Professional Development
(Originally published in Vignettes, 2014)

            I missed the first day of in-service class. Well, I played hooky. Our supervisor assigned us one of those made-to-order Act 48 classes that we could have finished at home on-line had we had a snow day in August. I was too tired to attend after spending a night bar hopping with a friend who is a weightlifter. I spent most of my afternoon emailing my most ambitious parents about their Princeton bound students, introducing myself, placating their expectations using my best trailer park diction.

            The next day, when the instructor, Mrs. Pythia Paramedir, concluded her lecture on how to accelerate the reading competency of 11th graders from the fourth-grade level to Princeton level in one marking period, she gave us a quiz. She said that the quiz should take us five minutes to complete (essay form).

            I was clueless. I kept looking around trying to find something to refer to, something to read, or someone’s paper to copy. If I let myself drift, I know I would use my laptop to look at sports scores, bag the quiz, and give her an excellent evaluation. That would get me off the hook. The quiz: describe the differences in educational themes in Klondike and Berry, two journal articles we were supposed to have read but were almost unreadable because the copy machine she used was running out of ink.

            My colleagues got busy writing so that they did not have to stick around and do overtime or kiss some central office administrator’s ass if they happened to show to see if we were as bored and miserable as our students would be in September. I sat there looking stupid, which is not a hard thing to do for me. Learning to be stupid has more benefits in education than learning to be smart. Stupidity can earn you merit pay; intelligence only earns letters in your personnel file.

            Out the window, I saw a large group of teachers playing softball. Most of them were standing around in left field. They reminded me of gourds in a field because of their body shapes. They had chosen the other professional development class --- team building. District guidance counselors were in charge. I began to scribble something down on my paper using the educational jargon of the time making sure to throw in statistical varia-tion analysis words like mean rather than common man terms like average. I asked Gail to see her paper to get an idea if I was on the right track.

            Gail knew little about literature or how to critique it. She was a nice enough young woman who would much rather have been home having babies or shopping with her mother-in-law. I was surprised when she was willing to hand her paper over to me, but she did it willingly without any eye contact.

            Women who avoid eye contact seem demure at first almost pitiful. If you get to know them, which for most men takes decades, you realize that they have a sixth sense that only their eyes can expose. It might be their natural inclination toward exhibitionism that they decline their eyes preferring like exotic dancers to expose their bodies rather than reveal their souls. They have an uncanny way of recognizing weaknesses in others. This is due to their primeval mothering instinct. This power makes them reprehensible and the most threatening of the human species. They have panther eyes and like panthers, when the time is right, they take advantage of that weakness. They thrive on disequilibrium making sure they are in the audience for the next feeding frenzy when the weakest pup needs to be culled from the litter. The Human Resources Department needs their service to keep fresh blood in the human pipeline and the jungle inhabitants fit, vigorous, and off balance. When put in charge, they are most indelicate when weaning the weakest of their brood withdrawing their milk slowly until the weakest starved and dizzy for her support falls from the nest voluntarily.

            Men on the other hand (I mean “normal” men, who have not yet morphed into unisexual androids.), once they know a weak-ness in themselves willingly admit it to colleagues. Give a man the opportunity to talk about his ass and he will map a story from itch to colonoscopy. Men have cultivated this trait from being naked with one another in locker rooms. Men prefer certainty even to the point of degradation as T.E. Lawrence pointed out. Men must know where they stand, must know their place on the totem. Like dogs they sniff each other out then roll on the ground to make sure they have placed themselves in the pecking order correctly. Men prefer calm water with little ripples. This could be why research shows that women (I mean “normal” women, not Hofferesque true believer, man-hating feminists.) prefer working with men.

            Gail used her classroom like I imagine she used her kitchen. Whenever I used Gail’s classroom, she would always hide her stapler, so I brought my own only to find out that she hid her staples too. She felt I was like a bossy mother-in-law rear-ranging her cupboards.

            Gail was a big anti-plagiarist, an all-American girl who bought her clothes at Nordstrom’s. It was her call in life to destroy any vestige of mimesis. People who go over the top in fighting plagiarism really lack knowledge of history. They fear allusion or reference having never read Hirsch on cultural knowledge. They lack depth. I blame higher education for this. They do not teach teachers content these days just how to teach which is impossible to do. Thanks to technology, teachers nowadays do not have to teach at all. We now believe that knowledge emerges miraculously from the cyber world, as medievalists believed life emerged from the mud and ooze after a rain. Technology is a tool like a pencil. Do we ask a pencil to stand up by itself and write Macbeth?

