A Hole in Juan (16 page)

“She’d belong to Greenpeace,” Susan Blackburn offered.

“Not just as a member, but as one of the people who ride on the ship saving whales. She wouldn’t only talk about it or send money—she’d do it.”

“She’d march for civil rights.”

“She’d have a political blog. A famous one because she’s the king’s daughter and all.”

Thoughts of the blind king pulled me back to Juan Reyes with his life in the balance and blindness a definite possibility. There was no escaping thoughts of him, and I would no longer try to.

“
Former
king,” somebody added. “
Disgraced
king.”

“Yeah, like scandal means you can’t still be famous. It’d make more people read her than ever!”

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I wanted to push them further, but my inner censor squeaked a protest. Shouldn’t do this, it squealed, but my censor was a diminutive creature, and I ignored it. “Do you think, on that blog, she could say whatever she wanted?”

“She’s Antigone, so of course!”

“It’s
imaginary,
” Susan Blackburn reminded me. “We’re
speculating.
She’s mythical.”

“I know,” I said. “But what if.”

“Yes,” Nita said. “Of course she can say whatever she wants.

This isn’t Greece.”

“Freedom of speech.” Drew nodded and folded his arms across his chest, making it clear that what he’d said was correct and that the topic was now closed for discussion.

“No limits?”

Allie’s eyebrows pulled together. “Why would there be?” She seemed angry about something—Antigone?

“What if Antigone’s advocating the overthrow of the government?” I asked. “In the play, she was, in essence, doing just that.

Saying the king was wrong, that she wouldn’t live by his decision.”

“Freedom. Of. Speech.” Drew repeated his words slowly, to help the cognitively impaired teacher.

I nodded. He smiled.

“I guess,” Nita said, “if it’s violent overthrow, then maybe the government would be watching the blog.”

People called out. They weren’t supposed to, but I wasn’t about to squelch the discussion.

“Maybe,” Susan said. “But they couldn’t stop it. You can think stuff and say stuff even if you can’t do stuff.”

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me,” Drew added. “My mother taught me to say that.”

“Here’s another thought,” I said. The tiny censor jumped up and down now, screaming, but luckily, he was still tiny. Plus, he had a lifetime of being ignored. He’d handle this. “What if 125

A HOLE IN JUAN

Antigone wrote a play like the one about her? Say she puts a play on her blog about disobeying the king, the law of the land. Or at least disagreeing with him, with it. Could it be produced? If it was produced, would she be in trouble?”

They grew more sure of themselves, and more sure that I wasn’t getting it.
“Freedom of speech,”
I heard repeated with a touch of exasperation.

“Long as she’s not lying—or libeling the king.”

I nodded. “Would freedom of speech apply to other art forms? What if she tried to draw it, to express her feelings visually? Drew an ugly, a foul portrait of the king?”

They weren’t as sure at first, but then they nodded. “It’s the way artists express themselves,” Davida said. “I’d consider that their form of speech, then. And how about political cartoonists?

So yes.”

“If it was a play? A poem?”

Even though some of the class continued to look at me as if I had lost more than a few of my buttons, as soon as I’d said the word “poem,” I saw the glint of recognition in Susan Blackburn’s eyes. She leaned to her right and whispered to her neighbor, who then turned to the boy behind her.

“I think I know what this is about,” Susan said. “I mean it’s about Antigone, yes, but my sister’s in eleventh grade. She doesn’t go here, but she’s good friends with Cheryl Stevens.”

“What are you talking about?” a boy said, and then I saw someone lean toward him and whisper, and then the buzz tra-versed the room at warp speed.

“We’re talking about
Antigone,
the ideas in the play. And also,” I admitted, “about the Bill of Rights.”

“It isn’t fair—it isn’t legal!” Allie said.

I was once again impressed by the subterranean communication in our tiny high school village. I knew the class’s collective knowledge—not academic, but practical, street smarts—would amaze me.

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“Which poem was it?”

We weren’t even pretending this was about Antigone anymore.

