I knew what was coming next. I had known what was coming next the moment Jessica asked me why Edmund lied to Susan and Peter. There was no getting away from it, though I had to try and deflect some of the guilt. “Now, before you start-“ I began.
But she was too quick. The moment Jessica was out of the door Mrs. Snowburn turned on me and any argument I had would have to wait for her lecture. “Now you listen to me and you listen to me well.” It was a good, solid, first sentence that caught my attention and kept me silent. “You do not, I repeat do not, under any circumstances teach her life lessons. You are not her parents, her teachers, or anyone who should be informing her of anything like when people lie. That is not your job and I will not have you filling it!” She stood up and began walking out of the room immediately.
She’d forgotten that I had a say in this decision though, however small it was still there because I’d been given it the moment Jessica was left in the room with me. “Now hold on a second. Are you blaming me for doing a job that you gave me?” Mrs. Snowburn turned around and scoffed. “No seriously. You left me in this room with a child that I neither wanted to deal with beyond headache prevention. You left her unmonitored while I slept. You left her instructions that I should read to her when I finally did wake up and the book chosen was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, not exactly see spot run. Did you just expect me to sit here and read to her in a monotone voice a book that she had high hopes for because she’d seen its movie?” I waited for her to answer the question. Though I was in the wrong and I knew it, she had been as well. She needed to know that I neither wanted to teach that lesson to her nor felt qualified in the first place. “I’m not going to lie about lying Mrs. Snowburn, especially not about a child like Jessica. She’d see through my lie in an instant and, while I can’t say I’d be heartbroken if she never spoke to me again, I’m sure you’d notice.” I needed to stay in her positive graces, even if they weren’t her good graces. I didn’t want to admit it, but if she didn’t take care of me no one else would. “If you’re going to blame me for something at least make sure you aren’t at fault either.”
She was going to say something. She even turned around and opened her mouth to retort but the janitor brushed passed to check the space heater. “I need to check Coach Z and the kids,” She quietly said and left the room without another word.
I sat in my bed for some time and thought. There was nothing else to do, I had no interest in the book and, other than the janitor, there was no one else in the room. “Whew, she’s holding up better than I thought it would,” Tim said. It wasn’t precisely directed at me, but because I was the only on in the room I was forced to be the one to engage in any conversation he wanted to start. “The guy who sold her to me said she wouldn’ last more’n a couple a days. I took her anyway and fixed her up right. Now she’s the only thing keeping’ this room warm.” He wanted my acknowledgment of his work.
I didn’t really care though, I’d just been yelled at for doing something that I had been forced into and didn’t have the skills to deal with appropriately. “Thank you very much.” I lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a bit to try and make myself go back to bed. The small glow of the heater gave a low red glow to the ceiling and I could watch the janitor’s shadow walking around.
I lay there for some time, waiting for sleep to come over me but my mind wouldn’t stop moving. I thought about my car and the trip here. I thought about everyone I’d met and everything I’d heard. If I wasn’t careful I’d learn everyone’s secrets before the storm was over and that probably meant revealing my own. Though, thankfully, many of the conversations I’ve had have been one way since everyone walks on egg shells around me, even if they don’t intend to.
Eventually it became apparent that I wasn’t going to go to sleep. Either I had already slept too much or there was just too much on my mind, or some combination of the two. “So how’d Coach Z make an ice rink in the gym?” I asked to ceiling. Like the janitor’s comments about the space heater he had to listen to my question, even if it wasn’t necessarily posed directly to him. “Did his just pack snow really tightly onto the ground?” I sat up and looked for Tim who had picked up the playing cards and was just starting a game of FreeCell. “Or did he melt water somehow and spread it over the wood.”
Tim paused for a second and thought about the question, at least that’s what it looked like. He frowned slightly and his eyes unfocused just before putting a card down. Now that I think on it, it’s very likely that was the first time he’d heard the news; his reaction was probably more surprise than anything else. But I didn’t know that at the time. “I can’t honestly say how he’d have gone about doin’ that. Then again, I don’t know half the stuff that goes on in this school at any given time.” That was the start of a rant and I knew it, though I was content just to listen. “I mean, I’m not the one that has to clean up all these people’s messes at the end of the day. Who do you think was the one that found that book on yer bed there? It certainly wasn’t Mrs. Snowburn, she couldn’t find one single book in that entire library that wasn’t halfway frozen already. So she came to me. Thirty minutes of searching in drawers and through piles to find that book along with three others. Whole building’s gonna have to be refurbished when this storm’s done. School’ll probably be closed for a month, which will eat into the kid’s winter break and my own time.”
He seemed done, though even if he wasn’t I thought I’d try to change the subject. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. No, it was that I didn’t really care about his frustrations. There wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway and these situations tended to rile people up rather than calm them down. “What do you do during your summer vacations?”
He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. “Why I work here! What else do you think I do during the summer?” He shook his head to himself as he moved a card. “I fix things and I improve things. I work harder during the summer than during the winter. Winter is spent keeping the place as even as I can. Cleaning, repairing, but rarely improving. Summer’s different. I have the run of the school to make things better than they were before. If the summer vacation length decreases my time to make the school better decreases and I get less done.”
I wasn’t expecting that. I thought everyone walked out of a school for at least part of the summer. It was the best time to have summer vacations and to get away from the classroom. It was, I had to admit, a small reason why I wanted to go into a teaching profession. Though certainly not a deciding factor it would be nice to have a few months each year were I wasn’t teaching instead of a year-round job doing the same thing everyday. Even if that meant a little more work behind the scenes and out of the ‘office’ sometimes.
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