The Kingdom of Childhood (4 page)

It was a boiling-hot day for mid-September and, as a cost-cutting measure, the school’s air-conditioning had already been shut off for the season. At the end of the school day I steeled myself for a visit to Bobbie’s old classroom and stepped in with a commuter mug full of iced tea and my hair piled up in a clip, trailing strands that curled with sweat. The iced tea I had purchased at McDonald’s on my lunch hour and, to hide my patronage of such a corporation, guiltily dumped into my rinsed coffee mug before returning to work. In my car I covered the plastic cup with an insulated reusable bag from Whole Foods and slipped out to the parking lot for refills when nobody was looking. If there wasn’t a clause in my contract that required this behavior, there may as well have been. But I didn’t mind. If a veteran like me didn’t respect the folkways of the Steiner school, then why would anyone?

Sandy Valera stood at the front of the room erasing the blackboard with quick, efficient strokes. High above, inked onto a long banner bright with a rainbow of watercolors, scrolled the quote, “Man is both a fallen God and a God in
the becoming.” Rudolf Steiner’s name was written beneath it in small but reverent capitals. It was hard to get used to seeing Bobbie’s handiwork hanging above the head of the woman who had replaced her. So many years I had known Bobbie, never imagining the absurd idea that she might die. Even after her cancer diagnosis, we all thought she was getting better until all of a sudden she wasn’t anymore—she had taken a turn, and then it went so fast. We had been a proud band marching behind our standard-bearer, and then suddenly the street ended in a jagged line and down she slipped into the black nowhere, leaving the rest of us stumbling backward, cacophonous and disoriented.

“You ready for the staff meeting?” Sandy called out to me.

“I hope so.”

“I think Dan’s got something up his sleeve,” she said. “The grand plan to bring us all wealth and happiness.”

“Why is it always about
money
.” I sighed. “All the things we need to address with these kids and it always boils down to the issue of
money
. I can’t think of a subject that bores me more.”

“You’re happy with what you make, then?”

“Of course not.”

She laughed. From a hook on the wall she retrieved her purse and looped it onto her shoulder. The hanger was brass and bore the image of three monkeys, each above its own hook: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Bobbie, who had carried no purse, always hung her jacket from the third hook. Sandy hung her purse from the first.

“Maybe he’ll give you a raise,” she teased.

“My husband would like that.”

“How was your anniversary weekend, by the way?”

“It didn’t happen. He had to work. I spent it making new dolls for the Hansel and Gretel puppet play. Exciting stuff.”

She straightened her skirt and frowned sympathetically. If she had been Bobbie, I would have expanded on that with my pent-up frustrations: how much it dragged me down that every time I walked into a room, contempt oozed out of Russ like snot out of a kid’s nose. How my children were almost grown and now I yearned to embark on all my long-deferred adventures: to see Stockholm and Amsterdam, to try absinthe and get puking drunk in the tradition of the great poets, to have wild sex in sketchy locations—with Russ would be just fine, if he was willing—and to grow myself a garden as paradisiacal as the one I remembered from my childhood. I would tell her how I felt as though Russ and I were two captives tied back-to-back to a pole, and while I was willing to whistle at the sky and look helpless until Scott left for college, I felt ready to start chewing through the restraints when nobody was looking.

But she wasn’t Bobbie. I liked Sandy, but she was only the woman I had been assigned to help get oriented on short notice; and though we might be real friends one day, we weren’t now. She was youngish and pretty and unmarried and still winked at life to suggest it come and get her. If she and I had anything in common beyond our place of employment, I did not have the ego to presume it.

And so I followed her brisk walk to the multipurpose room, hurrying on my shorter legs to keep up. Partway there she reached over and patted me on the back, as if to say she understood, or, perhaps, that she pitied me.

“We had an auditor from the Department of Health in our office this morning,” our headmaster told us teachers as we settled in for our meeting. “She is concerned about the number of religious affidavits we have on file in lieu of vaccination records. Also, it seems we have a number of families who have
turned in neither a vaccination record nor an affidavit. Clearly our record-keeping leaves much to be desired.”

