The Class Read online

  Dico and Khoumba were not backing down from their high, overplayed or not. I pressed Dico’s arm to urge him toward his seat.

  “Where you come off touching me?”

  “Sit down.”

  “I’ll sit down but you don’t touch me.”

  Kevin was standing around in the aisle.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I was shouting. He pointed to the chair nearby.

  “That’s my seat.”

  “No that’s not your seat there, you go to the rear.” I pushed his back and he resisted by nothing but his near-obese bulk. I grabbed roughly at the straps of his backpack and it fell onto a single desk that was wedged into a corner.

  “Why you mad at me?”

  “I’ll be mad at whoever I want. Who’s the teacher, you or me?”

  “M’sieur, you see this thing here he threw?”

  Khoumba was waving the incriminating evidence, a ball of paper. Dico indicted himself by denying it before he was accused.

  “Wasn’t me I’m telling you! I don’t give a fuck about her!

  “You don’t give what?”

  “I don’t care about her.”

  “That’s better.”

  I would have liked each student to come to the board to read his or her composition on pollution, but the Chinese girls couldn’t do that. Jie maybe, Jiajia just possibly, but Liquiao and Xiawen would only mutilate a few phrases already full of holes. They were hoping I wouldn’t put them through such an ordeal, and I was hoping the others wouldn’t notice or would act as if they didn’t. Halfway through the presentations I quit requiring them to come to the board, but I asked for volunteers. Then I put an end to the exercise by saying that time was short. Mariama, diamond plug in left nostril, made her coarse voice heard.

  “Why aren’t they going up, Jie’s gang?”

  I lowered my head for a moment too long, then raised it without knowing what I was going to say.

  “That’s not a very nice way of expressing yourself.”

  “But why aren’t they going up?”

  “The people who want to do it come up, that’s all.”

  “Just before though you told Frida to come up, and she didn’t want to.”

  “That’s because I was sure that what Frida had prepared was good.”

  “And them other kids who didn’t go up—what they did is no good?”

  “Can I go on with my lesson?”

  In a show of disapproval, she sucked her tongue hard against her palate. It made a Pfffh sound.

  “Is this a story where the characters are mice?”

  Sandra asked the question without looking up from her assignment pad, where she was noting down the title of the book to buy.

  “No, they’re real people. There’s just a story about mice for a short passage, you’ll see.”

  “Sounds stupid.”

  “That’s why I’m having you read it.”

  Mohammed Ali asked what auxiliary verb goes with ému. I asked what was the connection, there was none, I gave him the verb and asked if he could conjugate it. He started mumbling some M sounds and trying to stick some stubborn vowels onto them to make a word.

  “Émouvoir is a word that was invented just to bug people. Even grownups have trouble with it, just try it on them, you’ll see it’s a disaster. Only the most cultivated people like me know what to do with it.”

  Mocking laughter drowned the room, punctuated with a few sardonic throat-clearings. Annoyed, I closed off my purposely comical parenthesis by putting my sentence on the board with a Jesuit-style austerity. When I turned back, Katia was babbling with her neighbor Imani.

  “Katia!”

  “What?”

  “You know very well what.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “Come see me after class.”

  “M’sieur that’s not right, you’re pissed off and you’re taking it out on me that’s not right.”

  “First off, you don’t say ‘pissed off,’ you use a real French word, that will help.”

  “You’re mad and you’re taking it out on me that’s not right m’sieur.”

  “It’s not up to you to say if I’m mad or not, and now you be quiet unless you want things to turn out badly.”

  Imani raised her hand.

  “M’sieur, it’s true she wasn’t talking, I was the one talking I swear.”

  “You want the punishment for yourself, is that it?”

  “No m’sieur but Katia wasn’t talking.”

  “Is Katia three years old? She can’t defend herself?”

  “Ah, m’sieur, really you hassle us too much.”

  “Can I go on with my class?”

  “I swear you ride us too much.”

