After winning an Honorable Mention in the Nonfiction Short Story category in 2014, this year I submitted an excerpt of the first chapter of my memoir, which is still very much a work in progress. Rather than waiting to share it until I think it's perfectly revised, I decided to go ahead and post it in its current state. I hope you enjoy it.
ONE
Late January 2008
Contemporary wisdom says that half of all
teachers don’t make it past their first five years on the job. On the morning
of the 90th day of my own career, I stare into my reflection under the
fluorescent lights of a staff bathroom, and my mind clenches around this idea
like a boa constrictor. It’s 7:30. Most of the 89 mornings before this one have
started the same way: me standing within the gray-tiled walls that have become
my panic room while I run through all the repulsive things I have to address
before I can manage to live another day standing in front of a room of 14- and
17-year-olds.
The whole enterprise at this point feels
like, in the jargon of the cape-wearing Dungeons
and Dragons-obsessed teenagers who asked to hold a role-playing game club
in my room every Wednesday since the third week of school, “an epic fail.”
Anything and everything that happens at my
job seems to remind me of my incompetence at being a well-adjusted human. I
walk around feeling like an open wound every day, not just thin-skinned, but as
if throughout the process of leading, managing, and connecting to six classes
of teenagers—160 in all—my skin has dissolved completely and melted into a transparent
membrane that exposes my entire inner workings, like one of those deep-sea creatures
whose heart you can see beating inside of its body. Every interaction and every
piece of information I confront is a glaring reminder of how ill-prepared I am
to navigate this world fraught with high-stakes emotional transactions and
endless decisions.
I run my hand up the back of my head. My
hair’s slowly growing back since I’d hacked at it almost two months ago. The
Sunday night after I’d returned from visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving,
my on-again, off-again boyfriend Jack had sat me down on the floor of my attic
bedroom and told me that he “just didn’t want to be in a relationship.” He
continued, “It’s not you, it’s just that I don’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend
right now.”
The following Friday night, after a few of
my trademark tonics-with-mostly-vodka at home, I had one of those fits of
inspiration that only anger and fear and alcohol can generate. I decided that I
didn’t need to actually schedule the haircut I’d been contemplating all week—I
could just as easily do it myself in front of the bathroom mirror. My hair was
dark, thick, and lustrous, which I had never before experienced as an adult.
I’d finally gotten sick of the various short, punky cuts of my early twenties
and grown it out over the past few years, and it was now halfway down my back.
God, I’m so ugly, I thought as I stared at
my drunken face in the mirror. My ends
are so scraggly and all this hair is so heavy and frumpy. I need something
more...modern.
I grabbed the middle back section of my
hair, brought it around to the front of my left shoulder, and chopped off a
couple inches. Using a tiny compact as my rear-view mirror, I quickly worked my
way along the ends of my hair, trying to create a cascading effect that left
the sections framing my face longer in the front. I hacked randomly and at
various angles.
The way I worked at my hair was not unlike
the way in which I would cut away at a block of cheese: I’d make one slice
along the side, which would invariably not be at a perfect right angle to the
cutting board, so I’d have to keep slicing until I’d re-established a straight
edge. I’d eat some of these pieces as I worked and laid others on the counter
for my post-ritual snack. When the edge of the cheese was straight again, I’d
decide I needed another slice, and the whole process would start all over, more
often than not until the entire block was gone.
The sudden thought of that cheese shot enough
sense into me that I put down the scissors and called an intervention on
myself. If I kept this up, I would have no hair left. So I did what any
drunken, jilted, compulsively-self-styling young woman would do—I got in my car
and drove to Rudy’s, a nearby hipster barbershop. Who knows what the friendly,
lanky young stylist thought of me—I can only remember working very hard to not
seem as crazy on the outside as I felt on the inside. To hide as much of myself
as possible, to hide my own relationship to reality, to move through the world
and yet somehow not be in the world simultaneously.
