Rebecca Schiff - The Bed Moved - Stories

“I wonder who’s going to be traumatized this year,” he says.

I think about Lindsay on the steps, but Lindsay’s not crying now. She’s smiling through her eye shadow, inexplicably dressed as a French maid, crawling across the floor near a pile of balloons. We’re both traitors to quitting. I got my college acceptance letters last week, but I’m still here, reporting from a laminated bleacher on a Saturday. The guy from the post office is here, too. He comes every year.

Lindsay straddles her feather duster. I still can’t figure out how this costume fits into the theme. Maybe there’s a sitcom about a maid from that decade? Or maybe she’s the housewife on the show where the witchy wife controls her husband with her appliances? She twitches her nose at a girl dressed as an ad executive. Boys from the school start chanting, “Ride that broom! Ride that broom!” and soon men from the town join in.

“This theme is disturbing,” says Josh.

“She’s just confident in her sexuality,” I say.

He eyes me like he can’t believe I made the honor roll.

“No, really,” I say. “What are we doing that’s so much more important than what she’s doing?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Preparing for our futures?”

“Our bright futures in journalism?” I say. I fight with boys instead of dancing for them. “Are we going to be Woodward and Bernstein? You said in Debate practice that you wanted to be a prosecutor.”

This isn’t fair. We lie in applications. We lie in interviews. We lie everywhere but on top of each other. The town’s men are screaming around Josh, a boy who became a man by memorizing United States currency fluctuations in the decades before girls were allowed to play sports. Josh sits up straighter, unable to look at Lindsay on the floor now, like if he studies her any longer he will memorize her. He will turn into something else.

“It’s all good practice,” he says. “You know that.”

But they practice, too. It’s paid off. The whole thing looks like a never-ending halftime show, a sluttier version of a tumultuous time. The next dance number is even sexier than Lindsay’s, but the team burns a bra during their skit and gets disqualified for creating a fire hazard. Now girls I haven’t interviewed are crying. Their captain tells Spumondi to go fuck herself. Parents around me take sides, with some pledging allegiance to their daughters’ teams, and some saying Sports Night has gotten out of control.

The principal runs down the bleacher steps and announces that Sports Night is canceled. Every girl on the floor starts crying. People boo. I’m taking notes. The teachers turn into teachers again and start telling everyone they have to go home.

“See you Monday!” they say, as though we have a choice.

“See you Monday!” says Josh. He takes his cues from those in power.

“Wait, I think we have our headline,” I say. For once, I’m breaking new news. “Sports Nights Celebrates Past, but Future Hangs in the Balance.”

“What future?” he says.

“Its future. The event’s future.”

“Yes!” he says. We slap five, the kiss of nerds. “This is going to be a great issue.”

Dear Student A,

I’m sorry I put a sentence from your recent essay up on the SmartBoard without explaining to the rest of the class that they were critiquing writing by a fellow classmate. It was not smart of me, no matter what the board is called. I’m sorry that Student B said that his advice for how to fix your sentence was “Start over.” He believed that we were critiquing work by an anonymous student writer, perhaps from another college altogether. As you correctly pointed out during class, his advice was “too harsh.” I agree that criticism should be constructive. At the same time, I did not want to say that his advice was wrong. Sometimes the best thing we can do in writing is start over. Still, I am sorry you felt humiliated in front of the class. I know English is not your first language. You told me that if you could write an essay in Russian, you would not make as many mistakes as you are making in English. Please know that I find it impressive that you wrote a complex and thoughtful essay on “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath. I could not do the same in Russian if I had only lived in Russia for two years! Student B didn’t mean to offend, I’m sure.

Best,

Professor S

Dear Student B,

I’m sorry I didn’t explain that we were critiquing your classmate’s work before putting Student A’s work on the board. I know you felt bad about your comment, but it is my responsibility as the teacher to warn students in advance if you will be giving feedback to people who are physically in the room.

As for your grade, that remains to be seen. I’d like you to come to class more than once every three weeks. You write well, and you challenged the idea that toddler playpens are more humane than child leashes, which showed a willingness to take risks with ideas, even though the children-on-leashes discussion strayed too far from the poem we were discussing. Why are you at community college? You could go to a four-year college if you worked a little harder.

All the best,

Professor S

Dear Student B,

Regarding my last email, I didn’t mean to imply that a four-year college is necessarily better than a two-year college. College is dumb, jobs are few. All of you are becoming nutritionists or nurses or physical therapists and will probably make more money than I do adjuncting at your community college. I make enough to pay rent, but not to afford all of the dresses I wear to class. My creditors are going to come get me one of these days. By creditors, I mean credit cards. They have booths in front of the school to trick you into going into debt early. They sure tricked me, with my master’s in English Literature and my thesis on the advertisements in English periodicals where serial novels first appeared. What did those ads say about Victorian society? What were they trying to trick women into trying?

Do you study child development or marine biology? Though our class is in the Marine Building, I have yet to meet a student who studies marine life. Most of the Marine Building is for the Fashion Department. They are looking for models. I saw a sign. Perhaps the Russian girl you inadvertently insulted in class could apply. She’s tall and wears clothes well.

Sincerely,

Professor S

Hi Student C,

I am sorry you weren’t feeling well enough to come to class today. Morning sickness can be tough. Some of my friends have experienced it. I have not, though I am twelve years older than you. My mother keeps sending me articles about Oocyte Cryopreservation, but I worry about the defrosting process. Can that be safe? Plus, being a single mother looks like no picnic. Will you be going it alone?

Please bring a printed copy of your essay to our next class to avoid further penalties for lateness.

Best,

Professor S

Student A,

Thank you. Or спасибо, as they say in Russian. You guys have some great writers. It’s a shame that we had to read The Cherry Orchard in translation. I’m glad that things are smoothed out between you and Student B. He is a young man and sometimes doesn’t think before he speaks, though he is majoring in Communication Arts, a major I don’t totally understand, except that it means he is required to take more English classes. What are you studying?

Prof S

Dear Student F,

If you do not turn in your paper by the next class meeting, you will get an F on the paper and it will be difficult for you to pass the course. I gave you an extension after your grandmother died, but a month has passed since then. Unless your grandmother raised you, or played a central role during your childhood, grandparent grief is not the kind of grief that makes essay writing impossible. The death of a grandparent in college is a natural occurrence and happens to at least one student per semester, usually when an essay is due.