  “You can conjugate ‘émouvoir’ in the passé composé if you insist on mouthing off.”

  I asked Khoumba to read the excerpt, and she said she didn’t feel like it.

  “Feel like it or not, read it.”

  “You’re not gonna force me to read.”

  I turned to the twenty-four others for witness.

  “What’s that called, what Khoumba just did?”

  “Insolence.”

  “Good, Kevin. It’s good to have the word of an expert here.”

  Khoumba set about swallowing her syllables, as she always did when she objected, with a sidelong laugh because her pals around her were snickering. Lacking an idea for the moment, I told her to stay after class.

  “Frida you were in the middle of explaining the word ‘pervert’ to us.”

  I LOVE UNGARO, said her sweatshirt.

  “I don’t know if it’s right.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Like it’s a person who has strange ideas I dunno.”

  “For instance, if I want to eat the Eiffel Tower, am I a pervert?”

  “No, not that kinda strange ideas, I dunno.”

  The bell sent the down feathers flying. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Khoumba take three authoritative steps forward to set her home-note booklet on my desk, NIKE ATLANTIC on her fake leather jacket, mouth clamped shut hard as if in fear someone would go searching for secret microfilm inside. I wrote out the particulars of her penalty together with a word for her parents: Write a hundred-line essay on an adolescent learning respect, to be turned in signed by parents the day after tomorrow. Before handing her back the booklet, I wanted to get a handle on my temper.

  “Is it going to be like this all year?”

  “All year what?”

  “Apologize.”

  “For what? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Apologize. Until you apologize I’m not letting you leave.”

  She hesitated between saving face or rejoining her pals, who were taking turns sticking half a head into the doorway.

  “Fine, I got nothing to apologize for I didn’t do anything.”

  To annoy me she made a move to snatch the away the booklet I was holding in the air to annoy her.

  “Oh no you don’t. Pull my arm off while you’re at it.”

  She closed off again.

  “What happened this summer—did you find out something unpleasant about me?”

  On the surly offensive.

  “Why’d you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Last year we were pals, you liked me fine, and this year you make my life hell, so I figure maybe over the summer somebody told you bad stuff about me.”

  “My mother’s waiting for me.”

  “She’s waiting for you to apologize.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry what?”

  “Sorry that’s all.”

  “Sorry what?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Repeat after me: Monsieur I’m sorry for being insolent to you.”

  “I wasn’t insolent.”

  “I’m waiting: M’sieur I’m sorry for being insolent to you.”

  “M’sieur-I-am-sorry-for-being-insolent-to-you.”

  It was recited mech
anically, with a pointed absence of conviction. Still, I handed over the booklet, which she seized quickly before skipping toward the door. As she disappeared into the corridor she cried, “I didn’t mean it.”

  I bounded after her but too late. Her little rebel silhouette tore down a flight of stairs. I gave up, yelling threats after her. Returning to my desk, I kicked over a chair. Four hooves in the air.

  1. What are the values of the school in a republic, and what should be done to bring society to recognize them? 2. What should be the missions of a school in the Europe era and through the decades to come? 3. Toward what sort of equality should a school move? 4. Should education be divided differently as between youth and adulthood, and more thoroughly involve the working world? 5. What common foundation of knowledge, skills, and standards of behavior should students master as a matter of priority by the end of each stage of the mandatory schooling? 6. How should the school adapt to the diversity of the students? 7. How can we improve recognition for, and the organization of, the vocational track? 8. How can students be motivated and brought to work effectively? 9. What should be the functions of and the modalities for evaluating students, for grading, and for examinations? 10. How should student guidance be organized and improved? 11. How should we prepare and organize the move into higher education? 12. How can parents and other external partners of the school foster the students’ academic success? 13. How can we take care of those students in serious difficulty? 14. How should handicapped or gravely ill students be schooled? 15. How shall we battle effectively against violence and uncivil behavior? 16. What should be the relations among the members of the educational community, in particular between parents and teachers, and between teachers and students? 17. How can the quality of life of students in school be improved? 18. In matters of education, define and assign the respective roles and responsibilities of the State and the regional or local communities. 19. Should schools be granted greater autonomy, and should this be accompanied by evaluation? 20. How can the school best use its available means? 21. Should the school’s practices be redefined? 22. How should instructors be trained, recruited, and evaluated, and how can their careers be better organized?

