Authors: Gillian Roberts
GILLIAN ROBERTS
108
And finally I got it that Tisha Banks was not the topic, and Havermeyer was not speaking in metaphors, but literally. Our innocuous, terrific, poetry reading. The one thing I’d done here lately that had met with everyone’s approval had somehow become a wrong thing. Now that I knew what he meant, I could sit up straighter and speak more directly. “I can’t imagine what you’ve heard, but the fact is, none of my students advocate violence.”
“That is not what I was told.”
“By whom? Because it is what I
am
telling you. In fact, we taped it, so I could show—”
“I have had the opportunity already to view your production.”
“And? Surely, you saw—you didn’t see anything frightening.”
Nobody had read a Columbine-type work, not even close. Nobody had even opted for the violence of a typical rap poem, not that I would have censored it had they. Could he be offended by the dumb-dog poem? Was that suddenly anti-American? And then there was the one about the dead grandma. Was there too much death and dying in that? This was ludicrous, except for Havermeyer’s expression, which was solemn and annoyed.
“Cheryl Stevens.” He spoke her name with the gravity of one sharing the secret of existence.
“Cheryl? Cheryl’s
against
violence. That’s the entire point of her poem. It’s an antiwar poem.”
He nodded and looked satisfied, as if I’d just made his point for him. “Precisely.”
I gripped the seat of the chair and tried to think of this as a humorous situation. As Alice in the Havermeyer hole where nothing made sense because it was all a game. Things turned topsy-turvy, antiwar equaling proviolence, failure to report same a dereliction.
Only it wasn’t a game. His face was puffed with anger. “Let us be more specific and on target than saying the poem is antiwar.
It’s an anti
government
poem. Antigovernmental policy and effort.”
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A HOLE IN JUAN
I took a deep breath. “It’s about her cousin, her closest and favorite cousin, who was blinded. It’s about the pain war creates.
It’s about the idea of killing—and the horror of killing. It’s part of a great poetic tradition in Western literature.”
“You may interpret it as you like, but I saw the tape, and heard the words, and they are inflammatory and most definitely suggest civil disobedience. Revolution, one might say. Insurrection. This is a call for action against the government, or how else would one interpret it?”
I wondered what other job I’d be able to find once I was officially fired. I was not a good salesperson, didn’t know fashions, wasn’t particularly skilled on the computer. Could we make ends meet if I waited tables? Was the salary with tips any less than I made here? Did I even
care
at this point if I lost the job?
“This is not a personal vendetta or my own idiosyncratic rush to judgment.” He laughed with some derision, as if the idea that he could behave weirdly was beyond the pale. “I had a complaint almost immediately,” he added with heat in his voice.
I had been mentally opening the help wanted pages and going online to job sites, and it took a real effort to will myself back into the moment.
He looked delighted by the fact that somebody had complained to him. There was joy in having an equally stupid person out there, and he was dumb enough to believe that if two people agreed on something, it was the truth, no matter its actual merit.
I waited to hear the name of the student or parent who’d been that narrow-minded and outraged.
“Louis Applegate was understandably uncomfortable about having you spread seditious propaganda through the student body.”
Not a parent being overprotective and not a student unable to think things through. A faculty member. A history teacher.
How ludicrous could we get?
I knew Louis was a dry, sexless, sour work of a man, but still and all, he’d surely heard of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
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How could he object to a tenth grader’s unpolished but heartfelt poem? I tried to put my incredulity and anger to the side, and think about what I could rationally do about this situation. “I’ll talk with him,” I said, though I really wanted to shout at him, to shake some sense into him.
Havermeyer looked startled, as if I’d introduced an entirely new subject. “Why would you do that? Louis Applegate is not the problem. Your student is.”
“Cheryl? How can you or Louis Applegate think that?” I knew I shouldn’t have asked for more information the moment the words escaped my lips.
