You Deserve Nothing (12 page)

Abdul looked up at me, concerned. “That we can’t really understand God?”

“Good. And? Ariel?”

She let out a breath—this was the second time she’d been brought into the same world as Abdul. “And he’s saying that if you weren’t around when he made the world, then, like, you can’t possibly understand what God does now. So, just give up trying and accept God. And that’s totally what we should do. God has his reasons. We can’t understand them. We just have to trust him no matter what. I mean I’m sorry that Job had all those shitty things happen to him but God had his reasons. And in the end he’s better off than he started. So what’s the big deal?”

“And all the children starving to death in the world? And the girls who are raped on their way to school? And the ten year old who is hit by a drunk driver? That’s all God’s plan?” Jane was trembling.

Abdul was nodding. Ariel turned coolly to Jane, smiled and said, “That’s right,” as if it were her plan not God’s.

“O.K.,” I said. “O.K.”

After the bell rang and everyone else had left Gilad was still sitting at his desk.

“You O.K.?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“Well come by if you want to talk, all right? I have a meeting now but I’m free later so . . . ”

“You?” He interrupted me.

“Are you O.K.?” His face flushed. “I mean I’m sure you are,” he said collecting his things and stuffing them quickly into his backpack.

“Yes. But thank you. Thank you for asking. It was hard to sleep last night. I woke up very early. But I’m fine. I’m fine.”

He smiled at me, hoisted his pack over his shoulder and ducked out of the room.

* * *

I had an appointment to see the head of the school, Laetitia Moore, at ten-thirty and as I arrived she was walking the chairman of the board of trustees into the hallway.

“Always a pleasure to spend an hour together, Laetitia,” he said smiling at her. Turning to leave he saw me, paused for a moment while his face fell from warm flatterer to cold businessman, and left.

She ushered me in and I sat down.

“So, Will. I understand that you didn’t come to work yesterday. Is that right?”

I nodded.

“Can you explain why?” She wrinkled her forehead.

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Something with the
métro
?”

“Something with the
métro
? Yes, I saw a man murdered. He was pushed in front of the train.”

“Awful.” She shook her head and spun a heavy silver pen on her desktop.

“I understand there was a student there?”

“Gilad Fisher.”

“And he didn’t come to school either?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you tell him that would be O.K., Will?”

“We didn’t discuss it. It wasn’t really an option.”

“Why was that?”

I looked at her for a moment and then said slowly, “Because there was a dead man under our train.”

“And so the
métro
wasn’t running,” she said. She picked up a piece of paper and studied it. “The trains began running again at 11:45. So you decided you’d take Gilad to a café rather than return to school?”

“I didn’t
decide
anything. It was a disturbing thing to see. To say the least. Gilad saw more of it than I did. He was upset. The
métro
station, as, perhaps you can imagine, was in chaos. I thought it best for both of us to leave there.”

“I understand, but don’t you think, Will, it would have made more sense to have brought him to school where he could have spoken to a trained psychologist?”

“What psychologist?”

“Cherry Carver, the school’s psychologist.”

“Cherry Carver? She’s a math teacher. Why would I want Gilad talking to
her
of all people?”

“Cherry Carver is the school psychologist, Will.”

“Since when?”

“Since the beginning of the school year.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am serious. She did a course over the summer. I’m sure an announcement was made.”

“I didn’t know.”

“That’s not what is at issue here. What is at issue is that you kept one of our students out of school because you felt that you were qualified to counsel him. You refused to provide a sub plan and you neglected all of your day’s classes. It was bad enough that you didn’t come to school. That you kept a student with you opens us up to a lawsuit. I’m sorry, Will, but what you’ve done is difficult to excuse. You have a responsibility to this school. You didn’t fulfill that responsibility.”

My hands were sweating. I could feel the rush of adrenaline. I stared at her. She stared back until eventually she spoke.

“I understand that you were trying to do the best you could for Gilad. I have to trust that you made the decisions you did with Gilad’s best interests at heart but you have to remember that your job is to teach literature, not to counsel our students. Will? Do you have anything to say?”

I shook my head.

“Well,” she said, “if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Is there anything else?”

“In fact there is, yes. The reason that Omar was here earlier is that he’s concerned by one of your classes.”

“Omar?”

“Al Mady. Mr. Al Mady tells me that Abdul feels very uncomfortable in your class. What is it?” She looked down at her notes. “Senior Seminar, is that right?”

“Abdul Al Mady is in that class, yes.”

“Apparently, Abdul feels uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Is it true you’ve told the students that,” she looked down at her notes, “that God doesn’t exist?”

I laughed. “No, it is not. While I am confident that I’m a good teacher I don’t feel that I’m in a position to comment on the existence of God.”

“
Do
you believe God exists?” She gave me a stern look.

“You don’t, honestly, expect me to answer that question.”

She waved her hand as if swatting at a fly. “The point is that Abdul feels isolated, he feels that he’s under attack, that his religion is under attack.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s important, Will, that our students feel at ease in their classes.”

I smiled.

