Belzhar

  But our teacher acts as if she doesn’t notice that we’re uncomfortable. She’s still looking at hoodie boy, waiting for him to introduce himself properly. When he finally does, it seems to take all his effort. “I’m Griffin Foley,” he says.

  Then he stops. That’s it?

  “Welcome, Griffin,” Mrs. Quenell says, and she waits.

  “I’m from a farm a mile and a half away,” he continues. “I always get bad grades in English. I’m just warning you.” Then he sinks back down.

  “Thank you,” says Mrs. Quenell. “I’ll consider myself warned.”

  Just then the door bangs open, the knob slamming so hard against the wall that I worry it’ll leave a crater. Startled, we all turn at once to see a girl in a wheelchair trying to push herself into the classroom. “Oh, fuck,” she says as her backpack catches the edge of the doorframe.

  Everyone around the table, including Mrs. Quenell, jumps up to help, though right away we’re all clearly a little embarrassed at our own extreme show of helpfulness. Sierra gets there first, and she lifts the backpack off the wheelchair and out of the way, and the girl zips inside. She’s small, red-haired, delicate, but she’s in a real state, and the word that comes to mind now is blazing.

  “I know there’s no excuse for me being late,” the girl says in a nearly hysterical voice. “I don’t want to play the cripple card—oh, excuse me, I mean the disabled card. And I don’t want you to tell me it’s perfectly all right that I’m late,” she goes on.

  As I look over at our teacher, though, I can see that it’s not all right. The thing is, this girl doesn’t understand it yet. She’s probably heard that all the teachers at The Wooden Barn are really easygoing and gentle with their students, afraid that a single stern word might make them disintegrate. But Mrs. Quenell says, “I won’t tell you that. I would like for it not to happen again. We have a lot to accomplish. I don’t want to waste a second.”

  The girl seems startled. I bet usually no one has wanted to upset her, just the way no one has wanted to upset me either.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I haven’t figured this out yet.”

  “I understand. But you’ll have to, somehow,” says Mrs. Quenell, which seems a little harsh. “If you go through life like that, you’ll miss out on too much.”

  And then I realize—and maybe all of us realize, because as it turns out this girl is new too, like me—that she wasn’t born disabled, and that her wheelchair must be a pretty recent addition. I suddenly really want to know what happened to her. I don’t see a cast on either of her legs, so it’s not a broken bone. But the legs don’t look shriveled up, either, like the Wicked Witch of the East’s right before they disappear under the house. They look like normal legs packed in blue jeans, except they’re clearly not functional.

  “But it’s just so hard,” the girl says in a voice that makes her sound very young.

  “I know that,” says Mrs. Quenell, more gently now. “Hard. You’ve used the perfect word. And I’m a big believer in finding the perfect words. I’ve been that way as long as I can remember.”

  She closes her eyes, and I think that she is literally remembering something, dragging up a specific image in her mind from long ago. I wonder if maybe she’s too old to be teaching. Her personality seems a little unpredictable—shifting between impatient and sympathetic.

  Mrs. Quenell opens her eyes and says to the girl, “You’ve already learned two things since you’ve been here. One: Lateness—your teacher doesn’t like it. And two: Perfect words—she likes them very much. And now maybe we can all learn something about you.”

  The girl looks unhappy with this idea. “Like what?”

  “We’ve been going around the table and the students have been saying their names and a little something about themselves. Now it’s your turn.”

  “I’m Casey Cramer,” the girl says grudgingly. “Casey Clayton Cramer. All Cs,” she adds.

  “What?” says Marc. “Your grades?”

  “No. Casey. Clayton. Cramer. They’re all C names.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Right.”

  We all sit there, each of us feeling awkward and incredibly sorry for Casey Cramer, who can’t walk and has already been scolded by our teacher. But we’re also kind of waiting for Casey to say, “The reason I’m in this wheelchair is . . .” But she says nothing like that. She’s done.

