Educating Esmé (5 page)

We graphed favorite candy and other Halloweeny
stuff in math, worked on our leaf identification scrap-books, had a scary story contest (the kids wrote such gory ones, it was a little unnerving), a pumpkin decorating contest, a mummy wrapping race, estimated candy corn in a jar, performed our dramatization of the book
Old Devil Wind
for the kindergarten class, and I dressed up as a witch and fielded questions about the history of Halloween. I passed out what looked like candy at the end of the day, but really it was rubber lizards and cockroaches wrapped in colored foil. The teacher gets in a trick!

We are studying inventors. While the kids were at gym I dressed up in an outfit with all sorts of weird stuff sticking out: rubber bands, gum, chocolate chip cookies, lightbulbs, with a tag attached to each item saying who invented it. I wore roller skates, too. The kids loved it when I came rolling down the hall to pick them up! Then we all made a bulletin board of lightbulb cutouts, with illustrations of famous discoveries in the middle of each bulb. The board has the heading “Bright Ideas.”

Mr. Turner was nervous when he saw me. But I'm good at roller-skating. Boy, he would have been really nervous during my science magic show, if he had seen me put a piece of paper I had set on fire in a bottle to illustrate Bernoulli's Principle! Of course, I had a fire extinguisher near. But certain people just think it's their job to freak out. As long as they're freaking out, they feel busy, like they must be doing work. Getting upset is force, but no motion. Unless we are moving the children forward, we aren't doing work.

Mr. Turner gets mad when I say, “I don't work for you, I work for the children.” But it's true. Isn't it?

I'll find out when I get fired, I guess.

Assembly today. National anthem.
Oh, no
, I thought.
Will they
. . . ?

“. . . land of the free and the home of the brave!” A small group of voices enthusiastically added the postscript. “Play ball!”

Mr. Turner stepped up to the mike. “All right, who did that!” Nobody peeped.

They had no homework today, as reward for showing good judgment when it counted most.

The Connie Porter event was a rip-roaring success. Both my and Ms. Tyler's clubs met Ms. Porter outside the school with the sign and the red carpet and flowers. All the children wore
kente
cloth headbands and ties we had made to honor Addy's African roots. Then both clubs had lunch with the author, rotating seats so that all members had some time beside her. The lunch lady was very accommodating, giving all members teacher's lunches—
oohh-la-la!
—with a Southern-style chicken menu I had arranged with her.

The classrooms then came for the assembly. There was a big display of the Addy doll and all her accessories and the Addy books and displays of children's artwork featuring the scenes from the book that children thought were most exciting. I gave the classrooms poster board and yardsticks, so they made signs,
WE LOVE CONNIE PORTER
! It was a real rally. As kids entered, they put their names in one box for the
Addy doll raffle if they wanted, and there was another box for the children's questions, which she would draw at random to answer.

I was worried how the classes would behave during the assembly. At one assembly, an actress playing Shirley Chisolm became so disgusted with their manners that she took off her glasses and started screaming at them. But you could hear a pin drop as Ms. Porter read from her book and then answered questions. It was wonderful that most of the children were familiar with and liked her writing. You could tell that they considered her an important guest.

It was absolutely perfect until Mr. Turner got up and started blithering his nickel's worth. He is very long-winded. Then Ms. Porter drew the name for the doll. It was a boy's name, a boy who was in Ms. Tyler's after-school club. The boy ran up onstage. Mr. Turner took the mike and the doll from Ms. Porter. He hemmed and hawed. “Well, this is highly unusual! A boy!”

It dawned on me, what that homophobic, backward idiot was going to do. He wanted to redraw a name until he got a girl! After all these weeks of work,
he was going to put a damper on this event!
Don't even
, a voice screamed inside my head! I jumped onto the stage, and without even thinking, took the mike. I'll give him “highly unusual”!

“Yes, a boy, a boy who has been coming to Ms. Tyler's Addy after-school club regularly! What luck that someone so deserving, such a big Addy and Connie Porter fan should receive this prize!” I took the doll from Mr. Turner and gave it to the beaming young man. Who cares? Mr. Turner didn't put this event together, I did. So why should he get to give the doll away?

The hall was filled with begrudging applause from those who didn't win as the boy was hugged by the author, and then enthusiastic applause when they heard they were all going to get Addy treats, and then thundering applause to thank Connie Porter.

There was a book-signing after the assembly for kids who brought money to purchase books. It was worth the effort when I saw kids lined up a city block for an author's autograph. The publisher donated a hundred signed books for the poorer children, which I gave to the school counselor to distribute. The publicist
said this was one of the nicest school events she's seen. Ms. Porter signed a book for me: “Thank you! Thank you! You did such a wonderful job of motivating the children. You made me feel so welcome. The world should be filled with teachers with your energy and imagination!”

Wasn't that nice?

What also would be nice would be a thank you from Mr. Turner for all those unpaid after-school hours I spent promoting the book and the event. Not that I need it, I would have done it anyway . . . I
did
it anyway. It just seems like common courtesy. Instead, he seems to be brooding. Oh, well, you can't have everything . . . just everything that counts.

“I have asked you to refrain from having the children at the school address you as Madame Esmé. If you would like for the children to refer to you by your first name with the more acceptable title of Ms., Mrs., or Miss I have no objection. I hope that in the near future you will honor my request.” I look at the memo.

The children call me Madame Esmé. There is no good reason for that title. It was just a present I gave myself that first day of school, a little reward for having taken everything so seriously for so long, to have gotten from one side of the teacher's desk to the other. It is a bone of contention with my principal. In a closed-door conference in his office, Mr. Turner has told me that the name distracts from the learning process. I told him if the children can't handle the idea that people have different names, why don't we just throw in the towel right now?