He sighed and shook his head, playing out his frustration to an imaginary far balcony. “I think the situation has already been sufficiently clarified, but . . . to repeat, if I’m not mistaken, and I am not, I have already stressed that these are not normal times. There are things, ideas—incentives to violence—to noncooperation—
that cannot be tolerated, and I would think every citizen with eyes and ears would be well aware of that by this point.”
Ideas that cannot be tolerated. Did he hear how that sounded? Ideas, not acts.
“I understand there is a plan to print the poem in the
Inkwire
as well,” he said.
I nodded. “All of the poems that were read. The staff suggested it, and since we don’t have a literary magazine, I—”
“You agreed? Wouldn’t it have sufficed—more than sufficed—
for those ideas to have reached every student in the school one time? I’m afraid I do not consider an inflammatory, anti-American poem justifiable under any lights at this time in our history. And surely not disseminated under the banner of this school.”
“You’re saying we can’t print them?”
“Not Cheryl’s, and the rest are to be reviewed prior to publication. In any case, by the time the next issue comes out, Cheryl Stevens will no longer be a student at this school, so there is absolutely no justification for printing her work in a newspaper written solely by the student body.”
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This was unthinkable. I tried to recall anyone else who’d been asked to leave in the years I’d been there. We’re a school catering to kids who can’t or don’t make it elsewhere for a variety of reasons, some potentially serious, most not. We’d struggled along with learning difficulties, personality aberrations, and psychological disturbances—and now were we actually going to throw out a student for writing a poem?
“Before you leap to any wrong conclusions, understand that Cheryl’s withdrawal is her decision and precluded any need on my part to suggest it. I have merely had a preliminary discussion with Cheryl’s parents this morning, and they themselves suggested finding another more . . . philosophically comfortable, perhaps more suitable place for her.”
I had the distinct impression that if asked, Havermeyer would consider the place most suitable and comfortable for Cheryl Stevens to be the Prison of Bad Thoughts, where people’s minds get bound and gagged.
“I hope they change their minds,” I said. “Upsetting Mr.
Applegate over an issue of free speech hardly seems a reason to leave a school.”
“This has nothing to do with Mr. Applegate. He merely gave me an early heads-up. Furthermore, he indicated that the rest of the faculty is in sympathy with his views.”
I shook my head, still in shock. “How—when did—nobody said—”
And then I remembered Juan Reyes expressing amazement that I’d cared about his problems when I had problems of my own, then refusing to explain himself. I’d been heading for his room this morning determined to extract that refused explanation.
This had to be what it was about. I hadn’t made it to the lunchroom yesterday. I’d been preoccupied redoing the seniors’
examination. People must have talked about the poetry program, but it hurt to think they’d all thought it was a bad thing.
Then I remembered the brief exchange more clearly. Juan GILLIAN ROBERTS
112
Reyes had seemed sympathetic, not accusatory. He’d said I had problems, not that I’d created problems.
Not everyone condemned me. Maurice Havermeyer was rearranging the truth to suit his thesis. I looked at him. His fleshy face revealed almost nothing, but then there was precious little inside the man to be revealed. Few original thoughts crossed his mind, and those that did were never complex, and always hinged on whether or not a given idea or event was good for the bottom line.
“We stand for certain values here,” he said, “and I will not have our good name tarnished. I do not want to give the impression that the staff at this school—that we stand for—that we are in any way defiant of the values and beliefs that make this country great.”
“Like freedom of speech? I agree. I’d hate to give the impression we don’t stand for it.”
He cleared his throat. “This is not censorship. This is common sense for uncommon times.”
I wondered where he’d found that phrase.
“This is being cautious in the same way we look for hidden weapons at the airports.” He paused to listen to what he’d said, found it good, and nodded. I could see him regain his confidence—
his arrogance—and steam ahead. “An educator is the guardian of young souls, so I am therefore personally bothered by the fact that you did nothing to stop this seditious performance and, in fact, aided and abetted it.”
