Bright Before Us (14 page)

No,
I said, suspicious.
No one called me.

She nodded.
Well, they just want to ease the kids back into the classroom, so they're all going to stay as long as they can today, and maybe tomorrow ...

I must have been frowning, because she started speaking faster.
But I really doubt they'll be here past then
—she put her hands up defensively—
and they'll stay out of the way, obviously.

There was a pause, and I imagined her retracing her steps. She was realizing this was a breach of etiquette; it was dawning on her that she should have discussed it with me. She tried another approach, her face softening.
And how are you doing, in all of this?
She placed her hand on my shoulder. I looked down at it.

Okay, I think we should probably get started now,
I said, turning away. I heard myself speak in a higher pitch than normal, like something was pressing on my throat, choking off my air.
Mr. Noel, maybe you can give me a hand moving these tables?
The class needed to divide into two groups—one to begin the song, another to come in seconds later. Mr. Noel stood slowly, his eyes bugged, and lumbered toward me. I saw the principal walk over to the parents, nodding and shaking hands and being gentle with them like they were children who had fallen down. I was aware of the eyes watching me as, with a pealing squeak against the floor tiles, Mr. Noel and I dragged the tables to the perimeter of the room. I could hear fragments of the principal's quiet speech to the nodding parents.
The important thing to remember . .. difficult time, certainly.

Frank,
Mr. Noel said,
I just want to mention that I've done some work in schools.

I strained to hear the principal.
... Just up the hall if it seems like ... my eyes and ears, here.

Pardon?
I said to Mr. Noel.

Oh,
I said to Mr. Noel.
That's great.

So,
Mr. Noel said,
if you need me to take over at any point, just holler.

I frowned at him, struggling to stand up straight.

 

Caleb had wet the bed, Mr. Noel told me later. Rebekah had awoken crying and asked for her dead mother in the night, her father said. Their parents were afraid and helpless. And yet I couldn't help it when my compassion and trust—they were here to observe their children! They were doing the right thing!—gave way to resentment. What were they
really
doing here? What did they want from me? Every internal impulse lurched toward defensiveness and paranoia: I was in deep fucking shit.

Simon is having a recurring nightmare,
his mother told me that afternoon.
He loses his arms and legs and can't move.

I see,
I replied.

I shook my head.

Is that significant?
she hissed, looking at me with the expectant eyes of someone lodging a complaint.

 

When the recess bell rang at midmorning, I was half out of my seat to start lining them up when I looked out the window: it was raining.
Oh
, I said aloud.
Sorry guys, it looks like we're staying in for recess. They're probably just about to—

The announcement interrupted me: we were rained in. The kids made their collective noises of disapproval.

Hey, listen, it's way too wet,
I said.

But Mr. Mason!
they chimed. I had heard these kinds of complaints so many times—anything said in this tone
barely registered anymore.
Mr. Mason, that's not fair! We have umbrellas!

Listen,
Mrs. Stone said, standing authoritatively.
It's too wet out there. If the rain is gone in the afternoon, you can have recess outside then.

The kids were silent. She sat down, triumphant.

 

When we were rained in, we played games. Barnyard, in which they were blindfolded and let loose in the classroom to moo and cluck and figure out who else was mooing and clucking and then gather by animal. I had to stop assigning anyone Horse, because none of them could neigh convincingly. Or we played Who Is Hiding; the kids all closed their eyes and sat in a circle on the grimy floor, while I led one kid to the back supply closet. It took them forever, figuring out who wasn't among them.

We had played Heads Up 7-Up once before, and they had a giddy kind of attachment to it. Seven kids stand. Everyone else puts their heads down and one thumb up. The seven wander the class, each touching one of the extended thumbs. If your thumb is touched you put it down; I would watch thumbs get sucked into fists like sea anemones disturbed by a passing fish. The kids whose thumbs are touched have to guess who picked them. If they guess right, they get to be one of the next group of seven.

I can still remember from my own childhood how it felt when my thumb was touched—the aching joy of being chosen. Some kids pressed their thumb against yours in a kind of mirror image; others tenderly swiped their palm against it. I can remember entire alliances formed and fumbled because of who did and did not choose whom in
Heads Up 7-Up. We played it in fifth grade, and so were old enough to know we should try to throw people off: we chose the people we hated, so they would never guess it was us who had touched them. But second graders don't know yet about strategy. They just pick their friends. So in my class, the presiding outcome of Heads Up 7-Up was that everyone always guessed right.

The rain was coming hard and fast, and it didn't take long for one of them to abandon his disappointment over the lost recess and shout out the suggestion. And then I was picking the seven kids, a sense of anticipation in the air, and the seven were excitedly making their way to the front chalkboard.
Eyes closed,
I said from my desk. I did a quick peek-check and called out the most egregious cheaters; they closed their eyes and the game commenced.