We stared uncomfortably at our shoes.

“We will be following up with those families in the coming weeks,” he continued. “The longer this continues, the more it makes the pro-vax and anti-vax families feel at odds with each other. We cannot afford to give anyone the impression that the atmosphere at this school is contentious. And when I say we can’t afford it, I mean that very literally. Which brings me to our next item.”

I looked up from the floor, glad to move on.

“In light of the current situation,” Dan began in an artificially cheerful voice, “we have decided to hold our first annual class ring sale for the Upper School, beginning Monday.”

The murmur was immediate, but I looked left and right despite it, calculating from my colleagues’ expressions whether they felt as shocked as I did. Surprise, but not disapproval, was apparent on the faces around me. I lifted my hand and spoke without being acknowledged.

“I disapprove,” I said.

Dan met this with a thin smile, clearly prepared for my reaction. “I understand, Judy, but the board of trustees has decided it.”

“Then the board of trustees needs to reconsider,” I countered. “Those rings can cost hundreds of dollars. They represent exactly the sort of consumerist culture we oppose here. The parents are not going to like that one bit.”

“We receive eighteen percent of each ring sold.”

I shook my head. “I don’t care if we make a hundred percent. It’s a complete contradiction of the values of the school. I understand we need to raise funds, but that is the wrong way.”

Andrea Riss, the first-grade teacher, spoke up. “Judy…with
respect, our other options haven’t been realistic. The recorder and lunch basket sales netted us very little. I don’t know how it is in the kindergarten, but my classroom is suffering. Most of my chairs have threadbare seats and I only have two knights left in my castle. And my harp hasn’t had strings for a year now.”

A clamor of complaints went up. I looked at Dan, expecting him to call for order, but he remained silent in his chair, tapping a pen against his notebook and gazing in my general direction. Finally I spoke above the din.

“I do understand,” I said, and waited for the noise to die down. “But tight budget or not, this is a Waldorf school. For almost twenty years I’ve been explaining to parents why their five-year-olds can’t wear their Spider-Man and Little Mermaid shirts to school. I’ve led more seminars than I can count about the kiddie industrial complex. I will break out in
hives
if we send these kids home with glossy brochures for some artificial trophy they can buy on an installment plan. The idea is—” I considered my adjective for a moment. “Repugnant.”

“Well, the trustees have approved it.” Dan met my glare with a look of false good humor. “Let’s move on.”

“Let’s discuss it further.”

His gaze turned icy. “Let’s move on.”

At the end of the meeting, I gathered up my bags a bit too slowly and got caught behind the cluster of teachers filing out of the room. His hand fell heavily on my shoulder. “Judy, can I speak to you in private?”

He closed the door behind the last teacher and turned to me with an apologetic frown. “I knew you weren’t going to be happy about that. I felt it coming as soon as the trustees gave me their recommendation.”

“I’m astonished that you signed off on it. How could
you?
Class rings,
of all things. How about a Duke Nukem video-game tournament? We could charge admission.”

“You’re overreacting.”

I widened my eyes in indignation, but he held up one hand. “Don’t start with your list of the principles this school was founded on. I’ve been working in Steiner schools for as long as you have.
Your
board recruited me here based on that. Because this school was failing.”

“It’s never been
failing
. It’s been poorly managed.”

“You’re damn right it has been. I’d never seen a College of Teachers so dysfunctional, and
you
served on it. We wouldn’t need to make these concessions if the school had gotten its act together five years ago, or ten. How white is your classroom?”

Confusion took the edge off my anger. “What?”

“How white is it in there? Because we can’t bring in kids from the neighborhood without financial aid, and we can’t provide financial aid if we can’t even cover our utility bills. We have to take whichever families can pay, and you know what that means. The school gets whiter and richer and richer and whiter, and if you ask me, that’s selling out the principles more than the rings ever could.”

I glared at him without replying.

