.

  The breasts turned out so well the boys decided to add a penis. They glanced over, again, in Ms. Hempel’s direction. They even cleared a little space for her so she could stump over to the penis and object. But didn’t they know? She was the young teacher. It was her job to indulge them, to be impervious to shock, to watch all the same television shows that they did. She laughed when they made off-color jokes. She allowed them to use curse words in their creative writing. She taught sex education, with unheard-of candor. Of course, they were constantly testing her. When she asked her homeroom to anonymously submit any question, any question at all, regarding puberty or sex or contraception, she received some very graphic queries. She stood at the front of the class and read each question aloud. Competently, intrepidly, she described the consistency of semen, what purpose lubricant served, why a woman might enjoy receiving oral sex.

  Jonathan Hamish, who didn't even try to disguise his handwriting, had submitted a question of a more challenging sort. He grinned at her when he saw that she had pulled his crumpled paper from the pile. Whose the best lover you’ve ever had? Jonathan watched her closely, as if waiting for her to discard it, frown at him, send him downstairs to Mr. Peek’s office. But she found herself mysteriously touched, felt herself blushing in a pleasurable way. Another word, surely, would have been the more obvious choice: What's the best sex you've ever had? Who’s the best fuck? But even in his efforts to provoke her, he had selected a word that was exceedingly charm* ing. Full of solicitous, gentlemanly concern. And he grinned at her—not devilishly, not leeringly—but sweetly almost, sweetly and frankly. As if he really wanted to know. As if he were asking only because all aspects of her life were of interest to him. As if the thought of her embroiled in sweaty sex were unimaginable. In Jonathan Hamish's view of the world, Ms. Hempel would make love.

  When she read the question aloud, the homeroom swiveled in their seats and glared at Jonathan. They knew that only he would ask such a question.

  "Well,” Ms. Hempel said, displaying her ring finger. “Shouldn't the answer be obvious?”

  The penis, having a more slender base, proved more difficult than the breasts. It kept on toppling over. After a few frustrated attempts, the boys settled on a suggestive hillock (a pup tent, Ms. Hempel realized). They stepped back and admired their handiwork.

  “Keep going," Jonathan commanded, waggling his hands and feet. “I’m not completely covered.”

  They heaped more sand upon him, making it necessary that he remain absolutely still, for even the smallest twitch of his fingers could disrupt their progress. Jonathan, as Ms. Hempel well knew, was a child unable to stop moving. And perhaps it was a relief to him, this stillness, this weight pressing down on him.

  But he still was not satisfied with the effect. “Try putting more sand on my neck, and up around my ears,” he instructed.

  The other boys squatted down beside his head and care fully shaped the sand. "More,” Jonathan said. "It doesn’t feel right.”

  He could no longer move his head, but his eyes darted back and forth, monitoring their efforts. “You can put more on my forehead, and my chin,” he said. “Get as much on my face as you can.”

  His voice kept getting quieter and quieter. Ms. Hempel peered down at him anxiously. “Are you all right in there?” she asked. “Jonathan, do you want them to stop?”

  Finally, in a very small voice, he said, “Enough.”

  The boys were proud of what they had done. “Picture!” Roderick yelled. “We have to take a picture!” None of the boys had brought a camera. Only the girls had thought to do that. So off they went, thundering down the beach. “Don’t move!” they shouted back at Jonathan.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  Ms. Hempel knelt down beside him. “Jonathan,” she said. “Are you really okay?”

  “I’m okay,” he whispered. His mouth had turned a funny dark color, as if he had just finished eating a grape popsicle.

  "Promise me.”

  “I’m just resting,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  “Jonathan?” she asked. “Do you want me to get you anything? Do you want some water?”

  “No,” he sighed, his eyes still closed.

  Then he asked, “Do you see them?”

  “They’ll be back any minute now,” she said. “It’s not very far.”

  “This sand is heavy,” he whispered.

  “Do you want to get up?” she asked. “Jonathan?”

  “I’m okay. It's just a little hard to breathe.”

  "Oh sweetheart," she said. "That doesn’t sound good"

  "It's okay,” he whispered. "Are they back yet?”

  But only Ms. DeWitt appeared on the horizon: teacher of dvanced math, coach of girls’ basketball. When she called out Ms. Hempel waved back at her and smiled.

  “Everything's fine!” she shouted, despairingly.

  Another teacher would have intervened, she knew, would have brought it all to a halt. Stand up, she imagined Ms. De-Witt barking. Right now. This is dangerous.

  Words that Ms. Hempel should have said from the very beginning.

  “Can you see them?” Jonathan whispered.

  “Yes," she told him, though it wasn't true. “They're running straight at us.”

  The boys returned, eventually, and the picture was taken. Jonathan had become quite blue by that point. He wasn’t able to burst forth from the sand as the others had. It was much more of a struggle for him, and when he pulled himself to his feet, he was shivering violently. The other boys draped him in their towels. “Let’s go back to the bus,” Ms. Hempel said. “We can ask the bus driver to turn on the heater.”

