“That’s your excuse for him? It’s okay for him to hate because his parents practice hate?”
“Of course not, but—”
“No buts. Your boyfriend has a worm living inside of him that he has to constantly feed. It makes him extremely toxic and if you marry him, he’ll infect you too. Sweetie, I know you’ve always wanted to marry a guy like Trey, but is it worth it? To marry some awful guy just so you can be a member of the country club and drive a car as big as a tank?”
Joelle’s face got blotchy. “How can you possibly understand? Up until recently you have always had whatever you wanted. Luxury condo, Porsche, everything. Now you think I should dump my fiancé, who has made me incredibly happy, just because he doesn’t want to upset his parents by having your boyfriend at his wedding? Honestly, could you be more selfish?”
I looked at Joelle with her gaunt cheeks and ruined hair. A hunger glittered in her eyes, like she wanted to chop Trey up into hundreds of pieces, devour every one, and still lick her lips, craving more. At the age of twenty-two, I didn’t claim to know everything about love, but I was pretty sure what Joelle and Trey shared wasn’t it.
“I’m afraid for you, Joelle,” I said as gently as I could muster. “I think you’ll be miserable with Trey.”
“You’re just jealous. You’re used to having me all to yourself and now that you have to share me with others, you don’t like it.”
“Joelle—”
“Just go. And since you have such a low opinion of Trey, maybe you shouldn’t come to the wedding.”
Not that I wanted to be there. It’d be like watching Joelle drive her Toyota Corolla into the Savannah River.
I was reluctant to crash Carl’s guys’ night out, but I couldn’t stop myself. After leaving Joelle, I immediately drove over to Doc’s, where the poker game was being held. I just wanted to lay eyes on Carl for a minute; he’d be the anti-venom for my poisonous evening.
I’d been to Doc’s house before. A week earlier, Carl and I had attended a Christmas party there. Unfortunately all the small brick homes on Doc’s street looked alike. Then I remembered the Budweiser tree Doc had constructed out of longneck bottles and PVC tubes. I drove slowly down the street until I spotted the tree. Doc’s house was dark, and no cars were parked in the driveway. Was it possible the game had ended early, or the location had changed? My motor idled as I texted Carl: “Call me.”
Hours later and Carl still hadn’t returned my text. I stuffed my face with holiday candy corn and watched Santa Claws, Santa Slay and Silent Night, Deadly Night. I kept thinking about a bottle of Marilyn Merlot wine I had in the rack. I could have chugged it like spring water, but decided to abstain.
At some point I fell asleep and woke up with a start at three a.m., remembering I still hadn’t heard from Carl. Had something happened? Was he lying in a ditch crying my name?
I checked my phone and found a text from him. It came at midnight, an hour after I’d fallen asleep.
“Sorry, babe. Didn’t see your message until now. Late poker night at Doc’s. Lost my shirt.”
I had to read it three times before it sunk in and it was still hard to believe: Carl lied to me.
What’s worse, he’d been incredibly smooth about it: The casual tone. The inclusion of supporting details. All the marks of an experienced fibber, which begged the question, what else had he lied about?
A little voice in my head said, “It’s not as if you’ve been completely honest with Carl,” but I immediately squelched it. This was about him, not me! Plus I knew why he’d lied to me. As far as I was concerned, men lied about their whereabouts for only two reasons.
They wanted to get drunk at a sports bar with their buddies.
They wanted to get frisky with another woman.
Carl had not been at a sports bar. He was one of those rare guys who’d never once uttered the phrase, “How about them Dawgs?”
I pitched the phone across the sofa, stumbled into the bedroom, and belly-flopped onto the mattress. Not that I could possibly fall back to sleep.
Maybe there’s an explanation, I thought. My mind was too busy tallying up past hurts to think of one. First my family—especially my mom—had turned on me, then Lois, then Joelle, and now Carl. It was as if I’d been surrounded by fakes my entire life. Was it any wonder that I’d turned out to be one myself?
Twenty-Two
Used to be when I had a bad night’s sleep on a school night, the next morning I could pass out the fun gadgets, don dark shades, and zone out while the students frittered the day away. No more. No matter how tired I was, I had to teach. It was a promise I’d made myself after the incident with Janey. Lately I’d set such a high standard that every day I felt like I was channeling Socrates.
To top it off, a new student named Darnell showed up. Unfortunately I was in no mood to acclimate a greenhorn into the classroom fold.
“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” I said when he introduced himself. Usually I received reams of paperwork on new special education students.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Darnell was dressed in geeky high-waisted jeans and a spotless white t-shirt. The letter D was carved into his buzzcut at the back of his scalp. He handed me a schedule; everything was in order.
“Welcome to our class. I’m Ms. Wells.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said. I was impressed by his politeness. I didn’t get a lot of that at Harriet Hall, and hoped the rest of the students wouldn’t corrupt him as the day progressed.
Darnell kept to himself throughout the morning classes. At lunch he asked if he could stay in the room with me. “I don’t know anyone at this school,” he said forlornly.
