“When students look at history,” he said, “they shouldn’t see their own faces; they should see something unfamiliar staring back at them. They should see something utterly strange.”
But that’s what they do see when they look in the mirror, Ms. Hempel thought. Something strange.
“So, no, that’s not what I had in mind,” Mr. Meacham continued, somewhat more cheerfully. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the way history is taught in this schooclass="underline" not enough writing. A lot of reading, a lot of talking, but not much writing. And that”—Mr. Meacham smiled at Ms. Hempel—“is where you can help.”
“Me?” Ms. Hempel asked.
“You can teach them. Not only how to think about history, but how to write about it.”
Ms. Hempel saw that Mr. Meacham was mistaken. He had confused her with someone who liked teaching seventh graders how to write, who felt happiest and most useful when diagramming a sentence or mapping an idea or brightly suggesting another draft. This was not the case. The thought of increased exposure to seventh-grade writing made Ms. Hempel worry. What happened when one read too many Topic Sentences? Already she could feel how her imagination had begun to thicken and stink, like a scummy pond.
If only she could develop for her subject the same dogged affection that Mr. Meacham felt for his. People approached her, possessed by their enthusiasms, and Ms. Hempel would think, How beautiful! She loved enthusiasm, in nearly all its forms. For this reason she found herself scorekeeper for the volleyball team, facilitator for the girls-only book group, faculty adviser to the Upper School multicultural organization, Umoja. And now, teacher of seventh-grade United States history.
Mr. Meacham handed her a book that weighed approximately ten pounds. Its title, she noted, was full of enthusiasm (America! America!).
FIRST ASSIGNMENT. CHOOSE three people, of different ages (in other words, don’t grab the three seventh graders sitting closest to you), and ask them the following question: Why is it important to learn about American history? Record your findings. Include the name, age, and occupation of your interview subjects. Bring in your results and share them with the class.
“‘To help us better understand ourselves,’” Tim read from his binder. “Alice Appold. Forty-two. Chiropractor.”
“I didn’t know your mom was older than mine,” Daniel said.
“My mom is fifty-three!” Rachel announced with dismay.
“Ms. Cruz said that the reason it’s important to know about American history is because if we don’t know our past, then we don’t know our future.” That was Stevie.
“My father said he won’t answer the question because it’s leading,” Kirsten said.
“‘It’s our responsibility as citizens,’” Tim read, again from his binder. “James Appold. Forty-three. Restaurateur.”
“My mother said that if we don’t understand the struggles our ancestors went through, we won’t appreciate the nice life that we have now,” said Chloe, staring at Tim, who hadn’t raised his hand.
Julia Rizzo spoke next. “‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’”
Six students looked up in territorial surprise.
“That’s what my mother said!”
“So did mine!”
“I was just about to say that.”
“My sister,” said the other Julia, who would never have the same answer as anyone else, “told me that not knowing your history is like being a person who’s lost their memory.”
“An amnesiac,” Kirsten said bossily.
Amnesiac, Ms. Hempel wrote on the board, and then experienced an instance of it herself. It was a condition that sometimes afflicted her. She would turn her back to the class; she would forget everything. What is a noun? Who were the Pilgrims? And, more troubling, What was I saying? Or: How did I get here? The tether would snap, and she would be set adrift, the sleek green board stretching out all around her. She would feel, against her back, the warmth of eighteen faces. She would feel she might do anything in this moment, like sing a song from My Fair Lady. But then a pigeon departs from the windowsill, Stevie lets out a hiccup, a telephone, somewhere in the building, rings; and she recovers. Oh yes. I am Ms. Hempel. It is second period. A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea.
“A person who’s lost her memory,” Ms. Hempel said to the other Julia. “How true.”
And she thought of the terrible blank she had drawn the very day she’d been hired to teach at this school. Upon signing her contracts and shaking everyone’s hand, she found herself sitting in the faculty lunchroom over a plate of garbanzo bean salad and across the table from Mr. Meacham, who, as it turned out, taught a course in Chinese history. He was disappointed to learn that she did not speak the language, not a word of it.
“And your family?” he had asked. “What province are they from?”
It was at this point that Ms. Hempel’s memory failed her. Hunan? Szechuan? Were those provinces or just restaurants? And what kind of food was she, by hereditary right, supposed to most enjoy? She knew the answer, she did! She was simply nervous.
“Chungking?” she murmured, which didn’t sound particularly correct, but Mr. Meacham was already moving on.
“What a shame,” he said, “that your name isn’t more indicative.”
“Yes.” She didn’t understand what he meant. “It is too bad.”
“Is there a middle name, perhaps?”
“Grace?”
Mr. Meacham frowned, thinking. “Or a family name. Your mother’s maiden name?”
“It’s Ho.”
“Ah!” He smiled and swallowed the last of his milk. “Have you ever thought of hyphenating?”
He tried it out. He used the word euphonious. He said the name over to himself, three times.
“Ms. Ho-Hempel,” she said. “That’s what they would call me?”
Mr. Meacham nodded happily.
“But—” How could she put this? “Won’t there be a lot of jokes?”
He didn’t follow.
“You know, ho? As in, ‘pimps and.’ As in, ‘you blankety blank—’” She waved her hands at Mr. Meacham, as if guiding him into a very tight parking space. “Do I want a bunch of seventh graders calling me ho?”
Mr. Meacham looked at her, perplexed. “That’s precisely the idea.”
He picked up his lunch tray. “You’ll be expanding their horizons. An awful phrase, but a sound principle.”
She had a whole summer to practice saying it. Ho-Hempel. She even wrote it down on her name tag for the new faculty orientation. But when the first day of school finally arrived, children came crashing into her homeroom and by the time the last of them appeared — Michael Reggiano, congenitally late — she had lost her resolve altogether.
MS. HEMPEL LIKED THE land bridge theory, especially the part about the lumbering mammoths and the hunters in hungry pursuit. The hunters were following the game, a phrase that made her think of small boys running after ducks in the park. The two things couldn’t be at all similar; following the game was probably a lengthy and thankless process involving mammoth dung and very little real chasing or spear throwing. But still, that was how she pictured it: the band of hungry hunters pursuing a herd of lumbering mammoths. These hunters were so absorbed by the chase, they went running across a land bridge connecting their home, Asia, to an entirely unfamiliar and uninhabited continent, North America, without even noticing it. A land bridge was more difficult to imagine. The book described ice ages, glaciers, the freezing of oceans, their bottoms now exposed. Did that make sense? Did that big glacier, pinned atop the world like a yarmulke, somehow suck up the water in the Bering Strait? Apparently so. In that case, was crossing the land bridge like skirting a rampart of ice, the cold blue glacier bearing down on you from one side, or was it like trudging along a marshy strip of beach, with the glacier a white ship floating off in the distance? The book didn’t elaborate. All that mattered was the appearance of the land bridge, so that the mammoths could lumber across, so that the Asian hunters could follow, so that the Western Hemisphere could become populated.