HOW I BECAME A POET by Steven Schutzman
I was in the office again, after school. I could see my knees like little infant heads below my skirt line. I could see the shoes of the people walking by. Some days, like that day, I couldn’t stand to be looked at. Other days, I stared at everybody. The night before, a flock of geese flew over my house honking the whole way. Sounded more like excited talking than honking. Oh boy, Canada, we can’t wait.
I was sitting there waiting for another IEP meeting with my mother and my teachers and the school guidance counselor, Mrs. Hobart, and a lawyer representing the Board of Education. Since I’m in high school now, ninth grade, I am required to participate in decisions about my future.
Waiting outside offices is something I’m so used to it feels private, even when the office was busy like it was that day. When I was in elementary and middle at Piney Run School, I didn’t have to go to IEP meetings, just wait outside in case they wanted to talk to me which always meant a punishment or a new instructional plan or both, probably. At Piney Run School, I sat on a bench in the hall, the same bench where I got sent out of class for being incorrigible.
When the little kids in the Piney Run after-care class would come by, holding hands in a line on their way to the playground, I’d go completely still and stare at them with empty eyes. The kids all thought that was funny and tried to make me smile or blink except for this one boy who always started crying like I was a monster. And then I got yelled at by the obese after-care lady.
“You know what you’re doing, Young Lady. Now stop it.”
I stayed still and stared, making her madder. Even when I was already in trouble, I’d get myself in more trouble, sitting there waiting for my punishment. Incorrigible.
Piney Run, where I went from Kindergarten through Eighth Grade, was an old school and its halls were crowded with red shadows you had to push through to get anywhere. Beg pardon. Not at all. The red shadows were made of shouts and fever, shoes and shoulders, stale smells like feet and fresh smells like pine. To be by yourself in the hall was like being awake in a dream dark and somber. I loved it. At least four times a day, I’d get excused to go to the girl’s room and then I’d stay out so long my teachers would send a girl in to fetch me. Then they figured out to send a girl to the girl’s room with me in the first place and that ruined that. That’s what they do at these IEP meetings, come up with strategies to defeat your strategies.
Sometimes, on my wooden bench in the Piney Run hall of red shadows, I’d get lost in my fingerprint or fingernail or the bumps on my sweater. When you’re an ant, each grain of sand in the hourglass is a boulder you can watch tumble down and life is good. Other times, I’d put my fingers in my ears and listen to the blood roar in the canyons of my head. Sometimes, I picked a scab and then, ow, it was like I crashed into myself and woke up. Oh, it’s you there, beg pardon. I love saying that, Beg pardon, then Not at all. Beg pardon. Not at all. Like a British person.
When I was in the Sixth Grade, Piney Run School had a recycling project to collect soda and beer can poptabs and tie them together into this huge poptab quilt which was hung behind my wooden bench in the hall of red shadows. It was the best thing I ever did in that school and because I liked to wander by the stream where garbage washed up, I brought in more poptabs than anyone else. It was my thing but a mistake because it gave my mother and my teachers hope.
I loved the infinity of clicks the poptab quilt made as the air from an opening or closing door went through it. It was like being an ant. If another kid walked by while I was on my bench, we were two ants in an underground tunnel. I used to put my index fingers at the top of my head and wave them like antennas signaling to the other kid that the rulers of our colony were stupid. Of course, ants don’t do that. They love their colony and their queen and always do their duty.
Once, in the Third Grade, this kid Bobby Rogoff antennaed me back and I lifted my skirt up and showed him my underwear; I have no idea why.
“Get away from me, freak.”
At least the other kids were real to me then, as real as ants anyway. Not like in high school where they’re almost as bad as the adults. I often give myself the hearing of an ant and watch their faces distort. There’s no one left from my colony anymore since my friend Rose moved away.
The day that day was a gorgeous day, the air like silk on your skin so I cut high school and wandered the stream and then sat on a rock and ate my lunch in the sun. I read for a while, threw rocks, dangled my feet in the water. They cleaned the stream somehow, something they did upstream. No more soda cans, no more plastic bags hanging like party decorations from the branches, the water clear. It was so beautiful, I made up a poem in my mind when I saw a dragonfly gliding like they do just over the surface of the water.
Who cuts school and then shows up later for their IEP meeting when getting caught is guaranteed? I do.
The office was bright, busy and loud, not like the Piney Run hall of red shadows. Just to make conversation, the school secretary asked me if I knew I’d been absent from school that day and I just looked at her because the only reason she would ask was if she thought I was stupid. Then into the office walked the lady poet who had come to our class for a week when I was in the Fourth Grade at Piney Run to teach us to write poetry. I recognized her right away by her wild black hair, her jeans, her hips and her butt like the sides of a solid blue wall.
