Shadow Sister (2 page)

I shove my chair back and stand up. ‘Fine, but as far as the police go, I’m not promising anything.’

Jan says quietly, ‘If there’s another negative article in the papers it will cost us twenty new students next year and just as many will decide to change schools. That’d mean two jobs on the line, two teachers unemployed. Please, Lydia.’

As I stand in the corridor, amid the bustle of students, I’m overwhelmed by exhaustion. I walk back to classroom no. 209, unlock the door and go inside. My eyes dart to where I was standing when Bilal threatened me. I picture him stabbing me, see the knife in my throat, a big slash across my face. I see the blood pouring out and suddenly I’m shaking uncontrollably.

I gather my papers into the bag I’d left on the small podium and hurry out. I want to go home but my need to talk to Jasmine is stronger. The lunch break is almost over, but I have to tell her what has happened. Jasmine is my colleague and friend; we both joined the school seven years ago, fresh from teacher-training college. We have been through the same problems with discipline and difficult students. In the beginning she lived outside Rotterdam, but as soon as she got a permanent position at the school, she and her husband Lex bought a house in the same street as Raoul and me in the Hillegersberg area. We’d always been friendly, but after they moved into the street, we began
dropping round for cups of tea, and looked after each other’s children. Not that either of us have got much time for tea-drinking. We’ve both got families and a busy working week, so we mainly see each other at school.

‘My god, what happened to you? You look dreadful.’ Jasmine is in the staffroom drinking coffee and a quick glance at my face was enough to alarm her. The bell goes and the teachers around us pack up their bags, put their empty mugs into the plastic crate and leave the staffroom, chatting and laughing as they go.

‘Do you have to teach now?’ I ask.

Jasmine nods, frowning. ‘2E. Why? Tell me!’

‘Bilal,’ is all I say. ‘He had a knife.’

‘What?!’

I look at Jasmine; her expression of horror has made me feel better already. ‘A knife. And not a small one. A long, thin blade. He held it to my throat.’

Jasmine’s jaw drops. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

My hands are trembling and I’m close to tears again.

‘We have to talk about this, but I’ve got a class now.’ Jasmine is flustered. ‘Hold on, I’ll set them an essay, then I’ll be able to leave them for a while. Sit down and have a coffee, I’ll be back in a minute.’

She puts a cup of coffee down in front of me, then is gone, and I’m alone in the staffroom. I read the announcements on the noticeboard without taking them in. All I can think about is whether or not I should go to the police.

When Jasmine rushes back in, I jump.

‘Well, this really is the limit!’ she cries out. ‘We shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of rubbish. Tell me exactly what happened.’

‘We had an argument,’ I say, ‘but the crazy thing is, I can’t remember what was said.’

‘That’s the shock,’ Jasmine says. ‘It doesn’t matter. You had an argument and then what?’

‘He got up and came towards me. His face was all contorted, it was horrible. And then he pulled out a knife and pointed it at my throat.’ Three sentences and I’m crying again.

Jasmine puts her arm around me. ‘It must have been so terrifying.’

‘I really thought he was going to stab me,’ I sob, choking back the tears. ‘All I could think was, not my throat, not my throat, because I knew I’d have no chance of surviving that. But then I realised that he could also cut my face and I imagined spending the rest of my days with a big scar, or just one eye.’ I cry even harder.

Jasmine strokes my hair; her face is pale. ‘Where is Bilal now?’ she asks. ‘Have you already spoken to Jan?’

‘I ran out of the classroom and went straight to Jan’s office.’

‘And? What did he say?’

I pick up a plastic spoon and toy with it. ‘He would rather I didn’t report it to the police. He said he’d get in touch with Bilal’s parents this afternoon, and he’d suspend Bilal immediately.’

‘Okay. And what else?’

‘Legally speaking, Bilal’s got the right to take his final exams here, but he’ll be barred from entering this building. He’ll take classes at the other site.’

Jasmine nods. ‘The sooner they get him away from here the better. That does seem the best solution to me. Jesus, just the thought that he might pull a knife on me! I’d die of fright!’

