Teacher Man: A Memoir (13 page)

No. I go two stops in Brooklyn.

I didn’t know what to say after that. No chitchat. No banter from the professor.

Vivian said, Thanks for the grade, Mr. McCourt. That’s the highest I ever got in English and, you know, you’re a pretty good teacher.

The others nodded and smiled, and I knew they were just being nice. When the train came in they said, See you, and hurried along the platform.

My college teaching career ended in a year. The department chairman said even though there was brisk competition for my job and applications from people with Ph.D.s, he’d stretch the rules, but if I wanted to stay I’d need to show evidence I was pursuing a degree on the doctoral level. I told him I wasn’t pursuing anything.

Sorry, said the chairman.

Oh, it’s all right, I said, and went searching for another high school teaching job.

Alberta said I was going nowhere in life and I congratulated her on her astuteness. She said, Cut out the sarcasm. We’ve been married for six years and all you do is meander from one school to another. If you don’t settle down to something very soon you’ll be forty and wondering where your life went. She pointed to people all around us, happily married, productive, settled, content, having children, developing mature relationships, looking to the future, going on nice vacations, joining clubs, taking up golf, growing old together, visiting relatives, dreaming of grandchildren, supporting their churches, thinking of retirement.

I agreed with her but I couldn’t admit it. I gave her a sermon on life and America. I told her life was an adventure, and maybe I was living in the wrong century. I should have lived back in the days of the Conestoga wagon, when the wagon master in Western movies — John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea — cracked his whip and called, Move out, and the studio orchestra went into raptures, fifty violins swelling with prairie patriotism, pure wagon-train music, violins and banjos welcoming the harmonica wail, men in wagon-driver seats going, Hup, hup, hup, or men walking, leading horses and oxen, with wives up there holding reins, some wives you can see are pregnant and you know, because you’ve been here before, they’ll have their babies in the middle of an attack by ferocious Apache, Sioux, Cheyenne. They’ll get the wagons in a circle and fight off those howling braves threatening nice white mothers in labor but still, those Indians are magnificent in their feathers, on their horses, and you know the Indians will be driven off because every white man, woman, child, even the women in labor, will blaze away with rifle and revolver, will swing rolling pins and frying pans, defeat the pesky redskin so that the wagon train can move on again, so that white people will conquer this wild continent, so that the expansion of America will not be stopped by locust, drought, Rocky Mountains or whooping Apache.

I said that was the part of American history I loved. She said, Oh, Conestoga wagon, my ass, go get a job, and I snapped right back with a line from Dylan Thomas, A job is death without dignity. She said, You’ll have your dignity, but you won’t have me. You could see there was little hope for the future of that marriage.

The head of the Academic Department at Fashion Industries High School did not like me but there was a teacher shortage, no one wanted to teach in vocational high schools, and there I was, available and with McKee experience. He sat behind his desk, ignored my hand, told me he ran a dynamic department, rolled his shoulders like a boxer to suggest great energy and determination. He said the kids in Fashion High School were not academic hotshots but decent kids learning useful trades like tailoring and cutting, shoemaking, upholstery and, damn it, there was nothing wrong with that, eh? They’d be valuable members of society and I should never make the mistake of looking down my nose at kids in vocational high schools.

I told him I had just spent eight years in a vocational high school, wouldn’t dream of looking down my nose at anyone.

Oh, yeah. Which school?

McKee on Staten Island.

He sniffed. Well, that doesn’t have much of a reputation, does it?

I needed that job and didn’t want to offend him. I told him that if I knew anything about teaching I learned it at McKee. He said, We’ll see. I wanted to tell him shove his job up his arse, but that would be the end of my teaching career.

It was clear my future was not in this school. I wondered if I had a future anywhere in the school system. He said four teachers in his department were taking courses in supervision and administration and I shouldn’t be surprised to see them one day in high positions in schools around the city.

We don’t sit on our asses here, he said. We move on and up. And what are your long-range plans?

I don’t know. I suppose I just came here to be a teacher, I said.