  Which means, I realize with a light sensation of nausea, I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken.

  I don’t have to tell them anything big, I remind myself. Anything about Reeve, or what happened to me. I just have to say the barest little nothing, like everyone else. I just have to throw them a bone.

  Mrs. Quenell looks at me with her clear, interested eyes and says, “All right, it’s your turn now.”

  She waits. I have no choice in the matter. I can’t say that I’m not in the mood; I’m sure Mrs. Quenell would never put up with that. I gaze downward at the wood grain of the table, which suddenly seems as interesting as Casey Cramer being in a wheelchair. I just stare and stare at it, and finally I look up and start, “Okay, let me see. My name is Jam Gallahue.” Then I stop, hoping that that’s enough to satisfy Mrs. Quenell.

  But of course it’s not.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “Well,” I say, looking down again, “my name is actually Jamaica, which is where my parents went on their honeymoon. And where I was conceived.” Marc laughs in embarrassment. “My brother called me Jam when he was little, and it stuck. Oh, and I’m from New Jersey.”

  Then I’m done, and I look around, and other than Mrs. Quenell no one seems all that fascinated by what I had to say. We’re all so pathetically awkward: five mismatched students and the teacher who chose us.

  And though this would be a good time for her to tell us why we’ve each been chosen—for her to say something like “You may be wondering why you’re here. Well, on your standardized tests, you each showed a special aptitude for reading comprehension”—she doesn’t even try to explain. Instead, she turns her head slightly to take each of us in; it’s as if she were studying us, trying to memorize our faces.

  I have rarely felt anyone pay this much attention to me before, outside of my parents and Dr. Margolis and, of course, Reeve. I wonder what she thinks is so interesting. If I were her and I had to sit here looking at us, I would be bored out of my mind.

  But Mrs. Quenell glances at me, and then at the rest of the class, as though we’ve all been riveting, and says, “Thank you, Jam, and thank you, everyone. It’s only fair for me to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Mrs. Quenell. Veronica Quenell, actually, but I prefer being called Mrs. If any of you prefer being called Mr. or Miss, I am happy to oblige.” There’s silence. No, none of us prefer that. “I’ve been teaching at The Wooden Barn since long before you were born,” she continues. “I have certain demands that I place on my students, and I do ask that you meet them. Punctuality, of course, but not just that. Also, hard work, honesty, and openness. Now, you might well be thinking to yourself, Yes, yes, Mrs. Quenell, I will meet all your demands. But sometimes the mind shuts itself off, and no learning takes place. Reading does not get done. Assignments do not get met. And when that happens, well, there is no point to our being here.

  “But if you do all that I ask of you, I think you will find it very rewarding. I am passionate about teaching this class, which is the only class I now teach, because I am no longer a spring chicken. By which I mean I am no longer young. In case, somehow, you hadn’t noticed.” She pauses and looks around at all of us again. “Oh, so then you have noticed,” she says with a very faint smile. “Alas. Age is one of those things that none of us can do anything about.” Another pause, then she finally does say, “Some of you are perhaps wondering why you’ve been invited into Special Topics in English.”

  “No shit,” bursts out Griffin Foley, and there’s startled
laughter around the table. Marc shakes his head. “You made a big mistake with me,” says Griffin.

  “Like anyone, I do make mistakes,” says Mrs. Quenell. “I am certainly not perfect. But I have reviewed your files carefully, and I have no doubt that you are in the right class. Even you, Griffin.” She glances around at us once again. “Between now and late December, when class ends, I’ll be extremely interested in hearing what you have to say about yourselves.” Then she says, “I don’t expect you to understand anything that I’m trying to tell you.”

  We all just look at her. No, we don’t understand it at all.

