Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder
Chris sat at one of the empty children's desks, shoulders rounded, sunglasses resting in her hair. "Well, did you all enjoy yourselves?"
"That was the best trip I ever had!" shouted Felipe.
"Besides having fun, I hope you learned something about American history."
They crowded around her, showing her the presents they had bought for their parents at the gift shop.
"I got this wine jelly for my mother," said Claude. "It tastes just like wine."
"Claude! You're going to give that to your mother, and you just stuck your finger in it." Chris's voice contained no vehemence. She sat and smiled toward the window. Claude froze, the jellied finger in his mouth. Arnie showed her a ring he had bought, one fashioned from a flat nail. "It's real metal," he said.
"Oh, Arnie, that's nice."
Ashley stumbled over a chair, and Chris went to her, helped her up, and sat by her for a private conversation. Chris called her "dear heart." "It's usually Claude who has something happen to him. You can't do this, Ashley."
Ashley shook her head with mirth, her glossy, long black hair swaying and her lips sealed, looking at Mrs. Zajac. It was nice to see Ashley looking happy for once.
2
Teachers often console themselves with thoughts such as these: "It's just a bad day," "It's just a bad year," and "There's a full moon this week. That's why the kids haven't been doing their homework." Chris half believed in the power of the moon. She strongly believed in the power of the season now upon them—Little League baseball and the warm, long evenings of daylight savings—to bring on academic decline. She fumed at the class a few times during May, and one day when almost no one had done the homework, she went to the Teachers' Room and declared, "I hate them right now. I'm going to the Golden Lemon and start drinking now." One day she actually had to tell Judith twice what page to turn to in math—the closest she'd ever had to come to reprimanding Judith, who said, "I don't know what it is. I just can't shake the tiredness away." Sweet-smelling rain fell on many mornings and the sky lightened by the end of math. Gradually, moist heat began to fill the room. It was still there the next mornings, not unbearable but ominous heat, like heat at dawn in August.
Chris had come back from her vacation in Puerto Rico thinking, "I need a vacation from a vacation," and for a few days felt as if she was floundering. She rummaged through her chaotic closet and couldn't find her materials on the Civil War. "Mariposa? Could you look for them, please?" The little girl with the corkscrew-curly hair stood at the closet door, shaking her head at the mess inside. "Miss-is Zajac!" Mariposa said, and she clucked. Then Mariposa went in there and found all the materials, and Chris spent a long evening at her dining room table outlining her lessons for the rest of the year. She felt much better afterward.
When Chris had returned from Puerto Rico, her heart had sunk at the sight of Juanita's empty desk. Shy, blossoming Juanita had been moved away to some other town. Chris asked the counselor to make inquiries. Evidently Juanita's relocation had less to do with her than with a fresh argument between her divorced parents. Inside the girl's workbook was a fragment of a year's collaborative effort, a record of real progress, now aborted: the girl's careful answers and Chris's bold, red-penciled comments: "Excellent!" and "Good work, Juanita!" The workbook was just detritus now, awaiting year-end clean-up. Chris hoped Juanita was all right. She thought, "So much is out of your control. So much!"
Some children had changed markedly. Kimberly, for instance, the tall girl with the lazy-sounding voice and myopic eyes. In September everything about her—the whiny voice, the sour expressions on her face, her habit of turning her shoulders away from Chris when Chris spoke to her—had seemed to say, "I don't care if you don't like me. I don't care if I get answers wrong." Kimberly now seemed willing to try. One day Chris heard her say to Ashley that if Ashley's spelling partner was out, Ashley should work with another group—she could work with Kimberly's. Chris thought, "I'm seeing little sparks out of Kimberly. Now if I could just grab them..."
