Lenny and Miss D

She doesn’t stand a chance in a classroom full of teenagers. 

She knows it, and she doesn’t care. If she did she might do something about her clothes (comfortable is her only aesthetic) and her hair (thinning, badly cut, used to be red but now something closer to beige). She did not choose teaching, she always says, to be looked at. She is there to impart knowledge, skills and if the stars align perhaps even a spot of wisdom. She can see well enough through the spectacles she has worn since 1990; why should she spend her hard-earned money on updating them?

Miss D is what they all call her. Her surname is long and cumbersome and she prefers the simplicity. If she cares that they call her Miss Death-stare she doesn’t let on. It’s as if she knows they don’t like her and she encourages it sometimes. When she’s on duty at break time she walks around yelling at kids for eating junk food. What are you thinking, putting that in your body? There’s a rumour she once emptied a bag of cheese curls into the bin. She hates plastic and regularly shows clips of polluted oceans and half-strangled seagulls. You might think, if you were a kid in one of her classes, that it’s all your fault.

Most of the kids she teaches are idiots. She never says this but they feel it; in her glares, her angry red scrawls on their shoddy work, in her vinegary tone. You call this RESEARCH? She has this thing she does, when she’s disappointed in them, where she flaps whatever pathetic assignment or test has particularly offended her in the air, holding it by two fingers away from her body as if it smells bad. They call it THE FLAP. You gonna get the FLAP for that, Janice! I hope I don't get the FLAP! Oooh, Nicky, better write another paragraph and make it super neat, or you’ll get the FLAP!

She’s actually a pretty good teacher. She just loves Geography, she always has and even the dry textbook with its maps and population graphs and diagrams of atmospheric patterns gets her excited. She’s good at explaining, meticulous in her preparation, always up to date. She squeezes good grades out of her idiots; no one can fault her for that. 

Lenny is eighteen and he’s a softie. He’s cuddly, tall, dark-skinned and curly-haired. He’s nice to everyone and never raises his voice. Everyone likes him, even the teachers who forgive his dismal grades when they see that he really is trying and that the often indecipherable work he turns in really is his best. He wanted to do Physics and Computer Science but he didn't get in, so for the last four years (it should have been three but he had to repeat last year) he has been stuck with Geography and Miss D. He’s endured THE FLAP more times than he can remember but he doesn’t hold it against her. It’s one of his best subjects, actually, thanks to her lessons. He doesn’t do so well with reading; he’s better at listening, and when she talks he finds he understands stuff. And he likes the maps. Fancy words and long sentences confuse him but pictures he can work with. Signs, symbols, lines. He just likes them. 

There’s been a pile of old textbooks in the corner of the classroom for weeks now. One afternoon he asks her, when the rest of the class has left, what they are for. 

“I’m going to donate them,” she says, looking at him over her specs. It’s Friday and the last lesson of the day; Lenny thinks she looks tired. She hurt her back a while ago, missed a week of school and came back hobbling a bit and kind of bent over. “A friend works at a school that could use them. I’ll take them to my place when I’m feeling stronger.”

“I can help with that.” Lenny likes doing people favours. It makes him feel important, and maybe he is also just a kind soul. 

She looks sceptical. Lenny doesn’t get it – he just wants to help. 

“I have time now, Miss D,” he says. “I can carry them to your car.”

She narrows her eyes. “Okay,” she says, slowly. “Thanks.”

He ends up carrying her bag too, and a pile of books she needs to mark. He makes two trips, while she waits in the parking lot. 

“I’ll hang around here on Monday morning to help you carry these back to your class,” he says, as he puts the books onto the back seat of her rusty sky-blue Honda. 

“Thanks.” She doesn’t look at him. “Have a nice weekend, Lenny. Behave yourself.”

“Sure, Miss D!” he says, grinning as he opens the driver’s door for her. 

But as she bends to get into the car she knocks her head. Lenny, half-turned to leave, hears a cry of pain. 

“Miss D!” She is leaning on the door, eyes scrunched shut, frozen in a half-hunch. “Are you okay?”

She shakes her head. “Done it again.” She sounds strangled, Lenny thinks. 

“What can I do?’ he asks. “Miss D?”

She shakes her head, and to his horror he sees tears are escaping her still-closed eyes. 

“I don't know,” she whispers. “I need to get home.”

“Can I call someone?” 

She shakes her head again. 

He suggests getting one of the other teachers, or the principal, or the caretaker to help. It’s late, most of the kids have gone home and there is no one in sight right now. After every suggestion is met with silence, he realises she is in too much pain to make any decision. 

“Okay Miss D,” he says. “We got two options. Three maybe.”

She nods. She still clutches onto the door and her knuckles have gone white. 

“I can call someone from school to drive you home. Or an ambulance.”

She shakes her head. 

“Or I can drive you. I have a licence.”

She nods this time. “It’s not far,” she whispers. “A few blocks. Dean Street.”

“Okay!” Lenny feels encouraged. This is a plan. “That’s near the station. I can easily take the train after.”

“No ambulance,” she says, trying to move and then yelping in pain. “I just need my pills and my bed.”

