Today I wake up with the flu, full blown. I drag myself up and get dressed to teach class as usual since, as Lily points out, "I don't think we can get sick. I mean there's no one else to teach all those classes, right? You'd have to be at death's door."
    I am at death's door I decide, sitting on the raggedy doormat, which is also a thing that sums up my real role here, as opposed to English teacher. Having little prior experience with children, I had no idea the beasts would regard me as an irrelevant inconvenience on one hand, and some kind of personal servant on the other. Yesterday one of them dropped her crayon on the floor and stared at me. Then she threw the dice across the room. I stared back at her. Oh, I'm supposed to get that for you? It's bad enough I have to crawl around under the table after each class to retrieve everything that's strewn there.
    Today I'm looking down the barrel of six hours teaching with a half hour break, which becomes ten minutes by the time I've finished cleaning up. Worse still, it's almost all children.
    I walk into the class a minute before it's due to begin. I cut it fine because some of the kids get there early and sit in the room. If I'm there as well I feel obligated to try to engage with them, which is not only extra work, but these (six to ten year olds) don't have the concentration span for the hour and a half class in the first place. Anything added to the front end can only be a bad idea.
    Isidoro lifts his head, stares at me with his bug eyes and extra-terrestrial face. Graciela strolls in with her younger sister Eva, yapping away on her cell phone in Spanish. I open my textbook, snivelling. The book lost its gaudy red cover a while ago, and every day more and more pages detach from its spine. I glance at the clock. I should start. I can see Ian, the director of the school, lurking in the hall listening for evidence of my screw-ups. I was a last-minute hire after someone else pulled out and as a result I'm subject to a greater amount of scrutiny than the other two. Additionally, I've gotten the ass-end of a few things. For example, Ian announced to me, when he led us into the teachers' accommodations at the start of the semester: "You get the worst room, because you were last."
    "Ha-ha!" He doubled over. Then he said the same thing when he showed us the classrooms. He doesn't talk to any of us now, but he seemed to take a special dislike to me from the get-go.
    I attempt to create a decent impression not for his sake but because I'd like to get a passable reference so I can go on to a different teaching post with better conditions and without children. After beating my head against the wall trying to teach them something, I have, if not completely given up on the idea, at least relaxed my attitude with regard to it. In general what I'm trying to do in these classes now is prevent the kids from running out of the room and keep the noise down as much as possible so that Ian doesn't find out what a screw-up I am. That's the objective.
    Erik and Belén come in, and Soledad.
    All accounted for. I have no choice but to begin, although no one except Erik is interested, and he's listening for ten minutes if I'm lucky. I have sympathy for him because I see he gets bored - unlike the others he either already knows the work or picks it up straight away. He should be in a more advanced class, but he's not is he, he's here. When the others are colouring in I try to give him something more challenging, but it never works because as soon as I pay attention to one kid the rest of the class goes nuts.
    I'm supposed to give them a test today, which I have planned for the forty-five minute mark, after I re-go over everything that will be on it. I've promised they can play games for the last half hour of the class provided they all do well. This will happen if I allow the ones who don't know anything and don't pay attention to anything (everyone else) to chain copy off Erik's test.
    The test is on demonstratives. It's beyond them, but it's what I'm supposed to do. Following the book, I am using animals to try to illustrate this. They like animals at least. They can say "polar bear" better than "chair."
    "Okay, remember from last class," I begin, speaking slowly. "This polar bear." I point to the large picture card I'm holding. Then I put it on the table and walk a few steps away and point at it. "That polar bear."
    "Isidoro!"
    Isidoro is talking to Graciela. Eva is out of her seat, leaning over her sister's shoulder. I indicate for her to sit down and she shakes her head and laughs suddenly at something on a piece of paper. I hold out my hand for it and she grabs the paper to her stomach, jumps up and down shouting and laughing, and then everyone else is up and looking at it too.
    "Hey! Sit!" I say, as sharply as I'm capable of, which is not sharply at all, what with my head and nose all clogged up.
    Erik is the only one who obliges. I give him a smile. A raunchy orgasm-simulating pop song in English comes on: Britney Spears?
    "Bueno?" Graciela answers her phone.
     I shake my head and hold out my hand. She shakes her head too and hunkers down in her chair, talking hurriedly. I walk over and she hangs up.
