Cherry Blossom

teachers.

1 New at School

Dick Hammer felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. He turned his head, and heard the line leader say, Teacher, they’re fighting. He spun and paced toward of the back of the single-file line. They had told him in the teacher training program never to run toward an incident on the school yard. Keep it calm and controlled, they said.

Two boys from his Fifth Grade class, writhed silently on the ground, arms wrapped around each other. Avonte Green straddled a skinny, freckled, red-headed kid, digging his knuckle into the boy’s ear hole with one hand, while pulling his mohawk with the other. In his two days with the class, Dick knew few of the students’ names, but he knew Avonte. He had already sent him to the office for being out of his seat, talking back, refusing to work, and disrupting the class.

The boys kicked their legs and squirmed in the center of the dodgeball circle. The top of the red bristle poked through the crook of Avonte’s brown sinewy arm. Dick grabbed the two by their bony, tense biceps, and yanked them apart. They clung and clawed like fierce fighting animals. Dick didn’t remember hearing anything about this in the teacher training program. Would they fight to the death if he didn’t get in their way?

Stop! he yelled. Stop. Stand there.

Both boys stood, chests heaving, faces blushed. The redhead crossed his arms over his chest. Tears ran down his splotchy crimson face. He shook, as if he were freezing. Dick took deep breaths to calm himself. He did not want the boys to feel him trembling.

The other thirty-one kids in the class formed a loose half-circle around the boys. Mrs. Rafferty’s Fifth Grade class passed beside Dick’s group. Ann Rafferty leaned her head in, and whispered, Watch those two.

Yeah, thanks. I’m doing my best, Dick said as she went by. Obviously they were two of many that she had sent him from her class.

He released the boys’ arms. What’s going on?

He talked about my mama, Avonte said.

I did not, the other boy said. He pushed me.

Tell me your name. Dick said to the redhead.

Travis.

McElroy, right?

Mr. Hammer, Marcello’s going in the girl’s bathroom, someone yelled.

Okay, let’s take this back to the classroom, Dick said. Marcello, get over here.

When his students were again in a semblance of single file, Dick returned to the front, with Avonte on his left hip and Travis on the right. He told the first child in line, Miriam Maldonado, Okay, Line Leader, please go.

Walking through the sunny Kearney, California morning, Dick looked across the wide, brown-grass playing field, which he assumed had fallen victim to the ongoing drought. Out, beyond Cherry Blossom Elementary’s chain-link fence, fifty yards away, a man with a sky blue t-shirt and short dark hair ran with his arm extended, behind a boy on a bicycle. They sprinted along the sidewalk on Northern Boulevard, in front of a row of small, modest tract houses. Dick thought the guy might be another of the lay-offs from the closed-down canneries and factories in town. A passing black Escalade, spinning chrome wheels and blaring thumping rap music, blocked his view.

A child laughed in the line behind Dick, and he felt déjà vu, mixed with dread. In his own time in grammar school, as they called it, he was a tall, skinny, towheaded and bucktoothed boy, as shy as a slug in the sun. He succeeded as a student, but was always looking for the shadow to drop on him. Now he led a parade of strange rowdy children, in an elementary school, way out on the edge of the East San Francisco Bay Area. He never had any of his own kids, and before he started his student teaching, six months before, hadn’t stepped into an elementary school since he was that anointed, skittery child, himself. While growing up in a family with liberal, socially active parents, the names he heard his own teachers call were David, Bob, Judy, Kathy, Cheryl, John. His Cherry Blossom class roster listed the names Emiliano, DeJuan, Ebony, Jasmine, Louie Wong, Gurdeep, and Marcello.

He had needed a job, a new career, after moving from Olympia, Washington. He got along with children, his nieces and nephews and his friends’ kids. And, a man in elementary education seemed like high employability and job security. So secure that he was trapped behind fences, and couldn’t leave, if he wanted to, just as it was when he was a student.

Dick conducted his herky-jerky train toward his olive-drab portable classroom, a quick fix by the Kearney Unified School District to meet the surge in enrollment. He passed between the stucco wall of the main building and the fabricated wall of the portable. At the bottom of the rusted metal ramp, slanting up to the classroom door, he stopped. His eyes burned, as if they had sand in them, and his body sagged with exhaustion. Two hours into his third day of teaching. He turned and surveyed the line. Stop, he called, showing his palm to Miriam. Please stand up straight, right behind the person in front of you, hands at your sides, looking forward, just like this. He slid to Miriam’s side, facing the children. Atten-hut, he shouted. He mocked clicking his heels, and threw his chest back and his hands to his sides, standing at attention. Model expected behavior and teach discrete skills. The kids mimicked him, giggling.

