"The Whiz" -- a story iv

The year--just so you know--was 1971, the spring of 1971, long before the advent of "Me Too." When Mel said she knew how the principal would react, Sandoval agrees, as if the outcome of any such abuse is fairly well cut-and-dried. What she meant was that the principal, a fine man, would have said, "I'll talk to him" and let the whole mess go right there. 

At this point in the story, we're in the middle of what today is recognizable as sexual abuse. That's a ready conclusion that was, back then, neither ready, nor a conclusion. What happened was precipitated by an emotional breakdown. Back then, no one would have thought of involving the police. Mel would not have been blamed for what happened, but Mr. Crotty would have been looked at with a certain amount of sympathy, a pathetic man. It's difficult to think him somehow a criminal; easier to see him as a victim of mental breakdown.

Back then, a first-year teacher, I don't know that I would have known what to do but suggest what this fictional me initially suggests Melanie do: "talk to the principal."  

But that suggestion changes because the story takes a darker turn. 

___________________________  

Mel blew a moist breath over her glasses and rubbed them with a balled Kleenex she'd pulled from her pocket. "It's my fault, I think. If I wasn't there, there wouldn't be a problem," she said. "He's not a bad man, Mr. Sandoval." She shrugged her shoulders as if the whole mess was easily remedied. "It's just that I can't be around him."

I wanted to touch her myself right then, I wanted to comfort her in my arms. 

"You think I should just quit the whole deal?" she said.

I don't know why I said what I did. I really don't. It was so much easier, I think, just to keep it quiet, to keep the lid on. I suppose I was thinking the same way she was, that there was more to lose all the way around if the truth were known. I was no Crotty, but maybe I even wanted to protect myself--I don't know.

"What should I do?" she said.

"Don't tell Templeton," I told her. "Just be sure that tonight he can't get you alone. Leave early," I said. "Do something."

"I can't," she said.

"Try," I said. "Just don't put yourself in any kind of position where it might happen again. Stay the heck away from him."

I suppose I assumed that the fear across her face, in the way her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed—I suppose I thought that was only natural. What did I know, really?

When we walked back to school, we walked through an uneven cadence of grunts, three or four guys in dirty practice jerseys lowering their shoulders and butting the blocking sled around the field, the coach astride the machine in front of them, yelling derisively. All the way back, I had Melinda on one side, almost silent, and the football team on the other.

*  

The next day, Wilson Crotty lost it all in math class. Melinda and two others stood at the board working out a simple problem, the rest of the class diligently computing through the sub-stratum of the same exercise in their notebooks, likely as not glancing up once in a while to see how Melinda, the whiz, was accomplishing something that seemed to the others impenetrable.

No one knows what had happened between them the night I sent Mel back to math contest practice. I don't know either. Melinda never told me exactly. But I can guess what happened because I think I understand something of Wilson Crotty. He likely tried to explain to Melinda once again how his soul was rushing headlong towards her in a way that he'd never felt before. He probably told her everything again, expecting her to return the intimacy. And he probably reached for her, expecting this very bright and mature student to be one of his students, at least, who would love him.

No one knows exactly what happened, and I fear the worst. Even then, I didn't really want to know. Maybe what I'm guessing is just the best possible face I can put on Wilson Crotty. I'm trying to excuse him. Maybe it's the maleness in me that I'm still trying to protect.

_____________________ 

Sex abuse is all about power, I'm told, but what was at the heart of Wilson Crotty's unchecked passions wasn't abuse; he didn't want to rape Mel. In the "Me,too" world, he was--morally, even criminally--abusing the power of his position when he reached for her, his math whiz, his prize student, maybe the only young woman in his tutelage who was thoughtful enough to understand the depth of his loneliness. What he wanted was to be loved. She knew all of that herself. Even Mel didn't want to break him.

When old friends of mine came to visit that year and stopped by the school to visit my classroom, they came away telling me that there were some real babes in those desks. I was shocked, honestly shocked at a sexual appraisal I'd not let myself make. They were my students. They simply not available. 

When I heard them go on about great legs and boobs, I was even a little angry. They were my students, after all, not sex objects. I didn't tell those guys as much, in part because I knew they were right; I'd made the same assessments.

I don't know when I'd determined that this story was going to be about the narrator. My guess is that I knew it going in. There's an old rule in fiction writing: the reader is going to side with (which is to say, to believe in) the story's "means of perception." In first-person narration like this, readers can't help but see the narrator as the central character, the protagonist.

In the next segment of the story, even though the action will have taken the elsewhere, I'm embarrassed to say the narrator will remain the central character. 

The events you'll witness tomorrow prompted, years later, my writing this story.