And was something like a change coming over Claude? He had lovingly fingered the index card Chris had taped to his desk top, the one with the message DON'T FORGET TO COPY THE ASSIGNMENT! The card had peeled up. Now it had vanished—to where, Claude couldn't say. The red piece of construction paper on which Judith had recorded Claude's bet with Dick still lay on the counter under the window. The spring sunshine had drained the paper of most of its color. Claude had long since lost the bet—that he'd do all his homework from now on. Dick hadn't tried to collect. But one spring morning, after the usual lecture from Chris, Claude got almost all of the questions right on a science paper. A few days later, Claude asked Chris if he could collect the spelling homework—a request never granted to a child who hadn't done his, and in Room 205 a customary way for a child to tell her that he had. Then Claude actually finished a story. Chris read it at her desk. "It's about fishing again. But it all makes sense for once!" And on top of that, Claude, with a solid F average in social studies, did quite well on a social studies test.
Claude stared at the paper when Chris handed it back at the end of the day. His eyes went wide. "Eighty?" he said. "That's the best score I ever got!" He wanted to show Julio, who wasn't interested. He showed Judith, who was. The intercom called Claude's bus. He dashed to the door, the test paper in hand. He stopped. He remembered he'd forgotten his bookbag. He dashed back into the room. Dashing one way, then the other, Claude kept declaring, "That's the best score I ever got!" Chris watched the performance from her desk. She shook her head slowly. She let herself smile. Was something like organized academic desire stirring in Claude? It was too soon to know for sure.
"I love math," Jimmy said one morning a few days after the class trip.
Chris thought, "Pick me up off the floor."
"Me, too," said Manny.
"Me, too," said Jorge.
"Ugh," said Felipe. "I hate math."
"It's my favorite subject," said one of the girls.
"I like math and reading," said a boy in her low math group who came from another homeroom.
Chris looked at the child who had uttered that last sentiment. "Thank you," she said. "You have me for both."
She was the same old Mrs. Zajac, who wasn't born yesterday and was an old witch. She was an old-lady teacher who didn't fall off the turnip cart yesterday, and meant business, and who knew she had repeated the assignment fifty thousand million times, and, disgusted as you were about having to do your work over, was twice as disgusted herself that you didn't try to do it right the first time, who hoped you never had a doctor or mechanic who didn't check his work, who made lots of mistakes herself, was a terrible artist, unlike you, and knew how smart you really were, and said, at least three times between 7:45 and 1:45, "Pedro, do you understand?" "Mariposa, dear heart, stop writing letters and pay attention," "We're working. Right, Felipe?" "Claude, I don't want to hear it," and "Robert! Stop slapping yourself." When Jimmy once again avoided his classmates' suggestions by reconstructing his whole story, so that it no longer made any sense, the same Mrs. Zajac as the one of September said, "Okay, Jimmy. We'll start again."
She didn't use the threat of Mr. Laudato anymore or keep anyone in for recess, except on one bad day when many came in without homework and she delivered what she called "tirade number six sixty-six" about diligence. She said to the class, "I corrected these papers last night. Mrs. Zajac almost took the gas pipe."
The yearly ritual of the class trip now successfully completed—Claude hadn't gotten lost—the Science Fair loomed for all of the fifth-grade classes at Kelly. According to the rules, the children could form teams of their own choosing or work alone. Each team or child would choose a topic, such as dinosaurs or water power. (No earthquakes; after last year, the fifth-grade teachers had deemed models of exploding mountains too dangerous and messy.) Each would write a report on the chosen topic. Finally, each would construct a demonstration, to fit on a table in one of the gyms for the climactic event, the Fair
During an early rehearsal, Kimberly, who teamed up with Courtney, told Chris, "We're gonna put these foods on the table and tell 'em what the things are."
"Okay. You have foods on your table," said Chris to the two girls. "Someone comes by at the Fair. What are you going to tell them?"
"Like this is a potato?" said Kimberly.
"Everybody's going to know what a potato is!" said Chris.
"Like what foods nourish your body?" said Courtney hopefully.
Chris questioned Ashley, who was working alone on a water wheel. "Okay, what will it do?" Chris asked.
"Maybe it will turn," Ashley whispered.
"Maybe it will turn?" said Chris.
"Probably," said Ashley.
"No. No probably. It has to work, Ashley."
Chris questioned the team of Irene and Mariposa. "Are you just going to have a bunch of rocks in front of you?"