I usually didn’t allow students in the classroom during lunch. Those precious fifteen minutes were the only time during my day where I didn’t feel like I was simultaneously juggling plates and whistling Dixie. But Darnell looked so pitiful, I made an exception.
I also knew it had to be hard for him to transfer to a new school in the middle of the year. At Harriet Hall it happened all the time. The students were like carnies, living with an aunt for one year, a grandmother for the next. Their family situations were reflected in the way they talked. Instead of saying, “I live with my auntie,” they’d say, “I stay with my auntie.” Next week they might be staying with someone else.
After lunch, I led the class in a game about banking terms. It wasn’t going well. The kids were as resistant as ever. Darnell didn’t participate, but that wasn’t surprising since he hadn’t been exposed to the material. At one point he raised his hand and said, “May I be excused?”
“You need to use the restroom?” I said.
“No.”
“Where did you want to go?”
“Out. I don’t like this game.”
He probably felt intimidated, thinking he was already behind.
“Just sit tight for a couple of minutes, we’re almost done.”
He stood. “Can I have a pass?”
“No sir,” I said.
In a flash, his entire personality changed, jaw tightening, fists balling. It was as if a Ninja warrior had jumped into his skin.
“This game is for babies.”
The class laughed nervously, and I gave him a deadly look. The kid obviously wanted attention, and I wasn’t going to give it to him.
“Sit down, Darnell. We’ll discuss this after class.”
“You want to see me after class?” His question was a challenge.
I nodded and commenced with the game.
“You gonna screw me after class?” His lips twisted in a lurid way, and he bucked his narrow hips back and forth.
This time no one laughed. Even they knew Darnell had gone too far. The students were quiet, their bodies rigid, waiting for my
response. I felt shaky inside, like I’d swallowed a dozen goldfish. I didn’t want Darnell to know he’d gotten to me.
“The game is over for now,” I said evenly. “Please take out your textbooks and read pages three hundred to three-ten. Answer the questions at the end of the section.”
It’d been a while since I’d assigned busy work but the situation seemed to call for it. I needed a diversion.
Darnell upended a desk. “Who cares about the questions!” It sounded like an explosion when it hit the ground.
“Please leave this classroom.” I was unable to keep the tremor out of my voice.
He ducked his head and came at me like a human cannonball. He was so fast I had no time to duck out of the way. Darnell butted into my midsection and slammed me against the cinderblock. A sharp pain bayoneted the back of my head, and his fist loomed above me. Down it came in slow motion; in seconds, my face would bloom into a bloody pulp. Then someone grabbed his wrist.
The class thronged him. Vernon held Darnell’s arms back as he struggled to get loose. The boy spat out obscenities. Monica kicked his shins. The room rang with screams. Darnell wrenched loose of Vernon’s grip and made a run for it. Vernon gave chase.
No,” I said, calling him back in a weak voice. “Let him go.”
Wetness trickled down my cheek. I touched it, and my fingers came back bright red.
“She’s bleeding!” shrieked Monica. “Ms. Wells’s bleeding. She gonna die. That bad boy killed her.”
Gingerly I picked myself up from the floor, woozy with the smell and feel of my own blood. “Calm down. You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.”
My head cleared, and I held onto the wall to keep upright. The number one rule for every teacher was to never leave a class unsupervised. In a breathless voice, I told my students to collect their book bags and follow me over to Ms. Evans’ class. A scramble ensued and as soon as they were packed up, I led them into the hall and knocked on the classroom next door. When Ms. Evans saw me, she said, “Blood? On the third floor? This is a first.”
“Could you watch my class while I go to the nurse?”
“Someone should go with you,” Ms. Evans said. “Just in case.”
My kids bickered over who should accompany me to the nurse’s office. “Vernon,” I said. “The rest of you stay here.”
Vernon and I left Ms. Evans’ classroom and took the elevator to the main floor. I lurched my way to the nurse’s station, still slightly dizzy and unsteady on my feet. The students and teachers we passed stopped short and gaped. I probably looked like Carrie with a bucket full of pig’s blood dripping down her face. “I’m okay,” I repeated several times, as if trying to convince myself.
Vernon’s complexion was ashen; he held my arm tightly and kept saying, “That boy ain’t right. Ain’t right at all.” His concern was touching and unexpected.
When we arrived at the nurse’s office, I instructed Vernon to go back to Ms. Evans’ classroom. The nurse, a woman in her fifties with an outdated poodle hairstyle, immediately sat me down on a metal stool and swabbed my wound with an antiseptic rub that stung. “You’re lucky. The cut’s not deep; you won’t even need a stitch.”
“Why so much blood?”
“That’s how it is with head wounds. All those blood vessels in the scalp.”
The nurse was very matter-of-fact. She probably had to be with all the nasty business she saw on a daily basis, like cigarette burns, black-and-blue marks, impetigo and other infections allowed to fester and spread. Harriet Hall had it all.
After I was cleaned up and bandaged, I staggered over to Dr. Lipton’s office to report the assault. He immediately summoned Mule, the security guard, on his walkie-talkie and told him to look for Darnell just in case he was still on school property. Afterwards he said, “What did Nurse Maynard say about your injuries? Do you need to visit a doctor? ”
“No. She said it was a fairly minor wound.”
