Reading

The morning after back to school night dawned cloudy and cool. The hot season had passed nearly a week earlier. As Neil walked to his car, he almost wished for a jacket. He also realized that his attitude toward Modesto and the Central Valley had changed. His hatred for it had been three-quarters self pity, anyway. It was flat, and he didn’t like that, but the town itself was full of trees and green grass, and for the most part clean and pleasant. The countryside around the city was interesting, if different than he would have chosen. He had become accustomed to both in the two months he had been there.

He had also become accustomed to his students. He still found them frustrating, but it was not their fault they couldn’t understand Shakespeare, or that they were unable to deal with sophisticated thoughts. They were eleven years old; they were just exactly where they needed to be. He was the one out of synch.

Over the weeks he had begun to understand how to deal with them. At first, he had had to stop a dozen times a day when the confusion on their faces told him that they were not understanding him. That only happened a dozen times a week now, which was progress of a sort.

As Neil drove westward on Kiernan, he passed the Oaks and Johnson apartments. There was a cluster of Hispanic children waiting for the school bus. Some of them recognized him and waved. He waved back, and realized that after his first day’s reconnaissance, he had driven past this complex every day without investigating further. He would have to visit it eventually.

He parked his car and went to his room, dropped off the papers he had graded the night before, and picked up his textbooks. He signed in at seven-thirty in the teachers’ lounge and found that someone had made coffee. He settled in with a cup and began to review what he would teach that day.

Pearl was the next teacher in. She was heavy and always walked a little stiffly. “‘Morning, Pearl,” he said, “How did it go last night?”

“Fine. I had a fairly good crowd, and I got a chance to see some of the parents I had been wanting to talk to.”

Glen Ulrich came in and Pearl greeted him heartily; Neil tried to match her enthusiasm, but Glen’s attitude did not encourage any intimacy. Neil had discovered that he was a bitter, ingrown individual. He was the only teacher at Keirnan who did not visibly love the kids.

Tom and Fiona came in together. She waved at Neil. Their one-kiss romance had not blossomed, but at least Fiona had decided that she liked him. She had drawn him out and made him part of the group. He was profoundly grateful for her efforts; because of her, there were moments like this when his loneliness almost disappeared and his displacement did not trouble him.

At ten minutes until eight o’clock, by unspoken common consent, the teacher’s lounge emptied as they all went off to their rooms to let in the early arriving students.

As Neil approached, a small knot of girls were giggling together. Their faces came up an they piped good-mornings in their liquid, bird-like voices, smiling and brimming with life. “Good morning, girls,” Neil replied, then added, “Good morning, Rosa,” for the benefit of the round faced, solemn one who stood a little away from her companions. She rewarded him with a brief, shy smile, and a murmured greeting.

Neil unlocked the door and propped it back. They flowed around him like water, never thinking to let him in first. All the formal politeness that had characterized their first few days with him was gone now. They had accepted him completely, like family, and his room had become their second home. more tomorrow

“Of course it is, but he doesn’t disturb anyone else. He is cheating himself, but he is not interfering with any other student’s education. From my viewpoint, that is a smaller discipline problem.”

“Not from mine. All I care about is his education.”

Neil and John Teixeira locked eyes briefly. There was no way to disguise the tension that lay between them. Neil was astonished at himself; he had always prided himself on his self-control, but John Teixeira pushed all his buttons.

“I care about Oscar’s education, too. I care about the education of all of my students, and I’ll need your help if I am going to help Oscar.”

The other parents had drifted out, so Neil said, “Let me shut the door, and let’s sit down and talk about it.”

Teixeira said, “I’m tired of talking about that boy and his problems.”

His wife snapped, “John!” It was the first word she had said, and it came out sharply, like an electrical discharge. “You won’t win this argument by intimidation like you do in the courtroom. Sit down and talk to the man. He wants to help.”