  “But it’s all right,” says Mrs. Quenell. “You will. Of that I am certain.” She peers at her watch again and says, “I see that time is flying by, the way time tends to do. I’d like to introduce the first writer we’ll be reading this semester. She also happens to be the last writer, because she’s the only writer we will read. Whenever I’ve taught this class, I’ve focused on a single writer, and it always changes. I like to keep the conversation fresh.” In a quieter voice Mrs. Quenell adds, “I guess I can also tell you now that you are my last students.”

  We’re confused. Sierra raises her hand and asks, “What do you mean?”

  “Raised hands aren’t necessary in here, Sierra. Only raised minds. What I mean is that I’m going to retire after this class ends,” says Mrs. Quenell. “I’ve been here a very long time, and it’s been magnificent. But I believe it’s time for me to take my leave. So I’ve sold my house, and I plan to take a world cruise—one of those enormous ships stuffed with old people like me waiting in line for dessert—before I decide where to settle down. By the time the semester is over, I’ll be packed up and saying good-bye to The Wooden Barn.” Emotion pokes through as she speaks, though she clearly doesn’t want it to. “The school is giving me a retirement party at the end of the semester,” she adds. “Of course you’ll all be invited.”

  The end of the semester seems so far away; I can’t even imagine how I’ll get from here to there. It will be agonizingly long. She may think that time flies, but I think it stands still.

  “But enough about me,” Mrs. Quenell continues. “I’m not important to this discussion. You are. So let’s get on with the last Special Topics ever.”

  She reaches below the table and pulls out a stack of five identical books, which she passes around. It’s The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. I remember Hannah Petroski telling me it was incredible, “but so depressing.”

  Marc Sonnenfeld raises his hand, then remembers what Mrs. Quenell said, and quickly lowers it. “I know that book,” he says. “It’s supposed to be really dark. I think I remember something about the author.” He pauses, not sure if he should go on.

  “Go ahead, Marc,” says Mrs. Quenell.

  “Well,” he says uneasily, “I guess she . . . you know . . . killed herself, is that right? She turned on the gas and put her head in the oven?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “No offense,” says Marc. “I’m sure you’re a good English teacher and all, but is that . . . appropriate for us? I mean, aren’t we all sort of—” He breaks off in the middle of the sentence, embarrassed.

  “Go on.”

  “Fragile,” he says, with a little bit of irony in his voice. “Like it says in the brochure. We’re all supposed to be so, so fragile. Like porcelain.”

  “Yes, I believe it does say something like that in the brochure,” says Mrs. Quenell. “Marc, do you feel as if reading a book about a young woman’s emotional problems—by a writer who finally succumbed to her own emotional problems—would be too much for you?”

  Marc considers it. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I know it’s supposed to be a classic.”

  Mrs. Quenell looks around the table. “Is there anyone here who feels uncomfortable about reading The Bell Jar?”

  We all shake our heads no. But I wonder what my parents would say. Maybe they’d worry about me reading such a depressing book. I imagine going to the pay phone when class gets out and calling them to say that I’m reading The Bell Jar, and that it’s making me feel upset. “We’re pulling you out of that school,” my dad would say, outraged. And then I’d get to leave here tomorrow, and return to my own home and my own bed, and not have to deal with this odd, new environment and all these people with problems.

  “All right, thank you,” says Mrs. Quenell, as if she’d barely noticed before now that her choice of book and writer, at a school like this, is kind of unusual. Marc is right; suicide has to be a touchy issue here. A lot of students at The Wooden Barn are probably depressed. But it’s almost as if Mrs. Quenell were going right for the gut by picking Sylvia Plath. It’s like she’s doing whatever she wants, because she doesn’t care what people think of her. And for the quickest second, I’m almost impressed.

  “If anyone’s feelings change,” she goes on, “please come talk to me. I chose the curriculum with care. Just the way I chose all of you.”

  Maybe she did choose us with care. But who knows how the choices were made. None of us in the class seem to have much in common.

