The Clap

Ms. Marshall has decided to follow Brenda’s campaign in the Honors Social Studies class because Sheba Shapiro must know so much about it, she can provide inside information for their discussions. It’s an opportunity the opportunistic Ms. Marshall would not want to miss. Ms. Marshall thinks Brenda is a wonderful candidate.

Ms. Marshall has invited the candidate to address the class. The candidate can’t say no. Her daughter can’t say no. They would both like to.

“It’s good exposure,” said Wagman. “Mother-daughter team, honors student – help clear Sheba’s name – you’ll get good press.”

“I’ll get press,” she said. “It might not be good.”

“It will be good. Mary Steele loves you – you saved the swans.”

So, “Yes” it was. And today is the day. Wednesday, right smack in the middle of the week, surrounded by nothing on all sides.

Jason has been driving the kids to school, since Brenda no longer has a compatible schedule. There is nothing at all compatible about Brenda. She is not even compatible with herself, inwardly arguing all the time, trying to shape her conflicts into compromises.

But this morning Brenda and Sheba leave the house together, as Wagman suggested, mother and daughter, both in their new fall wardrobes. Brenda has dropped the fairy princess line. The two Shapiro girls are wearing back-to-the-fifties skirts. Sheba’s is black and red buffalo plaid. Her mother’s is black and white striped. Brenda has vowed to wear nothing but black and white – Adele’s idea – to signify, if anyone asks, that she is the candidate of both races.

They go out to the garage and get into Brenda’s new car. The old one needed a new starter, but that was just an indication of how old it was getting. Yes, folks, Brenda’s got a Smart Car. Not the one Zeke wanted. Not the convertible. The smallest, cheapest one there is. It’s black. Goes with the new wardrobe.

Zeke’s not in it, though. He figured there was plenty of room for him, he could squeeze in, he’s little. But Jason’s is taking him to school. Brenda’s car has now become a couple’s car. She can carry people only one at a time. Makes her very cozy company.

The ride’s a little bumpy once it picks up speed, but the interior of the car is cute and curvy. The ladies don’t speak. Each is nursing her unspeakable fears – Sheba that her mother will not pass muster with her classmates, and Brenda that her daughter is going to betray her.

While they park, let’s go directly to the classroom. The school has shifted its schedule – put fifth period first and first period fifth, to accommodate the candidate. A school is powerful enough to shift time, and the exercise of this power was suggested by the high school principal, Wagman, on behalf of the campaign manager, Mitch, who wanted them to arrive together.

The room is bright and cheery. All the windows are open. The desks are arranged in a semi-circle, so everybody can see everybody else. The teacher’s desk is at the front.

A collection of fashionably-dressed children are puttering around, talking to their classmates, getting their notebooks ready. A few of them have laptops open. Ms. Marshall is sitting at her desk looking at notes. She is more than a little anxious about this. It’s her chance to shine, but she’s afraid of Brenda, whom she knows not only from the campaign, but from parent-teacher conferences.

She knows how exacting Mrs. Shapiro is when it comes to following the rules yet not betraying the children. Brenda walks a fine line herself, and she wants her own children’s teachers to do the same. Truth matters, but so does obedience.

Brenda is big on obedience because without it, she would run amuck. She has urges and opportunities, same as everyone, but she clings to the straight and narrow. Very much like Clyde Waters. These people must be devious to get anywhere in life. Chief of all, they have to evade themselves.

But stop that talk. Can’t you see we’re in school? Brenda and Sheba are just getting out of the car, so we have time to look around. It cannot escape the eye that the room is dominated by large patches of big red and black checks. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the red and black buffalo plaid of which half the children’s clothing in America was made this year. There are three shirts, one skirt, a charming little coat-dress, one pair of jeans, and one pair of leggings. When Sheba enters, it will add another skirt.

The boys all look some version of cool: rock star, athlete, drug dealer, rapper, homeless kid...

Every student has a back-pack the size of a small dog-house. Some are on the desks, some leaning against them, others still on the backs of kids sitting sideways. Here and there are things you would recognize as backpacks. Khaki or green or neon, thinner than they are wide. But the rest, the new ones, are covered with minute flowers, slashed with stripes, dibbled with doodles, and some look more like mail-boxes than book-bags.

At the head of the class, Ms. Marshall looks like an anchor-woman, in a black pencil-skirt with a tight, lacey blue blouse. Blue, she has noticed, looks best on television.

And indeed, the cameras are there, ready to roll, as soon as Brenda walks in the door. It’s not live, they’ll pick want they want to, but they want to get it all. Mary Steele, minus the baseball cap, is sitting at one of the student desks.

Okay, folks, they’re here. We’re starting. The class has been rehearsed. They stand, and not quite as a chorus, welcome Mrs. Shapiro. Sheba slinks in behind her and goes to her desk. One of the two camera eyes follows her.

Ms. Marshall, in her long skirt and tied-back dark brown hair, stands and escorts Brenda to the teacher’s desk. Ms. Marshall of the long, lovely torso will stand, and in fact, walk to and fro in back of Brenda, calling on students and exhibiting her wares; Ms. Marshall longs to become a Mrs. and end her addiction to abortions.

We get right down to business. “I know some of you have questions for Mrs. Shapiro, and we’re going to start immediately so we can get as many in as possible in the short time we have. (Pause.) Emily P.”

One of the few girls not wearing the red and black costume-du-jour stands in her purple velour dress that looks exactly like a hooded sweatshirt with a drawstring, and asks, “Mrs. Shapiro, do you think we should have a Wal-mart?”