So, Neil thought, there is more to this family than meets the eye. Aloud he said, “Are you a lawyer?” When Teixeira agreed that he was, it was all Neil could do to keep from saying, “I might have known.”

Once he gave in to the inevitable, Teixeira became calm and was able to discuss his son rationally. He had always been an A student; in fact, he had never made anything but As until last year. His father and mother had been proud of him and had encouraged him to do his best.

Pride and encouragement are words which seem plain enough, but Neil knew that they cover a whole range of attitudes. How had that pride been expressed — or had it? How had they encouraged him; through praise, rewards, threats, or in some other way? Neil tried to find out the answers to those questions, with very little success. John Teixeira was too practiced in his profession to let out any information that he had not personally decided was relevant.

On the surface, the conversation was fruitful, but Neil came away feeling that all of the important issues had been bypassed. John  Teixeira himself was clearly the center of the family, and in his personality and history lay the causes and the cures of his son’s problems. After an hour of conversation, Neil felt no closer to those solutions.

# # #

When he walked out after the Teixeiras had gone, Neil found the parking lot almost empty. Only Carmen’s small sedan remained. He looked around, unwilling to leave her alone so late at night, and saw her coming out of her room. 

She smiled at him as she came up, surprising him with her friendliness. “You didn’t have to wait for me, you know. But thank you, anyway.”

“No problem.”

“Why so late?”

“I spent the last hour talking to the Teixeiras about Oscar.”

“No! Really! You must have the magic touch. Last year, he wouldn’t talk to anybody about it. It must be because you are el maestro and Oscar’s last teacher was la maestra.”

Neil shook his head. “I doubt that. John Teixeira strikes me as someone who doesn’t even want to admit that he is Chicano.”

“Oh, you’re right there. He wants to seem like an Anglo; he even got himself a blonde Anglo wife. But inside, that man is the most macho Mexican you are ever going to see.”

It was a curious observation coming from someone who was so obviously proud of her Chicano heritage. Somehow it fit, and somehow it seemed to be the key to Oscar’s problems. Only Neil could not see how to use that key. more tomorrow

Anna Breshears’ parents proved to be as colorless and forgettable as she was. Lupe Ochoa’s mother came drifting through, looking everywhere and saying nothing. Neil did not even know who she was until later when he read the names on his sign-in sheet.

Shelly Gibson’s parents were dark skinned Hispanics; there was nothing but the family name to indicate any Anglo ancestry. On the other hand, Delores Perez’s pale skinned parents showed no evidence of Mexican ancestry.  Anglos and Chicanos had been intermarrying in California since long before the gold rush, and family names were poor indicators of race.

Karen Whitlock came in with Larry at her side. Only a few of the students had come, and Larry did not look comfortable being dragged along. Mrs. Whitlock bubbled her enthusiasm for the school and everything connected with it. Larry wandered around the room looking for something to do, or perhaps for somewhere to hide. When Neil gently suggested that Larry’s attitude indicated that he was not particularly interested in school, Karen Whitlock did not hear him. She had a knack for only hearing what she wanted to hear.

Many of the parents had come and gone when Oscar Teixeira’s father and mother came in. He was tall, sharp featured and very dark, with hair clipped close and wearing a conservative business suit. His wife was petite, with cropped blonde hair and blue eyes. John Teixeira walked straight up to Neil and shook hands. Neil was just getting used to Chicano shyness and slack hand shakes, but Teixeira’s grip was firm and he met Neil eye to eye.

They exchanged greetings, then John Teixeira said bluntly, “How is Oscar doing this year?” There was just enough emphasis on the word “this” to write off last year as a bad dream, and an underlying uneasiness that showed little faith in the present or the future.

Neil’s reply was equally blunt. “Badly. He isn’t learning a thing. I would say he has stopped trying, except that he is trying very hard to be dense.”

Fire flashed in John Teixeira’s eyes and for a moment Neil thought he was going to rise to his son’s defense and blame the school. But the momentary defensiveness faded as quickly as it had come, and Teixeira said something short and bitter. His wife jerked at his arm and shushed him.

