Foot Surgery: a short story


Foot Surgery

Sylvia Wiskowsky-Davenport sat on the sofa, resting her foot on the ottoman while
arguing over the phone. “You’ve been out two weeks, Sylvia,” her school’s secretary said.
“When are you coming back to work?”
“Look, Eunice,” Sylvia said. “The doctor says I shouldn’t be released for work any
sooner than next Monday. If the principal’s got a problem with that, I’m sure the teacher’s
union’ll be glad to straighten her out.” She resented the accusatory tone in Eunice’s voice.
“It’s only foot surgery. I don’t see what the problem is. You can do all your teaching
from a chair.”
“What the hell does that mean, Eunice? Only foot surgery. Do you know there are more bones in the human foot than there are in any other part of the body?”
“So? My sister-in-law had foot surgery last month, and she was back to work after three days.”
“And all foot problems and foot surgeries are actually the same? Where did you get your medical degree?”
Eunice chose not to respond.
“I don’t give a damn about your sister’s foot,” Sylvia continued. “All I know is I’m in extreme pain, and walking or standing for any length of time is not recommended by my doctor.”
“Fine,” said Eunice. “Just get back here as soon you can. It’s getting to be a real bitch finding substitutes.”
“Yeah, you’ve put some real doozies in my room. I can tell by the pathetic quality of the papers I’m getting back.”
“Speaking of grades, how do you plan to get yours in by this Friday?”
“All my grades are in my computer at school. They can be accessed at any time by my department head. What’s the problem, Eunice?”
“What about the stuff you’re grading now?”
“I’ll just roll those grades up into my grades for the next term. Grades are just an average anyway. Honest to Pete, Eunice! Why would you have the gall to suggest I can’t evaluate my own students? Why are you always trying to make a mountain out of a molehill?”
“Okay,” Eunice said. “I’ll assume everything’s under control then. You just get back here as soon as possible.”
In a fat pig’s ass, thought Sylvia.

#

Jon picked up the keys and computerized attendance sheets from the principal’s office and went to the classroom. Everything was just as he had hoped. A typewritten note lay in the middle of the teacher’s desk: “Thanks for coming in. Have them follow the instructions on the board. They know what to do.” On the white board in the front of the room were three sets of instructions: red for first and fifth period, blue for second and third period, and green for fourth period. Each set said essentially the same thing: silent reading for fifteen minutes at the beginning of the class, vocabulary quiz after fifteen minutes, then studying the next set of vocabulary words. The instructions for the second day called for the students to read ten pages out of their literature books and write an essay while the teacher held individual conferences with the students about their grades. Jon couldn’t have been happier. He knew he could ignore the silent reading that most students didn’t do anyway and finish the vocabulary quiz in less than twenty minutes. That would leave at least twenty minutes for what he wanted to do. The plan for the second day would have to be changed because he didn’t know the students and couldn’t access their grades. The regular teacher wouldn’t be back until Monday, so if all the students took their books home and wrote the essay over the weekend, the second day would be his also.

#

Sylvia’s husband, Harold, was getting ready for work. She appreciated how helpful he had been during her recovery, but now she just wanted him to go away so she could watch the Today show in peace. As Katie Couric and a high-ranking government official talked about the potential for terrorism in America, Sylvia wondered what there was about Couric’s mouth that she found so disconcerting.
“I can come by at noon,” Harold said. “I won’t have any houses to show until after one.”
She sat there in her ratty purple bathrobe and stared up at her husband. His hazel eyes glinted in the bright morning sun, and a military style crew cut graced the top of his head. She resented how disgustingly fit he looked in his short-sleeved white dress shirt with the open collar and his Navy blue trousers. She, herself, had gained thirty pounds during the past year, partially because of her foot problem. At times like these, she especially disliked having him around.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
“Just call me if you need anything.”
“Okay. Maybe you can take me over to the school tonight so I can change the
assignments on the board.”

