The Learning Curve

The Learning Curve

Martin Briske took his place at the front of the classroom. He wrote his name on the chalkboard in big capital letters along with English 100. He turned to face his new students and smiled.
“Hi, my name is Martin Briske and this is English 100,” he said, surveying the room. “I’d prefer to be called Martin; however, if it feels too unorthodox for you, Mr. Broske is fine, too.”
Martin always loved the first day of the semester. Soon enough the room would show the abrasions of the semester. But for now, everything was pristine. The rows of chairs were in perfect lines. The floor was freshly waxed. The walls were clean. No overflowing trash bins, no thin film of sweat and exhaled grime staining the walls and windowsills.
And the students. Gleaming porcelain smiles. Fresh, rested faces. Attentive eyes following him around the room as they went over the syllabus, laughing at his jokes, indulging him really, mostly because they never expect teachers to have senses of humor, least of all about something as serious as school. The air was not yet pregnant with resistance: No angsty, griping teens and twenty-somethings rolling their eyes or sighing heavily when asked to get into groups. No cricket-chirping silences after posing a question, no my-dog-ate-my-doctor’s note excuses. On the first day of class, Martin knew, they devoured everything. Inferencing. Developing questions for class discussion. Reading strategies—he stuffed the docket full to take advantage of their eagerness, laying the foundation for the remainder of the semester.

* * *

“So how many of you are here taking this class as an elective?” Martin asked. “You were thumbing through the catalogue, thought you might take an extra writing class, heard I was an okay teacher, not too hard? A show of hands?”
None of them raised their hands, though many smiled or looked at each other, puzzling over Mr. Briske’s questions.
“Okay, so how many are here because you have to be here?”
The class filled with raised hands—firm, stiff heils; limp waving flags; shy, short-armed confessions.
“Aren’t we all here because we have to. This class is part of the ‘required general education curriculum,’” asserted a student in the front, her full, red lips curled in a smirk, and revealing a hint of her perfect, white teeth. She had long, straight blonde hair, which fell strategically over her narrow, muscular shoulders, and hooded, defiant light blue eyes. The tone of her voice was both acerbic and bemused, as if challenging Martin meant actually proving him wrong, none of which mattered to him.
“What is your name,” Martin asked, smiling.
“Emily Pranders.”
“Yes, Emily. You are absolutely correct. You all have to be here. Which then begs the question—WHY? Why in fact are all of you required to take writing classes? And WHY in 99.9% of colleges and university across the country is there some form of a two-year writing requirement?”
“So we can be ready when we enter into the job market,” offered a slight Japanese woman in the back. “Many of us will have to write a lot.”
An assenting murmur rippled through the room.
“And when we apply for jobs or graduate school, we need to know how to write or they won’t take us seriously,” said a student in the back. Others nodded.
“You’re all very pragmatic,” Martin said. “Certainly, you’ll need to know how to write—I would go so far as to argue that writing is the most utilitarian set of skills we learn in school. And I do want you to walk out of this class feeling more confident and comfortable as a writer regardless of the writing environment you find yourself in.”
He paused for a moment, looking around the room. “But why else?”
To think more deeply—to express your ideas, sure, but also to explore your ideas with greater depth; to communicate—to take those nebulous clouds of thought floating around your head and express them clearly and coherently so that someone else can understand you; to learn and discover—rather than using writing to demonstrate what we already know, the process of writing often helps us figure out what we think.
The room was silent. He waited a full minute before continuing.
“So then, what is education?” he asked. “Are you here merely to ‘get educated’ so you can then enter into the real world and get a job?”
Martin paused and glanced out the window at the students sitting in groups smoking cigarettes and laughing, the trees gently rustling in the breeze, the cars zooming by in the background.
“Can you ever step out of the real world?”
He loved posing this last question. School—education with a capital “E”—was the very definition of the real world, a social institution functioning to perpetuate dominant social and linguistic norms, behaviors, values, and beliefs; he wanted to scream at them, to challenge them to question such assumptions, to ask these very questions of themselves and each other.
“Education, perhaps rather than preparing us for the real world, in many ways creates the real world. Rather than teaching us to think and act as individuals, it encourages us to think and act individually within a closed system with inherent cultural biases and rigidly defined—and largely unquestioned—values, traditions, definitions of right and wrong, good and evil.”
“And this is bad because…?” asked Emily, her long, straight blonde hair now pulled back in a ponytail.
“Bad? I’m not saying it’s good or bad. If you’re here simply to get a diploma to then get a job, that’s your choice. But—”
“But what? What are you saying, Mr Briske?” interrupted another student. His black Che t-shirt hung loosely on his slender shoulders and chest. He rubbed his temples exasperatedly and then wiped his hand down his angular face, pausing to stroke the wisp of facial hair below his lips between his thumb and forefinger.
“Saying,” said Martin, pulling back. “I’m saying you all, we all should ask questions, man. Question our assumptions—what we think, but also why we think what we think. Asking ‘why’ is the most potent weapon we have as free, independent thinkers.”
“I don’t know,” Emily said, straightening the front of her white skirt and crossing her firm, lithesome legs. “What does this have to do with a friggin’ writing class?”
“Everything, my dearies,” Martin said, “everything.”

