From First to Last — A Teacher’s Tale
First Period: Local Color
We’re approaching the end of the school year — spring — and the grounds are moistening to new growth. I have dreams that cause restless sleep: to move to the next city, rent a garret apartment and wake up late; to read for my own pleasure, ignore the nagging appearance of “key lines” and the need to unpack them in the margins. To write…
I live with a roommate in Warsaw’s Praga district, in a building where the stairwell is lined with mops and buckets and plants that receive no light. I rise slowly from bed, a mattress set on a wood pallet just a few inches off the floor. There is a terrible stench.
First period begins in 50 minutes. Blindly, I take two steps through the kitchen and open the bathroom door. The stench is heavier but I don’t catch it. I run the faucet and soak my hair. With head bowed, I reach for a towel and turn back to my room, water beading down my shoulders. Then I step in it. Instinctively I shriek and look down at a smeared pile of shit. Szorstek is panting in the doorway to my right. My senses coordinate into a whole and there is a moment of existential despair.
Szorstek is my roommate’s dog. He lives most his life pacing through contained spaces, waiting for doors to open. I curse my roommate on one leg and hop back to the mattress to address the situation. My socks, now rolled into a ball, are dropped in the wastebasket. The wood floors have noticeable bunches of dog hairs in the corners. The shit pile is fresh, steaming. Szorstek continues to whimper, resetting his paws every few seconds, massaging his cramped desire to bull-rush the threshold. I curse my roommate once more.
One more day. This has to come to an end.
At Warsaw’s central metro station, I take my position with the teeming masses. We press tightly against one another and enter the wagon carried forth by tiny collective feet. For five to six stops we ride as upright sardines. Some read books a few inches from their faces. I catch the Polish fine print from my vantage but the words do not register. Five years in Warsaw and still unable to make sensible one line of text.
At Wierzbno station, the wagon exhales. I find the first seat available and roll my eyes to the back of my head, travel in deep sleep with the rails humming underneath. At the announcement for Imiełin, I wake up sharply. Four people remain in the wagon. One of them, standing solitary with his hand on a pole, is Filip, the school’s top delinquent. We are both late for school.
“Hello sir,” he says surprised at the sight of me. My expression is somewhere between sunken and half-dead.
“Hey,” I grumble.
“We’re late.”
“Appears to be that way.”
“You look tired sir.”
“Uh-huh. Long night.”
“Me too.”
“I imagine.”
We coexist awkwardly for a moment. I stand up.
“Did you go out last night sir?”
“Um, no.”
“Were you grading papers?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“So,” I redirect. “You did go out?”
“Not really sir. It was more of a party. The usual thing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We baked crackers sir.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“With peanut butter.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The peanut butter is for the THC.”
I’m slow to register.
“Cannabis sir.”
“Filip.”
“I didn’t know it before. The peanut oils soak up and absorb the THC really well. Paweł showed me. He’ll probably be late today too.”
“Filip.”
“I think I did something stupid sir.”
“Filip. It’s early.”
“I know, but I think I may have lost my girlfriend.”
“Oh. Well, you’ll find another I guess.”
“But I really like her. She’s incredible sir. Long legs, like straight up to her chin.”
“So what happened?”
“She caught me with another girl.”
“Filip.”
“Yea, I know. Sounds awful. But I wasn’t expecting her. She already broke up with me, last week. I don’t even know how she heard about the party. I lost track of things. They all say the same thing anyway.”
“They all?”
“Girls.”
“What do they say?”
“That I’m not mature. That I need to grow up. But I’m only 18 years old. My mom tells me the same thing. Filip, it’s time for you to grow up! One day you’re going to realize that life isn’t a game! But I’m 18 sir. It’s supposed to be a game.”
“Filip?”
“Yea.”
“It’s early.”
The doors open and close for Natolin. We start again from scratch.
“Mr. Krasner, can I ask you something?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why do you teach us?”
“Why do I teach you? I have to answer that at 8:30 in the morning?”
I check my phone and realize that my 9th graders are now assembled and waiting for me in room 3.
