This is a list of some of the items in Cora Brown’s trashcan.
1. A small stack of unopened greeting cards in multicolored envelopes. If you were to open them, they would read much the same: “My condolences” or “In your time of loss” etc. etc., followed by hand-written messages full of hollow assertions such as “She is in a better place now,” etc. etc. Cora knows that they are all the same, all similarly empty—it has taken her this three weeks since it happened to make up her mind. If she had thrown them away two weeks earlier, it might have been a vindictive kind of toss. She might have thought, “Fuck all of you,” and thrown them out with relish. But today, she was able to simply throw them away. She congratulates herself. Congratulations, Cora.
2. Five empty cigarette packs. Her family might be appalled if they knew that she has taken up smoking—at least, she assumes that this is the case. What she doesn’t know is that her youngest daughter Rebekah, the one with the quiet owlish eyes, knows that Cora has been smoking since one week after it happened—this was when Johnny and the children had started back at work and school but Cora remained at home, sitting on the front porch and gazing out over the lawn. Rebekah had found the ashtray out on the porch, and dumped it out in the trash before her father, her brother, or even Cora herself could notice that it was there. She had not told anyone about what she knew, and she had been helping her mother to hide the habit without her knowledge for the last two weeks. Cora will not be smoking for much longer now.
3. Plastic pie packages, instant rice box, plastic forks and knives, frozen casserole pans, and used paper towels. Cora usually does the grocery shopping, and had she been the one to go the last time, she might have bought the same kinds of quick fix-ups that her husband picked, but the difference is that had she done this herself, it would have felt like admitting defeat—it would have seemed too symbolic for her to bear. Johnny knew that she would feel guilty for not cooking her usual elaborate meals, and so he had thought it best to go ahead and buy all those things and take the resulting verbal chastisement like a man, and pretend that he had just gotten confused at the grocery store and bought the wrong things, just like a man. Congratulations, Johnny.
4. Empty cans of cat food. Cora’s friend Ruby gave her a Siamese kitten two days ago. Presently, she is fretting over it, feeding it too much, and laughing too loudly at its antics, as if to make her voice rise up over something that suffocates her. The Browns had fallen in love with the kitten immediately, desperately, and the soft thumps that its little feet make on the floor echo through the big house, punctuating the solemnity of the hours and minutes with moments of weightlessness. In fact, you don’t want to imagine what it would feel like to be in that house without a kitten right now. Good form, Ruby.
5. Wine bottles. Cora has always been a wine drinker, and she usually shows impeccable taste in her selections. Lately, however, she buys the largest bottles at the grocery store. These things happen when a hobby becomes a necessity.
6. Therapeutic hand-exercise ball. When it happened, Cora thought she couldn’t bear to part with anything that Ann Elizabeth had ever touched. For some number of days, this became her routine: she would go into the empty room and lie down on the empty bed, clutching some stuffed toy or article of clothing to her body, and weep torrentially into the pillow that still smelled like baby shampoo and the stale residue of exhaled breath. A few weeks later, though, she realized that it would not be fair to horde so many costly physical therapy accoutrements that less fortunate families needed for their own children. Just yesterday she dropped off most of the larger equipment at the hospital. But the little hand ball was different. It was the only one she could neither keep nor give away, because it had been Ann E.’s favorite object, the one thing that she used to keep in her hand for most of the day and sometimes even while she was asleep. Cora had been sleeping with it too. But this morning, Johnny saw her wake up and look at the ball for a few moments. Then she swung her legs over the side of the bed and padded into the kitchen on her bare feet. He had heard the crunch of papers in the bottom of the trash can, then Cora came back without the ball, slid between the sheets, and backed herself into the cave of her husband’s body.
7. A half-used package of maxi pads. When it happened, Ann E. had just turned sixteen. For the last three years, Cora and Rebekah had been developing a system for dealing with Ann E.’s menstrual cycle. By now, they had it down to a science—they could have written a dissertation on how two small women can lift a third body as big as each of their own to change a maxi pad, where to place the pad in the underpants of a wheelchair-bound girl so that it would not leak, and all the other considerations that no one anticipates before they are asked to come up with solutions for such things. Cora threw the pads away because she has already passed menopause—“Praise the Lord!” is all she has to say about that—and her remaining daughter is too young yet to need them.
