Ms. Hempel Chronicles (8 page)

She hung on to his neck and they waltzed over her pop quizzes. And into the bookcase, where he stumbled, and books toppled, and he pulled away from her, doubled over. She stooped down to help and suddenly he shot up, taking her with him, slung over his shoulder like a squalling child. She flailed and shrieked. Staggering about the room, Amit huffed, You took the part that once was my heart.

With a thump, he deposited her onto the sofa. So why not take all of me?

He then twirled around and lurched down the hallway and out the door. To buy them two bottles of ginger ale.

Beatrice lolled on the sofa and hummed a coda to his song. What luck! What fortune! A thousand blessings had been bestowed upon her. A springy sofa, a clean apartment. A pile of pop quizzes that could wait until morning. A dancing fiance. An airborne Beatrice. A pair of best friends, and a beautiful bridal shower.

Abruptly, she stiffened. For where was her present? Still perched atop her fiance’s head. Preening itself. And ruffling its polyester feathers.

And where was her fiance? Walking down the avenue, with a small lilt, a small stutter, in his step.

Beatrice retrieved her shoes from beneath the sofa and ran out into the street. She looked both ways. She saw a dumpster, a dark alley, and a brand-new van with a voluptuous woman painted on its side. She didn’t see Amit. She didn t see anyone on the street, as if she had rushed out of their apartment and into her own bad dream.

Her nightmares took a truly frightening turn when she was ten, and her father began to appear in them, to save her. But she always knew, through the inevitable logic of nightmares, that her father would be destroyed, that he would struggle valiantly but to no avail, and that his knees would crumble and his eyes would dim and he might try to speak a few loving, gurgling words to her before he expired. She knew it with an awful, churning certainty. It didn’t matter what shape the menace took: sometimes it was a sticky pink substance that came bubbling under the door; sometimes it was an infernal drug lord, disguised as her principal, who was trying to bring her school under his narcotic control. These terrors were acute, yet relatively benign, as long as she was battling them by herself. Once her father got involved, the nightmares would escalate: for what was more paralyzing than the sight of your father, corroding in acid, pinned down by a pitchfork, drooling and drug addled? In one dream she sat in the back of his car and watched his eyes in the rearview mirror as he slowly melted into his seat.

Beatrice hurried down the street. She passed a ladder, a trash can, a pool of broken glass.

In her dreams, death always took her father by surprise. Even up until the very end, he’d remain convinced of his immunity. With this same conviction he would, in real life, pick fights with fellow motorists, climb up onto the roof rather than call the handyman, and disappear into the wilderness for whole days at a time. Beatrice found these weekend excursions particularly infuriating. What better way to court calamity

than canoeing? She had seen movies; she knew about the dangers. The willful rapids, the bears snuffling about the camp-te the invisible parasites infesting the water. Not to mention the belligerent, banjo-picking locals who would immediately recognize her father for the city-slicking, fancy-pants doctor he was. She would try to tempt him with alluring alternatives: “We could go to the mall,” she’d say, "get some of those soft pretzels that you like.” Or she would volunteer to help him load up the car, and then tell him mournful stories about a girl in her class, whose grades—due to her father’s death in a tragic canoeing accident—had experienced a precipitous decline. But these tactics rarely worked.

Her mother didn’t want him to leave, either. She would not make him sandwiches to eat on the road; she would not smile; sometimes she wouldn’t even appear in the driveway to say good-bye. On the weekends that Beatrice’s father went away, she and her mother would catch glimpses of one another as they each stalked about the house in an undisturbed rage. But when the telephone rang, her mother, answering it, would say gaily, “Oscar? He’s off canoeing!” And somehow, the way she said it—in a bright, emphatic tone that left no room for further questions—made it seem as if Beatrice’s father were right there with them, uttering the words himself. She spoke in the voice he always used when asserting what was most obviously untrue. The effect was strange—hearing this voice come out of her mother. Then, with a slight shrug, she would return to herself, her face slackening, her pen circling the telephone pad, and Beatrice, confronted with the mystery of her father, the mystery of her mother, could only write repeated^, in ever tinier cursive, Canoeing is a perilous outdoor sport. She wrote it five times on the last page of her science notebook, stopped, remembered herself, and neatly tore out the page-
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the end of every two weeks you had to turn in your notebook for a grade.

