I Don’t Have an iPod, But My Mom Does

“What is this?” Mom asked, holding up a round black and orange baking dish.

No pause. “That’s what I use for artichoke dip. I need that.”

Blink. “Oh.”

I leave New York today, my 28th birthday, having moved here just before my 23rd. A lot of the stuff I’ve been packing up this past week came down with me, but somewhere along the way, things found purposes. The artichoke dip dish is just the beginning. There’s the electric mixer. The preferred corkscrew.

Somewhere along the way, I became someone with tastes and preferences and specialities. This stuff became my stuff, the things necessary to live the way I have chosen to. 

Closing up and taping and lugging and loading endless boxes doesn’t seem like the best way to spend your birthday. But all these boxes of all these things remind me that this adventure has been worth it. It’s been a good way to grow up. 

So, happy birthday to me.

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One week from today, my parents will appear on the curb outside my Brooklyn apartment. We will load up the artifacts of my adult life and drive back to Portland. My stuff will sit in the garage for a few days while I sort and organize and consider. Several weeks later, it will be back in the garage, as I get ready to settle in Boston. In between will be a summer in limbo.

It seems significant that this year is the 10th anniversary of my high school graduation, since that means it is also the 10th anniversary of that long, weird summer between high school and college. And tonight, I feel very aware that my eighteen year-old self lives inside of me.

At eighteen, I unfortunately had bangs and had tampered with my hair color such that pictures reveal it was kind of yellow. My clothes were sort of deliberately unfashionable. I was prone to viewing any conflict or transition as an identity crisis, and certainly saw myself as a tortured soul. A lot of the time, though, I was quite cheerful. I found that people laughed easily around me, which I liked from the time I was very young. My greatest comforts were in writing, pleasing adults, and expanding my encyclopedic knowledge of the two most important four-piece bands ever: the Beatles and U2.

That summer, I remember walking around Portland, passing by high school haunts like Bagel Works, Java Joe’s and One City Center. I sat in Monument Square and watched people and seagulls go about their business, somewhat disbelieving that the city—my city—would go on without me. I specifically remember being astonished that the Portland Public School system was done with me, that I had completed everything it had to offer, everything it was supposed to offer. At home, I know I bickered with my mother a lot, a lot more than ever before or since. Now I suspect it was because neither of us wanted me held back, but neither of us really wanted me to go, either.

I recognize that girl, and I confess that a few of the small hurts she carried I have not completely put down. At the risk of being writerly: She is me, but I am not her. Not only her, anyway.

I also recognize that this summer will have some things in common with the summer of ’98. I was an ill fit for high school, but, to paraphrase Orwell, I can’t say that I was altogether unhappy. Now, the most important reason I am moving is because I am an ill fit for New York, though that doesn’t mean it will be easy to drive away from that curb and wait for the unknown. As in high school, I made the most lasting friend with under a year to go. Again, I am forced to deal with the reality that a school system can, and must, function without me. Again, I feel like I’ve been unlucky in love, but part of being me is an openness and optimism that that XY set won’t always disappoint. I’m grateful for that hope, even if I can’t explain it.

One thing I know will be different is my relationship with my mother. We have the same bond we have always had, but it has already been tested. We have already come out the other side. She ceases to really care about the status of my laundry (I hope) and I cease to expect her to tell me I can’t wear ripped jeans or have to be home by midnight.

Basically, I have the rare chance to do something again, as an adult. I will spend the summer waiting, and then it will be time to pack up the car and head for another new life, again in Massachusetts. But I can’t swear I won’t sit in Monument Square a little first. And, quite possibly, brood over seagulls.

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Older people (my beloved grandmother, for example) are often fond of saying that any day spent on the right side of the grass (that is, over it instead of under it) is a good day. At 27 going on 28, I’m not so conscious of the Fates cutting my thread, but as a middle school teacher, I’m constantly reminded of my own version: any day spent on the right side of seventh grade (that is having it in your past rather than your present or future) is a good day.