“We heard all of them—which was it?” the boy continued.

When told, the response was immediate.

“That wasn’t even bad!”

“She was sad—is that a crime?”

“The guy’s blind! Why can’t she be angry for what happened to him?”

The air crackled with their electricity. There are few things teens enjoy more than a sense of outrage and unfairness.

I imagined Maurice Havermeyer happening upon this scene.

I would so have loved to see him try to defend himself against these righteous twelfth graders and all they’d been taught.

My attention returned to the room where, within seconds, everyone had learned that the author of the antiwar poem was leaving the school. It was possible they knew more than I did about it, since I’d only gotten Havermeyer’s version of the story.

Their sense of violation seemed even greater than mine.

“We have to do something,” Susan said. Many voices agreed.

We had a dissident. Mike Novak, generally interested in nothing outside the basketball court except for his hair, was at least consistent. He shook his head. Yawned. “I’m sure we don’t know the whole story,” he said. “The school must have good reasons.”

His classmates glared at him. He shrugged. The conversation bored him. “If you knew about her since yesterday,” he said,

“why didn’t you already do something? Why now?”

Susan was silent for a moment. “Because I didn’t think about it until we were talking about Antigone.”

It was a bad day, a terrible day, but I suddenly thought I might cry with happiness. Look at what had been given me, like a gift, a sense of being a genuine, certified
educator.
I had tapped into their unused reservoir of brains, at least a bit, at least for some of them.

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A HOLE IN JUAN

Okay, at least for one of them.

Mike Novak was in the minority, though I saw him recruiting Jimmy, who, in his perpetual state of discontent, was ready to disagree with anyone, even to disagree with disagreeing. But the conversation rolled over them, and grew ever more heated and determined.

“We have rights in this country!”

“The law’s the law for everybody!”

“Yeah, what are we? Second-class citizens?”

“Slaves?”

I was amazed. Of course, their sudden passion was not ab -

stract. In the eternal war of faculty versus students, their ranks had been attacked, and unfairly, so this was about their personal rights, and this was about them. We were talking about perceived self-interest, but it didn’t matter.

“Let’s sign a petition.”

“Let’s boycott school!”

I knew somebody would come up with that one. Normally, I would discourage such an idea, but today, I didn’t think it was the worst way of expressing their disgust. It was, in fact, close to my own plans.

They were delighted by each others’ suggestions, and I saw a succession of high-fives, and more quietly, nods and thumbs-ups.

I watched their animation, listened to the happy whine of mental gears in motion, and tried to superimpose this excited, exciting reaction onto the stolen exam, the threats against Reyes, his keyed car, the harassment, and the idea that they—or at least somebody in this group—had something to do with his accident.

The pictures didn’t fit.

I kept hoping Seth would join in, become engaged, but he looked abstracted, as though viewing his classmates from a high and distant peak. Lately, he’d behaved as if he were behind a bar-ricade, one I couldn’t see, but was nonetheless impermeable.

This afternoon, he again was the remote observer. Now and then he nodded if he agreed with comments, but he added noth-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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ing. In fact, he looked nervous, flicking quick glances at people, then looking away.

Susan stood up, arms crossed over her chest, legs in a firm, wide stance. She looked like the can-do! World War II posters of women in the factories. “We could call ourselves the Antigone Brigade,” she said.

I watched her gather support until even Mike and Jimmy grudgingly listened to a wild series of civil protest plans.

I did nothing to stop any of it. It was their right. Right?

And having fomented dissent, or at least given it a try, I felt ready to bid adieu. I didn’t need to stay to watch the revolution.

I was on emotional overload, worried about Juan Reyes’s future, if he had one, and about what had happened to him, about the series of minor and major pranks and attacks, about the dramatic changes in Seth—but also filled with a rush of love, admiration, and a sense of profound connection to this class for what was happening right now.

Their activism and excitement meant I’d done enough. It was time for me to say good-bye and find a new place where the First Amendment was still in effect.