By Monday morning he would be back again, in time to make Beatrice breakfast and deliver her to school. She soft, ened at the sight of him standing there in the kitchen, flushed and rumpled and stubbled, placing her favorite antique spoon on the table. The wilderness had released him, had given him back. And, just like that, all her fury would be snuffed out. Any irritation was now redirected at her mother, who upon his return had camped out in her bathtub, listening to NPR at a deafening volume. She should come downstairs! Beatrice would silently fume. She should come fluttering in, full of kisses and gratitude and relief!

Disaster had been held off once again. Wasn’t that cause for rejoicing?

For there Amit was, waiting in the checkout line, his small black head shining above the magazine racks. No crotchless panties in sight. Beatrice stood on the sidewalk and watched him pay for the two bottles of ginger ale. What luck, she felt. What extraordinary fortune.

The eighth graders were less fortunate. The next morning dawned drearily, with assurances from the weatherwoman that the sky would remain overcast. The sky was always overcast on Trip Day, the one day out of the whole year when the eighth grade took a very long bus ride to a rather grimy beach. They showed no signs of discouragement, however. Even at the stoplights, the school bus rocked back and forth crazily.

“Rule Number One!” Ms. Hempel hollered, before she let them disembark. “Don’t go in past your waist. There’s only one lifeguard on duty. And don’t forget to wear sunscreen. Those ultraviolet rays will burn you up, even though it's cloudy!”

"And don’t talk to clowns,” someone shouted from the back.

"Right," Ms. Hempel said.

The eighth grade clattered off the bus and, without await-ing further orders, stormed the beach. Ms. Hempel and the three other homeroom teachers trudged grimly behind, trying to balance between them the poles for a volleyball net Yelps could already be heard from the water.

As they cleared the boardwalk, Ms. Hempel saw her students frisking bravely in the surf. It was still very cold out Some girls wore cheeky little two-pieces flecked with polka dots and daisies; others skulked about in their fathers' T-shirts. The boys were already immersed up to their necks, their sleek heads bobbing atop the waves. “It’s freezing!” the girls wailed. “Ms. Hempel! It’s freezing!”

Ms. Hempel held their towels in her outstretched arms and rubbed their backs when they scrambled, dripping, up from the water. The girls clustered about her, reaching out their trembling hands and pressing them against her cheek: “See?” they asked. “See how cold I am!”

“Brrrrrr!” Ms. Hempel said, and rubbed them harder.

The girls then arranged their towels into a beautiful mosaic on the sand. Dropping down upon their knees, they dug into their beach bags, emerging with plastic containers and painted tins and shoeboxes lined with waxed paper. These they gravely placed in the middle of the mosaic. Julianne circled about them, distributing paper plates, while Keisha handed out Dixie cups half filled with soda. One by one the lids were removed, revealing jerked chicken, fruit salad, crumbling banana bread, couscous, fried plantains, sesame noodles, sticky little rice balls. The girls fell upon the food. "We organized a pot. luck,” Sasha explained, forking a pineapple wedge and making room for Ms. Hempel. “Please help yourself.”

Meanwhile, the boys had straggled up onto the beach and were now huddled around the school cooler, peering down into sodden paper bags. They consoled themselves by clap, ping their sacks of school-issued potato chips and making them explode.

“They thought a potluck was stupid,” Alice said, with profound satisfaction.

A family of seagulls and the three other homeroom teachers patrolled the area. Ms. Hempel shouted out, “Everything’s okay over here!” and accepted a lemon square, reminding herself that her presence was required. She would make sure that no paper plates were left in the sand. She would apply sunscreen to the girls’ shoulders, and provide an adult perspective on their discussions. Drowsily, she gazed out at the ocean. “I can't believe you went in,” she murmured.