In the brutal heat a couple weeks ago, the principal of my decidedly unair-conditioned school was forced to amend the usual no drinks in class policy and allow students to have water bottles. It is much cooler now, but the water is one more thing to ask for, another concern to be addressed, so they are still on a Death Valley-level hydration regimen. Just the idea that they can have water apparently engenders a bottomless thirst.

So, this morning then, I was not surprised to see a water bottle on nearly every desk. Except one. Karen had pushed hers so far away from her that it was balancing on the crack between her desk and the next one. If she moved it any further, it would technically be on someone else’s desk, and five years of teaching is long enough to know that that would be a scene. “Miiiiissss! I can’t do my work…Karen put something in my area!” Not good.

“Karen,” I asked gently, “what’s up with your water bottle?” One doesn’t expect water drinking to be a hot button issue, so I was surprised when she turned crimson and wouldn’t even look up.

“I know what happened!” a neighboring student said with more glee than was sympathetic, strictly speaking.

“And?” I queried, tilting my head to listen.

“Miss, one of the boys, he rubbed it on his, you know, the male part.” She blushed and added quickly, “You know what I mean, miss.”

Indeed, I did.

Confident that I understood, the glee returned and Yuleisy pressed on. “And she’s been drinking out of it! That’s like giving a blow job!”

Well, in the real world, no, it isn’t. But in the real world, people don’t go to third base with water bottles, either. Seventh grade is its own jungle, and teaching is a bit like going on a safari (except much, much less of a vacation). It’s interesting to observe the animals in their natural habitat, but it’s comforting to know you can get back in the Jeep (isn’t that the official vehicle of safariing?) and go home.

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OK. So long-shot becomes inevitable and inevitable becomes impossible. Hillary Clinton’s historic moment came and went, or hasn’t happened yet. I would betray my bias if I admitted that I am rolling my eyes a bit today as I think about all the smug Obama people, their BAs still warm from the printer, with their cargo shorts and clipboards. So I won’t, and it’s beside the point anyway. The point is that we are not the party of tired old men. No matter who our favorites have been (mine was actually Richardson—what a long time a year is!), we can all be proud of what we have shown to a watching world.

I’m still not sure which side I’m on in the good-for-democracy argument that has been all over this particularly close, particularly contentious (by contemporary standards, anyway) Clinton/Obama contest. The high voter turnout that has characterized the season is a good symptom. It indicates energy, initiative, and, most importantly, a belief that things can change, can get better if people will it to be so. Those things are enemies of cynicism, and cynicism is the enemy of a functioning democracy. If people won’t say what they want, be it because they don’t know, or don’t think it’s possible, or don’t care if they get it or not, it’s hard for the government to deliver. I’m not sure that we have said, conclusively, what it is we want, but we’ve at least pledged that we will. That, as Democrats, we care about figuring it out. In that pledge, the organism of democracy stirs, breathes, and lives.

This all sounds pretty high-minded, and it is, but I have a confession to make. My hesitation in the good-for-democracy argument is basically because what is good for democracy is not necessarily good for Democrats, electorally speaking. Of course I want the democratic process to thrive, but I want it to do so in a way that will deliver a Democrat to the White House. At the bottom of it all, I’m a partisan. I would be able to express purer ideas perhaps, and more original ones definitely, if I weren’t. But I am, and partisanship, in my case, means that I believe that we are all basically better off when a Democrat—any Democrat, nearly—is elected, and that how much better off we are is roughly proportional to the scope of the office he or she (!) assumes.

I have forfeited my right, and thankfully, my obligation, to have any specific ideas about the strategy involved in getting someone elected. After having a fairly marginal role in a single campaign, I left professional politics for the armchair. I had the heart for it, but not the stomach. So I’ll speak from the former.

