Today. I am in my classroom marveling at the height of the ceiling and the closeness of the floor. I cannot remember much about the weekend, but I am thankful I did not wake up in front of some random vending machine or in some stranger's living room, as the local drunks—local national and foreign GI—have been known to do.
I remember one of this weekend's yesterdays. I was at Sean Connery’s. It’s one of the cleanest bars on Bar Row, a swank Japanese-owned bar with no connection to its namesake, with low enough prices and enough flirty bargirls to guarantee a good time of gluttonous drinking and ear-splitting karaoke.
A pale and meaty Russian bartender—female, not male—a hot, tight-bodied Japanese-Filipino bargirl with a deep, sun-kissed tan and hair darker than the black thong she made no effort to keep below her lowriders, and my best friend all conspired against my sobriety with 100-proof shots. I willingly went along with them, but had I known—or thought carefully about the consequences of chain drinking—I might have chosen a different beginning and middle of the evening. Each drink was a well-placed explosive, time-released, to explode at various sides of my head in clusters, each detonation more painful than the last. Despite their effect on me at the moment and what experience taught me to expect, I guzzled each drink like I half expected that time to be different from all the other times. Of course, the fun ended as it always had with me wondering why I did not stop when that reasonable part of my mind started screaming at me that enough was enough.
Today is a hangover Monday, but I went out Saturday night. I imbibed recklessness while adhering to a strict prohibition of common sense and self-restraint. I remember feeling right at 10:00 PM when I had the second shot of Tequila Fortaleza after the 3 or 4 shots of Southern Comfort 100. It’s a tequila too good for shotgunning, but Jose Cuervo, the bottom barrel affront to agave that it is, was emptied by a group of young airmen who I knew would pay for all the beer and Tequila bombs they hammered.
At 11:00 PM, I was tipsy and loving it. A new bar girl on my lap was soft, like my gel-filled mouse pad. I scrolled where she would allow me, which was everywhere. Granted, she was no Suicide Girl, but she made up for it with proximity and availability.
By 2:00 AM, I was sure I was not drunk, but my boy, Carlton, wouldn’t let me drive. He said I had too many drinks, which was true, but I was drunk, filled with liquid bravado and distilled self-confidence. So I still wanted to drive. I remember the stubborn asshole threw my keys. I’m stubborn, too, so I'm not mad that he had to pop me in the jaw which was after I kicked him in the stomach. I was aiming for the balls, but my drunk aim failed me.
At 3:30 AM, I was getting back in the taxi, wiping my vomit-covered hand on my pants.
At 2:00 PM, I woke up on my living room floor, hardwood, not carpeted. My head was pulsating two or three beats off my heart’s cadence. I moved to the soft rug under the coffee table. The room was spinning or tumbling; I couldn’t tell the difference. Regardless, it was doing something that brought on motion sickness, and I made a vile-smelling deposit on the new Turkish rug that I bought overpriced from the vendor at the BX concessions.
My stomach lurched again, and I wondered, “What did I drink?” At the time I really could not remember.
“Beer doesn’t smell like that when it comes back up.” It was something sweet, straight liquor probably, dark, and maybe no chaser.
I wiped my mouth with my rough biscuit hands, a gesture that took me back many years. My older brother cooked biscuits on Saturdays, and when he did, he got dough everywhere, on the phone, the faucet, and his hands. He never mastered the art of cleaning up after himself as a child, and as an adult, he hasn’t gotten much better. I hated for him to touch me because dried, white, and pasty pieces of dough would crumble onto me, falling like thick clumps of dandruff.
I had the biscuit hands Sunday morning, a day late for my brother’s buttermilk biscuits, and I had wiped my mouth with them. Tiny pieces touched my lips, and a few found a way inside my mouth. The result was that my mouth salivated with a slimy and salty slew.
I'm pretty sure that I spent over 30,000 yen on my drinks, but the rug cost me more than five times that. I decided to sprint for the guest toilet rather than make another deposit on the rug. I needed to burp, and I doubted that only smelly air would pass from my throat.
