Free A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin Page B

to quit school. He passed out papers, opened windows. I had him do everything the other students did. Chuckling, he wrote endless pages of neat formless scribbles that I graded and handed back. Sometimes I would give him a B and he would be very happy. Now even he would not work. “ Para qué, hombre? ” Tim whispered to him. Emiterio would become confused, looking from Tim to me. Sometimes he would cry.
    Helplessly, I watched the growing confusion of the class, the confusion that even Sister Lourdes could no longer control. There was not silence now when she entered the room, but unrest … a brushing of a hand over a face, an eraser tapping, flipping pages. The class waited. Always, slow and deep, would come Tim’s voice. “It’s cold in here, Sister, don’t you think?” “Sister, I got something the matter with my eye, come see.” We did not move as each time, every day, automatically the nun buttoned Tim’s shirt. “Everything all right?” she would ask me and leave the room.
    One Monday, I glanced up and saw a small child coming toward me. I glanced at the child, and then, smiling, I glanced at Tim.
    “They’re getting littler every time … have you noticed?” he said, so only I could hear. He smiled at me. I smiled back, weak with joy. Then with a harsh scrape he shoved back his chair and walked toward the back of the room. Halfway, he paused in front of Dolores, an ugly, shy little girl. Slowly he rubbed his hands over her breasts. She moaned and ran crying from the room.
    “Come here!” I shouted to him. His teeth flashed.
    “Make me,” he said. I leaned against the desk, dizzy.
    “Get out of here, go home. Don’t ever come back to my class.”
    “Sure,” he grinned. He walked past me to the door, fingers snapping as he moved … tsch-tsch, tsch-tsch. The class was silent.
    As I was leaving to find Dolores, a rock smashed through the window, landing with shattered glass on my desk.
    “What is going on!” Sister Lourdes was at the door. I couldn’t get past her.
    “I sent Tim home.”
    She was white, her bonnet shaking.
    “Mrs. Lawrence, it is your duty to handle him in the classroom.”
    “I’m sorry, Sister, I can’t do it.”
    “I will speak to the Mother Superior,” she said. “Come to my office in the morning. Get in your seat!” she shouted at Dolores, who had come in the back door. The nun left.
    “Turn to page ninety-three,” I said. “Eddie, read and translate the first paragraph.”
    *   *   *
    I didn’t go to the grade school the next morning. Sister Lourdes was waiting, sitting behind her desk. Outside the glass doors of the office, Tim leaned against the wall, his hands hooked in his belt.
    Briefly, I told the nun what had happened the day before. Her head was bowed as I spoke.
    “I hope you will find it possible to regain the respect of this boy,” she said.
    “I’m not going to have him in my class,” I said. I stood in front of her desk, gripping the wooden edge.
    “Mrs. Lawrence, we were told that this boy needed special attention, that he needed ‘encouragement and challenge.’”
    “Not in junior high. He is too old and too intelligent to be here.”
    “Well, you are going to have to learn to deal with this problem.”
    “Sister Lourdes, if you put Tim in my Spanish class, I will go to the Mother Superior, to his parole officer. I’ll tell them what happened. I’ll show them the work that my pupils did before he came and the work they have done since. I will show them Tim’s work, it doesn’t belong in the ninth grade.”
    She spoke quietly, dryly. “Mrs. Lawrence, this boy is our responsibility. The parole board turned him over to us. He is going to remain in your class.” She leaned toward me, pale. “It is our duty as teachers to control such problems, to teach in spite of them.”
    “Well, I can’t do it.”
    “You are weak!” she hissed.
    “Yes, I am. He has won. I can’t stand what he does to the class and to me. If he