We are the party of the educated middle class, but we are also the party of new arrivals, of people trapped in the closing walls of generational poverty, of laborers and single parents and people who always get their own seat on the subway because they smell. Not every single one of these people will vote in November, but if we say that our party is big enough to hold the weak, the radical, and the marginalized, we have to mean it. Some things are too important.

So, to the Obama people: Congratulations on a fair and square win. Have a drink and toast yourselves and your hero. But just one. The smugness and the pumping fists are just annoying to people like me, and absolutely alienating to people like the ones in the paragraph above. You can afford to annoy people like me who will vote Democrat no matter what, but you can’t afford to alienate people who have nowhere to turn. And furthermore, you shouldn’t want to. In short, less audacity, more hope, please.

To the Clinton people: I have loved the idea of shaking up good-ole-boy Washington as much as anyone. You are still as much a part of this historical moment as you were yesterday, before Obama got his magic number. You still get credit for half of it. It’s time now, though, for the stiff upper lip. You, too, should have a drink and toast what could have been. But, for you too, just one. If you are going to say that Clinton’s campaign has been about the “other” Democrats, you have have to mean it. Because they still need a president.

To my party: Among the things that makes us the party of the angels is that we perseverate on an ideal of fairness. It is also part of our difficulty in getting our people to Washington. It’s tempting for us all to continue to squabble and gloat and lament about who is on the top of the ticket and why and how and by how many votes and by which bylaws. But if we do, we risk losing sight of the enormous historical possibility which has been offered to us. In the end, it’s us or the tired old men. Which will it be?

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Yesterday, I hosted a new ESL Teaching Fellow in my classroom, a bright young woman I already know and already like. My principal hired her to fill the vacancy I will leave behind. I’m leaving, quite by choice and after considerable effort, and that means IS 162 will require an ESL teacher. A third of my current students are moving on to high school anyway, so I couldn’t hold onto them even if I stayed. The nature of school is that people come and go. Those are the facts. The purpose of education is to be off and out, right? Isn’t that a bit like what I’m doing, by leaving the world of middle school, probably forever, for grad school?

Yes. But.

In his iconic all-synthesizer classic “Cars,” Gary Newman sang, “Here in my car, I feel safest of all.” I had never given it much thought, until I headed home yesterday and wanted to cry but couldn’t because I don’t have a car. If you cry on the subway, especially at rush hour, you have to do it standing up, your own face very close to the those of people you don’t know. People who will either try very hard not to notice that you are crying or will stare at you curiously. In either case, there is no sympathy and no comfort.

I didn’t want sympathy or comfort though. I wanted privacy. I wanted to be in a space that was mine enough so that I could have a few moments to grieve the loss of a beginning, an experience, an experiment that is about to be over and continued by someone else.

As I sat on that train, I was filled with images, mostly faces. And names, so many names. Names from every year, every class. Armando. Natalia. William. Said. Diana. Joana. Melissa. Karina. Jairo. Ilina, oh Ilina. Jose. Kasandra. Wanderlin. Damian. Abner. Sebastien. Lyze. Edwin. Jenill. Koralina, my birthday twin. Graciela. Stephanie. Stefania. Estefanny. Don’t cry, don’t cry.

New York fills you up with sights and sounds, with passion and mission. The place bulges with humanity. But, central to all its smaller cruelties is the inescapable fact there is no space and no time to react with any humanity at all. But, tired as I am, it is a little hard not to keep trying.

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In college, I was always one for used books. What do I care if the cover is a little bent? And the perfect, crisp binding of a new book is bound to crack, sooner rather than later, so let someone else bear the guilt. Mine came like that.

The best part, though, about a used book is in the underlining, highlighting and marginal notes of its past owner, this person who is a stranger but whose habits of mind, at least, habits of study, are revealed. Does the person highlight entire paragraphs or just confidently underline a phrase or name here and there? What is written in the margins? Some are messages of affirmation like, “Yes” or “Absolutely,” or, I really once saw this, “This is the point!” with an arrow pointing to the last sentence of a paragraph. Other times, there is self-doubt, confusion, and dissent: “Lame,” or “Huh?” or simply a question mark. Also, there is a kind of assurance in seeing that someone else underlined a particular passage for its beauty, or its truth, or its all-important relationship to central themes. It must be beautiful, or true, or important, because someone else thought so, too. Even in something as solitary as reading, there is still safety in numbers.