When I refused to write poetry in her class, the poet squatted down by my desk and stared at me with big bright brown eyes.
“Just write whatever you want. Tell me to get lost in ten different ways.”
I wrote what I wanted. Nothing.
“Come on, give it a try.”
I told the lady poet my mother said I didn’t have to write poetry if I didn’t feel like it, a total lie.
The poet couldn’t believe it. No fourth grader ever refused before. We were all like sheep.
“What’s that in your hand?” she asked me.
“My pencil,” I said, showing her.
“How can you write with that?”
My pencil was only an inch long including a full eraser. I never erase because an eraser feels wonderful when you run it over your eyelids and eyeballs and I didn’t want to use it up. I had the pencil since school started that year and I was trying to see if I could make it last until the end.
“Amanda doesn’t write,” my teacher, Mrs. Todd, said. “She scribbles on the inside of her desk and draws on her thumbnail.”
“Thumbnail sketches,” I said.
“Very clever,” said the lady poet.
“Amanda is very clever. She does exactly what she wants.”
“Why don’t you write me a poem about your friend the pencil?”
“That’s stupid.”
“Then let the pencil speak. Write a poem about how the pencil feels getting smaller and smaller.”
I actually wanted to do it. I thought I could write that.
“I don’t feel like it.”
The poet wasn’t giving up.
“I’ll tell you what; write just one word on your thumbnail,” she said. “Whatever word you want. And that will be your poem.”
I shook my head. What word would I write? It was hard to choose like choosing the word you would write in the sky. A lot of words seemed pretty good when I thought about them but not quite good enough to be the one word.
I think if the lady poet had come up with one more poetry idea she would have had me. I liked her. She had a pretty face and wild hair. I liked how she couldn’t believe I was acting like I was acting, like I was playing a prank on her, and I liked how she kept on trying to get me for poetry. I liked how her big hips swung as she walked down the aisle, how she would squat down at a desk to talk to a kid and how words were clouds coming out of her mouth. She had a pretty face with snaky black curls sprung around her head and lit up eyes. I was waiting for her to give me her next idea but she moved on and gave up on me like everybody else did and I always felt bad about how I disappointed her. I think she was afraid I was going to cause a rebellion but the other kids liked poetry and thought I was crazy. Before the poet left, each student was supposed to write a thank-you note thanking her for teaching us about poetry and I actually handed something in.
‘Beg pardon. Not at all.’ I wrote with my disappearing pencil.
In the high school office, I stared at the poet’s back and solid blue butt. It worked. She turned around and looked at me.
“Amanda, right?” she said, staring down. “Piney Run, right?”
“Hello, Poet.”
“How are you doing these days?”
“Okay.”
“I’m teaching poetry workshops here this week.”
“Cool but not in ninth grade.”
“No. How’s your pencil?”
“You remember that?”
“Sure. I even told my husband about it and . . .”
She sat down in the chair next to mine, her eyes were still bright like always, like there was a candleflame way back in each one. The wrinkles at the corners looked like the rays of the sun in kids’ drawings. I saw the parallel lines across her forehead and the white hair sprinkled through her black hair. The poet looked a lot older and more worn out than I remembered but still pretty. She put her warm, silky-smooth hand on my wrist.
“And you know, Amanda, I created a poetry exercise based on your little pencil and how a person might feel getting smaller and smaller until she was almost gone, so I always wanted to thank you for that. Thank you.”
I wanted to tell the poet I was sorry for not writing that poem about getting smaller and smaller when she was teaching our fourth grade class but I just couldn’t. Used to be I always apologized for myself, only half meaning it, but now I never do.
“You’re welcome, Poet.”
“See you around, Amanda,” she said and stood up and walked back to the counter.
I opened my binder and wrote out the poem I made up by the stream that day.
If I would write a poem
I would write it on this stream
the same poem the sun is writing
with that dragonfly
“Poet,” I said. “Here.”
My heart was beating like mad as I stood there and she read my little poem. I was scared, terrified. I don’t know. It wasn’t that I was afraid she wouldn’t like it. I knew she would. I knew that it was her job to like and praise my poem. I just felt like I was about to totally disappear like that old pencil of mine, getting smaller and smaller. But I didn’t disappear. Instead, on the way out, I crashed into myself coming back in and there I was.
Steven Schutzman’s short stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sand, Underground Voices, and Gargoyle.