Rita
Rita was a school nurse; she had listened to many students and administrators and teachers in her long years of watching; she had cried and laughed and worried over students and administrators and teachers, too. She was small and plump and middle aged, and fiercely protective of her middle school friends. She used to bring three sandwiches and a yogurt for lunch, eat the yogurt and give the sandwiches to some tall thin young one who had no lunch money. Rita was a friend of mine; she and I traded gossip and health problems and concerns many times. Most of her concern went to the students, the homeless ones, the abused ones, the stars of the campus who had problems only she knew about. Most of her concern went to them, rightfully. But sometimes there was a teacher or an administrator who earned her respect and then she would call and tell me about it. This is her story, the story of a young man and an old hurt, and the conflicts of the spirit. Listen to Rita and she’ll tell you about it.
The school was old, battered, and comfortable. Its ceilings were high and its halls were wide, and it echoed with the laughter of children. These children were in the seventh and eighth grades ; a time when life could be difficult indeed, for them and for the adults around them. In our school there was a dress code, but it was not strictly enforced. Our students were testing themselves and us, and clothes were the first front line. Some young men wore their pants so low that I figured one sneeze would bring disaster; the young ladies wore black lipstick and dark nail polish and anointed their hair with pounds of hair spray. Somehow, despite the clashes of dress and music and language, we all managed to teach and learn, students and teachers and the rest of us.
One of the teachers who we learned from was a Native American. We used to call them Indians. He still called himself an Indian and didn’t mind if we forgot to be politically correct. He was small and thin and bony, and he wore his hair very short, in a military style brush cut instead of the Navajo way, long and tied in a knot. He taught an eighth grade science class. His students won all kinds of awards for their science projects every spring, and he was held in high regard by his students, who imitated him in every way. They quoted his every saying. He read a lot, and had lots of sayings. Most of them were irreverent one-liners about religion from Mark Twain or H.L.Mencken.
Christmas was two weeks away, and the winter vacation was about to start. I could tell with my eyes closed; the running and the shouting was louder, and happier. There were snacks and goodies nearly every day in the teachers’ lounge, and teachers came in and sat in my office in between classes and chewed on the antacids I kept for them. They also used the scale and groaned a lot.
I used to teach a nutrition class to some of the eighth grade students, and the Home Ec teacher liked to remind everyone that we still could think about eating properly in the middle of the candy and snacks. So the week before Christmas I gathered my posters and handouts and did the class, leaving my office door open with a note that emergencies should go to the main office. The class was fun; everyone hooted and hollered when I told them to eat a vegetable snack and a yogurt dip instead of chips and salsa. Sometimes I thought I was talking to a wall, but some of the students took notes and one young lady told me she would help her mother plan meals, so I guess some of what I said got through.
When I came back to my office, there was only one patient. It was Mr. Tso, lying on the cot. He was curled up in a fetal position, and he had the electric blanket all the way up to nine. His feet and hands were cold and his forehead was clammy. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t asleep; when he heard me stirring around he said softly,
“Are they all going to eat carrot sticks and broccoli instead of fries and green chili burritos?”
I sat on the edge of the cot and thought how like a student he looked, young and pale.
“Mr. Tso, what’s the matter? Have you called anyone to pick you up?”
He nodded. “Mr. Otero called my wife over at Katherine Parish Intermediate and she’s on her way. I told him not to bother her, I’ll just lie here and go back to class later, but he said I didn’t look good to him.” Mr. Tso opened his eyes and looked at me and winked. “He’s a principal, not a doctor. How do I look to you?”
I hesitated, and then told him the truth. “Awful; how do you feel?”
“Short of breath, cold, weak, all the usual suspects. I was up late last night putting a tricycle together.” He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Big science teacher, big engineer. Took me twice as long to put the damn thing together because I kept having to lie down and rest.” He shook his head and frowned. “What’s your prescription, doc?”
“Go see your doctor and let them know how you feel. Get a lot of rest and don’t come back until after the holiday.”
He made a face and his frown grew deeper on his lined forehead. “Oh, yeah, the holiday. Time for all of us to be good little consumers and spend ourselves into debt to give our children twenty minutes of so-called fun. Christmas has disappeared.”
“Bah, humbug, huh?” I said softly and he nodded, solemn.
“Dwight, are you OK? You need to see the doctor right away.” A small dark woman walked into the office, her forehead furrowed with worry. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse and wore a delicate squash blossom necklace around her neck. Her hair was dark and glossy, tied back with a bright ribbon.