Today on my subway commute, I began Jane Austen’s Emma. Just looking at the book itself makes me smile a little. The front cover, which is a shade of yellow that nothing has been for at least 30 years, proudly proclaims that the book costs $2.25. That’s about the price of a slice of pizza on a New York street in 2008. Inside, is a simple stamp, “UNH,” and my father’s name in his familiar scrawl.

I have read many such books, looted from my parents’ bookshelves. The history books and contemporary fiction, I confess, I have not read many of. I have also skipped most of the poetry and things with colonated titles like X: A Theoretical Approach. But it is a great place to find a novel. Many of my motives are perhaps obvious: I’m looking for something to read, and these books are already in the house. Plus, $0 is even better than $2.25. But it is also for the marginalia.

My dad’s underlining (and he always underlined, never highlighting and only very rarely bracketing entire paragraphs) and notes tell me things about him that he couldn’t, even if he wanted to. In Emma, there is something underlined on nearly every page until about page 30. After page 36, there is no underlining at all. In its place is the occasional, sweeping note: “Class system at work openly,” or simply “patriarchy.”

It is a conversation with a past incarnation of someone I know in the present. I wonder, did Dad take an intial interest in the book that just tanked? Was he writing a paper on the exposition of the book (you know, phase one on that story triangle we are all forced to learn?) so notes after that point were unnecesary? Or maybe it was just a case of good intentions fallen short, a moment of scholarly exertion which passed.

Maybe I’ll know for sure when I get to page 36.

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With deposit mailed and current bosses notified, I am fully commited to relocating to Boston this summer and beginning an English MA program in the fall. I couldn’t be more excited. My visit last weekend was a combination of laughing over pints of beer with old friends and meeting an impressive faculty who seem truly charmed that I have chosen to pursue study at UMass Boston when I could have gone elsewhere.

The university aside, it’s always been true that I could have gone elsewhere. Until very recently, I have never seriously considered living in Boston. It’s probably lost now, but I remember writing an entry in my journal one time when I was on a train, headed back to New York from a vacation in Portland, ME, my much beloved home town. The gist of the entry, or part of it, was that despite being in New York indefinitely, “my soul basically dwells in Portland.” I don’t remember that wording because I think it’s mind-blowing prose, but because it’s so true. I never considered myself of New York. In five years, I never got a New York drivers’ license. I never changed my voter registration. I never even got a local number for my cell phone. It was not always a conscious choice, but it was a choice, to remain an outsider. It is always easy enough to feel foreign in New York, so I did.

If it were as simple as all that, though, I would have just gone back to Portland. Going back has always appealed to me, comforted me, and it still does. But the other point of this old entry was my not quite fear, more like something nagging me, that if I did go back home, I would face an awful moment of truth and discover that irretrievable pieces of me were left in New York. The entry concludes, in what I recall was a bit of a mantra for me at the time, with writing off Boston, which I saw as an inbetween that was neither Portland nor New York.

There was a wall there that I just couldn’t think through, and I think I know what the problem was: I saw being a resident of one place or another as the ultimate expression of my identity. I can be urbane and cool when I want to, but sometimes it seems like a lot of work. It’s also true that I am close to my family and care about family history and traditions, but they don’t make much of a Saturday night. The poles change from person to person, but it turns out that my true self is where everyone else’s is, too: somewhere inbetween.

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In the past year, a disproportionate number of the novels I’ve read have been what you could consider dystopian fiction. (Another blog post, maybe the next one, is how this literary diet led me out of New York and into grad school.) As a fan of Medieval romance, not to mention Harry Potter, I have no problem at all imagining these strange, invented worlds. In fact, many of the conventions of dystopian writing have seeped into my everyday consciousness, and into my unconscious mind all well, in the form of dreams.  