8. A wedding invitation. Two days after her daughter’s funeral, Cora’s neice, who lives in the apartment upstairs, announced her engagement to her boyfriend. “…would like to announce the union of Dan Alphonse Carlson and Abigail Marie Brown…” Cora has done an excellent job hiding her disgust at this monumentally ungraceful gesture. Good job, Cora.
9. A set of floral-patterned curtains. Cora Brown decided this morning that some things are going to change. Starting with those hideous curtains in the bathroom.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Not a Robot
Written December 2008.
A wall of B minor in reverberating synth: inscrutable, oblique, obsessively restrained. Motion suggesting itself first in the tension of the lower back, rolling up the spine and over, around the shoulders, barely a shudder before the sound rolls off the fingers. A tilt of the cheek aligns the cave of his ear with the monitor and he freezes in his sneakers, toes rolled under, white-knuckled and lock-kneed, the only movement a twitch of a taut shoulderblade careening down through arm-gristle to a trembling hand on the keys.
A wall of B minor in reverberating synth: inscrutable, oblique, obsessively restrained. Motion suggesting itself first in the tension of the lower back, rolling up the spine and over, around the shoulders, barely a shudder before the sound rolls off the fingers. A tilt of the cheek aligns the cave of his ear with the monitor and he freezes in his sneakers, toes rolled under, white-knuckled and lock-kneed, the only movement a twitch of a taut shoulderblade careening down through arm-gristle to a trembling hand on the keys.
A Tiny Nightmare
Written December 2008.
Some god of bitter ironies has laid Charlotte over Fort Lauderdale like velcro. Two of my private hells occupy the same dimension. Painted rich bitches with Long Island accents stroll by me forever, chattering about the new condos they’ve just bought in Asheville, where I can never go again.
Some god of bitter ironies has laid Charlotte over Fort Lauderdale like velcro. Two of my private hells occupy the same dimension. Painted rich bitches with Long Island accents stroll by me forever, chattering about the new condos they’ve just bought in Asheville, where I can never go again.
Frydaddy
Written December 2008.
The city is large today. Waiting in line for tea in late December? Where did they all come from? It couldn’t have been far, could it?
Children everywhere. Murmur and bubble. We almost throttled one of the joyful innocent throats for his insistent slurping, purposely holding his straw just above the line of the juice in its grubby burgundy cup. Parents sitting by, continuing to chat. At what age is it appropriate to educate children about the health risks posed by pushing adults to insanity with repetitive noise and motion?
There was the time when I ate dinner at a boyfriend’s house and realized that there was no way he could have helped ending up with a smacking problem. I sat quietly chewing my steak and tried to tune out the maddening cacophony of a family of six all smacking loudly with open mouths and slurping iced tea. I tried blurring out all the distinct sounds and focusing on the overall cadence, but that only caused an image to swell in my mind of a giant lump of half-digested meat rolling around in a room-sized mouth, and I was inside.
I excused myself and made my way to the bathroom, where I remained until I thought they had had a reasonable amount of time to finish their feeding trough ritual. When I came out, my boyfriend’s huge, surly father asked me through a soggy lump of biscuit that moved up and down on his tongue as he spoke, “Whassa matter? Upset stomach?” He gulped down the wad in his cheek, and then passed gas loudly.
“Yes, I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me this morning,” I replied, after courteously cursing the dog for the foul smell that now hung in the stale air of the dining room.
Pushing the greasy, wax paper-lined basket of fried shrimp towards me, he insisted that I eat because “I didn’t pull out that goddamn frydaddy and sweat my balls off for the last hour to watch you push food around your plate.”
The city is large today. Waiting in line for tea in late December? Where did they all come from? It couldn’t have been far, could it?