My hair semi-salvaged, my younger sister
drove me to a party later that night. It was what most of my extracurricular social
interactions had become by then, a delicate balance of two concurrent
behaviors: one, an elaborate charade to camouflage my drunkenness, while two, I
continued to drink enough to ensure that nothing could penetrate my bubble of numbness.
I talked to my sister for a bit, who knew the party’s host through work. I was
especially wary of family seeing me this way, so when I saw my ex’s best
friend, I gravitated toward him instead. But seeing him started to crack my
façade a bit, so as I jabbered on about how well I was doing despite the
break-up, I gulped down several glasses of champagne. I then got the hiccups. I
excused myself and went to the bathroom to hold my open mouth under the sink’s
faucet.
Historically, chugging water usually
forced my windpipe to close long enough that my diaphragm would calm down and
the hiccups would stop, but it could take a few minutes for this oxygen
deprivation to do its job. I looked back at my glazed eyes in the mirror above
the sink. My head seemed to gently bob, reminding me of the bloom of a flower
swaying in a breeze. This smooth rhythm was broken by a “Hic!” every ten
seconds, as my head suddenly jerked back and up, as if I were trying to snap
myself awake. As drunk as I was, I was aware enough to register the proof right
in front of me—I was too far gone to keep up the charade for tonight. I
couldn’t sober up quickly enough to make it through the rest of this party.
So I made my silent exit—the “Irish
goodbye,” as my friends from the bar I worked at in Eugene had always called
it—and started stumbling home. Why hadn’t
I paid more attention to the route my sister had driven here? Well, we hadn’t
gone that far from our house, so if I could just walk to a recognizable street,
I’d be able to find my way back easily. But this was Northeast Portland,
where streets regularly jumped the grid and started curving around corners with
no warning. Dead ends seemed to spring up out of nowhere. I must have circled
blocks and retraced my own steps for over an hour as I prepared to see something
familiar every few seconds. I’d start to feel panic rising, so I repeatedly imagined
finding a street close to home.
Eventually I crossed paths with a man in
his mid-thirties or early forties walking in the opposite direction. Maybe I
asked him what direction Alberta Street was, or maybe he just noticed my awkward
gait. Something in his soft mannerisms and mild voice deemed him
nonthreatening, at least to my drunken logic. I found myself walking alongside
him, his arm looped through mine as he guided me down the sidewalk. I don’t
know how long we went on like this. A minute? Ten minutes? We must have had a
conversation, but it is lost to me now. However long it was, a thought then
stabbed through my alcoholic haze: I have
no idea who this man is. He could be helping me. He seems nice enough. But he
also could be taking me wherever he wants right now.
I thought about how I could fight him
off—a kick in the groin, a thumb jammed into an eye socket. But I didn’t want
to let it get to that. I was strong, but he was still bigger and taller than
me. And why would a man suddenly
interrupt wherever it was he was going on a Friday night to help a drunk girl
he just met on the street get home…unless he wanted something?
“Wait!” I blurted out, yanking my arm from
his. I stopped walking and just stood looking at him for a moment under a
streetlight. His liquid brown eyes looked back at me with what I could
recognize as confusion mixed with concern. Terrified by all the morbid
possibilities now running through my mind and yet still not wanting to hurt the
man’s feelings, I said, “I—I just have to go,” and started running in the
opposite direction. “Thank you for your help,” I called back, and kept running.
Maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour later, I came upon my house entirely by
accident.
The walk and the adrenaline had metabolized
enough alcohol to make that sight the clearest thing I’d seen all night. After
I’d checked to make sure no one was following me, I let myself in and took off
my shoes so I wouldn’t wake my housemate Mike. Once in my room upstairs, I lay
on the futon that served as my bed and let myself think again about what could
have happened with the man. I shivered, then whispered out loud, “Thank you for
not hurting me. It’s my fault I’m like this.”
Then, to a God I
didn’t yet believe in, “Thank you.”
