Mark’s stress dreams before he started teaching had involved his standing at the front of the classroom, students in desks, endless pairs of eyes on him, and no sound coming out of his mouth, or he was naked, or whatever embarrassment his subconscious chose to afflict him with that night. But in his dreams, the students had been in desks facing him.

Reality was just as stressful, but not nearly as tidy. Some students were in their desks, yes, but a handful of them congregated by the class hamster, hopefully not devising ways to torture it, another group stood by the bookshelf, though none of them were reading, and another set had turned their desks to face each other and appeared to be having some sort of Pokémon battle. The noise level was deafening.

He’d already had to mark Xavier (by the hamsters) and Madysin (Pokémon battler) up once, and they only got three strikes for the semester. The five kids who were sitting quietly at their desks were looking at him with pity and impatience.

How was he supposed to be doing good here? He reached up to snag a paper airplane before it scratched his retina. Was it possible he had growled? The hush in the room was instant. Then the tittering started—twenty-some kids laughing into their hands.

He looked at the airplane and realized it said, in bright red letters on the side, “Mr. Jones sucks.” You know what, I kinda do. He’d snuck across the hall and watched the other third grade teacher while his kids had been doing work on their tablets. She was a USAteach alum and had been teaching here for a while. She had moved and spoken confidently, her class had followed her and obeyed her. It was clear she got joy from the act of teaching. He didn’t think he could ever get there. The pressure felt crushing—managing behavior and raising test scores, inspiring and changing lives? If he kept doing this, he would settle for not getting an ulcer. Forget about joy.

“Okay, class, in your desks, facing me, right now. I don’t want to have to write anybody else up today.” The sounds of 26 desks scraping on the linoleum grated on his nerves. Right… now all the eyes were looking at him. He resisted the urge to check his fly.

“Ofelia, will you start reading our math lesson for today? Madysin, I see you with the Pokémon cards; please put them up, or I’ll have to take them.” As the students, directed by him, read through the day’s math curriculum, he breathed slowly, and tried to remember these kids weren’t his enemies.

He had to get control of his classroom. He couldn’t keep getting his class in trouble or they’d all be suspended. He’d asked some of his co-workers, in a way that maybe minimized the problem just a little, and none of their suggestions had worked. He needed help. As the kids finished up, he realized he knew someone would be glad to hear about his failures…and just might love kids enough to help him anyway. Maybe it was time to very carefully visit his neighbor.

He ran into her in the alley. The past few weeks they had courteously existed on their block, even waving at each other when they passed in the alley. He’d visited a couple other churches, and damn it, still wanted to go back to hers. Only one other church read the scripture in a different language, and that one was thirty minutes away. It was the church’s values—not just the gospel, but the way the gospel should bring justice—that made him want to go back, not just more chances to interact with Sarah. Right. But he did want to be at a church that viewed literally everyone as their neighbor, and he—his faith—church was a necessity for him. He’d learned that he couldn’t do this life alone.

As he had totted up the questions he needed to ask her, the feelings he’d been trying not to feel snuck on up him. He was exhausted, lost, humbled, insufficient. And he both dreaded and couldn’t wait to talk to the woman who could help him.

So he headed over to her back door with a legal pad and a six pack of Corona. Before he was half way down the alley, she was there, heading towards him, carrying a bulging grocery sack.

“Hey. I brought you something.” They said it simultaneously.

“Jinx!” Her eyes were twinkling as she truly smiled at him. Did men’s knees go weak? It was the uneven bricks in the alley that made him stumble, right?

“Ooh, Corona?”

“Yeah I saw you have some at the restaurant that Sunday. I need to ask some teaching questions and thought I’d sweeten the deal.”

“Oh.” She regarded him gravely, her brown eyes steady now. “Guess you’d better come on over.”

He took the bag from her. “So, were these for me?”

This time her glance was dour. “Yeah. I’m trying to be kind to my neighbors. Unless you want to reject the fruits of my labor again, and then I’ll take them to the little old lady who lives next to you.”

“Oh, Miss Bertha?”

“That’s the one.”

“Hmmm…if you take them to her, I’m still likely to see them…but if there’s tomatoes in there, I want them.”

“Picky picky. Let’s just go back to my house and see what we can do about your problems.”

Three more weeks of Sunday school about neighbor-love had finally convinced Sarah that she needed to apologize to Mark for being such a jerk when they’d first met. The low hum of anger she felt when she thought about charter schools and big teaching corps she put firmly in a box, and focused on thinking about her neighbor as a misguided fellow image bearer. She was bringing the vegetables to him as a peace offering, and had mostly expected to drop them off on his back porch with a note, because he was usually gone this time of day—maybe he had a gym membership or something?

She was unexpectedly nervous about inviting him into her home. Not about her safety, but about what he would think about her. When she’d moved into her grandmother’s house after her grandmother had been moved into a care home, she hadn’t had the heart to make any changes. Five years later, she was still living in the home that had last been decorated and updated in the mid-sixties.

At first, she’d been too sad to care, and then she’d come to love it, and then it was almost cool again. She was a modern independent girl…with the heart of an 80-year-old. She did switch out mattresses—thank you IKEA for the rolled-up mattresses that could navigate the skinny stairs of hundred-year-old houses. But the rest was the same.

She opened the door smoothly, and he followed her into her kitchen. It was just a little messy—her 80-year-old heart didn’t extend to her grandmother’s obsession with cleanliness, but it was fine.

