Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Author:Lisa Brennan-Jobs [Brennan-Jobs, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802146519
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2018-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

The middle school was separate from the elementary school, housed near the upper field on a hill far above the mansion. Steve Smuin and Lee Shult, who had been my teacher in fifth grade, were the main teachers, and were rumored to be very strict.

Seventh grade included a geography class in which we were supposed to learn every country, ocean, sea, and landmark in the world. The assignment was to create a map, with every geographical element included. We worked continent by continent and we’d just arrived at Europe. I would spend ten hours creating this map, even though it would not be graded and was only a tool to learn the placement of the countries we would later be tested on. I spent the hours because I knew that if I made it splendid, it would be praised and pinned on the wall. I didn’t care how long it took—the anticipation of praise kept me afloat.

I was coloring in the Ionian Islands with a sea-foam green called Empire. My mother was wearing her tennis shoes, wrinkled at the toes, paint-stained cotton trousers that bagged, a sweatshirt turned inside out. Her head was cocked to one side, watching me. “You need light,” she said, and took a lamp from the painting studio she’d made by adding Sheetrock to the garage, plugged it in, and bent it over where I sat.

I finished the map that night, turned it in the next day, and Lee pinned it up facing the classroom—the only one pinned up.

At night, in addition to homework, I copied my notes into a large spiral notebook, sometimes ripping out pages and recopying if my handwriting was not neat enough. I stopped dotting my i‘s with circles, and added a sophisticated slant so my words drove forward toward the edge of the page.

Mornings, we were quizzed on the information from the day before, and then we announced our scores in front of the class to Steve, who sat at a computer and entered them without looking up, unless someone scored low enough that he gave a sarcastic look. The room would grow silent. It was as if a low score was not just academically wrong, but morally depraved; as if the low score announced one’s unwillingness to participate in the grand experiment of the school. Almost every day, someone cried.

I was afraid of Steve and this motivated me to work harder. Our poor diction and our selfishness in all its forms were what set him off. His lips were thin, his mouth was small and not fully visible through his short beard. A flash of contempt from those thin, bearded lips was enough to deflate me, sometimes for an entire day. Away from school, whenever I saw a car that looked like Steve’s blue Honda, my heart leapt into my throat, I was self-conscious and careful; I walked with a straighter spine, spoke with clearer diction, for the chance he might be watching. This continued for years, even after I’d left the school.

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