Part One - Chapter 3
First lesson of the third week with her Year 10 class is about to begin. Molly has greeted each student at the door, as she always does, and the students have made their way to their seats.
She scans the room. Some, like Harriet, have been hooked from the start. Some are being drawn in, she thinks, by the stories she’s been telling, the extracts she’s been reading, the lively conversations they’ve been having. Others, like Tran, seem to be holding themselves back.
There’s a buzz – a restlessness? a sense of anticipation? – in the room as she moves towards centre stage. She won’t mark the roll. She can see already that all the seats are full, even Zeph’s. She’d rather jump right in. Get the ball moving.
She stands at the front and holds up a hand. She’s practised beginnings since her fraught first year, and the students now know the routine. The buzz dissolves.
Molly loves this moment. One moment it’s a room full of different bodies, each propelled and animated by disparate impulses, affected by widely diverse influences, moving towards different futures. And then, in moments like this, the many become one. Or so she allows herself to imagine.
‘Two sentences,’ she says, then pauses. The room is still.
‘First sentence.’ Another dramatic pause. She moves a few paces towards the windows. She’s established this spot as the ‘storytelling’ spot, though she’s never mentioned it to the students.
There was once a beautiful but strange princess…
She’s reading from one of the Grimm tales. Groans from a couple of the boys, but they’re muted and good-natured.
There was once a beautiful but strange princess who lived high up in a hall in a tower, and in that hall there were twelve windows facing north, east, south and west, through which she could see the whole kingdom, and through the first of the windows the princess could see more clearly than other people, and through the second even better, and still more sharply through the third, and so on increasingly until through the twelfth she could see everything that moved above ground and below ground; and it had been proclaimed that no man could marry her unless he could hide from her for a whole day, but if any man should try and was discovered by her, then his head would be cut off and put on a stake, and the city was already surrounded by ninety-seven stakes and on each stake there were ninety-seven rotting heads, and for a long time no-one made the attempt.
The classroom is still.
‘That was one sentence? Really?’ says one of the boys up the back.
‘Second sentence,’ Molly says. She moves away from the window.
‘Hang on,’ says a boy at the back. ‘What happens in the story?’
‘It’s obvious,’ says Tran. ‘Someone comes and manages to hide and marries the princess. Completely predictable. Not very original.’
Molly decides to leave the second sentence for the moment.
‘OK. In groups of two or three, you’ve got two minutes to come up with an ending to the story.’
‘I’ve already done that,’ says Tran. ‘Someone hides and marries the princess.’
‘But she’s evil,’ says one of the girls. ‘Who’s going to risk their lives to marry a witch.’
‘She’s hot,’ says a boy. ‘I’d try.’
‘The story was written by a man,’ says one of the girls. ‘It’s sexist. All the old stories are sexist.’
This is lively and good but slippery. Molly switches tack again.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she says. ‘Ready to write. 10 … 9 … 8 …’ It’s a ritual she’s already established. They know there’ll be a time limit, that the writing will be private unless they want to share it. Momentum has built around this routine as well. Almost everyone is more involved in it than they were in week one. Not Zeph though.
‘… 3 … 2 … 1 … In three minutes, write an ending to the story. Go!’
Most begin. When she sees someone pause, she gestures to write, not think. ‘Just let the words come,’ she’s said. ‘Any words.’
The time done, she asks if anyone wants to suggest an ending. Four or five contribute. They agree that someone succeeds. There are various thoughts about how, and differing opinions about whether the story ends happily or not.
‘It’s a story called “The Sea Rabbit” from the Grimm brothers,’ Molly tells them. ‘You might like to read it for yourselves, to see how it really ends. But not now. Second sentence.’
Molly is in the flow. It’s not always like this. It’s not often like this, not as purely as it is right now. It’s as if she’s not making decisions at all, just allowing herself to be carried along by a wave that is propelling them all forward. She knows that this might not be the reality for many of the students. But that’s what it feels like for her.
‘Second sentence.
The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind – whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves. There, not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide.’
The silence this time is different. The language is dated and complex for these fifteen-year-olds. But they’re not deterred by it, not this time. The mood in the room is such that they seem to trust that this will be worth a struggle.
‘Thoughts?’ she asks.