Children everywhere. Murmur and bubble. We almost throttled one of the joyful innocent throats for his insistent slurping, purposely holding his straw just above the line of the juice in its grubby burgundy cup. Parents sitting by, continuing to chat. At what age is it appropriate to educate children about the health risks posed by pushing adults to insanity with repetitive noise and motion?
There was the time when I ate dinner at a boyfriend’s house and realized that there was no way he could have helped ending up with a smacking problem. I sat quietly chewing my steak and tried to tune out the maddening cacophony of a family of six all smacking loudly with open mouths and slurping iced tea. I tried blurring out all the distinct sounds and focusing on the overall cadence, but that only caused an image to swell in my mind of a giant lump of half-digested meat rolling around in a room-sized mouth, and I was inside.
I excused myself and made my way to the bathroom, where I remained until I thought they had had a reasonable amount of time to finish their feeding trough ritual. When I came out, my boyfriend’s huge, surly father asked me through a soggy lump of biscuit that moved up and down on his tongue as he spoke, “Whassa matter? Upset stomach?” He gulped down the wad in his cheek, and then passed gas loudly.
“Yes, I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me this morning,” I replied, after courteously cursing the dog for the foul smell that now hung in the stale air of the dining room.
Pushing the greasy, wax paper-lined basket of fried shrimp towards me, he insisted that I eat because “I didn’t pull out that goddamn frydaddy and sweat my balls off for the last hour to watch you push food around your plate.”
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Why I Teach
When people ask me what I do for a living, the conversations that follow are often very similar. A typical transcript might read like this:
Me: I’m a teacher.
Acquaintance: Oh, really? Elementary school?
Me: No. High school, actually.
Acquaintance: Really? You’re so petite and you look so young...don’t they take advantage of you?
Me: Um, no. I wouldn’t say so. I show them respect, I make my expectations clear, and so they tend to treat me with respect in kind. I love my kids.
Acquaintance: Well, what grades or subjects do you teach?
Me: English and Journalism. I get a little from all four grade levels.
Acquaintance: Oh, neat. I just wouldn’t have expected that. Do you teach at Asheville High?
Me: No. Yancey County, up north of Asheville.
(look of incomprehension from the acquaintance)
You know where Burnsville is?
Acquaintance: Oh, all the way up there? I went hiking up that way once. Are there lots of rednecks?
Me: That’s not exactly how I would describe them, but you could say that. Some identify with that title. Actually, though, my students are the most open-minded group I’ve ever encountered, even though I substituted last year in the city.
Acquaintance: Really? Interesting. That’s not what I would have assumed. I could never do what you do, but I really respect it. Teaching is such a noble profession...
I continue to be floored by the fact that even intelligent, educated people seem content to use the cliché. I hate the sound of it. It doesn’t make me angry anymore, but I admit that I have felt like saying snarky things to people for dropping that bomb. “Noble.” Bah!
First of all, it makes my job sound like an unpleasant labor of love, involving some kind of heroic sacrifice. This is not what teaching means to me. Teaching is exciting and interesting and endlessly creative. A variation on the above transcript might contain my oft-repeated assertion that I chose to teach partly because there is nothing less boring in the world to do all day long.
For instance, while people my age toil away for tip money and stay up late drinking and making idle conversation with other bored twentysomethings, I stay up late planning lessons that will hopefully get a room full of ninth graders excited about something, or push a group of standard seniors to do honors level work without even realizing that they are exceeding the usual expectations for their “demographic.” Part of my job is to inspire young people to realize their immense potential. What could be more fun and challenging? I’ve put in my time waiting tables and running cash registers, and I still respect that work. Nevertheless, there are few things more mind-numbing than that kind of alienated labor. Call me restless or stimulation-needy, but that life isn’t enough for me.
Furthermore, although I admit to sometimes losing sleep worrying about students, I find teaching to be particularly well-suited to a healthy, balanced, well-rounded life. Since there is always more grading to do, more paperwork to fret about, or somebody in authority who wants something from you, the ubiquity of stress and pressure make it all the more important to keep a healthy psychological distance. If a new teacher values her profession, she must find ways to cope with stress; usually, this means staying in touch with all the things she enjoyed before becoming a teacher, as well as any new interests that come along. This is the only way to prevent losing one’s proverbial marbles, and is therefore an important aspect of being an effective teacher. How could an anxious, unfulfilled, psychologically unavailable person really expect to inspire anyone?
