386
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Thank you, God, for everything." The sweet, solemn sounds
floated out of the high windows into the factories and machine shops.
Inside, Michael put the flag away with great care; the class sat down
with a clacking of seats. Michael, common clay now, allowed
himself the privilege of sweeping Tony's pencil from the desk
immediately in front of his own. The point broke. Tony was wild for
revenge. I am an experienced substitute, you know, and I
intervened quickly. Michael sharpened Tony's pencil, which gave
Michael pleasure and Tony satisfaction. We set to work.
Penmanship. On each desk was Scotch taped a neatly printed
card.
LINDA. MARLENE. ELSIE. PEDRO.
Every day they labor, fingers
crushed against unwilling pencils, sweatily mastering that mysteri–
ous tangle of lines .
I walked among them in their trial, guiding a straggling pencil
back to the line, tracing the intricacies of
G
for George, who was in
trouble . How hard it is! In the front seat sat a pale, sickly girl unable
to go beyond
A.
Angela. For her the mystery was dark and
treacherous, not to be unraveled. She stopped, defeated , again and
again. She ran to me, clutching her paper already ragged from
clumsy erasures, black with smeared lead, to show the letter
A,
misshapen, flattened, wide of the line.
"Is it good?" Angela asked, pointing with smudgy fingers to her
production . "Is it right?" She was flushed from her effort, feverish.
Angela had far to go.
From the back there came a sudden crash. Sounds of scuffling
and curses ripped the quiet air. Two boys were locked in single
combat, pummeling wildly, thrashing about in the narrow aisle. I
was knocked in the kidneys a couple of times before I could pry them
loose. They were neighbors. One was in tears. Rage and exertion
had puffed and blotched his face .
"He did it!" Pedro said. His face twisted in his struggle to hold
back the tears, wanting to give way entirely. "I didn't do nothing. He
knocked my plane down." He choked with righteous wrath. "It was
here . He knocked it down. Like this ." And the wounded boy swept
the plane, already crushed, from his seat for all the world to see–
and especially me -just how this offense had happened to him. Now
the tears got out. "And he said something bad about my mother."
Eyes and nose streamed freely. I soothed him. I offered him Kleenex
and other comfort in his extremity. I tried to straighten the battered
plane and promised him retribution. Out of the excited babble of the
children clustered around to witness evil, there rose one clear
feminine voice.