Back in the staff bathroom at work, it’s
7:33. I drop my hand from the back of my head and lift up my shirt for the stomach
portion of my morning inspection. I can’t see my ab muscles as clearly as I
could back in September. The waistband of my pants cuts into my stomach. Back
in September, my waist did not spill over the edges, and my butt had some
leeway in these pants. But the grueling schedule of my first few months of
teaching had started to give way: get up at 5:30 or 6, arrive at school by
7:30, teach until 3:30, get together my lessons for the next day and meet with
students, go to the gym at 6 or 7, pound out at least four miles on the
treadmill and watch my biceps bulge in the mirror while I lift some weights,
weigh myself, drive home, maybe make some phone calls, cobble together some
dinner, try not to have a drink. If I do drink, try to make it only one. No
more than two. Three on an especially bad day when I really need it. Fall into
bed around 11; hopefully not too much later. Sleep for about 6 hours. Do it all
over again the next day.
7: 35. I turn around for the rear portion
of the inspection. As if to prove the reality of a few pounds creeping back
onto my butt over the last few weeks, I’d insisted on cramming it into a pair
of size 6 Banana Republic slacks my older sister had bought for me at least six
years before. Damn, I forgot to wear a
thong today. The bottom bands of my underwear bisect each of my buttcheeks
on the bias. My thighs look like two plump sausages encased in a cotton/spandex
blend. I imagine my students looking at my fat ass while I write on the
whiteboard and cringe.
I try to remember why I am doing this. My
mind bounces from one image to the next: professors in grad school, and both of
my cooperating teachers who had mentored me during my practicum, had written
glowing reference letters highlighting my creativity and dedication. The middle
school students I worked with during my student teaching had thrown me a party
and sent me off with piles of cards and gifts upon my departure. I had won a
small scholarship based on an essay I had written about my passion for helping
ESL students thrive, and I still had pictures of the first two students I had
tutored in a program at the community college near the University of Oregon,
where I completed my undergraduate degree. My cohort leader, at the ceremony
marking the completion of my master’s in education, placed my graduation hood
over my head and whispered, “The survivor.”
I believe her enough to somehow still be
hanging onto that moment as I note the time: 7:40. I take a deep breath to
distract myself from the fact that I must now leave the sanctity of the staff bathroom,
and thus, actually face my day at school.
Once downstairs, I settle into the chair
at my desk and spot my copy of Elie Wiesel’s Night on top of a pile of papers that have gathered dust for the
last month while waiting to be filed. I’d placed the book there as a reminder
that I still need to prepare my lessons for it for my second semester Senior
English class. The edition in our school library’s collection is cobalt blue,
save for its front cover, which is a white background upon which a black sketch
suggests the shape of a small figure standing behind barbed wire. The title and
author’s name stand out starkly against this backdrop, as does the only other
text on the cover: “A slim volume of terrifying power,” according to the New York Times Book Review.
I do not think of literature when I read
this, or Wiesel’s unfathomable journey, or the exploration of the human
experience that might spring from this journey which could make for compelling
lessons. I think of a night almost two months before, when I had attended a
reading and launch party at a warehouse on Burnside for a somewhat avant garde
journal that, a few years later, Mary Karr would deem, “the best goddamn
literary magazine in America.” Knowing that I was newly single, a writer friend
had invited me, hinting that there might be some hot literary types there. And
being the newly single and frazzled new teacher that I was, I had no time or
mental capacity for writing, thus I decided to go so I could at least be near
some real writers, when it was looking less and less like I would actually ever
be one myself. I also was at that critical post-breakup juncture where I would
do almost anything to prove to myself and other people that I was still
desirable.
I arrived late, when one of the writers
was in the middle of reading a piece onstage. I had already warmed up with a
few drinks at home, but I couldn’t risk those wearing off, so I quickly found a
glass of wine, then a metal chair towards the back. I have no memory of what
the piece was about, or who was reading it. I was completely preoccupied with
how I appeared to others. Alcohol had long since become a necessary tonic that
made socializing tolerable, but it could no longer wash away the anxiety that
seemed to perpetually run like ice water through my veins. Should I sit up straight and cross my legs as to convey an intellectual
intensity and focus? Or do I go for a more insouciant posture, slouching into
my chair, as to try to look like I’m too cool for this? My entire
experience of the reading was the feel of my spine against the hard back of the
chair, and the way the chair squeaked when I shifted my weight. And of course,
the glass of wine that I clutched like a talisman. I tried to take measured,
occasional sips, when it was all I could do to not run over to the makeshift
bar, grab the nearest bottle, and guzzle the whole thing.