            Gail’s one paragraph was right on point. Not having any idea of the details behind her concise writing, I could not use any of her ideas. She wrote in a way that made her writing impossible to plagiarize unless you copied it verbatim. She learned this writing style early like in elementary school to catch copycats or she read too much Hemingway. There was no bullshit in her answer, no name-dropping, and that rendered it unreadable, uninteresting, and 100% correct. There was nothing else to add to her answer. She was one who followed directions. I doubt if she had any friends when she was in school. She would have been a student who kept her mouth shut and just listened or pretended to listen just like a good student should. That would have been good enough to get an A in my book.

            It was 5:30. The teachers had paid their dues to the parents, school board, and that guy who publishes teacher salaries. It was so late that there were not any parents in the parking lot to time our departure. On the mark, the teachers began handing in their quizzes. I asked the instructor, Mrs. Paramedir, if I could have a syllabus and retake the quiz once I had read the material. I would finally learn what the formula was for grading papers on a curve. I was hoping to get something I could use in my classroom or decrease the time I spent correcting compositions.

            Mrs. Paramedir said, "Oh, you weren't here for the first class." (The "oh" sounded like the "oh" of an elementary school teacher when she discovers that one of her students has soiled his pants.) She had made her point and had once again earned her reputation of pinning pairs of balls on her trophy wall. There was nothing I could say. I had to accept the certainty of degradation. That was fine provided I got what I wanted. If that was what they were paying me for, so be it.

            I followed her up the ramp into the freshly painted annex. The maintenance crew had painted everything white. I was amazed at how slowly she walked. Ghostly. I felt like she was exhibiting me as her trophy to the crowd of teachers below trying to exit the building through one door. I thought there might be too much touching going on down there. On the hand, she was exhibiting what was under her stiff flannel skirt to garner the attention of the folks below. All the other doors nearby were locked for security. The glare from the new, tinted blue windows hurt my eyes. It had begun to rain outside that added to the intensity of the refraction of light and the humidity enhanced the smell of perspiration and perfume rising from the crowd at the bottom of the staircase. Someone had powdered themselves with too much lilac.

            Mrs. Paramedir went into a science room and printed me out a coded syllabus. There were horizontal lines of lettering and digits and vertical lines as well with lettering that looked Hindi or Malayalam. I did not want to appear any more stupid than I was. I still had a slight headache from drinking the night before with my weightlifter friend. I did not tell her I could not understand the code.

            "Oh,” she said, “This is written in Singapore Math. It is new. We expect everybody to understand the code." She turned to go, and I grabbed her arm.

            “Now, just hold on a minute,” I said. I was having an allergic reaction to lilac perfume. I could feel my neck turning red and itchy. I needed a cigarette. There was a frog in a jar of formaldehyde on the science table. I wanted to take the frog and place it on my forehead to cool off my headache.

            "Now you are in big trouble," she said. "And it will be up to me to file charges against you for sexual harassment."

            "I’m sorry for grabbing your arm," I said, "but I just wanted to know if I could retake the quiz."

            "Are you threatening me?" she asked. “I don’t like your tone.” I could not tell whether she was playing with me or being serious. She reminded me of Camille Paglia.

            "No," I said. I wished that I had brought along a witness.

            “Listen,” she said. “If you want to grab something on a woman, you’d better grab something more important than her arm.” I knew I was safe.

            “You mean grabbing is like stealing. You better steal enough to make it worth your while,” I said.

            “Exactly,” she said. “Grab a little and we think you’re afraid; grab a lot and we have something to look forward to.” She hesitated. “You know, I am not used to handing out free advice. I bet you have lost many friends by not paying enough attention to women. Didn’t you have a mother?” She moved uncomfortably closer to me.

            “You’ve been a great help, and I am sorry I underestimated you,” I said. She backed up.