The morning passed slowly. Swimming and lunch had already taken place, and it wasn’t even eleven yet. No one dared return to the water; common sense had set in. And the volleyball net kept collapsing. The girls wrapped themselves in their towels and asked Ms. Hempel personal questions. Was she wearing, underneath her sweater, a one-piece or a two-piece? Did she propose or did he? But everything she said seemed only to remind them of something more urgent that they needed to say. Each one of her answers was interrupted, and then abandoned, as the girls hurried from one new topic to the next: discriminatory gym teachers; open-minded parents; plus-sized models. The animated nature of the discussion kept them warm. When they wanted to make a point, they threw off their towels, baring themselves like superheroes.

Ms. Hempel found herself noticing a group of boys off in the distance, bending themselves to a task with a suspicious degree of concentration. "What do you think they're doing?” she asked.

"Who knows?” Gloria sighed.

"Maybe I should go check on them,” Ms. Hempel said.

‘‘They’re fine," Julianne said, a bit sternly.

But they didn’t look fine. They were crouching over something- Maybe they had found a stash of hypodermic needles, washed up by the tide.

"I had better go see,” Ms. Hempel said.

"Ms. Hempel...,” the girls called, but she was already on her feet and walking away from them.

Upon closer inspection, she saw that the boys were absorbed in a fairly harmless activity. It involved one boy lying down on his back, the other boys heaping sand on top of him and patting it down, and then the boy heaving himself up and lumbering to his feet. The boys took great care to smooth out the sand so that when the body began to stir, the grave would crack and fissure in a dramatic fashion. She wasn’t sure where the pleasure lay: in burying a classmate, or in freeing oneself from the sand. They attacked both roles with equal gusto. She stood to one side and watched them.

When it was Jonathan Hamish’s turn, the boys began to add, at his behest, anatomy to his burial mound. As they shaped two sandy breasts, they glanced over at Ms. Hempel, to see what she would do. Their glance both defied and invited reproach, a look with which she was very familiar. She smiled at them permissively, then rolled her eyes to show how

unflappable she was. An argument arose as to the size of th outcroppings: some boys, among them Elias and Theo f
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they should be round and realistic, while others, like Roderick, wanted to keep building the breasts until they sat high and pointy on Jonathan’s chest. “That’s not what they do” Elias muttered, but sand was an imprecise medium to begi
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with. Jonathan grinned down at his protrusions.

The breasts turned out so well the boys decided to add a penis. They glanced over, again, in Ms. Hempel’s direction. They even cleared a little space for her so she could stump over to the penis and object. But didn’t they know? She was the young teacher. It was her job to indulge them, to be impervious to shock, to watch all the same television shows that they did. She laughed when they made off-color jokes. She allowed them to use curse words in their creative writing. She taught sex education, with unheard-of candor. Of course, they were constantly testing her. When she asked her homeroom to anonymously submit any question, any question at all, regarding puberty or sex or contraception, she received some very graphic queries. She stood at the front of the class and read each question aloud. Competently, intrepidly, she described the consistency of semen, what purpose lubricant served, why a woman might enjoy receiving oral sex.

Jonathan Hamish, who didn't even try to disguise his handwriting, had submitted a question of a more challenging sort. He grinned at her when he saw that she had pulled his crumpled paper from the pile. Whose the best lover you’ve ever had? Jonathan watched her closely, as if waiting for her to discard it, frown at him, send him downstairs to Mr. Peek’s office. But she found herself mysteriously touched, felt herself blushing in a pleasurable way. Another word, surely, would have been the more obvious choice: What's the best sex you've ever had? Who’s the best fuck? But even in his efforts to provoke her, he had selected a word that was exceedingly charm* ing. Full of solicitous, gentlemanly concern. And he grinned at her—not devilishly, not leeringly—but sweetly almost, sweetly and frankly. As if he really wanted to know. As if he were asking only because all aspects of her life were of interest to him. As if the thought of her embroiled in sweaty sex were unimaginable. In Jonathan Hamish's view of the world, Ms. Hempel would make love.

When she read the question aloud, the homeroom swiveled in their seats and glared at Jonathan. They knew that only he would ask such a question.

"Well,” Ms. Hempel said, displaying her ring finger. “Shouldn't the answer be obvious?”

The penis, having a more slender base, proved more difficult than the breasts. It kept on toppling over. After a few frustrated attempts, the boys settled on a suggestive hillock (a pup tent, Ms. Hempel realized). They stepped back and admired their handiwork.