Growing up, I assumed all five-year olds were offered the same academic advice my father gave me each time we discussed school: always do your best, never take the easy way out, follow your passions, and most importantly don’t contract the mumps.

          My dad stored his report cards from elementary and middle school in a green, fireproof World War II ammo box that he acquired at a local army supply depot. Each time he’d retrieve tax papers or other important documents from the metal box, I’d ask him to retell the story of his youth. At eleven, he moved from France to Cleveland, and was placed in public school without any sort of intervention or ESL tutor. He was forced to learn the English language and an odd system of measurements entirely on his own. Despite this disadvantage, he outscored many of his American peers, proudly flaunting his language skills in French class when the teacher turned to him for advice.

          I’d ask to see the report cards every time he opened the box, so he’d pull out the folded pieces of paper, scattering them on the bed.

          “What do you think?” he’d ask me. “Your old man’s not so bad, eh?” He received straight-A’s in every class until his sophomore year. Those report cards were missing from this pile. “I expect the same thing from you. If you’re going to succeed, you have to keep up your grades, no excuses.”

          “Tell me again why your other report cards aren’t in here,” I said, wanting to hear the story again. “The ones from tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades.”

“It was those darn mumps,” he said, sorting the progress reports into a neat stack. “Ever since then I got stupid.”

          “So mumps make you stupid?” I asked.

          “Whatever you do,” he warned, “don’t get the mumps.”

II

          I never attended preschool, any sort of daycare, or camp. Yet I was over prepared for kindergarten due to my parents’ insistence on excelling in the arts and academics. Before I ever set foot in a classroom, we read together each day, pulled a variety of educational games out of the closet, and spent the lazy summer afternoons finger painting on the patio. They frequently reminded me that I’d be the first in my whole family to attend college, so therefore I must push myself. When it came time to attend “real school,” I could barely contain my excitement. The day before I entered kindergarten I recorded a song into my parents’ portable tape recorder. The chorus went, School days, school days, I love school days. My mom still has the tape—proof of my early enthusiasm for education, even though we no longer own a tape player.

III

          A check minus. I held the paper in disbelief as Mrs. Hall, my kindergarten teacher, finished passing out papers to the rest of the students. On the top of my paper, in red marker, she wrote, “Color in the lines next time,” followed by a thick check minus. This may not have been my finest display of coloring talent—my crayon strokes frequently broke the black boundary of Goofy’s outlined body—but this was in no way check-minus work. It wasn’t up to the high standards I’d set with the Donald Duck project where I demonstrated a hint of shading, but it wasn’t any worse than the average kindergartner. I contested the grade with Mrs. Hall at the end of the school day after I slung my bag onto my back, preparing for the walk home. I thought perhaps the minus was simply a slip of the pen.

          She took the paper from my hand and pointed to the stray lines. “This is not the sort of work I expect from you, Michael. You’re better than this.”

          “But Brad’s paper was sloppier than mine, and he at least got a check.”

          “But you’re not Brad.”

          As my eyes welled, I ran from her room and out the front doors of the school. I’d never received a check-minus on anything. Paranoia overcame me. There is no way a college will let me in with that sort of grade. I bet that check minus will show up on my report card. What if I’ve caught the mumps? John looked a little sick the other day on the playground. What if I caught the mumps and am now stupid and can’t get into college?

          I crumpled up the paper as I walked home, stuffing it in the branches of a dense bush growing beside the brick school building. I figured I would crush my folks by informing them their son wasn’t going to continue his education after high school because of this Goofy disaster. I couldn’t bring these marks home to my dad; I was too ashamed. He was an incredible artist, sketching fantastic drawings of Daffy Duck and other cartoon characters for my amusement.

          On the walk home I wiped my eyes, trying to compose myself and not let on there was anything amiss. I found that my dad had taken a half-day off of work so we could play soccer together in the front yard. I conjured up some mild enthusiasm while kicking the ball around until I eventually confessed my crime to him.

          “Well,” Dad said, “where’s the paper now?”

          “In a bush,” I said.

          He held me while I cried into his shirtsleeve and then took my hand as we returned to the school to retrieve the check-minus from the bush. But we never found it. It must have blown away or been retrieved by the janitor. Or maybe, he said, it was a trick of my imagination and never existed at all.

IV

          After high school my father served in the Coast Guard before working as a pressman for a local newspaper. It was an arduous job that subjected employees to caustic chemicals, hazardous fumes, and exhausting manual labor. My dad’s friends lost fingers in the blades of the presses, and the huge rolls of paper had been known to fall off the shelves, permanently disabling several employees. The cracks and creases of my dad’s hands were dyed with black ink, despite the number of times he scrubbed them with the pink, chalky soap he stored underneath the utility sink in the basement.

          But I loved the smell of the ink. It clung to his navy blue work shirts and was infused in his hair. When he returned home from work, the smell of ink wafted into the kitchen, mixing with the chicken or fish sticks Mom was preparing. Biting and sharp like gasoline, there was something fresh about its presence in a stale room. On those long nights when my dad worked double shifts, my mom would send me to bed, insisting he wouldn’t be home until well past midnight, and I needed my rest. She’d leave my bedroom door open just a crack, while waiting up for him in the living room, listening quietly to Billie Holiday records. I’d close my eyes, listening to every word of those records, anxiously awaiting the scent of ink to rouse me.

V

          After fifteen years on the pressroom floor, the estimating department realized my dad was gifted with numbers so they offered him a white-collar desk job at a “slightly higher pay scale than his current position” (but also much lower than the other white-collar employees because he didn’t possess a college degree). The company needed my dad’s assistance in saving the company from financial ruin because he understood the practical matters on the floor but could also design, engineer, and manufacture the needed parts for the presses at a much greater discount than an outside contractor. They flew him to California to evaluate a used press the company was interested in purchasing. “It was the most amazing experience,” he said. “From here to LA there are mountains and plains and lakes, everything so beautiful from way up there. The world is evened out. At that elevation there is barely any trace of man.”

          For Christmas, the company gave my dad $500 and a large tin of caramel, cheese, and butter-flavored popcorn. When he asked why he’d received such a generous gift, his boss said it was the standard bonus for all employees. My dad mentioned that he’d never received a bonus when he worked on the pressroom floor. The man laughed and said they never issued bonuses to “those sort of employees.” Dad returned the money, and that following Monday returned to his job on the press. He kept the popcorn.

VI

          “Upon accepting our invitation into the honors program, you have a moral and intellectual responsibility to understand that you are better than everyone else. That can be a great burden when your peers in high school can’t understand that you are intellectually superior.”

          I chewed on my pen cap. Most of my blue pen caps were dented with imprints of my teeth. My mom and my health teacher lectured that the caps housed hundreds of germs that could potentially cause illness. Despite understanding and appreciating this information, I gnawed away at the plastic until it eventually snapped, forcing me to find a new cap.

          The classroom was occupied by two dozen seventh-graders who were instructed to listen to a lecture by the junior-high guidance counselor and then fill out a form indicating our interest in being admitted into the honors program for all subject areas. I raised my hand. I didn’t wait to be called on. We were supposed to wait. We were supposed to know better.

          “Excuse me,” I interrupted from the back of the classroom. “Can you say that again?”

          The guidance counselor cleared his throat. “I said you must understand that you are the best of the best. You are the brightest and most promising students in the seventh grade; each of you have the potential for greatness. The school has been watching you, and you are better than everyone else.”

          I unclenched my molars from the pen cap, stood up, and gave the blank form to the secretary who sat near the door. “That’s what I thought you said.”

VII

          My grandmother handed me a $100 bill to “buy new shoes and pants” for my first day of school—the private college ten minutes from my home that I’d been eyeing since kindergarten. The only application I sent out. She wanted me to have the gift because I was the first person in my family ever to attend college. She hoped that I’d be a success and learn what she, her husband, my dad, my mom, her parents, her sister, my cousins, their parents, and on and on and on never had the opportunity to learn. I don’t remember what I said back to her. I must have thanked her. I know I hugged her. I also know I didn’t spend the money on shoes.

VIII

          My dad attended college for one day. He said he’d wanted to go to Case Western Reserve University for drawing and design, but when the admissions counselor met with him, she actually laughed when she looked at his grades. He settled for Cleveland State University. On the first day of school, his science professor insisted that all papers be written longhand in a particular, uppercase font or they would not be accepted for credit. When my dad asked the reasoning behind this request, the professor explained that this was the “handwriting of scholars.” My dad withdrew from school the following day. When I asked him why he never stuck it out, he said his mom never really pushed him to continue. She didn’t care one way or the other what he did. More likely it was because my father has no patience for unexplained bullshit.