“Would you like to use my phone to make an appointment?” I asked. She nodded and leaned down over her husband and stroked his forehead, concern making deep lines in her face. Mr. Tso took her hand and held it, his eyes were closed and he looked about fourteen.
Mrs. Tso made the phone call and gathered his books and coat into her arms. “I’ll take these to the car and come back.” When she turned away there were tears in her eyes.
“How’s he doing?” Mr. Otero had seen Mrs. Tso come in. “I’ll help you to the car, Dwight.”
Mr. Tso nodded and began to sit up, slowly. He swung his legs over the side of the cot and leaned over, hands on knees, straining for breath.
“I feel so damn helpless,” he murmured. “Now Betty will go call everyone from her church and I’ll feel even more helpless, as if I can’t even make a tuna casserole.” He closed his eyes. “Every time I get sick like this we always get ten tuna casseroles from the church.”
I didn’t say anything. People tried to help, but he wasn’t accepting, wasn’t letting others give him a hand.
Slowly we all stood up, and Mr. Tso braced himself on tall Mr. Otero’s arm and we walked to the door and out into the bright, cold sunshine. Mrs. Tso had parked right in front of the door, and we helped him get in the car and bundled into a blanket. He endured all this fussing in silence, eyes closed, but I could feel the waves of helpless anger at being unable to help himself, having to lean on Mr. Otero’s arm.
“I’ll let you know what the doctor says,” he whispered.
They drove away, and Mr. Otero closed the door to my office and sat down. He looked at me with tired brown eyes and took a deep breath.
“How much do you know about Mr. Tso?” he asked.
“Some,” I said. “He’s had this heart condition for a long time, and he knows everything there is about baseball, and he’s proud and smart and doesn’t think much of organized religion. Even his own traditions. And he’s young. Too young to look like he does.”
The principal nodded. “He was on his way to a Ph.D. in physics, youngest man in his class. His grandfather had been a code talker in World War II, his father fought in the Korean War and was the first one to go to college in his family. And Dwight was on his way to scientific stardom.” The principal looked out the window at the deep blue sky and the bare trees. “Then his heart problem got worse, and he had to change his plans. He got a Master’s Degree but couldn’t finish the doctorate, so he came to teach. And our students are the richer for it.”
Mr. Otero stood up and told me about the two surgeries and the bed rest and the medication.
“He’s only 35 years old; every day is a gift, he told me once. Every season is precious. He’s angry but not so angry that he doesn’t see that.”
“His students win all kinds of science awards, don’t they?” I asked. “They’ve been in here asking about him, worried. They quote him all the time.”
Otero nodded. “Like most teenagers, they protect the people they love. They know what it’s like to be ignored and defenseless.”
The holiday came and went, and January brought us back to school. All the decorations came down and Valentine’s red and white went up in the halls and on the bulletin boards. There was a dance after school on the 14th and my office was the center of the activity because there was a bathroom with a mirror and also a set of scales. Eighth grade girls with perfect figures weighed themselves and moaned and groaned and waved their hands with great emphasis and said they were going to starve for a week. I had to replace the nutrition and diet booklets I kept in a folder on the desk about four times. The year was moving towards the spring, and the science students were worried.
“He’s only been in class two days all month, Mrs. Nurse.” Moises was sitting on the chair, looking glum. His big Science book was on his lap, along with another one on water that he had gotten from he library.
“Who teaches you?” I asked.
“Mrs. Denman, she’s the other science teacher. She’s great, and she knows a lot but she isn’t Mr. Tso. She doesn’t know anything about baseball.”
I nodded. She was also trying to hold two big classes together and keep her own head above water.
Moises looked at me with astonishment. “Do you know what Mr. Tso told me last night on the phone, for us guys to help her! Us? How can we help? I told him we’re just kids, but he said we could do it.” He looked surprised and eager, and repeated what his teacher had told him.
“He said he’d give us some assignments and told me how we can help Mrs. Denman and Durkin, the computer teacher. He said Durkin could give us some tips on how to use the computer to make our science experiments look great.”
Moises stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “We’ve got a class leadership group, Mr. Tso set that up before Christmas so we could solve little problems without going to him all the time, and I guess this is one of those problems, but not so little.” Moises gave me a high five and ran to class as the bell rang, jean legs flapping.