“What’s the point,” he snapped at her. “The boy has gone bad.”

Most of the other parents had left; only a few were standing in knots of conversation near the door. Speaking softly, Neil said, “I wouldn’t say that. The boy has a problem that needs to be solved, that’s all.”

“No one could solve it last year. Are you that much better?”

Mentally, Neil drew back. The last thing he wanted was a fight, but John Teixeira’s voice grated on him like chalk on a blackboard and it was all he could do to remain calm and civil. Neil’s voice sounded false in his own ears as he replied, “No one person can solve anyone else’s problems. But with your cooperation — and his — we can try to help him.”

Teixeira shook his head. “Maybe. I’m certainly willing to do anything, but I fought him all last year and got nowhere. He promised me things would be better this year . . .”

“Maybe they are better,” Neil said. “I only know what happened last year from reading his folder. So far he has not been any particular discipline problem. He just won’t work. And that is such a waste, with his mind.”

Teixeira homed in instantly on Neil’s words. “You mean,” he said icily, “that not working isn’t a discipline problem?” more tomorrow

It was nice, Janice Hagstrom said, that Stephanie got to spend three periods with one teacher, and she had heard such good things from Stephanie about Mr. McCrae; Neil, wasn’t it? Was Stephanie as talkative at school as she is at home? That little chatterbox never shut up, but Janice guessed that was all right because she never let her good times interfere with her schoolwork; at least she hadn’t yet, but time would tell, and Janice hoped that this new situation wouldn’t make her schoolwork suffer, and Neil was to call her the minute her daughter’s grades slipped even a little bit, because you know how important it is to nip these things in the bud.

Neil agreed that it was best to nip problems in the bud. As Janice Hagstrom wandered off to talk to one of her friends, he wondered if her husband ever got to say anything. He remembered what Carmen had said of Stephanie before school started. “Stephanie will sound smart because she has mastered her language.” Apparently Stephanie’s mother had not only mastered the English language; she had put it in chains and was making it run on a treadmill.

Janice Hagstrom’s exit left Neil a little shell-shocked, so that he was not quite ready for the soft spoken couple who had followed her through the door. Once again the woman spoke, but this time it was because her husband had no English. Maria and Jose Alvarez; Maria was round, short, and solemn like her daughter Rosa; her husband was compact and wiry. They each shook hands with a quick, limp motion. Jose’s dark, bright eyes followed the conversation, reading their faces since he could not understand their words.

Maria wanted to know if their daughter was doing well, and could not quite believe it when Neil said that she was. She was getting Cs, and once in a while, a D, so how could she be doing well? Neil pointed out that she also got a B once in a while, and even an occasional A. He explained that she was behind the rest of the class because she had not yet mastered English, but she was getting better every day, and that they should continue to encourage her.

Jose got a little of that, and said angrily to his wife, “What mean, not speak English?”

She answered him in liquid Spanish, and Neil could only hope that she was telling her husband what he had said. For all he knew, she might be changing it around completely. He thought, “If I were going to stay in California schools, I would have to learn Spanish.”

Neil tried again to get them to encourage Rosa, but the two of them walked away arguing in Spanish and leaving Neil feeling helpless.

Tanya Michelson came in with her parents and Neil had to control himself to keep from staring. Tanya was tiny, but both her parents were six footers, and she looked like a second grader standing between them. At first Neil could see no family resemblance, but when they started talking that all changed. Tanya’s father could not complete a sentence without some interruption from his wife, and he shot his wife black looks like the ones Neil aimed at Tanya when she interrupted his class.

Neil answered their questions politely, and said that Tanya  was doing fine. Where there any problems, they wanted to know. He said that she interrupted a lot. Mrs. Michelson cut him off to say that she always had.