IX

          The day of orientation, I was corralled into the school’s tennis courts with a few hundred college freshmen. We were instructed to hold hands with the two people standing next to us as we entered the cages. A “student leader” then commanded us to duck under outstretched arms, forming a twisted mess of bodies. A senior standing on a ladder, shouting through a megaphone, told us to untangle ourselves while still holding hands to make a circle around the perimeter of the court. I couldn’t comprehend what this had to do with preparing me for the five courses I was scheduled to begin the following day, but I understood this was some sort of “getting to know you,” team-building activity. I searched out fellow cynics to commiserate on the absurdity of this request, rolling my eyes at the eighteen-year-old girl with too much eye makeup who gripped my right hand. She asked what was wrong as she loosened herself from the knot she’d formed with the boy next to her. I said, “You know,” nodding my head to the senior on the ladder who was now cheering motivational rhymes. She said, “I don’t know.” I said, “That’s too bad.” She asked if I owned a car, because she and her friends had fake IDs and wanted to run to the convenience store after the orientation for beer. She said none of them had wheels and just needed someone, anyone, to make the run for them. I said I didn’t have a car. She said she’d seen me in the commuters’ meeting earlier that day and knew I had a car.

          Ten minutes later, as I ducked underneath arms, twisting my body over and under other freshman, trying to untangle and free myself from my peers, the girl said she wished she’d been holding hands with someone much more fun. She asked how such a “fucking loser” like me was accepted into college.

          I sat at the foot of my parents’ bed, sniveling that I didn’t want to go back to school. I said I’d always envisioned college as a place filled with academics who were self-motivated, focused on their studies. I wanted to return my ticket of admission. I said neither of them went to college, so I saw no reason why I had to go. My mom stroked my hair, telling me it would be all right. She said tomorrow would be better. They told me I had to go back if I ever planned on changing the world. They lied.

X

          After returning to the pressroom floor, my dad began exploring other careers because he said the job wasn’t “fun” anymore. When the company changed ownership, they fired most of his friends while expecting the remaining employees to work more for less pay. Dad said it used to be one of the best jobs he’d ever had because his coworkers developed a sense of camaraderie working long hours together to produce the paper. During breaks and lunch his buddies would play pranks on each other (slipping mice into their friends’ brown lunch bags and encouraging one another to sit on wet paint). After work they’d share a beer on the curb in front of the building. But the company broke their spirits by increasing restrictions on conversations in the pressroom and shortening their lunch breaks. They were now expected to remain virtually silent while working, as to not distract them from increased production.

          My dad took a second job—substituting as a night custodian for an elementary school. He hoped to demonstrate his strong work ethic to the principal so he could eventually be considered for fulltime employment. A year later he quit the printing business when he was hired fulltime to work as a second shift janitor. His few remaining friends in the pressroom were jealous.

          One evening while emptying the principal’s trashcan, my dad overheard the man complaining to his secretary about an error on his computer. My dad was a self-taught computer genius. He’d always remained ahead of the trends—he owned a Commodore 64 and a modem before anyone even heard of the Internet. As he relined the garbage can he offered the principal a brief explanation on how to resolve the error and prevent it from occurring again.

          Once computers began to be integrated into the school for teacher use, my dad became the unofficial technology coordinator. Administrators asked him to abandon his mop and vacuum throughout the day to do in-service instruction for teachers. One time my dad was asked by the superintendent to give a lecture on computers in the elementary school’s gymnasium. My mom and I had the day off, so we sat in the back and listened to his speech. After receiving a round of applause at the conclusion of his lecture, he didn’t wait until the room was empty to begin stacking chairs and sweeping the floor clean.

XI

          “Pick up the paper,” I said to my student who cleared the tattered notebook paper scraps off his desk onto the carpeted floor.

          “No,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

          “I said pick up the paper, now.” The room of twenty-nine other students fell silent.

          “No,” he said. “Do I look like a janitor?”

XII

          From the Yale handbook: “To ensure that undergraduate students are exposed to a range of ideas and disciplines during their time at Yale, Yale College requires them to fulfill a variety of distributional requirements, which must be met by certain milestone points. As knowledge of more than one language and familiarity with more than one culture will become increasingly important in the world of the twenty-first century for professionals in every field, the distributional requirements include foreign language study.”

XIII

          My dad is bilingual.

          The janitor is bilingual.

          My grandfather is bilingual.

          My grandfather was a janitor, too.

          That janitor was bilingual, too.

          My undergraduate creative writing instructor used to be a janitor.

          My undergraduate creative writing instructor is not bilingual.

XIV

          “Mr. Hemery,” one of my former students said, rushing into my classroom. “I heard that the nonfiction English class I’m signed up for next year is the dumb English class. Is that true?”

          The English department at the high school where I teach recently revised the curriculum to be more demanding and engaging for all levels of students. We strove to find challenging selections to motivate different types of learners to read the books and participate in intellectual classroom discussions. We still offered AP English—the course for students who’d been following the honors track for the past three years, but introduced two new courses: Nonfiction and Fiction.

          At the curriculum meeting I said, “The whole point is to instill some sense of passion about reading. It’s naïve to assume all people are passionate about the same things.” After hours of deliberation, we successfully created reading lists for each of the non-AP classes that would hopefully spur engaging real-life conversations—Nickel and Dimed, a book about trying to live on minimum wage, and Fast Food Nation, an exposé on big business’s exploitation of America.

          “Who told you Nonfiction was the ‘dumb’ class?” I asked the student.
“Well, one of my friends said that she had to take AP; otherwise, she’d be bored because those other classes were for regular students.”

“We worked really hard to make sure our classes prepare students for both college and work. I don’t know who is spreading these rumors, but they’re wrong,” I said.

          The student hesitated and then said, “She heard it from her teacher.”

XV

          Bumper sticker: My child is an honor student at——-school.

          Bumper sticker: My kid can beat up your honor student.

XVI

          My dad refuses to read fiction. He’ll read my wife’s poetry, but that’s about as close to the “not real” as he’ll get. I’ve tried to explain to him that fiction is a reflection of reality’s concerns.

          “Then why not deal with reality itself?” he asked. “It’s fucked up enough, isn’t it? What’s the point of reading something that’s not real? That just seems like a waste of time. Enough people avoid reality. And fiction is usually too wordy. Just get to the point, already, you know? Besides, I’ve never liked adjectives.”

XVII

          “Iago isn’t a faggot,” Shawn, one of my senior English students, said outside my classroom.

          “Mrs. Black said there is evidence that Iago is gay,” said another male student’s voice that I couldn’t identify.

          “He’s a pissed off, evil motherfucker, but he ain’t gay. Everything he does is calculated and precise and he brought down Othello because of pure revenge for fucking him over as lieutenant. He’s a badass motherfucker.”

          “Well, maybe it’s because we read Othello in AP English and your teacher doesn’t think you can handle that discussion in regular English.”

          “Maybe it’s because you’ve never seen real evil.”

XVIII

          My wife and I met my parents for breakfast recently and Dad recounted the intricate details of the sailing books we bought him for Christmas. He does this all the time, but before we presented him with his gifts this year, I made him promise to restrain himself from telling us every minute fact. I’m not really interested in sailing.

          He’s read all of Bernard Moitessier’s works but said he lost some respect for the author in his last book because Moitessier started to become a “mooch,” writing the book because he needed the money, rather than for the love of sailing. At breakfast my dad talked about some teacher from Stanford who teaches college courses on his boat, while sailing the coast of Europe. He told about a crew that survived a journey to Antarctica, but the boat sank on their return home in a small bay off the coast of South America when manmade debris crashed into it. He ended the morning by explaining the details of the crew of the Endurance who traveled to Antarctica in 1914 and survived. When they returned, they decided to join the military and fight for their country during World War I. They said it was the right thing to do. Nearly every man died in battle. According to Dad, man fucks everything up.

XVIV

          One of my students slipped his book bag off his shoulder as he entered my Broadcasting class. He’s typically one of the first in the room. “I have a question for you,” he said. “In AP English yesterday, our teacher said that we’re the only class that is required to make cross references in our research papers because none of the other students can handle it. She said that they can’t even get their citations done correctly, let alone understand more sophisticated constructions. Is that true?”

          He emphasized the word true as if he couldn’t even fathom not cross-referencing citations.

          “Sophomore year we primarily focus on the concept of research in general,” I said. “We stress how to take information from multiple sources, create a thesis and then support it with details. There is another paper junior year that is a little more advanced, but my seniors aren’t required to write a research paper like AP. I suppose they expect a little more out of you guys because you will most likely take higher-level English courses in college.”

          The student nodded his head and said, “Since you don’t teach your students how to really write a true research paper, do you ever feel like you are short-changing them?”