#

Tonya was collecting her books from her locker when her best friend Maylena
approached. “Girl, we looked all over for you last night. What happened?”
Tonya smirked. “Uh-huh. What do you think happened?”
“You didn’t go off with those Mexicans, did you?”
Tonya smirked, shrugged, closed her locker and stepped out into the hallway. Both of them were swept up in the wave of students trying to beat the tardy bell.
Just as the bell rang, they entered the classroom and sat in the front row. A short, grey-haired man in a light grey suit and a red tie sat in a chair facing the class. He smiled as he scanned the room and greeted latecomers with a nod of his head. At the top of the white board printed in large green letters was his name, “Jon James.”
The chatter in the room was loud and cheerful. A few seconds after the bell had rung, the noise decreased somewhat. Jon got up and walked around the room. As he walked, the volume of chatter diminished only slightly. Still smiling, he walked over to the light switch. When the room went black, the chatter ceased.
He turned the lights on again. “Good morning!” he said. “I realize I have only a few minutes to get your attention, so why don’t you give it to me, and we’ll figure out how today is going to work?” The students stared in disbelief. Where was that loud, accusatory tone they had come to expect from substitutes? “As you can see from this side board here, my name is Jon James. I have a Masters degree in English. I’m retired from the nuclear navy, where I used to be on submarine duty. For thirteen years after that, I was a technical instructor in the nuclear industry. Now that I’m retired from that job, I spend most of my time trying to write fiction, and every now and then, when I need some extra money, I teach.”
He folded his arms across his chest and looked out at the gallery of students that lay before him. A sturdy girl with red hair and an angular, asymmetrical face sat next to a slender brunette with a large, elongated face in the front row. Three girls who appeared to be from somewhere in the Pacific Islands sat off to one side in the back. Next to them sat a tall, thin boy with blonde dreadlocks. The boy raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“What do you want us to call you?”
He pointed to his name on the board. “That should do nicely, don’t you think?”
A skinny girl with freckles and hair the color of dishwater raised her hand. “You want us to call you Jon?”
“What I want doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know you’re not impressed by titles. And I can’t force you to call me by my title once you leave this classroom. Even while we’re in it, my title doesn’t guarantee that you’ll treat me with any real respect.”
A puzzled expression spread across the girl’s face. “I’ll show you what I mean,” he said. He picked up a green marker and wrote ‘Mr.’ in front of Jon. “Now. Do you respect me any more than you did five seconds ago?” He crossed out the ‘Mr.’ and wrote ‘Dr.’. “How about now?” He erased the ‘Dr.’ and wrote ‘GOD’. “Does that make any difference?” Laughter and a few soft murmurs indicated that it didn’t.
He erased the words in front of his name and walked to the back of the classroom. As he walked, he addressed the student with the dreadlocks. “You see, it doesn’t matter because respect is not something that’s given freely. It’s earned. I know that my hopes, dreams, and feelings aren’t any more important than yours are. We’re all born into this world. We live. We die. And somewhere between the being born and the dying, we all want to have a good life. In one way, the only new thing I bring into this classroom is experience. Hopefully, I can share things from my life that will help you discover what you need to have a great life yourself. Don’t you all agree that it all comes down to a respect that’s earned?”
He looked around the room. He had everyone’s full attention. “Here’s what I’m willing to do to earn your respect. I’m going to explain to you how, with same skills you have right now, you can earn at least one full grade higher on your written essays than you’re currently getting. And I’m going to tell you how to do it just by doing five or six things differently. What do you think? Would you be interested? Is that something you’d like to know?”
“How come you acting like you care?” Tonya said. “You ain’t nothing but a rookie
substitute noway.”
“I do care,” Jon said. “I want all of you to believe in yourselves and in the skills you already have. And I want you to think for yourselves. Otherwise, you’ll probably get dismissed, degraded, ignored, and devalued, like I did when I was in school.”

#

With her leg propped up on the ottoman, Sylvia graded the sloppily written quizzes and essays while repeating a sour litany to herself. “I hate teaching! I hate teaching!” She glanced up at the T.V. This new girl who took Kathy Lee’s place bothered her. The woman was like a Kathy Lee clone, but not as syrupy. What could the world possibly want with more than one Kathy Lee?

#

Tonya whispered to Maylena. “Is this dude nuts or what?”
Jon checked the location of the girl with the angular face on his seating chart. “Tonya? Is that your name?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It seems to me you’re a little skeptical.”
“Uh-huh. Well, me and Maylena, we don’t need no education. We gonna be exotic
dancers.” Tonya was a tall, big-boned girl who was slightly corpulent. Maylena was skinny
enough to be anorexic. Both wore tight-fitting clothes.
“I think maybe you do need it,” he said.
“I think maybe we don’t,” Tonya said, running a hand through her hastily-brushed, red-orange hair.
“Just give me a chance, that’s all I ask.”
“When you gonna do this?” Maylena asked, pointing to the red instructions on the board.
“Fair question,” he said. “First of all, most of you are not doing your silent reading right now. Right?” Several students closed their books on their desks and snickered. “So that’s fifteen minutes right there. Now, honestly, how long does it take to do a vocabulary quiz?”
“Ten minutes,” said Umberto, a lanky Latino with spindly legs and a buzz cut.
“Not even that long,” said a slender Asian girl sitting next to him. The seating chart revealed that her name was Sonya.
“Do you need time to study the words, Sonya?”
Daria, a pretty girl with skin the color of milk chocolate and hair arranged neatly in corn rows, spoke up. “The ones who studied know it. The rest don’t care.”
“I’ll split the difference,” he decided. “Those of you who want to study, go ahead and look over the words. Five minutes from now, I’ll start the quiz. I’ll pass out the new vocabulary words after that, then I’ll tell you how to improve your grades. Fair enough?”
The girls from the Pacific Islands and two Bosnian girls who sat next to each other
nodded. The others just stared.
Tonya leaned over and whispered to Maylena, “Uh-huh. This dude thinks he’s way cool. Watch me mess up his game.” She turned around and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. Then she turned back and smiled. He smiled back.
He walked over to her, knelt down beside her, and whispered, “Don’t look now, but
some buttons on your blouse have come undone.”
“Maybe I want it that way,” she said, pushing her breasts closer to his face.
Turning sideways, he stood up. He glanced down at her notebook, which sported a
cartoon drawing of a scantily-clad woman and the words ‘Bad Girl’. “Please button back up,” he said. When she made no attempt to do this, he spoke in a slightly louder voice. “If you’re trying to attract someone in this class, please wait until it’s over. And if you did that for my benefit, I’m telling you it’s a colossal waste of time to tease a sixty year old man who no longer has a sex drive. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. All it does is annoy the pig.” He hated to use a cliche’, but he knew it would work. The red-faced girl twisted around and buttoned up while the students who overheard the conversation laughed.