Ten minutes into the open house, there were a dozen parents in the room, chatting with one another and looking idly at the textbooks and bell schedule. Ramon Flores’ father had come in nodding, smiling, and avoiding conversation. Even his extreme shyness had not kept him from coming to see where his son spent his days. more Monday

“Do many parent’s show up?”

“Since you have all of the sixth graders, you can expect about thirty people to show up. In some ways, it will be the most important thirty. The ones who won’t show up for back to school tend to be of little use to you anyway.”

Neil was a little puzzled by the whole concept. “I guess I don’t quite follow you. What use are parents anyway — to me, I mean. I am not used to dealing with parents. In my old high school, I rarely even met them.”

“What did you do about discipline?”

“Discipline was between the student and me, or if it got really serious, between the student, me, and the office. The parent had little to do with it.”

“I see. Well, that might be all right for kids who are almost grown, but these students are still too young for that. Parent cooperation can still make all the difference at this age, and we try to cultivate it. That is what back to school night is really all about.”

With that in mind, Neil set about preparing. It didn’t take much physical effort. He cleaned up his room the day of the open house, wrote the bell schedule and a summary of the school rules on the blackboard, and put two name tags, one for each section, on each desk. He set extra copies of his textbooks out on the counter, and stapled some of the better student papers to the bulletin board.

The mental preparation was another story. Back to school night was scheduled for the eleventh of October. By that time he would have been teaching his students a little over four weeks. He had sixty-four students all together. How well did he know them? Could he even connect faces with names without error?

He ran his finger down his class list as he sat alone in his apartment that evening and tried to bring each face into focus. Some were easy. Tony and Jesse, his troublemakers, were engraved in his brain. So were Sean and Duarte, Rosa Alvarez and Rita Morales, Stephanie, Tasmeen and Rabindranath, Brandy, Oscar, little Randi Nguyen, and a dozen others. But the other forty were still hazy. He could put a face to most names, but for a few of them he still was not sure that he was putting the right face with the right name.

He spent the evening with his class list, as if he were cramming for an examination — and, in fact, he was.

# # #

When the night came, all his worries proved unfounded. The parents who came were unfailingly polite, and none of them were expecting miracles. He only had to jog his memory twice to bring up quiet, anonymous student faces. All the rest who came were parents of students who had made themselves known to him within the first week of class.

There was a message in that, but which way did the arrow point? Were these parents present because their children excelled and they were proud of them? Or were the children driven to make themselves known because the parents were always there expecting it of them?

# # #

The first woman to come in was tall, blonde, and confident. She stuck out her hand and said, “Hi. I’m Janice Hagstrom. This is my husband, Bill.” Bill was a bit shorter than his wife. He was young and good-looking, but he seemed a bit abashed in her presence. Janice did all the talking. Stephanie was her oldest daughter, and she always did well in school, but Janice was a little worried because this was a new situation and all, going from teacher to teacher all day, and she was glad that her daughter had at least one place to call home. more tomorrow

“You see, Jesse, Mr. Ulrich, Ms. Kelly, and Mrs. Clementi have all complained about your misbehavior in their classes. And when I asked the rest of the teachers how you are doing this year, they all said you weren’t doing very well. Things can’t go on this way, Jesus. What are we going to do about it?”

Jesse had stopped cooperating. Bill Campbell kept digging away at him, but Jesse refused to answer. Finally Bill said, “Jesus, do you think you can go out there and do your work without trying to stir up trouble with your classmates?”

Jesse shrugged and would not meet Bill’s eyes. He said, “That’s what I always do.”

There was a heavy silence in the room. Bill just said, “See that you do.”

# # #

When the mother and child had left, Bill said to Neil, “If I had asked him one more question, he would have called our whole teaching staff liars. Then I would have had to send him up before the board for expulsion. I couldn’t have allowed that kind of defiance.”

“You could have had him out of your hair,” Neil suggested.

“Yes. And I probably should have. It will come sooner or later, unless that woman gets some help. And she won’t; we’ve been trying to get her into counseling for three years now, without success.”

