If she had never moved back to Chicago from New York, none of this would be happening. She knew it in her gut. She had lasted there only a year, one year with four other girls in a tired old floor-through in Bushwick, with a creaky ceiling and neighbors who seemed to be constantly cooking. (Clanking pans, nonstop sizzles; why were they always frying something?) There were two windows in the apartment, one that faced an empty lot next door, and the other, which faced the trash-infested alleyway in the back. There were bars on the windows. Inside was prison, but outside was worse. Men made nasty comments to her on the street. She got called “white girl” a lot, and she hated it, even though she could not argue that point. She kept searching for the charm in her neighborhood but was neither equipped nor informed. She spent much of her time that year on a train to somewhere else in the city, anywhere else but there.
Her roommates were all the same as Robin, more or less. Their names were Jennifer and Julie and Jordan; they were all Jewish, they all had gone to midwestern colleges, and they had all individual secret joint bank accounts with their mothers, who would put a little extra in there every once in a while, so that they could treat themselves to something nice. There was a fifth roommate, who slept in the living room on the couch when she wasn’t sleeping at her girlfriend’s house. She was a brisk girl from Alaska, Teresa, who had grown up in a town of drunks, fighting her way to the middle class while the rest of the roommates did nothing but hover there.
They all had been brought together by the Teach for America program, and then spread out in terrible high schools across Brooklyn. Not quaint Park Slope Brooklyn, where the pretty people with babies lived, but east of there, on the way to racetracks and airports; on the way, it sometimes felt, to nowhere at all. Robin had not been prepared for any of it. Not even after a lifetime of consuming mass culture that told her how messed up schools in impoverished urban areas could be. Not a film or a song or an episode of Law & Order or a class in college or an orientation program had prepared her for how much one year teaching in a school full of at-risk kids was going to suck. If she was seeking hope and inspiration, or if she was thinking she was going to provide it, she was in the wrong place. She was way out of her league. Everyone knew it. She had no poker face. All day long she flinched.
She would wake up every morning and wonder if she was doing more harm than good. She spent money out of her own pocket on paper and markers. She tried to innovate: She covered a large empty tin can (last night’s diced tomatoes for the pasta sauce) with paper and named it the “Hear Me Can” and placed it in the front of the classroom. “When you feel like yelling or you’re upset about something, just write it down and put it in there,” she instructed the children. “And I promise you will be heard.”
After class, she would read the notes. Sometimes it was easy-to-take information.
Someone stole my pencil.
I don’t like tests.
They should have chicken nuggets every day at lunch.
But more often, the missives were hateful or sad.
My father called me a faggot last night.
It’s too loud to sleep in my house.
I hate you I hate these words I hate everyone.
But that wasn’t why she left town, at least not in her memory. There had been an actual, concrete turning point, which had happened near the end of the school year. For a week she and her roommates had woken up covered in bites, at first just a few, but then days later, their bodies, their bellies, their legs, their arms, were covered in red, stinging marks. There was no denying it. They had bedbugs. Teresa was the one who had finally recognized what the bites were and what would have to be done about it. They would have to wash all their clothes in hot water. An exterminator would have to be called. “And you can’t do anything but trash those mattresses,” she said. Who had suggested they burn them first? Was it Robin? Would her mind have gone to destruction so quickly? If she wasn’t the one who said it, she was definitely the one who agreed to it right away.
In an instant, they were all up. They could not live with the bug-infested objects in their lives a moment longer. They kicked their mattresses down the steps. Teresa single-handedly carried the couch herself. They dragged each item through the empty lot, across the gravel, and then to the filthy alley behind their house. Robin ran to the corner deli and bought some lighter fluid. One of the girls had some matches. The other girls picked through the alley for more flammable items: old newspapers, a lampshade, a half dozen dirty pizza-delivery boxes. They all stood there and watched the flames burn the mattresses. Burn those fuckers right up. They all stood there, scratching themselves. Was this what they deserved? They had taught for America.
Robin examined her mottled arm and said, “Screw this. I’m moving home.”
“Me too,” said Julie.
“Me too,” said Jennifer.
“Me too,” said Jordan.