#

Sylvia heard a key turn in the front door. She looked up and saw Harold enter. “I thought you couldn’t get away until noon,” she said.
“I had a drop-in customer,” he said. “They wanted to see a home in the neighborhood, so as long as I was nearby, I thought I might drop in.”
She raised both eyebrows and peered at him through her reading glasses. “Really?”
“Okay, I lied. I thought I’d come back and see how you’re doing.”
“Well, my foot hurts more than it should. I may have to go back to the doctor.”
He came over and stood by the couch. “I worry about you.”
“Harold, please. I’m trying to watch T.V.”
Exasperated, he went over to the television and switched it off.
“Dammit, Harold!”
He sat on the ottoman, next to her foot. “They were about to go to commercial anyway.”
She didn’t say anything because she knew he was right.
“Can I just talk to you for a while?”
“You can talk to me for two minutes. That’s how long the commercials last.”
He took a deep breath. She stared at the tattoo of an eagle, anchor and globe on his right forearm. “What’s going on with you?” he asked.
“What’s going on with you?” she answered.
“I just want to know if you’re as upset about teaching as you say.”
“Yeah. I feel trapped. So?”
“Did you ever like it?”
“In the beginning. But now there are too many kids. Too many parents who don’t give a damn. And too many morons, who don’t know anything about anything, trying to force teachers to do what they think is right.”
“That sounds depressing.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. It does.”
“What can I do to help you get out of teaching?”
“I don’t know. I know I don’t want to teach anymore, but I’ve been in it too long to blow my pension and just go off and do something else.”
Neither one of them said anything for a while. Then Harold spoke. “Have you thought about maybe getting your real estate license?”
“Aw crap, Harold. We can’t afford for me to do that.”
“Why not? We don’t have any kids to worry about. If you don’t want to go into real estate, maybe you should go back to college and get a degree in Art History like you always wanted to.”
“I don’t have any time left to change careers. Just leave it alone, okay?” She looked directly into his face. His hang-dog look irritated her.