“What is going on? Was the boy abused by his father?”

“Now that is the essential question. We don’t know. We only know what the mother says and you could see how unreliable she is. If he was abused, she has made it worse. Since the father died five years ago, she has lost all semblance of discipline. Jesse runs that household. He is an only child. There are only the two of them in the house, and I thank God for that. If there were a younger sibling, I would really be worried about what Jesse might do to him.”

Neil sighed, staring at the door where Jesse had gone out. “He is so young.”

“That’s what hurts. But you would be doing him no favors if you cut him too much slack. He has to learn to live in society or society will destroy him. If he doesn’t learn some respect for authority now, he’ll be in prison before he’s twenty-one. Right now, his mother thinks she is his only friend, when in fact she’s his worst enemy. Don’t fall into that trap.”

Neil paused at the door and said, “Thank you for your support.”

“That’s my job.”

“What I mean is — I’m sorry. I misjudged you. You didn’t want me here, so I didn’t expect any support from you, but you have treated me like any other teacher.”

Bill Campbell shook his head. “Neil, I said that if you made so much as one mistake that I thought might be leading you into any form of sexual misconduct, I would nail you. And I will. However, if I hadn’t been ninety-nine percent sure that you were innocent, I wouldn’t have hired you.

“As far as the parents, students, and other teachers are concerned, you are just like any other teacher. Publicly and privately, I will treat you that way, except for one difference. I will be watching the way you deal with your female students even more carefully than I watch any other teacher — and I watch them all.”

# # #

That same afternoon Carmen came to see him about back to school night. He had given it no thought, so she explained, “This isn’t an open house to show off what the student’s have done. We have one of those in the spring. The purpose of back to school night is to give the parents a chance to see their children’s teachers and to see what they will be doing during the year. For us, it is a chance to meet some of the parents.” more tomorrow

Neil glanced at Bill Campbell, but his face gave away nothing. Neil went on, “He is more than a scamp. He terrorizes the classroom.” He gave her a detailed account of all Jesse’s misbehavior. It took five minutes to tell. “And that is only what I have seen. He does these things and gets punished because of it, but the punishment doesn’t seem to change anything.”

“His father could never do anything with him either. He wouldn’t cry, no matter what my husband did.”

For the first time, Bill cut in to ask, “How did your husband punish Jesus?”

She shrugged. “They way everybody does, I guess. He would take away things Jesus liked, and if that didn’t work, he would spank him”

“Was he very strict?” Bill asked.

“Yes. I thought he was too strict, so I can’t understand why Jesus is acting like this now.”

“How long has your husband been dead?”

“Five years next month.” Nothing in her face changed, but you could feel the tension and guess what it cost her to keep her face from changing. She seemed under control, but Neil wondered what price she was paying for that control.

Now that Bill Campbell had taken over the conversation, he drove it remorseless toward his chosen destination. “Mrs. Herrera, would you say that you are as strict as your husband was when he was alive?”

Her lip trembled and her eyes narrowed as if she were summoning up anger to cover her hurt. She shook her head and said, “I can’t lay a hand on him.”

Still remorseless, Bill asked, “Why?”

“Because . . .” She broke down momentarily and fished a tissue out of her purse. “I can’t punish him because all Jesus remembers of his father is how he punished him. I don’t want Jesus to remember me that way. I want him to love me.”

“Are you saying that Jesus doesn’t remember his father with love?”

Mrs. Herrera shook her head mutely.

Bill Campbell leaned back in his chair and said, “Mrs. Herrera, we’ve had this conversation before. Just before Jesus was expelled last year, you said you had managed to start disciplining him, and you promised to get professional help. Have you been going to counseling like you promised?”