I bend the plastic spoon, making a white crease in the plastic. ‘But I wonder if I should go to the police.’

Jasmine frowns. ‘You should really, shouldn’t you?’

‘It wouldn’t do much for the school’s reputation, but on the other hand.’ I look at my friend despairingly. ‘What kind of signal would that send out, that a student can threaten a teacher with a knife and the only punishment is being sent to work in another building?’

‘And a suspension.’ Jasmine adds.

‘A suspension?’ The spoon snaps. I put the pieces down. ‘He’ll get a week’s holiday, watch a bit of MTV.’

‘That’s true,’ Jasmine says, ‘but what do you expect the police to do? The most they’ll do is caution him. If we reported every threat that was made in this school, we’d all be out on the street in no time.’

‘That might be true,’ I say heatedly, ‘but what kind of school is this then? Not reporting him means that the students have the upper hand, that they can do whatever they want.’

‘They can,’ Jasmine says soberly, ‘and you know it.’

I do know it. The power of the students, protected by their parents, is growing and growing. When I was at school, just the threat of being sent to the deputy head’s office was enough to stop me in my tracks if I was fooling around in class. These days they just laugh at you. Once, a student I’d sent out stood outside the classroom windows and dropped his trousers.

If you telephone the parents to ask them in for a chat, they never have time and they aren’t interested. If they do turn up, they barely understand what you’re saying because their Dutch is so poor – or they promise they’ll give their son or daughter a good hiding which you then desperately try to talk them out of. Often, they’re defensive. How dare you?! Are you saying they aren’t good parents? Isn’t it the school’s job to sort out problems? Isn’t that what they’re paying taxes for?

Victor, one of my colleagues, was once punched by a father.

‘What should I do, Jasmine?’ I ask. ‘What would you do?’

‘I’d sleep on it.’ Jasmine gets up to make another coffee. ‘Think it over.’

We sit there together, drinking our coffee in silence. I look at Jasmine over the rim of my cup. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

She rests her hand on mine. ‘Just go home,’ she says. ‘I’ll call you this evening, all right? And whatever you decide, police or no police, I’ll stand by you.’

I’m glad I never cycle to work, even though the weather’s lovely for the end of April. I can’t take my bike because I have to rush off at the end of the day to pick up my six-year-old daughter from school. To my shame, she is sometimes there waiting for me, holding the teacher’s hand. But not today. It’s Monday, early in the afternoon, and I’ve got plenty of time to tell my story to the police.

If I decide to.

As I cross the playground on my way to the car park, I catch myself looking around. The sight of every dark-haired, broad-shouldered boy gives me a jolt and I only feel safe once I’m in my car with all the doors locked.

As I join the busy Rotterdam traffic, it all comes back to me, piece by piece.

From the moment the lesson began, Bilal had been looking me up and down. I was wearing a skirt – not a mini-skirt, it was to the knee – and high black leather boots. Slouched in his chair,
Bilal looked from my legs to my breasts and then back again.

Ignoring things is always the best approach, so I carried on with the lesson. Until Bilal raised his hand.

‘Miss?’

‘Yes?’

‘You look really hot today. Are you going somewhere?’

There were some repressed giggles, but most of the room gave Bilal a cold stare.

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d keep such thoughts to yourself, Bilal.’

‘I bet you would,’ Bilal said. ‘You know what we call women in Morocco who walk around like that?’

I gave him a warning look. I’d recently made clear to the class the consequences of swearing, specifically of using the word ‘whore’.

Bilal sat up straight, leaned towards me as if in confidence, and said, ‘Prostitutes.’

Anger coursed through me but I managed to control myself. ‘Do you have chewing gum in your mouth? Do be so kind as to put it in the bin.’

Bilal worked his long body out from under the desk and walked, with the same sly grin, to the bin. He spat out the gum and went back to his place. As he prepared to sit down again, he stared leisurely, suggestively, at my breasts.

That’s when I did something wrong. I should have told him to leave the classroom and report to the headmaster, but instead I looked at his crotch, my expression scornful. It happened so quickly – I shocked myself – I realised I was making a mistake, but it was too late. Bilal had seen it. His expression changed from sly to hard, his lips thinned and his eyes filled with a threat that set all the alarm bells in my body ringing. I stepped backwards and that’s when he pulled the knife.

