Amanda Veautour

She tells me I'm wrong. She deserves a slap. The sting of her voice is what gets me, that high-pitch whine that only a pre-pubescent girl can reach. The melody that drives my fantasies of slicing tongues with metal rulers.

'That's not how I spell my name, Mr. Kelmer,' she says.

'Oh, do you use two Ts?' I ask.

'No, just one. But that's not right,' she says.

'I don't think there's another way to spell Bridgette,' I say.

'Well, that's not how I spell it.'

I rip open my desk's long, skinny middle drawer and tug too hard and too fast. The drawer falls out. The handle lands on my roller chair and my pencils, pens, erasers, chewing gum and ATM receipts scatter on the floor. She is the only kid laughing. I scan the mess for my thick Sharpie and find it near the trashcan. I walk over to her desk, pull off her nametag and position my marker.

'Spell it,' I say.

'B-R-I-D-G-E-I-T-H,' she says.

'There is not an H at the end of your name,' I say.

'No. Bridgeit H.. My last name is Harper.'

'Well, there's not another Bridge-it in the class this year. So, we don't need the H.'

Her patent leather shoes slam the linoleum. 'But I am Bridgeit H! I've always been Bridgeit H! Mr. Kelmer, you're not fair!'

I give her a look. She's not intimidated. She couldn't care less that my shoe is wide enough to kick her from the mid-section to the neck, or that her head aligns perfectly with my gut and that I could topple her with one good twist. She has no idea how dangerously close I am to balling a fist and ridding her of those first two adult teeth. I breathe and remind myself of the non-lethal mousetraps I've set in the basement; I'm not a violent person.

'It's true,' Katie Wheeler says, 'I've been with Bridgeit H since kindergarten and she's always been Bridgeit H.'

'Katie, you have not. You didn't even move here till Kindergarten was halfway over, dummy,' Bridgeit H says.

'Hey!' I say.

'Sorry,' Bridgeit H says. 'She's right though. I've always been Bridgeit H.'

'Fine.' I make the proper adjustments to her nametag, sloppily.

'Mine doesn't look as nice as the other kids',' she says.

'We'll fix it later,' I lie. 'Welcome to third grade. Let's start by introducing ourselves. Who wants to go first?'

Bridgeit H is the only kid raising her hand. I let her talk while I try to fix my desk. I try not to look so annoyed. I try not to be too loud. Three of them want to cry and I can't deal with tears this early.

It's only a name - a fixable mistake. But they're getting worse. The Kenneths with Cs, or all the old names with the new Ys - Lyndsy, Jordyn, Kymmy - now Bridgette spelled like a bridge with 'it'? It's not just the sheer idiocy. It's the time. It's the temper tantrums over the wrong letters. It's the notes from parents reminding you that there is no H at the end of their Hanna. It's the little attitudes, thinking they can outsmart their teachers on the first day. Driving us to break our desks. Lauren says I'm starting to stress the little things. She tells me it might be time to quit teaching. I tell her it might be time for people to quit having kids. She tells me not everyone can be as blessed as us. She means as broken as me. We found out five years in. I'm sterile.

I've never really wanted children. I don't really like them, but when I was one, they didn't much care for me either. I never got beat up or anything. I wasn't Nolleen Inkling. I didn't smell like turds or rat out the kid who spiked Mrs. Colonis' coffee with pencil shavings. I just never understood the spiking to begin with, or the pulling of little girls' braids, or Red Rover Red Rover, or farting. The other kids thought I was weird. They spat milk out their noses when Tommy McElroy stood on a cafeteria bench and mooned the teachers' table. I covered my eyes and pretended not to cry. Tommy got invited to all the birthday parties. I got invited to Nolleen's. I didn't go.

