Lucia Berlin - A Manual for Cleaning Women - Selected Stories

“Button your shirt,” she said. “Button your shirt!”

He moved his hands to his chest, began with one to move the button in the light, with the other to inspect the buttonhole. The nun shoved his hands away, fumbled with his shirt until it was buttoned.

“Don’t know how I ever got along without you, Sister,” he drawled. She left the room.

It was Tuesday, dictation. “Take out a paper and pencil.” The class complied automatically. “You too, Tim.”

“Paper,” he commanded quietly. Sheets of paper fought for his desk.

“ Llegó el hijo, ” I dictated. Tim stood up and started toward the back of the room. “Pencil’s broken,” he said. His voice was deep and hoarse, like the hoarseness people have when they are about to cry. He sharpened his pencil slowly, turning the sharpener so that it sounded like brushes on a drum.

“ No tenían fé. ” Tim stopped to put his hand on a girl’s hair.

“Sit down,” I said.

“Cool it,” he muttered. The class laughed.

He handed in a blank paper, the name “EL TIM” across the top.

* * *

From that day everything revolved around El Tim. He caught up quickly with the rest of the class. His test papers and his written exercises were always excellent. But the students responded only to his sullen insolence in class, to his silent, unpunishable denial. Reading aloud, conjugating on the board, discussions, all of the things that had been almost fun were now almost impossible. The boys were flippant, ashamed to get things right; the girls embarrassed, awkward in front of him.

I began to give mostly written work, private work that I could check from desk to desk. I assigned many compositions and essays, even though this was not supposed to be done in ninth-grade Spanish. It was the only thing Tim liked to do, that he worked on intently, erasing and recopying, thumbing the pages of a Spanish dictionary on his desk. His compositions were imaginative, perfect in grammar, always of impersonal things … a street, a tree. I wrote comments and praise on them. Sometimes I read his papers to the class, hoping that they would be impressed, encouraged by his work. Too late I realized that it only confused them for him to be praised, that he triumphed anyway with a sneer … “ Pues, la tengo…” I’ve got her pegged.

Emiterio Perez repeated everything that Tim said. Emiterio was retarded, being kept in the ninth grade until he was old enough to quit school. He passed out papers, opened windows. I had him do everything the other students did. Chuckling, he wrote endless pages of neat formless scribbles that I graded and handed back. Sometimes I would give him a B and he would be very happy. Now even he would not work. “ Para qué, hombre? ” Tim whispered to him. Emiterio would become confused, looking from Tim to me. Sometimes he would cry.

Helplessly, I watched the growing confusion of the class, the confusion that even Sister Lourdes could no longer control. There was not silence now when she entered the room, but unrest … a brushing of a hand over a face, an eraser tapping, flipping pages. The class waited. Always, slow and deep, would come Tim’s voice. “It’s cold in here, Sister, don’t you think?” “Sister, I got something the matter with my eye, come see.” We did not move as each time, every day, automatically the nun buttoned Tim’s shirt. “Everything all right?” she would ask me and leave the room.

One Monday, I glanced up and saw a small child coming toward me. I glanced at the child, and then, smiling, I glanced at Tim.

“They’re getting littler every time … have you noticed?” he said, so only I could hear. He smiled at me. I smiled back, weak with joy. Then with a harsh scrape he shoved back his chair and walked toward the back of the room. Halfway, he paused in front of Dolores, an ugly, shy little girl. Slowly he rubbed his hands over her breasts. She moaned and ran crying from the room.

“Come here!” I shouted to him. His teeth flashed.

“Make me,” he said. I leaned against the desk, dizzy.

“Get out of here, go home. Don’t ever come back to my class.”

“Sure,” he grinned. He walked past me to the door, fingers snapping as he moved … tsch-tsch, tsch-tsch. The class was silent.

As I was leaving to find Dolores, a rock smashed through the window, landing with shattered glass on my desk.

“What is going on!” Sister Lourdes was at the door. I couldn’t get past her.

“I sent Tim home.”

She was white, her bonnet shaking.

“Mrs. Lawrence, it is your duty to handle him in the classroom.”

“I’m sorry, Sister, I can’t do it.”

“I will speak to the Mother Superior,” she said. “Come to my office in the morning. Get in your seat!” she shouted at Dolores, who had come in the back door. The nun left.

“Turn to page ninety-three,” I said. “Eddie, read and translate the first paragraph.”

* * *

I didn’t go to the grade school the next morning. Sister Lourdes was waiting, sitting behind her desk. Outside the glass doors of the office, Tim leaned against the wall, his hands hooked in his belt.

Briefly, I told the nun what had happened the day before. Her head was bowed as I spoke.

“I hope you will find it possible to regain the respect of this boy,” she said.

“I’m not going to have him in my class,” I said. I stood in front of her desk, gripping the wooden edge.

“Mrs. Lawrence, we were told that this boy needed special attention, that he needed ‘encouragement and challenge.’”

“Not in junior high. He is too old and too intelligent to be here.”

“Well, you are going to have to learn to deal with this problem.”

“Sister Lourdes, if you put Tim in my Spanish class, I will go to the Mother Superior, to his parole officer. I’ll tell them what happened. I’ll show them the work that my pupils did before he came and the work they have done since. I will show them Tim’s work, it doesn’t belong in the ninth grade.”

She spoke quietly, dryly. “Mrs. Lawrence, this boy is our responsibility. The parole board turned him over to us. He is going to remain in your class.” She leaned toward me, pale. “It is our duty as teachers to control such problems, to teach in spite of them.”

“Well, I can’t do it.”

“You are weak!” she hissed.

“Yes, I am. He has won. I can’t stand what he does to the class and to me. If he comes back I resign.”

She slumped back in her chair. Tired, she spoke. “Give him another chance. A week. Then you can do as you please.”

“All right.”

She rose and opened the door for Tim. He sat on the edge of her desk.

“Tim,” she began softly, “will you prove to me, to Mrs. Lawrence, and to the class that you are sorry?” He didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to send you back to the detention home.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are a bright boy. I want to see you learn something here, to graduate from San Marco’s. I want to see you go on to high school, to…”

“Come on, Sister,” Tim drawled. “You just want to button my shirt.”

“Shut up!” I hit him across the mouth. My hand remained white in his dark skin. He did not move. I wanted to be sick. Sister Lourdes left the room. Tim and I stood, facing each other, listening as she started the ninth-grade prayers … Blessed art Thou amongst women, Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus …

“How come you hit me?” Tim asked softly.

I started to answer him, to say, “Because you were insolent and unkind,” but I saw his smile of contempt as he waited for me to say just that.

“I hit you because I was angry. About Dolores and the rock. Because I felt hurt and foolish.”