I filled the bowl with more liquid than solid, splattering slimy brown droplets in various places against the white rim. I knew I would have to clean it up again, but I was still tired, exhausted, and nauseous. I needed to sleep, but I had no strength to make it to my bed. The rug under my knees was brand new, plush like good carpet, but still not a pillow. However, plush is better than ceramic tile.
I woke up ten hours later, my brain growing at the same time that my skull was shrinking.
**********
How much did I drink?
How right did I get?
Did I get it right problem?
Did I get the problem right?
Mr. Marshall?
“Mr. Marshall, did I do this problem right?” It's Vicki Heffernan, a bright-eyed timid girl from Iowa with a slight overbite.
“Mr. Marshall, did I do this right?”
I force a mumbled response, careful not to speak too loudly. “Vicki, use an inverse operation to check your work.”
She's confused. “Huh?”
She is not the brightest student in the classroom, but she is honest and willing to ask for help, no matter how much I wish in this moment that she would try to figure things out on her own.
I ask, “What kind of problem are you doing?”
“Minus.” It is more a question than an answer.
I correct her with a question, “Subtraction?”
She looks up, “Subtraction,” repeating the word immediately as I begin to say it.
“And what’s the inverse operation?”
She does not think before she answers. “Plussing.”
“Addition.” I correct her again.
She repeats robotically, a little frustration audible in her voice, a sigh escaping with each syllable. “Addition.”
I transition into teacher mode. “So, if you’re subtracting the two numbers, how can you check your work?”
She offers, “By adding?”
“Yes, that's it.”
She has her mouth gaped open like she’s trying to ingest every germ circulating through the room. “I don’t get it.”
Frowning makes my head hurt even more but she will not let me smile today. I ask, “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t get it.”
“No, Vicki. What is the subtraction problem?”
“You mean the number sentence?”
“Yes.”
“Two hundred thirty-four take away one hundred sixty-two.”
“And what’s your answer?”
“Two hundred thirty-two.”
I wonder if last year’s teacher taught her how to consider the reasonableness of an answer. I spent some time on it, but her introduction to math reasoning should have started earlier.
“Okay. Let’s use an inverse operation to check your work,” I suggest.
“Okay.”
“Adding is the inverse of subtraction, so I want you to add your subtrahend and your difference.”
She stares at me, the strange alien with his strange alien language, "Huh?”
My skull is shrinking again. I feel that if I can just hit it hard enough against the desk, the pain will go away. “Add the two bottom numbers.”
Twice, she erases before she even gets started, brushing the shavings toward her instead of away. I have never understood why my students assume they are wrong before they get started, but then they overlook the most obvious mistakes once their work has begun. I’m sure it is a nervous reaction to having to sit and work below the watchful eye of a teacher.
“Vicki, you’re adding, not subtracting.”
“Oh, sorry.”
More erasing.
“You only needed to erase the subtraction symbol; everything else was correct.”
“Sorry.”
The rest of the class is working quietly, which means about half don’t understand either. Instead of asking for help, they will sit and work until they have completed every problem. Then they will turn their work in and act surprised when they see the low scores. Normally, I would be up and about, touching base with each student, but today is not the day for me.
I look up from Vicki to all of them and announce loud enough for all to hear, “Class, I am available to help. Only one student has come to my desk.”
It is an invitation that no one accepts. Instead, barely a quarter look up from their work and acknowledge that I have spoken. For many of them, if I do not call their names, they assume I am talking to everyone else but them. Hence, I tend to have to repeat myself quite often.
Vicki calls my attention back to her. “Mr. Marshall?” I can count on her to accept any help she is offered. She appreciates the time that I give to her—she always has—so I feel guilty about being such a waste, even though she does not realize it. “I don’t think my answer is right.”
I respond, “Neither do I. What do you think you did wrong?”
“I didn’t regroup.”
“No, you didn’t. Go back and try again. Use the place value cubes.” I know I sound disengaged, but I am using the energy that would have gone toward being a better teacher to not vomit on my student.
She asks, “We can use them?”