#

Jon collected the completed vocabulary quizzes and put them in the wire basket on the bookcase behind the teacher’s desk. “Please get out a sheet of notebook paper that I won’t collect,” he said. “This paper is for you so you can take notes about what I’m going to tell you next.”
Maylena raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“How do we know what you’re telling us is gonna work?”
“Because it’s what I’ve been telling students wherever I teach. And when I come back to these same schools two or three months later, I see those same students and I ask them, did I lie to you? They all say the same thing. No, you didn’t. My grades went up, just like you said they would.”
“Uh-huh,” said Tonya. “I’ll bet it don’t work for everybody.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It doesn’t work for those who won’t try.”
He walked to the board. “I’ll start with the most powerful thing you can do to improve your writing. It’s the key that everything else is based on. And I’ll bet those of you already getting good grades are doing this. He wrote: ‘1. WRITE WITH PASSION!’
“Bored people write boring essays,” he said. “It’s that simple. You have to care about what you’re trying to say, because it helps you find interesting ways to say it.”
He looked out at blank faces. “I’ll show you what I mean,” he said. “Let’s say thirty students have been assigned an essay to write, and only two have any interest in the topic. Suppose the topic is controversial. Let’s say the topic is—abortion.” He pointed to an empty chair in the classroom. “And we have a student sitting here who had a sister who got pregnant and died as a result of a botched abortion. Now, I’m sure that she would have a lot to say on the subject. I can imagine she might be totally against it.” He pointed to another empty chair. “Now we’ll say we have a student here who has a sister who got pregnant when she was thirteen and had two more children before she was sixteen. And the father of those children skipped out without ever paying child support. And we’ll say that this young mother is completely overwhelmed by having to take care of those children by herself and feels like a failure, even though she got straight As before she got pregnant. We can probably guess that her brother here is writing an essay supporting a woman’s right to choose. So we have two people who feel strongly about the same issue, even though they’re on opposite sides. Now tell me, which of those thirty essays are actually going to be worth reading?” A soft chorus of students agreed that only the two students who cared would write essays worth reading.
“That’s the key,” he said. “No matter what the topic is, always find a way to relate that topic to something you’re interested in or you feel strongly about. Otherwise, you won’t have a chance.”
Next, he wrote on the board, ‘2. USE ACTIVE VERBS.’ He turned back to the class.
“May I have a volunteer?” A tall, slender girl with a ring in her nose, six studs in her ears, and another in her navel raised her hand. He looked at the seating hart. “Jasmine. Could you stand up and come to the front of the class?” She complied. “Now, I just want you to stand there and do absolutely nothing. Think you can handle it?” She giggled, crossed one of her long, thin legs in front of the other and crossed her arms in front of her small chest. He pointed to her. “How would you like to write a sentence about what she’s doing right now?”
“She’s not doing nothing,” said a student in the back.
“That’s right,” he said. “She’s not doing anything.” Suddenly, he bolted for the door, then turned back to face the startled students. “What about what I just did? Wouldn’t you rather write a sentence about that?” He strolled back up to the front of the room.
A husky kid in the back whose name was Tony raised his hand. “I take it that’s an active verb?” Everyone laughed. “Can you give us a definition?”
“An active verb is something that’s done or performed. You can see it, sense it, hear it, taste it, smell it, feel it. It leaves a strong impression. But let’s consider the inactive verbs first. Is, are, was, were, am, be, been,—these are dull verbs. In fact, they’re actually called passive verbs. Nobody wants to read sentences about people passively ‘am’ing, or ‘was’ing or be-ing.” He motioned for Jasmine to return to her seat. “Verbs like these describe either a state of being or some wimpy, passive behavior that isn’t very interesting, like having or getting.”
He paused and looked around the classroom. Those not scribbling notes were looking
directly at him. “Now let’s think about what I just did. To describe it, you could make up a sentence that says, ‘Jon walked very quickly to the door’. That’s not exciting, is it? Take the next few minutes to write down as many active verbs as you can think of to describe what I did. Go.” He watched as a handful of students jotted down words. “Okay,” he said. “What have you got?”
Tony raised his hand. “Galloped.”
The student with the dreadlocks said, “Scrambled.”
“Dashed,” said Jasmine.”
A husky, dark-skinned girl in the back yelled, “trotted!”
The boy with the buzz cut shouted, “scooted!”
In spite of herself, Tonya said, “bolted.”
“I’m impressed,” said Jon. “You guys are definitely getting the hang of this. You also may have figured out that, if you choose an active verb, you don’t need to use those modifying words, very and quickly. Compared to scrambled, galloped, dashed, and so on, quickly doesn’t say much, and very says even less. So using active verbs cuts down on your need to use modifiers.”
Tony raised his hand. “I see a problem with that.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Using scramble, dash, and trot is cool when you write a story. But we have to write essays about facts and ideas. That stuff is hard to put into action words.”
“It isn’t really,” Jon said. “The most convincing arguments are the ones that create vivid pictures for the reader. That’s why we hear people talking on news shows about things like the raping of America’s resources or the brainwashing of America’s youth. Powerful verbs take thoughts and ideas and turn them into something we can imagine or feel. Whenever that happens, those ideas become powerful.”
He glanced at his watch and realized that he was running out of time. Racing against the final bell, he sped through the rest of his lesson, giving the students four more tips in rapid-fire succession. Then he took a deep breath and sat down on top of the teacher’s desk. “If you think these tips you were worthwhile, please raise your hand.” More than half the students raised a hand. “How many of you are going to try some of these things?” Some of the hands went down. He looked at the students’ instructions for Friday. “How would you like to do something like this again tomorrow?” A soft chorus of assent rose from the class. “Okay,” he said. “I could do a presentation on rap and poetry. Would that be okay?”
A louder murmur filled the room. Several students nodded. He pointed to the board. “Okay, you need to do Friday’s assignment over the weekend and turn it in on Monday. If you do that, it gives me all of tomorrow for rap and poetry.”
“What about discussing our grades?” Jasmine said.
“I can’t help you with those,” he said. “I don’t have access to them. If you want to do the poetry thing, raise your hand.” All but four students raised their hands. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do that if your regular teacher doesn’t come in and change the assignment. If she does, I’ll have to go along with whatever she puts up there.”
Just then, the bell rang, and the students started filing out. “Tonya,” he called.
She scowled and turned back to face him. “If you want to get in my face about
something, don’t even go there.”
“I just wanted to ask you about that drawing on the front of your notebook,” he said. “Did you do that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s very good. Have you taken any art lessons?”
She screwed up her face into a quizzical scowl.
“I think you draw very well. Maybe it’s something you might want to seriously
consider.” She stood silently, waiting for him to say more. “That’s all,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
He went over to the desk to look at the computerized attendance sheet for the next class. He wondered if he’d have enough energy to keep this up for five more periods.

