Devonne Brown

The women sat round the table and cackled loud enough to be just about half a coven. Arms flailed and eyes flashed, and chocolate orbited the luncheon feast. “That little freak got in my face and threatened me because I asked him to sit down. I am going to call his mother and write him up. I will not be threatened by a child.” All rants had to be respected to some degree, so there was a scant moment of silence before the shrieking recommenced and reached a crescendo. They all stopped to take a breath, a pause, then the women settled down to unwrap their lunches and trade the chocolate amongst each other. Chocolate soothed most of the memories of the onslaught of the morning sixth grade travesties, thus the educators became quite pleasant for the few precious minutes of their duty free lunch. 

No one needed or really wanted to ask about the classroom gore of the morning, letting go and moving on were what teachers had been trained to do.  I had had a pretty awful classroom experience that morning too, and would have brought it to the rest of the group’s attention, but as it turned out, the ten bed bugs and the roach that had crawled out of a Jaden’s notebook seemed inconsequential to the blow by blow account from the yonder end of the table being broadcast throughout the room. 

Everyone had her own special moment of defiance with a hateful kid on a bad day. We all had a daily war story we could share. If we wanted to play the one-upmanship game it would have been easy enough, but decorum prevailed with most of us most of the time. We were not in the mood that day to compete with Jane’s show and tell of endless unsatisfactory disciplinary action. It was a Friday, and we all just wanted to ease into the weekend.

“The thing about it is, you don’t throw somebody down, start punching his face, and only get five days detention.” Jane said. She whined through her nose anyway, now that she was upset, it she sounded just like she had the flu. Eleven year old boys were terrible to each other, and they stank like hot dogs with absolutely all the trimmings, or reeked of the cheapest spray-on eau de hormone from the drugstore, or both. Only the Lord knew which was worse.

“In the school rule book, page 24, it says, “He who punches another kid in the face more than once shall be ousted from school for at least three days.” I could be wrong about the page number,” sang out Tina.

Tina bounced as she giggled, and two or three of the other teachers politely tittered. Tina was proud of her quiet humor and so were the others who hoped that would quell the rant and quiet Jane. Alas, the overbearing buzzsaw sitting to her right spat her opinion like a redneck spitting out tobacco juice, and slapped the table with emphasis. I could not help but wonder why her head did not not come off of her head when it bobbed up and down in satisfaction while the others politely grimaced. 

 “The thing about it is, I don’t even know what my new schedule might be,” more nose whining, “God knows what they’ll give me. It’s just not right. I should know what I’m teaching next year. I’m certified in three subjects; remember when I had to do that when I taught 7th grade? They want me to quit. They have been trying to fire me for years because they told me I yell all the time. I do not yell. I have a loud voice. The kids like me, just ask them, They’ll tell you they like me, they do, they like me. A lot of the kids say that I’m their favorite teacher.” That last sentence had built up to a screaching crescendo. Once in awhile, someone tried to  interrupt her and change the subject, and did, without too much effort. Other times, she fought for the floor like a pitbull, and always, always brought the subject back around to her.

I tried the direct approach with her once, and I said in a stage whisper, “Jane, bring it down.” Man, it was so ugly. 

She rose over me at the lunch table and screamed. “You are not my mother!” 

Yes, I cowered.

 When she sat down in the chair, the jiggling of her butt shook the whole third floor of the school. Her head spun around three or four times, steam shot out of her ears, and fire flew from her eyes. Since the sophisticated and gracious ladies, of the group bowed their heads as if in prayer, and began to eat their lunch. I looked past Jane toward the long bulletin board covered with Shakespearean insults that I had posted at the beginning of the school year. The “mammering canker-blossom” caught my eye just as the figure of  its author appeared in front of it.

Shakespeare emerged from the bulletin board wearing the scarlett robes of a Doctor of Letters, apparently he had perused the Mark Twain issue of the Life Magazine that I had left for him. Desperately, I put my hands over my face as if to hold back tears from my recent verbal assault. If I giggled or cracked a smile, I was sure that Jane’s next tirade would rival Jupiter’s eternal storm. The Bard enjoyed a good old fashioned belly laugh with wind that blew all the papers from a stack of work by the window in the back of the room.  He knew that If I became indignant and left the room, that I would not be easily welcomed back into the luncheon fold. The sudden breeze was just the diversion needed to get the group back into its normal energy. I wanted to go home. He merely watched the proceedings.

Sweet Tina was the first to pick up the conversation. She spoke of the trouble with the upcoming bathroom breaks, a brilliant and kind diversionary tactic.