The reading was followed by the usual
plugs for the sale of discounted issues, then a DJ started a loud mix of indie
and electronic tracks. I found my writer friend, and she introduced me to Ken,
one of the journal’s editors. After only a few brief words between us, Ken was
less a person to me than a target, an antithesis to the rejection that still
burned through me from two weeks earlier.
I needed this conquest to rub out all
remnants of the way Jack, in telling me that he didn’t want to be anyone’s
boyfriend, had just found a circuitous way to tell me that I was not good
enough for him to want to be my
boyfriend.
The rest of the night is a series of
discrete images, as if the evening had unfolded in a dark room with a single
bare light bulb, which randomly switched on and off, illuminating the separate
moments that, when viewed continuously, revealed the way that Ken and I used
each other. I congratulated him on his success, and he kept our wine glasses full. When he told me about writing pieces for the New York Review of Books, I could only
counter with my recent publication in a local women’s literary magazine. Either
pity or lust, or probably a combination of the two, compelled him to praise me.
We drank more wine, and he introduced me to his friends. We chatted with my
writer friend, who raised her eyebrows at me as she looked back and forth
between us. Ken followed me to the dance floor. “You’re so hot,” he breathed
against my cheek when I danced close to him.
We left a couple hours later, Ken with
part of the wine surplus from the party in each hand. Back in my bedroom, we
drank while he told me more about his life in New York. He explained the
intricacies of some scandal entangling the staff of Gawker while I feigned interest, since this was the kind of gossip
that you can only care about if you actually know the individuals involved. He
spotted a book I was reading next to my bed. “I went to her reading,” he said
of the author. “She looks really pretty in this jacket photo, but trust me, she
looks like a horse in real life.” He told me about the torch he was carrying
for a girl who had been stringing him along, and I admitted to my own recent
snub.
He asked me about my classes and what we
were reading. “Lord of the Flies for
Senior English?” he said. “I read that when I was in sixth grade.”
“Well, a lot of my seniors are pretty low
readers,” I said defensively. “And when you study the book through the lens of
Freudian theory, it can be pretty advanced. We’re also reading Night, you know, the book by Elie
Wiesel,” I added.
“Oh, of course,” Ken said. “I always
remember that line from the New York
Times on the front cover,” he paused, then enunciated with self-conscious
affectation, “A slim volume of terrifying power.”
I laughed. “Yeah,
that’s the one we’re reading.”
I didn’t want to talk about books or
writing or the New York literary scene anymore. I knew that eventually we’d
reach an impasse, and Ken would realize how little I really knew. I was
relieved when he started kissing me again and pulled me down to the futon. I don’t
remember feeling anything while we had sex except for the cold awareness that
we both wished we were with someone else.
My stomach roils with the memory as I
start up my computer in my classroom. 7:45. I have to push those thoughts away,
because I have no room for emotional vulnerability. Today or any day. If I
don’t steel myself from the inside, these students will suck me dry. In no way
was I prepared for the sheer level of need that my students project, pulling me
toward them like a magnetic field. Part of the reason I got into teaching in
the first place was the profound connection I could feel forming between
teacher and student as we both trudged the road of knowledge together—but now
that it was teacher and 160 students, that connection felt less like a bond and
more like a steady leak.
It would be so easy to join my fallen
comrades and become one of the 50% of teachers who leave. Yet even in all my
bewilderment, I am still so aware of how literature and writing had always made
the world a little more comprehensible and bearable to me. I know I have to
continue on this path so I can teach not just my students, but myself, how to
live.