For me, this means reserving time on most weekends to see my friends’ bands play, take walks in the woods, read books, write in my journal, or have long, ponderous conversations with loved ones. I try to make sure that by the end of the weekend, I have had the chance to fully reset myself for the week ahead. This is as essential to my success in the classroom as doing research or grading essays.
I haven’t always felt so positive about my career—I had to go through a long period of turbulent ambivalence to get to this point. When I first found out in the twelfth grade that I had won the Teaching Fellows scholarship, my stomach must have flipped over in my guts. I thought that it must have been some kind of mistake. First of all, I could hardly believe that this stuffy, impeccably dressed group of retired teachers—my interview panelists—would have favored me over all those sweet-faced, agreeable, average-looking girls who love little children and who probably talked about how teaching is such a “noble profession” in their interviews.
I had walked into my interview with a shaved head and a chip on my shoulder, talking about how the concrete prison cells we call classrooms are actually the worst possible places for people to learn anything valuable, and how American school systems are no longer equipped to respond to the demands of our changing society. I walked out of the conference room congratulating myself for doing such a good job ensuring that no one would ever compel me to teach in a public school.
I shuddered at the idea, really. I had been to Governor’s School in the summer before my eleventh grade year, where my mind was irrevocably opened to worlds of possibilities I had never considered before. I thought that I would surely become an artist, or perhaps a political activist, when I grew up. Everyone else expected something of the sort from me, too. Teaching seemed to me like something people do when they can’t do anything else, or when they have become so complacent that they can be satisfied with a confining, highly localized sphere of influence. (Was I ever in for a shock!)
Applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship had been something that an adviser persuaded me to do as a backup plan, to which I had only grudgingly conceded, all the while feeling absolutely certain that it would not, could not happen. Yet, through round after round of applications and tests, my name kept appearing on the list of finalists.
And then I got the letter. There was no hiding the results from my parents, who had been waiting eagerly for the envelope with the blue star logo to appear in the mailbox. (They had hoped to be able to invest some of the money they would save on my expenses to open a restaurant, which they did the very next year.)
I tore open the envelope and read the first word, “Congratulations,” and immediately dissolved into tears. I had been duped! My plan to avoid teaching by telling the truth in my interview had failed! What could it mean? Could these old stiffs and bureaucrats actually want to see real change happen in public education? It ran contrary to my whole belief system. Clearly, this was the first of an ongoing series of surprises. Here I am now, a teacher in a tiny farm town just like the one I ran away from years ago, and I can honestly say that I feel excited to go back to work each Monday.
Me: I’m a teacher.
Acquaintance: Oh, really? Elementary school?
Me: No. High school, actually.
Acquaintance: Really? You’re so petite and you look so young...don’t they take advantage of you?
Me: Um, no. I wouldn’t say so. I show them respect, I make my expectations clear, and so they tend to treat me with respect in kind. I love my kids.
Acquaintance: Well, what grades or subjects do you teach?
Me: English and Journalism. I get a little from all four grade levels.
Acquaintance: Oh, neat. I just wouldn’t have expected that. Do you teach at Asheville High?
Me: No. Yancey County, up north of Asheville.
(look of incomprehension from the acquaintance)
You know where Burnsville is?
Acquaintance: Oh, all the way up there? I went hiking up that way once. Are there lots of rednecks?
Me: That’s not exactly how I would describe them, but you could say that. Some identify with that title. Actually, though, my students are the most open-minded group I’ve ever encountered, even though I substituted last year in the city.
Acquaintance: Really? Interesting. That’s not what I would have assumed. I could never do what you do, but I really respect it. Teaching is such a noble profession...
I continue to be floored by the fact that even intelligent, educated people seem content to use the cliché. I hate the sound of it. It doesn’t make me angry anymore, but I admit that I have felt like saying snarky things to people for dropping that bomb. “Noble.” Bah!