‘Isn’t that more than one sentence?’ It’s Tran. He’s right. She nods and smiles.
‘Other thoughts? Or questions?’ She has now turned on the data projector and this ‘second sentence’ is on the whiteboard.
‘What’s an Aladdin cave?’
‘Is this a house or something? Beneath the floor of a house?’
‘What does abide mean? There’s that song “Abide with me”. I’ve never known what abide means.’
Molly has worked hard these past three weeks to get to this point where her students are feeling comfortable about not knowing. She’s jumped on earlier put-downs, she’s made it clear she values uncertainty. Today it’s working.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Remember your number. One …’ She points to Harriet sitting at the front. ‘Two … three … four … five …,’ pointing each time to a different student. When she gets to ‘nine’, she starts again. By the time she’s finished pointing, everyone has a number. ‘Ones here,’ she says, pointing to a desk at the front of the room. ‘Twos here … threes here …’ The students move to their small groups of three or four.
‘In your groups, spend a minute or so asking questions about this second passage. Don’t try to answer or discuss the questions, not to begin with. Just note them down. Then, when I give the word, you can share ideas. Don’t rush to conclusions. Allow for differences of opinion. Listen to each other.’
For the next ten minutes, Molly watches. Occasionally, when she notices a rush to judgement or one student talking over another, she’ll say something. But for the most part she observes. And lets her batteries recharge.
She wonders whether the intense pleasure she feels during lessons like these is all hers. Do the students feel it too? Or at least some of them? As she looks around the room, she sees normally quiet students speaking, normally disengaged students listening. Even Zeph seems less in his own world than usual. But does this brief engagement during one English lesson have any lasting effect? They’ll leave here in twenty minutes and go to another lesson. And then another. And then out into the world, vastly different worlds, some of them more captivating than anything she can generate, or more demanding, or more distressing. Isn’t this a transient engagement, signifying (in the end) nothing? Aren’t most of them, anyway, more concerned about getting good grades, or at least not making a fool of themselves in the coming assignments, than in being gripped by these topics that grip her?
Perhaps. Almost certainly. But, right now, she doesn’t care. This feels so good. It’s why she teaches.
She calls time for the group work, and the students spend the rest of the lesson discussing questions, sharing thoughts. Most of the groups have come to a rough understanding of the second passage. A couple have made the connection with the first lesson of the semester and Molly’s dream. Enough students know – either from stories or from Disney adaptations – about Aladdin and jinn. The most interesting discussion comes when one group shares thoughts about the connection between the story of the princess’s towers and the image of the unconscious’s ascending vapours.
‘Harriet, have you got a minute?’ She suspects that Harriet is last to leave the room for a reason.
‘Sure. Thanks, by the way, for reading my writing.’
‘It was a pleasure, it really was. Please keep it coming. Whenever you like.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. And I enjoyed meeting your grandfather the other night. I gather from what you wrote that he’s a bit of an expert on myths and folk tales.’
‘He used to tell me heaps of them when I was little. He was an English teacher himself once. He’s got heaps of books about mythology and stories. It’s his thing.’
‘Do you think he’d be willing to talk to our class?’
‘I’m not sure. I think so. Do you want me to ask?’
‘Tell him I’d really appreciate it.’
‘I’ll ask.’
‘Come in Rhonda. Come in. Good to see you. Have a seat. Good weekend?’ Elliot Sullivan, Moreland’s principal, smiles.
It is a smile that has never warmed Rhonda, the school’s Head of English. Why is that, she has often wondered. He flashes it often enough, and there is no doubting that he cuts a dapper figure, with his black hair slicked back, his impeccable dress sense, his slightly out-of-place formality. He is a charming man. No, that isn’t quite right. He is a man who is conscious of an ability to charm, but it’s a charm that palls over time. And there lurks in his eyes, even when he smiles his broadest smile, the wild look of an animal wondering from which direction the next threat might come.
‘Thanks Elliot. Yes, a good weekend. You?’
‘Not quite as carefree as I had hoped, to tell you the truth,’ Elliot says as he pours them each a coffee from the machine that is permanently on. This careworn slightly self-pitying opening is a part of a ritual that Rhonda has come to expect. Elliot likes to let his staff know how hard he works, how heavy his yoke, how little sleep he is able to snatch given the magnitude of the challenges he faces on his staff’s behalf. ‘The paperwork from the Department just keeps piling up. It’s never ending. Never ending Rhonda.’
