Among School Children (24 page)

When she contemplated Claude, Chris thought of his school days going slowly by while a stronger current ran beneath. She imagined Claude at his desk, daydreaming about fishing as if he had all the time in the world, and she thought, Claude has only a little more than a year now to start learning how to put his mind to a task and get a little organized. If she didn't help him do that, he would be—she could see Claude there—wandering around lost, picking at his lip, in the halls of junior high.

She knew several Claudes. One of them amused her—the absent-minded boy of many ailments. He came to class once with his hand wrapped like a mummy's in a giant Ace bandage that covered a tiny cut on his thumb. Sometimes he walked past the classroom door by mistake. He would rush to the closet and forget what he'd gone for when he got there, all the while discussing his confusion out loud. "What was I lookin' for? I know! That paper. It's here someplace. Whew! Here it is."

The sad, lonely Claude wore pants that still had little bunches of thread where the price tag had been. This Claude was so out of touch with what his peers thought was "fresh" or "def" or "toy" that he told the whole class about his imaginary friends, Herbert and Herberta, who kept him company when he was lonely. Claude got laughed at for that, of course. Out at recess he tried to get the other children's attention by taking an old piece of two-by-four he'd found in the grass and swinging it perilously close to their heads. He would step on classmates' heels, and would turn around at his middle-person desk and try to show Julio, who did not like Claude, a card trick that didn't quite work. One time Claude came in from recess and tried to make conversation with beautiful Alice by saying, "I met someone who says he hates you."

There was, finally, the maddening Claude, who was sneaky and quick-witted. He had a perfectly good mind, Chris thought.

All three Claudes came together, almost every day, at homework excuse time. Why hadn't he done his homework again? "The only kind of paper we have at home is the kind where there's no lines," said Claude.

"I did it," he had said to Chris the other morning. She had asked him for his spelling homework.

Don't ask, she thought. Don't let him get started. But as usual she couldn't resist. Oh, well, she thought, this is some of the most creative work Claude does all day.

"Okay, Claude, where is it?"

"I don't know," said Claude, looking up at her earnestly. "It could be
anywhere.
"

She'd have to get his mother in again. Talk about
basic skills.
She hadn't done enough about Claude. It was high time she had a look inside Claude's bookbag. I'm almost afraid to look, Chris thought. She'd do that soon.

If she could have, she'd have avoided thinking about Robert now, but she saw him all too clearly. Robert was too big for his desk. He sat in his middle-person spot, lifting his desk up and down on his thighs, black hair in a crew cut, a broad white face, his lips very red under fluorescent light. One morning, at the start of math, Robert piped up in his squeaky voice, "Mrs. Zajac, do you want me to go out in the hall while you read the answers?" Robert meant the answers to last night's homework. This was his way of telling her he hadn't done his. He smirked.

She was standing in front of the low math group, ready to begin. Her hands went to her hips. "Robert, I don't think this is any kind of a joke. I think it's kind of ludicrous that by now you aren't doing your homework. If you don't care, I'm on the verge of not caring. I'm sick of babying you."

Robert looked up at her and made a small sound, like a mewling infant. Very bold for Robert.

"Shut your mouth!" she said.

Robert bowed his head slightly but started making little gabbing movements with his lips. Then he lifted his eyes to hers and made his eyebrows bob up and down.

"Out!" she said. The imperious teacher finger pointed toward the door.

"I'm going to leave him out there 'til he rots," she said to herself.

On the blue carpet beneath Robert's desk, items accumulated. One day a myriad of expended staples. On another bits of paper torn from a notebook, and the twisted wire binder of the notebook itself, lying there like a busted spring. Always there were candy wrappers and empty junk food bags from snack time. In the pauses between lessons, Chris would gaze at Robert. He would sit at his desk, his pen poised over work that he would not do. A pensive expression would cover his flat, ample face, and for a moment he would look like a well-fed executive in a photograph by Bachrach. This vision of Robert would pass, without any transition, and he would turn back into an oversized boy with ink-spotted jeans, the cuffs rolled up, the waist of his underpants showing. For no apparent reason, his face would flush red. Then it would grow pale. He'd slap his own face a few times. His face would light up again. He'd wave his hand hard. "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Mrs. Zajac! Mrs. Zajac!"

