The Essay

A short story by Susan Andrelchik

It was my first day at my third high school. My grandmother gave me a talk all the way there. This is your last chance, I have had it, all you need to do is keep your mouth shut or I  don’t know what I’ll do to you.

The school was in the worst neighborhood we had ever lived in. I heard it was the last possible placement for most of the kids who went there. How did my grandmother expect me to stay out of trouble when everyone around me was trouble?

I entered my first-period class. The student desks faced any direction but to the front. I looked out the window down to the parking lot. Some kids were getting off a bus, flinging backpacks, lighting up for one last drag before entering the building. The breeze of the warm late summer carried their voices upstairs through the window.

A nervous hello everyone made me whirl my head toward the front of the room. I laid my

eyes on the teacher and instantly filled with rage. Yet in that same moment of blind anger, I believed she was there to save me because she had not done so when she should have. I picked up the desk closest to me to heave it out the window. Then she looked at me. Just scoot it to where you want it, you don’t have to carry it to a new spot. She did not know who I was. Making a point no one would get would be a waste of time and I’d probably get kicked out on my first day. So, I put the desk down and took a seat.

I was five years old when I last saw her. That day I watched her from my front yard carrying boxes and lumpy black trash bags out of her house. She put them into the back of her boyfriend’s truck, the boyfriend who had interrupted my salvation. She hated her stepfather and found a way out. But she was supposed to become my new mother. That was my plan. She was almost out of high school and had big desires to learn how to cut hair. I knew it would work. I could live with her when she got a job. I could get away from my grandmother.

Here she was standing, a full-fledged English teacher in a rundown high school on the outskirts of a rundown city. She looked good and nearly the same. Something in her sorrowful eyes told me that the boyfriend I had long ago seen her with was not her last. She wasn’t wearing a ring, so nothing had worked out for her in that department. She was nervous in her introduction to the half-asleep junior class, and I felt sorry for her. If it hadn’t been her, I would have said something snide and given her a hard time to stifle whatever flow to her speech she might have thought she was achieving. But it was her and I was still in shock, so I kept my mouth shut.

We got our first assignment. Write an essay about the most significant person in our lives, past or present. What the…? My first period teacher was my babysitter when I was four. She liked to feed me peanut butter sandwiches for a snack. She used to stay with me until my tired old grandma got home from work. Sometimes it was not until after nine and I’d be in bed. Grandma needed any extra overtime she could get at the grocery store.

My babysitter often handed me my snack and would ask me if I ever get tired of the same old thing. I would shake my head and channel surf for cartoons. Then she’d pull a book out of her purse. She did that sometimes, checked out kids’ books just to read them to me. I always turned off the TV and then scooted over to sit in the crook of her arm.

When I unlocked the front door, Grandma shouted, did you stay out of trouble?

My babysitter was often witness to the trail of men my mom brought home during the day when Grandma was working. She treated me nicely and told me none of it was my fault. I was still so young, and I didn’t get what she meant. Later after my mom left and she had been my babysitter for a long time, she told me about her stepfather and how mean he was and how unfair adults could be to children. She said over and over, when she got into one of those talkative moods, that she would treat her own children so nicely and never yell and make sure she stayed married to their father, so they wouldn’t have to endure stepfathers. Sometimes I saw her on her front porch crying. She’d wipe her nose and give me a little wave, then go back inside.

My favorite times, besides the books, were after I finished my bath and sat down on the couch to watch TV with her. She would let me put my head on her lap and then run her fingers through my hair until I grew sleepy. She’d tuck me in and kiss the top of my head good night. When I started kindergarten, she told me she was almost finished with high school. I just knew she’d get a good job somewhere and then take me with her because who else in the world would my grandmother find to babysit me all those hours who lived just across the street? 

She didn’t really announce she was leaving but she started bringing the boyfriend around to our house and told me not to tell my grandma. He was older. I overheard the let’s-move-in- together-baby comments and haven’t-you-ever-heard-about-emancipation ones, too. So, when I saw the boxes, I screamed into my pillow and started getting into trouble at school. She tried to say good-bye, but I pretended I was sleeping. After that, I babysat myself making sure none of her replacements wanted to stick around.

On the second day of class I walked up to her desk. I leaned over her, getting as close as I dared to her hair. I wanted to see if she still smelled like roses. The scent of light citrus filled my nostrils. Better than when she was in high school. I lingered and asked about the length of the essay and the due date, even though all the information was written behind her on the board. We had time in class to work on our papers. She told us the assignment was to see how well we write. She said she wanted to spend as little time on the mechanics of English and get to the good parts like novels and poetry. I gave her my most sincere smile and headed back to my seat.

I raised my hand a little later. How about you write an essay, too. I’m pretty sure the class wants to know more about you. Like where are you from? She blushed. I suppose that’s a fair idea. I’ll think about it. I really did want to know who the most significant person to her was, then maybe I’d get to hear enough to figure out the gap of the last ten years.

I went home and worked on my essay. I was pretty sure even if she had not walked into that classroom, she’d be my subject. But would I care if I used her real name? Would I care if she never knew I was Michael now and not Sonny anymore? Would I be upset if I never saw her again?

On day three I turned in my paper. I stared at her as I put it on the pile. Can I go to the nurse’s office? I don’t feel so good. I didn’t want to hear her essay after all. I knew she did not write about me. It was never me. But now she would know it was always her.