            “I am Pythia, the Priestess of Delphi,” she said. “Here in America, I am known as the Measurer for I am well known for my skill of measuring men. I will let you know by next class if I intend to file charges." It was then that I realized that she was a shot and beer and a Nike just do it girl. She found me attractive, but it was late and was hungry.

            “You mean there’s more?” I asked.

            “Yes. Next in-service day,” she said. I knew I could not wait that long, and I suspected that she was waiting for something more.

             I was not too worried about the sexual harassment charges, but I wondered if this chick had been sniffing formaldehyde fumes. Those kinds of charges had become so common in the educational workplace that they had become a right-of-passage. It had become as common as accusations of racism; neither accusation had anything to do with sex or race, but it seemed that they were the most important issues in school.

            I left Mrs. Paramedir in the room after dispensing a dosage of smiles and relishing my emasculation. I thought she was sad to see me go. By now, it was raining hard. Black clouds were accumulating from the west. I went down the same way I came making sure I would find the unchained door. I got in my car, drove over to the softball field, and looked for some teachers who might know something. The group of teachers that had been in left field was huddling together in the dugout. I went over to them. I asked one man if he understood the syllabus.

            He said, “No. why do you think I chose team building instead of that course? I understand how to play softball but Singapore Math...I’m not one to hop on the bandwagon."

            "Aren't you a math teacher?" I asked.

            "Sure, I am," he said. “And aren't you an English teacher? You are the one who should know about languages; math teachers only need to know how to teach kids to keep score. That's why we are playing softball." Everybody laughed except the guidance counselors who were too busy trying to be less humanistic.
"Who won the game?" I asked.

            "Nothin'. Nothin'," he said. "Chapter One, Introduction to Zero.”

            I got up to walk to my car and noticed Mrs. Paramedir walking across the parking lot pushing a bright yellow plastic wheelbarrow to her car. She looked ridiculous. It was raining everywhere except where she walked. Over top of her were two squawking red-tailed hawks. I thought they would fall from the sky like some kind of mythic omen. I ran across the field shouting, “Pythia! Pythia!” and whistling my best red-tail hawk call.

            She stopped just before she got to her car. I ran up to her and grabbed her ass between the two parked cars. The red-tails flew away.

            “I will tell you exactly what is going to happen,” she said to me. Her eyes drifted from side to side as if she were under some kind of spell. She was ovulating, and my touch increased the flow of lava.

            “Do you know where the Granite Run Mall is?”

            “If it’s in Delaware County, I’m not allowed there anymore,” I said.

            “My husband is on a business trip and won’t be home until late,” she said.

            I had mastered the new Singapore Math and wondered if the new math had any effect on telling time because I sure did not want to be there when her husband got home.

            “Don’t worry,” she said. “Just follow me to Sun Valley.”

“Boy, that’s a reversal,” I said.

            I followed her home doing everything I could not to get lost. There was much traffic that time of day. When we arrived at her house, she asked me to help her plant a balled and burlapped hemlock. She said her husband could not do it because of his heart. She even confided that she and her husband were not very active and then asked me if I wanted a drink. Before I could answer, she was pouring Canadian Club into a tall Yogi Bear glass.
           
            By now, the rain had subsided to a drizzle. She helped me take off my shirt and brought me a pair of her husband’s galoshes. Size twelve. I thought I hope I do not disappoint her. I pretended to fit in the galoshes. I wear a size eight and a half.

            I knew how far I would have to dig to plant her tree. Deep. Very deep. I planted the tree while she watched from the breezeway. Afterward, she asked how she could return the favor. She had changed into her pajamas.

            “How about if you just pretend, I’m at the next in-service,” I said.
I finished my drink and felt much better. I had not noticed before, but Mrs. Paramedir looked a little bit like Candice Bergen. I told her that and she said that people said that all the time. I kissed her several times and left. I was not man enough to wear her husband’s galoshes.

            I went to the Flat Iron bar, drank some more, got sick, and pissed on a wall at Sharples Works before driving home.

 

Don Pito (2014)

Ramonita traveled with her parents who worked on the farms of South Jersey. As she got older, her affinity for the area grew especially toward the Napoli farm. There, the soft, porous soil reminded her of the narrow flat lands between the mountains and the beaches of Puerto Rico where she watched her parents cut cane and load the little train with cane that went from Salinas to the Bacardi factory in Ponce in the fifties.

