Man of Sorrows

This is an excerpt from my memoir, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School. I share it here in honor of the #Shameless conference I attended online sponsored by Olivia Alnes. You can check out her blog @ wildabide.com for more resources.

The chapter below occurred at an under-performing urban middle school with a challenging student in my class.

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I have never before been sexually harassed. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? When Raul tried to drag me into the eighth-grade lavatory and dared me to kiss him? In the hall. Between classes. Surrounded by other students. No teachers in sight.

Driving home, my hands clench the steering wheel. My shoulders shake as my foot presses the pedal towards the floor. I am sobbing like a kindergartener who can’t stop. I talk to myself, my words choked with herky-jerky breaths.

“Vice Principal O’Malley is so, so stupid! Blind! I hate her! Principal Reardon too! They never protect me! Or the kids!”

I feel myself morphing from mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. Anger bursts through my skin and out my mouth. I am a green-eyed monster raging with hurt and disappointment. Desperate with frustration, I fly past other cars in the passing lane.

At my interview they asked what I’d do if a student swears. Now I know why kids hurl the F’bomb. It’s a verbal hand-grenade when nothing else will do. “O’Malley is a total F… She treats kids with such F’ing disrespect. Reardon doesn’t have an F’ing clue and couldn’t stand up to O’Malley even if his F’ing life depended on it. Somehow I know both Raul and I are gonna be F’ed.”

What happens tomorrow? Nothing is hidden here. Gossip runs through a vena cava to the office and off to every capillary in the building. I don’t trust the administrators any more than Raul trusts me.

The reality is I’m scared of myself. I’ve been wrapped in some kind of suburban cocoon my whole life, and O’Fallon has ripped it open, so I can see what a gross worm of a person I really am. Raul called me a puta, a whore, but I’m worse than that. I’m a murderer. I want to bite O’Malley in the throat like the Rottweiler she reminds me of. I want to spill her blood like she spills accusation on form after form. I want to rip out her vocal cords, so she can no longer humiliate me or my students in the hall, the cafeteria, the playground. I want to shake her like prey like she’s shaken my confidence. I want to swallow her blood like she’s swallowed my students’ souls. I want to throw a big honking rock at Reardon’s car. I want to destroy them both before they destroy me.

God, I can’t believe what these kids have to put up with, and I can’t stand that I can’t fix it. My husband can fix anything. He knows how stuff works. He builds birds houses and houses for dolls. He sets up the generator when the power goes out.

Me? I break stuff just by looking at it. I hold parts right side up and they look upside down. I don’t understand how things fit together. I force flimsy plastic pieces into place, and they snap. What am I doing working with broken people? Complicated people who don’t want to be fixed. People who deny there’s anything wrong, even when they leave the room clanking so loudly you know something is about to fall off. People who betray you with an F’ing kiss.

I walk into my house and turn on the tea kettle. My husband is still at work, so I decide to call my mom. I need to talk to someone who will understand. Someone I trust to exonerate me, to tell me it isn’t my fault before Reardon and O’Malley tell me it is.

But how to make my mom get it? Sexual harassment will totally freak her out. She’s a nice person. My hatred will scare her. It’s beyond logic to someone wrapped in the gauze of the bourgeoisie. I take out a cup and clink it on the counter. I stare out the window until the kettle whistles. I pour the steaming liquid over the bag.

As it steeps, a deep, deep sorrow settles over me, a sorrow beyond fury, a sorrow stripped of hope by the white-hot heat of injustice, a sorrow that grieves innocence lost.

Somehow, I need to get through tomorrow. To finish my last few weeks at O’Fallon Middle School with a strength and dignity I simply don’t possess.

I set the phone down un-dialed, realizing the only one who can understand, the only one who can exonerate, has already heard my call.

Perhaps swearing is prayer’s evil twin, calling down curses from the high court of heaven, making myself the Supreme Court Justice of my own screwed up universe. And yet, that’s what I hate most about O’Fallon, all the name calling and accusation. I’m reduced to a Jerry Springer contestant. I surrender. Knee deep in quicksand, the more I struggle, the more it sucks me under. Only those you love can cause such pain.

“Jesus,” I whisper, “Surely you get this. They call you Man of Sorrows.”