Rhonda has heard it all before. The first couple of times she’d found herself being flattered, as she now guesses she was supposed to feel, as though Elliot was feeling the isolation of leadership and just needed a trusted colleague with whom he could share the burden. She had sympathised, consoled, even offered some advice. But it soon became clear that this was not necessary. Elliot, she now suspects, was trotting out these regular assertions of his selflessness to whoever was around, perhaps in order to allay threats perceived to be lurking in dark corners. No such threats existed, as far as Rhonda could tell. The staff enjoyed his ineffectiveness; it enabled them to get on with their own work without hindrance.
And Rhonda now knows better than to respond honestly to his invitation to talk about herself. His ‘Good weekend?’ is part of the ceremony, and in those earlier meetings when she’d been naive enough to think it a genuine interest, she’d been puzzled by his slightly restless body language as she responded. She now knows that Elliot will only relax when he is talking about himself or about his particular concerns.
‘It’s never ending,’ Elliot says again. He sighs. Rhonda waits.
‘Well,’ says Elliot. ‘This semester. How have things begun in your English Department?’
Again Rhonda knows better than to speak with any candour. An experience or two of sharing with Elliot a concern about a member of staff has in the past unleashed a kind of irrational venom in Elliot that shocked her. Despite the flashy smile, despite his honed ability to work a public audience of parents or visitors, he seems driven by some deep-seated conviction that the world, given half a chance, is out to do him harm, that everyone is a potential threat.
Elliot’s rhetoric is about calm, rational and collaborative decision-making but Rhonda has seen that the reality is very different. He has an inventive opportunistic mind; he has a nose for the way the wind is blowing. The trouble is that the winds kept shifting and the staff never quite knows what the next big exciting thing is going to be. They have learnt, Rhonda amongst the first of them, to mouth the right platitudes and in the meantime to get on with what they know actually works in the classroom. It is an exhausting and sometimes dispiriting game.
‘It’s been a good beginning,’ says Rhonda.
‘Classes running smoothly?’
‘As smoothly as can be expected,’ says Rhonda. She knows that Elliot will approve of the slight world-weariness in her tone. As if she’s on his side, two lonely wolves in a hostile world.
‘Yes, there are always challenges. I appreciate the work you do Rhonda. I really do.’
‘Thanks Elliot,’ she says. She hopes that’s the end of it, that she can escape to her staffroom. But Elliot is frowning. There’s something on his mind.
‘Molly McInness,’ he says. ‘How is Molly travelling?’
Elliot has a set against Molly. Rhonda has been aware of it for some time. Why, she has no idea. Perhaps it’s that Molly thinks for herself. That she doesn’t play Elliot’s games. That’s possibly it. But Rhonda likes Molly. She likes the fresh air she blows into an English Department that has a tendency to be a bit stuffy.
‘Molly’s fine,’ she says guardedly. Elliot is looking out the window.
‘I’m not sure how evidence-based her practice is,’ he says.
Rhonda waits.
‘I heard her talking about learning styles in the staffroom. There’s no evidence, you know, to support the hypothesis that learning styles exist. I worry that her practice is based on a fallacy.’
This is so typical of Elliot, thinks Rhonda. He loves to assert that a lack of a long-term longitudinal quantitative study proving a particular thing is evidence that the thing doesn’t exist. It’s his solid ground. She wonders if the lack of hard data about how the universe was formed means that no such formation took place.
If only Elliot knew that Molly was the least of his worries, the mildest of his critics. There is a game played by the more scurrilous in her faculty. The game came out of one staff member’s speculation about what their Principal might read. Some doubted he read anything. Others suggested titles. Where the Wind Blows: Planning for Principals. The Beauty and the Bell Curve. The Minuscule Kingdom of the Unequivocal Fact. While Molly occasionally laughed at the suggestions, she never joined in the game.
‘I’ve heard no complaints,’ says Rhonda. ‘Her students seem task-oriented.’ She uses a buzz word that she hopes will speak to one of Elliot’s pet worries.
‘How well are her lessons mapped against demonstrable outcomes?’