"Yes, Robert?"

"Can I go bathroom?" Just like a three-year-old.

Permission granted, he'd rub his hands together. He'd grin maniacally.

During a health lesson, one of many Chris gave about the perils of drugs, Robert announced, "My mother's old boyfriend had another girlfriend, and she had a baby, and it was addicted to heroin."

"Oh, Robert, how sad!"

Robert grinned.

"Oh, my God," Chris thought. "What a life he's leading."

She had brought him up to the front table to help him work on a story. He said to her happily, "Mrs. Zajac, I have this friend named Crazy Eddie, and a blood vessel broke in his ankle and there was blood all over his bed."

"Why do you call him Crazy Eddie?" Crazy Eddie was probably shooting up, she thought.

"Because he peels in an' outa our parking lot. He's real crazy." Robert's eyes narrowed, and he grinned, not as he might have grinned if he were happy, but with the exaggerated menace of a cartoon character.

She tried to get him to talk, but it seemed as if his thoughts must veer to the grotesque. The reviews of horror movies that he gave classmates, for example. "I like the part on Jason. Once there was a nail puller. Jason picked it up and slammed it right into some guy's head. Awesome!"

And he often wrecked her chats with the class.

"Does anyone know anything about Japan?"

"Yeah. It's fulla chinks," said Robert.

"He just does that to see what I'll do," she thought.

She still hoped to get his mother to take Robert to a psychiatrist. She had seen his mother several times, a towering figure who usually appeared unannounced at the door. Robert always seemed excited when his mother came to school, and for a while afterward would do some work. Chris had told his mother that her visits seemed to help, and his mother had said she would come to the school once a week, but had not returned since.

Would Robert flunk the Basic Skills Tests next year? Probably, Chris thought. But not because he didn't have a lot of basic academic skills. When, back in the fall, she had administered the California Achievement Tests to the class, Robert hadn't even bothered to read half of the questions. He had simply filled in at random and sloppily the bubbles on the answer sheet. In Robert's case, a standardized test merely measured the child's willingness to take a standardized test. Robert didn't care enough to try much of anything. She guessed he didn't dare. He couldn't fail if he didn't try.

He wasn't as disruptive as Clarence. He didn't spread his problems around as much. When he felt like hitting someone, he hit himself, and when he started squeaking or singing while the others tried to work, a look would usually silence him.

She gathered up her books and headed back to the room. She couldn't think of what to do for Robert, except to try to get him psychiatric help.

Chris knew only one incontrovertibly good reason for Clarence's being sent away: the rest of the class had to benefit. But this first week without him limped along. More and more children who had regularly done the homework simply stopped. On Thursday morning Judith got a 65 on a math paper. It was, for Chris, like going to the bank and finding that she didn't have any money left. She had told herself that the low math group needed the larger share of her time, and that the top group, and especially Judith, could mostly teach themselves. She'd have to distribute herself more equitably.

That morning passed slowly. The room had a rancorous air. She scolded the low math group, and all three reading groups, too, for not doing their work. After lunch and reading aloud, she went to center stage, in front of her front table, to start a grammar lesson with her homeroom class. It was a sunny day. Out the window on the playground, a small group of sixth graders picked through the contents of the garbage bags—the bags had split and the late March winds had lifted pieces of the trash and distributed them along the far fence. Behind Chris's left shoulder on the front chalkboard, the lists of children who owed her work now overflowed the usual quadrant. Chris planned to teach her lesson and ignore those lists for a while longer. She looked at Courtney, though, and she felt a little angry, both at Courtney and herself. She knew that Courtney hadn't done the language assignment. "Courtney, where's your homework?"

"You didn't tell me to do it."

"Courtney! Since when do I say, 'Everyone has to do the homework except for Courtney'?"

Courtney pouted.