The only part about being a kid that I ever enjoyed was school. Not my actual classmates or any of my teachers, but the textbooks, the worksheets, writing on the board, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, cartons of milk, hand crank pencil sharpeners - this stuff I understood. Pre-school right through college I liked being in a classroom, learning the answers, reading new stuff. I liked knowing if I wanted an 'A' I could study and get an 'A', or if I didn't, I could not and not. I sold ad-space for a small newspaper right after I finished undergrad. I sold more space than any other ad-exec, worked longer hours, brought in more new clients, even covered a couple of area high school games when the regular sports guy was too busy freelancing for someone else. When our assistant business manager landed a gig for a real newspaper, I interviewed for his position. I didn't get it. They passed for some doofus who'd been at the paper longer, but hadn't reeled in a new client since before I started. I stormed into my boss's office ranting that this was BS, that I earned that promotion, that I'd worked my ass off. I told him it wasn't fair. He told me this wasn't school. People think teachers become teachers because they like the kids; I became a teacher because I like fair. The kids are just an occupational hazard.

Lauren was good at being a kid. Her mother has stacks of photo albums filled with thousands of miniature Laurens covered in pink and white icing at neighborhood parties, and in ear-to-ear smiles each year at the bus stops. I bet Lauren laughed with boys such as Tommy McElroy. She would have been in on the coffee-spiking. We met after I started working at John Stark Elementary. She liked dating a teacher. She loved marrying one. I think she thought that my occupation meant that deep down I was sensitive. She asked if we could invite some of my students to the wedding. I told her only if I was getting paid to be there. The first time I called one of them a c—- she cried; she was drunk. She told me I couldn't really think that way. I told her after watching a kid bite another kid's forearm hard enough to break skin and taste blood, that, yeah, I could. She worried over what the biter was seeing at home. I suggested cannibalism. She slapped my shoulder and said our kids would never bite. I started sucking on her belly button and she stopped talking about kids. The day the doctor told us I was the problem, Lauren came home and lay on our office floor with a bottle of Pinot Noir. She beat one fist against the carpet. She'd planned on turning the office into a nursery. I grabbed the calculator out of the junk drawer and totaled up how much we'd wasted on condoms and pills before we'd started trying. We could have afforded a bigger television.

Lunch duty is the third worst part of teaching grammar school. The first two are sh-t and piss. Kids take a long time to understand the toilet's major function, and you'd think by first grade they'd get it. They don't. You'd also think that teaching third grade would grandfather you out of the sh-t-changing business. It doesn't, not when you're the token male teacher. Little boys have no control and state law requires that two adults be present whenever a kid's pants are down.

The first day is half over and I haven't helped rinse out any superhero or rocket briefs, but I drew lunch duty. I consider asking to switch, but that would require conversing with a co-worker. I try to avoid that. I don't trust any of them. They all like these kids, and all kids lie, and people who adore liars are idiots, perverts or both. The idiots love the liars because the idiots are too simple to recognize the lies, and the perverts can trust the liars not to be trusted. For the most part this school's filled with idiots. Grown-ups who've been lied to so much, and with such finesse, they start accepting lying as okay, helpful, even rewarding. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Proclaiming scribbles as masterpieces. Promises to fix nametags. They tell one lie, we lead with another.

I stop at my class's lunch table and notice Katie Wheeler has no food. She's sitting with Bridgeit H and another little girl whose name I've yet to learn.

'Katie, why aren't you in the hot lunch line?' I ask.

'Katie doesn't like hot lunch,' Bridgeit H says.

'Bridgeit, I'm talking to Katie,' I say.

'Bridgeit H,' she says.

'Bridge-it H, I'm talking to Katie.'

'That's okay Mr. Kelmer, I really don't like hot lunch,' Katie says.

Liar. Ten minutes before we'd walked down to the cafeteria, I read the hot lunch menu out loud (pizza, salad, Texas Toast, sliced peaches, and choice of regular or chocolate milk) and Katie had actually bounced off her chair and pumped her arms. She looked ridiculous, but excited and hungry.

'Katie, you need to eat something,' I say.

'She is,' Bridgeit H says. 'She's having my apple.' Bridgeit H hands Katie her apple.

'An apple is not enough.' I hand Bridgeit H's apple back to Bridgeit H. 'I'm sorry Katie, you're going to have to get in line. I'll walk you to the front if you'd like.'

'No, Mr. Kelmer. It's okay, I'll just go to the end,' Katie says.

I turn away.

'Pizza makes you fatter, Katie, and you're already a fatty, fat tubo,' Bridgeit H attempts to whisper.

