The Children's War Read online

  “My wife will be there. And my ten-month-old daughter. What do you think is going to happen?”

  The Finance Committee scoured the school district’s bylaws, but could find no prohibition against students being inside teachers’ homes. Next they tried to bury the proposition beneath paperwork, but Peyton Almoss retaliated by holding an open workshop on forgery during detention period, which drew record numbers and supplied the music club with enough permission slips for years to come.

  —Lyle Harris is complaining that some of the students are calling him by his first name.

  —That’s not necessarily a sign of disrespect—nor is ‘Mr. Harris’ necessarily a sign of respect. Nor is a noisy classroom necessarily a disordered one. Or sneakers necessarily a sign of diseased morals.

  —Rules become very confusing for the teenage mind if they do not apply universally, Matthew. It’s only a matter of time before one of the students asks why, if you’re allowed to wear sneakers, it’s not all right for them.

  —Rules become very confusing for the teenage mind, and not just the teenage mind, if they don’t make any sense, Trevor. Good reasons make good rules.

  Nearly one hundred students crammed into Matt and Gwyneth’s house for three hours of board games, darts, dancing, gossip, and pizza. At ten-thirty there came rumor of a knock at the front door. On Monday morning, the entire student body was talking about Matt’s showdown with the police.

  “It’s okay, I’m their teacher. We’re not being that loud. And it is a Friday.”

  “Well, just be sure to shut it down by midnight. This is a residential area.”

  By the time school let out on Monday, the music club’s membership had exploded to over three hundred, and they were forced to look for a bigger venue for the Christmas party.

  —I’m on your side, Matthew. But there is a great deal that is out of my hands.

  —What happens if Judd Haziz comes to the party despite being suspended?

  —Well, if it got back to the Disciplinary Committee—he could be expelled.

  —That’s what I thought. Thanks a lot, Trevor.

  The day after the Christmas party was the last before holidays, when the administration, knowing that no learning would be interrupted, distributed evaluation forms. These were to be filled out anonymously, in the absence of the teacher, and under the eye of a student invigilator who was instructed to seal the evaluations in an envelope and deliver them to the office. This ceremony was largely meaningless, since the teachers were allowed to review their evaluations and could identify most of their students’ handwriting; but it lent a solemnity to the proceedings that most of the students responded to, and their dignified postures as they completed the questionnaires suggested effort, precision, and justice.

  Matt tried to dispel this gravity with mock fear, mock threats, and mock bribes, but no one was amused. They waited sullenly for him to leave the room so that they could begin writing about him. In the hallway he exchanged mock grimaces with the other exiled educators, some of whom told him not to worry: the evaluations were just a formality for the school’s insurance policy. But the atmosphere remained portentous.

  He had not enjoyed the party. He had arrived late, with untamed cowlicks, on Gwyneth’s bicycle, because she would not let him drive the car, with its faulty signal, after dark. The decorations were already up, the punch and cookies already out, and the first round of Dance Lotto tickets already drawn. His official job that night was DJ, and to avoid being tied to the stereo, he had put five hours of his favorite songs on a disk; but after half an hour, someone put on a Polly Pringle record of staggering mediocrity—and no one even noticed the change. It seemed that in every room he entered, the laughter was just ending and a game had just begun. He stood for twenty minutes by the pool table, munching cookies and making sarcastic commentary, and though Hollis Turanti was playing without a partner, no one asked him to join. Searching for Anita Paulstone, who by note had asked to talk to him tonight, he found only Devlin’s parents, who mortifyingly thanked him for helping bring their son out of his shell, and asked his advice on consolidating the boy’s social and academic gains.

  Then, just when he had insinuated himself into a game of Monopoly, Devlin himself tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey, Matt. Judd just showed up.”

  Everyone looked up, looked at each other, looked at Matt to see what he would say.

  “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Shouldn’t somebody say something to him?”

  “If he wants to risk getting expelled over a stupid party, it’s his decision.”

  The Monopoly game fizzled, and Matt again went looking for Anita. As the search wore on, it seemed to grow in importance. Anita was surely one of the most attractive, well-dressed, and popular girls in the school. She had a little bow-tie mouth and a laugh like an eraser skidding across a desktop. When she was displeased with someone, she showed them not her middle but her pinky finger; and she cursed like a sailor in her high sweet voice. She was constantly grooming herself, adjusting her hair, her skirt, her bra. In class, when asking a question, she insisted on raising her arm, supporting it with her other hand and leaning forward in a way that flaunted her cleavage. When she brought her notebook to his desk he could smell her perfume, and her long hair sometimes brushed his shoulder.

  “Hey, Matt. Can I talk to you?” It was Peyton Almoss, looking distressed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, Jen C. told me Palm-Wine saw Elton and Alitz go into a bedroom upstairs.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a problem? I mean, the school could shut us down if they found out, couldn’t they?”

  “I guess Elton and Alitz never thought about that.”

  “Well, should we do something?”

