Ms. Hempel Chronicles

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  “Do you want to walk to Izzy’s and get a bubble tea? My treat?”

  For a moment it looked as if Ms. Duffy was about to agree. But just as she was turning away from the displays, she inhaled sharply and wheeled back around to stare at the bulletin board.

  Her finger landed on a pink piece of paper and circled a single word with baleful vigor. “Did you see this?”

  Ms. Hempel stepped closer to read the text, printed in a computers version of girlish handwriting: Persephone picked up the pomegranate and atefour of its’ seeds. She winced.

  “Oooph. Not good.”

  Ms. Duffy held the word pinned beneath her finger. Or could it even be called a word? It didn’t rightfully exist outside of the grammatical underworld, but Ms. Hempel knew from her own observations (in newspaper headlines! on twenty-foot billboards!) that these crimes were spreading. Rapidly. And evidently unchecked.

  “They're kids,” Ms. Duffy said. “They’re learning, they make mistakes. But how are they going to know that they’re mistakes if their teacher hangs them up on the fucking wall? I mean, does he make them do drafts? Does he correct anything?"

  Ms. Hempel shrugged weakly Her own alertness to error had wavered over the years. But maybe all it took was some time away, some time abroad, for one’s acuity to be restored, because now, by simply standing beside Ms. Duffy, she could feel her powers beginning to return, she could see the mistakes leaping out at her, the bulletin board lighting up with offenses like the big maps she imagined they used at the FBI.

  “Upper right-hand corner,” she reported. "Completely random capitalization. Since when is swan a proper noun? Or rape, for that matter?”

  Though she had to admit, both choices had their own logic.

  She also spotted Aries, alter in the place of altar, and— there it was again—that old devil, its’. The real wonder of it all was how these mistakes managed to survive under the pitiless eye of spell-checking. You had to kind of love them for enduring.

  But Ms. Duffy felt no such affection. She was pulling Persephone right off the wall. “Where's Leda?” she demanded.

  Ms. Hempel pointed reluctantly at the display. There was now a naked, pockmarked hole on the board. “Up there,” she said, and stole a look down the hallway. Maybe Mr. Mumford or, even better, Mr. Peele would make a sudden and sobering appearance.

  Ms. Duffy had risen up onto the very tips of her clogs, as if they were toe shoes and she a young dancer. Her belly didn’t throw off her balance at all. Up, up, her puffy fingers reached, quivering with purpose. “Got it,” she gasped. Down came Leda. Down, too, came Hera and the peacock, Echo and a weedy-looking Narcissus, Danae dripping wet in her shower of gold. Down came the Minotaur and Medusa, Hermes, Neptune, Athena leaping bloodily from her father s splitting head. Neptune? Wasn’t that the name the Romans used?

  Exactly, said Ms. Duffy’s scrabbling hands.

  She thrust the rustling pile at Ms. Hempel. "Can you hold this for me?” she asked, out of breath, then rose up again on her toes.

  Ms. Hempel gazed at the pillaged display, felt afraid, and looked frankly down the hallway, in the direction of help. But it didn’t appear as if the authorities would be arriving anytime soon. She wondered briefly why she, of all the young teachers who drank too much at Mooney's, had been chosen by Ms. Duffy for this particular mission. Perhaps it was simply chance. The end of the day, an empty vestibule, a surge of nameless emotion—and then someone emerges, making you not alone anymore. So it had happened, a year ago, with Mr. Polidori. “Out of the blue?” Ms. Hempel had asked Ms. Duffy. "The two of you just—” She could not believe it then; she had wanted more—but now, holding the plundered goods against her chest, it made a sort of sense to her. It was possible to find oneself, without warning or prelude, involved. So she crouched down and tapped the papers against the floor, neatening the pile, making a crisp little sound, wanting above all to avoid the appearance of untowardness, wanting the whole operation to feel as tidy, as considered, as possible.

  They agreed, finally, that the best thing to do would be to return the projects to Mr. Chapman’s classroom, with a carefully worded note attached. My room was how Ms. Duffy referred to it, and then she alarmed Ms. Hempel by asking, “You’re going to sign it, too?” No, she was not; but she didn’t have the heart to say so yet, especially now that Ms. Duffy was being seized by some fresh distress. As the fluorescent lights flickered on in the classroom, she looked about her wildly Things were not as she had left them.