"We're going to get a lot of rocks from around my house," said Irene. "And figure out their environment. Like whether they came from a desert..."
"Their environment? Rocks don't have an environment, and I doubt any around your house came from a desert." Chris's eyes got very wide. "You're going to have to be more specific."
But there were exceptions, and the most exceptional was Claude. Chris was astonished. Claude joined up with Pedro and Jimmy. Chris had to insist that Claude's partners do some of the work. Claude was clearly the leader. She asked the three boys to describe their project, and Claude piped up, "It's gonna be like on streams and rivers and how they form. How they move." Talking fast, shaking a hand furiously, Claude described all this while Chris ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, suppressing her smile. "That's very good, Claude! I like what I'm hearing!" They were down in the library. Chris turned to the aide there and said, "Would you help these boys find some more books on streams and rivers?"
"And ponds and lakes!" declared Claude.
Later, she overheard Claude say to a classmate, "I'm gonna work on my science project every night!" The next week, he described again for Chris, in remarkable detail, the birth of rivers. To the class in general, Chris said, "I hope some of you are as well versed on your projects as Claude." For a moment, Chris wondered, "Did I really just say that?"
This was the boy who, a month ago, when Mrs. Zajac was putting the heat on him, said he felt mixed up and wanted to go home. Now he raced around, making a chart for his project. The chart was incredibly neat.
Among a generally disappointing bunch of written science reports, Claude's looked pretty good. Only Felipe did a really first-rate job, a report full of accurate facts about dinosaurs, and unlike many others, not copied right out of books. Felipe had written, for instance:
I imagine animals like Elephants with fur coats. I imagine trees like giant featherdusters. That's what some animals and trees looked like millions of years ago.
High-pitched voices echoed in the gym. The end of May had arrived, and the Fair had begun. The noise was like one unremitting, collective scream, which could only get worse, because to converse in the gym one had to add to the clamor by shouting. "Today," Chris predicted, "will be a four-Tylenol day." Leading her class down the corridors to the Fair, she had followed a couple of thin trails of dirt, spilled no doubt from some child's geology exhibit. Chris hoped there would be no larger mishaps.
All the fifth graders had assembled in the gym. They stood in little groups behind tables, which were arranged in a large rectangle along the walls. The tables were laden. Chris decided to look at the projects from other classes first. She found a pretty good water wheel on one table; it was better than Ashley's, in that it contained some water. At the next table a boy from another class sat, looking hopeful, behind an exhibit that consisted of a rose, still encased in cellophane and planted in the top of an empty soda can. "What's your project on?" shouted Chris. She leaned across the table, cupping an ear to catch the reply.
"Flowers," said the boy, nodding earnestly.
She visited another boy, from another class, who said his project was on electricity. "It comes from plugs," he explained. Another had a store-bought model of a human eye on his table. He said, "It's an eye. It sees." One group from another homeroom stood behind a store-bought plastic robot and explained, "You push this button, and it goes left."
Chris felt a secret relief. She had awakened one night not long ago imagining children from other classes standing behind wonderful homemade rocket ships and expounding on physics, while her students explained to fairgoers, "This is a potato" and "These are rocks." Chris told herself now, "At least I don't feel too embarrassed. Mine aren't any worse than anyone else's." But then she stopped at Jorge's table, and her amusement began to wane.
Jorge, from her low math group, often looked exhausted. He had tried to do a science project, a model of a laser made out of colored paper, an electric light, and a cardboard box. Jorge had gotten the idea from a book. He'd followed all the instructions, he told Mrs. Zajac. "But it doesn't work," he said. Jorge had been heard to say a few days before, "I can't get too much help at home." An understatement. The floors of his family's apartment were covered with their dog's excrement. He wore the same clothes day in and day out, and even now, standing across the table from him, Chris could smell the sad odor, like rotting fruit. Jorge and his partners—two other boys who couldn't get much help from home either—sat behind their table and their inoperative cardboard box, looking glum.
Chris told Jorge he'd done well, not to worry, and she moved on. Jorge wasn't in her homeroom. But Ashley was, of course.