I turn back.

'I'm going! I'm going!' Katie says as she waddles past.

And I let her waddle. She doesn't need a fake apology from Bridgeit H.

'I'm glad you made Katie get lunch,' Bridgeit H says. 'I love apples.' She takes a bite.

I watch juice ooze down her chin. You're a mess, I think.

The bell rings. It's recess. It's not really a bell, just a recording. Fake or real, it means I can go hide in my room. Thank Christ. The playground is dangerous. Aside from the swings and the splintered wood castles and the giant metal slide that burns the backsides of bare legs, the playground is where the worst lies are told. It's where biters, blood pooled in the corner of their mouths, swear they didn't bite anyone. Where six-year-olds trip on unlaced shoes and egg their heads. Where little girls tell each other that eating lots of liver can make a baby, and where little boys kick each other in the groin. The playground harbors criminals. Kids that hunt abandoned jackets for pocketed cereal toys or partially melted chocolates, snipers who hide behind plastic posts. The spitters. The criers. The tattlers. Schools should issue body armor and bazookas.

The classroom is cool and empty. I open the windows but pull down the blinds. I fiddle with my middle drawer. I've got it to fit but it won't slide right. I wonder if this will be a yearlong problem. I find the littlest key attached to my key ring and unlock my bottom right drawer where I keep my lunch. I push back the front files, old grading books, copy masters, incident reports, scraps of contact paper. I should clean my desk. Maybe tomorrow. I pull out a crumpled brown bag holding the two sandwiches I fixed last night - turkey, provolone, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, salt and pepper, on wheat. I open the carton of whole milk I stole from the cafeteria and sip, and stare at the in-class library. The 12' by 12' pieces of multi-colored carpet in the Sharing Circle. The gallon of Elmer's Glue. I bite into my first sandwich. I wish it could stay like this.

'Excuse me,' Janine, the school's secretary, says knocking. 'Mr. Kelmer, there's been an incident.'

Janine is the least trustworthy. She makes less than most store clerks. She memorizes the phone numbers of all the Moms whose kids have nut allergies. She wears a lot of carnation pink and keeps a jar of gummy bears on her desk. People who do too much for too little do so for a reason. She's always saying she does it for the kids; I think she's one of the perverts. Her nipples are always hard. Last year at John Stark's annual bake sale, a mother asked Janine and me to get closer for a picture, so I put one hand on her back. She wasn't wearing a bra.

'Katie is going to sit in here and wait with you till her Mom comes,' Janine says. She guides Katie into the room, making sure not to touch her. I can smell Katie from four rows away; she smells the way I smelled the morning after my third date with Lauren. She smells like piss.

'Thank you, Mr. Kelmer,' Janine says.

I put up a hand. She leaves. Katie stares at the floor.

'You have an accident?' I ask.

Katie shakes her head. 'I spilled. Mr. Lamby said I could go home.'

'Aha,' I say, 'so the office was involved.'

Katie nods.

'Are you in trouble?'

'No,' she says, 'Bridgeit H.'

'Bridgeit H is in trouble?' I try to mask my enthusiasm. I rip into my second sandwich, making sure to keep the bread under my nose while I bite and chew. Katie clearly doesn't want to tell me what happened, and now I'm stuck reminiscing that date.

We were at a bar to hear a cover band. Lauren insisted we drink dirty vodka martinis. This bar was the kind of place that advertised pitchers of Natural Light for a dollar, and I was the kind of guy who only drank a few beers in college during footballs games. The bartender had to ask what was in a dirty vodka martini. Lauren told him vodka, olive juice and olives. The bartender did his best and bobbed three olives on top of two tumblers of vodka. Lauren drank enough to wade her olives in the middle of her glass, and then enough to sink them to the bottom. I didn't. Lauren finished her second 'martini' before I was a quarter way through my first. She got annoyed when I couldn't keep up, and ordered a round of rum-and-coke instead. We each drank three. I never puked, but I pissed the bed that night. When I woke up Lauren was on the couch. She kissed me and promised not to tell. She told me she could never trust a guy who'd never been drunk, and that next time she'd help me leave a different kind of wet spot.