  Together they climbed up the beach toward the parking lot. The boys ran ahead and tripped each other and kicked sand, but Jonathan walked behind them, still trembling, a towel thrown over his head like a hood. Ms. Hempel made him stop.

  “Come here,” she said, and she held him.

  Creep

  As children, Beatrice and her brother lived on the very top floor of their house, in rooms that had been inhabited by servants nearly one hundred years before. Attached to the wall at the top of the stairs was a beautiful wooden box, with one side made of glass, and painted upon the glass, in tiny gold letters, were the names of rooms: master bedroom; butlers PANTRY; DINING ROOM; CONSERVATORY; LOGGIA. Through

  the glass you could see a complicated system of hammers and bells and cogs, strung together with bright copper w
iring that disappeared through a hole in the bottom corner of the box and burrowed into the house’s thick walls, only to emerge on the floors below, inside each of the gold-lettered rooms, in the form of a button. The finger most often pressing the button was Beatrice’s, for when you pressed it, an electric current would course up the copper wiring to the top floor of the house, and a little bell inside the wooden box would ring, not a tinkling ring, but a sort of low-pitched vibration, similar to the sound people make when they’re cold: Brrrrrrrrrrr.

  Beatrice never got tired of hearing this sound. She liked it so much, she invented a game called Servant: she would waft into a room, drape herself across a chair, and then, in a gesture both impatient and languid, poke the little button embedded in the wall. She would hear, very faintly, that low and lovely hum, and then the muffled drumbeat of her brother hurrying down the four flights of stairs. “How may I be of service madam?” he had to ask, according to the rules. She would tell him, "I’m dying for a glass of water. On a tray,” or "Would you mind terribly, opening the curtains?” and depending upon how well he performed the tasks, a new round would begin, with Calvin climbing back up the stairs to wait beside the box and Beatrice deciding which room she would waft into next. But this was only one of many games she had invented, and maybe not as good as Teacher, or Dead, or Blackout.

  Living, as they did, at the top of the house, Beatrice and her brother were surrounded by trees. In the summer, their rooms filled with a green light. In the winter, the fir boughs grew heavy with snow and brushed against their windowpanes. Because they lived in rooms meant only for servants, their windows were small and perfectly square, not long and grand like those in the rest of the house. But they preferred it this way: they liked living in their tiny rooms, aloft in the trees; they liked the green light falling in squares at their feet. Their rooms were almost the same, but not quite: Calvin had a fireplace in his, and Beatrice had a wall of bookshelves built into hers.

  Beatrice didn't read books anymore. All she did was listen to the radio. She listened late at night, to the pirate stations found at the bottom of the dial. In the place where books should have been, she kept her tremendous radio. It had once belonged to her mother, in the days when she still wore her hair long and wrote essays.

  The pirate radio stations broadcast many different shows: they had names such as the Flophouse, and Nocturnal Emissions, and the Curious Sofa. Beatrice’s favorite was a pro-

  jn called the Rock Hotel. It came on every night at eleven ^’clock and played music of the sort that Beatrice had never heard before, music that sounded at once grinding and frenzied, like a train car screeching backward down a mountain, and 11 the passengers inside howling. A velvety static blanketed everything, like snow falling on the scene of the disaster. Before discovering the Rock Hotel, Beatrice had believed that music aS supposed to make things more beautiful and orderly. That’s when I reach Jor my revolver.; she sang in the bathroom. That’s when it all just slips away.

  Calvin stood outside the door. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She threw the door open and lunged forward, her hand convulsing. “I’m practicing electric guitar,” she said.

  Calvin tucked his chin against his shoulder and cocked his wrist in the air; he drew an invisible bow across invisible strings. “I will accompany you.”

  Beatrice let her hands drop. For a moment she felt poisoned. But it was no use explaining that violins and guitars don’t go together. She knew what he would say, serenely: “It’s an electric violin.”

  She wheeled to face the mirror hanging over the sink. "Give me a sword,” she said.

  “Viking, Roman, or Greek?" Calvin asked.

  “Viking!” Beatrice said. Her brother returned with the sword. Wielding it over her head, she studied herself in the mirror. Her arms, raised this way, looked thinner than they did when just hanging at her sides. She wondered what other reasons she might find to assume this position. “Tremble!" she said, to no one in particular.

  Calvin wedged himself between her and the sink, so that he could brush his teeth. He brushed his teeth many times a day because he was concerned about plaque. On his birthda their mother had given him a kit containing a special yell0vyr solution and a special handheld light. You sloshed the solu, tion inside your mouth, made the bathroom completely dark flicked on the special light, and saw, in beautiful and arctic blue, all the plaque that was slowly encrusting your teeth.

  Beatrice staked her chin atop his head and made a totem pole. “Hennano hermano hermano” she said. Calvin was learn, ing Spanish at school; she was helping him.