Another of his pets. And perhaps this is the source of his particular aversion to Molly’s approach. Molly struggles with the whole notion of demonstrable outcomes. Where was the thrill of discovery, Molly would ask, the pleasure of encountering the unexpected, if every step of the way had to be pre-planned? Doesn’t the whole notion of an outcome which is assessed through some kind of objective criteria rule out wonder and awe? Where is the thrill of discovery in this overemphasis on planning to predetermined outcomes? They are good questions. Enlivening questions. Just the kinds of questions Elliot doesn’t want asked.
‘I have a parent, a member of the School Board, wanting to know what she’s doing with her Year 10 class. His son is unsettled by it. There seems to be little direction.’
‘I’ve heard no complaints,’ says Rhonda again.
‘I wonder if you’d ask Molly to drop her Unit Plan by my office at her earliest convenience. I’d like to see for myself.’
She likes my writing! She has suggested weekly lunchtime meetings where we could talk about things I’ve written. Would I like that, she wanted to know. Would I what! I tried to be cool, but I reckon she could have heard my voice wobble.
Also she wants Grandpa to talk to the class. I asked him last night and they’ve been on the phone to each other since. Apparently Grandpa’s coming into class on Friday.
Anyway, back to the chat with Ms McInness. She told me she’d been reading Moby Dick. Had I heard of it? Of course, I said. Had I read it? No, I said, a book about a whale hunt just doesn’t appeal.
She wanted to read to me a couple of bits from the novel. She wasn’t sure why, or what we might do with them, but she thought I might enjoy them. I said that would be fine.
Being with her is different from being with other teachers. With some teachers, I feel like I’m being pushed along a predetermined path so I don’t experience any of the danger of the forest. With Ms McInness, I feel like I’m being pushed into the forest, with her beside me, and that we have to find our way through, not really sure what we’re going to encounter. I like that.
Anyway … That’s twice I’ve written ‘anyway’. I keep re-reading what I’ve written, so that I can keep the thread going, and I just noticed how I’ve repeated the word ‘anyway’. That’s not good writing. But maybe it’s because in this journal I’m allowing myself to get sidetracked. It’s like being in that forest, being distracted by noises and colours and movements, then remembering that I need to get back onto a track of some kind.
Anyway. Back to lunchtime. Back to reading me a couple of bits from Moby Dick.
The first bit was all about what it’s like to be tucked up warm in bed in a freezing room. It was a really cool description, and it finished with this neat simile. I wrote it down. Then you lie there like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. Teachers are always going on about similes and metaphors, but the way we talked about it was different.
‘Do you like that?’ she asked me. When I said I did, she asked me if I could tell her why.
‘Not really,’ I said.
‘Is it the image or the rhythm?’ she said.
I’d never thought it being the rhythm. Like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. I said it out loud.
‘It’s not the rhythm so much …’ I said.
‘It’s something else,’ she said. ‘Read it out loud and listen to the sounds it makes.’
‘Like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. It’s the alliteration. One warm. And the assonance. Spark, heart, arc.’
It sounded like showing off a bit, but I wasn’t showing off. It was like solving a puzzle, discovering something fresh, different from boring English lessons about poetic techniques. We were two writers – or that’s what it felt like – studying another writer’s art and discovering things that maybe we could use.
‘I’ve got a second passage,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a copy of it. Here, have a read.’
She handed me the copy.
... as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastedly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
We talked about this passage for AGES! I read it silently, she read it out loud, we talked about all the things I didn’t get (like the white bone, which was just the sea being frothed up by the ship’s bow so it looks like a bone in a dog’s mouth) and in the end I thought it was just the most wonderful bit of writing I’d ever read … but maybe that was because I was sharing it with her and it just felt like we were doing something special and thrilling together. Her interest was like … it was like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal!
:-)
She wants me to do more writing. An observation. Notice details. So I’m on the lookout. I can’t wait.
Zeph is first into the class. It’s Friday. First period of the day.
He’s spent the last half hour in the warmth of the school library, drawing an image from last night’s dream.
He’d dreamt that his mother was still alive. He was sitting with her by a river. His head was in her lap and she was stroking his forehead. She was saying some hippy dippy stuff about harmony which he didn’t understand. But her voice sounded warm and dreamy and relaxing. In the dream he was thinking that he must try to remember what she was telling him. She started to sing. He felt full of joy.