          “Not really,” I said. “Most students will only write research papers in school. In some way or another they may work on something similar in their jobs, like compiling data, but unless you’re a college professor, an MLA formatted research paper isn’t going to mean a whole heck of a lot after college. I think it’s all about getting people to think, rather than the nitty-gritty details. That’s why I like teaching English, because we get to talk about real concepts and philosophies. I don’t get too hung up on the little stuff.”

          “But still, I feel bad for you having to teach those kids. Don’t you ever feel like you’re wasting your time?”

          I really like this student quite a bit. He’s a good kid with good intentions and will surely run his own company someday. He has a likeable personality and is always prepared for class. Despite my fondness for the boy, I still cleared my throat and answered, “Never.”

XX

          1. Senior retaking my literature class because he refused to complete any homework first
          semester and failed the course:
                    a. Assisted the industrial arts teacher and a NASA engineer in the design and
                    construction of a robot that placed second in statewide competition.
                    b. Overheard me complaining to another teacher that my mobile broadcasting cart had
                    no cable management.
                              i. Welded and installed two intricate wire hangers on my cart without my
                              knowledge, and left a note that read, “Merry Christmas, Hemery.”
          2. Sophomore who received 53% on her research paper because of incorrect formatting on
          citations and, despite hours of extra help before and after school, lacks the ability to form
          coherent sentences:
                    a. Could easily be accepted into any art school in the country because she is an art
                    prodigy.
                    b. Writes poetry at sixteen that promises to one day be published by the most respected
                    literary magazines.
          3. Sophomore in my fifth period class who was suspended for asking his math teacher to
          “kindly shut the fuck up” and spent last Wednesday in the office due to an infraction of the
          dress code (holes in his jeans):
                    a. Believes John Lennon was the greatest gift to society.
                    b. Can play much of the Beatles library on his guitar (he brought me an audio recording
                    of himself playing to prove it).
          4. Sophomore failing my third period class because he’s not read one of the ten novels we’ve
          covered this year:
                    a. Can quote hundreds of lines, word for word, from the great movies of the past
                    century.
          5. Sophomore failing my third period class because he plagiarized his persuasive essay:
                    a. Plans on joining the military in two years to “protect” his older brother who’s been
                    serving in Iraq.
          6. Senior who sleeps in my class each day:
                    a. Works nights at UPS.
                              i. Uses money to pay for:
                                        1. Groceries.
                                        2. His own apartment.
                    b. His mother is addicted to heroin.
                    c. His father left when he was two.
          7. Senior failing my composition class:
                    a. Can rebuild the engine of his Toyota Corolla, modifying it for illegal street racing.
          8. Sophomore who has piercings in his tongue, ears, nose, and lips; a tattoo of Satan on his
          bicep; and is receiving 6% in my class:
                    a. Asked if I’m willing to “round up” his grade and winked.
                    b. Stopped by to say, “Thanks for everything” and “I’m sorry I didn’t do anything in
                    your class, but I really did enjoy the shit you talked about. You get it, man” the day he
                    was permanently removed from my class by his assistant principal because of his failing
                    grades and “complete lack of effort.”

XXI

          Note my dad left on my desk the day before I started my senior year of college:

August 23, 1998

Pops

Michael Hemery is the nonfiction editor for Hunger Mountain and earned his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Stacie Leatherman and son. This story is part of his collection titled, No Permanent Scars forthcoming from Silenced Press.

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review and many more. He published a three-volume series of the best of Northwest writing as well as an anthology of contemporary German poetry titled Evidence of Fire. He has published a limited edition collection of his own poetry and translated Yesterday I Was Leaving by Johannes Bobrowski. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. His story collection, The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking, was one of five finalists for the 2009 Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize.

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review and many more. He published a three-volume series of the best of Northwest writing as well as an anthology of contemporary German poetry titled Evidence of Fire. He has published a limited edition collection of his own poetry and translated Yesterday I Was Leaving by Johannes Bobrowski. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. His story collection, The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking, was one of five finalists for the 2009 Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize.

The small rooms induce, though, some sort of restraint into your prose, and your work is getting shorter. Is that better? How many pages a day do you need – to pay up, cover it all, put some aside for the many, many rainy days to come, in Dorset? To walk the prehistoric Chesil Beach?

Looking at the pieces. The “drafts”, the long queue on the flickering computer screen, at – what, 2am? Who’s awake in Dorset, at 2am? In Hardy’s Dorchester? The Dorset Insomniac. . .

Here’s one. On Emmett and his Danish Reading Pipe, he got it in Greenland. You can stuff enough aromatic baccy in the bowl for a long, long read in those Arctic Circle nights, your pipe your fireplace. But then – what? A brick, a kilo, of Jordanian hash?

Well, hell, all the books he read, and he read many. Oblamov, for one. That is a long novel about economy, really, the subject of all real Russian novels.

Here. This one. The girl who went to the Altamont Festival in a hearse. She was fourteen. Couldn’t get too far on that one. A couple paragraphs. No frequency.

What’s this one? “When I read the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books, I feel like no book I’d ever write would be reviewed in these pages.”

And some real fiction. Carlos Leon, sixty years old, found shot dead, at 9 in the morning, in a rooming house in the Excelsior District. Those in near-by rooms reported hearing him say, before he was shot, “May God forgive.”

Another. An elderly woman, found dead on the floor in her house in an upscale community. None of her neighbors could recall seeing her in five years.

A third, and a fourth. Must make fiction from these.

In some way even he may not have intended, Richard Brautigan’s advice, given years ago at a San Francisco streetcar boarding platform – to just make up things in a resume – was liberating.

But liberation can have its pitfalls, its sudden rapids. And then the long, long plunging waterfall, the no-return.

Don Skiles is the author of Miss America and Other Stories (Marion Boyars), and The James Dean Jacket Story and Other Stories (Cross+Roads Press). His work has appeared in West Branch, Central Park, Gargoyle, Asylum Annual, Floating Island , Chelsea and The Door Voice, and other publications. He lives in San Francisco.

The street the street across the street and beyond the window in the same street where solemn holes are being made for infamous pedestrians the same street that sees you coming when you don’t arrive that looks at you from the corner of its eye as if waiting for you in a corner it gives me a preliminary notice of your death the voices that are intuited are an omen of your death a sharp and satanic snail has seized the streets and with its infernal slime has transformed the streets into future death its slime travels spectrally almost invisibly over the indecorum of every shoe over the sharpness and acuity of certain heels the slime travels across wounds that only the street knows translucent trails of blood not yet dry the slime moves and advances like a slippery and tyrannical avalanche The demonic snail laughs silently and writhes from a wrinkled curve of its house remembering a grain of salt sharp as an infamous heel as its own slime.

My shoe has abandoned me has left me alone I walk as if crawling but not even that the truth is that I don’t know how to walk I creep I lean on my arms and pant the street becomes eternal I feel in my stomach the remains of a million shoes and dried gobs of spit I feel something sickening like the recollection of a worm I feel something seizing my legs and fusing them and instead of legs I have a single muscle a brilliant and disgusting muscle but more than anything brilliant I advance through the street I slither and my body starts to leave a salivating register of my cells a liquid memory of my steps a liquor flows as if I were an infamous snail defying the streets a satanic snail a fucking demented snail a blind and albino snail an aquatic snail lost on the asphalt remembering a grain of salt a snail born tragically deformed.

*




Te veo claramente sobre ese auto lleno de ojos que suministraban visiones inconclusas acerca de tus manos en el recorrido accidental de la noche cuando las cosas se ponen negras solo porque la noche las cubre cuando las cosas se ponen negras solo porque su propia sombra se incorpora y se vuelve tan ponderosa que las cosas cualquier cosa esta y esa cosa celebran un rito negro lleno de semillas.

La calle la calle de enfrente la calle y más allá de la ventana en la misma calle donde se hacen agujeros solemnes para peatones infames la misma calle que te ve venir cuando no llegas la que te mira de reojo como esperándote en una esquina me da un aviso previo de tu muerte las voces que se intuyen son un presagio de tu muerte un caracol agudo y satánico se ha apoderado de las calles y en su baba infernal ha transformado las calles en futura muerte su baba recorre espectralmente casi invisible lo indecoroso de cada zapato lo agudo y afilado de algunos tacones la baba recorre heridas que solo la calle conoce rastros translucidos de sangres ya ni secas la baba se mueve y avanza como una avalancha resbalosa y tirana. El caracol del demonio se ríe silenciosamente y desde una curva arrugada de su casa se contorsiona recordando un grano de sal agudo como un tacón infame como su propia baba.

