Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres
no teacher. I look out the corner of my eye at the girl sitting next to me. Her kinky red hair cascades down her back in a giant ponytail and she’s wearing hot pink leg warmers under a ruffled gray miniskirt. I’ve seen such getups on the pages of Glamour magazine, but never on the streets of Lafayette. She must be new, from some place big, a city. She’s bending over her notebook in absolute concentration, sketching. As I lean forward to get a closer look—tiger, a very good one—a man in a white shirt and blue tie strides to the front of the room and bangs his fist on the metal desk. The preppies stop chattering and everyone looks up, except the girl beside me.
“I’m Mr. An-der-son, and this is Al-ge-bra 1,” he says slowly, enunciating every syllable. He glances at the clock at the back of the room. “The time is 8:03. If you did-n’t sign up for Al-ge-bra 1, leave now. If you did sign up for Al-ge-bra 1, take out your text-book, face the front of the room, and shut up. Let’s make this as pain-less as pos-si-ble for ev-er-y-bo-dy.”
He speaks so slowly that I wonder whether we’re the idiots or he is. I dig Algebra for Life out of my backpack and set it on my desk along with a notebook and two sharpened pencils.
Mr. Anderson leans his broad shoulders against the blackboard and crosses his arms over his chest, surveying the room. He must have been a hunk, I think, before he developed man breasts and a gut.
“Hey you,” he calls to the girl sitting beside me. She continues doodling.
“Yoo-hoo!” he yells in a high voice. There’s laughter, and the girl looks up, startled, and slides an arm over her notebook. Her eyes are ringed in thick black liner. Mr. Anderson waves both hands at her.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Elaine Goldstein,” the girl says, pronouncing it as Goldstine.
Mr. Anderson rubs his chin.
“Jew name, isn’t it?”
Elaine looks at him without responding as snickers spill from the back of the room.
“How do you spell that word, Goldstein?” Mr. Anderson asks. He pronounces it as if it ended in “stain.” Gold-stain.
“G-O-L-D-S-T-E-I-N,” Elaine spells, as Mr. Anderson writes it on the blackboard in capital letters.
“Miss Goldstain, kindly pay attention in my class.” He erases her name with a broad swipe of the eraser, then starts tapping out an equation.
“O-kay, peop-le, o-pen your text-books to Chap-ter One.”
Elaine’s arm drifts back to her notebook, where she draws two long fangs in the tiger’s mouth. A sabertooth. I drum my fingertips on the side of my desk nearest her, and she scowls over at me, her cheeks scorched with humiliation. I turn my head to stick my tongue out at Mr. Anderson—who’s still writing out the equation—then look back at her.
She smiles.
I look for David in the frantic crush between classes, but don’t see him.
I walk into each new classroom with a pounding heart, looking for a girl who’s sitting alone and glancing about as uncomfortably as I am, someone who’s also new to this circus. But by the time I locate each new room in the dark rambling hallways and rush inside with my Farrah smile, the desks are packed and I have to make do with a seat in or behind the nerd section.
By lunchtime, I still haven’t spoken to a single person. Mademoiselle Smith is standing in front of French class grunting “répétez: é È, eu, eau” in a constipated voice when the noon buzzer rings and kids launch themselves from the room without waiting for her to finish her sentence.
I ignore the mass exodus and slowly copy the homework assignment into my notebook, putting off for as long as possible the moment I’ve been dreading all day. When I finish, I zip up my backpack and stand, the last student in the room.
“Bon appétit,” Mademoiselle Smith calls to me as I walk out the door.
I find a bathroom and check myself in the mirror. My Farrah curls have unraveled and my Farrah eye shadow lies in turquoise pools under my bottom lashes. I squirt liquid soap onto a paper towel and scrub it off over the sink.
In the hallway, lunchtime noise rises from the first floor like the drone of a hornet’s nest. I walk past a drinking fountain clogged with spit tobacco to the stairwell, walk down it, and observe the cafeteria through the small window in the metal door. On the far side of the room, there’s a job fair. Tables have been pushed together and a banner is taped to the wall: “EXCITING career OPPORTUNITIES with Lafayette’s LEADING employers: Caterpillar, Taco Bell, Alcoa. Get a Head Start on Life!”
Most of the round blue tables are filled, and a food line winds along one wall. I open the door, my stomach sour with nerves and whiskey, and stride purposefully toward it, as if someone were waiting for me, holding a space.
At the round blue tables I again recognize a seating arrangement: The center of the room belongs to the Jocks and the Preppies—the popular kids—and surrounding them are the lower orders—the Nerds, the Hoods, the Farmers, the Unclassifiable Outsiders.
As an unsmiling row of ladies in hairnets and aprons take turns spooning food into the compartments of my lunch tray—creamed spinach, tuna casserole, butterscotch pudding—I scan the room for David. He’s nowhere in sight. Neither are Elaine or Mary.
I hand the cashier the $2 Mother gave me and face the room.
A girl with a side ponytail and stirrup pants stands a few feet away from me, also holding a tray and looking around. Maybe she’s new, too. Maybe I should talk to her. But what would I say? Hi, are you new, too? That sounds so dorky! As I ponder this, a girl at a center table jumps up and yells “Christie!” and she rushes away.
The aroma of warm mayonnaise and dill pickles from the steaming casserole is making my mouth water. Where should I sit? What group should I join? Where do I belong? There doesn’t appear to be a table for Unclassifiable Outsiders. I search the room for someone, anyone, sitting alone, and my eyes drag across the orange-haired boy. He’s sitting with a bunch of farmers along the back wall, facing my direction. He hasn’t noticed me yet. I watch him fork spinach into his hateful mouth, then I walk to a conveyor belt jerking dirty trays behind a wall and set my lunch on it.
There’s a vending machine in the basement, next to the gymnasium. I buy a pack of Boppers and a Tab. I try the locker room door, but it’s locked. So is the gym. Through the glass doors, the wood floor gleams in the pale light cast by the high windows, and the empty bleachers await the next event. A large clock on the far wall says 12:50. Fourth hour starts in ten minutes.
I find a girls’ bathroom down the hallway and try the door. This one’s open. I walk into a stall, slide the metal latch closed, and sit down to eat.
I’m the first to board bus No. 26 after school. The driver motions to the seat behind her when I climb in.
“Y’all sit here for the meanwhiles,” she says, studying her three-inch-long nails, which are painted the same shade of purple as her pantsuit. I slide onto the bench and pretend to read my French book as kids erupt from the school building, yelling and laughing and chasing each other down the sidewalk. As the bus fills, I worry that the driver will leave without David. I stick my French book into my backpack, preparing to get off when she starts the engine if he isn’t here. I’ll find him and we’ll walk home together.
As the driver fiddles the radio to some whiny country music station, I see David rushing down the sidewalk, head down, hands clasping the shoulder straps of his backpack.
“There’s that nigger,” I hear a male voice say behind me.
David stomps up the stairs with a tense face, and presses his lips together as the driver loudly informs him about our reserved seat.
“Scaredy-cat!” a boy calls as David sits down next to me. “Wuss!” David doesn’t look at me.
On County Road 50, the bus gets stuck behind a combine that crawls