Marguerite
written by: Lenore Weiss
I owe my first job to Marguerite. I sat behind her in seventh grade. She was a quiet girl with sallow skin. One day, the math teacher called upon her to “Explain the square root of two numbers.”
“Happy to.” Marguerite looked up from her desk and displayed a radiant smile. She put down a pocketknife. “Some numbers are rounded and others pointy. They dive below the pavement where they grab glowing fish and multiply.”
None of us could believe that instead of just admitting she didn’t know, Marguerite had dared to give such a fantastical answer, especially to Mrs. Woods, a teacher known for her Woods Rules of Order that included no gum chewing, no talking, and no late homework ever.
Mrs. Woods rapped on the blackboard, her fist covered in chalk. “What kind of answer is that?”
“A square root is like a mirror with reflections.”
Up until now, Mrs. Woods rarely called upon Marguerite. Unlike most of us, she was too quiet and rarely looked up from her desk.
Mrs. Woods marched down the aisle to conduct an independent investigation. “Have you done yesterday’s homework?” She flipped through Marguerite’s workbook and found nothing. She then looked at her desk. “What’s this?” and saw her own image carved with Marguerite’s pocketknife.
Mrs. Woods escorted Marguerite to the principal’s office, who came back to the classroom to observe for himself what Mrs. Woods had only whispered. For the first time in his career, the principal displayed a certain grace, and assigned Marguerite the task of illustrating the entire class yearbook.
Marguerite’s success changed Mrs. Woods from a mediocre teacher into one with a mission. She now expected Marguerite to have all the right answers, and what’s more, she did. Each time Mrs. Woods quizzed her, she sat up straighter, and responded graciously with the right answer, her braids moving ever so slightly along her collar. Yet with each success, Mrs. Woods grew sullen, horrified at her own reaction to what any normal teacher would have encouraged, maybe even celebrated. Six months before Mrs. Woods’ retirement, Marguerite’s success reminded the math teacher of her face carved into Marguerite’s desk. It was Tuesday, Assembly Day; everyone in white blouses.
“Marguerite Alphonzo,” said Mrs. Woods. “Stand up,” and the girl obediently rose. “What do you think should be the punishment for students who draw in class and deface school property?”
Marguerite was dumbfounded. She had done her homework, even turned in several assignments ahead of time. Marguerite’s braids twitched nervously. She was such a winsome girl, with delicate hands and a fragile mouth, two light brown braids balanced dutifully on the ends of her collar.
“I’m waiting for your answer.”
Where was the woman who had given Marguerite a sense of purpose? No where.
She dashed to the blackboard and, in a few broad strokes, drew a loathsome beast. Then she ran outside the class, screaming, “I could have loved you; I could have loved you.” Mrs. Woods picked up an eraser, the words “I could have loved you,” still echoing down the hall.
Running out the door, Marguerite bumped into me. “Mrs. Woods is just a crazy old fart,” I said. “Forget her.”
For several months, I didn’t hear about her, and when I did, I hoped Mrs. Woods would suffer pangs of deep remorse. Marguerite was in the hospital with kidney failure. The doctors wanted to operate and were looking for a kidney.
The county hospital was an old brick building with tendrils of flowers wrapped around the wrought iron door and windows. A man in dusty blue pants sat on the top step next to his German Shepherd, a cup between him and the dog.
“What room is it?” I asked.
“219—the children’s wing.”
A nurse at the desk directed me back downstairs to walk around the Coke machines. By the time I found Room 219, I wondered if I should’ve even come. But I found Marguerite, about twenty pounds thinner when there had never been much of her, a kind of plastic soda straw threaded down her nostrils with brownish-blue gunk bubbling through the straw into a jar that stood on a table next to her bed.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Lulu. I sit in behind you in math.” She said nothing. “I thought Mrs. Woods was mean, and I heard you were sick,” I handed her the yearbook that contained her pictures.
Marguerite took the book and smiled at her pen and ink drawings of the lunchroom, the auditorium, the play yard. She began crying so hard, I was sure she was going to yank the soda straws from her nose.
“I’ll dance for you,” I said, trying to distract her, and drew Marguerite’s yellow curtain around us, stretching my hands above the railing, inconspicuously pushing her bedpan into a corner.
“Tonight you are at a very special club,” I said, “and the music is hanging in the air because it is so humid and the sound has no place to travel except to stay next to you all evening like a perfume; the music is your partner with the flowers and the fragrance and a flecked moon in the sky that has orange and pink rings around it.” I began singing Besame Mucho, dancing the steps the way my mother had shown me when she was still alive. Different faces crammed the doorway, patients from other rooms, nurses with medication, looking at me with wide open lips.
The hospital staff hired me to come into the Solarium every Saturday afternoon to entertain the patients. I visited Marguerite two more times, but she didn’t get any better.
None of it was fair.
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