There remained, after the business of constituting the list, to find qualified instructors. The hospital schoolteacher, not one to come in on a rainy day let alone a rainy night, was dead. Among the parents there were two teachers, a man who taught third grade and a woman who taught second, who gathered the seven- and eight-year-olds to themselves and drafted lesson plans for the other grades that got rougher toward the borders of middle school and by high school were nothing more than vague suggestions. Their plans were mostly ignored, anyway, by new teachers who substituted enthusiasm and strength of numbers for experience. In the end the Committee isolated teachers or proctors or coaches for everything on the list. Dr. Tiller grudgingly admitted that she had given voice lessons in college.
Jemma, who’d already replicated a new pair of clogs in anticipation of an appointment, was disappointed to hear that the job had gone to Maggie, of all people. She was a secret clogger, and not after all, Jemma discovered on seeing her dance, someone with no joy in her life. Jemma found herself faced with twelve children selected for perceived spiritual or otherworldy leanings who were to receive instruction in Jemma’s “art.” Jemma protested, to no effect, that she didn’t think it could be taught — she’d tried with Vivian and Rob and even Drs. Snood and Sashay. “You must try,” Dr. Snood told her. “It might be different with younger minds.” She liked the children, but it was a disappointment to get another assignment, and to find, just when she thought she was free, that she had landed in another sort of rotation. Everything should be so strange, she thought. Other powers should manifest. A boy should shoot ruby-colored blasts of obliterating power from his eyes — Calvin had always wanted to be able to do that. Or a girl should be able to run through walls. Or every toddler should suddenly be able to float. Or land should appear. But instead the sea remained as endless as ever, and she was the only super-powered person among the population, and, instead of entering into constant celebration, the people in the hospital identified a new business, and settled down to it.
It was not so unusual that so many people seemed to have a better idea of how her gift worked than Jemma did herself. Inside the fancy institution of the hospital, people were used to having opinions in the absence of knowledge, or stating theory with such formidable enthusiasm ignorant ears could be excused for mistaking it for fact. “If it is not science then it must be art,” Dr. Snood proclaimed in a special subcommittee, with just the attendings and Jemma present, who felt somehow like her vagina, or something similarly personal, was being discussed. Medicine was an art, too — everybody knew that, and nobody understood better than the attendings the subtleties of this truth. They were trying to decide what, officially, they ought to do with her — for her disobedience she’d already been scolded and praised by the whole Committee, punished and rewarded with a sentence and suspension of basement imprisonment — and they needed to decide what exactly she had done before they could know how to direct her. Art, an upwelling of spirit, a thalamic burst, a miracle enzyme that facilitated a tendency to health already present in the body: the descriptions flowed freely, but Jemma could not understand how they added up to the resolution that what she did was good, and must be taught, for its own sake, not to mention what a shame it was that the art would be lost if something unpleasant should happen to her.
Pickie Beecher was the most obvious choice for her class, since he was, hands down, the weirdest kid in the hospital. She and Dr. Sundae picked twelve all together — a number Dr. Sundae liked and Jemma considered fraught with unprofitable associations. Jarvis was there in the abandoned NICU conference room on the first day of class, so were Juan Fraggle, and Josh Swift, and Ethel Puffer, dressed in two pairs of pajamas, and still with her eyes and her head painted. Magnolia was there. Kidney and three of her siblings, States’-Rights, Valium, and Shout, were chosen by Dr. Sundae because they said their father had already taught them special healing techniques. Marcus Guzman was there on account of his recent near-death experience. Cindy Flemm was there, but Wayne was not.
Jemma sat with her legs folded underneath her on top of the conference table, facing her students, who sat in semicircle on the floor. Jarvis was scowling, but his was the only unfriendly face in the bunch. They were so quiet that Jemma could hear plainly the noise of the water striking against the window. She closed her eyes and listened to it for a few moments, knowing she must look like she was meditating, but really she was just trying to decide what to say.
“Well,” she said, “I’m not really sure how to start.” So right away she broke a promise she’d made to Vivian the night before. “If you are wishy-washy on the first day,” Vivian had told her during a checkup the day before, “or even in the first five minutes, if you show any weakness at all, they’ll devour you.” She’d volunteered as a teacher’s aide in college, and had many summers of experience as a camp counselor, and said there was something about Jemma’s look that would invite disrespect and abuse. “Show me your mean face,” she’d said, but had only laughed when Jemma scowled at her. She advised Jemma to strike preemptively, to make it plain that her soft face belied the steely educator inside, and had even extemporized a little speech. It’s all about the blood (she was supposed to say, or something similarly hard and frightening) if you don’t understand the blood, then you won’t understand the pain, and if you don’t understand the pain, then you won’t get to the healing. Jemma had protested that it wasn’t really like that, but had promised Vivian that she would present a façade of meanness to her students. She was in the habit of making promises to Vivian in order to quiet her, and looking at the expectant faces of these twelve children, all of whom had suffered her mysterious touch, and so been linked to her in a way she felt she could not begin to understand, it seemed even more ridiculous to roar at them.
“You all probably know about as much about how it happened as I do. I don’t really know how I did it, though I could do it again if I had to. I don’t know how to teach you to do something I don’t know how I do, but we can try it. I can show you some stuff, and then we’ll see what happens. But before we do anything else, does anybody have any questions?”
Kidney raised her hand. “Are you Jesus?” she asked.