Teacher does good done good: "A Way with Bea" by Shanteka Sigers

Some of the most mind-opening takes I've heard or read in my life came from something I read or heard in passing. Days later, I'd realize how profound the thing was I'd just been exposed to, but by then it was too late to track down the source. I'm sure you've had a similar experience. That interview on the radio where the speaker said something that opened up worlds for you that you'd only suspected existed, only you didn't get their name and you can't seem to find it when you Google the few phrases you can remember the speaker said. 

One of those experiences for me with a phantom life-changing article came in graduate school. There was some kind of newsletter on writing craft left around a lobby. The gist of the article I read went something like this: the difference between a true poem and mere propaganda was in the attitude the narrator took toward the problem the poem put forward. A true poem and propaganda might both start with a similar problem--say, the inequality of life and how the poor always seem to get the shitty end of the stick--but the poem is willing to look the problem square in the eye, while propaganda knows from the beginning how it is going to answer the question. It's the difference between religious faith that knows how it will end and a human heart open to the experience of reality. A true poem might have a happy ending, but not without first going into the heart of darkness. Because the true poem was willing to do this, though, we believe its resolution more than we would believe the resolution of the propagandist. 

Propaganda, in this sense, need not be actual propaganda, but any art that comes in cock-sure it has the answers and that it wants to preach them to its audience. 

Teacher does good

Earlier in BASS this year, I wasn't that interested in "In This Sort of World, the Asshole Wins," because it seemed to me like a pretty familiar story. It was an addict's story, like hundreds of other addicts' stories, and I didn't feel it showed me much I hadn't seen before. 

"A Way with Bea" is about a teacher who connects with a troubled student, which is also a pretty familiar story. I can name five "teacher does good" movies right now without taking a breath. But "A Way with Bea" still felt justified, like it was a necessary addition to the genre, and in fact a whole new direction for stories about teachers. 

Why? I think in part because Sigers followed the mandate of that mystery article I read all those years ago. This isn't a Hollywood feel-good story about a teacher reaching out, one in which the audience is allowed to bless teachers in their hearts and then feel absolved about how shitty schools and opportunities are for poor people. The story goes to dark places, and there are times when it seems very much like it might end there. It doesn't end with an inspiring song and a text-based summary of future events, like "Bea went on to major in biochemistry at MIT, where she graduated magma cum laude. She is now a teacher in the same school where her own teacher turned it all around for her." 

There is redemption at the end, or at least a hope of redemption, but it never felt inevitable. It felt earned, which is why I find this story to be more than just another version of a story I've already read.

What also helps make this story feel fresh is the sharp observation and language in it. We get a taste of this right at the beginning, when "The Teacher" describes Bea's appearance: "She grows in angles. The broadness of her nose and the wide, sculpted divot leading down to her lips and the deep, delicate hollows behind her collarbone. the disorder of her swarming hair, misshapen and dusty, but still a laurel." 

What a multi-use metaphor "but still a laurel" is! We see Bea's dignity even in her disorder. 

I don't think most readers will have a hard time connecting to this story or figuring out why it's in BASS. What I'd like to take a little stab at, though, is to look at something that might not stand out as important in "A Way with Bea," which is The Teacher's life away from school.

The "B" Story....ahahhahahahah, do you get it? I called it the "B" story, because that's what it is, but also, this is a story about "Bea" and oh, my God, it works on so many levels...

Thanks to Mrs. Heretic, who has been thirsty for Hugh Laurie since I don't know when, I've seen a ton of episodes of the TV show House. House does what a lot of TV shows do in that each episode generally has an "A" story, or main story (like the person with the mystery illness House is trying to figure out), and a "B" story or secondary story line (like House trying to flirt with Cuddy or figure out who Wilson is dating or tormenting his interns). The B story is clearly less important and subordinate to the A story, but if the episode is crafted thoughtfully, the two still somehow relate to each other. They might relate through contrast, e.g. House says he doesn't care about feelings in the A story but we see him caring about feelings in the B story, or through similarities, like maybe House is struggling to figure something out in both story lines. A common trick in the show is for House to say something related to the B story line, and he then relates it to the A-story disease he's been stuck on, and the relationship allows him to suddenly solve the puzzle. Example: "Who keeps taking all the best donuts?" he screams, and then that makes him think of how some cells in the body act selfishly, and it's those cells that have been the problem all along.  

