Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  The jelly on the floor is my whole life. Everything is a giant mess. My house is the metaphorical representation of the inside of my brain. There are laundry bins throwing up everywhere. The refrigerator hasn’t been cleaned out in a century. But I’m so tired, I can’t get caught up. And sometimes, even when I do have some time, I just need to lie down, clear my head, and spend some time with my grief. I feel adrift. I had such a good few weeks, and now I feel exhausted and completely uninspired. My Ezra moment has vanished.

  Sometimes I think my grief is like a physical injury—every day there’s a little more range of motion. But that doesn’t work because some days it feels like the pain is getting worse instead of better. The range of motion becomes more limited. When I look at that dried jelly and the laundry bins, I think grief is a really sloppy roommate who just leaves his shit lying around everywhere. Lately, things feel more like grief is having one arm cut off. Some days are good and I think, wow, I can really do this with one arm, look at me, making it work with one arm, and I never knew how useful each finger was, and even each toe! But then other days when I haven’t had a lot of sleep and I feel sadness pull at me like a giant magnet, I look at that little splotch of jelly and think how this life is just really fucking hard with only one arm.

  The bottle is warm. I see the jelly on the way back to Kai’s room. I let it sit. I’ll get to it eventually.

  I’m certain that part of this shift of dealing with a messy house and messy brain comes as a result of going back to work after maternity leave. There is just less time to get things done and a lot more to think about. There is no doubt, however, that it is good to have a place to go and be forced to think about the needs of my students over the needs of myself. Grief seems to be a completely egocentric emotion, but teenagers even have me beat when it comes to being the center of the universe.

  Right now in eleventh-grade Honors English we are reading No Exit by John-Paul Sartre. Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher and writer. Existentialism is an incredibly complicated philosophy. The one basic component that we consider is Sartre’s idea that “your existence precedes your essence,” meaning you are not what you believe you are; you are a product of your actions. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s about as far as we get in eleventh grade. Anyway, in the play No Exit there are three characters: Garcin, Inez, and Estelle. All three have landed themselves in hell for sinning in various ways and they are there to torture each other. The play does a lot of interesting things, but one of the main things we talk about is how it exposes this philosophy of what you are over what you say you are. We start off at the basic level.

  “Raise your hand and give me an example of when a person—do not name names—says they are something, but their actions prove them to be something completely different.” The room is silent. I already know how this will go. They’ll be silent and then they’ll get into it when they see what we’re getting at. Finally, after waiting for a little bit (not long enough, that’s always been one of my problems), I say, “Have you ever heard someone say, ‘Yeah, I know, aren’t I such a good friend.’ [I do a really good imitation of a snotty high school girl. It’s not a Valley girl, which is what you’re probably thinking; it’s more entitled white girl. It’s killer.] But really that person is a horrible friend. She talks about other people behind her back, she never asks questions about other people or sounds interested, and if a cooler crowd were to come along, she’d be gone in seconds.” I see heads nodding.

  “Popular,” Leah Simon says from the front row.

  “Excuse me?” I’m not quite sure how this connects to my imitation.

  “People would call themselves popular, but they’re really not.” I turn and write popular under the heading “Essence.” This conversation is a total Leah Simon topic. On most days, Leah wears a worn-out green army jacket, baggy pants, and her black Doc Martens. She has long black hair that is usually tied back in a messy bun. She is incredibly bright but prefers to show people how sassy she is over how bright she is, though sometimes she can hit them both with the same chord and it’s awesome. Other times, she just sounds impolite. One time before class, Leah picked up my picture of Kai and said, “Your baby looks creepy in this picture.” I had absolutely no idea what to say. I just had to initiate an inner chant in my head that said something like, “Don’t swear, don’t swear.” I told her to set my baby’s picture down and find her seat. I really hope one day she realizes how she can be wickedly intelligent in a way that would make her incredibly successful.