“I know you like to talk and everything,” he continues unfazed, “but why don’t you do something else? Don’t you think you’re wasting your time? I mean, maybe you could write a book or something.”
“I am writing a book,” I say defensively.
“You are? Really? What’s it about?”
“What’s it about? That’s hard to answer. It’s about life.”
He is hoping for something more like a plotline.
“It’s about my travels and why I came to Poland, or my travels in Poland, kind of like a travelogue but not really.”
“Oh.”
I sigh.
“I’d like to read it.”
“Sure. When it’s done.”
“Do you have mentors, or influences? Is your writing like someone else I might have read?”
“Someone else you might have read? I don’t know, maybe.”
I search my mind fruitlessly for mentors and influences.
“It’s like a travelogue and I ask a lot of questions, so maybe it’s philosophical. It’s like a confessional….it’s first person,” I finish.
“Oh.”
I notice that I’m sweating.
“But then you could be working on your book instead of teaching.”
“Even writers need a day job Filip,” I rationalize.
“Yea, I guess so,” he processed aloud. “Kurt Vonnegut, the guy we’re reading, did he have a day job?”
“I think he worked in a library. Or for a publisher, as a proof reader. No, no, he was a reporter, or an ad writer. He was in the war. Maybe he just wrote. I don’t really know Filip.”
We arrive at the last stop, Kabaty. The doors open. Filip and I leave the wagon silently. I catch sight of the clock at the base of the stairs — 8:35. I contemplate hurrying my gait as a means of separating.
Filip stops once we exit the station.
“I have to smoke a cigarette,” he says in the fresh air.
“Okay. See you later then. When do we have class?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right. See you then.”
Filip inhales deeply and stands again in his cocoon of thoughts. I pick up my pace and walk with my gaze to the ground. I had stopped writing my book over a year ago. My book is about my dog, actually. It’s about my friendship with a dog and coming to Poland with him and searching for Jewish gravesites. My influences? How come I still can’t place my influences? Maybe I’m not a writer. I spend my free time after school scribbling in cafes. That’s what I couldn’t tell him.
I keep my head to the ground. If I had looked up and stopped my mind, I might have realized that it is a lovely day.
There is no activity in the front hall when I enter the school. I skip past the sign-in book and race up the steps to the teacher’s lounge. In fluid motion, I bend down to my locker to retrieve a tin of English Breakfast tea while letting my bag slip off one shoulder. I start the electric water kettle, find the day’s worksheet and approach the copier. Still wearing my jacket, I place the sheet on the glass, shut the cover, and select 15 copies. I tend to my tea. Then the copier makes it known that no matter my fragile temperament, it will not cooperate.
I can take off my jacket now.
My next progressions are performed with the exactitude of an oiled machine and the spirit of a repentant husband. Open the front cover. Unlock the feed. Pull open the metal tray. Reach a hand in and turn the rollers. Check for jammed paper. Notice your smudged hand. Hold it in. Reload and lock the tray. Shut the front cover. Open the side door. Look for jammed paper. Close the door firmly. Listen as the paper tray rises and repositions itself. Wait. Be a good boy. Think nice thoughts. Press the green button. It’s working. It’s working! Wait.
Out of paper. Oh, an easy labor. I open my locker door, reach inside but find only the wrapping of an empty sheaf. The copier blinks mercilessly. The room is empty.
Hold it in.
Out the lounge and running desperately down the steps, leaping two at a time, I open the door to the office. The secretary, Iwona, senses my presence but does not look up from her computer. I smile in the American habit. She lifts her glassed eyes with weary dread. What do you need? Paper. I’m out of paper. She chastises me with a sigh, then retrieves a fresh sheaf from beneath her desk. I must wait for the familiar spiral notebook too. It is opened to where a hand-drawn table notes the daily debits and credits. I sign my name to a month’s supply of copier paper, thank Iwona in the American habit, and race back up the stairs, skipping two at a time.