One of the cameramen chokes on a laugh, but when everyone looks, his face is expressionless.

“Well, Emily,” Brenda says, “do you want one?”

Emily was not prepared to have the tables turned. She hesitated. Her mother told her to ask that question. Her mother doesn’t want the Wal-mart because they don’t have a union, and they just pay their people whatever they want. But half of Emily’s clothes come from Wal-Mart. And half their kitchen, and all the sheets and towels. Their house is full of things from Wal-mart.

“I… I like Wal-mart,” she says, because it is the only truth she can find in her head at the moment. The rest is confusion.

“So do we all,” says Brenda. “But Wal-mart is just like a boy you might like who does bad things. You may be his friend, but unless he shapes up and does good things, you shouldn’t marry him. Wal-Mart has to change its ways. Otherwise we can not let Wal-mart come and live with us, no matter how cute it is.”

Everyone in the class laughs, except Emily P. who is caught up thinking about the boyfriend Brenda gave her.

From behind the desk, Ms. Marshall moves things along. “Thank you Emily P. (Pause. Smile. Twinkle.) Jacob?”

A boy in a track suit stands and asks a question that was not the one Ms. Marshall had approved. “Do you think that women make better judges than men, like Ms. Sotomayor says?”

Ms. Marshall steps forward, pointing warningly at the boy, but Brenda raises her hand. “No, Jacob, I don’t. But neither does Judge Sotomayor. Sometimes we say things when we mean something else. All she meant was that women make just as good judges as men do. You know, Jacob, people didn’t always believe that. People used to believe that men could think better than women. They didn’t even let women vote. So we’ve come a long way, and you have to let Judge Sotomayor be happy about that.”

Jacob sits down, wondering if his question was answered.

Next is Emily M. There are three Emilies in the class. Emily M wants to know if Brenda believes in God, or Darwin. Brenda looks quizzically at Ms. Marshall. Is this Social Studies? But Ms. Marshall is smiling, so she has to answer.

“Emily, what do you like: Chocolate ice cream or going to the movies?”

This buys her a moment while everyone laughs.

“Emily, I don’t think that’s a fair choice. Darwin is one of God’s children, just like all the rest of us. He may be right, and he may be wrong, but only God knows for sure. The rest of us are entitled to our opinions, and I believe he is right. And by the way, I like chocolate ice cream AND going to the movies.”

Joshua (Biblical names were popular the year Sheba was born – there’s a Joseph, a Matthew, and a Daniel here), a tall boy in tight black jeans and a T-shirt featuring a Gorilla playing drums, wants to know if she thinks we should take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Simple question. Not a simple answer.

“That’s what government is for, Joshua, to take care of all the people. One of the ways we do it is to ask those more fortunate to help those in trouble.”

Joshua interrupts. “But my Dad says if you don’t let rich people keep their money, they’ll stop making it, and then there won’t be any money for anybody.”

Another boy adds, “My Dad says you’ll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Ms. Marshall is not smiling now. In this class, except for Sheba, and one of the Emilies, the children have been raised by Republicans, and have very bad ideas. That’s why she feels she has to make a big show of the correct way to think, and talk about her abortions, and in other ways bring them in tune with the modern world.

Brenda is on top of this one. “There is no such thing as a goose that lays golden eggs.”

Well, that’s the end of that, I guess. But it is not the end of the session. The children have suddenly become disruptive. These are honor students after all. They have something to say. Now they’re all talking at once, shouting questions.

“Do you think we should bomb Iran before they get the bomb?”

“Is North Korea going to kill us?”

“Why doesn’t President Obama want poor people to go to his daughters’ school?”

“Does President Obama (they are always respectful) want to own everything in America?”

“Why do the Democrats want my grandmother to die?”

The cameras are rolling. Mary Steele’s pen is flying. Brenda is flabbergasted at the misinformation, the absurd fears, the awful images that have been put into these children’s heads by their mean-spirited, selfish, divisive parents.

She’s a teacher. She takes control. To hell with Ms. Marshall, a neophyte who knows nothing.

She stands and claps her hands. Once. A loud, cracking sound that she perfected in her second year of teaching and has used every since. All voices stop.

“That will be enough,” she says in a stern, unyielding voice. “This is not how people behave. This is how puppies behave, yapping for food. People wait for their turn. They don’t go barking up to restaurants or kitchen tables begging for attention. These are serious questions. They all have answers. But an answer is only as good as the question that’s asked.”

She does not look at Ms. Marshall. “I’m going to give you homework. I want you to go home and think about your question, and think about what made you ask it. Then ask it again, in writing, in your own words. Bring it to school. Give it to Ms. Marshall, who will get it to me. I will answer each one. Thank you for inviting me.”

She comes out from behind the desk, nods at Ms. Marshall, and leaves the room, the cameras still rolling.

She goes back out to her new little car, unlocks it, gets in, sits down, and cries. Just the way she did after her first day of teaching.

This time we’ll let her have her cry. She’s entitled to it. After all, she’s the Democratic candidate for congress in a Republican district. How would you like to be in her shoes? (High-heeled, black and strappy, exactly what she once vowed she’d never wear. Adele insists. Mercy is so damn tall.)

She had not imagined that children could be like that. Her daughter is in a school full of Republican monsters. Maybe she should take her out and put her in a private school where people have the right ideas about the important things in life.

However, Brenda made it to national TV again. The clip they took was of her crowd-quieting clap, and so in a way, Wagman had been right. It was good press. She was in charge. We like that in people we’re sending to Washington.