For Alice, it had been a moment of truth. Using all of her strength to hurt someone was not the person she was. Some athletes were no doubt intelligent, but couldn’t she be an athlete without becoming a monster? And if she was going to be a Christian, now or ever, it would be by finding peace, not victory at some silly sport. In that moment, she had become what she despised in others, and she didn’t want to go there ever again, not into that arena of madness where she had no control over what she was doing.
As much as Alice regretted losing her temper, she couldn’t excuse anyone who would mock her just because she was going to a Christian school. Almost all of the students at Saint Michael’s were Catholic, but it was still a public school. Maybe if it had been a Catholic school they would have shown more respect. Maybe the people in charge of public schools thought it was all right to be sacrilegious about heaven, but she couldn’t turn into one of them, could she? Going to a Christian school had to mean that there were some differences. Alice thought there were many differences, actually. In her mind, most kids in public schools didn’t take life seriously, and they certainly didn’t take their studies seriously. Alice imagined that in a school without prayer and chapel, there was nothing to remind students that “Life is real, life is earnest.” The teachers in public schools probably didn’t take life seriously either. They got paid more than the teachers at Midwest Christian and must have thought life was one big expensive party with summer made up of beer and pretzels. It was a wonder that any students from public schools could get admitted to any college. What would it mean to be the valedictorian in a public school? That you’d learned which direction you had to go to get to Canada and could use a sentence without using “ain’t”? “Our girls are going to heaven.” You bet. On the issue of defending Midwest Christian, Alice would stand her ground—but not with her elbows. Never again.
You didn’t have to elbow anybody in debate and choir. They would be the only extracurricular activities for Alice in her senior year. Lydia was in choir too but wasn’t interested in debate. “I don’t want to learn to argue both sides of an issue,” she said. “I just want to argue the right side. My side.”
That was Lydia: funny, quick, and always clear about how she felt. To Alice, debate taught clarity and balance. It taught that there really are two sides to almost every issue. Rev. Prunesma would disagree, but he had a Dweller’s tunnel vision on every issue.
Lydia was no Dweller, but she could be stubborn, a real contender in any argument, a fact that, to Alice, just made her more interesting. She was always a challenge, but it was as if Lydia saw in Alice what her parents couldn’t see. Lydia constantly reminded Alice how intelligent she was—and how beautiful. “You could make a million dollars as a model if you wanted to,” she said.
“Right,” Alice said. “A model what? Model string bean for Jolly Green Giant advertisements?”
“And your wit!” Lydia howled.
But Lydia didn’t talk about Alice’s beauty or wit when they first saw each other in the hallways.
“How are things at home?” she asked.
“Don’t ask,” said Alice.
“Come on,” said Lydia. “I heard the hailstorm hit you hard and that you didn’t have hail insurance.”
“The rumor mill is alive and well,” said Alice.
Alice had dreaded the hailstorm topic because it would be a reminder that living on a farm not only carried bad smells with it, but potential economic disaster as well. Still Lydia was different: she might compete with Alice for grades, but she wasn’t the kind of person who found perverse pleasure in a friend’s misfortunes. Alice once had a friend like that, and Lydia was not of that kind.
“Not really,” said Lydia. “I think my mom talked to one of your neighbors. I don’t gossip, you know that.”
“I know that.”
Lydia looked at Alice with her bright, intelligent eyes. “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”
“My feelings are still pretty raw,” said Alice.
“You in Miss Den Harmsel’s class with me ?” Lydia gracefully changed the subject.
“Yes!”
The mention of Miss Den Harmsel’s class put them both in an immediate bright mood. They had an equal admiration for her and love of her classes, and they loved the fact that she didn’t change from one year to the next. While her students grew and altered their appearance, one hairstyle this year and another the next and one clothing fashion one year and another the next, Miss Den Harmsel looked exactly the way she looked the previous spring—and the spring before that. It wasn’t as if she missed every reference to whatever might be the current most popular music group, but she was like the old Krayenbraak house in the way that she was stable and predictable through all kinds of weather.
In class, Miss Den Harmsel wasn’t flashy or funny, but she knew her stuff and was all business. She was almost as tall as Alice, and Alice sometimes imagined that she could be like Miss Den Harmsel someday—except that Alice knew she wanted to get married and have a family. Alice had confused desires, seeing—as was her human lot—through a glass darkly, but she adored Miss Den Harmsel and her unswerving dedication to her work. Her students were her family and she gave them every ounce of energy and knowledge that she had. They’d hear the clicking of her shoes as she approached the classroom, and she’d enter briskly with that wrinkled and serious brow over her long face, lay the textbook down, and say, “Class, we have much to accomplish today”—and then she’d go at it.
“Did she recommend books for you to read over the summer?” Lydia asked as they approached her classroom.
“Of course,” said Alice. “I read them both twice. I just finished rereading The Grapes of Wrath last week. I read Beloved twice in June.”
Lydia looked puzzled. “That’s strange,” she said. “She had me reading The Federalist Papers and Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.”
“Maybe she thought we’d talk to each other and trade books.”
“Maybe she sees us differently,” said Lydia.
They walked into the classroom and sat on opposite sides so that they wouldn’t be tempted to whisper if Miss Den Harmsel said something that excited them both.
This was Senior Advanced Placement Literature. All sixteen students were preparing for college, several of them to become teachers. Miss Den Harmsel loved Emily Dickinson and William Shakespeare. She said that those two authors would be the focus of the entire semester.
Alice savored the prospect and had both thick texts lying on her desk, used copies that cost only four dollars each and which, for some reason, the bookstore manager had set aside for her.
Alice put her hand on the Shakespeare text and waited for Miss Den Harmsel as she distributed a printed study guide.
Why would anyone want to waste their time on a basketball court with insulting morons from public schools when you could spend time in the presence of a Miss Den Harmsel! Alice thought. Public schools didn’t have anybody like Miss Den Harmsel. Miss Den Harmsel was a scholar and elevated students with her high expectations. She acted as if knowing the classics was a birthright that no educated Christian should resist. “Get wisdom. Get understanding,” she often said. She was quoting the Bible: Proverbs.
“If you know Dickinson and Shakespeare, you’re ready to understand all literature,” she began. “Irony is at the heart of both comedy and tragedy,” she said. “Shakespeare and Dickinson knew that.”
It was strange that Miss Den Harmsel would appreciate irony but never speak ironically herself. Ironically, she probably knew that.
11
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