  “Loggia,” he said indistinctly. He was still brushing his teeth.

  “Aren’t you finished yet?” Beatrice asked, leaning upon the sword just as a very tired and very bored old lady would rest upon her cane.

  “Don’t do that!” Calvin said, his mouth full of blue. He cherished his swords; he had three complete sets of armor and weaponry from three different periods of history. They were made of very durable plastic, but still: their mother had damaged the Roman-centurion one while trying to teach a lesson to the large raccoon that lurked about their driveway. Now, when brandished, it drooped in a pitiful way.

  Beatrice turned on the bath. “Could I have a little privacy, please?” The bathtub was held up by four claws that looked as if they belonged to an eagle, or a big hawk. It was long enough so that you could submerge yourself entirely and still not feel anything pressing against your head or your feet. Beatrice and Calvin loved the bathtub. On Christmas they gave each other fat glass jars filled with bath beads, shining like jewels. Beatrice gave Calvin Peach Passion. Calvin gave Beatrice Gardenia. These she now deposited into the water. “I need to relax,” she said.

  "So do I," said Calvin mysteriously, as he retrieved hi# word and floated out of the bathroom. The bathroom had tvvo doors: one leading to his room, and the other to hers. In this way, it was like a joint

  Beatrice turned off the lights. She stepped into her bath. “I’m in my bath!” she called out. She splashed about in the darkness, and then she was still. She felt everything around her: boughs brushing against square windows; the large raccoon lurking; a hawk skimming right over the roof. Things were astir, things she couldn’t see. Out in the night, animals prowled and crept. Much farther away people were creeping about, too, making drug deals, going in and out of apartment buildings. The word, the idea—apartment—was enchanting. But she lived here, in the trees, at the very top of the house. Beneath her a gardenia bath bead dissolved, releasing its oil and its peculiar scent.

  “Is anyone listening? Anyone at all?” The radio spoke, glowing from her bookshelves.

  Beatrice sat up in her bed. She was listening! In defiance of everyone: her mother and father, who fancied her asleep; her friends at school, who liked Prince and choreographed sexy dance routines to his songs; her piano teacher, for whom she played inventions and fugues, all the while thinking about an amplifier, a fuzzbox, a roadie. She didn’t exactly know what all of these things were, but she wanted them. She knew they existed, because visitors to the Rock Hotel would mention them in conversation. There was a band, for instance, called We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It, which was a mouthful, but that was the point. She was listening. She knew what to say. Not group: band. Not concert: show. You did not buy a

  ticket; you paid a cover at the door. Beatrice was paying atte tion, so that she would be prepared.

  "Am I talking to myself?” the voice asked. “Am I the 1 person left?”

  There was a long pause. “If you can hear me, I don't cai* who you are, you have to pick up the phone and call me. N0Vv Make a request. Win a prize. I don’t care. You know what the number is.”

  Beatrice did in fact know the telephone number. She often practiced dialing it but never considered doing it for real. The DJ tended to criticize those who called up the Rock Hotel. His name was Shred. He would make fun of people’s requests or else refer to them as psychopaths. “There are
a lot of weird people out there,” he would murmur. “And they all love to call me." But now he sounded lonely, and possibly like he was losing his mind. Beatrice wondered if she should reach out to him. Maybe in this vulnerable state he was less likely to belittle her.

  She padded over to the radio and found the pocket diary she kept there, a gift from her mother, identical to those belonging to her brother and her father, in which they were each supposed to keep a growing list of Things to Do. In this diary Beatrice had written the names of the bands that she heard on the Rock Hotel: Squirrel Bait. Agent Orange. Pussy Galore. Angry Samoans. Big Black. Mission of Burma. The Cramps. She liked to copy these names in clean bold letters onto her school binders, and would be surprised to learn, at later points in her life, that these names were often attached to real things: Samoa is a country? And Samoans are the people who live there? They were islanders; they had been colonized; they had much to be angry about. But here, in the darkness and quiet of her bedroom, Samoans were simply residents of the Rock Hotel.

  And as such, safe from ridicule. She would dial the number

  she would ask for the Angry Samoans. It was safe. She Id herself this as the line rang. But still her heart quickened, atly, like the piano teacher’s metronome, making her play the minor scales at increasingly reckless speeds. It was only a question of time before an accident occurred.

  "Rock Hotel," a voice said.

  "Shred?” Beatrice asked. “I’m listening!"

  “Good to know,” Shred said, sounding not at all close to the brink of despair. He sounded as if he were eating a sandwich. “What can I do for you?"

  "Could you please play a song by the Angry Samoans?” “Sure,” Shred said. "Which song?”

  She had no idea. In her pocket diary she had not yet begun writing down the names of songs. He said it so fast, all the information she needed to know.

  “You choose,” Beatrice said. “I trust you.”

  Shred made a swallowing noise. “Will do,” he said. “Thanks for calling the Rock Hotel.”