As his class waited silently, Dick backed up the ramp, his footsteps pounding on the rusted, flexing metal. Never turn your back on your students.He put the key in the lock of the door, which had been tagged with mob7, in tailing yellow paint.

Dick snapped on the fluorescent ceiling lights, and stood in the doorway as his students passed through. Please go right to your seats and take out your Language Arts books.

The students filed in, filling the six rows of five desks and one row of three desks. They sat with their backs to the door, the wall clock, and the room’s only bank of caged, louvered windows. Beyond the short row of desks, low wooden bookcases ran from one corner half the length of the twenty-four-foot side wall. On the other side of the room, in the opposite corner, a four-foot round blonde laminate table served as a work and conference space. Dick had yet to fill up the bulletin boards, clad with blue construction paper and yellow ribbed borders, along the walls beside his desk and at the other end of the room. Green chalk boards filled most of the forty-foot wall behind his desk. As he walked to the front of the class, over broken brown-and-green linoleum, with the particle board under-flooring showing through in spots, Dick smelled a vague plastic odor. The toxicity of the air and light in the room was adding to his headache. He passed back through the middle aisle of desks to open the door again, and secure it against the pipe metal railing with a saggy bungee cord.

2 The Girls Find Their Daddy

During after-lunch silent reading, two students, Sanjula Prasad and Danilee Kindle, approached Dick on his metal stool, in front of the class. He lowered his newspaper and looked from Sanjula’s amber eyes to Danilee’s light blue. "Yes? Why aren’t you two reading? This is silent reading."

We want to know if there’s anything we can do for you, Sanjula said, leaning forward.

Dick sniffed the cardamom in her hair.

She glanced back at Danilee, who stared at Dick with all her features raised, in a look of expectation.

At the moment, what I need is for you to read. It’s important. But, after school, if you want, you can clean erasers. He straightened his spine on the hard stool. At six feet-five, even sitting he was taller than they were, standing. Sanjula stepped forward, as Danilee joined her. Their chests pressed against his knees. He felt their body heat. The perspiration beaded on Danilee’s temples and her pulse ticked in her throat. The whites around her azure irises were flawless.

Okay, girls, back to your books, Dick said. About ten more minutes of silent reading, he announced to the class.

Dick fanned himself with his folded newspaper, ran a hand over his hairline to wipe away the beads of sweat, and adjusted himself on his stool. He had not anticipated the closeness. Student teaching was like being in a zoo. He got within arm’s distance of other teachers’ kids. Now, with his own students, he was in the cage. They were up under his nose, breathing on him, pressing against him, demanding his attention and care.

The girls turned and pranced to their seats, Sanjula on one side of the room, and Danilee on the other.

He swung his head one hundred eighty degrees and surveyed the group. Besides when he read to them, right after recess, he thought, silent reading was the quietest twenty minutes these kids spent in the school day, probably at any time during their entire day. Every girl and boy in the crowded room was sitting still and reading something.

When the bell rang at 2:40, Dick stood by the door as the students filed out. Some parents waited at the bottom of the steel ramp to the portable. Avonte left last, head down, body slumped.

Better day tomorrow, Avonte? Dick said.

Whatever. Avonte said.

Dick knew that he should talk to the principal about the boy. If he did, he would have to contact Avonte’s parents. Dealing with parents ranked just above wiping up children’s vomit for most teachers. He decided to give it more time and see what happened.

Back in the doorway, he heard giggling. By the board, Sanjula and Danilee boxed with felt erasers in their hands. Chalk dust rose above them.

As Dick watched the two play and laugh, he wondered why he was so fascinated by girls. Every movement, gesture, nuance. Their size, smell, sound, softness. He was hetero, so it followed that he needed females to complete his sexuality. He remembered, as a little boy, playing doctor behind his garage with two neighbor girls. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. His mother appeared, under the clotheslines, hand on hip, face screwed. She scooted the girls home, and escorted him into the house. She said, Don’t do that again, but never explained what or why. Different, mysterious, and forbidden. In a household with six males, his mother guarded her privacy. His father stood at the toilet, with his giant unchiseled member dangling, and urinated, while Dickie brushed his teeth or dried off from a bath. His mother always stayed behind a closed door.

As a shy boy, teased about his crooked teeth, Dick lacked confidence around girls. They seemed to sniff his fear. They were beyond his reach. He had females as friends, but he never dreamed that they could be interested in him romantically. He had his first girlfriend when he was out of his teens. As he learned about females, the illusions faded, but he never lost his fervor.