When he woke up, he could hear the wind blowing outside the apartment window. Lying in bed, he wished he could return to the dream, where he felt cocooned.
In the library before school, he started to draw the dream. But he couldn’t remember his mother’s face. Not how it was in the dream, or how it was in real life. He didn’t have any photos of her. And now, a little more than five years since she’d died, his memory of her face has gone.
He’s already sketched the river, a boy’s head resting in a lap, but the mother has no face.
Zeph makes his way to his seat at the back of the English class. He is first to sit down, and he feels the eyes of the other students on him as they enter.
He hates these first moments of any lesson, before the focus switches to the teacher. He feels exposed. He imagines students staring at him. He never looks up. He tries to imagine an invisible wall around him, so thick it cannot be penetrated and he cannot be seen. He feels the constant threat of being noticed, invaded, undone. Made less held together.
‘Who’s the old man?’ he hears a boy ask his neighbour.
Zeph takes a quick look. There’s a white-haired man who’s just walked in with the teacher. The pretty girl with the dark hair and hazel eyes – he’s noticed her before – is standing with them, talking to the English teacher and with her hand on the old man’s arm.
‘Harriet’s dad I reckon,’ says another. ‘See, she’s introducing him.’
‘Her dad? He’s too old.’
‘Grandfather maybe?’
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
Zeph is aware of a tension leaving his body. No-one’s looking at him. He’s invisible, and relieved.
He gets out his drawing of the dream. If he can’t remember his mother’s face, maybe it can just be any female face? Someone from this class perhaps? He could sketch someone while the lesson is going on. The girl with the dark hair, Harriet, is walking towards her seat. Her, maybe.
Zeph takes out his sharpened pencil. The girl sits looking to the front. He cannot see her face. He wants to sketch her face. But then she turns to look out the window while some late stragglers file in. Zeph takes a mental snapshot of her slightly flushed cheeks, her high forehead, her dark shoulder length hair brushed back over her ears and parted down the middle. He notices her eyes, full of life and not-a-little fire. Zeph has seen this kind of face in the book of old Italian paintings he sometimes flicks through in the library. A Madonna face. Would it work in his drawing, he wonders.
First the teacher and then the old man are talking to the class. Their voices become a background buzz.
Zeph begins to draw.
Max stands a little awkwardly at the front of the classroom as Molly introduces him.
‘We’re so pleased to welcome Harriet’s grandfather to our class. Mr Henderson is a story teller, so Harriet has told me, and something of a scholar of folk tales, and I’ve invited him here today to share some of his thoughts.’
As Molly speaks, Max glances at Harriet. She is sitting at the front of the class. She is avoiding his eye, and there’s a pink flush around her neck.
‘I’ve asked him to speak for a while,’ continues Molly, ‘and then we’ll open things up for a conversation. Please welcome Mr Henderson to our class.’
There’s some self-conscious applause, led by Molly, and then the room is quiet. Bodies settle into seats. Max sits on the teacher’s desk. He folds his hands in front of him, a thumb idly stroking a protruding vein on the back of his hand. A slight but still comfortable tension builds in the silence.
‘I want you to imagine that what I’m about to tell you is true.’
He pauses again. He sees a frown or two on the faces in front of him.
‘I have a brother who is a scientist,’ he says. ‘He and a group of his colleagues have built a most unusual and marvellous machine. How he has done it, I don’t know, but he tells me that this extraordinary computer can answer any question put to it. Any question at all. And he’s asked me to be involved in a little experiment. He’s asked me to give him some questions for this computer, just as a test run, to see what kinds of answers it comes up with. I thought I might ask your advice. What questions should I submit to this computer?’
There’s a silence again. Max can see the students wondering how this is connected to stories and their English class. Harriet is smiling though. She’s heard this before.
‘Who’s going to win the Grand Final this year?’ calls out a boy.
‘Splendid,’ says Max. ‘Anyone else?’
‘How can I make a million bucks in a day?’ says another.
‘Good question! Any more?’
‘When will the world end?’
‘Is there life on other planets?’
‘How many kids will I have?’
