Chapter 11: Zayna

Chapter Eleven

Zayna

Massachusetts, 2 years ago

I know pacing relentlessly in front of the principal’s office won’t help my case, but I can’t help it. This time, they went too far. Too damn far. Someone has to do something. From the first day I got here, these kids never respected me. They seem to think I’m no more than a kid myself. I have a Master’s Degree. And even if I didn’t, I deserve some respect.

I’m just saying it’s my job to stand up there and teach, which means I should have some authority to discipline. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

Mr. Sutter, a gigantic man who looks like a pimple with an off-brand Donald Trump wig from Spirit Halloween, opens the door. I wouldn’t hate this man with every fiber of my being if he hadn’t been making the situation with these students worse. Even his fucking smile gaslights me.

“Miss Fontaine! Come on in. I heard you were in trouble today,” he says with a dismissive chuckle that already feels like twisting in the knife from earlier. I was in trouble? That’s really how we’re framing this? I’m almost surprised the superintendent isn’t in the room or some other gaslighter in chief working for the school administration. It doesn’t take long before you learn that teaching is not about education – it’s about politics. I think we’ve all had enough of politics in this country, especially the cruel bureaucracies in the teaching profession where you get punished for caring.

But it’s just one administrative blowhard. Tom Sutter. The douche bag. He pulls out a chair for me and I double check that one of these demonic ass students hasn’t left a shit stain in it. I learned to do that from experience. He walks around to his side of his desk, unnecessarily adjusting his football trophies from high school as he makes his way to his seat.

If the only thing you have left after being a star tight end is the head injuries, there’s no need to remind everybody about it every chance you get.

I try to collect myself. I’m already having the dark thoughts I promised I wouldn’t bring to the table.

“Mr. Sutter,” I begin calmly with the warm obsequious tone women in the teaching profession learn to have with their superiors. It’s so fucking demeaning. “The three students I’ve spoken to you about cornered me in the hallway outside of class, groped my behind and took videos of the entire thing. They’re escalating this behavior and what these boys are doing is criminal. It’s assault.”

He gives me a smile that says “are you fucking serious”, because he genuinely believes that this is a non-issue.

“Miss Fontaine…”

I interrupt him. “Mr. Sutter, these boys have threatened to rape me. They are telling me exactly what they’re going to do and you’re telling me there’s nothing the school can do?”

This time, I don’t give a shit about this stupid job — even if honestly, I’m very much behind on my bills and need this teaching job to catch up on the shit I went through during that stupid ass global virus. My health insurance was nowhere near where it needed to be before I caught pneumonia of all damn things.

I’m still paying off those three damn days in the hospital. But I’m too outraged to stay quiet about this. The police were even worse than this vanilla gorilla manspreading in front of me, but Mr. Sutter is my boss and I might not be able to press charges against a “bunch of kids for a prank” (as I was told), but I can definitely sue this workplace. For something!

“Listen, Zayna. They’re kids. They’re private school kids. They might be exploring the boundaries of their intellect. Their sexuality… They’re self-expressing. Here at Barbour-Barnes & Goodenough Academy, we encourage that.”

“You encourage female teachers getting raped?”

His face hardens. Like I’ve done something wrong. I swear, I’m about to catch a case.

“Listen. Those are serious accusations. Most of these boys are on track to Early Decision at Harvard or at the very least Princeton.”

“They threatened to rape me,” I say, emphasizing each word slowly, hoping that at least the word “rape” seeps into this man’s head. He sighs, clearly frustrated with me.

“I’ll talk to them,” he says. “Take a sick day tomorrow and come back refreshed on Monday. The job gets to all of us, Zayna. I sympathize with that.”

This man wouldn’t know what sympathy was if it laid eggs in his rectum.

“I’ll take my sick day. Paid.”

I’m quaking with rage, but this is all I can muster. Taking my paid sick day with a fucking attitude instead of actually doing something. All because I had to get pneumonia… From a failed situationship of all things. Imagine getting ghosted by a guy and still paying for the fucking hook up a year later.

“Thank you,” Tom Sutter says, leaning back and glancing at his old football trophies as if he’s about to launch into another one of his completely vapid stories about the ‘glory days’ — when this school didn’t admit women or black students.

“Well, I’ll see you on Monday,” I mutter quickly, before I get trapped in a conversation with The Douche Bag. I slam the door behind me on the way out. Because again, it’s all I have.

And it won’t keep me safe.

I leave work and text my best friend about what happened. She’s a therapist, and she’s been trying to get me to start “loving myself” and stop “giving everything to a job that is obviously trying to kill me”. I would never say those things on my own. Maybe she has a point.

Zayna: Brooks and Grant threatened to rape me today… School did nothing.

Tazara: SUE. THEM.

If I can’t afford my hospital bills, where does her ass think I’m getting money for a retainer? Doing just about anything in this country costs money, especially getting justice. Teachers who can barely keep a roof over their head don’t get justice. They just switch schools and move on. But this is my third school in three years.

I’m stuck somewhere between not sure how much more of it I can take and committed to the students who aren’t terrorists, the consistent income, and the fact that I thought teachers were supposed to save the world. I don’t have the power to save the world and I don’t even have the power to save myself from debt, or any other inconvenience.

Zayna: They at least gave me a sick day.

Tazara: Such bullshit! Should I come over?

Zayna: Nah. I’m good.

But I’m not good. The worse these little freaks escalating attacks get, the more I think about what would happen if I had to defend myself. I drive home in my beat to hell white Toyota Camry and park right in front of my apartment, like I always do. I live in Unit #105 on the ground floor. Maybe that’s why all my situationships keep escaping out the window.

Because let me tell you, dating as a black woman in Massachusetts is barely dating. It’s more like getting used by guys who want to taste the rainbow and don’t care about anything beyond the color of your skin. Nothing could be worse than going back to Curtis. Even dating guys that don’t care that my favorite author is Toni Morrison, or that I dream of a little log cabin out in the country where me and my tall, strapping man can curl up by the fireplace in warm fuzzy socks reading Thoreau…

Today, walking into my apartment feels like entering a prison block. I’m just stuck in this cycle of my life. Going to a place I hate every day and then… the humiliation. The second I open my apartment door, the numbness I buried all day in that private school that was supposed to be different spills out.

My chest catches with a startled sob.

Where else in America can a woman go to work and face multiple people threatening to assault her, and they just get away with it? It feels wrong. And no matter how much I tell myself that I’m doing it “for the kids”… I don’t think these kids give a fuck.

If I can just finish this semester… I’ll quit for good. I have to do something before this gets out of hand.