#

Sylvia went to school that night. Harold accompanied her, holding doors open as she passed through on her crutches. She hopped in, surveyed the room, then gestured toward the floor and the white board. “What the hell is this!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just look! There’s crap all over the floor. And the board. What’s that crap on the board?” She hobbled over to the wire baskets that contained the students’ completed assignments. “Boy, do I dread having to grade this garbage.” She scooped up the papers and stuffed these into her briefcase. She looked at the board again. “Damn substitutes! Think they can just come in here and take over your damn whole class! Screw up your lesson plans, your students’ attitudes, everything!” She looked at her husband and pointed to her foot. “My balance isn’t good enough. Can you pick up all that junk on the floor for me?”
“Sure, hon,” he said.
During the ride home, her angry thoughts erupted into words. “None of the others get it. It’s us against them. You have to force them to learn. Otherwise they just sit there like oatmeal. I’m the only teacher in the whole damn school who maintains proper discipline. All the rest just kiss up to these punks. I’m telling you, it’s like turning the asylum over to the inmates.”
Harold didn’t want to hear this ranting, but he didn’t want to be accused of not supporting his wife, either. He nodded.
“Most of these punks are degenerate morons, anyway. The offspring of idiots. They
don’t want to be in school. They want to be out drinking, drugging, and practicing unsafe sex. Everybody knows you have to take control. I’m the only one who’s tough enough to make them toe the line.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Harold.
She shook her head in disgust. I might as well be talking to myself, she thought.
After he pulled into their driveway, he got out and opened her door. Slowly, she twisted her body around and pointed her bad foot at the concrete, like a child dipping a toe into a chilly stream. Let him think it still hurts, she thought. I’ll get some good mileage out of this yet.
He tried to help her up the steps, but she pulled away. “Harold, stop it. I need to do this for myself.”
He sighed and stepped back. When she reached the door, she turned around and said
sarcastically, “Now I could use some help.” He came up the steps and opened the screen door. She frowned as she backed away in two quick hops.
“You go ahead, hon,” he said. “I’m going to wash the car.”
“What for?” she said. “The damn thing’s spotless.”
Inside, she put weight on her foot and limped over to an easy chair. She was incensed that the sub had dared to circumvent her lesson plan. What was that junk he wrote on the board anyway? Use heavy words, not big ones! Write shorter sentences! Read it aloud! That wasn’t a coherent lesson. Those were just bits and snatches, like handy tips from the Reader’s Digest. Who the hell does she think she is, anyway? She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. I should go in tomorrow and spy on her from behind the partitions, she thought. Then I could write her up. I could say that my students complained about her, and I could demand that she never come back into my classroom again.

#

At home that night, all Jon could think of was what to bring to class the next day. Wallace Stevens? Carl Sandburg? Maybe some Fugees, Grandmaster Flash, or Tupac Shakur. He knew he would be working far into the night to create the exercises the students needed to understand how poetry works.

#

Sylvia woke just before dawn. Harold had already gone to show a property to a client in Lincoln County. Quickly, she fitted a baseball cap over her unbrushed hair and threw on an old grey jogging suit and a ratty brown coat. She took the keys to their second car, a beat-up, primer grey Chevette, and went to the garage. She figured she’d have to park the Chevette at least one block away from school so it wouldn’t be recognized. She found a space two blocks away and parked there. She took a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and put these on. She was counting on this disguise and her walking in the darker areas of the hallway to keep her from being discovered.
By moving slowly and carefully through the halls during the earliest moments of the day, she managed to surreptitiously limp into her classroom. Once inside, she stepped behind the partitions in the back of the room, where she kept outdated textbooks and broken furniture. She propped a three-legged wooden chair up in the corner against the wall. Then she sat down and rested her eyes.

#

When Jon got to school that morning, the bags under his eyes were as evident as the grin on his face. He opened the door to the classroom, turned on the light, and looked at the board. Then came the letdown. The regular teacher had changed the assignments. Each class was required to take a comprehensive examination. He shook his head.
From behind the partition, Sylvia stared in open-mouthed amazement. She was sure that the sub would be an inexperienced female, possibly some college senior with a provisional certificate and lots of bright ideas on how to change the ‘system’. So what if he’s an older man, she thought. That just means he should have known better. She gloated as she peered out at the new assignments she had written the night before. That ought to fix them, she thought. There’s no way in hell that more than just a handful are going to pass that!

