After the Screaming Stops

Shrinking there on the stool in the science classroom, I just want to gather my ungraded quizzes and my dignity and flee to freedom. But, I don’t. I sit there, paralyzed by the assault.

“We are not your enemies,” I finally counter. “We are not Blake’s enemies.”

But they disagree. The mom-grandmother team has arrived at our meeting with a mission—to deliver a bucket of vitriol against their child’s godforsaken teachers, principal and school counselor.

“You don’t want him here.” “You think he’s stupid.”  “You lied to us.” You. You. You. You.

They shout from across the table, first one, then the other. A cacophony, an onslaught.

I don’t know where to look, so I concentrate on the mother’s gold teeth and on the silver clips in her hair. She looks young, I think, and pretty, despite the hatred spewing from her lips. I count how many times the grandmother, sitting beside her, announces she’s going to call the school board. I think it’s six.

I daydream about other careers. Doctors? Do they ever get screamed at like this? If only I had been better at chemistry…

I half-rise, planning an escape. But something compels me to collapse back in the chair.

They deliver a verbal right hook. Then, a left. Then, a kick in the shin. Fifteen minutes have passed. Maybe 20.

Suddenly, the grandmother, crying, reaches for her purse and starts shaking it. Directly across, I think she might fling it at my head. But, then, as she unzips the silver clutch, I imagine a weapon, lifted up, directed at me, and…

Such is the world we live in.

There is no gun. Instead, she yanks out a bottle of aspirin, clutching her heart, sobbing.

“We’re afraid,” utters Grandma.

Then, there is a collective deep breath. The meeting shifts.

Blake, a black eighth-grader who is new to our school district, is behind in reading, lags in math, is about to fail his classes and will soon enter high school. Here, sitting around the table, are four teachers, the assistant principal and the counselor. Maybe that we are all white is an important detail. Maybe not.

Regardless, in my mind, I transform from a defensive literacy teacher into a terrified mother of a failing teenager. As best as I can, I sit in her stool and view this scene from her perspective.

Will my boy, that I nursed, then weaned, then watched, gleefully, learn to walk, continue to fail? Will this child for whom I hold such high hopes, drop out of school? Mix with the wrong crowd? Become a statistic?Land behind bars?

Will it be my fault?

I am screaming for them to give him extra attention, to boost him up. I am screaming for them to not reduce him to a troublemaker. 

I am screaming for them to believe in him.

Please, help me. Help him. Please, be there.

Then I blink back, becoming myself again. Maybe I reach for the box of tissues and hand them to the shaking, suddenly-frail Grandma. Maybe I look clear into Mom’s eyes and then glance quickly at my colleagues. Maybe I fight my own tears.

I walk around the lab table and show Blake’s mom the key to finding his homework assignments on our website. I remind her that he can access To Kill a Mockingbird on audio. We all assure her that he is the not the only student who has struggled. We will help him, we say, careful not to deliver false hope.

Mom apologizes for the drama. Once, then again. We exchange emails and promise to be in touch. It’s not exactly a lovefest, but not a brawl either.

We’re glad you came in today, we say. Maybe those are just words that teachers robotically say to parents. After all, we have been blamed, ridiculed and demonized as liars. Are we really glad?

But this week, when Blake asked for help finding newspaper articles for his literacy project, and when he smiled at me and said that his mom had read my email last night, it struck me that, yes, I suppose I really am glad.

He is somebody’s baby, somebody’s hope. Maybe I really had forgotten that, but for the screams.

Baker is a middle school language arts teacher in Missouri.