They did very well, that class. They got together and organized their assignments and every now and then Mr. Otero cruised by to check on things. I did some talks on anatomy to some of the class who were doing a experiment with bones, soaking chicken bones in various solutions to see what happened. When Mr. Tso came back, in March, there were Easter eggs and Spring Things on all the walls, and order in his classroom. He had been in Michigan undergoing some more tests, and another complicated heart surgery, and was recuperating, slowly.
He came into my office with a little note from his doctor that I should check his pulse and blood pressure once a day, and keep a record. Mr. Tso made a face.
“I feel like an invalid. They won’t let me do much, and I get tired walking up stairs.” He looked angry but didn’t have the energy to show it. I took his pressure and noted the pulse and wrote it down in a little notebook that he gave me.
“How’s your class, Dwight? They’ve been pretty excited about the Science Fair and how well they’re doing on their own.”
He smiled. “They’re learning more than those science experiments. I gave Moises a problem to lecture the class on: he’s going to talk about water and solidification and why the earth isn’t covered with ice.”
I shook my head. “Beats me. Physics wasn’t my bag, natural science was. Why isn’t it?”
He stood up. “Come and watch Moises tomorrow around nine in the morning. He’s talking to both the science classes, and it’ll be a sight to see. He’s a star, that guy. He doesn’t know it yet, though.”
To see Moises in a coat and tie was a real treat. The coat was a little too small, and had served several of his brothers, but it didn’t matter. He stood up tall and straight and told us just why ice didn’t cover the earth and made it clear enough for even his old Mrs. Nurse to understand.
“A long time ago, last winter I guess, I went to Chama to see my grandfather on the ranch. He has this big pond and I got an idea for my science fair project just listening to him wonder about the ice. He and I watched the ice float to the top, but the water underneath was warm enough for little plants and stuff. So I got some beakers and put hot water in one, cold water in one and ice in the other and measured the volume.”
Moises stopped, looking around at his audience and gesturing to the beakers on the table. “And guess what? The volume of the cold water was greater than the ice. When water solidifies into ice, it expands, so the volume of a pound of water is less than the volume of a pound of ice. Therefore, ice floats on water where it will melt when the temperature rises. If water did not expand when it solidified, it would sink and thus would build up at the bottom of the ocean or pond like at the ranch, where it would not melt. So that’s why the earth isn’t covered with ice.” He looked triumphant. “Get it?”
We did, and applauded and Mr. Tso smiled quietly from the back of the room.
The spring was wearing into summer, and Science Fair was upon us. I was one of the judges, mostly of natural science stuff since the heavy duty physics and engineering was beyond me. We gathered in the gym where all the exhibits were set up, ate doughnuts and listened to Mrs. Denman explain the rules and how we were to judge each district entry.
“The best two of each classification will go to Regional, and the best of that will go to State. Right now we’re judging the best in the whole school district, so you have some really good entries out there.” She was proud of them all, especially the combination class she had taught all semester. Mr. Tso was there, smiling, sitting in the corner. The doctors had given him an oxygen container to use, and he looked small and crumpled inside his clothes. But the look on his face was full of pride for his class, and the smile on his lips couldn’t have been broader. He was wearing his hair much longer now, in the Navajo way, tied in back of his head with a red cloth.
There was also another best of district, a young lady who had gone around to the various water sources in the county and checked the pollution levels and status of the drinking water. She had an elaborate ecology display, and understood everything she had done; she had documented it all on the computer after school and on Saturdays in Mr. Durkin’s room, who came in to help the students who didn’t have computers at home. Since that was most of our students, he was at school most every Saturday.
“It’s OK with me, I can get out and do the grocery shopping on my way home.” He was a big man, burly and gray, as expansive as Mr. Tso was reserved.
We put the blue ribbons on the winners and yellow ribbons on the others, and gave certificates of merit to everyone. The gym rang with applause and cheering, and busy students took their experiments down and got ready for the next level which would take place at the University, in Albuquerque. Moises put his beakers and computer printouts away carefully, and mused about transportation.
“Do you think it’ll get to Albuquerque safely? I hope nothing breaks.” He cradled the glass in his hands, and wrapped it in newspaper. I brought some cardboard splints and gauze from my office for the delicate things, and his father helped bring the boxes out to the truck.
“Mr. Tso thinks I can get a scholarship in science if I work hard in high school, Mrs. Nurse.” He said shyly, grinning. I looked up at this tall dark young man and shook his hand.
“I’ll bet he’s right. You listen to Mr. Tso.”