He shook his head, couldn’t understand my lack of ambition. I wasn’t dynamic enough. Because of him those four teachers taking courses were moving on and up and out. That’s what he said. Why should they spend their lives in the classroom with kids when they could travel the corridors of power?

I felt brave for a moment and asked him, If everyone moved on and up and out who would teach the children?

He ignored me, allowed himself a little smile with a mouth that had no lips.

I lasted one term, September to January, before he forced me out. It may have been the matter of the shoelace and the rolled-up magazine or it may have been my lack of dynamism and ambition. Still, he praised me at a department meeting for my lesson on the parts of a sentence where I used a ballpoint pen as a visual aid.

This is the plastic tube that holds the ink. If you removed this tube from the pen what would happen?

My students look at me as if they can’t believe I’m asking such a dumb-ass question. Man, you wouldn’t be able to write.

OK. Now what is this I’m holding in my hand?

Again the patient look. That’s a spring, man.

And what would happen if we removed the spring?

When you try to push the tube out it won’t write because there’s no spring to push it and keep its little nose out there where all the writing is done and then you get in a lotta trouble because you can’t write your homework and the teacher’s gonna think you’re crazy if you come in telling him about missing springs or tubes.

Now look at what I’m writing on the board. “The spring makes the pen work.” What is the subject of this sentence? In other words, what are we talking about in this sentence?

The pen.

No, no, no. There’s an action word here. It’s called a verb. What is it?

Oh, yeah. The spring.

No, no, no. The spring is a thing.

Yeah, yeah. The spring is a thing. Hey, man. That’s poetry.

So, what does the spring do?

Makes the pen work.

Good. The spring performs the action. We’re talking about the spring, right?

They look doubtful.

Suppose we say, The pen makes the spring work. Would that be right?

No. The spring makes the pen work. Anyone can see that.

So, what is the action word?

Makes.

Right. And what word uses the action word?

Spring.

So you can see how a ballpoint pen is like a sentence. It needs something to make it work. It needs action, a verb. Can you see that?

They said they could. The chairman, making notes in the back of the room, looked puzzled. At our postobservation conference he said he could understand the connection I was making between structure of pen and structure of sentence. He wasn’t sure if I had succeeded in getting that across to the kids but still, it was imaginative and innovative. He was sure, ha ha, if some of his senior English teachers tried it they’d improve on it, but it was a pretty nifty idea.

When I pulled on the shoelace one morning and it broke I said, Shit.

Alberta mumbled into the pillow, What’s the matter?

I broke the shoelace.

You’re always breaking shoelaces.

No, I’m not always breaking shoelaces. I haven’t broken a shoelace in years.

If you didn’t pull on them they wouldn’t break.

What the hell are you talking about? That shoelace was two years old, out in all kinds of weather, and why wouldn’t it break? I pulled on it the way you try to force bureau drawers when they stick.

No, I don’t force bureau drawers.

Yes, you do. You get into your Puritan Yankee rage as if the drawers were your enemy.

At least I don’t break them.

No, you just yank on them so hard they’re stuck forever and you have to pay a master carpenter a fortune to straighten them.

If we didn’t have such cheap furniture I wouldn’t have to struggle with drawers. Jesus, I should have listened to my friends who warned me against marrying Irishmen.

I could never win a domestic squabble. She would never stick to the subject, which in this case was shoelaces and bureau drawers. No, she had to drag in the Irish thing, the closing argument, the one you made before you sentenced the defendant to be hanged.

I headed for school in a rage, in no mood for teaching or cajoling, Aw, come on, Stan, sit down, Joanna, put your makeup away, please. Are you listening? Open your copy of this magazine,
Practical English,
turn to page nine, the vocabulary quiz, fill in the blank spaces and then we’ll go over your answers.

They said, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep the teacher happy. They lifted magazine pages as if each weighed a ton. They took their time. Turning to page nine was a big deal and before they made that move they had things to discuss with their friends in front, behind, beside them. They might have to talk about what they watched on TV last night, Gawd, wasn’t that scary, and did you know Miriam, yeah, the one in our drawing class, is pregnant, did you know that? Naw, I din’t know that. Wow! Who’s the fawder? You won’t believe it. Swear you won’t tell. It’s that new social studies teacher. Really? I thought he was a fag. Nah, that’s a big act.