  Beneath the globe where the USSR reigned in red, Mohammed and Kevin were battling over the seat beside Fouad. In the end the former decided to oust Bamoussa, who protested that he always sat there for French class.

  “If you want his seat, Mohammed, find a better argument than that.”

  “All he has to do is get out.”

  “That’s not an argument.”

  “If Bamoussa stays there, there’ll be too much pollution in the room, and that’s bad for the ozone layer.”

  “That’s better. But you don’t show us in what way he pollutes.”

  “With his burnt-up sneakers, he pollutes.”

  “Your sneaks burned up, Bamoussa?”

  “He’s the one burnt ’em.”

  Souleyman, already sitting, had his hood pulled forward.

  “Hood, Souleyman, if you please.”

  He sent it sliding onto his shoulders with a backward toss of his head, uncovering his shaved scalp. Fortunée wore glasses now and didn’t make a fuss. Khoumba had LOVE spelled three times in a column on her pullover and was unpacking her things without the least intention of handing in what she owed me. I bent over her desk.

  “Give me your booklet.”

  “Why?”

  “You know very well why.”

  In her penalty assignment I replaced the hundred lines by a hundred and fifty.

  “The next time you’ll think first about what you say. And acually you’re lucky, you’ve got two weeks to do your penalty.”

  “I’m not gonna do it anyway.”

  I turned on my heel to keep myself from insulting her. Fury. As I walked back to the platform, she mumbled something that made her seatmate laugh. Worse fury. Dounia to starboard.

  “M’sieur, on the television they were saying there’s gonna be a debate in the middle schools?”

  “Just get out your folder.”

  Amar to port.

  “You gonna give us homework over vacation?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I won’t give any.”

  Lina left off blowing on her tea to note my busy scissors.

  “Good lord you never stop working, you.”

  Without remarking on my lack of reply, she addressed Geraldine, who was distractedly scanning the official document on the national schools debate tacked up on the corkboard.

  “Don’t be so low, Gégé.”

  “I’m not low at all, I’m finished tonight.”

  “That’s right, you have no classes Friday.”

  Running through like a gust of wind, Luc sent my pile of exercise papers flying and said,

  “—these privileges, it’s really infuriating.”

  Lina cut short a swallow.

  “You can’t complain, you work only Friday mornings. Look at me—excuse me but I don’t get out until five o’clock.”

  “Yes but I do still have four hours in a row, if you don’t mind.”

  “Please, morning hours, that’s nothing.”

  “Yeah but four in a row, thank you very much.”

  With shadows under his eyes that stretched out to his ears, Gilles was fingering a cigarette and yearning for a smoking room.

  “Depends on the students. If it’s the eighth graders, it’s worse.”

  Standing beneath the woman with the parasol, three rings in each of his ears, Leopold disagreed.

  “Well the seventh graders, I don’t even want to tell you. I put in two incident reports again yesterday. With them, it’s not even worth the trouble on Fridays. Morning or not.”

  Rachel had just jammed the photocopy machine.

  “Why doesn’t this do both sides, this piece of shit?”

  Gilles didn’t let go.

  “The eighth graders, they’re the pits.”

  “You do look tired, really.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know . . .”

  “You’ll be able to rest pretty soon, y’know.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Vacations stress me out.”

  twenty-eight

  Coming up out of the metro, I stopped at the brasserie. A fifty-year-old guy was smoking without his hands, which were enlisted to hold his paper, on which a rugby player in white lifted his victorious arms. The uniformed waiter set a cup on the copper bar.