Mi zapato se ha ausentado de mí me ha dejado sola camino como gateando pero ni eso la verdad es que no sé caminar me arrastro me apoyo en mis brazos y jadeo la calle se hace eterna siento en mi estómago un millón de restos de zapatos y escupos secos siento algo asqueroso como el recuerdo de un gusano siento que en mis piernas algo se apodera de mí y las une y en vez de piernas tengo un solo músculo un músculo asqueroso y brillante pero más que nada brillante avanzo por la calle me arrastro y mi cuerpo empieza a dejar un registro salivoso de mis células una memoria líquida de mis pasos un licor fluye como si yo fuera un caracol infame desafiando a las calles un caracol satánico un caracol hijo de puta y demente un caracol albino y ciego un caracol acuático perdido en el asfalto recordando un grano de sal parido y deforme.

Estela Lamat, translated by Michael Leong

Elizabeth Tussey
Born and raised in Northeastern Ohio.

Tony (not his real name) is the name he goes by. Tony, by the way, thinks the substitute teacher Mr. B (that’s me) is cool.

What’s a Jolly Rancher?

–

Principal comes in after the bell for end-of-bathroom -break has rung. Sub is still in the bathroom. Principal is teaching the kids the words “infer” and “inference” — words he’s seen on every statewide test.

I return, stand at my desk, looking like the captain’s lieutenant. Looking grateful for this intrusion.

“Infer,” he explains, is what he does when he views the videotape recording in the boy’s bathroom (!) — sees kids goofing off and infers from the time-stamp on the videotape that that activity occurred during recess.

–

Two tests to hand out this period. There isn’t enough of one to go around. So I hand out the Reading Skills test, until I run out, then pass the remaining kids the Social Studies Skills test.

That was wrong.

Kids finish the SS test and are waiting for the Reading Skills kids to finish. Time is ticking away. I infer that I goofed.

–

First period planning. The literature room is being used by the music class for textbook lessons. It’s the room I blew up in last time. I don’t need to be here. So I head over to the HS teacher’s lounge.

Well, no one else would’ve said “blew up” actually. The farm boys greeted me that time with the “Yo, Dude!” greeting. In turn, I excessively mocked their behavior with a “Yo, Wha‘z Happ’nin‘, Brudder!” Not in a kind tone.

Today again I’m in that room and just before I leave for the lounge a music student or whatever addresses me as “buddy.” I dress him down. I mention the need for respect of one’s Mr’s and Mrs’s. I feel I’ve done right by myself, and him. But it’s her room again, Mrs. Burke’s. It’s haunted by bad feelings.

I was in a sour mood anyway that first time I subbed for her. The kids weren’t doing their assignment. They had been assigned the graphic novel Maus… to read in class. SSR: Sustained Silent Reading. But no! Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Who would’ve thought kids liked talking so much.? Such an adult activity. Filling the room with yada-yada., yakety-yak, blah-blah-blah. And that’s all right. But they’re not reading Maus during SSR. I’m reading the teacher’s copy of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

And I’m going down, down, down in the blank despair of it…

So I rip a new asshole. I make it clear I am not their buddy or their dude. We are not on equal status. It’s loco parentis, dudettes and buddies — admittedly though on the Rent-A-Car model in my case. Like their parents I want them safe and I want them to learn.

Why I’m not sure.

–

This school sucks. The only place to get coffee is in wood shop, probably — but where’s that? The secretary doesn’t volunteer that information and it’s already time to scurry back to the classroom, before I’m marked (for life) as tardy, before that mark goes on my permanent record. And where’s that?

–

Scary how neat the classroom of the mathematician. All angles 90-degrees, all surfaces elegant. Unblemished, Uncluttered, Pure! as if newly manufactured. Neutral tans and clean blacks. All blinds drawn, all lights working. Nothing superfluous on the desk or in the drawers. Quiet reigns in that first period. Even I feel like being good.

NB: The math teacher is the guy who, shirt tails out, parka open, orange safety-vest half donned, hair mussed — who, in the mornings and afternoons, has the duty of blocking the student cars from coming into that one parking lot.

–

They took advantage of me in World History. Especially the girl who asked to use the instructor’s computer — for research, I thought. But she wanted to look up a sweater she wanted to buy. Others crowded around to give advice and make comparison.

Then lights out. Death, dead bodies, “comfort women,’ on the DVD about the Japanese occupation of Korea. Mostly in the back seats, check it out: cell phones, iPods, photos, and playing cards. The girl with the blackened-from-mascara eyes turns around to look at the ‘comfort woman.’ “Yuk,” she says.

–

Need a password to get on the school system. No one volunteers.

One is straightening her hair with an electrical device. Two are plugged into their music. Nap time has seemed to some an option.

Raja, short for Rachel. DJs and BJs. Two Madisons, one familiar to me. I know her mother and father. Some girls look like teachers. None of the boys do.

We have a parts-of-speech guessing quiz. A class in the hallway is working on a noisy group project. I poke my head out to ask them to be quiet. Cliff, a friend’s ex-husband, is there.

Amber and Latoshe are not reading much or taking notes. Anthony and the boy next to him are not taking notes. Another girl is helping Raja straighten her hair. It looks quite frizzy already.

Renee’s going home fourth period, feeling sick with the pregnancy. No planning period for me. I am transferred to substitute for her. Her class is writing a descriptive essay on their favorite television show or movie. It’s supposed to be persuasive.

–

“Don’t think because I’m small I’m not dangerous. I’m dangerous.”

I’ll keep that in mind.

Kid in art class does a mask of an alligator — used to be a mask of a dog. What does that convey?

“Sexy.”

Kid combs hair forward. Youngest receding hairline I’ve ever seen. Crumples a paper to play a shoot-and-goal game with, yes, the boy with the lowest hairline in the room.

She wasn’t here yesterday. She can’t do the assignment today.

The billed cap is pulled up and turned around and placed back. The billed cap is pulled up and placed backward. The boys examine their playing cards.

The other sub today at school is his brother, he says, looking out the window: “His van’s still here.”

–

Throws his pencil as if dropping it. As if only retrieving it picks up the assignment of the boy who has gone to the restroom. “Put that paper back, please.” Ohhh…

Muted discussion of sports scores, plant identification test coming up after music history.

“Ohhh… full sentences? I’m not going to write in full sentences.” Ohhh… scientific names? He’s not going to worry about the scientific names.

Ohhh…

In the hallway between periods: “How did you do?”

“I got a high D.”

–

Resisting empathy for the kids in the bourgeois school today, the school for children of college professors and local professionals. They have everything: nice layout, clean new furniture, new books, renovated auditorium, an entire renovated middle school (when does that happen, ever?).

I want to scold them for their privileged ignorance of other schools and the other children — rural schools funded insufficiently through property taxes. But here they are in Social Studies, buckling down, reading, doing the assignment, quiet, no sass, no backtalk, no acting out (or very little). They’re easy.

–

Fourth grade. Brendan already has the label on him. As does Nicholas. Destiny’s on the trouble-maker list too, but strictly because of attention. Instead of cutting out the mask, she cuts it to pieces. She’s the line leader today. Isis does the weather.

Shyra draws a rainbow frame. Other girls draw mother and daughter. Boys draw mostly monster trucks. Ben says his is made of plastic, can be seen through, has a door to enter. It’s more of a monster rocket.

–

Per their chemistry teacher’s instructions I’ve asked them, the classes, to write a 3-quarter-page synopsis. Individual students have asked me: Is that 3 fourths? Is that 3 fourths? — pointing to a page 1-quarter-page covered. One kid heard 3 pages! the article to be synopsized was not 3 pages.!!

But I’m gritting my teeth and not knowing why. What do I care about their synopses in chemistry class? Then some object to the word ‘synopsis.’ “It’s abstract, not synopsis.” Synopsis, abstract, summary, it’s all the same thing, I retort. Still some eye me skeptically…

High school, tenth grade, ninth grade.

–

Someone left a Trojan condom under a CD in the computer lab. Who should find it but the biggest Actor Out in the class? Football athlete, hero to his friends. The girls want to see it. One of them scoffs at Trojans, as if she knows, and sticks out her tongue. The laughter-energy, embarrassment energy, peer-driven — almost derails the search for research sites and the proper way to cite them.

10th grade, sophomores.

P.S. They made a mistake putting wheels on the computer lab chairs.

–

                     Sexual
                     health is the discussion today
                     in Family and Consumer Science
                                                                class.

Presentation by a nurse, whose mother is… the school secretary.

Teen sexual activity. A pregnancy information clinic essentially.

No, I’m not uncomfortable with this activity.

Use correct words: I expect we will be able to say penis and vagina, without giggling and acting like little children.

