In February
by Meg Yardley

February is the worst month of the year for teachers.

In February, Avery Williams knows with absolute certainty that her students are ungrateful, entitled, hormonal monsters whose attention spans have been atrophied by their screen addictions, who are learning nothing from her class, and who will go on to lead miserable lives with no genuine human connection and no ability to think for themselves. 

In February she calculates her salary for all the possible retirement timelines (it should be in five years, but with the budget cuts…).

In February, the cold rain leaves wide puddles in the staff parking lot where plants have grown up through the grating of the drains. In February, even cloudless blue sky days just remind her of how every time she’s turning on her car she’s contributing to climate change.

In February she scrolls through job ads online. Her next job is going to be something blissfully solitary, or in an office shared with a few pleasant and mature adults. She will be able to go in late one morning if she needs to pick up her car from the shop. She’ll travel in the off season when you can get really good deals on airfare (she pictures herself in Cabo, or maybe Hawaii). And she won’t have to know about teenagers who have been homeless for six months or lost their dads to gun violence or smoke weed on an everyday basis to cope with their memories of sexual abuse.

In February, she can’t seem to remember any of her students’ names, even though she’s been saying them for five months. Mismatched first and last names leap to the surface of her memory from past years. She sticks with “young man” and “young lady” until something triggers her memory and the right name surfaces on her tongue.

In February, Ms. Williams spends her lunch in the copy room so she won’t have to answer the door when students drop in to ask: “I just want to know how I can bring up my grade?” (translation: “Will you let me pass your class despite not having turned in a single piece of work this marking period?”). In February, hearing her colleagues complain is the only thing that keeps her going.

 

“How many weeks till spring break?” groans Ms. Curtis, pulling a sheaf of blank paper out of a package. 

“Five weeks, two days, and three hours,” Mr. Simon returns right away from the table where he’s tapping away at his laptop. “I have a countdown going on the board.”

“Don’t use that one!” Ms. Williams calls out to Ms. Curtis, who is approaching the copier. “It’s jamming again and it mangled the only hard copy of my assignment this morning. I had to come up with an entirely new lesson plan in fifteen minutes.”

“I made copies second period and it was working okay,” says Mr. Simon.

Ms. Williams shrugs and sits back. “Well, use it at your own risk.” She takes out her lunch: chicken salad. The greens gleam cold under the copy room’s fluorescent track lighting as she spills some dressing over them.

“Y’all don’t know the right way to handle this machine,” says Ms. Curtis with a sideways smirk. “It just needs a little prayer over it.” 

“When I was growing up, they said there was no prayer in schools,” says Mr. Simon impishly.

“As long as we have copy machines, we WILL have prayer in schools.” Ms. Curtis lays her hands devoutly over the lid. “Dear Heavenly Father, we ask your blessing on this most bountiful instrument of… of…”

“Duplication,” supplies Mr. Simon. 

“…of duplication,” Ms. Curtis continues smoothly. “May the copies flow freely just like You made the milk and honey flow in the land of Canaan. In Your Name we pray. Amen.”

“Amen to that.”

Ms. Curtis presses “Start” on the copier and a rhythmic whirring starts up, papers sailing into the catch tray with a satisfying swish, swish, swish.

“See that?” says Ms. Curtis. “God is good – ”

“ALL the time!” Ms. Williams can’t help laughing. A February laugh.

Over the whirring of the copier, she hears another teacher’s low voice from across the room: “I’ve barely seen her all year – she keeps missing department meetings. I thought she was just kind of burned out.”

And another teacher, one of the new ones whose names Ms. Williams won’t bother committing to memory unless she stays for a second year: “Is she out of the hospital yet?”

“Leah said she’s going to visit her today, so I think she’s home.”

Ms. Curtis stops counting papers and turns her head with a look of concern. “You mean Annie McLaughlin? I heard some kids talking about her this morning but I didn’t know if it was true.”

The new teacher frowns. “I was hoping the kids wouldn’t hear. That’s the last thing she needs to deal with when she comes back.”

“They didn’t know for sure,” says Ms. Curtis. “They said she OD’ed, but they didn’t know if it was an accident or what. It was my first period class – you know what gossips this year’s juniors are.”

“I feel bad that I didn’t notice anything,” says Mr. Simon, running a hand across the back of his neck.

Ms. Williams remembers Ms. McLaughlin’s face at the last staff meeting, staring vacantly out the window. Actually, had she even been at the last staff meeting? No, that was two meetings ago – she hadn’t even showed up for the last one.

