Chapter 30
Andrew
Before the first bell rings Monday morning, I count the number of school days left—seventy-nine. I’m not sure I can even make it through today. When did this quit being fun? And now I have to tutor Stephen Newman. Lucky me.
He and a couple of his friends breeze into class about two seconds after the bell rings. They’ve been standing outside for three minutes or so. I’m writing the day’s objectives on the board and pretend I don’t notice. When I turn to look at the class, he’s slouched back in his seat with that smug, self-satisfied expression. I refuse to be baited by this little jerk. I manage to get through class by biting the inside of my lower lip until it bleeds.
“Stephen,” I say as he gets up to leave.
He comes to my desk, but when I start to speak, he turns his back on me and fist bumps his buddies out the door. Then he calls out to Kristyn Murrow, “Hey, girl,” and waggles his tongue at her. She giggles and disappears out the door. When there’s no one left in the classroom he turns to me.
I am not amused.
“I’d like you to come in for tutoring. You’ve got a sixty-eight average in Algebra for this nine weeks. I’ll work with you until you get on more solid ground. I do algebra tutoring after school on Mondays—today. I can get you ready for your test tomorrow, and maybe, if you put in the effort, you can hang on to that eligibility.”
“I can’t make Mondays. I have . . . other things to do.”
Sure you do.
“All right, then. I tutor calculus on Thursdays. I can work with you then on test corrections.”
“Nope. Thursdays are no good either.”
“Then why don’t you just suggest a day,” I say, irritated.
“Wednesdays. After football practice.”
Wednesdays. Of course. That’s the one day of the week that Maya works late. I’ll either have to leave Kiki at Ms. Smith’s Village late that day, or Maya will have to juggle work and a kid until I can get out of here. God, I am starting to hate this brat.
“What time are you done with football practice?”
He shrugs like I’m boring him to death. “It’s off-season. Four thirty.”
So I have to stay at school an extra three hours to tutor a kid who not only doesn’t seem to care one whit about his grade, but who is trying his damnedest to make my life miserable. I hear these stories all the time from other teachers. Somehow, I thought I was immune. Silly me.
“Then I’ll see you Wednesday at four thirty.”
He looks me up and down like I’m a piece of shit, then ambles out of the classroom like he’s got all the time in the world but wants to waste a few more seconds of mine.
It doesn’t surprise me when he’s fifteen minutes late Wednesday. I had already given up on him. I’m just shutting down my computer when he slouches into the room. His hands are empty. No paper. No pencil. No calculator. No respect.
So that’s how we’re going to play the game, huh?
I have some quadratic equations already written on the board. I stand and hold out a dry erase marker. “You made a forty-nine on yesterday’s test. I’ll allow you to do test corrections after we review. You can bring that grade up to a seventy. After that, with some sustained work, we can get your average above the failing mark.”
He stares hostilely back at me.
O-kay. “Why don’t you come up here and we’ll work these problems on the board together.”
“You’re kidding, right?” he says to me and guffaws.
Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the fucking bait.
“All right. Then I’ll walk you through them.” I review the different methods of solving quadratic equations, then talk through a few problems. But I might as well be talking to the wall. He stares out the window the entire time, mouthing what looks like a rap song. I stop midproblem and wait until I have his attention. When it becomes clear that I’m not going to get his attention, I return to my desk and finish packing my things.
Stephen gets up and sneers at me. “Guess I’ll see you next Wednesday.”
Robert
“He’s back, guys!” Ms. Momin closes the door behind me and ushers me into the living room where my group waits.
They are already seated in a semicircle. Patrick is the only one who gets out of his seat. He extends his bent arm out to me. It wavers and I have to grab his fist and steady it for a fist bump. “Hey, Patrick. How you doing, man?”
“Bah!”
“Yeah. I’m back. Have you been practicing?” I pull my recorder from the velour slipcase.
“Yah. Yah.” The words explode from his mouth in a staccato burst.
He drops into his seat again as I squat in front of Sophie. Her eyes are fixed on something or nothing behind me. “Hey, beautiful. I missed you.” She doesn’t respond, but I know she hears me.
Ms. Momin coaxes her to look at me and say, “Hi, Robert.” It takes a lot of coaxing, but eventually her head swings sharply my way and bounces a little like a bobblehead. She fixes her eyes on me briefly and says something that approximates “Hi, Robert.”
I pat her knee and crab walk to the chair next to her. Jo-Jo. He’s whimpering.
“Hey, Jo-Jo, you ready to play some music?” He draws in a deep, deep breath and lets it out with a shudder. He’s going to burst into tears; I back off.
I pull my chair up close and I look up at Ms. Momin, who’s wrapping Sophie’s fingers around her recorder. “What have y’all been working on?”
She smiles over Sophie’s head. “ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ ”
“That’s a great song!” I say to my group.
As Ms. Momin explained to me in December, these kids don’t do well with change. I learned that lesson the hard way when I tried to introduce “Jingle Bells.” They like the familiar. They like the repetition. And every time we play it, it’s like the most beautiful thing they’ve ever done, like it’s the first time.
“Okay, everybody put your mouthpiece in your mouth.” After a few tries, Patrick manages on his own, but Ms. Momin and I have to help the other two. And when they’re ready, we play.
You’d think I’d get sick of this after months of the same old routine, but the look of triumph on their faces each time we finish the song leaves me humbled and grateful for the experience. I’ve missed these kids.
Parents are just arriving as we wrap up. I help the kids get the recorders back in the slipcases tagged with their names and then stack them on the table for Ms. Momin to put away later.
This is the first time I’ve seen the parents since Dad died, and I have to endure a few minutes of sympathy and promises to let them know if there’s anything they can do for me.
“You are so good with them,” Ms. Momin says as I help her return the chairs to the dining room table. “How are you doing?”
Ms. Momin is beautiful. She’s young, with these huge brown eyes and long dark hair. I think if I were into girls, I’d find it very hard to be in the room alone with her right now.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“We only have two more sessions before your service hours are complete. Honestly, I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.”