She had not, but she had a fistful of excuses. Bill heard her out, then said, “None of that matters. The fact is that Jesus is in the sixth grade now, and he is no better than he was in the fourth. He can’t stay here if he keeps acting like this. We have been patient before, but this year he has to shape up or we will expel him again, and we won’t take so long doing it this time. We can’t have one student disrupting a classroom so that thirty other students can’t learn.”

Bill went to the door and called Jesse in. Neil was suddenly struck by his youth. He thought, “He’s just a baby. How can we hold him accountable for his actions?” Jesse flopped down in a chair by his mother and she brushed his hair back. He pulled his head aside.

Bill sat down again and said, “Jesus, I don’t like seeing you in my office again, especially so early in the year. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Then why are you here?”

Jesse looked daggers at Neil and said, “‘Cause he hates me.”

Neil started to protest, but Bill went right on. “Does Mr. Ulrich hate you, too?”

Jesse saw the trap, but he went right on to say, “Yes, he hates me.”

“What about Ms. Kelly; and Mrs. Clementi?”

Jesse shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“What about Mrs. Rawlings and Ms. Zavala? And Mr. Wright?”

This time Jesse didn’t reply. more tomorrow

When the bell rang, Neil told Jesse to stay behind.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

“You can go to the bathroom later. Right now I want to talk to you.”

“I gotta go now.”

“No. Later. Come here.”

Jesse came up to the front of the room, looking slantways at Neil as if he were not quite bright, and squirming as if he were about to wet his pants.  Neil almost let him go, but he had seen so much that he concluded this was also an act.

“Jesse, what were you doing during reading?”

“Just reading.”

“Not making anybody’s life miserable?”

Jesse was all wide-eyed innocence, hurt that he should be accused. He said, “I never did nothing to nobody.”

Neil enumerated the things he had seen Jesse doing.

“I didn’t do any of that stuff.”

“I saw you, Jesse.”

“You did not. I didn’t do it.”

Neil was shocked. Could the boy believe his own denials, or was this another scam? He looked into Jesse’s eyes and saw eyes that were old and wise and — evil? Can an eleven year old child be evil?

The look in Jesse’s eyes shook Neil to the core.

Still, it had to be dealt with. “Jesse, I saw you do everything I said, and I don’t intend to put up with it.”

Jesse lowered his eyes and said, under his breath, “Didn’t do it!”

“When the other kids come back, you will change places with Scott Anderson.”

“For today?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

“I don’t want to sit up front.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have any choice.”

“It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything.” The look on Jesse’s face was frightening. If the boy believed his own denials, then he had real problems. If he was lying coldly, he had worse problems.

Jesse left for the bathroom muttering under his breath. As soon as he came back, as late as he thought he dared be, Neil made him exchange seats with Scott. 

From the other students’ reactions, Neil realized he had been too slow in seeing this problem. Scott didn’t mind the move. Jesse muttered under his breath that it was unfair, but no one paid any attention to him. The ones in the back row heaved sighs of relief. Lorraine Dixon who sat in the front said, “Don’t you put him next to me!” and Rafael Ayala who would sit behind Jesse said, “I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

Jesse made a grandstand production of the move, sighing deeply and sending black looks toward Neil. Neil ignored him.

When he was finally seated, and Jesse said, “I hope you’re satisfied!” he had pushed Neil one step too far. Neil leaned over Jesse to make close eye contact and said, “Jesse Herrera,  your behavior last hour was terrible, and this hour hasn’t been any better. I will not tolerate that kind of nonsense in my classroom. The next time you misbehave, you will get a detention.”

“Detentions don’t mean nothing to me. I lived in the detention room last year.”

Neil shook his head. The boy had gone from apparent angel to this in twenty minutes. Now he sat looking forward with a wooden expression on his face and ignored Neil when he told the class to get out their books. Neil decided to end the confrontation by letting Jesse have that bit of rebellion unchallenged. But when he looked at Jesse later, he realized that it really didn’t matter what he did. Jesse had declared himself ready to devote himself to making Neil’s life miserable. more tomorrow