IN THE FALL of the year 2000 the University of Arkansas hired me to teach two classes in their writing program. I was thrilled with the assignment. I had never taught school but I loved schools and classes and I believed I was ready.
That first fall semester went well. It was easier than I had imagined it would be. The students were bright and well read. I liked them and quickly became maternal, especially about the brightest ones.
I protected myself from my deepest worries by writing them a letter which I passed out in the first class to both my groups. In it I asked them not to come to class with a fresh cold and not to write the details of childhood abuse as I was incapable of reading such details. I remembered two terrible accounts of abuse that I had read in newspapers over the years and which I could not get out of my head. I had expended a great deal of energy burying those accounts and didn’t want to add others to their store. One of the things I have never been able to get out of my head was an episode that Geraldine Ferraro encountered when she was a prosecutor. I am sorry she passed the knowledge on to me and hope she has been able to forget it herself.
So, shielded by my letter, I watched the first semester pass uneventfully and signed on to teach again the next fall.
That second fall is here and already I am feeling vulnerable. I encouraged my undergraduate fiction workshop to such an extent that last week, at the second class meeting, they handed me nine short stories to put on the worksheet. I was elated and proud and clutched their offerings to my chest. The next morning I went to the office to have the secretaries turn the stories into a worksheet for the following Thursday.
As I was removing the paper clips and staples from the stories and putting them in order my eye fell on the first page of a story. A three-year-old girl was being ordered by her father to put on her robe and slippers. THEY WERE IN HER BEDROOM.
I panicked. I hid the story at the end of the stack of stories and hastily prepared the papers for the secretary. I couldn’t wait to get the papers out of my possession. I ran from the building and got into my car and drove home. I had forgotten to write a letter to them this second year telling them that I couldn’t read that stuff.
I had a bad night. But in the morning I put on my workout clothes and decided I was strong enough to face it. I’ll go to the university and get a copy of the worksheet, I decided. Then I’ll go to the health club and get on the treadmill and read the damn thing. I am strong. I am brave. I can do it. I’ll read it as quickly as I can and make some notes and forget it. If I don’t go on and read it I’ll think about it all week.
The workshop only meets one night a week and I had five days to go. I had to bite the bullet. I had to soldier on. I had agreed to teach this class and I had to teach it. I was sixty-six years old and no one had ever abused me. I could take it. I could overpower my imagination with my reason. Maybe.
It was Saturday morning and the health club was surrounded by a sea of policemen and yellow tape. The club was having its annual Kids Triathlon. Beautiful, wonderful, marvelous, divine little girls and boys were everywhere, in the pool, on their bikes, on the footpaths. Parents wearing official red shirts were writing down times and calling out warnings at the corners where the bikers had to take sharp turns. At least a hundred children were being adored and loved and fed potassium-laced drinks and health bars that contained more calories than most of the children in the world consume in a week.
I was in the land of plenty with lucky children who are loved. I could do it. I could go inside and read the story. I saw the owner of the club near the bicycle stand, went to her and confided my situation. “Come find me on the treadmill,” I told her. “See if I’m strong enough to do this.”
“I wouldn’t be,” she said. She’s one of my best friends. She knows how I feel about children. She knows I have twelve grandchildren.
“I’ll come check on you when I can,” she added and gave me a hug and I went into the building and up the stairs and got a reading rack and climbed on a treadmill and put on my reading glasses and stuck the worksheet on the rack and turned the treadmill up to three point eight with an incline of five and started reading.
IT WASN’T ABOUT CHILD ABUSE. Au con-traire. It was about a father making a three-year-old girl put on her robe and slippers and go out into the front yard and look up at her bedroom window so she could see that people could see into her room at night, so she should close the blinds or wear her robe.
The young author thought this was a really mean thing that her father had done to her and probably accounted for her recent breakup with a controlling boyfriend.
Jesus.
Later, after I had done four miles on the treadmill and gone downstairs to watch the leaders come in from the twelve-year-old bicycle leg of the triathlon and gone home and eaten a huge breakfast, I got into the shower. While I was rubbing blonde conditioner on my hair I had an epiphany. I’m going to make a list of stories I want them to write to complement the ones they give me, I decided.
“I’m Glad She Divorced Him”
“It Was Nice of Them to Care What Happened to Me”
“She Tricked Him into Marrying Her So What Did She Expect?”
“My Mother-in-Law Was Only Trying to Help”
“People Are Doing the Best They Can Based on the Information They Have Available at the Moment”
“We Had a Constant Food Supply and a Warm House But We Sure Weren’t Satisfied With That”
“I Just Wanted to Protect You From Strangers”
FALL 2001