Language fit for a spy, an enemy of the country. And all I thought I’d been doing was demonstrating that the arts could be used to express emotions. In short, my job.
“And that you were, furthermore, deliberately planning to as-sist students in further disseminating words that can only foment unrest.”
I didn’t know what I disliked most intensely: his language or the impulses behind it. I decided to avoid the blather that would preface what he had in mind. Instead, I’d fall on my sword, force 113
A HOLE IN JUAN
him to say what he wanted. Temp work couldn’t be that bad, could it? I looked at him directly. “Are you asking for my resignation?”
That was too straightforward for my headmaster. “Well . . .”
he said. “Well . . .”
“Because I don’t agree about this. In fact, I think it’s a violation of all we teach here, no matter what Louis Applegate says. I think it’s a disgrace that somebody who suggests tossing out a student for expressing her sorrow and confusion about a loved one’s war injuries should pretend to teach our children social studies. I respect his constitutionally protected right to think it and say it, but surely, not to do it. Actions matter. Thoughts and words are protected, and I think he needs a remedial course in our basic rights, starting with the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech.”
“He didn’t precisely say—nobody said—the Stevens family made this decision on their own.”
“Well, if they were given the same twisted interpretation of what Cheryl wrote, I can’t blame them. But aside from them, you’re upset that I supposedly allowed this to happen, and I’m not upset about it at all, so do you want my resignation?” I itched and yearned for him to tell me he did. I wanted out. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, surely didn’t want to work in this environment.
My entire relationship with Philly Prep’s one-man administration had been fraught with tension and dispute and, I suspected, mutual dislike, but this was the nadir. This was disgusting. Despite my fury, I did give a moment or two’s thought to the students and work I loved—and to the perilous state of our checkbook—
but I nevertheless couldn’t see any alternative. I was sure I could find another underpaid job where at least the Bill of Rights was upheld.
“You must learn to not rush headlong into decisions that way, but to think issues through, to reconsider, in these trying times—”
I knew these times were trying. I didn’t need re-education GILLIAN ROBERTS
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from Maurice Havermeyer. “Putting it bluntly,” I said, “I cannot understand why we should take away our basic rights—our students’ constitutionally guaranteed rights—while we’re fighting others who would take them away. And fighting in order that other people should have those rights.”
He looked as if I’d whirled him around until his eyes spun.
Nothing had gotten through to him. Instead, when he opened his mouth to speak, he’d pushed the play button again after being on hold. “—and reconfigure, perhaps, establish new para-meters concerning incendiary material and perhaps consider more discretion although of course I am not suggesting anything like censorship, but still, we all self-censor, do we not? We don’t cry ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater, and we don’t question the right of the man at the airport to have us take off our shoes or examine our handbags. You could explain that to your students, make it clear.”
I didn’t see why I had to endure any more of his meaningless blather. “I understand,” I lied. It shortened the time he’d have to spend saying lots of words and meaning nothing. And to my horror, I did understand.
Having said that, while Havermeyer stammered and backtracked and tried to articulate what he wanted without actually saying anything concrete, I stood up and left the room, powered by the smoke and fumes coming out of my ears.
Eleven
I’d lost my appetite and was left with roiling energy and no place to put it, so I stormed out of the building, ignoring the sporadic sprinkles that were all that remained of the morning’s rainstorm, and stomped about till I found a homeless person leaning against a wall, holding an umbrella and a damp card-board sign that said hungry.
I handed him my pristine lunch.
His expression suggested that I’d handed him vermin, not victuals. “How about money, lady? A man’s got to live.”
“Change your sign, then,” I snapped.
“Words matter!”
I stormed on, thoughts circling in on themselves, getting nowhere. I had long since debated leaving teaching for more pay or ease, but the problem was, I loved it, so I stayed. But that was GILLIAN ROBERTS
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then and this was now, and every muscle and bone of my body wanted only to stomp away.
I looked back at the disgruntled homeless man who was now too intent on eating my sandwich to notice I was watching him.