Random Events

As I try to recall it all, the events during that ninth grade year seem random. I don't know the order in which they occurred. That is the way of memory. I had an English teacher who seemed smarter than the rest, but that may have been the result of her teaching us literature. She smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. We knew that from getting close to her. And she did get close in a rather intimate way when she talked to you. She would come up behind you at your desk and lean over to look at your paper so that her breasts were pushed against your back, and she would speak in a low, hoarsey whisper close to your ear meant not to disturb others. But disturb it did. She wasn't young but middle-aged, and there seemed a world-weariness about her that was profound. She was divorced, we knew that, and she lived alone in a house close to the school. Herbie had been over there, he said in a conspiratorial way that was meant to convey the unsaid. He was writing a book along the lines of "The Prophet," a personal search for meaning and she was helping him. She had spoken of Herbie's writing in class, so it had legitimacy. It worried me, though, Herbie's writing and the relationship he had with the teacher and simply the fact that he went to her house. I felt as if I were falling behind in some way, growing up wrong or not at all. I knew I could not write anything personal or poetic, and I did not know how to get invited to the teacher's home. Still, when she looked at me, I felt she was searching my eyes for something, some spark of life or meaning that I was unprepared to give her. Each day, I looked forward to her class, but afterward I always felt undone.

There was another English teacher, Miss Bloodworst, who was was very overweight and not at all attractive but whom, it was said, was pleasuring the fellows that came to her home. It was an apartment rather than a house, which made her seem something strange and exotic in our lives, but I couldn't imagine why anybody would bother with her. I didn't like to think about it.

Winter passed with its gray coldness, and with Spring some energy returned. I decided to try out for the baseball team though I had not played baseball for two years since that championship game we lost because of my hesitation. I began throwing and fielding balls with Allen and was surprised at how bad I had gotten. His father would throw to us for batting practice, and I was a bit embarrassed. During tryouts, though, I did well, and when the list of those chosen was posted, my name was there. That didn't settle well with some of the others who had not fared as well.

"Why in the fuck did they pick you," Jack spat. His face was screwed up with pain and rage, and I could tell he wanted to fight which surprised me some since he really wasn't what I considered a tough kid.

"I don't know. I guess I did well."

"Well coach told me that he didn't pick me because I wouldn't have been happy sitting the bench." That seemed to give him some satisfaction.

"Well good for you," I said and walked away stung by his comments.

But for the while I would be an athlete again with kids from my own class. It was a tonic against the other world that swirled around me, the drinking and drugs and brainless violence.