‘Excellent,’ says Max. ‘One more.’
‘What’s the point of all this?’ It’s Tran up the back. Max senses the instant shift of mood in the room. Molly is frowning.
‘The best question of the lot,’ says Max. ‘What is the point of all this? Of course there’s no such computer. But the questions are real. Your questions are the kind of questions that we all want answered. What will the future be like? What happens when I die? How can I live a good life? These are questions that have been asked for as long as there have been humans living in society. Today some seek answers to these questions in religion. Some turn to science. Or to the astrologists or fortune tellers. Or to some leader who promises to have the simple answers to these tough questions. There aren’t any simple answers, of course. Most of these questions take us into the realm of mystery. Stories are an attempt to talk about the mystery.’
Is this sounding too neat, Max wonders. The mysterious is so difficult to talk about, so open to over-simplification or crass new ageism. He senses a new restlessness in the room, perhaps because he’s lost them or because Tran’s challenge still hovers.
‘The point I’m wanting to make here,’ Max continues, ‘is that folktales have always existed because there are some big questions that can’t be approached in rational or scientific ways. Logical thought is never going to tell us the meaning of our lives, yet it’s a question we all wrestle with. Science is never going to tell us if we have a soul or what happens after we die, yet we all think about it.’
‘And folktales have the answers? You’re joking, right. No-one believes that stuff.’ It’s Tran again.
Max sits still. He doesn’t look at Tran, who no doubt is trying to stare him down. He doesn’t look at Molly, who he senses is uncomfortable with the way the atmosphere in the class has stiffened. He doesn’t look at Harriet, who he suspects is cringing.
There’s a tactic he’s learned from sticky moments in the past. Circumambulate. Walk around the object. Look at it from a different angle. Don’t get stuck.
Max stands up suddenly and moves towards one of the windows. Then he turns to the class.
‘Once upon a time,’ he says, ‘there was a king who had a great forest beside his castle, teeming with game of all kinds: deer, rabbits, ducks and the like. One day, he sent out a huntsman to shoot a deer, but the huntsman didn’t come back. He sent more huntsmen out, but they didn’t return either, and not one of the pack of hounds they had taken with them was ever seen again. From that time on no-one dared enter the forest, and there it lay in deep silence and solitude, and all that could be seen from time to time was an eagle or a hawk flying over it.’
Silence.
‘Well,’ says Max. ‘You’re listening. Why? You know it’s not true. It never happened. It’s just a story.’
Silence.
‘We want to know what happens,’ says a girl at the front.
‘Yes, we want to know what happens. It’s true of all good stories. We want to know what happens. And why do we want to know what happens. The answer is always the same. It’s because we recognise the situation. We have experienced this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In this case, the king is faced with the totally unexpected. Things are no longer as they once were. The taken-for-granted has gone. This is true for us all. Life keeps throwing up challenges.’
‘But they’re different, these challenges,’ says the same girl. ‘This king, whoever he is, will no doubt solve this mystery in some way. But his solution isn’t going to help me with whatever problem I’m faced with tomorrow. We don’t have forests and disappearing hunters to cope with.’
‘Folktales do help,’ says Max. ‘This one says something about challenges. About how we all face them, it’s a part of the human condition. It also says something about courage and persistence and trust.’
Max begins to draw a big circle on the whiteboard under the heading ‘The functions of myth’. He’s about to talk about Joseph Campbell’s four functions of mythology. But again Tran interrupts.
‘Is this on the Common Test?’
This is puzzling. The Common Test? Max looks over at Molly for help.
‘Tran! Enough. Go on Mr Henderson.’
But Tran won’t be silenced. ‘It’s just that I’m wondering why we’re spending this time on the functions of myths if that isn’t in the Common Test.’
‘Because it’s interesting and it’s important,’ says Molly. ‘Please go on Mr Henderson.’
‘If it’s so important,’ says Tran, ‘then I guess it’s on the Common Test.’
Max senses a shift in the class’s sympathies. Tran has instinctively surfaced an underlying concern.
Molly tries to ignore it, but before Max can continue, Tran says, ‘So, should we all be taking notes? We’re spending so much time on this that it’s obviously on the Common Test. Can someone lend me a pen?’ He’s looking pleased with himself.