  There were still the purple beanbags in the reading corner the jade plants were thriving, having been faithfully watered by Ms. Cruz. The record player was still there, too, although buried under stacks of handouts, and the Calder mobile still dangled from the ceiling. But the Indonesian shadow puppets were gone, and so were the poems.

  “He took down my poems?” Ms. Duffy’s voice was small. She had gone to great lengths to procure them, risking arrest. A few years earlier, the poems began appearing on subways and buses, in the place where advertisements for credit repair and dermatologists had once hung. And as soon as a new poem was posted, Ms. Duffy would devise a plan for obtaining it: scouting out empty subway cars, climbing up onto the scarred seats, easing the poem from its curved plastic sheath, secreting it away beneath her long winter coat. All for the sake of her fifth graders! Every day they could gaze up and contemplate the words. Or not, and therein lay the beauty of osmosis. They passed the year in the company of Whitman and Dickinson, Mark Strand and May Swenson; some of it would penetrate even the most obdurate souls.

  Which was probably the thinking of the transit authorities, as well; but the fact that her fifth grades edification came at the expense of the citizenry’s did not seem to give Ms. Duffy pause. And then it became possible to acquire the poems lawfully by sending off a simple request on school letterhead— but Ms. Duffy, like all true teachers, had a renegade spirit, and continued to haunt the buses late at night.

  Now, in the place of her stolen poems were boldly colored posters urging the class to read! Also pointing out that reading is fun! That people everywhere should celebrate reading! Additionally, there was a poster commemorating

  the Super Bowl win of the Green Bay Packers. All of which it was obvious, had been obtained through official channels.

  Ms. Duffy sank down onto one of the many little tables arranged throughout the room. The fifth graders didn’t yet know the isolation of desk-chairs; they still worked company ionably at these low shiny tables. She covered her face with her hands and sighed, her elbows digging into the high mound of her stomach.

  “I hope he put them somewhere safe,” she said.

  “You want me to send them to you?” Ms. Hempel asked. “No, there’s no room. I just meant in case he changes his mind.”

  She glanced over at what had once been her desk, at the piles she was no longer accountable for.

  “He has them doing those dumb workbooks?” she asked, but all of her fire from the vestibule was now extinguished.

  “Its his first year,” Ms. Hempel said, and laid the ransacked myths on Mr. Chapman’s desk. “He should take whatever shortcuts he can find.”

  Ms. Duffy didn't answer. She was still looking around the classroom, at the small ways it was now strange, at the names taped onto the backs of the chairs, names that had no meaning to her.

  She said, “I lost Theo McKibben at the Metropolitan Museum. My first year.”

  “Theo?” Ms. Hempel laughed. “That’s easy to do.”

  “It was a nightmare. My first waking nightmare.”

  "The first of many,” said Ms. Hempel. “But just think: You’ll never have to go on a field trip again.”

  Ms. Duffy smiled slightly. “Never again.”

  And then Ms. Hempel realized with a sickened feeling

  that she had forgotten to distribute the permission slips for next week’s outing to the planetarium. Only three days left: not a problem for the organized ones, but it didn’t allow much leeway with the chil
dren you always had to hound for everythin g She would have to resort to an incentive plan: Early dismissal? Ice cream?

  She paced around the desk mindlessly and saw it as both hopeful and doomed: the careful stacks beginning to slip, colored pens littered everywhere, memos from Mr. Mum-ford protruding at odd angles, the plastic in-box taken over by trading cards, half-eaten candy bars, extra-credit assignments on the verge of being lost.

  “You’re brilliant.” She turned to Ms. DufFy. “You are. Because we can't leave to make more money; that’s despicable. And we can’t leave to do something easier, some nice quiet job in an office; that would be so embarrassing! Am I supposed to tell my kids, ‘Okay, I’m off to answer phones at an insurance company’? It’s impossible. So what can we do? We can always ..Ms. Hempel gestured helplessly at Ms. Duffy’s belly. “Why didn't I think of that?”