8:51. Almost half the class gone. The futility has beaten me down to a careless humored state. Perhaps I should dally and enter the classroom just a moment before the closing bell? Is my day being filmed? I do not mind playing the butt of someone’s schoolhouse joke. Isn’t that what teachers sign up for?
Back to my avowed copier. She blinks indifferent smiles, consistent as a mule. I reload the paper tray, reset my sheet, and notice the title of my day’s exercise: “Local Color — describing place through the five senses.”
I process Filip’s lingering remark: don’t you feel like you’re wasting your time?
Wincing, I press the green button. The day, as it is, begins.
***
While the copier made its clack and drum music, I addressed the confined space that for five years and a day had accepted my preoccupied greeting each morning and never once complained about the body language that suggested I would rather be somewhere else. I took inventory: two plywood tables with chipped white veneer, computer monitors from the last millennium, a deskjet printer sunlit in one corner, the entrance hall crowded with coats on hooks and unruly books on cheap bookshelves, wide ring binders and units of various sciences loose in the rings, undressed window panes with a view of a construction pit, the late May sun shimmering over sets of lego-like apartment blocks, the distant red flag of a Tesco box store. But what of the smell? Traces of dog shit on the shoe. Touch? Burnt black toner on the fingertips. Sound? Sterilized, redundant copier breaths. Taste? Black tea with milk, burning and bitter. And sound again: an empty stomach.
8:55. The worksheets are ready.
I resumed my personal track meet down the stairs stopping just short of room 3 to collect my breath and feign a casual air. As so, I opened the door and entered class.
The tables had been reorganized. A group of six boys laid atop them, barking out poker commands. I registered stacks of coins and bills before each player.
Now, let it out now —
“Get that shit out of here!”
The tables were dutifully pulled apart and the boys worked frantically to collect their money. They were stunned into silence.
“Mr. Krasner?” Daniela asked. She sat with her best friend Daria by the window. They had matching iPhones on their desks, one in pink casing and one white.
“Why are you so late?”
“Copier hell,” I replied. “Don’t ask.”
I dropped my bag heavily to my desk and laid the papers and tea mug down. The students retreated into docile form, a usual result when the teacher expresses wrath.
“Get your notebooks out. Hurry up.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Local color.”
“What?”
“Local color!”
They cowered as I distributed the exercise. The top pages were smudged with ink.
“Local color is a term used for describing local places. It means that which makes a place local is its color. And to reproduce this in writing, you have to notice the details. Like in Rules of the Game.
I paused, and let them voice their displeasure.
“Can you pull out the story?”
The class grumbled. Even on a good day, when I showed up on time and wrote a pithy objective on the whiteboard, they rarely brought their textbook. Their reasoning was understandable: it was the size and weight of a cement cylinder. They had memories of lugging the book to class upon my request only to see that I did not refer to it during the lesson. They knew well that I preferred to go off the straight and narrow. But not today. If ever there was a time for the straight and narrow, it was today.
“How many books do we have?” I asked at the sight of their incapacity.
Five students showed the marine green cover.
“Okay, we have enough to share. Three students per book. Let’s go — reorganize. Now!”
They moved around with suspicious glances.
“Can someone find the passage that most associates with local color? It’s typical of Amy Tan’s writing. You should be able to figure it out.”
I waited in the silence and sipped my tea. It did not concern me that no one was in the mood to work. Half of me wished that we’d waste the last 25 minutes searching for the passage to read, and then the bell would ring and I could escape and succor myself in the lounge with more black tea.
“Do you mean when she describes Waverly Place?” Daniela asked.
Always Daniela.
“Yes. Waverly Place. This is the neighborhood where she grew up, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you guys remember about the neighborhood? Can we list some of the details on the board? Just from memory?”
It was too late to take back the instructions now. I approached my bag and dug inside for the marker. If I uncapped it, I would have to teach.
“It was crowded,” I heard.
“Right, crowded.”
“And it was poor.”
“Poor.”
“It was filled with Chinese people.”
“Chinese people.”
I uncapped the marker.