“Let’s go this way.” She led him around the kitchen island to the dining room. Fortunately, she’d cleaned her table off recently. Only one half of it was covered with all her teacher stuff. She pushed a stack of worksheets a little bit further down, catching the bag of math manipulatives that movement displaced before they could hit the floor. She pulled a chair out and gestured to the other one at the clear side of the table.

“What’s up, Mark?”

He set the beer on the table and sat down. His movements were slow, and he opened his mouth a few times before any sound came out. He swallowed, and she saw his throat move.

When he finally started speaking, his words came out in a jumble. “I—school’s—my kids—I can’t do anything.” He ran his fingers through his hair, the rich brown strands curving every which way. He stared at a knot in the wood grain of her table. His next words came out clear but quiet. “I don’t have control of my class. I need help.”

“You mean your summer-long teaching immersion wasn’t enough?” She felt bad about the snark as soon as it left her mouth.

But he looked her in the eyes and nodded. “Yeah, I can’t get a handle on it. I’m capable of so many other things outside a classroom—hell, as a student, I got a 4.0, but I’m in there with 26 kids, and I can’t do anything.”

“For starters, 26 kids is a large number for anyone, particularly a baby teacher. That’s a lot of kids. What grade do you have?”

“Third.”

“Okay, that’s eight- and nine-year-olds. Medium-sized. What’s happening?”

“I can’t get them to focus and pay attention without threatening them—I’m definitely not in control. But the disciplinary policies of the school are so strict, I don’t want to get the kids in trouble all the time. But we have proficiency standards to hit, and I don’t see how to get them there right now. There’s like five really good kids but the rest…I don’t think they are bad kids per se, but they just don’t listen.”

She looked at him, noting the slope of his shoulders, the tenseness in his expression. She had to help him. For him, for his students.

“Do you do have a transition system as soon as they come in? Are you allowed to have rewards? What’s your racial make-up? Did USAteach talk to you about cultural sensitivity?” This really was forgiveness, wasn’t it—giving out her hard-fought wisdom. Probably more helpful than vegetables.

“I don’t really have a transition, I just wait for the stragglers and then get started. I think some teachers do rewards, but I’m not sure how to go about it. And we talked about cultural sensitivity a lot, actually.”

“Do you feel like that might be a part of your dynamic?”

“I’m less sure because I don’t want to screw things up.”

“Okay.” She considered, then reached out to pat him on the shoulder. “Let’s try this to get your day started. Instead of worrying about instruction time, take the first few minutes of your class room to help them transition from home life to school life—like make them all put their backpacks and coats away, and then come sit in the circle. See how much that changes your day. And then after that we can talk rewards and feeling awkward. I know you don’t have a lot of spare time, but try to listen to what they talk about and find out more about it. Don’t just confiscate their Pokémon, know how to talk to them about it. I think you’re gonna be okay, and at least your heart is in the right place.”

He hitched his shoulders up and then released them with a sigh. “Thank you. It’s…I’m…I’m in a weird place over there. I’m still older than most of the first-year teachers but I’m not on par with the teachers my age, and I’m just feeling lost and like an odd duck and exhausted. They are asking so much of us. And I gotta admit that decorating the display boards doesn’t come easy. I didn’t learn that in the military.”

“Oh, you were in the military?” She added that fact to the collage of information her brain was creating about him.

“Yeah, I served, came back, and did college. I’m old. Saw enough bad stuff on my tour of duty that I wanted to make a difference when I got back home. Thought I’d be better at it.”

He ran his hand over his face, and she could see the lines she’d missed before. She blinked, and also suddenly a beam of late sunlight ran over his face, and it was as if she were seeing him in focus for the first time. Oh no. She blinked again furiously, willing him to go back to the way he had been.

Nope. He shone in the sunlight, and she was gone. The collage had changed into something in her heart. This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t…falling for him, was she?

“Well, now that you’ve solved my problems, how about some Corona?”

“I make no promises that my answers will work, but sure.” She was still dazed. Drinking with this man would be fine, right? A+ decision. “Let’s go sit on the porch.”

“You do that a lot, sit on the porch?”

“Yeah, I like to keep an eye on the block.”

She went into the kitchen, cut up some limes, and brought them outside.

They sat on the porch, drinking their drinks. She subtly moved her lawn chair a little bit farther away from his.

“What branch of the military were you in?”

“The Army.”

“Was that—hard? You said you went overseas?” Were these questions way too intrusive? She’d thought he was young and callow when they’d first met, but he’d definitely done some big boy stuff.

“I did a tour of duty, yes. If you’re asking if I’m gonna go crazy with PTSD, I’m fine. And so far, when I’m not, I get help.” She hoped his rental agent had told him how much gunfire could happen in their neighborhood.

“You know I’m from Memphis—are you from here?”

“Well, this is my grandmother’s house, so my family is from here, but I grew up in South County.”

“The county? Tell me more.”

She found herself telling him all about her family in the county, how nobody really understood what she was doing. “They say things like ‘If you were out in the county, at least you’d get paid respectably and be in a safe area.’ I don’t understand how they can just ignore all the hard things that most of my neighbors have to deal with. It makes me so mad sometime. And…I love this house. I love being so close to work. And I love those kids, man. I know it’s not true, but some days it feels like I’m the only one who does.”

They got another beer, and she pulled out the chips and salsa. She didn’t know why he smiled when he looked at the salsa jar. They had to scoot their chairs close after all to share the salsa that sat on the tiny round folding table she kept on her porch.