Not too long ago, I had a dystopian dream which was vivid enough to be a scene from a novel. It interested me enough to write down, and I’ve copied it below. By way of disclaimer, it is by no means a completed short story. It is a fragment, as near as possible to exactly the way I dreamt it.

* * *

I had never been to Annie’s apartment before. I knew her parents were radicals – had been radicals – everyone knew that. It’s funny how something can seem really out there, but then, without anyone really noticing, it becomes normal.

The door opened into the living room. There was one window on the left far wall. It didn’t have a curtain, but not much light was coming in. The place was pretty much what you would think: pine wood floors, highly polished, and white plaster walls. The violet-colored metal cap of the Portal Point was the only color. A group of eight or nine men were standing in the center of the room. They were older – Annie’s uncles, maybe one was her father – and I had the idea that I was walking in somewhere I didn’t belong.

“Yes, miss?” one of the man said. His sinewy arms were crossed over his dark blue collared shirt. Now I was sure I’d interrupted something important.

“Sorry, sir. I’m a friend, um, a classmate of Annie’s.”

My eyes darted around, always ending up at the purple metal.

“Of course,” the man said. His voice was pleasant, but of course he didn’t smile.

“Lucy! What are you doing out there?” Annie’s voice, warm, pushed out into the room. I felt my body relax and tighten up again with a jerk. I was wearing white, and I could feel an enormous pimple growing and pulsating on the side of my nose.

Annie appeared next to me and seized me by the arm. It seemed to me that her father’s eyes were focused on the place where our skin was touching. Back then, I was always thinking things like that. Annie pulled me, mercifully, down the hallway and out of sight.

“Do you need anything, Lucy? God, I mean, gosh, it must have been a long trip for you. Not like it used to be when you could just get on the train…” Her voice became small and I instinctively looked around. We were under another Portal Point.

“It was nothing,” I said with as much vigor as I could muster. “I only need to use your bathroom.”

“Right here.” She pushed open a white door behind me. I followed eagerly. My fingers ran unconsciously along my nose. Annie’s parents were important enough that they probably had a mirror. A mirror!

The bathroom was clean and everything was new. I will never forget how clean everything seemed at first. “The tap works, but it takes a moment for the water to warm up.” Annie sounded far away. Above the sink was a mirror. My stomach leapt into my throat. To be alone in front of a mirror, just for a few minutes. My pulse was so strong that I was almost afraid the Portal Point in the hall would pick it up and dial for medical assistance. A boy at school said that happened to his mother. There were a lot of stories like that around in those days.

Annie turned to go and let me pass through the door. Almost imperceptibly, she moved her eyes towards something in the room. She did it again, and I followed them. There, below the mirror, was a disk of purple metal.

“You even have a Portal Point in your bathroom!” I said, too loudly.

“Oh, of course!” she answered, keeping her volume steady with mine. “That’s one of the most important places to have one. But don’t worry—it’s not the kind that can hear you. Can you imagine?” She smiled. What kindness!

“I’m so glad you told me before I, before I, made a mistake.” I said brightly. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say. Annie blinked and nodded.

In the bathroom, I went to the toilet and pretended to pee, then walked slowly to the sink. I splashed cold water on my face. It made me seem tough, which I knew was virtuous, and I hoped that the cold would take some of the redness out of my pimple. That wasn’t virtuous, but as long as I kept my eyes closed, the Portal Point couldn’t see it. When I stepped back out into the hall, Annie’s father was standing there. His arms were folded across his chest.

“I hope you found everything you needed, Miss Miller,” he said. I turned my faced up to him.“You know my family name, sir?”

“I worked with your father in the old days, when we were practically boys.” I knew what “the old days” meant. His lips smiled but his eyes didn’t. A smile is really about the eyes. Everything is about eyes.