Before her fifteenth birthday, she married Don Lilo, a good man full of promises who was a dozen or so years older than she was and whose blood had already been thickened by the harsh New York winters. Don Lilo promised Ramonita’s father, mother, and aunts and uncles a better life for her and promised Ramonita’s family the mountainside that faced Naranjito from the south where they could grow food and build cement houses.

Don Lilo had a good reputation. He was gentle and courteous and read magazines. He was tall and thin and light skinned with thinning red curly hair and some suspected that his real father had been a gringo overseer for a large coffee estate. He had only fostered one child out of wedlock, but he didn’t have much contact with the child’s mother. His family had been prosperous in the past but no one except the old storytellers could remember exactly when or why but they knew he liked horses. Knowledge of horses was the last vestige of Don Lilo's family's prosperity that had been passed on to him. Don Lilo de Naranjito had taught Ramonita to ride but it was Don Pito de South New Jersey who had bought Ramonita her first pony.

When they first married, Ramonita and Lilo followed in her parents’ ways by following the harvest with the eastern stream of migrant workers from Florida to Georgia, to New Jersey. Don Lilo promised Ramonita a quinceañera, but she never would have one. When she was twenty-one, after her third child and after Don Lilo fell asleep on a Manhattan street after a night of drinking and froze to death, Ramonita found herself alone in a one-room tenement house with three children. She sent Don Lilo’s body back to Naranjito but couldn’t afford to go herself with her three children. Someone wrote to Ramonita to tell her that they had placed a wooden cross on Don Lilo’s grave and that he was buried about thirty meters below the large flamboyant tree on cemetery hill.

She took the bus to Philadelphia and walked with her children in the dead of winter across the Commodore Barry Bridge to Old Man Napoli’s tomato farm. Napoli's wife, Yolanda, was surprised and overwhelmed to see her. The Napoli’s had known Ramonita ever since she was a little girl. They took her on as a cook and housekeeper. Don Pito turned on the heat in the little cabaña off the main property down the old cart road. The cabaña had one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. Ramonita turned it into a palace.

She was proud that Don Pito attended to her and had taken her from the fields and that the other Puerto Rican women were jealous.

The following spring, Don Pito and Ramonita painted the cabaña yellow and peach with the leftover paint that Don Pito had used in his bathroom. That summer, they replaced the roof and gave Ramonita a key to the big house where she could use the washing machine and dryer.

The farmworkers called Old Man Napoli, Don Pito, because he never stopped whistling. Don Pito was a first-generation Italian immigrant who settled in South Jersey. He was a brawny, big chested man with dark, leathery skin who never lost his accent. His strength and vigor betrayed his sixty-something age.

Don Pito had known Ramonita ever since she was a little girl. To Don Pito, Little Ramona was like a prodigal daughter whom he waited for to return every season. Don Pito and Yolanda could have only one child, a boy, Vincent. It was God's will, they would say. Vincent left the farm for Penn, became a lawyer, quit, got his PhD in Hebrew studies at Dropsie, moved to Bleeker Street, and got a job as a librarian in New York City. He was a disappointment. Don Pito never spoke much about him but Yolanda was still proud and bragged to everybody about how many languages Vinnie could speak and always sent his lover, Nick, anisette laced pizzelles on holidays.

One Saturday, Don Pito’s migrant workers were coming in from the fields. The young men were talking about their Saturday night American girls in curlers. Girls who had grown fat and wide in their hips after their husbands or boyfriends had left them for the Cowtown Rodeo or the shipyards of Chester. Ramonita was taking homemade zucchini bread, tangerines, and water in plastic milk cartons to the workers in the tomato fields.

It was a ritual toward the end of the day for Don Pito to sit down with his workers and talk. He had pride in their labor and was not offended by the calloused hand. It reminded him of his peasant upbringing in Italy.

Ramonita was late today because Don Pito’s wife, Yolanda, was having troubles. Yolanda’s doctor had changed her medicine for the pinched nerve in her neck and she was suffering. Ramonita did what she could for the old lady between gathering her bundles for the workers and cooking supper. Ramonita told the old lady she would be back right away. She turned down the stove burners to low and took the bundle outside and laid it across her pony tied to the rod iron porch gait.