  “For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Bell Jar,” she says, “it was written over fifty years ago by the brilliant American writer Sylvia Plath. The book is autobiographical, and it tells the story of a young woman’s depression and, I suppose, her descent into madness. Does anyone know what a bell jar is?” We shake our heads. “It’s a bell-shaped glass jar used for scientific samples. Or to create a little vacuum. Anything that’s put under a bell jar is isolated from the rest of the world,” she says. “It’s a metaphoric title, of course. Sylvia Plath, whose depression made her feel as if she herself were in a kind of bell jar, cut off from the world, took her own life at age thirty.”

  No one says anything; we just listen. “This is the one novel she wrote in her lifetime. She was a very fine and accomplished poet, and she wrote some of her most powerful work—the poems in her collection Ariel—at the end of her life. We’ll be reading them, too, of course. Oh, and she also happened to be a prolific keeper of journals over the years. Which is why,” she says, “I’m also giving you these.”

  Mrs. Quenell reaches below the table again and pulls out a stack of five identical red leather journals, passing them around. When I get mine I open it and the book makes a slight creaking sound, its spine tight. It’s a well-made object, I can tell at once, and it’s also clearly very old, the pages slightly yellowed, as if it’s been sitting in a box in a closet for decades. The pale blue lines on the paper are closer together than I’m used to, and I know that I’d have to write a lot to fill up even one page.

  “Whoa, this is an antique,” says Griffin.

  “Yes. Just like your teacher,” says Mrs. Quenell with a smile. She folds her hands and looks at us. “For tonight,” she continues, “in addition to reading the first chapter of The Bell Jar, you will also begin thinking about keeping your own journal. Try to imagine what you might write. Begin writing, if you can. But at the very least, think about it. It’s your journal, it belongs to you, and it will be a representation of you and your inner life. You can write anything you like.”

  But all I can think is, sarcastically, ooh, how exciting. Because there’s nothing I want to write. I’m hardly going to put down on paper the things I think about all the time, night and day. The person I think about. That’s only for me.

  “Once the spirit moves you,” says Mrs. Quenell, “you will write in the journal twice a week. And you will all hand your journals back to me at the end of the semester. I won’t read them, I never do, but I will collect them, and keep them. Like the writing itself, this is a requirement. I’m a firm believer in my students moving forward and not dwelling on what might be less than productive.” She takes a moment, then says, “You will be doing close reading all semester, and also what I call close writing. And you will all be asked to participate in class discussions. Some d
ays this will be harder than others, no doubt.”

  She looks around the room again, very seriously, and says, “And there’s something else that I require for this course. Though I don’t like to put it like that. It’s something that I would like to ask you to do, human being to human being. Which is that you all look out for one another.”

  I’m not sure any of us really knows what she means, but we all agree that we’ll do what she’s asked of us.

  “Thank you,” says Mrs. Quenell. “Are there any questions?”

  “Are you sure it’s okay to write in this?” Marc asks. “It looks like it should be in a museum.”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” she assures him.

  “But what should we write?” he presses.

  “Marc,” says Mrs. Quenell. “You’re not a young child anymore, are you?”

  “No,” he says.

  “I didn’t think so. If I told you what to write, then I would be treating you as if you were. I believe your birthday was in the summer, yes? And you turned sixteen?” He nods. “That’s a fine age to be. An age at which you can make certain decisions on your own, and one of them is what to write in your journal. You don’t need some old woman giving you prompts. I know that there’s a lot going on in your brain.”

  But Marc still looks stressed. “Mrs. Quenell, I don’t mean to be annoying,” he says. “But I do best in school when teachers give me instructions. I’m sorry,” he adds.

  “No need to be sorry. Just a moment, let me think.” She takes a few seconds, and then she tells him, “I would say that you should write whatever best tells the story of you. I hope that helps.”

  I look at Marc. No, it doesn’t seem to have helped at all, but Mrs. Quenell doesn’t appear to notice. She stands up then, and I see how tall she is. She towers over us with her white head and elegant silk blouse.