"You won't guess who's back. G---."
"WHAT?!"
"Apparently they let her out of the mental institution."
Teachers, when alone, talk mostly about students-- especially the rambunctious kids with multiple suspensions or family troubles. A lot of the time, these conversations involve a combination of head-shaking, advice, and emotional support. ("Don't even call his mom; she doesn't care. Go straight to his auntie." "Try putting her in the front row." "Could be worse. He punched someone in my class.") I often indulge in these sorts of conversations. When the chatting veers toward cruelty ("I swear I think that kid breathes through his butt"), I try to change the subject.
In this instance, the young lady in question sounds like the brand-new transfer to my English class. I pause beside the door and verify this,
"You mean B--- G---? She's in my class now."
"Well look out,"
"She went away for a few years and came back?"
"Yes, to institutions, but she won't tell you that. She's crazy."
"She's very well-behaved in my class. I like her. She takes a lot of notes. Is there something I should know?"
"Watch out. She is super volatile. Her family is MESSED up."
"Why don't you do me a favor and take a flying fuck at a rolling donut?" I don't say.
Moments like these I recall that my heart is always with the students instead of the teachers. Moments like these I recall that I went into teaching not because I loved my own instructors but because I hated them. Moments like these I recall how my father was suicidal and institutionalized in his mid-twenties and how I myself rode in the back of a police car to be evaluated at a mental healthcare facility.
"Major depressive disorder, recurrent," and "uncomplicated bereavement" are the diagnoses my therapist recently gave me.
The same teacher rolling her eyes about B--- G--- has told coworkers that I am crazy. She is, incidentally, my supervisor.
I often can't sleep; I dream of my dead father rising like Frankenstein's monster and wake up breathless. I dream of bedbugs crawling on my face. I panic about being homeless again. Sometimes, I trace the parallels between Grendel and my murderer brother and accidentally share my thoughts with my students. They have, time and again, accepted me exactly as I am. My teachers did not.
Teaching can be intensely stressful. Meeting after meeting, endless paperwork, pressure to prepare students for ridiculous standardized tests, budget cuts, new laws passed by pedants with no pedagogical experience. But every day I drag myself to the shower at six a.m. anyway.
I do not get out of bed for my supervisor. I get out of bed for B---, who sits in my room, highlighting Beowulf in pink, the afternoon sun a thick yellow against her caramel skin and freckles.
