J. Bradley Minnick: MS. ROBBERS • Cleaver Magazine

J. Bradley Minnick
MS. ROBBERS

Ms. Robbers taught seventh-grade Spanish at Mann Middle School and was the reason for Bernie Markee’s infamy. Ms. Robbers was white, tall, unmarried, called herself a “Progressivist,” and believed she spoke Castilian Spanish perfectly, pronouncing each syllable succinctly and with great care. Worksheets were the rule, but it was Don Quixote that gave us fits.

Up until seventh grade, Bernie Markee had come to think of himself as a pretty good student. Although he didn’t read quickly, he loved to read—often into the early hours, unable to put his books down, even after his mother kindly told him that it was way past the time he should be asleep; however, this recent problem with Spanish made very little sense to Bernie, who assumed that loving one language would most easily translate into loving another.

In Ms. Robbers’s class, after completing what she called “the dailies,” we would try to read in Spanish out of fat Perma-boundless Don Quixote editions we collectively called Dr. Quotes.

For herself, Ms. Robbers reserved a large leather volume of Don Quixote, and each pristine page held a bit of gold leaf and, according to Ms. Robbers, “the wisdom of the ages.” The volume, she often reminded us, had been passed down through her family and was the first thing she would rescue if ever she found herself in a fire.

Meanwhile, our tattered Dr. Quotes looked as if they had already been through both fire and flood—their torn, earmarked pages were filled with doodles and cautionary quips: “The early bird gets crap for breakfast”; “This book is nothing but a depression sandwich”; and, “Don’t count the pages until they’re all red—a homophone—ha-ha.”

Ms. Robbers’s “progressive” teaching method—her philosophy, her technique—was simply to sit on the corner of her desk whilst one by one we stumbled aloud over the words in our Dr. Quotes and accompanying supplemental Vocabulary Worksheets, beginning with A—acardenalar, followed by acariciar, and acatamiento. Yes, we all stumbled and verily fell, except, of course, for Alicia Mármol—a gifted girl in braids who knew just about everything about just about everything.

Alicia was always, according to Ms. Robbers, acertadнsimo. She would sit perfectly still in her neat and pressed blouses and pleated skirts and would read in perfect cadence—the beauty of Spanish falling trippingly and in three dimensions from her tongue—“dadivoso, favorecer, indecible.” You see, Alicia was working ahead, and it was rumored that she was on worksheet O. “Obstante, no se usa a pesar de nosotros, Alicia,” Ms. Robbers gently “corregida.”

As evidenced by all, Alicia Mármol had spent the majority of the previous evening practicing her pronunciation and defining words the rest of us would be accountable for the following day: “El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.”

Bernie imagined Alicia Mármol together with her perfectly-pressed mother and her button-down father sitting around their clean Formica kitchen table with a new super-deluxe leather edition of Don Quixote spread out in front of them, all taking turns reading aloud page after page: “Y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el cerebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio.”

When her parents were satisfied with her pronunciation, Alicia would be allowed to snip open a new page with the scissors she held in her pretty fingers—fingers that Bernie Markee imagined also held onto all previous imprinted meanings.

As the scenes shifted, Don Quixote found his way through joy and pain and sadness and insanity: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams—this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness—and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” Alicia’s classroom register would lift by degrees into high seriousness, and once elevated, pitch sustained, she would suddenly lower her voice to a whisper: “Renunciar a los sueños, esto puede ser una locura.” Everyone, including Ms. Robbers, would shift forward with a resounding rumble that rippled through the classroom’s plastic blue seats: “Demasiada cordura puede ser lo peor de la locura, ver la vida como es y no como debería de ser!”

Alicia Mármol, who we secretly loved, represented—no!—embodied! all that, if one tried his very hardest and good-God-best, if she was humble, honest and sincere, if he was dutiful and persistent and helpful to others, one could eventually, turn out to be. And Ms. Robbers seconded this notion with an English quotation she dredged up from the estimable Mr. Aubry FG Bell. “Querida clase,” she said to get our attention and morphed into English, “The best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive, for one and all, to learn Spanish.”