What was that stain on Katie's shirt? And why were her corduroys dry?

'So what did she do?' I finally ask.

'Nothing,' Katie says.

'Katie, stop lying,' I say.

'I'm not!'

'Something happened. You're sitting in here. Bridgeit's in the office.'

'Bridgeit H,' she says,

'Bridgeit H is in the office, your Mom's on her way, and you smell like,' I take another bite.

'Pee.'

'Yes. Right. So, so did she scare you and you had an accident or something?'

'No.'

'Did she kick you in the stomach? Block the door to the bathroom?'

'No, she,' Katie lifts open the top of her desk and pulls out four pencils. A blue one, a pink one, a yellow one, and one that's decorated like an American flag. She lines them up horizontally in the divot at the top of her desk. 'She didn't do that,' she says.

I watch her organize the pencils. She keeps changing their positions. She's thinking. It's encouraging, seeing a kid think in a classroom.

'I didn't have an accident,' she says. 'I had apple juice. Bridgeit H saved me a juice bottle. You know those little juice bottles that kids who have cold lunch bring?'

I don't answer but I try to crunch my chips softer.

'Well, Bridgeit H gave me her juice at recess. She said since you took her apple away from me at lunch that I should drink it instead. That apples were good for fatsos. I told her I had peaches. She said apples were better, she said apples would help me be skinny. I told her the juice smelled funny. She said it didn't. I told her to smell it but she said that only weirdos smell juice, and then, and then she made me take a sip. She made me take a sip and when I had it on my mouth, she just pushed, just pushed the bottle up.'

The pink pencil rolls off Katie's desk and up to the first row. She stares at it. I finish my last chip. There's a sliver of barbeque-dusted fried potato lodged in my gum. I walk over and pick up Katie's pencil.

'I told her I didn't want to drink it,' Katie says. 'I told her it smelled funny.'

I put Katie's pencil at the end of her line and take a good stare at the wet spot on her shirt. There's a yellow tint. All I can taste is the smell of piss. She's the first student I consider hugging.

'Katie,' I say, 'I hope Bridgeit H's Mom kicks the crap out of her. She's a mean little girl. Don't play with her, or listen or talk to her. Don't even think about her. And if you do, think bad thoughts. And stop lying.' She looks into my face. 'And apples won't make you skinny.'

Katie blinks and keeps rearranging her pencils until her Mom shows. Mrs. Wheeler is upset. She picks up her daughter and says only, Thank you. I put up a hand and sigh. I walk over to Katie's desk and gather her pencils. I'm worried. Which one did Katie want where? I decide to put all of them in my middle drawer, and then I notice fresh pit stains. I'll have to grab my suit coat out of the trunk of my car. I hate wearing suit coats, but I always have one. Kids say awful things about teachers who sweat.

I tell Lauren what happened over thawed, processed Shepard's Pie. I'm drinking milk, Lauren's on her second glass of Merlot. She likes pairing expensive wine with cheap food. She says it evens things out. I think, like us.

'That's the worse thing yet,' Lauren says.

'I don't know if it tops the biter,' I say.

'Jonathan, the poor little thing was drinking piss!'

'Yeah, but the biter didn't stop with that girl's forearm. There was the incident in the boys' room.'

'You never told me about the boys' room.'

'I did so. The two boys? After using the urinal? The biter?' I dip a forkful of potato, corn and beef into a round of ketchup.

Lauren douses her dinner with more salt. She takes another bite. Three more sips. 'The urinal. The biter. The ambulance! I remember now. But Jonathan, this was girls.'

'This is true,' I say, 'these were girls.'

'I wonder how she actually got the piss into the juice?'

'I don't.'

'F—-,' she says. 'How do these kids get so damn crazy? Our kid would never, ever, even think of it.'

She still says that a lot, out of habit, I think.

I swallow and watch Lauren cradle her glass against her chest.

I watch her trying to rinse off dishes.

I watch her break a plate.

I watch her eyes droop and her legs open. I watch her roll over, not caring to clean up. I watch her pass out.

I watch her and think, we would make terrible parents.

Then I fall asleep, soundly.