    "Give it to me," I say, in my broken Spanish. "Until the end of class."
    She clutches the phone. I hesitate, then move back to the front of the class, thinking of Lily returning home the other day, face downcast.
    "I had a fight with Antonio Ivan," she said (aka Ivan the Terrible, a six year old or thereabouts).
    "Who won?" I asked.
    She glanced down at her shirt, which resembled part of a Paul Klee canvas - one of his hieroglyphs - in red marker.
    "He did," she said, before locking herself in her room for the night with a bottle of red wine.
    "Just turn it off then," I say to Graciela.
    I think I say. Yes, that's the word for "off," isn't it? "Please."
    She nods. Okay. Where were we.
    "These polar bears," I say, picking up three picture cards.
    I put them on the table and walk away and point. "Those polar bears."
    "Graciela, Isidoro, what are they?" I ask, over the top of their conversation.
    They gape at me.
    "This is on the test," I remind them, first in English and then in my terrible Spanish. "This is what you need to know for the test, okay?"
    Ian has told us we should only use English in the classroom. But I constantly hear him explaining things in Spanish in his classes, so. There's only so much stuff you can mime.... He has the advantage of being fluent though (with a pronounced British accent) - something which none of us other teachers are, remotely. This advice that he doesn't follow himself is one of the very few snippets of it he gave us, near the beginning of the semester. Nowadays if one of us says hello when we walk in the door, he won't reply. Last week I tried to ask him a question about the grading system, and he looked at me like I had rocks in my head and then flicked his eyes between me and his laptop.
    "I'm working can't you see?"
    I backed away and to the side, sneaking a peek at the screen.
    Manhunt.net.
    "What's that," Lily asked when I relayed this episode, while we walked into the house, straight to the kitchen to pop open our post-work beers and take long, grateful guzzles; "one of those bounty hunter shows?"
    "Uh, no," Jessica said. "That would be the other type of manhunt."
    "Oh," Lily said. "Oh...."
    "This is the important work he's engaged in. This is why he can't answer a question," I fumed.
    "Never try talking to him when he's on the computer," Jessica said.
    "He's always on the computer."
    "Yup," she said. "Sucks to be us. Cheers."
    "Cheers. One day at a time," Lily added. The AA line does not refer to our alcohol consumption, which is just our way of coping. It refers instead to the answer Lily supplied when I was wandering around after a couple of weeks on the job, asking: "How am I going to get through this? How am I going to make it to end of this contract huh? Seriously?"
    "What are they?"
    "Polar bears!"
    "Good!
    "And in a sentence?" I repeat this question in Spanish as well, after getting no response to several tries with the English version. Graciela smirks, at my accent or some grammatical error in there, probably both. She's opened up a bag of sweets and is stuffing her face, in between talking with her mouth full.
    "These or those?" I say, pointing at the cards.
    "These," Isidoro says.
    "Those!" Graciela shouts.
    "Good. Those. Those what?"
    I write "Those ____ polar bears" on the board and put the verb "to be" next to it. Then I ask if anyone can provide the correct form of the verb.
    "Graciela?" Usually she likes to write on the board. It's the only thing she does like, apart from talking and eating. Nothing doing today though.
    "Erik?"
     Erik comes up. Graciela and Isidoro keep yakking. The alliance of these two slackers is one of the more alarming recent trends. Previously they couldn't stand each other, which worked out fine. Now they won't shut up. I'd forgotten that I meant to separate them from the outset today. Better late than never though.
    "Graciela! Come and sit here."
    I pull a chair out next to mine.
    She gives me a dull stare, rolls her eyes and continues talking.
    "Graciela!" I tap the chair. "Now."
    She shakes her head, folds her arms.
    So what am I supposed to do with that? We regard each other. Everyone else is suddenly paying attention. I just got a head spin. Possibly I look crazed.
    "Okay." I sniffle and go into a guttural coughing fit, sounds like a couch being dragged, stop-start style, across a cement floor. "Here, now," I bark, when I recover.
    "On second thoughts - outside." I stab my finger in the direction of the door. "Just get out. Out!"
    This last word escapes from my mouth in an involuntarily high pitch. I'm getting upset it seems. I blow my nose and point to the door again. What I want to do is go up to this tragically misnamed kid, drag her ass out of the chair and dump her in the hall, the shit.
    "Out. Now!"
