Free Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z. Z. Packer

wife.” She used the steady bad-ass eyes she’d practiced in the mirror for her class. Bonza chucked his head to the side as though his wife were some sort of poem he’d read, hadn’t understood, and had dismissed.
    Lynnea tried to pull away, but couldn’t. “No,” she said. “And I mean it.”
    Bonza let go and looked at her as though he was tired and she was keeping him from getting his sleep. “Listen. Do you wanna learn all the right tricks or what?”
        
    T WO WEEKS after the Bonza incident, Lynnea got a new student. The guidance counselor, Mr. Knight, handed her a thick, bulging folder.
    “Sheba Simmons. Those are all her records, transfers.”
    As Lynnea glanced down at the heavy folder, the guidance counselor whispered into her ear, “She knifed a teacher at her old school.”
    “Yippee,” Lynnea said.
    A girl walked into the office. She was over six feet tall and the legs under her miniskirt looked like those of a bodybuilder.
    “Are you my new student?” Lynnea asked.
    “Question is, You my new teacher?”
    Mr. Knight pulled Lynnea outside the office and gave her the rundown on Sheba: Sheba did not live with a family but in a home for girls. Every afternoon a bus with iron grillework on the windows was going to pick her up, take her to Hollander Ridge. According to Mr. Knight, the place was a large formstone building with OUR LADY OF PEACE in bas-relief above the entrance.
    Before Sheba entered the classroom, Lynnea told everyone that they would have a new student, and as soon as she said the name “Sheba,” Terra Undertaker howled, “Sheba. That a dog’s name!” The class began to bark wildly in various pitches, ranging from Chihuahua to Doberman.
    When Sheba stepped into the room, the barking trailed off to nothing. Sheba sat in the chair closest to Lynnea’s desk, took out her notebook and pen, eyed the board, and began copying the day’s notes. No one moved, Lynnea included. Sheba, sensing that it was a bit too quiet, turned her head around to the class.
    “Why y’all all back there?”
    Lynnea didn’t know what she was talking about until she noticed that the desks and seats had traveled to the back half of the room, leaving her and Sheba in the front.
    “Everyone,” Lynnea began, using her orchestra-conducting voice, “move your desks forward.”
    A few pushed their desks, but that was it. Five students had come forward. Sheba stood and scanned the classroom.
    “Y’all hear the woman! The woman say move !”
    Desks clattered, seats edged across the tiled floor with persistent fart noises, girls dragged large fake designer handbags behind them like migrant workers told to flee the land. Sheba flitted her eyes as though all of this wasn’t quick enough for her, but would suffice. The students sat straight in their desks, not daring to speak. Sheba sat back down slowly, primly smoothing down her short skirt against her thighs before edging into her seat. Lynnea stood. The silence lasted almost a full minute. Finally, Sheba looked at Lynnea and said, “Is you gone teach us or what?”
        
    V ENUS WAS raking the same patch of leaves over and over. The leaves leapt from the broken prongs of the rake and settled back to where they’d originally lain. “Hello,” Lynnea said. “Venus. Venus? Hello?”
    “Oh.” Venus turned, still raking. “How you doing?”
    “Fine. Teaching. You know how that goes.”
    “Ohhhh do I. They all crack babies. None a them’s got a bit a sense to them. Ought a skip schooling and send them all to the military.”
    Without looking up from the leaves she said, “So. When you say you was moving out?”
        
    I N THE following weeks, they finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and moved on to The Great Gatsby. The class was quiet with Sheba in it. If a student began to talk, Sheba would stand andsay, “Y’all need to shut up and learn something.” Everyone would remain seated.
    One day after school, Lynnea lifted her head