“That’s something that I feel very strongly about. We are here for our students, to provide a supportive environment, to make sure that they feel good about themselves, so that they leave here with high self-esteem. I want each of our students to leave our school with the sense that they are, in their own ways, special.”

“And Abdul doesn’t feel special? Is that Mr. Al Mady’s concern?”

“Omar’s concern, Will, is that Abdul is under attack in your classroom. That simply can’t go on. Not with any student and certainly not with Abdul Al Mady.
Particularly
not with Abdul. In general, you need to be very careful when dealing with religion in the classroom. And above all, you can’t challenge the faith of our students. Your role is to teach literature, not to question the existence of God.”

“I disagree. I believe it
is
my role to challenge the faith of my students. In fact, I take it as my primary role—to question their faith in all things. It’s impossible to teach literature, at least to teach it well,
without
questioning that faith. It also seems impossible that we should be having this discussion and yet here we are.”

“Will, please. I’ve been an educator for more than twenty years. I hardly need a lesson from you. Clearly, a teacher should challenge his students. It is, however, one thing to challenge them and quite another to question their faith in God. You don’t honestly believe that it should be you who questions their religion?”

“Within the context of a piece of literature? Of course I do. Those very questions exist already in the work I teach. Have you not seen my syllabus? The reading list?”

“I glanced at it this morning, yes. I saw that you’re teaching
The Book of Job
. You have to understand that there’s an important distinction, Will, between the questions posed in a text and those you pose directly to your students. You also teach
Macbeth
, Will. Would you have your students consider suicide or murder? These questions need to remain in the texts.”

I shook my head. “I disagree entirely. Literature is irrelevant unless its questions have some bearing on the lives of the readers. You think a student who reads
Hamlet
shouldn’t herself consider the idea of suicide? That when reading
The Book of Job
we shouldn’t consider the existence of God? Or his logic? Or his nature?”

She stiffened. “Will,” she said. “I will not permit you to use our classrooms to question God’s existence, logic, or nature. It is one thing to discuss a character in a work of literature, it is quite another to treat the God of the Old Testament as a fictional character. This is dangerous territory. You have a moral responsibility to protect your students, to steer them through works of literature, to help them see clearly. That’s it, Will.
That’s
your job. No more.”

“Laetitia, I disagree.”

She drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid neither of us has time for an academic argument. Perhaps another time, but for now, you need to understand my position, which is to say the school’s position. Simply put, you may not question your students’ religious faith. For that matter, you may not suggest that they consider suicide or murder.”

I laughed.

“Do we understand each other, Will?”

“I think so,” I said, and left her office.

* * *

Mia and I sat together on the grass eating our lunch, the sun turning the poplars gold. A wind blew across the field and, for the first time that autumn, there was a sharpness in the air.

“Cherry Carver is the psychologist. She’s the
official
school psychologist?”

“Apparently so. She claimed that there’d been an announcement.”

“How does a school have a psychologist that the teachers don’t know about? Who has
never
practiced psychology? Cherry Carver? Fucking Cherry Carver?”

“It’s always for the kids. We’re doing God’s work. Don’t forget that,” I said, smiling.

“Speaking of which, I had a long talk with one of my new students. Marie de Cléry. Very sweet. Do you know that every day since the beginning of the year before she leaves she says, ‘Thanks Ms. Keller. Great class, Ms. Keller.’ She came by the office the other day to tell me how much she likes my class.
This
is why she stops by. To compliment me and to talk about the work? She stayed for an hour. She’s my new favorite,” Mia said beaming.

“That’s good, it’s good to have fans.” I felt sick.

“No, I mean she’s not like one of
your
panting groupies and she’s not looking for grades. She doesn’t really write all that well. She’s fierce and interested. Everything we talk about, she tries so hard to understand and then when it clicks, she looks like she could cry she’s so happy. It makes
me
want to cry. We’re reading ‘The Flea,’ and today she had this expression on her face. I don’t know, just total befuddlement, like she’s in pain and then all of a sudden she sits up, her face bright and relaxed. She raises her hand, I call on her, and she says, ‘Men are so pathetic.’

“The others start giggling but I know exactly what’s happening and I smile at her and then all the other kids, none of whom have yet understood the poem, shut up, and Marie says, ‘It’s just another guy trying to get laid.’ Of course she’s right and she takes ten minutes to explain the whole thing to the class. It’s not as if she’s really literary but she saw the whole thing. While all the little SAT drones were looking for metaphors and similes, she just, click, gets it. ‘All that to hook up with this girl? So lame. Just say what you want. Be a man,’ she says. We spent the rest of the period talking about how men are pathetic. An excellent morning.”

I loved the way Mia spoke about her students. I knew no one else who believed so certainly in what she did. I loved the way she taught, the way she worked for those kids, but I could barely look at her.

As we were finishing our lunches I glanced up to see Gilad walking back along the walkway from the cafeteria. When he passed, I waved.

He smiled and turned into the upper school building.

“That’s him? The kid you kept from classes? The one you’re morally bankrupting?”

I nodded.