#

The first bell rang. The entering students groaned as they looked at the board and filed past Jon to get to their seats. He forced himself to smile. “Sorry,” he said.
“What are we takin’ this test for?” Tonya said. “We ain’t done nothing with grammar all year.”
“I wish we could have done poetry,” Tony said.
“Me, too,” Jon said. He passed out the test booklets.
“Why can’t you be our regular teacher?” Jasmine said. Several other students agreed.
Jon put up his hands. “I’m sure your regular teacher is fine,” he said. “It’s a lot easier being a sub than it is being the regular teacher.”
“She’s not fine,” Sonya said. “She’s mean. She doesn’t help us the way you do.”
“You actually try to make us better,” the kid with the dreadlocks said.
From behind the partition, Sylvia thought, boy, mister, are you getting snowed! She looked out at the class and did a silent inventory. First there were those two future hookers in the front row. They’ll probably spend a lifetime getting beat up by pimps and die from AIDS. They and most of the other class members were what she liked to call the Afterbirth of Woodstock. Unmotivated scum. Dregs. Like Jason, that weird kid with the Rastafarian locks. There’s a future drug overdose if she ever saw one. And all those foreigners and minorities who can barely speak English, let alone write it. Even that Chinese girl, Sonya. She wasn’t really that smart.
Amid a chorus of groans and whispered epithets, Jon passed out the computerized answer sheets. Tony raised his hand. “Yes?”
“Tonya’s right, Jon,” Tony said. “We haven’t studied grammar all year. Some of this stuff she’s referring to, we don’t even know what it is!”
Jon grabbed a test booklet from the top of Tonya’s desk and paged through it. It looked more like a competency test for English teachers than a test for high school sophomores. He took a deep breath and made a decision. “I’m going to ask you some questions,” he said. “And I want you to respond by raising your hands.”
At first, Sylvia got upset. Then she was pleased. If the sub screwed up her lesson plan and refused to give the test, not only could she ban him from her classroom, she could have him taken off the list of teachers allowed to teach anywhere at her school. Let him fall through his ass, she thought. Fine by me!
“How many of you know what a gerund is?” asked Jon “Raise your hand.”
Three students raised their hands.
“What about a participle? If you know what that is, raise your hand.”
Two students raised their hands.
“What about an infinitive? Who knows what that is?”
Sonya raised her hand.
“Okay, pass them back.”
The students sat in stunned disbelief.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Pass everything back. I’m not here to guarantee your failure. I’m here to help you succeed.”
As the students passed back the materials, Sylvia scribbled accusations.
“Now,” Jon said as he went to the board and erased his notes from the previous day. “Let’s get down to it.” Everyone settled in their chairs as he wrote on the board, ‘The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy’. The room got silent. “Anybody ever hear of them?”
Jason raised his hand. “They’re kind of old.”
“Hell, yes!” Jon said. “That’s because I’m kind of old. You got anybody else around here who’s willing to discuss rap with you?”
Jason smiled. “Okay, then. Bring it on.”
The students cheered as Jon popped a cassette into a tape player and hit ‘PLAY’. A
jumble of a capella scatting streamed out of the speakers, and the students started swaying to its rhythm. This was followed by repetitive shouting underscored by a jazzy bassline. Then someone started rapping, swinging his words to the insistent beat while a funky violin and phonograph needle-scratching sounds played underneath. I’ve got him now, Sylvia thought as she scribbled furiously on her note pad. She knew that profanity and sexually suggestive lyrics would follow.
After two minutes of rapping, Jon stopped the tape, and the students groaned. “Hold on,” he said. “I have to stop here because I want to make you aware of skills you already have.” The students exchanged confused glances. “Anybody know what these guys are talking about? What they‘re trying to say?” Sonya raised her hand shyly. “Yes?”
“They say that politics and business make it hard to be an artist.”
“That’s easy, girl,” said Jason. “That’s what they say in the words that come out of their mouths.”
A tall black student in the back raised his hand. “You got to track them close,” he said. “The dude says it’s tough enough to be an artist, but tougher still if you got a social conscience.”
Sylvia stared in disbelief. She had never heard this student volunteer to speak in class before.
Jon consulted his seating chart. “Tyrone, right?”
Tyrone grunted.
“Why?” Jon asked. “Why is it harder if you have a social conscience?”
Tony raised his hand. “Because if you’ve got a social conscience, you know the truth and you know it’s different from what folks want to hear.”
One of the Bosnian girls raised her hand. Jon consulted the chart and saw that her name was Verinka. “I think it is Marxist,” she said.
Sylvia stopped scribbling.
“Why do you say that, Verinka?” asked Jon.
“It is all about capitalist control. People in charge don’t allow artists to be artists. They want them to make poetry into propaganda for products and ideas.”
“I’m not sure how that relates to Marxism,” said Jon. “But if you wrote a paper proving what you believe, I think that would be a very interesting paper.” He saw Jason with his hand up and called on him.
“It’s not just the government,” Jason said. “It’s the rap producers and artists, too.”
“Let’s look at some specifics,” Jon said. “The Disposable Heroes say that hypocrisy is the greatest luxury. What do they mean by that?” No one said anything for a while. Then Tony’s hand went up slowly. “What do you think, Tony?”