“You need to face facts, Judy,” he said, his voice lower than before. “This is about survival. I didn’t pack up my family and move across the country so I could bring down your school. That should be obvious enough to you. My son is in your class, for God’s sake. I came here because I believe in this. But my first priority is to keep our heads above water. It has to be.”

“‘Life is the unknown and the unknowable,’” I quoted, “‘except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we possibly can.’”

“Yes,”
he said with passion. “Kahlil Gibran, right?”

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull,”
I corrected, and met his ice-blue gaze. And there, for a single unnerving moment, I felt my reproach stumble over the electrified wire of my dream of him: a memory that had never happened.

In the hallway, the other teachers left me alone. Even Sandy hurried ahead. They walked to the parking lot in pairs or trios, chatting amongst themselves. It was a little like high school: nobody likes a know-it-all. In a few days I would return to their good graces.

Stepping out into the parking lot, I heard the squeal of a saw from the workshop and turned toward the sound curiously. So far as I knew, I was the last to leave; could a student still be working at this late hour? I sidetracked up the path and pushed open the heavy door. There stood Zach, working on the same saw with which he had been occupied the previous day, now hoisted onto the worktable. Sawdust twinkled like glitter in the sharp, low sunlight.

I called, “Are you allowed to work in here unsupervised?”

He blew the dust from a board. “Technically, no.”

I stepped inside and let the door close behind me. “Well, at least you’ve got your safety glasses on.”

“I wear contacts. The sawdust would scratch my eyes up if I didn’t.” He pulled the glasses off and added, “You look wiped.”

His observation surprised me. My experience with teenagers had taught me they possessed an almost aggressive skill for ignoring the emotional states of adults. It was the same way they handled pet messes or dirty dishes: you can’t be held responsible for what you fail to observe.

“Dr. Beckett and I had a difference of opinion at a faculty meeting,” I explained, probably unwisely.

His interest was immediate. “Oh, yeah? Over what?”

I infused my weary voice with a bit of sardonic enthusiasm. “We’re going to have our very first class ring sale.”

He snickered. “That’s lame.”

“Do you think so?” Again I was surprised. Normally Waldorf students leaped at the opportunity to take part in the for bidden rituals of the ordinary public high school.

“Of course. Steiner would not approve.”

“I thought you and Steiner were butting heads.”

He offered his abashed grin again, turning a piece of wood over in his hand. “Over me being a crime against nature, yes. Not over anything else.”

“
Nothing
else?”

He shrugged. “I’ve liked my schools and all that. I’m happy. I’ve got no complaints.”

I walked around to look at the playhouse. The pile of boards that had been laid out on the floor the day before were now assembled, the corners dovetailed together with smooth, perfect notches. I ran my fingers over the edges and admired the scalloped gingerbread trim laid out on the worktable. The project had all the marks of competence, which was far more than I had expected out of a high school junior. It was certainly better than anything Scott had done in his arts classes the year before.

“It looks like the project’s coming along well,” I said. “When do you expect to have it done?”

“A couple weeks. It needs to be finished by the end of the term so I can get a grade. I wanted to do a thatched roof, but Mr. Zigler said it would be a fire hazard.”

“He has a good point.”

“I suppose. I like fire, so for me that’s a selling point.”

I chuckled. “Not if someone’s inside it, though.”

“I guess not, yeah. But it would make a cool prop for a pillage scene in a play. I bet it would burn like a mother.”

I indulged him with a wry smile. “So what
are
you going to do for the roof?”

“Cover it with acorns. The kindergarten at my old school had one like that. It’ll look cool.”

“Where are you going to find enough acorns to cover the whole roof?”

He pointed to a box against the wall.
Greg’s All Natural Potato Chips,
read the ’60s-style bubble script printed on its side. Acorns filled it to the brim. I asked, “Where did you find all those?”

“The woods. My mom actually let me take the car for once, so I could collect them. In the service of the higher good.”

“You’ll have to show me. I could use some of those for a craft project, myself.” I peeked into the playhouse and examined its tight corners, giving it a slight shake to see how well it held. It hardly budged. “The joinery is beautiful. You’re very good with your hands.”