He looked startled. “We always do, always. Whatever he says. Like the fact that Bob Feller played for the Cleveland Indians when he was sixteen and won lots of games. At sixteen! We listen when he says ‘no matter how bad you are, someone is worse and no matter how good you are, someone is better.’ That made me feel really good when I got a lousy grade in English.” He pulled a comical face and looked morose. “I’m good at Science but boy my English needs help.”
I laughed. “Mr. Tso is right; no matter how good you are, someone is better at something else! You’ll get help with English, just like you help your classmates with Science. Just keep at it and remember, to explain Science you need English, and you did very well that day you lectured.”
He blushed and shook his head. “That was easy, that was just saying what I thought about a subject I liked. And knew something about, that helped!”
“And your English essays will all be about scientific subjects now, I’ll bet.” Mrs. Denman came up behind Moises and gave him a hug. He turned around and whistled.
“Hey, that’s right. I can write about neat stuff and not worry about spelling, science spelling is easy!” He grinned and ran off, following his father to the truck and off to his house with the precious cargo of his science project. Mrs. Denman looked after him.
“Why is it that the end of the year always makes me feel old?” She turned quickly and gave me a bright smile, “ …not for long, you understand. Just for a day or two.” She sighed, and we two stood there, tired and feeling a little old, watching eighth graders skip and bustle around us.
“Don’t feel old, ladies. You’re too young to feel old.” A quiet voice behind us brought both of us out of ourselves. Mr. Tso stood there, one hand leaning on the oxygen canister, the other holding his wife’s shoulder. I laughed.
“Claire and I always do that, don’t we?” I gave Mrs. Denman a nudge and she picked it up.
“Oh, yes, we pretend to feel old when we really feel about seventeen. Right?” She winked at me. And Mrs. Tso smiled.
“It’s a little hard to feel seventeen, but twenty-five would do fine.” She gave her husband a gentle hug. He sighed and looked around at his class.
“That’s what makes me feel young, looking at all those youngsters with their lives ahead of them, and know that I’m a part of it. A small part, to be sure, but a part nonetheless.” His quiet voice was firm and low.
We watched for a minute, and then turned to go. I asked if I could take Mr. Tso’s blood pressure, and he laughed and said, why not, and we walked down the hall into the nurse’s office. Mrs. Tso went to the classroom to collect the last of his belongings; Mrs. Denman was going to give the final exam to the combined science classes so Mr. Tso could go back to his doctor in Michigan tomorrow. I noted the blood pressure and pulse, and also the slightly blue cast at the base of his fingernails, and the tightness around his mouth, so the doctor could check to see if the oxygen level was high enough. We sat there, in the quiet office, watching dust motes dance and listening to the wheeze of the old freezer, now full of ice cream for last day parties.
“It’s been a long year, but with all this help I’ve had, we’ve made it.” He looked at me with a wan sort of look, and shook his head. “People have been praying, lots of them, all our church group.” I must have looked startled because of the way he talked about the church people before. He looked down at the floor with a solemn sort of look and said, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and talking to whatever God is up there,” he looked mischievous and pointed all around the room, “on the reservation, or wherever She is!”
He grinned and shook his head. “ Even the people on the reservation have been a part of this, the sand paintings and the medicine men, whatever works.” Mr. Tso grew quiet, staring calmly into space. “I went back there, back to the grandfathers, like Moises did on the ranch. He got the idea for a science project looking at a pond.” Mr. Tso looked at me with clear brown eyes. “I got the idea for the rest of my life among the old grandfathers, maybe. It all works, I guess. Prayers, and church casseroles, chants and sand paintings.” He looked out the window at the green trees and the cloudless summery sky and smiled. “Another season, another gift. I knew that, all along, at least.” Quiet Mr. Tso seemed to want to talk, to expand on what he had found. “I couldn’t do a Ph.D. for me, but I’ll trade it for a student like Moises. I’ll just publish him and he can do the work of writing it all down.” He looked at me with pride shining in his eyes. “I could have done a lot worse than that. It’s better this way, for both me and Moises.”
He turned away and looked out the window at the summer, and took a deep breath. He stood up slowly, and I helped push the oxygen while Mrs. Tso walked at her husband’s side. We went slowly down the stairs, and he leaned a little on his wife and let me carry the oxygen and put it in the car. They closed the doors and waved as they drove off, to summer and doctors and another season, another gift. Seasons and sand paintings, people and prayers, everything works together.
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