JAILERS MOVED PATRICK from cell to cell without warning, and I didn’t want his homework papers to be scattered, so I had decided that a single composition notebook would be the repository for all his work. Assignments included vocabulary (sentences), a lesson from the day (say, on apostrophes), journaling, and responses to the reading. The reading questions were sometimes specific: Why do you think the creatures tortured Aslan? And sometimes open: Write a letter to Lucy from Edmund. The journaling was mostly open—observations, for instance, about jail: What is one thing you’ve noticed about jail?
Patrick’s homework made me happy and filled my days. Part of it was, of course, teacherly satisfaction: He was being useful; he was doing something with himself. What teacher wouldn’t be pleased with his quick grasp of irony: It is ironic to know Calvin comes back to jail after being released a week earlier. It takes discipline and patience to use one’s mind, and here was tangible proof of both. Part of it, too, was my writerly sadism, which I had always inflicted on others who sent writing my way: I regarded my brutal editing as a sign of care. And so I thrashed through his words, circled errors, barked orders. I battered the page so thoroughly that sometimes it was difficult to see what he had originally written. Sometimes I shouted. (APOSTROPHE!) Every forgotten comma was noted (I circled the space where the comma should be and wrote, What’s missing?), every run-on sentence was marked (Where should this sentence end?). If a pattern of mistake emerged—crying spelled as cring, trying as tring—I assigned extra homework to eliminate future mistakes. I also tried my best to take note of what he was doing right. If he used their correctly, as opposed to there or they’re, I wrote, Good job, that’s the right one!
The task of correction gave me a peculiar but necessary distance from him and a semblance of control in a situation where I had little. He would write, for instance, a sentence for the word sunder. To sunder me and my family is like cutting my life short. I drew a smiley face next to the sentence and responded, with the emotional deafness of a robot, Perfect use of sunder. Yes, jail has sundered you and your family. For the word profane, he wrote, People in jail talk crazy and are profane to each other even elderly folks. Wanting to repeat the usage of the vocabulary word, I wrote idiotically: Yes, it’s unfortunate that they are profane. Or he wrote, It would be figurative if I say I’m dead in jail. I responded: Wonderful use of figurative.
Perhaps this is how all writerly beginnings work: with a focus on mechanics, with the enactment of distance. But there was also a merciless honesty in my corrections. Because Patrick worked quickly to stamp out old errors, I told myself that he craved my corrections in a way that certain people, seeking guidance, trust only that which is most savagely dispensed. For me and perhaps for him, the task of making a sentence perfect had the effect of containment: It kept unbearable emotions at bay.
And, in fact, Patrick was learning with a ferocity I did not remember from the first time around. To keep up with his pace, my visits went from once to twice a week. I instituted Friday quizzes on vocabulary and bought him a pack of index cards. Within a month he would exhaust the supply. He had no rubber band, so the cards were always tumbling out of his notebook or forming a thicket in his hand.
The cigarettes had given Patrick new cachet; he traded them, it appeared, for candy and chips. Often he had some kind of junk food for me. “Here,” he’d say casually. A jumbo-sized Snickers bar would appear suddenly from his jumpsuit, in his outstretched palm.
—
“HOW ARE YOU?” I asked one Monday morning.
“Ain’t nothing going on here,” he said. “Just drama. What’d you do this weekend, Ms. Kuo?”
“I cooked a bean soup with Danny and Lucy,” I said casually. “Then we saw a movie.”
He was silent, his hand on his chin, as if I’d said something very philosophical.
“How does that sound to you?” I asked brightly.
He said, “Lovely.”
Then he said, “They married?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Kuo,” Patrick said, “you got a boyfriend?”
I felt an immediate discomfort. To receive male attention is a universal horror for young female teachers in secondary school. On the other hand, I thought, I asked him about his personal life; why couldn’t he ask me about mine?
“Yes,” I said.
This was a lie.
“What he do?”
I ignored him. “Hey, why don’t you start some silent reading while I check your homework.”
He returned to his book and I tried to hide my distress. I was just being paranoid, I thought.
I looked at his homework. I had written, What is the best part of your day?
In his handwriting: Thinking back when you ask me whats the best part of my day. I must admit it is when I see your face. Here in Jail theres nothing really going on outside of negativity. When you say yea, I feel you sound very sexy.
I felt queasy. Why did he have to go and ruin the exercise like this? I felt a rush of nostalgia for my female students. They’d written about boys, breakups, feeling ugly, unrequited love, single moms, hope, flowers, candles. With them I never had to engage in the fearful, self-inspecting review: Was my blouse modest, my skirt long enough? Instinctively now I glanced at my clothes: baggy pants, baggy sweater, muddy sneakers, hair pulled back—yes, I looked like my usual unkempt, androgynous self who caused my poor mother despair. No, I had not encouraged him.
But for the past three years, since dropping out, he had wandered around Helena without any institutional contact and forgotten all its rules. I looked young, I was a woman, and he was surrounded by men. I visited him; I showed compassion.
So why was I mad? Because of what I had to do now: make boundaries clear.
“Patrick.”
He looked up from his book.
“This is not okay. It’s inappropriate.” I pointed to the last line of his writing.
My tone surprised me—there it was, the teacher’s tone still intact, an affect of no-nonsense irritation.
Patrick looked down. My frankness had humiliated him. He didn’t want me to think that he was like creepy Mr. Cousins or shameless Shawn or his trashy jail mates. So much of jail seemed to involve convincing yourself that you were different from those around you.
“Sorry, Ms. Kuo. I ain’t mean no disrespect. Really, my mind ain’t be clear here, you know. Things be crazy here, jail mates be—” He stopped.
So this was why I was angry, too: Patrick had lowered himself, not knowing any better, and I had caused this lowering by showing up in his life.
“I’m your teacher,” I said.
Officiously, I pointed to his book, even though he had been reading it dutifully and I had been the one to interrupt.
He never crossed that boundary again.
—