The rest of the year turned on that pout. Chris folded her arms. "I think it's time we had a little talk," she said. There was acid in her voice. She looked down at her class, from one face to another, and she smiled at them with most of her teeth.

"What is today's date? What month is it?"

Many little voices helped her figure out the date.

"It is not June," she said. She scowled down at them, but they looked so worried, so many faces seemed to say, "I didn't think I was
that
bad, Mrs. Zajac," that for a moment she felt like laughing. She was losing the edge, she thought. It would have to be all acting now. She felt, really for the first time in weeks, at peace and fully energetic.

The color had faded from Chris's neck. She cried, "Some of you think school has ended!" Two sets of red-painted nails pressed against her breastbone. "I don't know why!" Her teacher finger lifted high into the air. "Some of you think you don't have to do homework anymore!" Her teacher finger came down hard. "I don't know why!" Her hands flew up and outward. "Some of you think, 'Yeah, I have to do the work, but who cares what it looks like. The old witch'll accept anything.' " Her hands came back to her breastbone. "I haven't changed! I'm not going to accept garbage. Which it looks like I'm getting from some of you people."

She looked at them. She let it all sink in, and then she said, "Because what do you think the old witch is going to make you do if you hand in lousy work?"

"Do it over," said several faint voices.

"
Do it over,
" said Chris, adding, "Do you think we could possibly do quality work this afternoon?"

Every head nodded, except Robert's.

It all sounded like the first day of school, and that was what Chris had in mind.

The next afternoon, Chris went into her classroom closet and came out with a construction paper Easter bunny. It was ragged and creased from years of folding. She said what she usually did when announcing an informal art lesson. They could make anything they liked, but if they wanted, they could make an Easter bunny. This one of hers might give them some ideas. But they shouldn't make one just like hers. Mrs. Zajac was a terrible artist. They were much better artists than she. Felipe cheered, and then Chris said, "But art is only for the people who don't owe me any work."

That got Felipe going. He did the math he owed her fast. Maybe the sight of Felipe rushing to the board, mounting a chair, and erasing his name from the delinquency lists inspired the others. Maybe Chris inspired them, striding from desk to desk, telling the delinquents what they owed. Suddenly, the room was full of scholars. Soon a parade of children approached Chris's desk. They carried papers. Some brought them in both hands, as if carrying little trays to her. "Pretty good, Pedro!" "Very good, Jimmy! Now go to the bathroom, and when you get back, we'll work on the second question." "This is not the best work you can do, Arnie. I'll tell you that, buster. But I'll accept it. Okay, Arnie, you can erase your name." As the afternoon wore on, Julio, Ashley, Courtney, brought papers to the shrine. They rushed away to erase their names. Jimmy came back to her desk with an entire social studies paper done. "Very good, Jimmy! Finally, finally, finally, you gave me something of quality. I knew you could do it. You should be proud of yourself, Jimmy!"

By the time the walkers left, the green chalkboard, drying in streaks, was empty, except for a tiny, dusty patch of names in the upper right-hand corner. Robert's and Claude's stood out, but they'd had more catching up to do than the rest of the class put together, and they'd made some headway. The exercise in housecleaning made her feel that they had confronted the past honestly and had put it behind them. Chris felt pumped up. She couldn't remember when she'd had this much energy, especially on a Friday. The wall above the closet was newly adorned. The witches were gone. A host of Easter bunnies took their place—multicolored, floppy-eared, crazed-looking. Next week new bulletin boards. New campaigns. New everything. She was going to double her planning time starting next week. She had more energy than she knew what to do with. She never would have felt this way, Chris told herself, if Clarence were still in the room, or, to be honest, if she hadn't needed to prove to herself that her room was different without him.

Chris often muttered in the room, "Patience, Mrs. Zajac. Patience." She felt especially impatient for signs of progress now.

The next week Chris launched several offensives at once. Too many, perhaps, to fit inside one week. At one moment, she found herself trying to finish up a lesson while outside her door there stood waiting for her: Paul, the vice principal, to talk to her about Courtney; the psychologist, to talk to her about Robert; and Claude's mother, to talk to her, neither for the first nor last time, about Claude.