  “What do you want to do? It’s Devlin’s house. Talk to him about it.”

  Matt did not know what Anita really felt. In the halls and parking lot she hardly acknowledged him. Was she made shy by her infatuation, or did she only flirt with him in class out of cruelty? Nothing could ever happen between them, of course, and not only because he was happily married; but it was delicious to imagine her in love with him, and to rehearse the gentle, complimentary words he would use to tell her he was unattainable. He studied her note for clues, but the words were noncommittal.

  Khaji handed him a glass of punch, and he found himself wishing that someone had had the guts to spike it.

  “It’s not a very good party, is it?” he said.

  “No! I think it’s great.”

  “When I think of some of the parties we threw back in my high school . . .”

  He was still lost in remembrance when Anita Paulstone poked him in the ribs.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you, Matty.”

  “And I’ve been looking all over for you, Neetie.”

  Khaji moved away.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Let’s find someplace quieter.”

  But every room was crowded, and in every room someone shouted his or Anita’s name. They did not reply, and the others’ eyes followed their progress knowingly. Before they could find a suitable refuge, Devlin grabbed Matt by the arm.

  “Hey, Matt. I think we got a problem. Some guys just showed up that I don’t think they’re in the music club. In fact I don’t think they even go to Dundrum.”

  “So charge them a ticket.”

  “Well, the thing is, they sort of brought some beers.”

  This news was announced during a lull in the music, and several faces turned their way. The faces showed disappointment and appeal; and Matt imagined that the disappointment was directed at what they expected him, as a teacher, to say, and the appeal at what they hoped he, as one of them, might say.

  Realization dawned in
him. The party was dull because he was there. His presence made it a school function. At none of the parties he had enjoyed in high school had a teacher been present. And at all of them, without exception, there had been alcohol.

  He smiled and spread his hands. “I’m not going to say anything if you guys don’t.”

  “Forget it,” said Devlin. “I’ll talk to Peyton.”

  The music started again, and the faces turned away—Anita’s too.

  “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “I wanted to ask you something, but I think I know what you’ll say.”

  “Well, ask anyway. Maybe the answer’s not what you think.”

  She tucked hair behind her ear and adjusted her belt impatiently. “I was going to ask you if you’d ask Peyton if he likes me, but you would’ve said I should ask him myself, right?”

  All the times she had ignored him in the hallway or in the parking lot: Peyton had been with him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I might have asked him for you.”

  “That’s okay. I guess I’ll probably just ask him myself. That’s probably the grown-up thing to do.”

  Taylor Medaval came out of the classroom, clutching the envelope of evaluations importantly. He was reluctant to relinquish them.

  “I’m supposed to take them to the office myself. It says right here.”

  “That’s just so they get there, dog. Do you think Ms. Angeles cares, or even notices who puts them in her box? Come on, I’ll save you the trip. I’m going there anyway.”

  “Don’t you need to be in class? There’s still fifteen minutes left.”

  “I’m putting you in charge.”

  The boy’s eyes became glazed with visions of prepotence, and his grip on the envelope relaxed.

  Matt secured himself in a toilet stall, tore open the envelope, and riffled through the forms, reading at random:

  “Mr. Roades needs to take more care when he writes on the blackboard.” —“It was often difficult to concentrate in Mr. Roade’s class because of all the talking going on all the time.” —“We should of spent more time on preparing for the final exam and not so much time making decorations and planning for the music club, when some people in class were not even in the music club (not me) although I did enjoy the preparations a lot. But not the party itself, for reasons that I will be mum about here.” —“Matt seems to have some teacher’s pets in this class, I will not say who though.” —“Hard to get anything done in this class.” —“Spent too much time talking about himself (but we all liked it).” —“Mr. Roades is rude and forgets people’s names.” —“Some of the things talked about and the language used in this classroom was not always appropriate.” —“I learned a lot in this class but I couldn’t help the sneaking suspicion that I could of learned more: That is to say, if the teacher (Mr. Roades) had not spent so much time helping the more ‘challenged’ students catch up to the level of the rest of the class (like 90%).” —“With Matt’s brains and education he could get a lot of jobs better paid than a teacher.” —“There should have been more structure to this class.” —“Matt tries too hard.”

  He searched in vain for the praise and gratitude that he’d been expecting, then for some explanation for his students’ treason. Their comments purported to be objective, and even hinted at sorrow for having to be so blunt, but much of what they said was nonsense. He knew all his students’ names. He did not teach to the bottom ten percent, but rather, if anything, the top ten. If there was too much talking, whose fault was that? He wrote on the blackboard perfectly legibly.

  Waves of anger and sadness passed through him. Did they really believe what they had written? If so, why had no one ever asked him to write more clearly or to talk less? Why had none of them ever said, “It’s too loud in here,” or “Let’s move on to the next problem already”? And even if some of them had spoken up (had some of them?), what did they think that he could, or should, have done about it? Did they really want another teacher who told his class to shut up and sit down and turn to page sixty-seven?

