Ms Hempel Chronicles

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781848871878
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857893086
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Ms. Beatrice Hempel, English teacher, is new - new to teaching, new to her school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out quite what is expected of her - in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class? Or not? Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum finds her characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. Ms Hempel Chronicles takes the reader on a journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up.

Creep

AS CHILDREN, BEATRICE AND her brother lived on the very top floor of their house, in rooms that had been inhabited by servants nearly one hundred years before. Attached to the wall at the top of the stairs was a beautiful wooden box, with one side made of glass, and painted upon the glass, in tiny gold letters, were the names of rooms: MASTER BEDROOM; BUTLER’S PANTRY; DINING ROOM; CONSERVATORY; LOGGIA. Through the glass you could see a complicated system of hammers and bells and cogs, strung together with bright copper wiring that disappeared through a hole in the bottom corner of the box and burrowed into the house’s thick walls, only to emerge on the floors below, inside each of the gold-lettered rooms, in the form of a button. The finger most often pressing the button was Beatrice’s, for when you pressed it, an electric current would course up the copper wiring to the top floor of the house, and a little bell inside the wooden box would ring, not a tinkling ring, but a sort of low-pitched vibration, similar to the sound people make when they’re cold: Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Beatrice never got tired of hearing this sound. She liked it so much, she invented a game called Servant: she would waft into a room, drape herself across a chair, and then, in a gesture both impatient and languid, poke the little button embedded in the wall. She would hear, very faintly, that low and lovely hum, and then the muffled drumbeat of her brother hurrying down the four flights of stairs. “How may I be of service, madam?” he had to ask, according to the rules. She would tell him, “I’m dying for a glass of water. On a tray,” or “Would you mind terribly, opening the curtains?” and depending upon how well he performed the tasks, a new round would begin, with Calvin climbing back up the stairs to wait beside the box and Beatrice deciding which room she would waft into next. But this was only one of many games she had invented, and maybe not as good as Teacher, or Dead, or Blackout.

Living, as they did, at the top of the house, Beatrice and her brother were surrounded by trees. In the summer, their rooms filled with a green light. In the winter, the fir boughs grew heavy with snow and brushed against their windowpanes. Because they lived in rooms meant only for servants, their windows were small and perfectly square, not long and grand like those in the rest of the house. But they preferred it this way: they liked living in their tiny rooms, aloft in the trees; they liked the green light falling in squares at their feet. Their rooms were almost the same, but not quite: Calvin had a fireplace in his, and Beatrice had a wall of bookshelves built into hers.

Beatrice didn’t read books anymore. All she did was listen to the radio. She listened late at night, to the pirate stations found at the bottom of the dial. In the place where books should have been, she kept her tremendous radio. It had once belonged to her mother, in the days when she still wore her hair long and wrote essays.

The pirate radio stations broadcast many different shows: they had names such as the Flophouse, and Nocturnal Emissions, and the Curious Sofa. Beatrice’s favorite was a program called the Rock Hotel. It came on every night at eleven o’clock and played music of the sort that Beatrice had never heard before, music that sounded at once grinding and frenzied, like a train car screeching backward down a mountain, and all the passengers inside howling. A velvety static blanketed everything, like snow falling on the scene of the disaster. Before discovering the Rock Hotel, Beatrice had believed that music was supposed to make things more beautiful and orderly.

That’s when I reach for my revolver, she sang in the bathroom. That’s when it all just slips away.

Calvin stood outside the door. “What are you doing?” he asked.

She threw the door open and lunged forward, her hand convulsing. “I’m practicing electric guitar,” she said.

Calvin tucked his chin against his shoulder and cocked his wrist in the air; he drew an invisible bow across invisible strings. “I will accompany you.”

Beatrice let her hands drop. For a moment she felt poisoned. But it was no use explaining that violins and guitars don’t go together. She knew what he would say, serenely: “It’s an electric violin.”

She wheeled to face the mirror hanging over the sink. “Give me a sword,” she said.

“Viking, Roman, or Greek?” Calvin asked.