My father. Annie’s father tilted his head and studied my face.

“You liked him, didn’t you, father?” Annie said. Her expression had changed, but to what?

“Yes, I did. Very much.” He unfolded that great arm and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You are among friends here, Lucy.”

It was the first time in my life when I was absolutely sure that I was being lied to.

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A few people (okay, mostly my dad, my most loyal reader) have asked me what my blog title means. The truth is that, until I had written a few posts, I wasn’t sure myself. It just sounded right. Once I had thought of it, I couldn’t even think of what else might be a title.

Really, the title is about a two things that are different but related.

I am a music fan. I listen to music often, read Rolling Stone, feel nostalgic when I watch VH1 Classic, and am a formidable opponent at music trivia. I care that Group A is working with Producer B, and that they are recording in the same studio in which Group C recorded the legendary Album D. I love liner notes, especially on resissues, to which members of the band usually contribute. Liner notes come with albums, collections of songs which, in the best cases, have been carefully chosen and arranged. Albums mean CDs. You know, CDs, like in the 90s.

From the title of the blog, you already know that I don’t have an iPod, but its more than just the lack of the actual device. I haven’t made a single move in the direction of digital music. I don’t have a single music file on my computer. I have never been to the iTunes website. I don’t have any idea how to burn a CD. When my mom declares that she has to charge her iPod, or when my dad tells me about an old song he unearthed and downloaded, they are speaking from a world that my generation created but that I am not part of all.

So, part of the reason I don’t have an iPod is simply that it isn’t how I listen to music. I like albums, but I also like the act of buying a CD and bringing home to pour over the packaging and listen to it from start to finish. And I don’t even want to have my whole music collection available all the time–I don’t want to listen to music all the time, period. I’m more committed than that. The other reason is the discomfort with my generation that I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. When I get that feeling that “everybody” is doing something, I have to resist it. That’s not a matter of being too cool, it’s not conscious enough for that. For better or worse, I guess I’ve never done that well with the group identity thing.

But as I get older, my generational identity is becoming more complicated. The baby boomers, who I confess I have always idolized, frustrate me more and more as I get older. Their self-indulgence and narcissism looked better on them when they were younger I guess. And it’s hard not to resent inheriting the Social Security crisis a little bit.

I’ve been hoping since I was about 10 that my own generation (Gen X.5, I guess you’d call us) would look better to me as we grew together, and I’m still hopeful. Still, at least for now, I’ll stick with the Sony CD changer I took to college. I hope that answers your question.

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A few days ago, on my regular subway commute home, I peered up from Newsweek and noticed a guy across the aisle was reading 1984. Now, 1984 is one of my very favorite books ever. Certainly, I can find no fault with this fellow MTA rider’s literary taste. But, seriously, the New York subway is a pretty tough place to be reading that sort of thing. Surveillance cameras everywhere, cops searching your bag, crowding, the distinct smell of unwashed human bodies, the free reign of enormous, greasy rats. You see where I’m going with this. It isn’t subtle. 

But sometimes with Orwell, it is subtle. You look from the page out into the world, then back to the page, then back at the world. You privately wince a little and say to yourself, “I wish that weren’t quite so true.” 

Right now, I’m in the middle of Burmese Days, a novel he wrote in the Thirties, when he was still a little hungry. At the point I’m up to in the book, the plot is just getting going, but the atmosphere and context are well established. Orwell worked as a policeman in Burma not ten years before, and the Raj he writes of is a saggy one that ceases to know what it is or what it’s for. The main characters are a group of Englishmen who spend most of their waking hours drinking and smoking at the European club (“European,” of course, meaning white-only). They are racist to varying degrees–to one man in particular, the Burmese people are “dirt” and “savages,” while to others, they are considered harmless, and even charming, so long as they remain unblinkingly obedient.