There will be group activities…

Consider carefully sharing information about abuse and neglect — for I am a ‘mandated reporter.’ All persons in the medical and legal professions are mandated reporters. So it would help me so much if you would dot dot dot…

                     so they start with forms. Time drags on.

The girl in the jaunty man’s fishing hat, bald from chemo apparently, usually albino-bright, today pink. Hand on cheek, hiding her eyes partially.

Take it seriously. Code numbers, no names.

–

Student teacher in Ancient Cultures. Not much for me to do except be a body as a legal requirement. ‘Let it go,’ he whispers to me, when the teen truck mechanic cruises in, cusses, makes the class laugh, puts his arm around the student teacher, mocks him, calls him ‘Willy.’

I have six days of this. It’s painful to watch. It’s painful to let go.

–

It would be nice if I could get on email. I can’t. I’m serving as substitute guard for what is known formerly as In-School Suspension (ISS). I repeatedly think of it and refer to it as In-Seclusion.

I’m glad to get the work. I’m here tomorrow as well. ISS is what they do when kids lose control or just plain disobey beyond what is deemed corrective by mere lunch detention. Usually their behavior here is tolerably serene; they have no audience; they don’t need to put it on here — and know the consequences if they do: alternative school, what we used to call reform school. Or maybe it’s alternate school. I’ve heard Saturday School too.

Nice kids in here some times. There was Britney, with the pink dyed hair, 17, mother of a one-and-a-half year-old child, moved only recently with her mom from Cincinnati to Albany. Hippy-style kid, eats tofu, and other good, organic foods. Food was the problem. She was here in ISS for several days for refusing to leave her breakfast and return to home room. She didn’t want to waste the food.

There was Tyler, too, with the Mohawk, lots of friends, not dangerous, spent a good part of the time marking up the white board with: ISS is torture! Drew the wood shop next door with its grinding noises and the band room filling the hall with unprofessional sound. These he drew on either side of a screaming head similar to Munch’s “The Scream.”

–

Kicked 3 kids out of 1st period. Of whom I’d been pre-warned. Jade, the boy in the gray and black sweatshirt, kind of dark skinned, usually reserved and to himself, lately he has been bullying others.

Two in the class are dark-skinned and have gray sweatshirts! Hey, dude! But I stop him in mid-sentence. It hurts his feelings not to be thought a peer. “Mr.,” I tell him. After more sass from him, I move him. That doesn’t help. Two goon-brethren join him in giggling, disrupting. Out they go today! No mercy. No wanna deal.

–

Two student teachers, one substitute teacher, four students — in Intervention. Dustin hasn’t any work to do. Wasn’t here Friday because of Special Olympics. Head down on the table. No one is doing much of anything for him. I’m here evidently as security again. The boy knows the process, the administration of activities, but learning is not in the cards today. What am I doing here? Warehousing, restricting, possibly punishing.

Om Nama Shivaya (masculine).
Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha (feminine).

–

Being Mr. Wise. Or just being Mr. Whiz-Bang. Mostly Mr. B., the dude, the man who substitutes for Ms K and Mr. C and the whole honorific alphabet.

Being Mr. Work. Losing the Mr. at home and in the teachers’ lounge. Losing the term and the strained respectful tone, losing track and losing a human race, losing the bottom and the top.

Being Mr. Four Corners. Being Mr. Pick Up and Go. Being Mr. Relax and Shut up. Losing the Mr. and just Being the Being for a change.

–

Substitute teacher learns… of two kids who have been molested, no penetration says Mr. Downs, who has paper work to catch up on, will be in the building if needed.. The boy acts up at times, may even need police intervention — for his own safety, says Mr. Downs. The girl does not act out, but may suddenly break into tears if she’s stuck in her schoolwork — was stuck on word “flushing” for two hours on a test yesterday. Thanks, Mr. Downs, for the pre-information.

–

Meting out punishment to Alexander Hamilton. He is in the wrong seat, or doesn’t have permission to be there. At least he won’t be in ISS.

Half the six grade is in lunch detention. The line into the food area is moving slowly. Foot-longs are the meal today. And crinkle fries. I must sit with Tessa. She must sit with me.

For the rest of the day I am paid to sit with one child. She is to have no joy or uplifting moments. We close the door to ISS so as not to hear the music classes. Is this how to learn being grown-up?

I keep mis-thinking of In-School Suspension (ISS) as “in seclusion.”

–

I’m shifted to ISS from middle school math, in charge of three boys, 9th, 10th, 8th, who compare spending last year about the same time here and in the alternate school. They discuss who was rude last year (of ISS and alternate school faculty), what were the infractions, and how many days left to freedom this year.

At 9 a.m. we go to the awards ceremony, 1 hour and 18 minutes. Was that more of a punishment? No, because there was human energy, laughter, pride expressed, praise — though Bo, one of the hoodlums here today, was disappointed at not receiving his expected good attendance award. Last year it was 2 days missed, this year 1 day or no days to receive the medal and certificate. Everyone who gave blood this year is asked to stand up. One of the boys with me does. No certificate.

–

Awaiting the day. Assignments in flux. Soon I will know where to place my bag down. Coffee and bananas for breakfast. The principal has just come in. The secretary has been regaling me with stories of recent tornado scares. Her daughter helps out before going to class, opens doors to rooms for substitutes. Middle-schoolers begin to walk in from the buses. Other substitutes report.

On the speaker phone in the middle school office:

Busdriver A: Is today the day you’re taking your baby to the doctor?
Busdriver B: Yes.
Busdriver A: Now you stay calm and don’t worry.
Busdriver B: I won’t.

T-shirt messages on middle-schoolers:

Here I Am. Now What Are Your Other Two Wishes?

Not Now. I’m Busy.

What’s In It For Me?

–

Pre-school. Jadens. One a boy, one a girl. A Jade Lynn. An Ashton, who is one unholy terror. He and boy Jaden are like a bombardment. Jaden threw a fit when I took the chair from him. He was hauling it around in a half-seated position. He later wanted to show me stuff, leaned against me.

Forgiveness is easy when you’re just starting out.

–

So that’s a Jolly Rancher! It’s a kind of hard candy. Is this actually the office of Mr. Miller?

–

So I’m in alternate ISS. They’re going to bring in another table. The ones to be seated will be kept separated. How will it go today? I’m glad I’m not in a rough school.

I’m waiting for the overflow from central ISS. They have gobs of kids they are punishing all at once. I get the sense it was not the result of a riot, but serves as a scheme to get them to complete their end-of-the-year school work. Often the infractions are minor here as compared with other schools.

I suspect it’s a strategy to raise the school district grade at No Child Left Behind HQ.

–

Line ‘em up. Churn ‘em out.

Ivars Balkits writes, “This is a piece of creative nonfiction based on a journal I kept while employed the past two years as a substitute teacher in several school systems in southeastern Ohio. I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing though the journal itself reflects a lot of frustration I felt with schooling as it’s done in Ohio and in the US in general.”

This piece has been nominated for The Donald Murray Prize and The Best American Short Stories.