  “Real good those Brits.

  “They invented the game, what can I say.”

  Outside, the still-timid daylight revealed the Chinese butchers unloading a refrigerator truck. Past the corner, Serge the dean and Ali the monitor were assessing the sabotage to the bell system.

  “Gotta get it fixed, what else can I say? Hey, hello, how you doing?”

  “Super.”

  I didn’t need to push open the massive wooden door. A cleaning woman was wiping her wet mop over the tile floor of the playing court. Wielding a straw broom, another woman piled leaves against the back wall of the inner courtyard. Behind the blue door shadowy-eyed Gilles, a bandage on his finger, was photocopying a textbook page. He raised his voice to be heard over the machine.

  “Totally kills me to come back here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was building something and bang with the hammer.”

  Leopold pushed through the door next, and on his sweatshirt a vampire decreed APOCALYPSE NOW in English.

  “Hey. What’s that?”

  “I was building something and bang with the hammer.”

  Valerie was checking her e-mails.

  “Something else bothering you?”

  “Doesn’t it kill you to come back here? Me, totally.”

  Dico hung back from starting up the stairs after the others.

  “M’sieur could I still change class?”

  “It’s more the class that would like to change Dico.”

  “A student ca
n change head teacher?”

  “Get going.”

  Most of the troop was waiting in front of the physics room. Frida was pouring out a story and a semi-circle of girls were drinking it up.

  “So I go I’m not your ho, so he goes—”

  “OK, into the room.”

  I’d slept badly. Mohammed pushed Kevin, who, exaggerating his loss of balance, bumped against the first desk to the left as he entered.

  “M’sieur you see how he shoved me?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Dianka caught up to me at my desk.

  “M’sieur, that book I couldn’t find it.”

  “What book?”

  “The one you told us to buy, with the mice in it.”

  “Everyone else found it, why not you?”

  Souleyman had come into the room with his hood pulled forward. I waited till he sat down.

  “The hood, Souleyman, if you please.”

  He slid it back onto his shoulders with a toss of his head.

  “The cap too.”

  He lifted it off by passing his hand across the front of it, as if it were a balaclava. Dounia was looking at herself in the cover of her metal pencil kit. Dianka had not moved away.

  “So it’s no problem m’sieur if I don’t have the book?”

  “No, no. You’ll just be putting yourself even more out to lunch than usual.”

  She turned away, pleased at not having to buy anything, and nearly tripped Fortunée, who wasn’t wearing her glasses and was coming to hand me Khoumba’s penalty paper. I held her off by raising the palm of my hand.

  “Tell her to bring it to me herself.”

  So informed by her friend, Khoumba came forward from the back of the classrom with the sheet and wordlessly dropped it onto my desk.

  An adolescent learns gradually to respect her teachers because of threats from them or because of fear of getting into trouble. These are just examples. And I respect you already and respect should be mutual. For instance I never tell you that you are hysterical so why do you tell me that? I have always respected you so I do not understand why you make me write this whole thing!! In any case, I know that you have some grudge against me but I do not know what I have done. I do not come to school to have my teacher give me a hard time for some unknown reasons! Would I do your job? NO!! I am your student and you are my teacher. So I do not see why you give me a hard time. You are supposed to enrich our knowledge of French. My resolution is to apply myself to all the schoolwork that way there will not be any more conflicts “for nothing” except if you “get after me.” I admit I am insolent SOMETIMES but if people don’t cause me to be I am not. All right, I return to the topic. When I say “because of threats from teachers” it’s like where for example you wrote in my home-note booklet “I will have to take more serious measures” well that there’s a threat (according to me!). And when I say “fear of getting into trouble” it means that the person is afraid of being sent to the principal’s office or being expelled. In any case I promise to respect you if it is RECIPROCAL. Anyhow, I will not even look at you so you won’t say that I am looking at you insolently. And usually in a French class, people should be talking about French and not about their grandmother or their sister. So from now on I will not be talking to you.