* * *

Martin turned to write on the chalkboard. He felt the room shift behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flashing trail of blonde. He turned and came face to face with Emily. She was smiling at him, showing her perfect white teeth.
“Emily, what can I do for you?” Martin asked.
She did not answer but kept staring at him, smiling but only with her mouth, Martin noticed. Her light blue eyes were somber and focused intensely on him.
“Emily, can I help you?”
Still she did not respond.
“Please return to your seat, Ms. Pranders. You’re holding up class,” Martin said. “If you have a problem or concern, please come talk to me after class.”
Emily turned toward to her seat in the front row. Martin began writing on the board. When he turned around to address the class, Emily was right next to him. Only this time, Derick Ottenger and Sarah Wildington were on either side of her, looking at him wordlessly.
“Will you please return to your seats so we can finish class,” Martin said forcefully. He reached down for his bag but Derick grabbed his wrist and squeezed it tightly. Martin, shocked, tried to wrangle it back but was no match for the young man’s strength.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
Steven Bursh sprung from his seat and grabbed Martin’s other hand, pinning it to his side.
“What the—get your damn hands off me, you little—”
At that moment, the other students in the class began to make their way up to the front of the classroom, encircling Martin and trapping him against the chalkboard.
“Mr. Briske,” Emily said. “Why are you here?”
The circle cinched tighter, like a noose, gradually enveloping him in a sea of hands reaching for him and pulling at his clothes. Before he could yell out, Martin felt a pair of cool, soft, slender hands slip around his neck and begin to choke him.
“Wait, wait everybody. I was trying to—” he gasped as a hand covered his mouth, muffling his words, while other hands tore his clothes from his body, leaving him naked and vulnerable.
“It’s all very irresponsible of you,” she said. “Why do you think these lies, Mr. Briske? Why?”
He felt the first set of teeth pierce his skin just below his chest. Then another set tearing at his abdomen and another buried into his calf. He could feel the burn of their teeth, their fingernails digging into and puncturing his arms and legs, shredding his face, his neck, his ears, tearing his hair. All the while, the life was being choked out of him by the pair of soft, cool hands squeezing his neck.
“It isn’t fair. It isn’t right,” he rasped, momentarily wriggling his mouth free. But they were already on him.
As he began to lose consciousness, Martin locked eyes with Emily Pranders. She was smirking in the same stupid way, her eyes clear and vigorous, her cheeks flushed, her gleaming white teeth and brand new designer outfit and the tips of her perfect blonde hair stained red with his blood.

