About Crows

Emily Brown

It seemed to me, when I was 22, that no one had ever really told me what it would be like to be 22. Certainly no one had told me how bad it could be. When I hit rough patches that year, I was surprised, surprised in the way that young people often are. I was angry.
The months after my twenty-second birthday were auspicious enough: I completed my student teaching, graduated from college, enjoyed one last summer working at the university library. I stayed in Chicago and looked for a job teaching high school. I hadn’t secured a full-time position by the time school started, so I put in the paperwork to become a substitute teacher—not an ideal job by any means, but a nice transition from college to the working world, and a good way to show possible future employers my competence and dependability. I remember that unemployed period fondly to the tune of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” which played constantly on television while The Gap’s fall line paraded across the screen. While waiting for the paperwork to go through, I took long walks in autumnal sunshine. I learned to make a couple dinners for the boyfriend who finally had moved to Chicago to start law school.

When October came, so did work. Curiosity and hope sustained me through the first weeks of subbing. I was sent to some terrible schools at the beginning, but they were interestingly terrible. I figured it would get better in time: I would improve my classroom management skills, I would become inured to bad behavior, and it would all help me get a real teaching job in the end. I got in good with the sub coordinator at a decent high school on the Northwest side of Chicago and so had steady work.
September and October of that year are very clear in my memory. Fall helped me mark time. Leaves changed color and fell, jackets got progressively heavier. Then November began, and the days were all a blur, blustery and cold, until March or April. I remember my morning walk clearly though, and I remember one particular alley. After I parked my car on a side street, I would walk towards the school through this alley, between yellow-bricked apartment buildings and high wooden fences. I walked quickly to get to school on time and to get out of the cold, and I know my shoes didn’t make a sound—they were the kind that left marks all over the floors of the hallways and the gym—but in this memory I always hear footsteps, measured and slow.

The footsteps were from young men walking to and from the Jewish Orthodox high school down the road. There would be one, two, or three of them every morning, and we’d share a small smile against the cold. They wore large-brimmed black hats, white-collared shirts, and black wool coats. Winters in Chicago offer many variations on colorless: pale yellow brick, sun-bleached wooden fences, back porches and stairs, salt-stained asphalt. But these boys’ black hats and coats were such a rich black, their shirts so white and delicate and starched—it was the most beautiful thing I saw each day.
There were echoing footsteps, gliding strides, and crows circling overhead, their morning caws loud and ominous. But my memory contradicts itself. There was also stillness, silence, and slowness in those walks through the alley. It was like a slow-motion dream sequence. While the colors, images, and sounds made a pensive and dreary scene, it was my own face that gave that walk significance. The truth about the gray days of November is that the boyfriend in law school had broken up with me. Without heartache, gray days slip away unnoticed. Filled with sorrow, they matter—they add up and they are remembered. In the alley and in the dream, I was the girl with the pale face, the sad eyes, and the momentary smile.

It was nice that my heartbreak could feel so remarkable during this short walk. It felt worldly. Everything changed once I got to the street. A different, jarring time took over. The soles of my shoes struck the pavement harder than before.  I had to dodge irritating and irritable cars. The buzz of chaos all around made me wince, and my dread grew until it hit its pinnacle at the front steps of the school, where I faced a mob of noisy teenagers. Everything about them was clownish. Their spastic movements, their garish and tacky clothes, their incredible range of pitch and volume. I walked this gauntlet and fended off their jostling and noise with pointed “Excuse me’s” and an air of annoyance.

Once I got to the classroom, the rules were simple. I was supposed to take attendance and explain the lesson left by the teacher; the students were supposed to behave. There were definitely classes, days even, where the rules were followed perfectly. Mostly though, I fought to get my simple tasks done. Getting the students quiet after the bell always left me wishing for a louder, more intimidating voice, and taking roll was a surprisingly embarrassing business. The school was in a very diverse neighborhood – aside from the usual mix of white, Hispanic, and African-American kids, they were Korean, Polish, Indian, Vietnamese and more. Mispronouncing names of various ethnic, cultural, or religious origin was a quick path back to chaos.
A month or so into subbing, I thought I was getting better, and wasn’t flustered when I encountered the name Dederick. “Is…De-DER-ick here?” I asked, timid but somewhat confident about the pronunciation.

The kids howled with laughter. “You mean DED-rick?!”

“Yes,” I responded, rolling my eyes, but also smiling. There was nothing they enjoyed more than pointing out an error. Sometimes their enthusiasm was catching and I couldn’t help but laugh.

But there were plenty of times when I didn’t laugh. I hated their rudeness and oblivion, but hated my responsibility in teaching them about rudeness even more. And what I hated most is that I seemed to simply disappear at the door. To them, I was just another adult, a sort-of teacher, one whose authority should and would be tested. All the things about myself that I liked, that I considered defining characteristics—compassion, a sense of humor, the desire to do a job well—didn’t matter to them. It was also of no consequence that I had been an excellent student at college, that my bosses loved me, or that I was terribly sad about a break-up (and was full of self-pity about it). The only thing they needed to know was that I was older and I enforced the rules.  
Giving a quiz in a freshman English class one day, I instructed students to take everything off their desks before starting. I had to squeeze my way through one of the narrow aisles several times to remind one girl in the back corner to clear her desk. She wasn’t particularly nice about it and I responded firmly. On my third attempt, after the rest of the class had started working quietly, she turned to her friend across the aisle and said, “I wish this bitch would get out of my face!”

Standing in front of her as she said this, in the back corner of the classroom, I didn’t have a lot of time to act. The rest of the class gasped and turned around to watch—what was she, the sub, going to do about this? Indeed, what was I going to do? As a teacher, I had to be in control of the situation and stay in control. I needed to address the girl’s affront to show my authority, without overreacting and losing what little respect the other students had for me. But as a 22-year-old, I was just incredibly angry.

I was mad that she was so rude, and I was mad that I couldn’t fix it. I could reason with her or scare her into being polite with me in the future, but as long as I was subbing, I would always encounter new rude kids. I was mad that I had this stupid job and that the boyfriend had broken up with me. What hit me hardest during this moment in the back corner of a classroom—what enraged me most—was that this girl got to explode her frustrations on me and I couldn’t reciprocate. I had things to swear about too.
I shushed the other kids. I issued a quiet threat to her while my eyebrows were raised in serious displeasure; I kept my mouth in a hard unsmiling line for the rest of the class period. But it took a long time to stop being mad.

This girl wore an unflatteringly tight denim jumpsuit. It was strange to think, but in spite of our divergent tastes in fashion, she and I weren’t that different. At her age, I listened to the Smashing Pumpkins sing, “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage,” and felt there could not be a more appropriate metaphor for life in high school. She was an echo from my high school past—much gutsier than I ever was, but with the same desperate frustration. I had so much anger over the lack of control of my life. Her impotent anger had turned into an outburst, while mine festered, showing at school mostly as I walked sullenly through the halls.

I’ve often thought about that year spent subbing and getting over a 22-year-old’s broken heart, wondering what kind of lesson I had learned. I’m still not sure what it was—maybe something about that defiant girl in tight denim, or the Jewish boys with their large black hats. Or something about the crows, circling and cawing above me in a forlorn alley.