Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Without looking up from the leaves she said, “So. When you say you was moving out?”

IN THE following weeks, they finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and moved on to The Great Gatsby. The class was quiet with Sheba in it. If a student began to talk, Sheba would stand and say, “Y’all need to shut up and learn something.” Everyone would remain seated.

One day after school, Lynnea lifted her head from its defeated position on her desk and found a pair of eyes staring at her, as though she were a problem Sheba was trying to solve.

“Miz Davis, I got to talk to you.”

“Yes,” Lynnea said, glancing at the clock.

“We can’t go on like this. I mean, nobody want to learn about no metaphors and symbolisms and — I don’t know what all.”

“Well, that’s what we have to learn for exams.”

“ You don’t have to learn nothing. We the ones—”

“Anything,” Lynnea corrected.

“What?”

“Go on.” Lynnea sneaked another glance at the clock.

“Maybe we can learn it, but not by you just yapping at us. Nobody wanna hear nobody else talk for no hour. It just get boring. Maybe we could act out some of the book, like a soap opera or something. Or when people wanna say their opinions, like a talk show.”

So they tried the soap operas and talk shows in class.

“I still think Myrtle is a ho and Daisy—” Jerron searched the ceiling for words. “If she tried that shit — I mean stuff — where I live, some guy woulda clocked her long ago.”

“But you gotta understand,” Ramona said, “them was white folks, back in the twenties, when they just had invented cars. Daisy didn’t even know she’d run Myrtle over. They just did stupid shit like that.”

“All right,” Lynnea said. “Could you quit it with the cursing? We’re not on the streets.”

“I don’t live on no street!” an anonymous voice piped up.

In return, Sheba glared at the class and said, “If you don’t live in no street, then don’t act like you live in no street !”

The class was absolutely silent. Lynnea felt awkward and feeble breaking the silence. “Thank you, Sheba. Very well put.”

The rest of the class they discussed The Great Gatsby with the quiet reserve of golf commentators describing a stroke. When the bell rang, they shambled out of the room quietly, but Sheba stayed.

Though class had ended well, it had still been a long day. Lynnea slumped over her desk, forehead resting on a pile of ungraded homework.

“Well,” Sheba finally said, “they read the book. They understand. That’s what you gotta keep in mind.”

Lynnea raised her head and slowly nodded in reply, though Sheba was gone.

For a few weeks things went well. She was finally finishing her copying and lesson planning early enough to leave when the other teachers left; she was finally able to pack up her lessons and leave the building before the janitors kicked her out. Before Sheba, she used to spend at least an hour at her desk, paralyzed, recovering from her day. Now when she passed the school basketball court, she smiled and waved.

THEN SHEBA stopped coming to class regularly. When she did come, she would smack her lips, occasionally casting a feeble glance Lynnea’s way. One day when Lynnea was trying to explain etymologies to the class, the class grew noisier and noisier, books scattered on the students’ desks, wads of papers strewn about the floor. Lynnea couldn’t even hear herself speaking; the room sounded like a football arena, everyone talking — all save Sheba, who’d come to class after three weeks of spotty attendance. Sheba sat in her chair, the cuffs of her too-small rabbit fur jacket starting way past her wrists. In the midst of the noise and confusion, Sheba surveyed the scene, arms folded like a cigar-store Indian.

Lynnea heard a girl yell, “He pushed his thang up against my jeans and whooo !”

“All right, April,” Lynnea said. “Out! Now!”

April stood, and for a moment looked as if she was going to say something, but shook her head, furiously, as though what she would have said would have been too foulmouthed even for her.

“Hurry up, April,” Lynnea said. “We don’t have all day.”

Sheba stood up from her chair so suddenly the chair nearly toppled backward. She glared at Lynnea. “Now, everybody else in here talking. Why you gone call on April? If you had your act together you’da stopped the yakking before it got to this!”

The class applauded.

“Sit down, Sheba.”

“Make me,” Sheba said.

Lynnea considered this. Why couldn’t she make Sheba sit down? Wasn’t that one of the basic things a teacher should be able to do? “Well, Sheba. You can leave with April. Out.”

“I’ll get out. I don’t care no more. Sick a this class.”

Lynnea sighed. “Well, get out.” She’d felt that up until now, up until Sheba’s absences, she and Sheba had been a team: a crazy, lopsided one, but a team nonetheless. For a moment, she dared to meet Sheba’s gaze head-on, and in that moment thought they’d reached some sort of détente of stares. It was then that Lynnea knew she would have gladly endured Sheba telling her off, cursing her out, stomping her foot, as long as Sheba stayed. Stay, she wanted to plead, but Sheba was the one to twist her eyes away first, and Lynnea heard herself say, “GET OUT!”

And so Sheba made a production of leaving: stashing papers into her notebook with grand, though haphazard, flourishes, slamming each book onto her desk before stuffing it into her bag. April’s eyes followed Sheba slamming books and she began packing her supplies as well. Just as the girls got to the door, the guidance counselor arrived.

“Ms. Davis. I’m here for Sheba.”

“That was fast. I was just sending her out. April needs to go, too.”

The guidance counselor turned to April and narrowed his eyes with mock seriousness, “April, what you doing getting in trouble? I thought we put a end to that.” He winked at April as though to remind her of a secret deal.

April tottered her head and flashed a set of lipstick-stained horse-teeth for him.

“Oh Mistah Knight!”

Mr. Knight straightened to all his six-five bulk and resumed his guidance-counselor voice for Lynnea. “I wasn’t coming here to take Sheba to the principal’s office. She’s got a doctor’s appointment, but I’ll take both these young ladies downstairs.” They left chattering on either side of him.

As soon as they had gone, Ebony, the girl who’d hit Lynnea, cheerily called out, “Miz Day-vis!”

“Yes, Ebony. What do you want?”

“You don’t know Sheba got a baby in the oven?”

Lynnea tried not to let her surprise show. “That’s not a matter for classroom discussion.”

The students thought it was a perfect matter for discussion.

“Uhh uhhn!” one girl squealed. “Sheba pregnant! No she didn’t go and get knocked up!”

“And she a big girl, too,” one boy said. “I’d be afraid to steer that wheel.”

A FEW days before the winter break, while she was sitting in her car thinking, she spotted Sheba through the frost of her windshield. Sheba was watching the boys’ basketball game, her hands clutching the chain-link that fenced in the basketball court. Though Sheba was no less than a few feet away from a crowd of people, she looked utterly alone. Winter was beginning to chill the air but Sheba still wore miniskirts, fishnet stockings, high heels.

Lynnea tried to see what it was that Sheba saw, but when she looked at the basketball court all she saw was gray concrete, the long-faded free-throw line, the school mascot painted in the center so weathered and chipped that the whole thing looked like an ancient mosaic. The boys who smoked weed all through the fall had vanished, leaving behind two short, skinny boys playing a hard, fast game. Perhaps Sheba only cared about the boys. More likely than not, she cared about how hard they were playing, that they could want to win so badly that neither dared back down.