           When school started, Catherine, er, CQ!, sought Helen Trees out at the very beginning to introduce her (Helen) to her (CQ) girlfriends from high school, a group Helen would grow to call the Fucking Loser Bitches High School Group, and insisted Helen move in with Sylvie Drago (the outcast), who didn’t have a roommate, at least not one deemed fit for the Fucking Loser Bitches High School Group.
           Drapes, as Sylvie Drago’s roommate was called, was a descendant of a devout Saudi Arabian family who was not allowed to shower in the bathroom shared among the floor, so Drapes stashed herself in one of the stalls and washed her crotch with a bucket of water, which she kept in the closet and dragged to the facilities day in day out, wore heavy drapes (hence) as clothes, all day all night and absolutely under no circumstances could have the door to the room open without covering every single piece of skin (minus her face) as not to expose herself to any boys roaming the floor. It was against Drapes’ religion to permit boys to see her without the drapes and since the fucking things made her sweat profusely, they were always off and the door was always shut, the stench of boy-sweaty-socks and boy-sweaty-balls permeated within the confines of the room.
           Sylvie had not factored in the possibility of Drapes as her roommate at The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!), or any other foreigner, so Sylvie confided in CQ and hoped she would be able to produce a suitable roommate.
           Helen joined CQ and the Fucking Loser Bitches in the hallway on their floor in their dormitory. They (the Fucking Loser Bitches), a pack of hungry dogs, circled Helen, each waiting to sniff her butt or hump her leg, since CQ had peed on her at orientation.
           To Helen’s left, Robin Gallagher, strawberry blonde and freckled-faced, nose ring, Bob Marley T-shirt coupled with a pleated pair of (Helen tagged as men’s, but questionable^[5]) khaki Ralph Lauren shorts, and Birkenstocks (!!!), who walked with a limp, offered Helen a nod and a “Hey.” She leaned against the wall and shifted her weight on to her good leg. “Knee Surgery. Blew it out playing soccer.” Helen noted possible lesbian^[6].
           Across from Helen, Melinda Mayfield, short and curly and frizzy and despicable hair, wore (see The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!) fashion page 1) a men’s oversized green and white striped Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, equipped with matching ribbon in her, come to find out, perm-ed hair, gave Helen a quick hug and said, “We call me Mel! We’re so glad you’re here, right CQ? We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, ever since CQ met you. We’ve heard a lot about you from CQ.” Mel looked to CQ for approval and upon getting it, retreated to her position – slightly behind and to the left CQ. CQ flipped her heavily moussed body-waved hair over her shoulder knocking Mel in the face with the crisp strands. Helen noted Mel’s narrowed eyes and clenched jaw as she removed a hair from her glossed lips^[7].
           To Helen’s right, Kim Whitaker, tall and thin and brunette with long hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, removed a Kleenex from the sleeve of her men’s (yes) red and white striped Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, though long-sleeved, wiped her nose and eyes and offered Helen a weak smile and said, “I’ve never been to New York.” And added between sobs, “I’d love to go home with you sometime.” Helen noted a wide gap between her front teeth and that she was slightly cross-eyed or perhaps one was just lazy.
           Helen imagined bringing Kim to New York and introducing her to her father. Then Helen imagined that her father was speaking to her again.
                      Helen: Dad, this is Kim Whitaker from school.
                      Dr. Trees: From The Ohio State University?
                      Helen and Kim: Go Bucks!
                      Dr. Trees: (speechless)
                      Helen: Kim, this is my father Dr. Francis Connor Trees.
                      Kim: (sobbing)
           Helen pictured Kim offering her hand to Helen’s father, quickly stuffing the Kleenex up her sleeve, hoping Helen’s father wouldn’t see, but of course he would. He’d never shake her hand, not only because of the germ-factor on her ragged snot tissue, but really he’d never get past the eyes. Helen’s father would stare at Kim in disbelief. He’d be calculating the following:
           A) Eyes crossed? Or one lazy?
           B) Same as A
           C) Same as A and B
           D) Did Helen say friend?
           E) Did Helen say Bucks?
           Helen’s father would later say to Helen, “To be successful, one needs to surround themselves with successful people.” Helen couldn’t decide if she would stand up for Kim in the proposed scenario and The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!) or fold and succumb to her father’s vision of success.
           Upon second glance at the Fucking Loser Bitches (and especially Kim), Helen noted she would succumb. She was sure she would find at least a few successful friends at OSU (GB!). At least to introduce to her father, they would speak to each other again, right?^[8]
Mel said, “We’re upset because we miss Eddie.” She put an arm around Kim and as Kim blew her nose Mel added, “We try not to speak of Eddie.”
           CQ said, “Her boyfriend. He’s only twenty minutes away Kim. Jesus.”
           Kim said, “Fuck you Caty.” Her face scrunched up and red, her hideous gap revealed.
           Mel said, “We’re calling her CQ! now.”
           Kim said, “Okay, well fuck her too!”
           CQ said, “fuck you too” and Kim said, “fuck you” again and Mel said her, “we” bit. Helen was disappointed in her new Ohio friends and began to question her decision to leave all her miserable non-friends and non-family in New York. Whatever happened to the friendly orientation days, where exclamation marks were used without the accompaniment of four letter words? Surely Helen could have at least gotten in to New York University (or worse SUNY) had she applied. She watched them squabble, their baggy sleeves caused them to make each hand gesture twice; once with either hand (Kim) or elbow (CQ and Mel) trapped in the men’s oversized sleeve and twice to reveal a pointed and or middle finger. CQ was okay and maybe Robin (suspect lesbian), but the other two insufferable. Helen hoped she might be able to turn CQ and Robin against Mel and Kim.
           Robin said, “Guys!”
           They stopped. A few parents carrying garbage bags full of clothes and shoes, lingered in the hallway a few doors down, pausing briefly to ensure everything was okay. Helen, embarrassed to be connected to such catty behavior, smiled and playfully rolled her eyes, confirming only silly girl stuff was the case. Helen made eye contact with one of the fathers wearing an OSU t-shirt, which read (yes) Go Bucks! and thought of her father. Her father didn’t wear T-shirts.
           “Okay, okay. I know it’s hard Kim, but Eddie’s probably having the time of his life right now. So, so should you. There is no way he is standing around crying to his friends.” CQ was right. Helen was amazed anyone would go to college committed to a boyfriend from high school, but then remembered the gap and the lazy eye (or crossed) and thought it better for Kim to hold on to anyone she could.^[9]
           A group of girls squealed at the other end of the hallway as a boy in a towel pounded on a door yelling, “Let me in dickhead!” Helen was getting annoyed. “Who smokes?” she said.
           CQ, Robin, and Kim said they did, Mel, an asthmatic said she (we) did not, and no one but Helen had any cigarettes. She handed each girl a Marlboro Light knowing damn well this was going to get old fast. Smokers, or so-called smokers, who did not possess cigarettes but smoked everyone else’s was not something Helen tolerated. Yet, in an attempt to make good with her new Ohio girlfriends, she handed out her cigarettes with an exclamation mark on the end of each one! Here! Here! Here!
           “Hey wait up.” A girl wearing tight black jeans and a white button-down shirt (not Ralph Lauren), a tearstained face, and heavy blue eyeliner, stomped down the hall and called out (no exclamation mark) to them. She reached the group, packing her cigarettes and muttering, “Fuck this.” Helen noted no ribbon, no men’s shirt, and no fucking embroidered horse: the outcast, no doubt. The girl was Sylvie Drago and her introduction to Helen Trees consisted of a scowl (from Sylvie) and a raised eyebrow (from Helen).
           Sylvie said, “Fuck this, fuck her.” Then to Helen said, “You’re Helen Trees?” Helen said yes. “You’re moving in tonight,” Sylvie said. Helen more importantly noted she had her own cigarettes.

           It was very interesting for Helen living with Sylvie, the outcast of the Fucking Loser Bitches High School Group, not only because Helen incessantly kept finding teeny tiny rubber bands strewn all over the fucking room since Drapes had worn braces ^[10] and for some reason thought it might be funny to hide them all over the place to angrily disgust the next resident in retaliation for having been pushed out of her dorm room and forced to live in the all-foreigners-dormitory, which was taking away from Drapes’ ^[11] experience as a college student in the U.S. of A., but she was also completely filled in on the history of CQ and the Fucking Loser Bitches, why Sylvie was the outcast, and how Helen Trees had become the Liar, er, Liar! of the group.
           Upon hearing her new title, Helen was enraged. How dare those Fucking Loser Bitches turn against her, and not just against her, but against her behind her back. Sylvie informed Helen, CQ had told the Fucking Loser Bitches she was a Liar! after having met her at orientation. Helen wanted to know, no, demanded to know, what she had lied about. Then Helen remembered she had lied about everything.

           During orientation, CQ said, “So, do you have any brothers and sisters and if so, what do they do?”
           “No,” Helen said.
           Helen had one sister who was institutionalized for attempting to commit suicide twice. Once, as Mary Katherine Trees, a success, according to Helen’s mother, and once as Gloria “Glory” Peterson, a failure. Glory Peterson was institutionalized and technically Glory Peterson was not Helen’s sister. So, no, Helen did not have any brothers and sisters.
           “Um, is your mom someone you can talk to, like a friend, like, talk openly with about anything and everything?”
           “Yes,” Helen said.
           Helen had not spoken to her mother in five years. They communicated via written notes left in the kitchen on the butcher block, once in the morning, and again in the evening. The notes were quite friendly and Helen was pleased. So, yes, Helen was friends with her mother.
           “I really don’t know if I want to marry Tom, I mean, I would hate! hate! hate! to get a divorce. God! Are your parents divorced?”
           “No,” Helen said.
           Helen’s parents got divorced when Helen was nine years old. Since then, her mother had remarried a crusty Italian Mathematician, Gus Della Penna, and her father had remarried First Ex-Wife, an older woman Helen had never met, and eventually he remarried Second Ex-Wife, a young girl Helen had never met, and finally, just this past August, remarried an even younger girl named Kristy Speigelman, who had just graduated from college two years ago, whom Helen met at their wedding. So, no, Helen’s parents were not divorced.