  “What word can be put under the heading “Existence” for popular people?” I ask. I look around the room to let the class know that Leah doesn’t have to answer this. She does anyway.

  “Well, they suck, mostly.” The class laughs and luckily Leah’s poignant observation of high school social hierarchy catapults us into a rich conversation. Leader, good sport, honor student (I love that that phrase made the board!)—all of these words are our essence, but what about our action? We talk about whether “honor” students actually behave in an honorable manner. There is a lot of snickering from Ryan Dannerman and Doug Treen. For one of their group projects earlier in the year, Ryan and Doug somehow incorporated the two of them playing Guitar Hero in front of the entire class for five whole minutes.

  By the end of the discussion, they’re beginning to get it. I assign the entire play for the weekend. When I sit down to reread No Exit, as with everything else in my life, I think about Josh. Garcin, the only man in the play, worked for a pacifist newspaper when he was alive. When war broke out, he fled. Garcin is convinced that he is not a coward and all he wants is for Inez, another character, to validate the fact that running away from his ideals does not make him a coward. She will not admit this. In the midst of their argument, Garcin gets frustrated and says that his life ended too soon, and that if only he’d been given a little more time, he could have proved that he was the hero that he had dreamed himself to be. He could have proven that he was a real man. He asks Inez, “Can one judge a life by a single action?” Of course, the audience knows that this is Garcin’s main problem. The existentialist would say, yes, you can judge a life based on one single act.

  Josh died too young, but he didn’t wait around for anything. He didn’t wait around to prove he was a real man. If you went back in time to any moment of Josh’s life, you could judge his life in any act you found him doing. He biked across the country. He traveled the world. He loved his friends unconditionally. He was compassionate toward children. He worked for charities. He took time to have fun. He lived. He never complained. He cooked delicious meals. He kissed the women he loved. He soaked up as much of Michigan summers as he possibly could. He did not wait for anything. Maybe somewhere he knew it would end quickly.

  I won’t share any of this with my students. I’m there to teach a play, not to exercise my grief-stricken brain in front of them. Besides, No Exit is a short unit. Before I know it, we’re on to poetry.

  I never really think about how an upcoming novel will impact me before I read it. It just happens. So far this year, I have done an astounding job at keeping my act together at school. I’ve only been back for four weeks, and I’ve put all of my energy into staying focused on work while I’m at school and not letting my mind wander off into the land of emotions without any reins. But I worry about poetry.

  I think of Dennis, who also teaches eleventh-grade Honors English. In February of last year, Dennis’s mom passed away. She was the mother of thirteen children. Before we go any further, did you hear that number? Thirteen. Double digits of children.

  A few weeks later, after the funeral, he was back at school in the middle of the poetry unit with his eleventh-grade class. One of the poems that his students had read for homework was “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. One interpretation of the poem is that the speaker is pleading with his father not to die. The last stanza of the poem reads:

  And you, my father, there on the sad heig
ht,

  Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  They were planning on discussing it in class. When they got to that poem in class, Dennis stopped his students and said, “I’m sorry, but we will not be discussing this poem.” He explained that his mom had just passed away and this poem was too hard to read right now. The students were shocked. Mr. McDavid was a tall, stern man; he was notorious for being a tough paper grader and a teacher with high standards who did not tolerate misbehavior. And here he was, tearing up from behind his glasses saying he couldn’t read a poem.

  Now that poetry is in the wheelhouse, I think specifically about Dennis, his mom, and Thomas’s poem. I think maybe I will have a hard time with “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” but I read it, we read it in class, and I’m fine. I take a deep breath before I read “Death Be Not Proud,” but it doesn’t faze me. None of the death poems get to me. But then today I am sitting in my empty room on my planning period and I begin to read “Picnic, Lightning” by Billy Collins. All of the sudden, my throat dries up and I can feel my body start to shake.