“Did you hear me when I read the directions out loud?”
“No. I was looking through my notebook.” She is so obliviously honest.
“Did you read them yourself?”
“No. I didn’t think I needed to since you read them.”
Good teachers don’t hit students or say mean things, but there are times when I envy the Japanese teachers who so easily rap a kid across the head.
Self-restraint increases the pressure. The pain is behind my eyes now. I just do not have the patience to deal with this right now.
I look up to see Ms. Vee staring in through the window. If her eyes could talk, they would be huffing now. She is always more patient when she needs extra time to finish up with her class, but when I go over, she acts like I committed a crime.
I rise from the work table and direct, “Vicki, finish reworking these problems at home, and be sure to check your work. We’ll go over them tomorrow.”
“Yes sir.” Her sweetness offers some respite from the pulsing in my head.
She takes a lot of work, but she is polite, so pleasantly different from her peers. This moment of my hangover notwithstanding, I truly love the girl, and I want so deeply for her to succeed. She struggles, but she is also learning how to survive in a challenging academic setting. This year will serve her well, as will her attitude. She was raised well.
Her mother, a heavy-chested brunette with a deep but sexy country twang. She has a tattoo of a crow on her leg, visible when she is dressed in her civilian clothes. She also grew up in Iowa with very little by way of materialistic things. Now, she can afford to buy Vicki the newest and most fashionable clothes, but she focuses on raising a smart and strong little lady. She's taught her to be careful not to burn any bridges and to appreciate any help she can get—even from hung-over teachers. Both of them deserve a medal and a better teacher.
Our last parent-teacher conference was spent talking about how an old teacher, one of her least favorites, was the one who encouraged her three years after high school, four years after Vicki’s birth, to join the Air Force. At the time, she was struggling at a dying plant, always close to getting fired because she was determined to spend time with her daughter, regardless of the work schedule. She ran into Ms. Schimel during a Fourth of July fireworks show and ended up spieling about her hardships. Her former teacher, as she tells the story, was always kinder than her facial features and Puritan style of dress made her appear. She encouraged Ms. Heffernan not to give up and told her she would make some calls and see what she could do. A friend of a friend had a brother who worked at the Pentagon, and after a few calls, she was told to enlist in the Air Force with the intent of going to Officer’s Candidate School, with a recommendation that would nearly guarantee her a commission.
Though she did not love Ms. Schimel during high school, she was always kind and respectful, just as her mother had taught her to be. And though she wished Ms. Schimel would lay off the mentholated rub and cigarettes, she meekly held her breath and fought back the water in her eyes until she graduated.
Vicki is like her mother in that way, and I promised after the first week of school that if I see her after high school, I would help her in any way possible.
I doubt Ms. Vee has made the same promise. At the door, Vicki looks up to her, her eyes so trusting and mind so oblivious to the body language of others, regardless of how brusque and rude. “Sorry, Ms. Vee, I needed help.”
Ms.Vee smiles a fake smile, making no attempt to not be condescending.
“It’s okay, Vicki, dear. God gave us patience for times such as these.”
I want to ask her if God gives his children tact and humility, but I decide against it. She wouldn’t get it anyway. I cannot help but wonder about all the bridges she had burned throughout her life. Other than the other meaty and celibate curmudgeons at the school, she had no friends that I had seen, and despite her tenure here—thirty-three years and climbing—no one, not even her friends, looked to her for leadership despite her position as the union representative.
Feeling it better to take my homeroom to lunch than to deal with her, I turn away and walk toward the stairwell.
“Everybody have a lunch?”
Their answers are a chorus of offbeat yeses and huh’s.
It doesn’t take much to convince me that explaining would not be worth my time; instead, I usher them down the dimly lit stairs into the bright, windowed hallway. A few are inclined to touch bulletin boards and jump up in feeble attempts to touch the ceiling that is barely low enough for me to reach.