  She had imagined a body cast instead.

  Again Ms. DufFy gave a thin smile. It wasn’t clear whether she took Ms. Hempel’s compliment as such.

  “So what’s stopping you?” she asked idly. She plucked a long, loose hair from the sleeve of her sweater and dropped it onto Mr. Chapman’s floor. Then suddenly she seemed to remember that she was herself pregnant, and undergoing a remarkable experience. She lit up. “You should do it!" she said with abrupt conviction. “You'll love it. You will.” She stood from the little table and moved warmly toward Ms. Hempel. “We think we have all the time in the world, but in reality we

  don’t. And when you find the right person, you just have to go for it. There’s never a good time; it’s never convenient; don’t fool yourself into waiting for the perfect time—”

  She stopped. Her hands flew up to her mouth. "I’m So sorry!”

  Ms. Hempel touched the fair, freckled arm. “Oh, don’t worry. Please, really, don’t worry.”

  “I’m an idiot,” cried Ms. Duffy.

  "You're not," said Ms. Hempel. “Because I forget, too. After I do the dishes, I get this panicked feeling that I’ve put my ring down somewhere and now I can’t find it.” She picked up her bare hand and looked at it. “Everything was friendly, it really was.”

  Ms. Duffy nodded, her face stricken.

  “Amit and I still talk on the phone. And last week he sent me a book.” She didn’t mention that it was actually one of her books, a book that had been swept up in his wake and had now washed up again on the shores of his new apartment. “Were in very good touch,” she said.

  Ms. Duffy remained unconsoled. “What happened?”.'she murmured. “What made yoU'decide—”

  It was hard to keep straight; they had told people different things at different times. There was Amit's fellowship in Texas, which he couldn’t turn down; and there was the difficulty of finding time to plan a wedding, not to mention the expense; there was their youth, of course, and the uncertainty that comes with it, the fearful cloudiness of the future (and what a mercy that was, to be considered, at nearly thirty, still heartbreakingly young).... All of which was true of course, just as all of it was prevarication, and even in the midst of saying these things, she was never sure exactly whose feelings were being spared, just who was being protected. For whose

  sake was all this delicacy required? She hated to think that it might be hers.

  “It wasn’t the teaching, was it?” asked Ms. Duffy.

  Oh no, it wasn’t that. At least she didn’t think so. But funny how everyone had a theory they believed yet also wished to see refuted. “It’s not your father, is it?” her mother asked, her father dead two years now but his absence still brimming as his presence once had. When she showed her the ring, her mother had offered to walk her down the aisle. "But I know it’s not the same,” she said. “I know that.”

  So she had told her mother no, it wasn’t because she missed her father. Though she still could feel his warm, dry, insistent hand hovering just above the top of her head. And she had told Mr. Polidori no, it wasn’t because of him, either. Though at moments she could still feel his hand, too, as it made its way down the length of her spine. She had been surprised that he’d even asked. A surprising glimpse of vanity, of self-importance. He had cornered her by the jukebox and gazed down at her earnestly—the earnestness also a surprise.

  But it was only a kiss!

  And some nuzzling, some breathless pressing and hugging, in one of Mooney’s indeterminate bathrooms. Ages ago, on one of those happy Friday afternoons. After he had ended things with Ms. Duffy but before he had fallen for the gamine younger half sister of Mimi Swartz. A pause between the acts, there in the dark stall at Mooney’s, everyone giddy with the fast approach of summer. She had tumbled into the bathroom and found him, back to the door, penis presumably in hand, and before she could even gasp he had glanced over his shoulder, told her to wait, and then unhurriedly finished, washed his hands, dried them from a roll of gray paper towels, asking her, Do you hate this song as much as I do? They had danced,

  barely able to move. He had lowered the swinging latch int the little round hook by the door.

  Forgot to do that, he said, and she laughed.