The memory fills me with a burst of confidence. I’m going to go to the police; of course I’m going to go to the police.

I head back towards the centre, brave the traffic along the Coolsingel Canal and turn off into a side street called Doelwater Alley. I park there and look over at the ‘swimming pool’, as the mint-green tiled police station is known.

But I don’t get out of my car.

My eyes sweep the alleyway and the square in front of the police station, searching for Bilal. He isn’t here. Of course he isn’t here, but he might come out from behind a parked car once I get out of mine.

I don’t really expect that to happen, but my heart pounds away all the same and I wonder whether I’ll be able to get any words out once I’m inside.

I need to get a grip on myself. A glass of iced water would do me good, but all I’ve got is a mouldy tangerine lying next to the gear stick.

I take a deep breath. Would Bilal really have stabbed me? I’ve known him long enough not to believe that. Yet, that look in his eyes when I provoked him…Who knows what I triggered in him? Even though I have a good relationship with most of the students from immigrant families, I’ll never truly understand them.

I imagine Bilal being interrogated – he might have to spend some time in a prison cell – and then I see the Bilal I’ve always known, an arrogant but intelligent boy who is probably already regretting what he did. Maybe Jan is right and I’d only make it worse by reporting it.

I don’t know how long I sit in my car, but at some point I wake up from my stupor and drive home.

I’ve always felt the need to make the world a better place. As a five-year-old, I took the new kids at school under my wing, and this protectiveness carried on into middle and high school. For the bullied kids, my support made the difference between a quiet, unremarked existence and being the butt of classroom jokes. I was popular at school and other children followed my lead.

When I was fifteen, I started working on the school magazine. Before that, no one read the magazine; afterwards I’d see copies in school bags and on the tables in the canteen. My complaints about teachers discriminating against the immigrant students made me a kind of school heroine.

I’d take on anyone, whether it was about headscarves being tolerated in the classroom or smoking on school grounds.

I’ve only ever wanted to help.

As I drive home, I remember Bilal’s face as I fled the classroom, the aggression in his eyes, the complete arrogance of his
manner. What I usually see with my Moroccan and Turkish students is that they’ve lost all sense of direction. These kids are born in the Netherlands, they grow up watching
Sesame Street
and Disney cartoons, but feel that they’re considered second-class citizens. They don’t feel Turkish or Moroccan, but don’t feel Dutch either. Caught between the culture of their parentage and the country they live in, they’re wrestling with their identity, anxious because there are no jobs to go to when they leave school, angry because they feel discriminated against.

If a student is having problems, I offer to buy them a drink, sit down with them, and discuss what’s going on, while respecting their social codes. We almost always find a solution. My teacher training didn’t prepare me for today. We were taught pedagogy and maintaining discipline, not how to handle aggression or violence.

I’m almost home when I think of how empty it will be there: the silent rooms, nobody to tell my story to. Should I go to Raoul instead? It’s ten past three, he’ll be in a meeting right now. To Elisa’s then? If she’s busy she’ll make time. You can always drop in on her.

Elisa is my twin sister. We’re identical twins, but I’m fifteen minutes older; perhaps that’s the reason I’ve always protected her – first from the school bullies and later from a crowd who liked to spike your drinks with ecstasy and cadge money from you.

When Elisa set up a photography studio, I soon realised that her lack of business acumen would stand in the way of success. She wasn’t assertive enough to get new clients and she let the clients she did have barter her prices down. In any case, the studio didn’t attract much custom. Not that it really mattered, neither of us has to work. We come from a wealthy family; wealthy and old and noble. It’s not something that particularly interests us – we never talk about it.

But money can’t buy everything. Our parents always impressed
on us that we should study and get jobs, that it was more comfortable to have wealth, but that shouldn’t be the guiding principle in life. We weren’t spoilt as children; we got the same pocket money as the others, did Saturday jobs and had to take on a paper round if we wanted extra money. It was an education I feel deeply grateful to my parents for.