A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room

Read A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room for Free Online Page A

Book: Read A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room for Free Online
Authors: Dave St.John
Tags: Romance, teaching, public schools
or not here I come. He liked the
smell of her, for Christ’s sake—even that.
    Small. Slender. He could see over the top of her head
in his bare feet. Yet there was something in her eyes—a fierceness.
Years ago he’d seen a cougar gone to tree with her yearling. The
big cat’s eyes were like the hazel ones he saw before him now.
There was something hard in them—a look that said if she were
pushed, if she were made to stand and fight, she would come back
with every atom of her being. It scared him—it was what he liked
most about her.
    “You don’t kid around, do you?” It was a barter—three
days with this deadly angel for his job, straight across. A few
days with a lovely stranger for what little was left of his life.
He wanted her to take the deal, wanted it more than he’d wanted
anything in a long time. Something told him she would.
    He shook his head no. “You want my job, you can damn
well try to get it. I won’t resign. You heard the deal. I’m making
it easy enough.
    I’m not going to hand it to you. Take it or leave
it.” He went out, the locker room door swinging shut behind
him.
    • • •
    She’d take it.
    Her fingers moved quickly over the keys of her
laptop. Fourth period— self-defense. Two students sent to the
showers without office notification, a second violation of
assertive discipline guidelines.
    She slipped it back into her bag. Dh, she was good.
She didn’t need his resignation. She’d just asked to see what he
would say. It was a trick she’d learned at the mercados in Sao
Paulo—ask for more than you need and you’ll get what you want.
    Thursday night it would be over. Friday she’d be back
in her office, her wonderful office, smelling of new carpet and
freshly brewed chamomile tea. Her eye fell on the empty mat, moving
with grim slowness about the empty wrestling room, dead silent,
now.
    Where did that leave Chelsea, Moses, Frank, and the
others? It left them with a rookie who didn’t know a thing about
teaching except the useless nonsense they taught in teacher
training, and it left the district with fifteen thousand saved on
his salary. Not a bad deal—for the district.
    Could she do it? Could she fire a good teacher to
keep her job? She went to wait for him in the hall, letting the
door swing shut behind her.
    She didn’t know the answer.
    She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
    She waited for O’Connel in the stale hall.
    Through large windows she looked out over the front
lawn.
    The rain had let up, but the sky hung heavy still.
Lightning skipped above bloated clouds, rattling the plate
glass.
    The last time she’d seen her father had been a day
like this. He’d taken her up on the roof of their apartment, and
together they watched a storm blow in from the east, stinking of
the sea—of rotting kelp, crab shell, sewage.
    On the roof with its forest of aerials and vent
pipes, her father sat under the tin overhang of a pigeon loft
holding her close in strong arms. Around them Sao Paulo stretched
an endless noisy jumble to the hazy horizon.
    Sipping at a bottle of beer, eyes on clouds sweeping
above them, he spoke to her as he never had. Smelling of beer, of
sweat, of diesel, he pressed her to him, tired eyes full of love,
beard sandpaper against her face.
    “Minha pequenina, what will you be, eh? A great
woman? A special woman?” Tongue-tied with emotion, she could say
nothing. Most nights, shuffling home coated with dust turned to
black mud in the sweaty creases of arms and neck, he found little
to say. The family table at dinner was a solemn and silent place,
the only sound of eating, of drinking. Now, under a bloated sky, so
many words at once. He had never said such things—not to her.
    He took another sip of beer, sending droplets of
condensation running up the neck of the bottle. With a big
calloused hand, nails stained brown with hand-rolled cigarettes, he
stroked her hair. “My little one, who reads so much and says so
little.” He shook his head, smelling

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