“She lived in Chinatown, San Francisco. But the details you’re listing are more like ideas.”
I was writing on the board.
“Amy Tan described Chinatown in such a way that you could hear and smell it. Even taste it, if I remember well. Maybe we should read some of it first. Daniela, since you’re vocal today, can you be a reader?”
“Hey! Why always me?”
“Because I’m too tired to explore my options.”
“I don’t feel vocal today.”
“Neither do I.”
Defiant silence.
“Are you going to read Amy Tan or stall until the bell rings?”
“Stall sir.”
“Do you want me to yell at you again?”
“Why did you yell at us sir?” Maria asked. She was sincere, dark haired, dark eyed, and most herself when singing a rhapsody of recriminations.
I began to soften.
“Did I yell at you?”
“You used bad language sir,” Darius said. He was the leader of the poker game, a gaunt boy with angelic swarthy face and long Mediterranean locks of hair.
“You said shit, sir,” he continued.
The class cracked up and Darius took pleasure in it.
“And so did you,” I said. “Well done.”
He nodded at my recognition.
“Are we going to have class or not?”
“Not,” Sebastian said. He had limp shoulder length blond hair and spoke in a monotone voice that belied his genuine sensitivity.
They were gaining courage.
“Let’s go outside Mr. Krasner!” Maria pleaded
“Yea, why should we have class?” Daniela picked up. “We’ve already missed over half of it, and by the time we get warmed up it will be time to go. And look outside Mr. Krasner.”
I turned to the Kabaty scene that only a moment before had filled me with disgust.
“It’s beautiful today. Perfect sun. Flowers in the bushes.”
“You see flowers in the bushes?” I interrupted. “Where? What bushes?”
“Well, I’m using my imagination. You like when we use our imagination.”
“Not when you’re trying to trick me.”
“We’re not trying to trick you Mr. Krasner,” Maria picked up the slack. “We’re suggesting this for your good as well as ours. You’re already in a bad mood. Why not go outside and enjoy the morning.”
“Because we can’t enjoy the morning.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re in school.”
They absorbed the joke with sealed smiles.
“You see, you understand us so well,” Maria continued. “We want to enjoy school.”
“You want to play poker. You want to text message your friends.”
I snared Daria with my eyes. She shyly placed her iPhone back on the desk.
“You want to succeed in steering the teacher away from his lesson. You want to win!” I finished.
“We want to go outside!!”
I placed the cap back on my marker and sat down behind the desk with complete ambivalence.
“Mr. Krasner?” Maria asked. “Are you okay?”
“Hm?”
“You don’t want to go outside?”
“No, I do. I’m just thinking of something for us to do.”
The boys jumped on the concession and moved towards their bags.
“Wait a second!” I straightened up. “I haven’t given any instructions. Stay put.”
They waited in suspense.
“Okay,” I said after delay. “We will go outside today.”
“Yea!!”
“On one condition — we will use our minds somehow.”
“Why should we use our minds?” Maria asked. “It’s so beautiful.”
She had a point.
“It is beautiful? Or you’re just saying it’s beautiful?”
“Really, it’s beautiful. I mean look at it?”
“I am. And I’m not sure I see it in the same way as you. I see an apartment block under construction and a road leading to a bright Tesco sign in the distance. I don’t see any trees and I don’t see any bushes.”
“I see a bush,” Daniela said. “There, right there is a bush.”
“That’s a shrub,” I said.
“What’s the difference?”
“A bush has flowers in the spring.”
“Well, it’s green.”
“And what does it smell like?”
“Smell like?” she reacted. “How should I know?”
“It smells like dog shit sir,” Darius said. The class rolled over as he gloated.
“Twice now Darius. Really, well done. I bet you can’t get away with another one.”
He considered my intent.
“It smells like roasting flesh,” Sebastian said.
“Sebastian!” Maria reprimanded. “That’s disgusting.”
Sebastian had a habit of disturbing the class with his tales of the grotesque.
“He’s referring to the kebab,” I interceded. “Right Sebastian?”