Revenge

Revenge
Albert Gaines killed Marty Henderson. It wasn’t an accident per se, though he certainly did not purposefully intend for it to happen. Still the court ruled in favor of murder charges because Gaines, a noted disrepute and troublemaker, had been a ticking time bomb with a rap sheet over seventeen pages long (single spaced) even though he was barely eighteen. That Henderson was in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire during a liquor store robbery, meant little to the prosecutorial staff. They threw the book at him and deservedly so.
At his sentencing, Henderson’s mother was allowed to address Gaines, who showed no remorse or emotion whatsoever, even though the judge intimated it could affect his sentence. Mrs. Henderson pointed out that if given the opportunity, she would kill Gaines herself—in fact, she promised that one day she would get her revenge; she swore it; she would kill him. For he clearly did not know what it meant to be a human being, to be loved, to love. So, she said, he may as well die. And she would be the one to do it.
And with that Mother Henderson spent the next three years of her life searching and plotting, for she knew she would not rest until she had her revenge. She read and traveled, first around the country and then in the East, all the while composing long letters in her head filled with rageful promises and vengeful pledges.
Then she came about a solution. And for the first time in years, she slept.
In the spring after she returned home, she would sit in the shade of an acacia tree in her backyard quietly attended by a warm, blooming breeze and write letters to Albert Gaines in prison. They were filled with her pain, but also with questions for him and stories about Marty. Eventually she told Gaines everything she remembered about her son: about his first pet—a cat named Richard whom Marty found on a bike ride to the Cheese Factory; his high school sweetheart, Julianna, who made him oatmeal raisin cookies and broke his heart; his seventh-grade baseball coach, Mr. Stewart, who taught him how to work hard for something he really wanted; his postcards home from summer camp which he signed “Love Marty” and always in parenthesis wrote”(your son)” as if she might forget. She wrote about Marty failing his driver’s test because he didn’t yield to an emergency vehicle and about her feeling so bad that she bought him and his friend a bottle of tequila and some 7UP; she wrote about his unending curiosity for life; she wrote about his heart.
For two years, Gaines never wrote back. Mrs. Henderson wasn’t sure if her letters were even being read. But she sent them every week anyway, because she enjoyed feeling close to her only son—the one person who, at a glance, could read her mind and understand her emotions. Sometimes she talked out loud to Marty, but mostly she wrote about all of her memories and tried to wrap her mind around the enormity of her pain, as if understanding it might take away some of the bite.
One day, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from Gaines. It sounded tentative and defensive, rambling and wayward. But Mrs. Henderson wrote back anyway, responding to his questions and starting a weekly correspondence with Gaines that continued for the next seven years. In his letters, he gradually began to talk about himself. He thanked her for her honesty and inquisitiveness, but also for the shame and sadness and guilt that her letters helped him feel. He told her that he understood the quality of the love a mother has for her child, a love he barely knew or felt, “like ripples in a pond, the initial splash of love radiates outward, gently pushing those broken leaves and twigs floating by and willing to be affected.” He’d been numbed by drugs and anger for so long—his emotions completely shut down—that he’d forgotten how to feel. But now he found himself moved to tears by the gentle morning sun chasing away the unknowing, lonely darkness or when watching a “vee” of returning gulls migrating home for the summer or in his prison cell the night he received his high school diploma. Her letters, he said, were transformative. He felt like a butterfly coming out of its protective shell, he said, and for the first time in his life, even though he’d been in prison for more than decade, he felt free.
When Gaines went before the parole board for what would be the final time, Mrs. Henderson was invited to attend and was asked to address the inmate who had killed her son during a botched robbery over twelve years ago. She stood and addressed both Gaines and the court, telling them the following:
“Twelve years ago when I stood at your hearing, you were a brash, arrogant, unrepentant thug who had taken my only child,” she said, her voice calm as tears trickled down her face and neck. “I told you, I swore, that I would kill you, Albert Gaines…And I succeeded. I killed you. I killed that young, cold, heartless child who took my son; he’s dead. That child, Albert, would have been kept alive by my hatred, so I killed him with my love and forgiveness. In his place is you, Al, a grown man with a second chance to live your life. I forgive you for killing my son. I free you from that burden and hope you will find a way to free yourself.”
She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, turned, and walked out of the courtroom. She did not look at the judge or the parole board or even Albert. She did not make eye contact with anyone seated in the audience. When she reached the door, she did not turn around or even glance back over her shoulder. She did not stay to hear the verdict or talk to reporters or answer questions. She did not wait to be consoled or congratulated or admired. She had said her piece, had shared her own burden.
Mother Henderson walked down the courthouse steps and back into the world, letting the summer wind tousle her hair and dress while turning her face to the blue, cloudless sky, closing her eyes and feeling the warmth of the sun wash over her. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the dewy, thick scent of cut grass and turned soil. She walked through the courtyard lined with irises and lilies and neatly trimmed hedges and into the teeming bustle of the streets filled with engines purring and shoe heels scuffing and people laughing. She walked past a schoolyard filled with children screaming and playing and wondering. She walked to the gentle, flowing creek where she had spread Marty’s ashes so many years ago, took off her shoes and, letting the hem of her dress drag in the water, waded to the far side where she sat in the shade of an oak tree, closed her eyes, and held her son close.