Ms. Campbell’s class, always late or in a hurried rush, cuts through my line on their way to specials, pushing my easily disrupted class into a frenzy of confusion. They don’t know to stop and just wait for the class to pass through, so they continue moving and mixing the lines until some of my students are walking with her class and some of hers are with mine. It reminds me of stories of close-quarters combat, an elementary school grade-level war. We two teachers are the generals, disappointed with the behavior of our troops and the neglect of their training.
The hallway is a cacophony of complaints and blame-pointing.
“Run and catch up.”
“You’re rude.”
“You guys cut through us.”
Automatically, I begin to rub my temples. An unorganized teacher and fifty-two kids stand between me and an open-air ride to Popeye’s. I’m not a huge fan of the greasy, high-cholesterol chicken, but it is the only on-base restaurant that is both far enough away to make a drive worthwhile and close enough to guarantee me enough time to not have to inhale my food. Moreover, they make the best iced tea on the base.
Frustrated, I take charge of a situation that should not exist, not when there is a class that has practiced walking in straight lines since the first day of school and there is a professional educator who makes more without a Master’s degree than many stateside administrators make with PhDs.
“Alright, stop.” Everyone, including Ms. Campbell, stops. “Ms. Campbell’s class, move to your left. My class, stay to your right and keep moving.”
The students follow orders like good soldiers, moving from attention to obedient, organized action. Then, always a few yards away from the last person in her class, a disheveled and hurried Ms. Campbell apologizes.
I don’t exactly ignore her, but I also don’t take the time to engage her. “It’s okay.”
I really want to tell her to keep moving, but I don’t want to be rude.
She asks, “So how has it been?”
I say, “Fine.” However, what I mean is: don’t stop to talk, lady. Instead, I say, “I just need to get some fresh air, so I’m rushing to get them to the lunchroom.”
“I understand. Sometimes I just need to get out where the pollen and gnats can saturate my body more than the sunshine.” She giggles at her own humor.
I breathe through clenched teeth.
She continues, “I didn’t have allergy problems until I came here. You know I hear that a lot of people have the same problem.”
I continue walking. “Really?”
“Yes. And migraines too.”
The rude voice in my mind asks, Did they start before or after they met you?
She continues, “Did you acquire any health problems after coming here?”
“No, but I do have a headache right now.” I know that sounded rude.
“Well, you should take something.”
“Oh, I will. I just need to drop the kids off for lunch.”
“Well, I won’t hold you.”
I lie, “Oh, it’s no problem. I wasn’t in any kind of a rush anyway.”
Despite my words, I power walk past her toward the door before she can add some more change to the few cents she’s already given me.
She’s a nice lady, but I wish she could learn to say hello and just move on; instead, she has to tell me everything I didn’t ask to know. Usually, I endure her banter, tuning out her words as I try to draw my eyes above her neckline, instead of below at her under-covered flushed and freckled cleavage. She’s a heavy-breasted woman, bottle-tanned and blonde, fitting too well into the physical stereotypes of the middle-aged Floridian woman. She hails from Northern Florida, so she is southern in her eccentricities, except for her penchant for Jimmy Buffet songs and speaking dreamily of sunshine and warmth.
I can still hear her talking, whether to me or to someone else, I don’t know. Regardless, I continue into the bright day just in time to see the last of my line disappear into the lunchroom. Protocol says that I should follow them in to make sure everyone has lunch or lunch money, but the blaring heat and light reflected from the sidewalk compels me to walk impatiently to my car, ignoring the parents trying to find their way to the cafeteria.
In my mind, I run through my CD case, deciding on a disc to make the ride smoother. I need a woman’s voice, so I insert Amy Winehouse.
In less than forty-five seconds, I am pulling out of my parking space and heading toward the school parking lot exit while Amy’s Rehab makes me think even more about Saturday’s craziness. I am not an alcoholic, but I consider giving up the spirits altogether.
They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no no no….
Though the song touches on a serious topic, I smile at her girlish defiance.
She’s the woman I wish I’d met Saturday night. What I would have done to be her Mr. Jones.
I let that thought fade to the roaring sound of freedom, the F-16’s cutting through the sky above, drowning out even the sounds in my mind’s ear.
It’s going to be a long rest of the day.