Lauren opens the bedroom door.

'I'm leaving,' she says.

'Mm hmm,' I mutter.

'I have a meeting. I won't be home for dinner.'

'Mm hmm.'

'You know it's already past eight, right?'

'Sh-t.'

She closes the door and I finally get up. I get in and out of the shower in ten minutes, pat myself dry, brush my teeth, rinse my mouth, lather my armpits in deodorant, dress, fill a travel mug with coffee, grab my bag and start for the car. School's only five minutes away and it's early September. I could walk, but I'm running late, and I never walk.

I pull into the faculty lot and sit. The car's still running. There's some punk song on the radio. I know the song, but I don't know the title or the artist. The kid is singing about wanting someone to shove, needing someone to shove, wanting someone to shove him. I think it's a remake of some other song, I think the original lyrics were about wanting someone to love, I think I like this remake better. I sing along and picture Bridgeit H and me pushing each other on the playground; I'm winning. I turn off the radio, take three deep breaths and heave myself out of my 2000 Civic. I'm getting too cranky and fat for an economy car. Maybe for our anniversary Lauren will buy me an SUV, maybe I'll buy her one of those fancy wine openers.

I use the back entrance. My shoes are still a bit wet from the morning dew, and the janitor, Mike, always waxes the floors on Wednesday mornings. It's Wednesday and the squeak of my shoes is echoing. I love the sound. I drag my feet all the way into my classroom. Her giggle ruins it.

'What are you doing, Mr. Kelmer?' she says.

'Bridgeit, what ar-'

'Bridgeit H,' she says.

'Right, whatever. What are you doing?'

'My mom does Pilates on Wednesdays, so she drops me off early.'

'Well, if you get here early you're supposed to wait in the cafeteria with the other kids.' I walk past her, making sure to pick up my feet.

'Yeah, I don't like it there.' She follows me. 'So, I thought I'd just wait in here.'

'Well, you thought wrong, Miss Harper.' I twirl my finger towards the door.

Bridgeit H crosses her arms. 'Mr. Kelmer, you've got to have something I can help you with.'

'It's only the second day, Bridgeit H, and I think you should be trying to follow every rule to a T after yesterday's incident.' I sit down at my desk, open up my bag, take out my lunch and slide out my lunch drawer.

'Huh?' she says.

I put my food in place and slam the drawer. 'Huh?' I mock.

Bridgeit H blows her bangs. 'Are you taking about the Katie thing? Because my Mom talked to her Mom and she's not even mad at me anymore. It was an accident. I just saw this thing on TV and thought I was helping.'

'Helping?! What did you think you were helping her with?' I push both hands against my desk. It moves a little.

'Being, you know,' Bridgeit H wraps her arms around an imaginary belly and jiggles.

'You thought pee would help with her weight?'

'Yup, saw it some show, or something like that,' she says. 'Doesn't matter, Katie says we're friends again and my Mom said if her Mom says it's okay she can come over on Friday for a sleepover and we can make popcorn and drink sugar soda.'

I cover my face with my hands and start rubbing above my eyebrows.

'Mr. Kelmer, can I ask you something?'

No, I want to say.

'Did you tell Katie that you wanted my Mom to beat me up?'

I keep rubbing. And sweating. 'Huh?' I say

'Did you tell Katie that you wanted my Mom to beat me up? Because I didn't think teachers could say those things, and my Mom wouldn't ever do that anyway, but did you say that? Katie said you said that, but sometimes Katie just says things. She once told my Mom once that I said the S word, but I didn't say the S word, or any words. So, did you say that?'

I stop rubbing and stand up. Bridgeit H follows me to the back of the room, to the tall file cabinet.

'Mr. Kelmer, did you? Did you-'

'Bridgeit H, take that nametag off your desk and throw it away.' I unlock the cabinet and pull out what I need.

Bridgeit H does what I ask, and then comes over to my desk to watch me write out her stupid name, with her stupid capital H, in my best penmanship, on a new nametag.

'Mr. Kelmer,' she grabs her piece of decorated cardboard, 'it's prettier than anyone else's!'

'It is,' I say. And it's not fair, I think.