First of all, it makes my job sound like an unpleasant labor of love, involving some kind of heroic sacrifice. This is not what teaching means to me. Teaching is exciting and interesting and endlessly creative. A variation on the above transcript might contain my oft-repeated assertion that I chose to teach partly because there is nothing less boring in the world to do all day long.
For instance, while people my age toil away for tip money and stay up late drinking and making idle conversation with other bored twentysomethings, I stay up late planning lessons that will hopefully get a room full of ninth graders excited about something, or push a group of standard seniors to do honors level work without even realizing that they are exceeding the usual expectations for their “demographic.” Part of my job is to inspire young people to realize their immense potential. What could be more fun and challenging? I’ve put in my time waiting tables and running cash registers, and I still respect that work. Nevertheless, there are few things more mind-numbing than that kind of alienated labor. Call me restless or stimulation-needy, but that life isn’t enough for me.
Furthermore, although I admit to sometimes losing sleep worrying about students, I find teaching to be particularly well-suited to a healthy, balanced, well-rounded life. Since there is always more grading to do, more paperwork to fret about, or somebody in authority who wants something from you, the ubiquity of stress and pressure make it all the more important to keep a healthy psychological distance. If a new teacher values her profession, she must find ways to cope with stress; usually, this means staying in touch with all the things she enjoyed before becoming a teacher, as well as any new interests that come along. This is the only way to prevent losing one’s proverbial marbles, and is therefore an important aspect of being an effective teacher. How could an anxious, unfulfilled, psychologically unavailable person really expect to inspire anyone?
For me, this means reserving time on most weekends to see my friends’ bands play, take walks in the woods, read books, write in my journal, or have long, ponderous conversations with loved ones. I try to make sure that by the end of the weekend, I have had the chance to fully reset myself for the week ahead. This is as essential to my success in the classroom as doing research or grading essays.
I haven’t always felt so positive about my career—I had to go through a long period of turbulent ambivalence to get to this point. When I first found out in the twelfth grade that I had won the Teaching Fellows scholarship, my stomach must have flipped over in my guts. I thought that it must have been some kind of mistake. First of all, I could hardly believe that this stuffy, impeccably dressed group of retired teachers—my interview panelists—would have favored me over all those sweet-faced, agreeable, average-looking girls who love little children and who probably talked about how teaching is such a “noble profession” in their interviews.
I had walked into my interview with a shaved head and a chip on my shoulder, talking about how the concrete prison cells we call classrooms are actually the worst possible places for people to learn anything valuable, and how American school systems are no longer equipped to respond to the demands of our changing society. I walked out of the conference room congratulating myself for doing such a good job ensuring that no one would ever compel me to teach in a public school.
I shuddered at the idea, really. I had been to Governor’s School in the summer before my eleventh grade year, where my mind was irrevocably opened to worlds of possibilities I had never considered before. I thought that I would surely become an artist, or perhaps a political activist, when I grew up. Everyone else expected something of the sort from me, too. Teaching seemed to me like something people do when they can’t do anything else, or when they have become so complacent that they can be satisfied with a confining, highly localized sphere of influence. (Was I ever in for a shock!)
Applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship had been something that an adviser persuaded me to do as a backup plan, to which I had only grudgingly conceded, all the while feeling absolutely certain that it would not, could not happen. Yet, through round after round of applications and tests, my name kept appearing on the list of finalists.
And then I got the letter. There was no hiding the results from my parents, who had been waiting eagerly for the envelope with the blue star logo to appear in the mailbox. (They had hoped to be able to invest some of the money they would save on my expenses to open a restaurant, which they did the very next year.)
I tore open the envelope and read the first word, “Congratulations,” and immediately dissolved into tears. I had been duped! My plan to avoid teaching by telling the truth in my interview had failed! What could it mean? Could these old stiffs and bureaucrats actually want to see real change happen in public education? It ran contrary to my whole belief system. Clearly, this was the first of an ongoing series of surprises. Here I am now, a teacher in a tiny farm town just like the one I ran away from years ago, and I can honestly say that I feel excited to go back to work each Monday.
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