“Viking!” Beatrice said. Her brother returned with the sword. Wielding it over her head, she studied herself in the mirror. Her arms, raised this way, looked thinner than they did when just hanging at her sides. She wondered what other reasons she might find to assume this position. “Tremble!” she said, to no one in particular.

Calvin wedged himself between her and the sink, so that he could brush his teeth. He brushed his teeth many times a day because he was concerned about plaque. On his birthday their mother had given him a kit containing a special yellow solution and a special handheld light. You sloshed the solution inside your mouth, made the bathroom completely dark, flicked on the special light, and saw, in beautiful and arctic blue, all the plaque that was slowly encrusting your teeth.

Beatrice staked her chin atop his head and made a totem pole. “Hermano hermano hermano,” she said. Calvin was learning Spanish at school; she was helping him.

“Loggia,” he said indistinctly. He was still brushing his teeth.

“Aren’t you finished yet?” Beatrice asked, leaning upon the sword just as a very tired and very bored old lady would rest upon her cane.

“Don’t do that!” Calvin said, his mouth full of blue. He cherished his swords; he had three complete sets of armor and weaponry from three different periods of history. They were made of very durable plastic, but still: their mother had damaged the Roman-centurion one while trying to teach a lesson to the large raccoon that lurked about their driveway. Now, when brandished, it drooped in a pitiful way.

Beatrice turned on the bath. “Could I have a little privacy, please?” The bathtub was held up by four claws that looked as if they belonged to an eagle, or a big hawk. It was long enough so that you could submerge yourself entirely and still not feel anything pressing against your head or your feet. Beatrice and Calvin loved the bathtub. On Christmas they gave each other fat glass jars filled with bath beads, shining like jewels. Beatrice gave Calvin Peach Passion. Calvin gave Beatrice Gardenia. These she now deposited into the water. “I need to relax,” she said.

“So do I,” said Calvin mysteriously, as he retrieved his sword and floated out of the bathroom. The bathroom had two doors: one leading to his room, and the other to hers. In this way, it was like a joint.

Beatrice turned off the lights. She stepped into her bath. “I’m in my bath!” she called out. She splashed about in the darkness, and then she was still. She felt everything around her: boughs brushing against square windows; the large raccoon lurking; a hawk skimming right over the roof. Things were astir, things she couldn’t see. Out in the night, animals prowled and crept. Much farther away people were creeping about, too, making drug deals, going in and out of apartment buildings. The word, the idea—apartment—was enchanting. But she lived here, in the trees, at the very top of the house. Beneath her a gardenia bath bead dissolved, releasing its oil and its peculiar scent.

“IS ANYONE LISTENING? Anyone at all?” The radio spoke, glowing from her bookshelves.

Beatrice sat up in her bed. She was listening! In defiancé of everyone: her mother and father, who fancied her asleep; her friends at school, who liked Prince and choreographed sexy dance routines to his songs; her piano teacher, for whom she played inventions and fugues, all the while thinking about an amplifier, a fuzzbox, a roadie. She didn’t exactly know what all of these things were, but she wanted them. She knew they existed, because visitors to the Rock Hotel would mention them in conversation. There was a band, for instance, called We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It, which was a mouthful, but that was the point. She was listening. She knew what to say. Not group: band. Not concert: show. You did not buy a ticket; you paid a cover at the door. Beatrice was paying attention, so that she would be prepared.

“Am I talking to myself?” the voice asked. “Am I the last person left?”

There was a long pause. “If you can hear me, I don’t care who you are, you have to pick up the phone and call me. Now. Make a request. Win a prize. I don’t care. You know what the number is.”

Beatrice did in fact know the telephone number. She often practiced dialing it but never considered doing it for real. The DJ tended to criticize those who called up the Rock Hotel. His name was Shred. He would make fun of people’s requests or else refer to them as psychopaths. “There are a lot of weird people out there,” he would murmur. “And they all love to call me.” But now he sounded lonely, and possibly like he was losing his mind. Beatrice wondered if she should reach out to him. Maybe in this vulnerable state he was less likely to belittle her.

