December 2006, Bloomington, Indiana

By Aja Romano

My driver’s side car window has decided to become stuck forever in the down position. Naturally this happens the same day my sleepy town gets a freak snow storm, because this is my life. I’m out past midnight taping over the window with plastic and duct tape. It’s finally happened: my car, which has for so long teetered on the border between “respectable middle class transportation” and “bumper-sticker-covered scrap metal” is now, officially, a clunker.

At work the next day I try to pass off the garbage bag flapping in the wind as a minor inconvenience, an office conversation piece and not a setback that has me secretly ready to cry from frustration.

I tutor kids who’ve been put on probation. We’re supposed to help them straighten out their lives, but it’s as if every student I tutor can see through me, can see that I don’t have it together any more than they do. As if it’s my life, not just my car, that’s teetering on the border between respectably middle class and piece of junk.

Right now, I’m watching students through the classroom window. Adrienne has her long, long legs crossed, chair back, and boobs thrust forward. She’s flirting with Darren, who’s blushing and tossing pencils at the ceiling. They’re in tutoring because their parents want them to be. Tutoring isn’t mandatory for them, but they hate it as much as if it is.

They greet me, their Nazi tutor, with groans of dislike. They’re wishing they had the other tutor, the cool one who wears upscale clothes, neatly pressed, and treats them like adults. Her, the boys all have crushes on; me, they make lesbian jokes about.

“I get to leave 15 minutes early,” Adrienne says. “Because I came 15 minutes early.” Her natural mode when speaking to adults is to challenge. She arches her eyebrows at me now, and I steel myself for the inevitable.

“Did you get your algebra done?”

“I can do it at home,” she snaps. She has narrow, hawk-like eyes, all the more piercing when they flash in anger.

I take a deep breath. “Well, your parents aren’t coming til half-past anyway, and you haven’t done any work, so why don’t we—”

Adrienne explodes. The Borderline personality rears its ugly head and claws its way out of her at full volume. “YOU CAN’T KEEP ME HERE,” she screams. It always shocks me – her transition from the Siren with lowered lashes and moves full of seduction into the tantrum-throwing little girl.

“You aren’t my mom — you aren’t even a real teacher. I’m nearly 17 and I don’t have to listen to you.”

You’re not supposed to argue with students – I know this and I hear myself doing it anyway. “This isn’t a classroom,” Adrienne seethes. “It’s just a room with some tables. It doesn’t make you my teacher.” She begins to put on her coat.

“Sit down, Adrienne.”

“I’m not staying,” said Adrienne. “I bet my mom’s already out there. If she’s out there, you can’t make me stay.”

“Sit back down,” I order her. “I’ll go check.”

Adrienne’s parents drive a flashy red SUV. It’s pulled up to the curb in front of the entrance just as I get to the door, which is a complete surprise since they’re never early. I hover in the doorway, wondering whether it’s worth it to try to keep Adrienne there.

My uncertainty lasts as long as it takes for Adrienne’s mom, a peroxide blonde who looks just like her daughter, to stick her head out the window and start shrieking at me over the car engine.

“Adrienne needs to stay til 6,” she yells. “You close at 6?”

“Yes,” I answer, all my anger at Adrienne melting into indignation. “But Adrienne’s only scheduled til 5:30 and she’s already been here an hour.” Her mother shakes her head, pours out a litany of excuses, and says something about dad picking her up in a half hour. She drives off before I’m even sure if I’ve answered.

Adrienne is standing in the doorway to the classroom, looking eager.

“She’s out there, isn’t she,” she says triumphantly.

I suddenly feel like a monster.

“She says you have to stay til 6.”

“What?” Adrienne’s face goes pale, and she says coldly, “You did this, didn’t you?”

I try to answer, but Adrienne storms out into the hall so that she can have a bigger audience when she screams.

“Don’t give me that! You talked to her and now I have to stay a half hour longer!”

“I don’t blame you for being upset, Adrienne, and I understand how you feel—”

Adrienne cuts me off in a cold, bitter laugh. “Yeah, sure you do.”

I think of how I spent the previous night tromping around in boots and freezing, trying to throw a garbage bag over my car in the middle of a minor blizzard, and for a moment I am there again, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

How easy it is to teach someone about polynomials or World War II. How to deal with life – how to stand next to a child (16 going on 13, forever) and say, “I’m sorry about all of this,” without stumbling over the words and tripping over your own stupidly flat tone. No one has ever taught this to me.

It’s 20 minutes past six, and Adrienne’s father is nowhere to be found.

“Do you want to call him again?” I ask.

“No, he’ll be here,” Adrienne says. She’s still upset, but her anger has given way to something more subdued; she’s folded in on herself a little as the two of us peer outside. It’s early December, pitch-dark, and the glow of the streetlights against the fog have colored the entire street a dirty orange.

“Maybe he just got stuck in traffic.” It’s pathetic, my lame form of apology, but it’s all I can muster. Adrienne lowers her eyes and stares at the floor. I stand next to her in awkward silence.

“Do you like my jeans?” Adrienne says at last. “I patched them myself.”

They’re low-rise denim, stone-washed and patched at both knees. She’s written on them with a red sharpie down one knee: Devil-child.

“You did a good job,” I smile.

“They’re the only pair I have. My parents won’t buy me new ones.” Adrienne glances up at me for a moment, then looks away again.

This is the friendliest conversation we have ever had.

I glance down at my watch. Her dad is half an hour late.

“They never forget my brother,” Adrienne says quietly.

All I can do is look at her.

Another moment, and she lifts her head. “I’m going to go wait outside for him,” she says, throwing her shoulders back. “I’m sick of being in here.”

I let her go, thinking of her patched jeans and my patched car and my patched tongue. Our patched lives.

Adrienne stands at the far end of the parking lot, under a tall street lamp. It casts her long shadow on the sidewalk, and she looks taller and smaller all at once. The night glows orange all around her, and as she hugs her arms to her chest and shivers, she is the loneliest kind of normal I have ever seen.

Aja Romano lives, works, and plays in Bloomington, Indiana, where she tutors kids through the probation department and moonlights as a freelance writer and critic. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Bloomington Herald-Times and the Columbus Post-Dispatch, and her articles on life and politics in the South have been spotlighted on DailyKos and the Democratic Underground. She has changed the names in the story.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, December 11th, 2006 | Email This Post

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