Ashley sat alone at her table. She hadn't wanted a partner. Now Chris wished she'd assigned someone to Ashley. The girl once said she had only three friends. "That's all the people I know." Ashley lived in the Flats with her mother and stepfather. Her real father had visited her last weekend. Ashley had told Chris all about it. Her real father had helped Ashley make her water wheel. Ashley had brought it to school a few days ago. As the girl had carried it up to Mrs. Zajac's desk, Chris had noticed Ashley's hands shaking. Her water wheel was made of cardboard and paper plates. An electric motor made it turn. She had surrounded it with sprigs of greenery. The plastic figure of a Dutch girl stood beside the wheel. "Where's the water?" Chris had thought to herself when she'd first seen Ashley's project. Chris had said to her, "Oh, look at this! Very nice, Ashley!" Now Ashley sat behind the contraption, looking frightened and, as always, as if she'd like to hide, and Chris told herself that the lack of water didn't matter.
Chris cupped an ear and leaned toward Ashley, who said, "It's an overshot water wheel, and when water hits it, it turns." She didn't have much else to say.
Arnie's father had arrived. Chris smiled broadly. She extended her hand. Arnie's father clasped it shyly. Chris noticed that his pants were torn and dirty. An unmistakable, sweetish odor of liquor came from him. It was only about ten in the morning. Chris visited Arnie's table. On it lay a store-bought example of an electric switch. Arnie smiled at her. He looked especially cute to her now. He knew something about how the switch worked. Chris was writing grades in her book, grades based not on the projects but on what the children had learned. She wrote B beside Arnie's name. Then she paused. The grade meant nothing, she thought. She hadn't based it on what Arnie knew. She'd based it on Arnie's father. She might as well stop grading this event.
Other parents had arrived. There behind her homemade model of the solar system sat Arabella, smiling sweetly, looking chipper and healthy and confident, telling the judges all the names of the planets, their approximate distances from the sun, the main characteristics of each. And there, in his electrician's uniform, moving from table to table and correcting the mis
Alice's father wore a necktie and blue blazer. The team of Alice, Judith, and Margaret had done electrical generation. Alice's father had taken them to the Holyoke water power plant a few days ago. Through a friend he'd arranged a special tour for the girls. Afterward, he'd bought them all ice cream cones and taken them back to the Highlands to help them finish the project. Their display, a model town on a large piece of plywood, didn't show how power got generated, but it was the nicest-looking project in the gym. Chris questioned them. The girls knew their stuff. Chris chatted briefly with Alice's father. She thanked him for helping his daughter and her friends so much.
She meant those words. But she couldn't look around the gym now without feeling sad. The children whose parents had come to the gym—for the most part neatly dressed, confident-seeming adults—had the best projects and knew the most about their subjects. In general, the forlorn projects belonged to the children with no parents on hand, such as Courtney and Kimberly, who stood behind a table displaying a box of oatmeal, a hamburger bun, a piece of white bread, a carton of milk, an egg, two potatoes, and a remnant of iceberg lettuce growing brown.
Chris wished she could call a halt right now. The whole event looked like a rigged election, distressingly predictable, as if designed to teach the children about the unfairness of life. She saw one bright spot, though. There was some room in an unfair world for individual achievement. She walked up to Claude's table. She questioned his partners, Jimmy and Pedro, first. Claude said to them, "Come on, guys. Don't let me down." Pedro and Jimmy still couldn't tell Mrs. Zajac much about rivers, even though for weeks she had been opening books on the subject for them. But she felt rescued from this day, for a brief time, when she looked at what Claude had done: on the table, his thorough and neat diagram of a river rising in mountains and flowing to the sea; and behind that, Claude's model river. He had built his model on a metal serving platter. Little stones were piled up at one end, from which a chute of aluminum foil descended, depicting a waterfall, which led to the river itself, which had banks described by more small stones and a bed of aquarium gravel, and water, too. In the water lay a little rubber crayfish and a little rubber fish, which if you squeezed it (as Claude would for fairgoers) spawned several smaller rubber fish from its nether end. She'd never dared to hope for this much from him. And the best was still to come.