“I’m just guessing,” said Tony. “But I think they’re talking about what they do,
compared to what they say. Isn’t that the hypocrisy?”
“If you look up hypocrisy in the dictionary, that’s about what it says,” said Jon. “But what precisely is the hypocrisy they’re talking about?”
Tyrone raised his hand. “They be sayin’ that folks cain’t afford to be rappin’ something they don’t do they own damn selves. They all be rappin’ for sex, drugs, and violence, or maybe even against it, but they be livin’ large, and don’t be givin’ nothin’ back.”
“Yeah,” said Jason. “That’s the hypocrisy.”
Jon raised his eyebrows.
“Tyrone,” he said. “When you say giving back, you mean giving back to the
community?”
“Yeah,” said Tyrone. “They be talkin’ about how unfair it is that nobody helps people trapped in ghettos, but they don’t do nothin’, so what they talkin’ about?”
“What do you mean?” said Jon. “Tell me more.”
“When they say in they rap to kill other brothers and sexually attack sisters, then at the awards ceremonies they all be talking about peace and love and thanks to God, and like that. So if they worship God, the sex and violence is a lie, and if they worship sex violence, peace and love and God is a lie. ”
Jon walked around the room until he was standing directly in front of the partitions. Sylvia sucked in her breath. When Jon turned back to face the class, she exhaled. “Why does the rapper keep saying ‘raise the double standard’? What does that have to do with anything?” He stood there and let the silence permeate the room. “Good,” he said. “We’re stuck. That’s a good place to be.”
“What you mean?” Tonya said. “How’s that a good place to be?”
“Because it gives you a chance to use those skills I told you about.” He walked to the front of the room. “If you don’t know what a word means, what do you do?”
“Look it up in the dictionary,” Tony said.
“Okay,” Jon said. “Look up the definition of ‘standard’.”
Without looking, Tony reached behind the partition and grabbed a dictionary. Sylvia twisted her legs sideways to keep from being touched. After hoisting out the dictionary, setting it on his desk, and opening it, he began his word search. “Here it is,” he said. “A pole or spear bearing a conspicuous object.”
“Is that what they’re talking about?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Find a definition that you think fits.”
Tony ran his finger across the printed lines until he found one. “Ah! A long, narrow, tapering flag formerly used to mark a rallying point, send a signal, or serve as an emblem.”
“Could that be the definition we need?”
Jason smiled. “They’re talking about a flag.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “One flag for us and another for them.”
“And that would be the double standard,” Jon said. “Right?” A few students nodded.
“Anyone disagree?”
Sylvia held her breath as Jon started moving toward the back of the room again. When he got to the middle, he pivoted and came back to the front. “So what is this
double standard? What two flags are they raising?” Tonya raised her hand. “Yes?”
“That old damn lie about boys can do it, and girls can’t.”
Jon smiled. “That’s one way of putting it. Boys have one flag, or set of moral standards, and the girls have another.” He turned to Tonya. “Is that what this rapper is talking about?”
Tonya became defensive. “I don’t know. Don’t be makin’ fun of me.”
He walked up to her desk. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not a simple concept.” He glanced down and saw a detailed pencil sketch of himself. “Wow! Did you do this?”
She wrinkled her brow and her eyes narrowed to slits. “Yeah,” she said.
“That’s really good. May I keep it?”
“I ain’t done yet.”
He spun around. “Sooooo—is this rap about the sexual double standard, or is it about something else?”
Jasmine raised her hand. “Are they talking about one kind of life for the ones who buy the rap and another kind of life for the one who do the rap?”
Verinka raised her hand, and Jon acknowledged her. “That’s the anti-Marxist message,” she said. “Different standards for different classes.”
“It’s okay for some, but not okay for others.” Jon said. “Who is the privileged group here? Are the Disposable Heroes part of that group?”
“Maybe a little bit,” Tyrone said. “They even say that.”
Tony’s hand shot up. “A tendency! They’re talking about a tendency! Everybody has a tendency to say one thing and do another. That’s why they say we have to open the door and look inside.”
“Open the door. Look inside,” said Jon. What do they mean by that?”
The girl with the dishwater hair raised her hand. “Examine ourselves.”
A Samoan girl in the back row raised her hand. “If we’re serious about opening the door and looking inside, we can’t lie to ourselves about our real emotions and motives, can we?”
“Aha,” Jon said.
“That’s why it’s a luxury to be a hypocrite,” Jason said. “You have to not care about a whole lot of the people to put those things like that in your rap.”
Jon moved around the room, glancing from one student to another. Tyrone raised his
hand.
“We got a whole bunch of answers here. Which ones is right?”
“This isn’t like math,” said Jon. “All of them might be right, or at least partially right.”
Sonya raised her hand. “If that’s true, then how does a teacher know which grades to give which students?”
“You should be graded by what you write and how you write it. The proof you offer and the quality of that proof, just like in a court of law. You build your argument, and the teacher judges how effective it is.”
“How come you can get this out of us,” Maylena said, “and our regular teacher can’t?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said. “Maybe it’s because I don’t see you as students. To me, you’re works of art.”