Would you open the magazine to page nine?

Fifteen minutes into the class and they’re still turning pages of lead. Hector, open the magazine to page nine.

He had straight black hair and a thin intensely white face. He stared straight ahead as if he hadn’t heard me.

Hector. Open the magazine.

He shook his head.

I walked toward him holding a rolled-up copy of
Practical English
. Hector, the magazine. Open it.

He shook his head again. I slapped him across the face with the magazine. There was a red mark on that white cheek. He jumped up. Drop dead, he said, tears in his voice. He walked toward the door and I called after him, Sit down, Hector, but he was gone. I wanted to run after him and tell him I was sorry, but I let him go. When he cooled down a bit and I collected my wits I might be able to talk to him.

I dropped the magazine on my desk and sat there for the rest of the period staring ahead like Hector. The class made no pretense of turning to page nine. They looked at me or one another or out the window and they were quiet.

Should I talk to them, tell them how sorry I was? No, no. Teachers don’t stand there confessing to mistakes. Teachers don’t admit their ignorance. We waited for the bell and when they filed out, Sofia, the girl who sat next to Hector, said, You shouldna done that. You’re a nice man but you shouldna, and Hector is nice, too. Hector. He got a lotta trouble and now you made it worse.

Now the class would despise me, especially the Cubans, Hector’s group. There were thirteen Cubans, the largest ethnic group in the class. They considered themselves superior to any other Spanish-speaking group and every Friday wore white shirts, blue ties and black pants to make sure they weren’t confused with any other group, especially the Puerto Ricans.

It was the middle of September, and if I didn’t find a way of getting the Cubans back, they’d make my life a misery till the end of the term in January.

At lunch a guidance counselor brought his tray to my table. Hi. What happened with you and Hector?

I told him.

He nodded. Too bad. I wanted him in your class because of the ethnic thing.

What ethnic thing? He’s Cuban, I’m Irish.

He’s only half Cuban. His mother’s name is Considine, but he’s ashamed of it.

So why would you put him in my class?

I know it sounds like a song, but his mother was a high-class whore in Havana. He had questions about the Irish and I thought they might come up in your class. Besides, he has gender problems.

He looks like a boy to me.

Yeah, but…you know. There’s the homosexual thing. He thinks now you hate homosexuals and he says, Fine, he’s going to hate all the Irish and all his Cuban friends will hate all the Irish. No, that’s not right. He has no Cuban friends. They call him
maricon
and stay away from him. His family is ashamed of him.

Oh, hell. He defied me. Wouldn’t open the magazine. I don’t want to be caught in a sex and ethnic war.

Melvin asked me to meet with him and Hector in the guidance office.

Hector, Mr. McCourt wants to come to an understanding with you.

I don’t care what Mr. McCourt wants. I don’t want to sit in class with no Irishman. They drink. Hit people for no reason.

Hector, you didn’t open your magazine when I told you.

He stared at me with cold black eyes. So, you don’t open your magazine and teacher slaps your face? Well, you ain’t no teacher. My mother was a teacher.

Your mother was…I almost said it, but he was gone, second time he walked out on me. Melvin shook his head and shrugged and I knew my days at Fashion Industries High School were over. Melvin said Hector could sue me for assault and if he did my “ass was in a sling.” He tried to be funny. If you wanna slap kids around go get a job in a Catholic school. Those big priests and brothers, even the nuns, are still beating up the kids. Maybe you’d be happier with them.

Of course the chairman heard about my problem with Hector. He said nothing till term’s end, when he placed a letter in my mailbox saying there would not be a position for me in the coming term. He wished me well and would be pleased to give me a satisfactory rating. When I met him in the hall he said that with regard to the satisfactory rating he might have been bending the truth a little, ha ha. Still, if I kept at it I might succeed as a teacher because, in his observations, he noticed that occasionally I had hit pedagogical paydirt. He smiled and you could see he liked his little phrase. He said something about the lesson where I illustrated the parts of a sentence by breaking down a ballpoint pen. Yeah, I had hit pedagogical paydirt.