    "Ooooh!" the class shrieks and laughs.
    Graciela casts her ox-like eyes up at me and gathers her books, saunters to the seat next to me. This is not the reaction I was expecting. The reason I haven't threatened to kick anyone out of class before is I figured any of them would be glad to go and maybe the rest would want to leave as well, and I'd end up sitting in the room with my whole class outside, which would be fine with me, except it's not in the interests of my objective, of appearing to Ian as though I am not a screw-up.
    I should persist and make her leave, I think. This must be one reason I get no respect, clearly, there's no follow through to my act. I need to sneeze. To hell with it. It's hard to have follow through when I pass every day in a state of body and mind exhaustion, feeling like a wet dishrag, or one of those massive pieces of tripe they have draped over the counters at the market. Shit. Almost out of Kleenex.
    Graciela resumes her conversation with Isidoro, across the table.
    I switch animals - a penguin this time - one of the quirks of the picture cards belonging to the school is that none of them contain animals that are found anywhere near Mexico. Except for a pelican, which is misspelled: "pelikan," so I'm opposed to using it. Last class I got them to trace and cut out their own animal cards but the only person who completed the task with recognizable creatures - Isidoro - took his home and hasn't brought them back.
    "What's this?"
    "Penguin!"
    "Good Erik! Isidoro - what's this?"
    He glares at me.
    "What's this?"
    A piercing scream rings out.
    I jump back and put both my hands to my head.
    "Eva?"
    Eva is open-mouthed, pointing behind me. Then the whole class runs screaming to the far corner of the room and huddles there, jumping up and down, tugging at each other.
    What?
    I look behind me and see a moth the size of a small penguin, plastered to the wall. Its wings are inky black. We have one like it in our teachers' accommodations too; I usually see it on the kitchen shelf next to the chicken broth.
    "Mala suerte, mala suerte!" Eva is shouting. Bad luck!
    "Shhh! Shhh!" I put my hands over my ears.
    Their screams get louder.
    "Hey!" I try to go over the top of them. I slam a hardback on the table but they're still engrossed. The only one who seems genuinely upset by the situation however is Eva. The others are just running with it, having fun.
    "Hey!"
    This is not my "hey" this time. This is Ian, who has poked his head in the door. His eyebrows are pinched together and his face is turning red and purple.
    "You are disrupting the whole school!" he shouts in Spanish.
    Instantly, the kids go silent.
    "I can't hear my class - you are being disrespectful!"
    They hurry back to their seats, scared and repentant-looking.
    I gaze at Ian. He looks like an exploding prune. I can't understand how he commands this kind of authority. Obviously I'm missing something.
    He points at me but addresses his comment to the kids. "Pay attention to your teacher!"
    Then he gives me a stern look and stomps out.
    The class is all ears for five minutes. The moth is a forgotten concern. Then Graciela's phone rings.
    "Bueno?"
    The rest of them start talking.
    "Okay, test time."
    "Test?"
    They stare at me as though this is the first they've heard about it.
    "No teacher!" Eva yells.
    "Teacher, no!"
    "Yes. Books closed.
    "I said b-"
    They're out of their seats again. Eva is chasing Belén around the table trying to wrestle something from her grasp. Graciela is chatting on the phone. Erik opens the door to the cupboard where the textbooks are kept. Then everyone runs after him into the cupboard. The door slams shut and they stay in there laughing and nattering and turning the light on and off.
     Well, I think, it could be worse. I'm tempted to wedge a chair in front, keep them in there the rest of the time. I could read my novel perhaps. The noise level in the cupboard is rising. Someone is yelling at someone to stop doing something; leave something alone. More shrieking. I gaze at the brown floor tiles, regarding their rectangular shapes as coffins, and this situation as a funeral. Mine.... Shit, where did all my tissues go?
    Ian appears.
    "Where's your class?" he says, glancing between me and the cupboard. The yelling and screaming stops.
    "We're playing a game."
    "In the cupboard?"
    "Yes, yes, in the cupboard."
    He gives me a terrible glare, which says, incontrovertibly: you are a screw-up.



About the author:
Rose Hunter is from Australia originally, lived in Canada for many years, and now lives in Mexico. She has been published in many magazines and journals, including a previous issue of Word Riot (September 2008). Links to more of her work can be found at her blog Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have to Take Me Home.

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