Are you done, Jake? Yeah, I'm done. 

In "A Way with Bea," we spend roughly as much time with The Teacher away from school as we do in it. We see that The Teacher has bougie friends who work much more remunerative jobs than her, that she is in a marriage with a well-meaning, mansplaining dope The Teacher doesn't like, and that The Teacher comes from sensible country stock. Her dope, sandals-wearing husband has a cat he refuses to put down.

One interesting plot point to consider, since this is a written text that can avoid the issue rather than a visual story that can't, is what race her friends and husband are. The Teacher is black, a blackness that has taught her to strictly control her emotions. But her friends say things like "ghetto grape," and her husband wears brown sandals and dotes on an old cat. Of course black people can wear brown sandals and dote on old cats, but if I only knew those facts about them, I might be tempted to think they were white. Maybe I'm stereotyping, but I almost feel like the story is asking us to fill in some gaps like that. Does she have mostly white people in her out-of-school orbit?

I don't think so. I think her husband is a black man who happens to wear sandals and like cats and is a little bit soft. The Teacher might attribute it to his being from the city (which is a reverse from how we usually think of the city-country divide). The question about her friends is interesting. I personally find it hard to believe a bunch of white, educated women would say "ghetto grape" around their black friend. They might say it behind her back, but not to her face. I think they're black friends who feel like they can say it, and maybe they can, but it still hurts The Teacher, because it feels like it's dismissive of the kids she cares about, not just a bit of harmless linguistic tomfoolery. 

The Teacher wishes her husband would cheat on her so she could get out of the marriage. She can't find the feeling she once had for him. He drives her crazy trying to tell her how she should feel about Bea. 

At the end, how are the A and B stories meeting? What is The Teacher learning from one story that helps her with the other?

I think it's this. Bea is interested in biology. She dissects a bird on her own, which other teachers see as evidence of her being unstable and dangerous, but The Teacher understands this is her showing interest. Bea also carries around an eyeball she got from God knows where, which again, The Teacher understands when others do not.

At the end of the story, The Teacher has arranged for Bea to come to her house to get "contraband," which The Teacher says includes a better biology book from a different school. Might it also include something else? There is an a seeming digression in which The Teacher talks about bones and what it takes to make them "so smooth and glossy they seem unreal, almost manufactured." One is to let them lie in the dirt and wait for nature to take its course. The other is to boil them. 

The Teacher witnesses the death of the cat while her husband is traveling for business. The last line of the story is, "The Teacher will tell her husband that she took care of his cat." Has The Teacher boiled the cat? Or perhaps worked with Bea to dissect the dead cat and then boiled it? Is that part of the contraband at her house? 

If so, then we have a B story in which The Teacher can't stand her husband and looks at his hanging-on-too-long cat as a symbol of their hanging-on-too-long marriage. In the A story, she's trying like hell to connect with Bea. The two stories seem to converge when the cat finally dies, leaving the teacher with something she can use to connect to Bea with and also--when she tells the husband she "took care of" it--to get out of her marriage. Maybe she's realized that her passion for teaching is too big to be able to also have room for marriage. 

Are we, the readers, also supposed to be annoyed by the husband? I'm not entirely sure, but I feel like no, or at least "annoyed" is all we should feel about him, not that he is actually malevolent. He's a normie. He wants what most people want, and that's fine for most people, but The Teacher has been called, perhaps, to a more ascetic vocation. Expensive dinners and weekends at Home Depot don't agree with her sensible country mind. She needed to see the alternative of a middle-class, wealth-aspiring American life in the form of her husband and her friends in order to knowingly make the other choice she's made.  

Other takes

Looks like Karen and I agreed on some of our favorites this year in BASS. She liked this one, too.