and you’ll do alright.”
We all had previous teaching experience. For the last four years while I was in college I had worked at different elementary schools throughout the Buffalo Public School District. I knew how to make lesson plans. I could teach long division and administer a spelling test and explain the difference between mitosis and meiosis. I learned to play handball at recess and how to make friendship bracelets. I’d even been a finalist for The Most Promising Young Teacher in the Buffalo Area award, the most prestigious honor I have ever (almost) earned and maybe ever will. The girls in the classrooms would look at me with big, dewy eyes that provided more validation than any award.
But when it came time to apply for jobs after graduation, I realized I didn’t want to teach elementary school, nor did I want to be in the public school system anymore. I didn’t want to wear a school ID on a lanyard around my neck and lead lines to the cafeteria and ask students to use quiet voices in the hall. I didn’t want to stay in a world where my students weren’t sure whether they needed to use the restroom, much less who they were, and where kids outnumbered books two-to-one. In the break room of the school where I taught during my last year of college, Mrs. Mlynarski, the science teacher who had been there since before I was born, took me aside. “Public school is going to shit,” she wheezed. “It’s all about closing the achievement gap and coddling mixed with chronic, purposeful underfunding.” I told her I had gone to public school, realizing as I did so that I wasn’t refuting her point as much as stating a fact. “But wouldn’t you have rather been somewhere else?” she pushed. “Don’t you still wish you were somewhere better?”
Yes, I told her. And a few days later, I submitted my resume to Vandenberg.
Ms. McNally-Barnes settled herself on a desk, her supple stomach spilling like risen dough over her waistband, and continued. “Having appropriate student-apprentice relationships is essential to maintaining your authority,” she said. “There has been trouble here, in the past, with young women not knowing where to draw the line. Dean Harvey has tried in the past to ban female apprentices from the program, but you know: Only so many guys want to grow up to be teachers.”
Raj, sitting barefoot and cross-legged in his chair, sat up straighter. “And I’m happy to act as representative for that underutilized talent pool.” His sneakers and socks lay in a crumpled pile under his chair, and I turned away from the sight of his naked feet, as though he was openly picking food out of his teeth. Every time Ms. McNally-Barnes referred to us pointedly as “ladies and gentleman” he grinned widely, happy for the attention and for the novelty of being constantly differentiated.
Ms. McNally-Barnes pointed grimly to the packet on my lap. “Don’t let these boys think that you’re their friend. Never let them think they have a shot at a romantic relationship with you, oh no. The minute they stop seeing you as an apprentice and start seeing you as a woman, you’re in trouble.”
ReeAnn had taken out a notebook and was scribbling furiously. I peeked over at the page. APPROPRIATE CORRESPONDENCE ONLY, she wrote. Then, underlined twice: APPRENTICE, NOT WOMAN.
There were certain rules we had to abide by, Ms. McNally-Barnes explained: No stepping foot into a student’s dormitory room. No touching the students in any way. No allowing the students into your personal residence. No texting, calling, or messaging with any of the students, and emails were only appropriate if they were related to an academic matter. No relationships outside that of student and apprentice.
“I assume these rules all apply to me, too?” Raj asked, drawing attention to his maleness once more.
“These rules apply to everyone,” Ms. McNally-Barnes said, and I felt certain as she said these words that she was looking right at me.
_ _ _
Even after the Christopher Jordan incident, I thought I would do all right. The incident had been a small mishap—I stored it away in the same place as the memory of wetting my pants on the school bus in fourth grade and of vomiting outside the Town Houses my sophomore year at Buffalo State after trying weed for the first (and only) time. It wouldn’t be until I told Kip about the incident that the shame would dissipate. “That’s fucking hilarious,” he’d say, and I’d realize that this is why we share things—to transform those memories into tidy stories that are no longer ours alone to carry.
The night before my first class, I sat at my desk and planned a lesson. According to the course description given to me by my supervising professor Dr. Duvall—call me Dale, he had said in his email—the aim of Honors World History at Vandenberg was “to acquire a greater understanding of how geography along with cultural institutions and beliefs shape the evolution of human societies, tracing the development of civilization from the Neolithic Revolution to the Age of Industrialization.” I would begin my first lecture by defining culture and explaining how the development of tools influenced the culture of early humans. I would show them on a world map the sites where the remains of various hominid species and early humans had been found. I debated whether I would be able to talk about the distinguishing physical characteristics of Homo habilis, Homo sapiens, and—most titillating of all—Homo erectus without the class dissolving into laughter.
Of course, I wouldn’t be teaching entirely on my own yet, not for a few more weeks. I wished I could be more excited. Teaching is what I wanted to do after all; teaching is what I was supposedly good at. But instead I felt a strange sense of dread, one that felt larger and more threatening than simply standing before a classroom of teenage boys.
I lay my outfit out on my bed, a pale pink ruffled blouse I had purchased the month before from a department store—loose fitting, high in the neckline, consciously conservative—and a pair of shapeless gray slacks. Downstairs, Babs, ReeAnn, and the Woods twins were watching a TV show they all liked, something about random men and women being paired up to train a puppy together. I thought about bringing the outfit downstairs for the girls to approve. I could hold it up and joke: What do you guys think, too revealing? Maybe I could even watch the show with them for a little while. But I’d already washed my face, and I didn’t feel like covering it up with makeup again. Laughter rolled up the stairs, grating as a car crash, and I felt tired. I crawled into my bed, letting the outfit slip to the floor.
Through the wall behind my headboard, I could hear Chapin talking on the phone, her voice gravelly and soft and the words indistinct. I wondered how many people she’d slept with. I thought about calling my mom; I imagined her back home in Lockport in her gray terrycloth robe with the holes in the elbows, drinking a mug of Sleepytime Tea in front of the evening news with my dad snoring next to her and the TV volume turned up too loud. My mom and dad had waited to have children until later in life and now, as an eternal stay-at-home mom and a retired support services technician with high school diplomas, my parents simply wanted to rest. That involved attending the occasional Lockport town meeting, providing key lime pies for bake sale fundraisers, and never touching one another (a fact that didn’t strike me as strange until I started watching PG-13 movies and saw the way men and women in love were supposed to behave). I already knew what my mom would say: Put yourself out there. You’re going to do great. Everything is going to be okay.
I crossed the room to get the notes from my desk and returned to my bed. I sat against the headboard, the covers pulled up over my lap, an invalid awaiting visiting hours. “Welcome to Honors World History,” I said to the room. “I am your teacher, Miss Abney.”
_ _ _
It rained the next day, a cold damning rain, and the boys tracked wet footprints up the stairs and into the halls of the academic buildings. My hair was a crown of frizz around my face, and my ballet flats squelched with each step. “You must be Imogene,” said Call-Me-Dale when I walked into the classroom, coming around his desk to greet me.
I took his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr.—”
“Dale.”
“Dale, right. Dale.”
Dale was tall and angular, with long, thinning hair pulled back into a ponytail, wild eyes, and a wide grin. He could have been thirty-five or fifty-five. He bounced on his heels as I set down my bag, a little kid