Ramonita mounted the pony. It was a hot, cloudless day. Ramonita intercepted the workers returning to the compound. They made fun of her being late but didn’t seem to mind. Don Pito grabbed the leather tether and led the pony while Ramonita rode. Don Pito had never led the Pony before while Ramonita rode. She hoped he wasn’t angry with her for being late because he knew Yolanda was suffering and Ramonita did not want Don Pito to ignore Yolanda’s pain.

Ramonita let Don Pito lead the animal and thought it a bit silly for him to do so, especially because she still had work to do back at the big house where Don Pito’s wife was waiting for her. She thought of the greasy pan in the sink and her fried zucchini and pork in the oven. She knew Don Pito liked the skin of the pig a little burnt, but she didn’t want it to cook too long because the meat would lose its juice.

They lagged behind the group, picking up dropped or forgotten tools, aprons and random baskets that Ramonita stacked behind the pony's mane. They laughed and joked, and Ramonita feigned agitation with the old man as the stack of baskets got higher and higher hiding Ramonita behind them. He was not angry with her, and Ramonita felt that the old man was happy to see her. Ramonita pulled the stack of baskets closer to her body, pulling her dress up to a bundle below her hips into a mound in her crotch; the hard wooden binding of the basket's bottom rim pressing and pinching against the inside of her thighs made her adjust her seating to the gait of the unhobbled pony.

Back and forth, back and forth, up and back, the animal paced occasionally kicking a stone or moving its legs sideways to avoid a low spot in the cart road. Ramonita balanced herself and the baskets and held on to the pony with the strength of her legs pressing them to the pony’s sides. When they got to the woodshed before the main road to the house, Don Pito stopped whistling and lifted the baskets off the pony. His face was redder than it had been, and his eyes were watery and squinty. The workers went ahead. Ramonita swung her brown leg across the pony’s mane and slid off to help him. She followed him behind the woodshed that set between his tomato field and a windbreak row of thick arborvitae. They were alone.

As Don Pito stacked the empty baskets in the woodshed, Ramonita sat down on the grassy rise next to the arborvitae. "Be careful of the bees, Popi," Ramonita said. She had been stung by some yellow jackets that had built a nest under the old woodshed. She pulled her knees up to her chest but made no attempt to hide her white fluffy drawers and thighs. Don Pito came out of the woodshed, beads of sweat drifting down his face. "We should keep that door open for a breeze," he said. "Then the bees go away."

“OK, Popi, come sit an’ rest,” Ramonita said worried about the old man’s deep red face and the heat. She didn’t want him to have a stroke. She needed Don Pito to help Yolanda tonight. He stopped and looked at Ramonita. Ramonita had seen the look before some twenty years before when Don Lilo had first taken her between the two mountains one afternoon walking home from the river to her parents' home in Naranjito. She was only fifteen then and had not had her quinceañera because her mother could not afford a white dress. She did not move to hide herself because to do so would betray a confidence.

She had made a decision and told herself that she would live with it. It was God's will. That was enough to atone for her pleasure in being wanted. No one deserved her more than Don Pito. If there were a betrayal, it would remain unspoken.

Don Pito lifted her and pulled her toward him. The sweat on their arms slid together and she felt his rough skin mingle on her smooth olive skin. The pony had lathered. The inside of Ra-monita’s legs was wet from the white foamy lather. It was a sign she thought. Go slow Popi, Ramonita thought. Enjoy it for now because you will not sleep well tonight. Your sin will keep you awake. Yolanda suffers at home for you.

Ramonita could not speak. Don Pito undid the first button on her dress. She took his hand and removed it because she knew the knuckles of his old fingers pained him. Don Pito turned, and she grabbed his arm and gently pushed him back. She began to unbutton her dress. When she got to the last button just above her waist, she noticed one of Don Pito’s workers come around the arborvitae hedge. Don Pito did not notice. The worker did not look their way but veered left taking the long way back to workers’ houses.

