by Craig Fishbane
1
Teresa was separated from her family at the border. She spent a month at a facility where the boys shared the same bathroom as the girls. She insists that everything is fine now that she is back with her mother. She always has a smile for me when she steps into my classroom—a cramped den of tan desks and navy wallpaper—and joins the other seventh graders for her English lessons. Although she will gladly point to pictures to answer questions, she still refuses to speak any words in English. She will talk quite readily in Spanish, however, especially with Clarissa, my teaching assistant. They sit together in blingy t-shirts and frayed blue jeans, gossiping like BFFs every morning. When she is not dishing dirt with Clarissa, Teresa loves to read Spanish books from the library. Her favorite story is about a wounded magpie who lives with a blind dog in a cave in the desert.
2
Jorge’s family was involved with the drug trade. They fled Honduras when his uncle got killed at a gas station. Now Jorge lives with his parents in a one-room apartment with no television. Although I’m sympathetic when he tells me how bored he is, Clarissa calls him a spoiled fresa. She may be right. Jorge constantly complains about Teresa, who sits across from him. He runs his fingers through spikey brown hair and says that Teresa whispers Spanish curses and spreads nasty rumors during recess. With the help of Clarissa’s translation, I counter that I’ve heard the same kinds of complaints from Teresa about him. Jorge just shakes his head and says he wouldn’t have to put up with this crap if his uncle were still around.
3
Lucinda has no use for either Jorge or Teresa. When they start quarreling, she gets up, straightens a checkered skirt and sits alone at the table next to the window. She has already seen more than her share of trouble. Last week she told Clarissa how she watched hungry families eat their dogs in Venezuela and has no need to see her classmates clawing at each other. Lucinda is content to sit by herself and work on her report, using two languages to write a biography of George Washington. When I ask her how things are going, she looks out the window and tells Clarissa that she can’t wait to go back to her country and return to the house with views of emerald mountains.
4
Clarissa likes to joke that Jorge and Teresa will probably get married. Projecting romantic entanglements is one of her specialties. She clicks the tips of red nails on my desk during lunch and tells me how the dietician likes to flirt with the security guard and that the math coach is having an affair with the guidance counselor. Clarissa has a way of making our school into a soap opera. The plots are riveting but the scripts are not always true to life. Half the staff won’t speak to Clarissa because of the rumors she’s spread. For all I know, Teresa flew to into the States with her mother and Jorge’s uncle was an accountant. My Spanish is too rudimentary for any substantial conversation and the Berlitz software my wife bought me hasn’t helped much. With my limited language skills, I have no way to confirm anything Clarissa tells me. Until I share a common vocabulary with my students, Clarissa’s stories are all I have.
5
My wife tells me I’m going through a mid-life crisis. Perhaps she’s right. I’ve been teaching for twenty years and have never worried before about knowing my student’s histories. I never felt like anyone’s back story was my business. I was just the bald educator in the crumpled corduroy jacket who was satisfied teaching children how to properly conjugate verbs. It wasn’t until Clarissa was assigned to me this year that I started to hear what my students were actually saying to each other, the confessions and consolations that had registered only as ambient noise, idle whispers while students were completing their assignments. Each time Clarissa tells me another anguished secret, I come to see not only how helpless I am in interpreting other languages but how useless I have been trying to help my students.
6
When the class returns after recess, Jorge and Teresa start bickering about the positioning of their desks. I ignore the argument until Jorge slams a book on the floor. If Jorge really does have a crush on Teresa, he has a terrible way of showing it. His face is flushed, his eyes are moist and his chest is heaving. By the time I get to his desk, he is muttering what Clarissa will later tell me is a threat to tell the whole school what really happened in that bathroom Teresa had to share with the boys. Before I can say a word, Teresa leans across the desk and extends her hand toward Jorge’s face. The room goes silent with the sound of the slap.
7
Clarissa takes Jorge and Teresa to the principal’s office to get to the bottom of who said what to whom. I remain in the classroom and sit with Lucinda to check her report. As I look over a series of crisp Spanish sentences, I find myself wondering if Lucinda really wanted to study the life of the first president or if Clarissa had convinced her it was a good idea. Every story I know about my students features an underage narrator in an unfamiliar language depending on an unreliable interpreter for any hope of either clarity or closure. I start to type Lucinda’s words into a translation app on my phone but before I can finish the first sentence the bell rings and I tell Lucinda that she will have to finish the rest of the work at home.
Category: Featured, Short Story