Everybody in the classroom stared back at him.
“Okay,” he conceded. “So maybe you’re works in progress, but you’re works of art,
nonetheless.”
“What you mean?” Tonya said. “Like paintings and sculptures?”
Jon sat on the edge of the teacher’s desk. “That’s right. When I look at you, Tonya, I see Pablo Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror. And when I look at Maylena there, I see a painting by Modigliani. And Jasmine—Jasmine, could you stand up for a second?” Jasmine stood. “Now, can you stand just the way you did yesterday when you were up here in the front of the class?” Jasmine moved her feet closer together, crossed one foot in front of the other and folded her arms across her chest. “When you stand that way, you remind me of a Giacometti sculpture.” Several students yelled, “Hey, what about me? What am I? Do me next!”
My God! Sylvia thought. I can see them! Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror. Modigliani’s portrait of Jacques Lipschitz’s wife. Giacometti’s sculpture. She leaned forward and peeked out. If the kid with the dreadlocks had darker hair, he’d look like the Laughing Cavalier! Tony reminded her of a painting she once saw of a young Henry VIII. She turned her head in the opposite direction. Daria’s a young woman in a Henry Owassa Tanner painting. The Samoan girls could have been painted by Gaugin. And if you aged Umberto, posed him just right and set a guitar in front of him, he could be from Picasso’s Blue period. The thought consumed her. She realized that, if she took the time, she could find a work of art in every student in her class.
Jon stood and moved back to the front of the classroom. “Okay, I want you to listen as I tell you what skills you just used.”
Sylvia stopped writing accusations and began taking notes.
“The first thing you did, you broke the rap down into its smallest parts so you could look at each part and discover its separate meaning and function. We call this analyzing, because that’s what analyzing means, to break something down into its component parts. ” Sylvia wrote this down as Jon wrote the word ‘Analysis’ on the board.
“Next, you compared what the rapper said to your own personal experience, and to the historical, social, and philosophical context that surrounds it, in order to find other meanings and qualities in what the rapper said. This is called investigating the context.” Sylvia scribbled on her note pad as he wrote ‘Context’ on the board.
“After you investigated the context, you went even further into the individual parts of the rap to find meanings at the deepest possible levels. By that, I mean you checked out any metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech that the rapper used to make his point more clearly understood.” Sylvia continued taking notes as Jon wrote ‘Deeper Meanings’ on the board.
“Finally, you gathered up all the stuff you took apart and you put all this back together in their original places to see if your theory actually works. We call this synthesis, which means putting things back together to see if they work. It’s the same thing a mechanic does when he fixes something. The last thing he does when he works on an engine is to put it all back together and then start it up.” Sylvia added this information to her notes as he wrote ‘Synthesis’ on the board.
“Now let’s take all of these things you did and see if we can apply them to literature.”
He opened a poetry book to a pre-marked page. “I’m going to read this passage from a poem by T. S. Eliot. This is a place where Eliot is saying one thing and talking about something else at the same time. When you think you know what the fog represents, raise your hand.”
From behind the partition, the possibilities overwhelmed Sylvia. She wondered about her relationship to her students. Was it possible she could shape them into works of art? Daring to consider this made her hopeful. She started to cry. Tony felt the vibration and peeked around the partition. She looked so unkempt and disheveled that he didn’t recognize her at first. Desperately, she put her fingers to her lips and pleaded with imploring eyes. He nodded.
Meanwhile, Jon read aloud.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-
panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-
panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
When he was done, seven people raised their hands. “That’s a good start,” he said.
“Let’s see if we can raise that number. I’m going to read it again. Listen carefully. See if you can figure it out.” This time, he read with exaggerated inflections and gestures. As he read, students conferred quietly, formulating guesses, and sharing conclusions.
After the second reading, more than half of the class had raised their hands. “One more time,” he said. “Let’s get everybody seeing the same thing.” By the time he finished reading it again, all the students in the class had raised their hands. He looked out and decided to call on Tyrone.
“It’s a damn cat!” he announced proudly, and everyone cheered.
Just then, the bell rang. Jon was grateful for the bell, because he needed a break. He charged into the scrum of students plowing through the door, and headed toward the faculty restroom.
Behind the partition, Sylvia wiped her face and blew her nose. She got up from her chair, moved out from behind the partitions and made her way to the classroom door. After pausing at the door, she took a deep breath and plunged into the bustling stream of onrushing students, half-limping and half-sprinting through the surging mass.
Just outside the school office, Eunice and the Assistant Principal stood together, watching a raggedy woman in a dirty brown coat and a baseball cap lurching down the hallway. Puzzled, the Assistant Principal turned to Eunice and asked, “Who let that bag lady in here?