Twelve

And that was that. The rest of the day went quietly and smoothly. My teaching life had apparently ended not with a bang but a fizzle and no matter what had happened, obligations continued, so I jumped into a phone booth—if only there were still phone booths, changed into my cape—if only I had one—and became PI Girl for the thrill of watching the blank façade of Bertha Polley’s house.

I tried to pass the time by imagining how Pip pictured this.

Surveillance—what an exciting lie of a word. For Pip’s sake, I pretended to be dictating a memo of what I observed. “Subject’s patio is three steps up from sidewalk. Furnishings consist of two aluminum-tubing chairs with threadbare red-and-yellow striped seats and backs and one small round table holding a terra-cotta GILLIAN ROBERTS

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pot and dead plant. Blue aluminum siding on house façade, and wrought-iron railing around patio. Front yard contains one scraggly bush and packed dirt. Ms. Polley apparently not an avid gardener even before her accident.”

I couldn’t make it interesting, even for Pip. And I couldn’t make Berta Polley appear.

I checked the time, took one last look at the nondescript house, and wished I could jazz up my detective work for Pip, or maybe, being honest, for me.

When I got home, I was the loft’s only occupant. Pip was still out. He’d said he had a big day of sightseeing ahead, and I was so happy he wasn’t going to spend another day watching TV that I’d forgotten to ask what sights he planned to see.

I felt at loose ends and ethically challenged. If I was going to quit my job, did I still have to mark the accumulated quizzes and essays in my backpack? Probably. I would retain my dignity and not saddle my successor with loose ends. I marked the eleventh grade poetry units and felt another rush of sorrow and anger and disbelief when I came to Cheryl Stevens’s. I wondered how this entire episode would affect her. I hoped the same passionate emotions that had led to the poem would continue, and that she’d hold on to her sense of right and wrong. As soon as I was officially a free agent, I would get in touch with her and tell her all of that.

There was an extra poem in the packet. It lacked a name or title, as had the one Liddy Moffatt had found. Maybe one of my students was taking the idea of poems being written by “Anon.”

too literally?

It was wretched. No wonder it wasn’t signed.

Mischief Night and are we scared

For big trouble we’re prepared

But what’s a prank and what’s a crime

And is the only difference time?

Friday till midnight is all right

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That’s the meaning of that night.

But if it’s done another day,

Then somebody’s gonna pay

Ghosts and goblins say they will

When they have some time to kill.

Doggerel. I bet it was—wisely—rejected by its author, but just in case not, I put it in the backpack.

Pip walked in as I had my head deep into the freezer, searching for something spaghetti-compatible. I had garlic, olive oil, and basil so I felt 90 percent of the way there. “Did you have a good day?” I asked as I found a small package of ground turkey.

“Way good,” he said, surprising me with his enthusiasm.

“Did you go to Constitution Hall?”

He shook his head, then saw my expression. “I will, I guess.”

Then, more emphatically, “I will. Soon, maybe.”

“Normally, I’d say do whatever you like. Today, I feel as if that trip should be a universal requirement.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll explain later. Where did you go?”

He tossed his rain jacket onto the floor, then reconsidered and hung it on the bright yellow coatrack that, prior to cohabiting with Pip, I would have said nobody could miss. “Kind of related,” he said, “at least about the law. Or breaking it. I went to Eastern State.”

The old penitentiary—the first one in the world, now a crumbling historic site.

“Really something,” he said. “Creepy.”

“You know, it was innovative in its time. That idea that prisoners could be—”

“Penitent. The audio said that. They could change, they thought, if they kept them in solitary.”

I remembered my trip there and how, walking through its claustrophobic dimness, I found it hard to believe this once rep-resented the most progressive thinking about crime and punish-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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ment. “Solitary confinement was thought to keep them away from bad company.”

Pip glanced at me quickly, then away. His mother blamed some of his sudden desire to drop out on unsavory new friends.

“Better, I guess, than being left to molder in a dungeon,” I added.

“Capone’s cell had fancy furniture, and rugs, and everything.”