None of us, really, had any idea what was going on in the novel, but Alicia Mármol, through her voice alone, was able to help us find our way into a kind of fourth dimension that, through the words she read, not only transfixed us but transposed us into the story.

She would read in Spanish and even translate important passages for us: “To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. ‘Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.’”

Of course, after Alicia finished reading, the remainder of our class time quickly evaporated into verbal agony, each of us, once again, consigned to stumble over the words in front of us like a Spanish-language accident.

Slippery words, carcajada, with the promise of misplaced adventures eluded us—each potential quest did too, devolving into gibberish. When called upon, we would sweat “barniz” and burble “bizco” and blurt out sentences we couldn’t quite pronounce: “estar preparado es la mitad de la victoria,” much less understand.

All along, Ms. Robbers would provide stern corrections—admonishments with unsubtle sentiments: “Why can’t each of you be like Alicia?”; “Why can’t each of you prepare like Alicia?”; “Why can’t each of you be Alicia?”; and, “If only you were Alicia, this classroom, Mann Middle School, and the el mundo sería un lugar mucho mejor; don’t each of you agree?”

The highlight of the agony—for each agony is not without its moment of expectation, even if its outcome is a small gesture—was most pronounced toward the end of each class when Ms. Robbers would stand—rising toward the ceiling and hand the great leather volume to one of us.

Once Don Quixote was deposited, a delicate dried rose, into your hands, you were expected to turn its brittle pages—brown and spotted, compounded by age—with respect reserved for the monarchs of Spain.

So, you might imagine the stunning surprise when Bernie Markee, on his first day back after twenty-eight days absent, found Ms. Robbers’s finely etched and cold leather-bound edition of Don Quixote thrust into his hands, which trembled under the weight of the ponderous text.

The silence in the classroom grew between Ms. Robbers’s and Bernie Markee’s astonishment, between us and Bernie’s non-existent voice, and between Cervantes’s Spanish and Bernie’s English.

Ms. Robbers rarely dropped a word when transferring Don Quixote into our hands—she didn’t need to—the awe and solemnity of the occasion spoke volumes. But in this unexpected moment, Bernie, we knew, had been singled out.

His excessive absences had been duly noted in Ms. Robbers’s grade book and still required what she referred to as a reasoned reason para las ausencias.

“Por favor lee, Bernando,” Ms. Robbers commanded.

Hands trembling, perfectly ashamed, pervading sweat, Bernie sat, having been asked to read aloud in Spanish—language penned by the greatest writer who, according to Ms. Robbers, had ever lived.

Had he been in possession of any real sense of himself, Bernie would have declined Ms. Robbers’ request—writing over it with impertinence. But, alas, who in 7th grade, especially a thin, sickly boy who despised being there, had the presence to send a real zinger back at his teacher?

We supposed that Bernie would just sit there in his small corner desk, tracing his hand over the pristine cover of Don Quixote without ever reading from it, or worse refuse this magnanimous gesture of welcome into our community of peasants.

No, Ms. Robbers leveled her eyes and bade Bernardo, who had missed, to her count, “Exactamente 40 días de escuela, hasta ahora, sin razón” to read in a language she imagined he could barely get his lips around. “Sí,” her beneficent gesture was as false as his false stomachaches and warm-water thermometers.

“Sí,” Ms. Robbers knew exactly how to call into question the veracity of Bernie’s past illnesses; to punish him in front of the entire class; to ensure he would never again miss another day for fear such embarrassment would be repeated.

Yet, at that moment, dumbstruck, dispossessed of confidence, tongue affixed to his sticky palate—at that moment, sitting on his hands, silent, fearing even to touch Don Quixote’s gilded pages—at that moment, lungs filling with dread, pain beginning in the upper chambers of his heart and lodging itself in his ribcage, preventing him from catching his breath, at that moment with each shallow breath, his senses grew dim, and by some force, his fingers were able to turn to the page Ms. Robbers directed.