           Helen wondered how CQ knew she had lied at orientation and asked Sylvie. Sylvie said CQ’s mom had been seated beside Helen’s mom at the parents welcome dinner. But Helen told Sylvie there was no way Helen’s mother would ever reveal their family’s private life like that and Sylvie just shrugged. Then Helen remembered her mother’s pill addiction and drinking problem and recalled it increasing after Helen had announced her attending The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!). Helen noted to write her mother a note about this.
“Great,” Helen said and walked over to the window. She saw CQ and the Fucking Loser Bitches, minus Mel, bumming cigarettes from Paul, a stoner Helen really liked and unfortunately had confided in CQ about it. Helen imagined CQ telling everyone in the building about Helen Trees the Liar! in 303 and her crush on Paul the Stoner in 201.
           Sylvie said, “Look, technically you didn’t lie. I mean. I get it. But that’s not really the problem. I think she gets that you would lie about your sister and maybe your fucked up parents, it’s the other thing.”
           Helen spun around to face Sylvie. “What other thing?”
           “The sex thing.”
           Helen’s stomach dropped. She remembered her pounding heart and shortness of breath when CQ had asked her if she had a boyfriend and if Helen and her boyfriend had had sex. CQ also inquired about blowjobs and eating pussy and finger fucking and all kinds of things Helen had never done before. The closest Helen had come to a sex was in her junior year of high school, giving her then-boyfriend a hand job that left him with blue balls, and Betsy and Betty, at Spence, had found out and painted her locker blue and glued blue handballs all over it (very un-Spence-like) and it took Helen a long time to even get the joke. Everyone had laughed behind her back for months. Helen was humiliated. Then Helen remembered framing Betsy and Betty for cheating on an economics exam and the two of them getting expelled from Spence and not gaining entry to Princeton University, the one and only college to which they had applied.
           Helen knew there was no way CQ’s mom would have received that information from Helen’s mother. She returned to the window to watch CQ smoke Paul’s cigarettes. Helen thought college would be different, especially at OSU (GB!). She didn’t know anyone here and no one knew her. And quite frankly, Helen was better than all of them. Then Helen remembered she never wallowed in self-pity only vengeance.

           It just so happened that Helen Trees and Catherine Quinn were both majoring in Business Administration. However, CQ the Marketing route and Helen the Economics route. Helen had always done well in school, even though her disciplinary record stated otherwise (see page 2 escort service). Helen enjoyed it. She was one of those students when called upon always knew the correct answer, but managed to include some other brilliant notion while reciting it. Although her grades never really reflected her IQ, Helen hoped to become a member of MENSA, like her father, especially because her mother had been rejected and her stepfather thought it ridiculous. Mary Katherine Trees was a member and normally that would discourage Helen from desiring membership, but Mary Katherine was dead and Glory Peterson was not intelligent enough for acceptance. The one thing Helen could attribute to her mother was her ability to be an eloquent fall down drunk. Helen had no problem seizing the title of one of The Ohio State University’s (Go Bucks!) most profound and prestigious partiers, while proving her intellect among peers and faculty. For Helen it all just boiled down to time management.
           Helen needed only four point five hours of sleep a night. As long as Helen could block off the time and was able to distinguish between what she needed to get done and what she wanted to get done, Helen was able to accomplish it all. When CQ caught a glimpse of this quality, she tried to mimic it.
           CQ attempted to study when Helen studied and party when Helen partied, slighting herself of the sleep she required in order to maintain some sanity. This was a disaster. CQ needed sleep. What made it even more of a disaster for CQ was the thirty-five-page paper due at the end of the semester in one of their most challenging prerequisite classes for their major. The class notoriously was re-taken by each freshman student (CQ’s brother included). There was officially one week left before the paper was due and CQ hadn’t written a thing and she was panicked. Then Helen remembered she had turned her paper in early and received an extremely high mark (which inevitably lead to her not having to repeat the class).

           Only days before the end of the semester and the thirty-five-page paper was due, CQ paced in Helen and Sylvie’s room. Sylvie at her desk, her back facing CQ, and Helen at her closet, rifling through her clothes deciding what to wear. Helen said, “Do you really have absolutely nothing to turn in for even part of a grade?”
           “I just didn’t do the paper. Tom and I were not getting along and I spent every fucking night on the phone with him! God, why?” CQ flopped on to Helen’s chair in the corner of the room and looked green. Helen hoped she’d vomit elsewhere and that it would be very painful; she did not want her chair or her room to stink.
           Helen stood in the center of the room in her jeans and T-shirt, her hair wet having just showered. She was going to meet up with her new gang of friends, the ones who did not think she was a Liar!, or at least didn’t know it yet.
           “Fuck,” CQ said, “That chick with the broken arm is getting an Incomplete for the semester and writing the paper over the summer.”
           Helen brushed her long wet red hair and climbed up on to her lofted bed. “Yeah, but she’s an exception.”
           “I need to be an exception. Not my arm, but maybe just my wrist.”
           “You’re too late to be an exception. There’s no way Professor Wu, Professor Fuck Wu, is going to let you get away without turning in anything. Come on Caty, you’ve had all fucking semester.”
           Sylvie sat at her desk; open books and notepads covered the surface. She turned to face CQ. “So, why didn’t you just do it? Because of Tom?” She exhaled loudly through her nose, a decrescendo of air, and shook her head, her head shake keeping the decrescendo’s time. Her breathing said, “You’re a fucking idiot and I hope you suffer and die.” Helen noted how much she liked that exhale and head shake and hoped to mimic it in the future.
           CQ rolled her eyes and sank deeper in to the chair. She glanced at the phone mounted to the wall above her head, yanked the cord, the receiver landing in her lap and dialed. “Hey, get down here.” She tried several times to hang it up without having to move her body whatsoever, till Sylvie, fed up with her, stormed over and grabbed it from her.
           “Who the fuck was that?” Sylvie said.
           “Jeni.”
           Jeni Clementine was the reason Helen Trees had been officially branded the Liar. Fucking Jeni.
           Helen had a connection with Jeni that was absolutely infuriating to Helen. When Jeni was around Helen and they were talking, Helen felt she could share a little more about herself, being Jeni hadn’t graduated from Fucking Loser Bitches High like the rest of the group. Helen invited Jeni to visit her friend for the weekend, TJ Ley, who was getting his MBA from Case Western.^[12] The Fucking Loser Bitches had returned to their hometown, somewhere outside of Cleveland (Helen noted everyone from Ohio was from somewhere outside of Cleveland), for their high school’s homecoming football game (Robin’s brother was a senior on the team), so Helen thought it would be fun, and a chance to bond, for Helen and Jeni. Little did Helen know, Jeni was one men’s oversized irregular striped Ralph Lauren Polo shirt away from being hailed the newest member of the Fucking Loser Bitches High School Group. Jeni, now deemed, Whore, had fucked TJ while Helen, passed out drunk, slept in the bed beside them.
           Weeks after the visit to Case Western, Helen grew suspicious of Jeni. One night, Helen, returning from her late night class, joined the Fucking Loser Bitches and Jeni (but not Sylvie) in CQ and Mel’s room for movie night. CQ and Mel on their beds, Robin, knee elevated under a few stacked pillows, on the futon chair, Kim on the floor, and Jeni, in her own chair she dragged from her room down the hall. Helen found a spot on the floor beside CQ’s bed. No one acknowledged her, everyone’s eyes glued to the television.
           Helen said, “Your knee’s acting up?”
           Robin said, after several moments, “Oh me?”
           Helen said, “No the other girl in the room with her bad knee elevated.” She looked to CQ for back up, preparing for a few minutes of teasing Robin, which usually led to hurting Mel’s feelings, which was really fun, but CQ didn’t react.
           Jeni said, “Helen, maybe Robin is sick of you always making fun of her.”
           “I don’t always make fun of her.”
           CQ said, “Yeah you do.”
           Helen said, “So do you. You make fun of everyone, especially Mel.” Mel got up and left the room.
           Jeni said, “Nice work. Why don’t you go paint your room blue or something.”
           Helen said, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” But she knew. She knew exactly how she found out too. Fucking TJ.
           Jeni said, “Oh Helen.” Jeni’s tone was sympathetic. Oh. Helen. Oh, poor, silly, fucking, inexperienced Helen.
           Helen said, “Oh Helen what?” Helen’s tone was sincere. She decided to play dumb. Helen glanced at the clock on the CQ’s nightstand. “Fuck, I gotta get into the paper, did you start yours CQ?”
           “Let’s watch porn. I have one of Tom’s. Helen? You want to watch?”
           Every eye on Helen.
           “What kind of porn?” Jeni said.
           “It’s soft core. A blowjob here, a HAND job there. Kid stuff, “ CQ said, “Helen? Yeah?”
           It was evident to Helen these few lines of dialogue had been rehearsed. Perhaps Mel’s exit staged.
           Helen said, “I’ll catch the next one. I’m going to get started on the paper. I want to get it out of the way. Have fun.”
           Helen tried not to run out of the room and slam the door behind her, but she was sure she did anyway. She stood in the hallway, wondering if she were going to cry. Tina, two doors down to the left, popped her head out. “Oh, hey Helen, you okay?”
           “Of course. Lots of shit to do.”
           “Right. Professor Wu, right?”
           “Right.”
           “Hey, if you see Leslie, tell her I’m looking for her. I thought I heard her door open. Anyway. Later.” She closed the door and Helen walked slowly down the hallway to her room. First thing she did was call Fucking TJ. It was the last time they spoke.

