Death, Unchartered. Dorothy Van Soest
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chair with a book and a drink. I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen before preparing lesson plans for the next day, ruminating the whole time about what happened in the meeting.
By the time I went to bed I was so tied up in knots that sleep was impossible. I had double-binded myself. My original sin had been not reporting what I’d witnessed to the principal right away. I’d done the easy thing, not the right thing. Yes, Frascatore had suckered me, but I had walked right into it.
I stared up at the sinister shadows slithering across the ceiling. The burden of my transgression was heavy, and much as I wanted to, I couldn’t put it down. I castigated myself for being so passive. I’d had another chance to tell the truth during the meeting, and had still remained silent, even as every fiber of my being was calling out to me to do the right thing.
It wasn’t the first time. My actions often were miles behind my passion. After years of careful training while I was growing up, it had become second nature for me to remain silent. I learned to not express my opinions, to not make waves. But I hadn’t been born passive. My passivity had come in small steps. Like colluding with evil came in small steps.
Enough already, I scolded myself. You might as well wear a sign saying you’re sorry for the Vietnam War, the bombing of Laos, and everything else that’s wrong in the world. Better yet, while you’re at it, why not apologize for your existence. Cut yourself a break!
I pulled off the covers and slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Frank. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. No roaches scattered across the floor when I turned on the light. At least that was something. Then the water, cool on my throat, calmed me into a new thought. If my passivity had come in small steps, then why couldn’t it be undone in small steps? Why not, indeed?
I went back to bed, lay down with my hands on the back of my neck, and stretched my legs out. I closed my eyes, and images of my students and their apartments zoomed by as if I were a photographer snapping pictures of travels to new places. One scene in particular came into such sharp focus that it was almost as if I were there again.
~
I’m standing in the foyer of a four-story apartment building, waiting to be buzzed in. I push the apartment bell for the third time, and still no response. I walk outside, ready to give up and leave, when Mentayer’s brother comes running up to me. He’s out of breath.
“Ms. Sylvia,” he says. “I was s’posed to be watching out for you and tell you they was out back. I’ll show you the way.”
“Thank you, Markus,” I say. “So, is second grade still going well for you?” Every day at noon, Markus came to my classroom to meet his sister so they could walk home together. He was a cute kid, small for his age and full of energy, eager to chat and clean the blackboard for me and help me put things away. When Mentayer pulled him away with a reprimand, he’d tag along behind her with a skip in his step and without complaint.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nods, and his mouth falls open the same way his sister’s does. His resemblance to her is remarkable in other ways as well: a small gap between his two front teeth, a lopsided smile, and curious brown eyes.
His little hand grips mine as he leads me along a narrow, cracked strip of concrete to the back of the building. There, in a postage-stamp yard, sits his sixty-six-year-old grandmother, square of body yet wiry in the face and arms and dressed in a rumpled muumuu with magenta flowers and chartreuse leaves. She’s perched on a wooden crate scooping pigeon poop with a rusty metal spatula onto pieces of newspaper, which she then folds and tucks under the crate. Mentayer stands next to her.
“Grandma,” she says, “why don’t you put it in the garbage can? You come back later, there’s gonna be little pieces of poop scattered around for you to pick up all over again.”
“Rats gotta eat, too, girl. Everyone and everything’s gotta eat something.”
Mentayer spots me, and her eyes light up. “Look, Grandma, it’s Ms. Sylvia. My teacher. She’s here, like I told you.” Her gap-toothed smile widens as she takes my hand from Markus and pulls me forward. “Grandma, this is Ms. Sylvia,” she says.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. LeMeur,” I say.
“Everyone calls me Grandma. Don’t expect you to be no different.”
I smile. This might take some getting used to. “Is this an okay time?” I ask.
Mentayer’s grandmother nods. She wipes her hands on her dress and stands up with effort. “You two go on in the house,” she says with a shooing motion of her hands and a flick of her wide hips. “Be sure to watch your feet now. Don’t you be dragging any dog shit or other garbage into the house again, you hear?” Mentayer scrapes the bottom of her shoes on the concrete and Markus scrambles behind her around the corner to the front of the building.
“Now, tell me, Ms. Sylvia,” Mrs. LeMeur says. “What trouble did my granddaughter get herself into this time to make her teacher come to here? I swear, Markus has more sense than she does even though he’s the younger. I tell that child every morning to try and act more like her brother, but it don’t seem to make no difference.”
“I’m delighted to have Mentayer in my class,” I say. “I wanted to meet you. I’m visiting all my students’ homes. You’re the first.”
She squints at me. “Huh! You sure she’s not giving you trouble? She was a handful for all her other teachers, don’t know why third grade would be any different.”
“She’s smart, as I’m sure you know. She’s a fluent reader, way above her grade level. School can be boring for a child as bright and quick as she is.”
“Her momma was smart, too.” A deep sadness gathers around Mrs. LeMeur’s mouth. “But that didn’t make no difference. Drugs took hold of her after Markus was born. Killed her in the end. I don’t want Mentayer going that road.”
~
Frank rolled over, and when his arm brushed against my cheek, I scooted away from him and faced the wall, not wanting the images in my head to go away. I kept thinking about Mentayer. She bored easily, the work much too elementary for her, and then would act out in ways that were challenging in their ability to disrupt, yet thrilling in their creativity. She’d grunt, pant, tap her fingers on her desk, her feet on the floor, sometimes burst into dramatic energy, her crowning achievement a swoon and a roll of her eyes. I designed challenging projects for her to tackle when I sensed she was restless, and more often than not the advanced work absorbed her interest.
I went to see her grandmother two more times after our visit in September. The first time I went to show her a story Mentayer had written and to praise her granddaughter for how well she was learning to manage her impatience in class. The second time I went to confer with her about an incident involving Mentayer in the gym. An older boy had sneaked up behind her when she was jumping rope and pulled out one of the ribbons braided in her hair. She gave chase with the rope and, in her words, “slapped that boy silly.” The boy took off crying, “like a baby,” and Mentayer ended up getting in trouble with the boy’s teacher. Who, thankfully, wasn’t Frascatore.
We met in the living room that time, Mrs. LeMeur sitting in an overstuffed brown chair, and Mentayer and me across from her on a ragged couch that was scratchy and had wooden legs. Markus was there, too, sitting in the corner on a chair he’d brought in from the kitchen. His eyes were wide with curiosity and his mouth open as he watched the scene unfold.
The apartment was immaculate and smelled of fresh paint. According to Mentayer, her grandmother made the landlord strip off all the paint down to the wood because there was lead in it, and then he repainted the whole apartment, which was why they all had to stay with an uncle for a week.
“What do you think about what happened in the gym?” I asked Mentayer.
“I think that boy won’t ever mess with me again.”
“That ain’t no excuse for doing what you done,” Mrs. LeMeur said. She wagged her finger to make her point.