He smiled, revealing gold fillings in the back of his mouth. “Good.”
“So what happens now?”
“Once we get our hands on him, the boy will be suspended.”
“Do we need to call the police?” The smell of hair tonic filled my nostrils. Dr. Lipton’s hair was slick with it.
“Let me worry about that. Right now you should go home and rest. In fact, there are only two days left before we dismiss for the Christmas holidays. No point in you coming back until after the first of the year. Don’t worry about finding a substitute. I’ll handle that.”
I shook my head. “I need to be here tomorrow. It’ll upset my students if I don’t show up. They’ll think I’m badly hurt.”
He plucked at the fabric of his pinstriped suit. “I’ll send someone from guidance to speak with your students. And I’m not suggesting you take those days off. I’m telling you.”
Twenty-Three
When I got home I swallowed a sedative and immediately climbed under my down comforter and constructed a fortress of pillows around me. All I wanted to do was hide from the world for a short while. Maybe until the next Ice Age.
I woke to the sound of knocking. Too groggy to get up, I burrowed even deeper beneath my covers. The knocking ceased, and my front door opened. Heavy footsteps sounded down the hall and stopped.
“I have a full can of wasp killer,” I said. “And I’m not afraid to spray it.”
“It’s just me. I used my key.”
Carl. My mood momentarily perked up as it always did at the sound of his voice. Until I remembered he was one of the reasons I was hiding.
“Go away,” I said from beneath the covers. “I’m not feeling well.”
“Come out, come out wherever you are.” He pulled away the comforter. I resisted and we engaged in a brief tug-of-war. Carl easily won.
He winced when my face was revealed and sat on the bed next to me. “You’re all banged up. What happened?” In a rote voice I filled him in on the Darnell drama in my classroom. I decided not to say anything about his lie to me. I didn’t have the energy for a big, emotional scene which would surely climax with me screaming, “Whose bed have your Reeboks been under?”
“Why didn’t you call me?” he said.
Because you’ve shaken my belief in humanity, I thought.
“Have you spoken to the police?” Carl said.
“Dr. Lipton said he’d handle that for me.”
“That’s not how it works. You have to talk to the police. You’re the one who has to press charges. ”
“Then why did Dr. Lipton say he could do it for me?”
“Because if you press charges it’ll make the newspaper, and teacher assaults are terrible publicity for a school. It’s to Lipton’s advantage to hush them up. Rumor has it there have been three other teacher assaults this year at Harriet Hall, and none were reported to the police.”
Three assaults were three too many, yet if I insisted on pressing charges, Dr. Lipton would do what he always does when I displeased him: Threaten my job. After coming this far, I had no intention of getting sacked.
“I just want to forget about the whole nightmare.”
Carl cocked his head, a genuinely puzzled look on his face. “That doesn’t sound like the Toni Lee I know.”
I gave him a narrow-eyed look. Do we ever really know a person?
“I bet I can guess the reason for your reluctance. You’re worried about the student, aren’t you? Even though he hurt you, you don’t want to see him go to jail.”
Boy. Did he have me wrong.
“Look at it this way,” he continued. “If he assaults one teacher and gets away with it, he’ll assault another. You really need to talk to the cops.”
The nerve of him telling me the right thing to do. Big phony.
“I don’t want to press charges,”
I said through my teeth.
“But, babe—”
“Don’t you ‘babe’ me, you…cheater.”
Damn. Hadn’t meant to blurt that out.
“What?” he said, looking genuinely stunned. I had to give it to him; the guy was smooth as whipped butter.
“You lied to me about poker last night. I drove by Doc’s and the house was all dark. No cars anywhere.”
Carl’s mouth opened and closed several times. It was like watching a goldfish in an aquarium.
“Well...?”
“It’s true,” Carl finally said. “I’ve been hiding something from you. For a while.”
A while? I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear his confession. It was even worse than I thought.
“What I’m about to tell you must be kept absolutely confidential. I was with Doc, but we weren’t playing poker.”
“What were you doing?”
“A few teachers from Harriet Hall have been meeting for several months, trying to figure out a way to get rid of Dr. Lipton. We’re positive he’s urging certain faculty members to falsify grades and attendance. He also may be asking some teachers to manipulate mid-year testing results. We’d like to find out who he’s managed to corrupt.”
A wave of queasiness nearly knocked me backwards. Carl wouldn’t have to look very far.
“We want to bring Dr. Lipton down before he’s appointed superintendent, but so far he’s been untouchable.”
I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been so disgusted with myself. My shame was so great I said something I shouldn’t have.
“If it will help, I’ll report Darnell.”
“Thank God. Last year a teacher almost died from an assault. She’s still in a coma and might never recover.”
I remembered my father mentioning rumors about assaults at the school, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it.
Carl climbed into bed with me and started to kiss me with extreme passion. I wasn’t surprised. He seemed to get most turned on when I was good, not naughty. Here was the truly kinky part: His belief that I was a good person turned me on too. Why couldn’t I be the kind of woman he thought I was?
Girl Meets Class Page 18