To Orwell fans, our hero, John Flory, is familiar. He is boozy and somewhat hapless, erudite in an unconventional way, and oddly lovable. He isn’t perfect, but you’re rooting for him. Flory is interested in Burmese art and customs and his closest friend is a Burmese doctor, not a fellow British officer. Again and again, both at the club and among the “natives”, he is expected to act a certain way and have certain attitudes because he is British. Even his Burmese friend makes certain to have whiskey available when Flory visits, because that is what Englishmen are supposed to drink.

At the club, Flory is forced to listen to racist, anti-native diatribes and nostalgic memories of the grand old days of the Raj, when brown brothers knew their place, but he lacks the courage to defend his friend. At the doctor’s, he denounces the English character and Britain’s role in India to a degree that the doctor, a heartfelt Anglophile, considers seditious. Watching Flory go between the extremes of these two worlds is fascinating.

I have lived a lot of my life in New York as Flory in miniature. My Latino students continue to be amazed that I like my enchiladas with salsa rojo (the spicier option, at least locally), and even that I would go to a Mexican restaurant in the first place. I love these moments with my students, but negotiating my whiteness, and the set of assumptions that comes with it, among the adults is often not so rosy.

My first year at Is 162, I shared a classroom a few periods a week with Ms. Purcell. I don’t remember her first name, or maybe I never knew it. She was black and from somewhere in the South. From the beginning, it was clear that Ms. Purcell was going to have a hard time in Bushwick. When kids were nasty to her, she was nasty right back, which only made them nastier the next time around. In December, she announced that she was not coming back after Christmas break. She and I were in our shared classroom one afternoon shortly after she gave her resignation, and I guess she decided I had as good an ear as any.

“Fuck this,” she said. “I’m goin’ home, where I can actually teach.”

One thing I know for sure is that a conversation that begins with the word “fuck” is one which you want to be brief.

“This isn’t an easy place to work, that’s for sure,” I said.

I was trying to be small talk-y, politely disinterested, but instead my remark encouraged her. “Did you know that this school was going to be nothing but Spanish trash when you got hired? ‘Cuz I sure didn’t. You can’t teach kids like that.”

Um, what? Didn’t she take a walk around the block when she interviewed and notice that everyone she saw was Latino? Did she really just call said Latinos “Spanish,” like it was 1970? And, most curious of all, why is she saying this to me, when she knows I’m an ESL teacher? Despite the questions streaking by in my head, I was too stunned to actually say anything.

She laughed mirthlessly. “Lowlifes. I ain’t wastin’ any more of my time.”

The atmosphere in the room seemed to snap and I could feel something in me rushing to the surface. I was inexperienced with just about everything then, but I couldn’t let this woman think that I was sympathetic to her hate.

“Please don’t talk about the kids like that,” I said, and then immediately regretted saying “please.” It was not a rhetorical tsunami, but it was something. She looked up and studied my face, which I tried to keep still.

“What’s your problem?” she spat. “You’re white.”

“That has nothing to do with anything. I chose to work here. If I wanted everyone to look like me, I would have stayed in Maine. These kids are special to me. So just don’t talk about them like that around me,” I said.

I don’t remember what she said after that, so maybe she didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the absolute last time I saw her, but it was certainly our last conversation. I was proud of the way I had handled myself, both because I felt that I had stood up for my students and that I had represented white America well.

Sometime later, I was in the teachers’ room talking with some colleagues, one of whom was Latina. One of them was telling an unrelated Ms. Purcell horror story and we were laughing. Still feeling new and like an outsider, I was pleased that I had a Purcell tale of my own to extend the conversation. They expressed disbelief when I told them what she said. I threw in my line about taking a walk around the block when she interviewed, which got a laugh, then told them what I had said in response. The Latina teacher sort of scrunched up her face and what she said I will never forget:

“Well, thanks Ms. Sampson. But we can stand up for ourselves.”

The paralysis of being so completely misunderstood by people who have no questions has never left me. Finding a mirror image of that feeling in the pages of book is vindicating, but the feeling is still maddening. And something worse, too. It is lonely.

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