She padded over to the radio and found the pocket diary she kept there, a gift from her mother, identical to those belonging to her brother and her father, in which they were each supposed to keep a growing list of Things to Do. In this diary Beatrice had written the names of the bands that she heard on the Rock Hotel: Squirrel Bait. Agent Orange. Pussy Galore. Angry Samoans. Big Black. Mission of Burma. The Cramps. She liked to copy these names in clean bold letters onto her school binders, and would be surprised to learn, at later points in her life, that these names were often attached to real things: Samoa is a country? And Samoans are the people who live there? They were islanders; they had been colonized; they had much to be angry about. But here, in the darkness and quiet of her bedroom, Samoans were simply residents of the Rock Hotel.

And as such, safe from ridicule. She would dial the number; she would ask for the Angry Samoans. It was safe. She told herself this as the line rang. But still her heart quickened, neatly, like the piano teacher’s metronome, making her play the minor scales at increasingly reckless speeds. It was only a question of time before an accident occurred.

“Rock Hotel,” a voice said.

“Shred?” Beatrice asked. “I’m listening!”

“Good to know,” Shred said, sounding not at all close to the brink of despair. He sounded as if he were eating a sandwich. “What can I do for you?”

“Could you please play a song by the Angry Samoans?”

“Sure,” Shred said. “Which song?”

She had no idea. In her pocket diary she had not yet begun writing down the names of songs. He said it so fast, all the information she needed to know.

“You choose,” Beatrice said. “I trust you.”

Shred made a swallowing noise. “Will do,” he said. “Thanks for calling the Rock Hotel.”

Beatrice put down the receiver. She felt damp all over. Standing in the dim light of the radio, she stroked the telephone. She stroked her pocket diary, and then the radio itself. He had been terribly kind to her. That’s what she would say, if she ever met him—she would meet him, she decided, they would become friends and then go out together and live in an apartment—she’d say, “You were so nice! That first night we talked, you were so nice to me.” She practiced saying it aloud. Then she practiced saying it in an English accent.

As she glided back to her bed, she stumbled upon something warm and human. She gasped, without wanting to, for she already knew who it was. “Calvin,” she said. He was playing Cat Burglar.

She heard him slide into a sitting position; she heard him sigh with satisfaction. “That was a long time,” he said. “Maybe a record.” Though she couldn’t see him, she knew what he was wearing: their mother’s ancient turtleneck, the kind that was black and stretchy and had two long tongues that reached down and snapped together between the legs; black tights; black knitted gloves; a beret that their father had brought back from Montreal. The purpose of Cat Burglar was to slink into Beatrice’s room without her noticing. Any burgling was incidental. Calvin had developed this game entirely on his own. For Beatrice, the most enjoyable aspect was suddenly switching on the light, because Calvin seemed to believe that making himself flat was the same as making himself invisible, and it was interesting to see him pressed into the floor, limbs spread, as if a cement roller had traveled over him, or else smushed against a wall, trying not to breathe.

She didn’t turn on the light now. If she did, then all would be lost; she would see the flowers blooming on her bedspread; she would see the little porcelain lampstand man leaning toward the lampstand lady, his tiny porcelain lute in hand.

“Go to bed,” she told Calvin. “You’re feeling very, very sleepy.”

“Who’s English?” he wanted to know. “Who were you talking to?”

“Shred,” she said, and despised herself for saying it. Her book jackets, her sweaters, her new pointy shoes, the toes already scuffed: she couldn’t keep anything nice for longer than a minute. “He’s not English.”

“Who’s Shred?”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Beatrice said, and moving her hands through the darkness, she found something shaped like Calvin. She guided it toward the door. In the radio’s dim light, she saw the pair of sunglasses he had added to his disguise. These, combined with the beret, gave him the appearance of a strange and chic little person, like a boy whose parents are glamorous performers, and who spends his whole childhood drinking ginger ale in nightclubs. Beatrice filled with the intoxicating feeling of her brother being unfamiliar to her.

And then the radio spoke. It said, “This song goes out to the girl who wanted to hear some Angry Samoans.”

“That’s me,” Beatrice whispered, to no one in particular.

HER OTHER NIGHTTIME ACTIVITY often enthralled ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Talent
• Accomplice
• Sandman
• Creep
• Crossing
• Yurt
• Satellite
• Bump
• Acknowledgment