  Or did she? She would like to think that she had, that she had kept her wits about her and laughed, kept things floating along lightly, the encounter accidental and jolly. She would like to think that she hadn't swooned. Hadn’t shut her eyes and given way, tipped her head and held on. There was no hesitation—only treachery, only readiness—a perfect swan dive into the dark pool of flings and affairs. Maybe she had let out a little moan. But then the song came to an end, and he clasped her bearishly, pecked her on the forehead, said: I bet you make all the boys crazy, Ms. Hempel. And after releasing the latch, gallantly held the door open for her.

  She walked, obedient, to her seat at the bar, wondering, What just happened?

  Later, she would return to this moment, flipping it back and forth like a tricky flash card, one that somehow refused to be memorized. She asked herself all the boring questions (not pretty enough? odd smell? fiance?) but couldn't quite manage an answer. Causality kept escaping her. He kissed her, then he changed his mind—that was as far as she ever got; But always fascinating to her was the fact that she could feel him changing his mind. Feel it in her muscles and on her skin. Not that he did anything so obvious as stiffen, and his body didn’t once let go of hers; yet something shifted: the pressure that was once excited now merely emphatic, the mouth still warm but only reassuringly so, the embrace turning into a squeeze. His body’s gracious withdrawal of interest in the very moment that he decided, No, this really isn't for me.

  And though many things would reveal themselves in time—the sex of Ms. Duffy’s baby, a girl; and the name, Pina,

  after the bleak choreographer; the name of the woman who worked at Amit’s lab, which was Lilly; the right word, the word she’d been looking for, Yemeni—still she returned to the bathroom at Mooney’s, to its perfect mystery, to the moment when Mr. Polidori wrapped his arms around her like a bear. So that was what it felt like, someone making a decision. She wanted to remember how it felt.

  Satellite

  Ms. Hempel had a way with girls of a certain age. They hung around her after school; they invited her over to their houses for dinner. They sent notes at the end of the year, usually on cards they had drawn themselves. Serpentine flowers. Primitive stars. On overnight trips they asked if they could play with her hair. They showed her their poems, sought advice about boys. At Christmas they gave her poinsettias and a gift certificate for a back massage. They liked her shoes, her clothes; they liked every time she did something different with her hair. Not once did they miss her birthday. On the last day of school, they hugged her, speechlessly. But later she would read, in their purple handwriting: I’ll always remember the seventh grade.

  Her sister, Maggie, found all of this difficult to believe. “I would never do that for a teacher,” she declared. “Is your school a hippie school?” She wanted to know if they had to do gym. “Can they call you Beatrice?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do they get r
eal grades?”

  “Of course they do!” Beatrice said, and snatched the birthday card back from her sister. “I failed a kid two years ago."

  Maggie returned to her puzzle book, spread out on the kitchen table. She resumed chewing the beleaguered eraser at the end of her pencil. Rotating her ankle, she kneaded her long monkey toes against the floor.

  "I don’t know,” she said. “Your students sound weird."

  According to whom! But Beatrice contained herself. She gazed at her sister—the shiny, pebbled dome of her forehead, the butterfly appliques on her mall-bought top, the chapped knuckles of her long, desiccated fingers—and thought to herself, without much pleasure, My students would eat you for breakfast.

  Did Maggie even know what it meant to shape an eyebrow? To do an ollie? Would she say tuna sashimi was her favorite food ever? Would she choose Elie Wiesel as the subject for her next book report?

  Probably not. She wasn’t in any hurry to become a knowing, complicated member of the world. She was content to do puzzles and enter flute competitions and behave ingratiatingly with their mother. Often Beatrice had to remind herself that her sister was the same age as the girls she taught at school. Compared to them, Maggie seemed either stunted or strangely wizened.

  “No tea for me,” she said, though Beatrice hadn’t asked. She poured the boiling water into a cup and opened the refrigerator.

  “Where’s the milk?”

  “You’ll have to use soy,” Maggie said. “Turns out I’m lactose intolerant.”

  “But we love milk,” said Beatrice. “We love all dairy products.”

  “Remember last summer? The banana split?”

  Beatrice nodded, haunted not by the explosive sounds emanating from the bathroom but by the hoarse moans coming from what must have been her sister. She had sounded like an old sinner on his deathbed.

  "Well, that was the problem,” Maggie said.