Come on, girls! Dick called. If you’re going to clean them, please take them outside and gently slap them together. I’ll show you.

He led them out the door, on the ramp. He slapped two erasers together, sending up a small white cloud. Please don’t play. Just clean them and bring them back inside. Okay?

Yes, Mr. Hammer, Sanjula said.

Certainly, Danilee added.

Mr. Hammer, Sanjula said as he turned toward the door.

Yes?

We want you to be our Dad.

You have fathers. You don’t want another one.

My father is very mean and Danilee doesn’t even know who her father is, Sanjula said.

I’m sorry about that, girls, but I can only be your teacher.

Okay, Sanjula said.

Danilee watched him but didn’t say anything.

Dick went back into the room, aligning desks, putting away books, and digging through the papers and materials down to his buried desktop. Danilee came in with the erasers and laid them on the chalkboard tray. Is there anything else I can do? she asked.

I don’t think so. Thank you. He moved to the door. Another thing the teacher training program told him: Do not be inside a closed room with a girl student. Where’s Sanjula?

Her mother picked her up. Danilee said.

Is your mother coming soon? Dick turned the knob, pushed open the door, and stepped on to the ramp.

Danilee joined him outside. They stood, looking down the breezeway between buildings. She leaned her body into him, and he moved away.

He tried to think of something to say to the girl. He didn’t know her and he didn’t know what children talked about. He examined the top of her head, her perfect part, dividing her straight blonde hair into two even halves, her pink scalp showing through. Her bangs were cut just above her eyes. Her mother had spent time doing her hair that morning.

Are you married" Danilee said, looking up at him with her sky blue eyes.

Excuse me?

I said, are you married? Danilee said it loudly.

Do you see this ring? He tried lifting his ring finger, but spread his fingers and turned his hand instead.

People wear rings who aren’t married, Danilee said. And people who are married don’t wear rings.

Yes I am. It’s a little personal.

What do you mean?

I mean it’s private. It’s my business.

It is a secret? If it is, why do you wear the ring?

It’s not a secret. He put his foot up on the lower bar of the ramp railing. "Are you married?" Dick said.

Danilee looked at him and smiled. No, silly.

Danilee! A woman in an army field jacket walked in the breezeway from the parking lot.

Danilee turned and pointed. My grandmother.

The fiftyish woman tucked strands of graying blond hair into the bun on top of her head. Dick descended the ramp. He put out his right hand. Hello, I’m Dick Hammer, Danilee’s teacher.

I’ve heard all about you. Danilee is thrilled to have you. Beth Bettencourt. She took his hand.

Hi, Beth. Dick pumped hers twice and dropped it.

I hope she hasn’t been a bother, Beth said.

No. She’s been helpful. He turned to Danilee. Thanks, again, for cleaning the erasers. See you tomorrow.

Danilee came down the ramp and threw her arms around his hips. She squeezed, pushing the side of her face against his breastbone. Beth pulled her arm, and they walked away, with the sleeve of Beth’s coat across the back of Danilee’s hair, spread over her shoulders. As they cleared the portable and turned toward the parking lot, Danilee looked back at him. What does the girl want from me? Dick thought, as he turned and went back to his classroom. What do I want from her?

3 The School Run by Washington

Hellooooooo?

Dick heard a woman’s voice as he stood at the pencil sharpener. The principal, Mrs. Washington, leaned in the doorway.

How’s it going? Mrs. Washington drew out go-ing and raised the ing, in a sing-song, as if she were talking to a Kindergartner. She sidled her broad body up the narrow aisle, knocking desks askew in the row. I like to occasionally check in with my new teachers.

"It’s okay. They are a bit of a handful," Dick said.

I told the other Fifth Grade teachers not to transfer out all their behavior problems, when we were forming this new Fifth Grade class. She leaned over the first desk in the first row, flipped a page on her yellow legal pad, and scribbled a note.

All their behavior problems? he said.

I’m sure you will find the other teachers supportive if you have questions, Mrs. Washington said, still writing on her pad. We all realize that it is not easy to begin with a new class, and your first class, at that, in the middle of the school year. So, please, if you need anything, just ask.

I’ll be sure to.

Do you have enough books?

As far as I can tell. Some of the copies are pretty bad. Pages missing, bindings broken, and covers are falling off.

That I understand. For now, we’ll have to make do. Mrs. Washington closed her legal pad. Don’t forget the faculty meeting Monday, right after school.

She headed back up the aisle of narrow desks, waving her hand in the air. Put up student work. Lots of student work. She turned and walked