I watched them perform their exaggerated tiptoe around the classroom. Marisol picked her best friend, Monica, Henry picked the kid he sat right next to. I had a pair of first cousins in the class, a boy and a girl; Cody picked Brianna inside of ten seconds. They opened their eyes, immediately knew who had picked them, and it was time for round two.

The game was futile, but they loved it anyway.

Greta was scheduled for a sonogram that night. She had made the appointment for the evening, having taken the night off, and it was disconcerting to drive to a hospital in the dark. It was something I had only ever done in an emergency: slicing off part of my thumb chopping garlic, breaking my collarbone falling from a bike.

Is this a checkup ultrasound, or a particular kind of ultrasound, or what?
I asked.

She shrugged.
What do you mean?

She rolled down the window, spitting out her gum.
The baby is doing great,
she said.
I can feel it.

Good,
I said, looking for parking.
That's good.

Inside, the doctor confirmed her intuition.
Everything is looking a-okay,
he said. Greta's expression bore a whiff of petulance, as if she had won a bet.

I bought her an ice cream sandwich at the gas station, and when we got home, we lay down on the bed to listen to an old CD on the stereo. She rested her head on my shoulder, and I combed her hair with my fingers.

Are you doing okay?
she asked me.

Of course,
I said, my eyes clenched.

She tensed, waiting for my response.

I sighed.

Stop,
I said.
Please.

She lifted her head from my chest and turned away. When I heard her breathing go ragged for long, difficult moments, and then slow finally into the rhythm of slumber, I knew that she had cried herself to sleep.

Both times Greta miscarried, the calls came directly to the classroom. The first time was shortly before Christmas, near the end of a student teaching assignment at a school in Oakland. I'd taught alongside an irritable woman named Miss Martinez. I don't remember her first name, since I was instructed not to use it. I had nearly completed the seventyplus classroom hours necessary to graduate, and though I disliked teaching in others' classrooms, I told myself I would enjoy it once I had my own—the way prospective parents recoil from a tantrumming brat and tell themselves,
Ours will be different.
That morning, Miss Martinez answered the phone and scuttled over to chide me.

You can't receive calls here. It sounds like a woman,
she said, scandalized.

I took the phone and heard a flurry of activity—intercom pages, shuffled papers, people shouting.
Mr. Mason?
the nurse asked. She coughed, apologized for having to be the one to tell me this.

I hung up the phone and retrieved my backpack from the closet.

Did you inform her of my policy?
Miss Martinez said.

I walked to my car without a word.

When she complained to my professor—a bike-riding hippie with a T-shirt that read KILL YOUR TELEVISION—he nodded sympathetically and promised that next semester, my coteacher and I would
share the same vibe
. A few days later, Greta packed away the contents of the nursery.

Everything had been yellow, her one nod to the unknown. A yellow wall hanging with a quilted sun; a yellow set of curtains. Yellow clothes, yellow blankets. A yellow liner for the bassinet. By then all of the pregnancy
books had been read, the suitcase packed though it wasn't yet necessary. Greta had collected an array of pants with elastic waistbands, had made lists, charts, budgets. We hadn't decided on names. She had been eleven weeks along.

I made the mistake of looking in one of the books to see what a fetus looked like at that stage.
Your baby may soon be able to open and close his fists,
the caption said.

 

The second call came to Hawthorne, about two months after school started, on a morning in November when I had given my students a photocopy of ten clocks and asked them to write the time below each. I came around to measure their progress.

Simon, how's it going?
He had filled in only twelve o'clock, the simplest one.

What I don't like,
he began, his voice edged with irritation,
is when the little hand is between the numbers.

Okay,
I said,
you have to see which number the small hand is—

Am I just supposed to guess?
he asked, exasperated.

The phone rang, and I patted Simon's shoulder, setting my pen down on his desk before walking away.

Mr. Mason,
a woman said. I understood immediately—from the familiar sounds behind her, the discomfort in her voice, the fact that the classroom phone almost never rang.

You're from the hospital,
I said.

Yes,
she began.

I cut her off.
Has something happened to my wife?

I watched Simon squirrel my pen away, slipping it into the plastic tub under his desk.

Your wife will be fine,
the nurse said.

Give IT!
one of the kids said, somewhere behind me.
I said give it!

The baby's dead,
I said.

The children closest to me looked up.

Your wife has miscarried, sir, yes. She'd like you to come pick her up.
She paused only a moment before she asked,
Sir, did you hear me?

Yes,
I said flatly.
I heard you.

The principal covered my class. I drove down the street beneath the elm trees that lined each side, their branches meeting above in a canopy. The world looked different—when I left school in the afternoon, the streets were always crowded with children walking home. But with class still in session the school looked abandoned, the swings moving in the breeze. I had the uneasy feeling of playing hooky, like when I stayed home sick as a kid and got carted around on my mom's errands, suddenly privy to the workaday world. I turned on the radio absentmindedly, whistling to an upbeat tempo, tapping the rhythm on the steering wheel. I caught myself and shut the radio off, sitting at a red light, disgusted by my still-pursed lips.