Max can see that Molly is furious and made speechless. Harriet is looking shamed, flushed. He struggles on with his diagram, but without conviction. His words sound lame, forced. When he asks if anyone has any questions or comments, the room is silent. The lesson limps to a close.
‘I’m so sorry Max,’ Molly says once the students have left. ‘That was inexcusable.’
‘I’m not sure I handled that as well as I might,’ says Max.
‘You were fine,’ says Molly. ‘Don’t worry about Tran, he enjoys stirring things up. No, what you were saying was great. It will challenge them. I’m so glad you said what you did.’
But she’s clearly deflated. Max feels for her. He worries about Harriet, too.
It’s 4.15 that afternoon and Rhonda is still at her desk in an empty English staffroom. Elliot appears at the door. This is highly unusual. She can’t remember the last time he visited their staffroom.
‘Rhonda, I’m glad you’re here. No-one else? I was hoping to catch Molly.’
‘She’s gone home.’
‘As has everyone else. I see,’ says Elliot pointedly. ‘You and I will be here until late, I fear. No rest for the wicked.’
She resents the implication that her teachers don’t work hard enough. Most of them, she knows, will be marking and planning over the weekend and will arrive at school the next day with less sleep than is healthy. But this, she muses archly, is not an observable verifiable fact, nor the subject of a long-term quantitative study, and therefore cannot possibly be true.
‘You wanted to see Molly?’ she asks.
‘She hasn’t shown me her Unit Plan yet. I’m sure you passed on the message?’
‘She’s had a rough day,’ says Rhonda.
‘I know the feeling. It’s not been easy for any of us Rhonda.’ Again that look-at-me move. ‘Tran’s father’s been on the phone. He’s on the School Board, you know. He’s not happy.’
‘What’s he worried about?’
‘His son’s progress. His son comes home frustrated, he tells me. He’s not being adequately prepared for the coming assessment.’
‘I’ll let Molly know.’
‘Would you? I’d be very grateful. Tran’s a good student. They’re a good family and they want the best for their boy.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
‘Well, sorry to have disturbed you Rhonda. I know how busy you must be. No rest for the wicked eh?’
Fucking Tran. What a dickhead! Thinks he’s so smart, swaggering like that in front of his dopey mates, puffing out his big-man chest. I wanted to say something to him after class, but I know he’d turn it against me.
Dickhead.
Ms McInness has suggested I do some descriptive writing. Observe carefully, notice the details, she said. I’ve tried writing about Tran but all that comes out is an ugly stream of invective. As above.
And then yesterday after school, when I was on the train, I saw a kid from my English class, Zeph, about four rows in front. He had his earphones in and didn’t see me, so I watched and made some notes and afterwards did some writing.
He sits leaning his forehead against the train window. He’s wearing a purple hoody. He stares into the distance, but there’s a faraway look in his eyes and I doubt that he sees what is out there. Maybe he’s listening to a sad song. Or maybe he’s remembering something. His head gently rocks to the rhythm of the train. Perhaps the rocking of the train is soothing, like being rocked in a cradle.
He blinks as if his eyes are sore, and he yawns so often it’s almost comical. He’s tired. Was he out late last night? Maybe he sleeps rough and is taking the train trip for warmth?
He has thick eyebrows which arc perfectly over his dark brown eyes. His jaw is square and his lips are full, almost pouty. There’s the faint shadow where one day a dark beard will grow. He looks unhappy, and yet there’s a softness about this face in repose which makes it rather nice to look at. I don’t remember him looking like this at school.
He is clutching a bag to his chest. I wonder what’s in the bag. Not school books or sporting equipment. It’s bulgy, as though he’s got groceries in there or something. Again I imagine him sleeping on the streets, if not now maybe some time in the future. My heart feels heavy.
When he stands up to leave the train, I see that he’s wearing black tracksuit pants and white sneakers. He is also taller than I expected. He drifts past me as if still lost in thought, his bag now slung over one shoulder. He is in a world of his own in the midst of this crowded carriage. He gets off and disappears into the gloomy winter afternoon.
I saw him again today, at lunchtime in the library. He was drawing. I wanted to go over and talk to him, but he was so into his drawing that I felt I’d be intruding.
But I did look over his shoulder as I left the library.
He was drawing me.