  Out of nowhere, the poem crushes me. I move to the corner of my classroom where no one can see me from the hallway. I cry and shake. I have worked so damn hard since returning from maternity leave to not cry at work. I am so mad at myself. I had no idea it would be “Picnic, Lightning” that would get to me. I was completely unprepared for it. But it just hit a certain nerve, a nerve that I wasn’t sure even existed, about the uncertainty of life that I will never be able to escape. Sayings like “It could never happen to me” or “What are the odds?” no longer supply me with any comfort. Most humans say these things to themselves in order to mask or ignore the truth that none of us, not our loved ones or ourselves, are promised to be here for any length of time. “Picnic, Lightning” comes at me like a nightmare. “Remember me?” it says. “I’m that little reminder that someone is here one second and then—boom!—they’re gone.” Senseless, undeserving, unjust, untimely death is a rare occurrence, but “Picnic, Lightning” affirms that no matter how rare it is, it is always close enough to strike.

  I turn off the lights in my classroom. I sit on the floor and take deep breaths through my tears. I keep looking up at the clock. I know I have to get myself under control in forty minutes. Not just under control. There must be absolutely no evidence of crying. There can be no puffy eyes, no plugged-up nostrils, no red face. As I cry, I continually wipe under my eyes to make sure my mascara isn’t smearing. Thirty-five minutes, shit. Finally, with about fifteen minutes to spare, I open my door and walk down to the bathroom. I check my face, get a drink of water, and go back to my room. Without thinking, I get my white boards ready for class. “Take out your h.w. and something to write with!” it says at the top. I list our agenda underneath.

  I’ve had days like this before. I feel like I take a step up, right to the edge of the earth, and look over the cliff. On these days, I don’t want to hand Kai to anyone else. I want my sisters and my brother to move home. I don’t want to go to work. If it could end in one flash of a moment, then why on earth would I spend my time at work? But I can’t operate normally with this mind-set. I hate these days. Picnic, Lightning days.

  Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of the poetry unit. You’d think I’d create a lesson plan around some love poems to honor the holiday, but I don’t. I’m not into love poems right now and I’m certainly not interested in discussing them with teenagers. Overall, I have a general feeling of resentment toward this holiday. One year ago today, Josh and I drove over to my parents’ house and told them we were pregnant. We called Moo, Ads, and Hales from my parents’ house. All night we laughed and relived everyone’s reaction. I remember my brother kept saying, “I just need to sit down for a minute.” I could hear him smiling through the phone. I can vividly remember standing in my parents’ kitchen with Josh. All of us were smiling, crying with happiness.

  So this morning I wake up and of course all I can think about is how stupid Valentine’s Day is. As if most of us don’t get the crap beaten out of us by Christmas, now we have another holiday to remind us about the lack of love in our lives.

  Most of these negative thoughts leave me by the time I get to school. Once I get to the classroom, I focus on tasks at hand; copies for first block, checking in homework, updating my gradebook, getting my lesson plans together.

  In the middle of first hour, nine upperclassmen dressed in white button-down collars and pressed black pants show up at my classroom. First block is ninth-grade English and all of us, my ninth-graders and I, know what is going on. For the past two weeks the Berkley A Cappella Choir has been advertising Valentine’s Day serenades. There were posters all over the hallways and announcements right before lunch. You pay two dollars and this small group of choir students will come to your first hour and completely embarrass someone on your behalf.

  They come to my room. I smile as I see them walk in. I wonder which one of my students is in for the surprise. Maybe an older sister ordered a serenade to torture a little brother (that happened last year), or maybe a ninth-grade boy actually had the guts to send a girl a Valentine’s Day song.

  “Hi, Mrs. Taylor!” Erin Gilson walks in first. I had Erin in my eleventh-grade class last year. I remember she came to the funeral home during Josh’s viewing. So many of my students came to the funeral home. Erin came with a few other students from our English class. I remember them staring at me, not in a bad way, just looking at me with sad and wondrous eyes. That image unconsciously flashes in front of me when she walks in. I dismiss it quickly, knowing I can’t think about that day or that place while I’m at work.

