“It’s too bad Mrs. Carmody couldn’t hold her liquor last semester,” someone else says. “We wouldn’t have ended up with the six-month sub from hell.”
“Seriously,” Melissa says. “Go surf away forever, Holden, and take your shitty quizzes with you.”
Something hot enters my throat and then escapes.
“I dunno. It just seems like she wants us to care about history,” I say.
Then, as usual, I wish I hadn’t spoken. I swear I hear every pair of eyes roll across the room. Every time I talk to these girls, they look at me like I’ve grown four heads.
“Okay, Cory,” Rika says, smiling down at her own index cards, and the studying goes on.
One day, I rise to leave Ms. Holden’s office and fumble both my history notebook and my Morality textbook. They fall to the floor. We both reach to get them. I can smell her hair, something mint, and salt water, and coconut suntan lotion.
“What’s this?” Ms. Holden says, picking up my Morality textbook.
I panic. She’s noticed the doodles I made of the textbook’s photo-illustration people. And she’s reading the captions I wrote over my doodle-people’s heads.
The more anxious I got in Morality class, the more I doodled. The margins are filled with my drawings of the wholesome, puzzled, praying humans in the book.
I haven’t drawn much since Papa’s accident. But still—weeks ago I defaced the word of God! And all His pictorial advice! I remember all of a sudden that she’s still a teacher.
“Nothing,” I say quickly, and I try to snatch the book back. She holds it away from me, grinning. She stands and reads. I sit, burning, and bounce both feet.
Then she reads the captions for my doodles aloud. “‘I struggle with the temptation of evil, sensual hand-holding. Will you still have french fries with me?’ ‘I’m sorry your pet hippo died; Jesus will replace it.’” She giggles. She sits back down, continuing to read.
“These drawings are great,” she says.
“You don’t want to take points off my honor card?” I ask. “For vandalizing school property?”
“No way. I mean, I suppose I should, being your authority. But I want to read more of these. We’ll call it a special dispensation. Act of mercy.”
She keeps reading, laughing at all the little scenes I drew. She pauses at one page and smiles a smile I’ve never seen before. She tips the book so I can see only the cover.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” She riffles the pages, closes the book, and hands it back to me. “You have a gift. It’s very intelligent image revision and theme reinterpretation.”
“Thanks? I guess?” But of course my whole body is abuzz with her approval. With the memory of her hand on my knee. I feel like I should run around all the bases of the outside softball field about twenty times.
That night, when we’re back home from the hospital, I riffle through my doodles again, trying to see what she saw.
I catch a white boy with a scraggly goatee and a flannel shirt from ten years ago; a stock photograph. He has his fist under his chin. I’d sketched a cartoon version of him in the margin. In my drawing he was wearing a Saint Agatha’s skirt, and I put my thought bubble over his eyes.
Siiiiiiiiigh . . . M.H.!! . . . Siiiiiiiigh
I seize a pencil, mortified, and try to erase it. The indentations stay.
I tell myself she couldn’t possibly have noticed—surely there were many M.H.s in the world.
April 9, 2009
Holy Thursday
All 565 of us stream into the gym today, bleachers pulled out and chairs arranged for Holy Thursday Mass before Easter break. We have one class in the morning, then Mass, then freedom. We’re fidgety but obedient, sitting and standing for the readings and prayers.
The priest raises the Eucharist, commemorating Christ’s gestures. We line up for Communion. I take it even though I’m not sure I should. I don’t want to call more attention to myself by asking for a blessing instead.
At the end of Mass, walking behind a slow-moving crowd of restless classmates, I see the back of Ms. Holden’s head near the gym entrance. She’s talking animatedly with someone, nodding. I hear Ms. Holden’s laugh drift toward me, the best music. Then I see: She’s talking, and laughing, with my mom.
I stop breathing. Spending time with Ms. Holden always felt like a secret to me. I never brought my secrets to my parents. Ms. Holden talking to my mom, at school, feels like a historical summit, with so much to potentially reveal.
I should pretend I’m more prepared for this. Instead I blink and stare.
Then Ms. Holden notices me watching. She calls over to me. “Magandang oo-maga, Cory!”
“Tanghali!” my mom corrects her. “Because it’s noon now. But that was a good ‘Good morning.’”
The guarded, worried, mourning version of my mom is gone for a moment, and this friendly, outgoing version of my mom is teaching Ms. Holden Tagalog. I feel a sense of gratitude calm me for a moment. I start breathing easy. Ms. Holden makes other people feel better, not just me. Ms. Holden is good. Even my mom can feel the goodness.
“Hi,” I say.
“Your history teacher says you are very hardworking, earning extra credit. You didn’t tell me and your papa.”
Ms. Holden winks at me behind my mom’s back. The wink that always wakes me up inside.
“I wanted to . . . surprise you?” I say.
“Cory has an excellent memory,” Ms. Holden says. “She’s able to absorb a lot of complexities and nuances of history. I’d say she’s way ahead of her classmates.”
“Her father also has a good memory,” my mom says. “I think that’s where she gets it. That, and her eyes. The shape.”
The sadness comes back into my mom’s face. Ms. Holden gets serious. “How is he, Mrs. Tagubio?” she asks.
My mom shakes her head a little. Then she brightens.
“Maybe we can have you for coffee at the house,” she says. “Tomorrow, for Good Friday. You can tutor at our home, and then have merienda. A small thank-you, for your extra time with Cory.”
“Ma, Ms. Holden’s probably busy,” I say. But I’m thrilled at the invitation. Then I wonder if my mom’s offering just to be polite. But she looks eager to host someone for something other than sympathy.
Early on after Papa’s accident, we had visitors almost every day—friends from church, or visitors from Manila, or younger guys from my dad’s crew. But the kitchen has been quiet with our worry lately.
Ms. Holden looks between us. “I’m not busy tomorrow afternoon,” she says. “That’s so kind. I’d love to visit.”
April 10, 2009
Good Friday
We spend the morning with Papa. His bruises have faded. The nurses have wrapped him in a gown. But he hasn’t woken since his first seizure.
Dr. Chiu says one of her many acronyms at us: VS. Vegetative state. The next level up would be MCS: minimally conscious state. She walks in every day with the Glasgow checklist. She shines lights into Papa’s eyes. She pinches him. The checklist doesn’t change.
Ma tells him our plans for the day: the remote programming job she’s working on with the hospital WiFi, Good Friday Mass later. “Cory,” she says, “tell Papa about your teacher, your extra credit.”