Don Quixote, now open on his desk; our eyes went wide, our ears waited. Ms. Robbers’ implacable grin also waited for Bernardo to deliver some butchered version of Cervantes before she could, with justifiability, snatch the book from his hands as if the sole reason she had placed it there was to destroy him.

Bernie looked up toward Ms. Robbers’ grin, his body in great distress, his arm muscles jumping, his mouth gasping, his fellow students stifling laughter (produced from both fear and empathy) and, then, suddenly, the staccato chortling fell silent like the moment after that sick bird flew into our classroom’s plate glass window and plummeted to the ground, stunned, up-ended, eyes open, unblinking. We all rushed to the glass and knew that the bird knew it was being watched but not helped; yet, out of an innate need for survival, it attempted to gather its will and right itself.

At that moment, all that Bernie could focus on was what Mr. Ick, Mann’s Social Studies teacher, had told him earlier that day—a bit of advice that had found a solid place in his long-term memory: “Bernie, if you find yourself making a mistake while writing in pen, be sure to strike the odious word three times through.”

Those of you prone to foreshadowing might imagine that Bernie picked up the nearest ink pen and began striking though Cervantes’ language, in effect, consigning the events of that morning to a mistake. But, Bernie was not yet so self-assured, nor was he predisposed to act as a destroyer.

Still, his body needed to mark this event, and with his head bent over the mottled page, his eyes watering as he made out the words. His breath short, he somehow found himself and began to read and not only read but translate “el bocado” from Spanish into English for the rest of us:

Since thou dost in thy cruelty desire
The ruthless rigour of thy tyranny
From tongue to tongue, from land to land proclaimed, The very Hell will I constrain to lend This stricken breast of mine deep notes of woe To serve my need of fitting utterance. And as I strive to body forth the tale.[1]

And, in the midst of a good reading or at least a reading good enough that Ms. Robbers did not feel she had the right to stop him—Bernardo’s nose issued a single drop of blood that splattered on the gilded page, punctuating the termination of this moment with a red period.

Ms. Robbers’s hands rushed to save the book but were too late to save it completely. Bernardo’s blood had fallen on the page in a way that couldn’t be missed and that indeed fouled Cervantes’s allusions with the presence of the humanness of its audience—thus signifying a reader, who is, at times, strong and at other times weak, at times self-assured and at other times stumbling, yet always at the mercy of invisible forces.

Soon after, as Ms. Robbers held Don Quixote in her hands and stared into the dark red blood stain, we, to our credit, did not gasp, but issued forth spontaneous applause, our hands banging together in rousing appreciation for what seemed like several minutes.

After Ms. Robbers had found her own voice and bade everyone to “¡Siéntense! ¡Todos en silencio!” and after we all had dutifully obeyed, it was the perfectly pressed Alicia Mármol who stood tall, yelled “Ingenio lego” and continued to clap her hands long after the curtain on this particular event found the floor.[2]

——

[1] From translation by John Ormsby

[2] Cervantes called himself an “ingenio lego” and according to the Spanish Royal Academy it refers to “the faculty in man for prompt and effortless discourse and invention.”

J. Bradley Minnick is a writer, public radio host and producer, and a Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He has written, edited, and produced the one-minute spot “Facts About Fiction,” and Arts & Letters Radio, a show celebrating modern humanities with a concentration on Arkansas cultural and intellectual work and can be found at artsandlettersradio.org. He has published fiction in Toad Suck Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Inklette Magazine, Cleaver, Twelve Winters Journal, East of the Web, Litbop Art and Literature in the Groove, Rural Fiction Magazine, Café Lit, Potato Soup Journal’s “Best of 2022″ anthology, and Southwest Review.