Don Pito put his hand behind her knees and back and lifted her. Ramonita felt for the side of her dress to pull it closed. The old man’s movements were not gentle like a young man’s. She heard the bones of knees crack as he bent. He set her on the ground. He stared down on her and opened her dress exposing her brown breasts. She nudged upward and forward with her shoulder blades so that he could more easily kiss her breasts. Never taking his eyes from her eyes, he lifted her thin cotton dress upward from her knees and pulled her loose underwear to the side. He took care not to put his aged weight too heavily on her legs. He pushed her leg to the side with his left leg kicking up dust with his boot. He undid his thick leathery belt and loose-fitting Dickies. She turned her head to the side not to see his eyes for she did not want to see his embarrassment if he could not find his strength. Ramonita gently lifted her hips to brace herself and search for footing with her heals in the sandy soil. A tear streamed down Ramonita’s face, and she said a silent prayer to ask God to give Don Pito the strength to finish and manliness to forgive himself. She wondered how she would forgive herself if Don Pito failed or if she could not atone for all he had done for her and her children. She quickly tried to wipe the tear away before he saw it. Don Pito stopped and tried to pull away from her.

“Stay,” Ramonita said and nodded to Don Pito, “Stay,” as her hand snapped down to grab him before he had left her completely.

“Stay, Popi,” she said and caressed his old leathery face.

She managed to slide her fluffy panties down without moving his bulky frame. She paced him to the gait of the unhobbled pony. Don Pito closed his eyes and for a moment was young and strong. She lifted up to kiss his graying chest and then looked beneath him, under his aging belly and dirty shirt, to make sure she had not distracted him. Don Pito buried his face in her neck and took a deep breath through his nose. She gently gave a little budge. He was with her now, with her in all of his fullness, and he felt the blazing sun on his back through his shirt. When Don Pito had finished, she pushed her hips into him. She did not want to lose him even though he was losing her.

“Bueno, Popi. Suave,” Ramonita said caressing the old man’s hair and kissing him fully on his dry lips.

Afterward, Don Pito brushed the sand off Ramonita’s back and told her he was sorry that he had made her pretty dress dirty. She gently touched his bristly face. It wasn’t as red as it was before. Ramonita was careful mounting the pony that had been waiting patiently for her. Sensing the moment, it had extended its phallus. Ramonita lifted up and reached back with both bare feet and clutched the pony’s phallus.

“No. No. Don’ do that,” Don Pito said smiling. “You make him angry.”

“He angry, Popi. Celloso. You almos’ as big as him.”

Don Pito handed Ramonita her sandals that she had left on the ground. Without taking them, with an act of strength and pride, she pulled the reins hard to the right, she kicked the little pony hard in its side with her bare heel and galloped passed Don Pito, the pony’s phallus swinging like a thick, knotted cord. She rode back to the big house to unload the untouched fruit and to message Vicks Vapor Rub on Yolanda’s back and neck.

Don Pito returned to the house, hosed off Ramonita's sandals and set them by the screen door next to his work boots by the rod iron railing. He thought he might rub the pony down because he was lathered but it was Ramonita’s pony. She had always cared for it.

The following year, just after the last frost, Don Pito, with a little persuasion from his wife, paid Ramonita’s airfare back to Puerto Rico. Ramonita embraced Don Pito's wife and was forgiven. Marisol was born two weeks later and never would know her father who died of a heart attack just before the harvest. And even though she would know not her father, Marisol would know many others who would try to be.

Ramonita called Don Pito twice after she returned to Puerto Rico. The first time, when she arrived to let him know she was OK. The second time, months later, she had left a message on his answering machine asking him if he wanted her to return. A dream had prompted her to make the call. She had had a dark premonition of five full moons crossing a cloudy night sky. It was just a dream but when she awoke, the light of the moon had invaded her bedroom. She did not like the moon. She felt that it drew away her strength and claimed it gave her a headache.

Two days later, her neighbor who had a telephone, came to her door to tell her she had a phone call. It was Don Pito’s wife. Don Pito’s wife spoke to Ramonita respectfully and with dignity. She delicately told her that she had heard her message and that she was not the cause of her sorrow. She spoke more like a mother. She told Ramonita that Don Pito had had a heart attack but that it was not Ramonita’s fault. Don Pito had got into an argument with one of his tenants.

He went quickly, she said. He did not suffer. She asked Ramonita not to come to the funeral because it would cause problems with the family but that later, she could come and to bring the baby to see her but not to wait too long because she was going to sell the farm and move to New York to live with her son Vincent. Yolanda warned her not to wait too long because she was going to die soon.