           Jeni the Whore, and the rest of the Fucking Loser Bitches, came down to Helen and Sylvie’s room at CQ’s command. They discussed CQ’s plan, the break-the-wrist-plan, to be the next exception in Professor Wu’s class, in detail. CQ hinted toward a volunteer to assist in the break and unfortunately, her Ralph Lauren Polo team of Fucking Loser Bitches did not have their hands in the air. The strategy pressed on to the how, shelving the who.
           Everyone (CQ, the Fucking Loser Bitches, Jeni, Sylvie, and Helen) gathered outside their dormitory parking lot, beside Jeni’s blue (Helen noted to not say blue or stand near anything blue or wear anything blue) Ford Mustang, in the farthest corner where no one would bother them.
           CQ said, “What if I lay down in the parking lot, my arm stretched out, and someone drives Jeni’s car over my wrist?”
           Helen said, “Have you ever seen a car tire before?”
           CQ nodded.
           Helen said, “Good. Next.”
           Robin said, “What about a bike?”
           No one said anything. Helen rolled her eyes, but allowed her to continue.
           “You have more control over the bike. Man, I dunno.”
           Kim said, “Yeah. The tire is smaller.”
           Jeni said, “For better aim to the wrist.”
           Sylvie exhaled her infamous exhale. This was going nowhere fast and Helen had things to do.
           “Look,” Helen said, “We want the break to be clean. We do not want to risk the possibility of surgery or any other serious permanent damage. The wrist is essentially a double row of small short bones, called carpals, intertwined to form a malleable hinge. Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle.”
           “We don’t know what any of that means. We need to be serious,” Mel said.
           “It’s an acronym if you’d let me finish. And, I know this is serious. Trust me, I do not need you telling me it’s serious. Both of my parents are doctors, so I know a lot about this shit.”
           CQ said, “Shut up Mel.” Then to Helen said, “What does the acronym mean?”
           “The acronym represents, before I was so rudely interrupted and reminded about the seriousness of the situation from the girl wearing Homer Simpson slippers, the bones in order of proximal row lateral to medial and then distal row lateral to medial: Scaphoid, Lunate, Triqetrium, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Capitate, Hamate.”
           Everyone looked frightened, except for Sylvie, who grinned. Sylvie said to Mel, “Serious enough for you.” Mel nodded, mouthing the acronym and counting on her fingers.
           CQ said, “So you’ll do it?” Helen, without the slightest hesitation, said, “Sure.” A sly smile danced over Helen’s lips as she recalled movie night. She continued.
           “The most common fracture of the wrist is the Scaphoid Fracture, so we’ll plan for that. It can be more difficult to detect in an x-ray, but wrists are tricky anyway. A good choice though, if you’re going to break anything on purpose. At least, I think so. The Scaphoid Fracture is also more common in young adults and hopefully will not necessitate surgery or worse, ORIF.”
           “ORIF?” Sylvie said.
           “It’s exactly what we do not want to happen to our cheating friend here. Open, Reduction, Internal, Fixation. Allow me to simplify for present company. She, Would, Be, Fucked.” Helen counted on her fingers the last four words for Mel. “Basically, it’s going into the wrist and inserting metal rods and pins in hopes of reconstructing the wrist. It’s the most painful fix and can take years to heal.”
           They (CQ, the Fucking Loser Bitches, and Jeni) stared at Helen. They took a moment to whisper among themselves in a huddle. Sylvie and Helen lit cigarettes. Helen heard people shouting from across campus, drunken shouts, and she remembered she had somewhere to be.^[13]
           After a moment, Jeni said, “So, does this mean I can put my car away?”
           Helen stamped out her smoke and started to roll her eyes.
           “Wait,” Helen said, “I have an idea.”

           There was no way Helen was going to seriously run her over with the car. However, the car door was perfect.
           Helen strategically placed CQ’s wrist within the confines of the car door where someone really and truly could possibly get their wrist slammed in it. The break had to be somewhat real. Keeping the arm steady was going to be the only trick. Helen and CQ reviewed several times and marked where the door was going to make contact with the wrist, it being imperative CQ didn’t flinch and or chicken out, and Helen was then going to take a running start and throw all of her weight against the door slamming the hell out of it, the impact causing the snap.
           Helen and CQ set it up, promises were made that no one would ever be mad at the other person, (not held) promises were made that they would never reveal to anyone who did what and or why it was done, (obviously not held) and promises were made that no matter what medicinal complications served as a result of the break, under no circumstances could either party be held responsible (actually held). It wasn’t necessary. After Helen pummeled herself into the car door without CQ flinching or chickening out in the slightest, her wrist snapped.
           However, CQ wasn’t crying alone from the pain. A chorus of sobs followed from the Fucking Loser Bitches and Jeni. Helen was in shock that she could pull off something so malicious without a hitch. In CQ’s eyes, Helen was a true friend, someone who would go out on a limb and who could be trusted. Someone who had put another’s worries and concerns, the thought of not being able to complete an assignment for a difficult Professor, a difficult class and a difficult major, ahead of her own, and empathized with the anxiety of a friend and wanted to do everything in her power to have that friend’s anxiety lifted. Helen Trees was Catherine Quinn’s personal hero.
           If only Helen had been able to look upon her actions as guileless friendship instead of foul play. Once she heard CQ’s wrist snap and saw the tears spring into her eyes, the gasp of the rest of the Fucking Loser Bitches and Jeni, and witnessed the scared, amazed looks on their faces, Helen knew it was her internal hatred for this person that enabled her to carry out this violent task.
           Sylvie approached Helen as Helen lit a cigarette, and she thought Sylvie might ask her to move out, that maybe Drapes was the better option, but the smirk on Sylvie’s face read Congratulations! and not Get out! She winked at Helen, her back to the Fucking Loser Bitches and Jeni, and said, taking the cigarette out of Helen’s hand and pressing it to her lips to inhale, “Next time, people will need to sign on the dotted line, a verbal agreement of No Hard Feelings will not suffice.” She exhaled and handed the cigarette back to Helen. The next day Sylvie changed her major from Social Work to Pre-law and Helen changed hers from Economics to Pre-med. Another business attempt, no doubt.
           Helen and Sylvie tried not to laugh as CQ shouted to the Fucking Loser Bitches to, “Fucking help me!” And CQ verbally annihilated Jeni for not driving her immediately to the emergency room and screaming threats about Oral Internal Fixation and whatnot. Helen felt Jeni’s eyes bore through the back of her head, wishing Jeni would’ve been a little bit nicer to the Liar after all. CQ gently eased herself into the front seat of the car, the scene of the crime, clutching her wounded paw with which Helen had provided her, and smiled at Helen, thankfully, through the windshield.
           Helen couldn’t have that on her conscience every time she faced CQ and instead of emotionally and mentally beating herself up over the incident, she decided it really was her duty to bestow pain upon the one person (CQ!) who was in charge of inflicting so much on her (Liar!). It was with relief that the break-the-wrist exception plan granted CQ an Incomplete regarding the thirty-five-page pager for Professor Fuck Wu’s class, which led to her transfer to a different school, Kent State (whose version of Go Bucks! was Can’t Read, Can’t Write, Kent State), which led to the transfer of the rest of Fucking Loser Bitches High to (yes) Can’t Read, Can’t Write, Kent State, plus the transfer of Jeni the Whore to her State of Knocked Up and Living at Home.^[14]

           Helen and Sylvie remained roommates throughout their undergraduate collegiate careers. Of course, neither one of them graduated from The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!) ^[15], and was expelled due to a wrist break gone sour. ^[16] Carson Wilde (not his real last name), number 7 and star quarterback for the Buckeyes, ratted out Helen and Sylvie to his father, who happened to be the Provost of The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!), for having to undergo ORIF. ^[17] Carson had signed a contract with Helen and Sylvie for a Scaphoid Fracture to his right wrist. At the time, Carson didn’t realize he would need his right wrist to throw touchdown passes, though he was excused from his Calculus final. He never played football again and the Buckeyes had a losing season.