In fact, the children can handle it. Once, in the middle of Puzzling, Selena called out, “Why you called
‘Madame'?
Why aren't you called
Mrs.
, like everybody else?”

“Because I'm not everybody else,” I explained. I wrote some titles on the board.

“
Mrs.
is short for mistress, and I'm nobody's mistress. I'm too old for
Miss
, and if I said
Ms.
, most of you would call me Mrs. by accident, and that would get on my nerves. I have to hear my name called about a thousand times a day, so it better be one that I like. So please call me Madame,
Mme.
, which is French for
my lady
. Madame Esmé, at your service. Every time I hear my name, I feel regal, like a queen. I lift up my chin and put my shoulders back, and close my eyes halfway, like I'm half-amused and half-suspicious.” I demonstrated.

“You look like a giraffe,” Billy remarked.

“Well, when I grow up, I'm going to be a Mrs., like my mama,” said Latoya, sticking out her chin.

“That's fine,” I said. “Madame was my personal preference. When you grow up, you can decide exactly what you'd like to be called.

“In
Island of the Blue Dolphins
, Karana has two names. She doesn't tell her secret name to white people, because she knows her true name is powerful and can be used against her. I tell you my true title, and my power is in that name. When you call me Madame with respect, it makes me strong enough to try to become all I want to be. When you use it with disrespect, I am weakened.”

“I'm going to be a Ms.,” decided Zowela, “and you people just
better
pronounce it
right
.”

“I'm going to be a Mrs.,” announced Melissa.

“I'm going to be a Mrs., too,” squeaked Kirk. The class laughed.

“I think,” said Selena slowly, “that I will be a Madame.”

The class said nothing more. They returned to work.

I
WAS NOT
always the grand Madame I am today. I grew up in Uptown Chicago, the “inner city.”

I remember being a little girl in a rented apartment, one in a six-flat, with my little brother and divorced father. It was owned by a landlord who would sit and catch flies on the back porch, then remove their wings. He admitted that it was his great dream to someday start a wingless fly circus. He died before this ambition could be realized. He left his widow, a frightful Greek Harpy named Leda, to run building operations after his passing. She had oily black hair that hung like a jagged fence around her shoulders and a face as feminine as a heavyweight boxer's. I assumed he had purchased her from a catalog.

When she wasn't axing an apple tree with children
still screaming in the boughs or throwing kittens out of third-story windows like water balloons, she was paying my father a visit to offer her insight into home decorating. Her main complaint was the books. Every-where. In every room. Kafka! Sartre! Seuss! Kant! Kierkegaard! Aggghhh! The sight of them sent her raving, screaming that if we did not get rid of them, she would take our refrigerator away! My brother and I stood by politely and looked at each other from the corners of our eyes. Our refrigerator had not worked in months. We waited a moment for her to remember this.

“Well, then . . . I will charge you, Meester!” She leered at my father. “I will charge rent for every book that you have living here!”

It does not make sense to say something does not make sense to someone who does not make sense, but sometimes, what else can you say?

“That doesn't make any sense!” my father shouted.

“What you running here, anyway, Meester? A whorehouse?”

“A what?”

“Look at all these books, Meester! It looks like a
whorehouse! A WHORE! HOUSE! If you running whorehouse, I charge extra!”

“Don't you mean a library?” I offered, my brother making laughing noises through his nose.

“YOU
chut opp!
If I say whorehouse, I mean whorehouse!”

“Get out,” my father growled, his fists balled. Years later, he would laugh at Leda, but not then. Nothing spoils a sense of humor like a divorce and a bitchy landlady.

Leda stormed past me as I held open the door. “If you live in a whorehouse, you'll grow up to a be a whore,” she warned in a whisper.

“A library,” I corrected, patiently.

“Okay, then! If you live in a library, you'll grow up to be a whore!”

I knew about whores, anyway. They were the ones I heard screaming all through the neighborhood in the middle of the night, when plainclothes policemen had sex with them and then put them under arrest. Once in a while I saw them in the day, wearing lamé and lace and high, high heels. I thought it was wonderful, the way they always looked like they were going to a party.
The way they sassed the patrons they didn't like. The way they seemed to know so much. A little like librarians.

Hence, my lack of offense when, during student teaching, Zahid told me I dress like a whore. I had to consider, he's from the city, too. Maybe he means it as a compliment. I answered, “Thank you.”

Hence, my patience in the face of Mr. Turner's assault on “Madame.”

“I know you think it's the name of someone who runs a whorehouse,” I say cheerfully, “but there are other meanings. Madame Montessori, for instance, was not a whore, as far as I know.”

“Well, I have the children's best interests at heart.”

“Really? From where I sit, I don't think it has to do with the children at all. This is just a power trip. This whole thing is stupid, it's not about ‘madame' at all, it's about you telling me to do something for no reason and me doing it. You just want to see me pucker up.”

“I'll have you
written
up,” he barks, stands up, sits down, stands up, points upward to the imaginary
heavenly bureaucrat to whom he plans to send his complaint. “It will go on your permanent record.”

“Is that the same record upon which my seventh grade misbehavior in gym is documented?” I feign concern.

“I've received legal consultation. If you refer to yourself as ‘madame' again, I'm warning you, I'll pursue a court case.”

“Really? Well, when I called the ACLU, they seemed to think that you're the silly one.”

“The ACLU?” His eyebrows draw up fearfully. “Is that the teacher's union? You didn't call the teacher's union, did you?”

JoEllen's mom says there's a lot less fighting at their house since JoEllen taught them conflict resolution. That was nice to hear!

Letter from Selena to her dad and stepmother:

“In our class I learned so much about social studies like, slavery, Pilgrims, and how in the 1600's people
lived. I understand how you two said that my teacher is really nice but sometimes she's not but there's always a reason. And I learned much more when she was screaming!”