Free Radio Belly by Buffy Cram Page B

needle,” he says, waving his hands over his head. “For this they working whole long life! Now big change!”
    It’s only once he slides a memo across his desk that you understand. It seems the test makers have decided to add an additional item to the Speech portion of the test. Students will now have to give a three-minute speech on what makes them unique.
    â€œOh, this is nothing,” you say, sliding the memo back across his desk. “Piece of cake. I don’t think we need to worry about this.”
    He looks puzzled. “But ‘uniques,’” he says, jabbing his finger at the memo.
    â€œStudents love to talk about themselves,” you say.
    â€œBut we have no uniques,” he says. “Uniques is opposite of war.”
    That strikes you as profoundly true: soldiers and corpses are far from unique. “Yes,” you say, “but the war is over and I’m confident each one of your students has a unique living inside them.”
    Mr. Bruce looks briefly reassured. He returns to his eye-of-the-needle speech, but you already know the drill: only the top two students in the country will be given the opportunity to attend an American university; of those left behind, only ten percent will gain entrance to the country’s one university; for the rest, the exit test will mark the end of their education—the girls will marry and the boys will begin mandatory military service.
    â€œOther side of needle,” Mr. Bruce continues, “is Ha-vad.” He nods fiercely.
    â€œHarvard?” You laugh just a little, more of a snort really. Even your smart friend couldn’t get into Harvard.
    He fixes his eyes on your collarbone and flings his hand toward a portrait hanging on the wall behind you, saying, “See fo’ self.” The portrait is of a young man dressed in graduation regalia. It must’ve been taken in the seventies, the way his hair is feathered, the way he looks immersed in a soft purple fog. The table beneath the picture is done up like a shrine with fake flowers and bouquets of red and gold Harvard pencils, never sharpened.
    â€œMy student. Ha-vad grad,” Mr. Bruce says. Then, as if offering you a mantra for the coming months, he says, “Ha-vad, Ha-vad, Ha-vad.” He is snapping down on the words, angry or rapturous or both.
    WHEN YOU ENTER the classroom for the first time, your students are already seated, looking bored but determined, as if they’ve come to do your taxes. The boys and girls are on opposite sides of the room and the girls are all wearing those privacy masks.
    When you smile, their faces scrunch up like babies encountering something bright or sour for the first time.
    You attempt introductions but they all say the same thing—what sounds like “I am Pin Pon”—and you lose track. You can’t tell if the girls are smiling or frowning behind their masks and the boys might as well be wearing them, their faces are so placid.
    You write your name on the board, but it doesn’t matter. You are “Mrs. Teacher” to them.
    You notice that the boys have textbooks but no paper, that the girls have paper but no textbooks, so you ask them to pair up while you search for supplies. But by the time you find pencils nobody has moved and Principal Bruce is peering in through the hallway window.
    All of this might be intimidating except that you believe Speech to be the most dynamic of subjects. With Speech there is no need for textbooks or pencils or paper. You will write a topic on the board and in no time at all the room will fill with the dull roar of opinion.
    You break the class up into girl-girl, boy-boy teams and open your X Test book to find a topic. The first ones are all about extracurricular activities—TV and team sports and afternoons at the mall. The next ones are all about money—allowances, college funds and after-school jobs. You flip through the pages but the rest of the