It takes a while and he can tell it hurts her a lot, but in ten minutes Lenny has her in the back seat, sitting awkwardly forward. She is sweating, breathing hard, really suffering. He gets her keys and starts the car, his school bag on the passenger seat. Her flat is very close, and in three turns they have arrived. It takes more than ten minutes to get her out of the car, and he is about to get out his phone to call an ambulance after all when she finally manages to grip his arm and pull herself out. Somehow they get to the entrance, into the elevator and up to the fifth floor. She hangs onto his arm so tightly all the way that by the time he has got the door open he is pretty sure he will have bruises. 

When he’s helped her lower herself onto her bed, and she has managed to tell him where to find her pills, he finally looks around. 

Plants, of course. That doesn’t surprise him. They are everywhere, even on top of the fridge in the small kitchen where he goes to fetch her water. Cats live here; he can smell them (their pee at least) and there are hairs on the carpet, food bowls on the counter. He smiles to himself – he would have been surprised if she didn't have cats. There are avocados in a basket, and an empty oat milk bottle. The glasses in the cupboard are mismatched, mostly amber-tinted, and on one shelf are five (he counts them) teapots. He nearly bursts out laughing when he sees a dog-eared poster of the Backstreet Boys on the kitchen door. But it’s when he walks through the small living room to return to her room with the water that he sees something that surprises him so much he almost drops the glass. 

He continues to her room, not wanting to linger and make it seem as if he is snooping. She is half-sitting against her pillows (dark purple, and there’s an Indian scarf hung on the wall), still hurting too much to do anything but crack her eyes open a little, take the water and swallow the pills she was holding in her shaking hand.  

“Can you feed the cats?” Her voice is strained. “Half a cup in each bowl. They will come in later.”

“Sure, Miss D. What about a cup of tea?”

She nods, eyes closed again. 

“Black, no sugar?” She smiles. He has guessed right. 

He measures out cat food, puts the kettle on. Then returns to the living room, knowing he probably shouldn’t.

It’s a wall of framed photos. No family, no ancient grandmothers or smiling babies. No weddings or holiday snaps, but class photos, rows of kids in uniforms just like the one he has on now. She must have run out of space, because all of one and half of another wall are covered in them. The older ones are framed in wood and glass, the newer ones in just the cardboard frames they come in. He has a few himself, in a drawer somewhere. Amazed, he looks across the room to see a table that holds more, casual snaps this time, in the familiar classroom and school hall, of smiling kids holding up projects, or standing beside presentations of planets, ecosystems, tornadoes. One is of Miss D standing beside a group of three kids he recognises from a few years back. The kids hold up certificates and Miss D is beaming with pride. There’s one of a boy and a girl climbing on top of a model of the earth – he recognises it as the one that’s outside the Science museum, where Miss D takes her seniors every year without fail. And In pride of place, framed in white above the table is a blown-up picture of Angela someone, the girl who made their school famous by becoming a national weather reporter. She’s standing with Miss D at the school weather station, holding up a rain gauge. 

Man, it’s like the glass cabinet in the foyer outside the school office, packed with trophies and shields and pictures of famous ex-pupils and old principals. It’s like … a shrine. 

Lenny makes tea, adjusts pillows, gets her phone charger and plugs it in beside her bed. He makes two trips back to the car to get the books. 

“Thank you Lenny,” Miss D says, as he is about to leave. The pills are kicking in and she seems calmer, although she has barely moved an inch. “There are popsicles in the freezer. Take one if you like.”

“Is there someone you can call?” he asks, standing in the doorway of her bedroom. It’s very embarrassing to see her like this, in her bed, but he feels funny leaving her here so helpless. 

“I’ll call my brother, don’t worry about me.” She smiles a bit and he feels reassured. “It’s just a spasm. It will pass.”

“Okay.” He looks down at his feet, wondering if she is embarrassed too. 

“Leave the keys inside. The door will just lock behind you,” she says. “And make sure you go over the chapter for Monday and finish that assignment. You need more time behind your desk than most.”

He nods. Yup, her pills are working. He wonders if she is going to ask him not to tell about all this. He could get a lot of attention out of it. Miss D has like a thousand plants! Her place smells of cat wee, and she has a BACKSTREET BOYS poster on her kitchen door! He’s barely out of the door when she calls him back. 

“Say what you want when you see your friends,” she says. She winces as she shifts her position. “I don't care.”

Lenny takes the stairs fast, three at a time, his school bag jolting on his back. He thinks about the Charlie Brown cartoon one of his teachers has stuck up on her door, where Charlie worries that he forgot to give his teacher a letter he wrote her, and Lucy suggests he sends it to her home. Teachers have homes? Charlie asks. 

Yeah, teachers have homes. 

The chances he’s going to get the flap for his assignment are pretty high. Geography isn’t going to suddenly turn into a part of his day that he enjoys. She’s not going to give him bonus marks for saving her from having to ask someone else for a favour. He doesn’t get fluvial geomorphology and he probably never will, but he won’t be telling anyone about the photos, or the cats or the boy band poster. He’s not sure why. He just doesn’t want to. 

But the popsicle – he opens it on the train and laughs as he reads the label. 100% natural! Dairy and Sugar free! Pure apple, pear and prune puree with added real lemon juice!

Prune puree? Now this he might spread around a little. It won’t do any harm and come on, it’s funny.

He bites off a piece. It’s grainy and kind of weird. So sour it makes his teeth hurt. But it has to be good for you. No denying that. 

Kind of like Miss D herself.