He nodded glumly.
“The smell of roasting meat. About the only thing a human can retain by the nose. Can you smell the hummus and grape leaves too?”
He looked bewildered.
“Can you taste the kebab out there in this distinct neighborhood of ours?”
“Oh, I see where you’re going,” Daniela said. “You want us to do with Kabaty what Amy Tan did with Chinatown.”
“Precisely.”
“Huh?”
“We’re going to paint Kabaty in words. Outside. All you need is your notebook and pen.”
The boys leaped from their chairs with the sudden passion of frogs.
“Just hold on a second, will you? I want to explain the assignment.”
They splashed back down, grousing.
“I want you to imagine that we live in a world before photographs and films. Try to remember what it was like for people to share stories solely through the written word. What words would you choose to describe a place? How could you distinguish this place from that place? What senses would you try to conjure? We have the sun, the apartment blocks standing and those under construction. The Tesco sign. The dog poop. The shrubs, or bushes, the green leaves. The hope of flowers.”
“The kebab sir.”
“We have the kebab. The roasting chicken on a spit. The lamb slivers and the grease rolling off the butcher’s knife. The sweat of the man’s brow as he cuts the meat. The line of students crowding across the counter. The television screen in the corner playing racy music videos.”
“You don’t like Rhianna sir?”
“Smut!”
“It’s not always smut, sir,” Sebastian said. “Sometimes they show Al-Jezera. Broadcasters in head shawls.”
The classroom had that look. They leaned back in their chairs, listening, watching, inside a theatre. But there was no stage here, no separation. They were participating in this play, when they felt the urge to.
“This is one snapshot of Kabaty,” I continued. “Can you write another? Can you write it in the age of paper and ink? Write it for someone reading in silence, in the solitude of a chair and a lamp? Can you make words come alive?”
“Mr. Krasner,” Maria interrupted.
“Hm.”
“You can stop now. We get it.”
“Ok, sorry. Do you have your notebook and a pen?”
“Yeeeeeeeeeees.”
“Are you ready to go outside?”
“Yeeeeeeeeeees.”
“To use your mind?”
“Noooooooooo.”
“One more time, please — “
“Yeeeeeeeeees.”
“Ok. You’re released. Go play!”
The boys charged first into the empty corridor. I packed up my bag slowly and straddled behind the group as it squeezed through the doorway. Maria was stuck at my pace. She could see something was on my mind.
“Mr. Krasner, are you okay?”
“Yea, I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem kind of sad.”
“It happens. Good days, bad days.”
“We can stay in the classroom if you like.”
“No, it’s okay. It was a good idea Maria.”
Fortunately the Principal was not strolling the hallways so I didn’t have to explain why after arriving 25 minutes late, I was now letting the class out 15 minutes early. The stampede of boys rushed through the front door and into the yard space to the side of the school. There in the morning sun they imitated dogs that first arrive at the dog park. Darius played at being chased while Oleh and a few buddies played at the chasing. The girls collected quietly atop the ping pong tables and sat with their legs hanging off the sides. I arrived last, my teacher’s burden over the shoulder, and my tea still balanced in hand. The sunlight caused me to squint. I yelled to the boys to direct their romp towards the girls. They appeared terribly clumsy in their heavy jeans and wiry bodies.
“Not the most athletic group,” I noted.
“Nope,” the girls sighed.
“It’s a good thing getting them out in the sun.”
“We should do this more often sir.”
“You’re probably right.”
The boys finally approached the group, panting and sweating.
“These are the ground rules,” I said. “You have to find a spot alone.”
“Alone? Why do we need to be alone?” the girls whined.
“Obviously because you don’t want to. You can’t write as a commune. Look, there are plenty of good spots for everyone. There are benches there by the fence. The basketball court. You can sit on the grass.”
“We’re not sitting on the grass,” Daniela said loudest.
“Why not? What’s wrong with the grass?”
“Are you kidding? There’s pee in it!”
“Oh lord.”
“And dirt!”
“And dirt? Oh my God! There’s dirt in the grass? Where? Where?”