A student had said to Ms. Williams the other day: “At least you keep the gradebook updated, not like Ms. McLaughlin. She literally hasn’t inputted anything in like a month.” And what had she thought? She had thought, These young teachers have no stamina. She had not thought of depression, of suicide.

To visit her though – how awkward would that be? What would she say? She tries to imagine what her own momma would have done – her momma was always visiting sick people, bringing flowers or food, making cheery conversation but not overstaying her welcome. But to visit someone who had just attempted suicide? Even her momma wouldn’t know what to say in that kind of situation.

And below all this wondering, she is aware of fear that she would see something of herself in Ms. McLaughlin’s face. That she would recognize the look of defeat.

She tosses her salad container in the recycling bin and stands up to leave. Ms. Curtis looks at her and shakes her head. “Take care, Avery – “ she says, gathering up her copies.

“You too, Diamond,” Ms. Williams says. It comes out of her mouth a little sideways. The younger teachers always call each other by their first names, but she is fixed in her ways and can’t help but think of her colleagues as Ms. Curtis, Mr. Simon, Ms. McLaughlin. Still, she knows that using her first name is a form of tenderness, maybe the only one Ms. Curtis can offer in this moment.

Arriving back at her room, Ms. Williams flicks on the lights and sets down her lunch bag on her desk. She places a hand on her laptop as if to open it, but stands still. A gust of rain sheets against the window and she shivers a little, adjusting her chunky scarf more snugly under her ears.

There is a knock on the door. It opens right away, of course: students these days don’t even wait for a “Come in,” they just push right on through with the entitlement of this age of instant gratification, messages more instant than speech, the constant availability of facts and calculations at the scrolling of a thumb, no need for encyclopedias or calculators because “I can just look it up on my PHONE, Ms. Williams.”

“Ms. Williams?” says a tall boy with a curly mop of dark hair and long eyelashes, what’s his name – girls are always giggling around him, he only turns in his assignments about half the time – Byron Melendez, that’s it. Did his parents foresee that he would look like a romantic poet when they named him Byron?

“Yes?” says Ms. Williams.

“Sorry to bother you,” he says, though he doesn’t look sorry. He looks self-assured like all the seniors, his hands in his pockets and a winning smile on his face. “I was just wondering how I can bring up my grade in your class.”

She looks away from him. Her eyes go to the side bulletin board with biography posters of Benjamin Banneker and Katherine Johnson that students made for extra credit. She sees the student-created displays on the origins of geometry in the Islamic Golden Age and the way Pacific Islanders used geometry for navigation. She sees the stately array of shapes advancing across the top of the board with marvelous purity. She reads the James Joseph Sylvester quote: “Mathematics is the music of reason.”

She looks back at Byron. It is February and he has a D+ in her class. She sees the doubt now in his face – it was brushed over with that layer of self-possession, but it’s there. She sees that he knows he’s “not good at math” and has known this ever since he first heard it in middle school. She sees that he remembers it every time he sits down to do a geometry problem, like it’s one of the infallible, inflexible, reproducible equations marching across the white board.

A gust of warm air blows over her as the heater starts up with a rough, juddering sound, and she recalls what June feels like. 

In June she will see hopefulness in Byron’s bright eyes. In June she might not even recognize Byron with his curls tucked under the absurd shape of a graduation cap, with a tassel hanging in his face. In June Byron will have posted his college acceptance all over Instagram or whatever social media app they’re using this year. In June he’ll be saying goodbye to that girlfriend he’s been cuddling up to all winter.

In June Ms. Williams’ chest will fill with pride at the sight of her students walking onto that stage, like this was something she did. In June the salutatorian will thank her by name in his graduation speech. In June she’ll be full of good will, getting ready for two months of vacation, debriefing with her young colleagues, jotting down a couple of new ideas for next year’s curriculum.

“Ms. Williams? You okay?”

Byron is staring at her with concern. He probably heard the rumors about Ms. McLaughlin too and now he’s worried about all of his teachers.

“Just fine,” she says finally. She looks down at her hand and flips open the laptop. “Come here, young man,” and she beckons him around to her side of the desk. “Let’s take a look at the gradebook and see what we can do.”

 

Meg Yardley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry and short fiction have recently appeared or are forthcoming in publications including Salamander, Gulf Coast, SWWIM, Cleaver Magazine, and Solstice Magazine.

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