  No, he decided that the feedback was not sincere, but ad hominem slander. These must be the words of the unpopular students, the quiet students who had been too timid to join the music club, the ugly students who resented the attention paid him by their attractive classmates, the stupid students who had been unable to grasp the coursework. Under the cover of anonymity, they were venting their spite. He was able to entertain this hypothesis until he came upon an evaluation, proudly signed, by Khaji, who may have been quiet, but was not stupid, ugly, or, since joining the music club, unpopular. He read her words with bewilderment and pain, and stuffed the sheet of paper in his pocket before returning the others to the envelope and delivering them to Ms. Angeles, the school secretary.

  “To be truthful to begin with, I would not recommend it (the teacher or the program) to other people. I am in twelfth grade now and therefore naturally I have experienced every different kind of teaching math, but the way Matt did it here would be for me the bottom of them all, really.”

  The music club called no meetings in the new year, and eventually its constitution lapsed. It was revived, two years later, by four students interested in starting a school band.

  “I will however put forth the opinion that Matt (he preferred to be called Matt) can be very likeable, but that might not be what we needed above all. It can help to keep people paying attention (I mean when you are charming and talk well and are funny) but not everyone. I am afraid that many people get left out under that method. Maybe a few don’t like the humor, and a few don’t like the math. In either event, if you make it optional to learn, a lot of people will not bother. Would that be their fault? They are the people I can’t help but feel regret for.”

  Judd Haziz was never expelled, because no word of his having defied suspension ever reached the Disciplinary Committee. No teacher heard him speak again in class, and he flunked out of high school with dignity.

  “What can you do for them? I don’t know, but it would have to be individualized. You can’t treat the whole roomful of people like one good, attention-paying, wanting-to-learn pupil. People are all different. Give too much freedom, and you give people the choice to fail. But failure can’t be an option, a good teacher would believe. You are in my opinion being undemocratic toward the people who don’t care if they fail.”

  A year later, one of Matt’s students accused him of abusing his own daughter. No one really believed it, but several of Matt’s colleagues muttered that they were not surprised: it was the sort of thing that came of fraternizing with teenagers, who, after all, hadn’t yet learned to master their emotions.

  “Another point: It can be nice to be nice, and maybe a bad grade can feel like a penalty, but when people know for a certain fact that they cannot get a grade below maybe a C, they will quit trying if they ever tried to begin with. Therefore again I think trying to be helpful rendered Matt actually unhelpful.”

  The scandal soured Matt on teaching and cast a shadow over his career, but he did not quit. He didn’t know what else to do, and was afraid of the unknown.

  “Next, I hope I will be permitted to opine that external to the educational context Matt could learn a thing or two, too. I am talking now about the oh-very-popular club with the puzzling name. You know the one I mean. Here too he didn’t do the job required of him. And the outcome? Everyone who attended will be embroiled in a web of concealment and deceit till their dying day. Thank you once again, Mr. ‘Matt’ Roades. Sincerely, Khaji Ji DuPreane.”

  As the years passed, his classes gained structure, and his evaluations improved.

  —Hey, Mr. Roades? There’s just one thing I don’t understand.

  —Let me see. Oh. This looks like you’re getting into matrices.

  —I just don’t understand why you can’t divide a matrix.

  —Yeah. Huh. You know, I wouldn�
�t worry about this stuff. You won’t have to know anything past chapter twelve.

  —But if you can multiply a matrix, why can’t you divide it?

  —Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about it. You don’t need to know that.

  A GIRL SAT in the motel parking lot, reading a book too large for her and keeping an eye on her two younger sisters playing in the dirt. She was still learning to read and many of the words were strange to her, so the page appeared rather like this:

  The best eye on its own would be puviqkirr if it did not hold the ends of immaliqable niqti foziqs that pick up the ssolako set up by the light qaemse. Huvitiq, the many millions of niqti foziqs would be voqsaekly superfkauar if there were not certain areas in the brain specially dirofmed to rirnumc to the cgilobek and electrical riebsoums of these foziqs. It is here that the ilnqirroum produced by the pgusums on the light-simrosoti layer of the eye first becomes light and color. The light we sannuricly see with our eyes is not born in this layer nor in the niqti foziqs. It first comes into eworsimbi in the brain. Light and color are tgiqiduqi not outside us: we carry them within ourselves, for the world around us is blacker than the most ssxfoem night.

  She looked around in surprise. Sunlight lay upon everything, causing the grass and trees to shimmer, the pavement to sparkle, the church and factory spires to glow, and the flags of the car sales lot to scintillate in the distance like an ocean. She could not believe that all this existed only in her brain, or that the world was in reality dark even when the sun shone. The idea seemed foolish: one had only to open one’s eyes and look to see that the light and color were out there, in the things themselves, and not in her head. Disappointed with herself for failing to grasp the book’s truth (she was too young to doubt that books contained only truths), she reread the page, pausing to stare balefully at the words she did not know, as though a more concentrated attention might divulge their meaning.