  Tim Argbaum holds the harmonica. They don’t have any music sheets. They take their places in front of my class. I wait to hear the name of one of my students. Erin looks at me and says, “We’re here for you, Mrs. Taylor.” Then, before I even have time to think or mentally prepare myself, Tim blows into his harmonica for the first note and they all start in. They sing the first verse and one chorus to the song “Lean on Me.” They sing “Lean on Me” to me on Valentine’s Day.

  Once they are done, I stand there frozen. Somehow I say thank you and they file out as quickly as they came in.

  I will never forget that moment as long as I live. There were so many gripping elements of it, I can’t quite bottle it up. Their thoughtfulness, the way they said something without making a big deal out of it, walking out without analyzing my reaction or asking for a follow-up conversation. But also it was just the pure sound of their voices. It was a cappella, so there wasn’t a sound in the room expect for these eight students singing. There is rarely a time in our lives anymore where we sit and intensely focus on one single sound. Their voices were so strong and so real. For the rest of my life, every time I hear a rendition of that song, I’ll smile and think that no one will ever do it as well as the Berkley High School A Cappella Choir. On my next Picnic, Lightning day, I’ll close my eyes and think of their voices.

  On Friday after school, Deedee picks up Kai and tells me to take a few hours to myself. I decide to wander through Borders bookstore for a while. I find a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning. Smith magazine invited its subscribers to submit their own six-word memoirs. The book was inspired by an Ernest Hemingway line: “Baby shoes: for sale, never worn.” Hemingway proved that an entire story could be told in six words. The book is amazing. It’s funny and sad. I want to meet all of the people behind the quips. “I’m ten and have an attitude.” “I still make coffee for two.” “Accidentally killed cat. Fear anything delicate.” One of my personal favorites: “Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence.”

  Of course I think about my life in six words. What would it be? What six words would summarize the insanity of the last year of my life, let alone the first twenty-four? What first comes to mind is “Single widowed mother
trying to recover.” But then, I reason, if I only had six words, would I choose the word widow? Would I allow that word to make up my identity? Just a half-dozen words to describe everything I’ve been through—would widow make the team? If I wanted to be as descriptive as possible, then certainly widow does explain a lot. I am a widow, at least in title. But after reading through some more six-word memoirs, I decide that if I only had six words, I wouldn’t take widow. “The female version of Indiana Jones.” That’s not mine, that’s an entry on page 29. It’s brilliant. I want to be friends with that girl. Maybe she’s a widow too and she just decided that her adventurous spirit was more important than her marital status.

  A few days ago I was in the book room at school, which is a creepy room to begin with. It’s dark with only a small window. The metal bookshelves take up the majority of the room—and it isn’t really a room, either, it’s more like a large walk-in closet. Dust lines the black and maroon tiled floor and there is a very odd smell. It’s the smell of stale books. I had to go in the book room to get sixty copies of Lord of the Flies; my ninth-grade class starts it next week. The book room holds all of the books we currently teach along with all of the books that we used to teach. As I walked through to find the Everbind stack of Lord of the Flies, I saw the stack of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic, The Scarlet Letter. I read The Scarlet Letter in Mrs. Madison’s class in tenth-grade English. But now, as a single mom myself, I feel a new connection to The Scarlet Letter.

  The plot of The Scarlet Letter revolves around this woman, Hester Prynne, who has an illegitimate baby. Hester Prynne sleeps with this guy in town and we’re in Puritan America, so the town is really pissed at her. She has to serve a prison sentence while pregnant, and then after the baby is born she has to stand on a scaffold for a while with her infant. (Gotta love the Puritans.) Finally she is made to wear the letter A across her chest, which is meant to stand for adultress. First of all, this book is about a baby-mama. Hester never confesses who the father is, although the blood-sucking psycho residents of mid-seventeenth-century Massachusetts really want to know.