Daniela clarified herself between rounds of laughter.
“I just mean that my jeans will get dirty sir. I did not come to school today to sit in pee.”
“So you guys want to come outside but be as far removed from the outside as possible? Just sit here on the tables and play with your phones.”
“Yes.”
I sucked in my breath. Did I have enough strength for another labor?
Right at about this time, the class was treated to a vision of a young boy darting from the school and flashing into the tall grass by the fence where he stopped, bent low, and plucked a few dandelions.
“What the heck was that?” Daniela asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said casually. “Looks like he’s doing his homework.”
The girls looked at each other for clues. The boys, led by Darius, had disbanded at my first sign of distraction and carried on with their wild circuit.
“What are you talking about?” Maria asked.
“Their homework. 6th grade English.”
“What was the homework?”
“To collect a flower. They were supposed to bring one from a place outside of the school grounds though.”
Another boy flashed out from the school like a yellow blur and raced to the same plot of grass.
“We’re reading The Little Prince,” I continued.
“And?”
“And, well, it’s connected somehow. It’s connected to the senses too. And appreciating the little things, like what we’re supposed to be doing now.”
“I’d rather be doing their assignment,” Maria said. “Why don’t you let us pluck flowers!”
“You’re not in the 6th grade anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t treat us like we were….”
She elongated her words into a lovely buttery tone.
The bell rang. Instantaneously, a herd of students pressed through the school’s front doors and like summer bees intermingled with my 9th grade boys. The girls were more sensitive to my position.
“Well, wasn’t much of a lesson,” I said aloud.
“You were right Mr. Krasner,” Daniela replied. “We won.”
“You always win,” I said. “It’s supposed to be that way. You’re the young.”
“We can do the assignment for homework,” Maria suggested.
“You could. But I didn’t get a chance to assign it.”
We settled on no culmination. The girls slowly mixed with the rest of the swarm buzzing in the tall grass outside of school.
“It’s a nice day though,” I said.
“Yea, it is.”
I placed my bag heavily over one shoulder, grabbed my tea and walked back to the school careful not to spill what was now tepid muddy water. A student approached me from behind. It was Sebastian. He was out of breath and placed his notebook in front of me.
“I have the assignment sir,” he said.
“You did it?”
“Yea. By the refuse bin. I thought it would be the best spot.”
I turned around and noted the bin.
“Can you check it sir?”
“Of course.”
I placed my tea mug on the ground and read Sebastian’s passage, skimming at first, but then forcing my mind to slow down and appreciate his effort.
The colors of the rainbow, yellow, green, blue and red, side by side in a stocky alliance. They mark the territory around the mother barge. She is grey, unadorned, and her womb is filled with plastic stuffed embryos, piled thickly together, pressing one head forward and then another. The smells rise from out the openings of the tied yellow knots: day old herring tins crusty in fish oil, gaseous cries floating in stalled bubbles above crushed Styrofoam, the rubber washed soles of sneakers, molded bread, and the dried up remains of vodka sticking to the bottoms of pocket sized bottles. Circling the plump belly lie shards of green glass, a protective rim against assault on the mother barge, or the remains of the dead she feeds on by night in this stark and empty lot. Another mother of another species approaches with her child tucked away in a carriage. The mother stops for a moment and keeps her distance. It’s not time to throw her away.
I shook my head, recognizing Sebastian’s distinct ethos.
“Well Sebastian, thank you. Your writing is alive, in a dead way.”
I handed the notebook back to him and he tucked it under his arm without much expression. He never accepted compliments.
“Thanks for doing it.”
“Uh-huh,” he shrugged.
I bent down one last time to retrieve my tea. With a backward glance, I recognized Sebastian’s trash bin and made acquaintance with the strange creatures piled there. I took in the sky. It was blue, with a few wispy clouds, much like Szorstek’s dog hairs framing the white sun. Lowering my head again, I focused on my next class. Second period began in less than two minutes.
For Second Period of a Teacher’s Tale, please see:
