Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher Read online

  Bobby tried to place her. “I don’t remember seeing you in gym class,” she admitted. “What year are you?”

  “I’m a junior—or fifth former, I s’pose.” The girl shrugged as if Metamorian terms were not only unfamiliar, but also a little ridiculous. “I have a doctor’s note excusing me from gym. Allergies,” she added laconically.

  “You’ve played field hockey before, haven’t you?” Bobby tried to reach the taciturn girl.

  “Some.”

  “Why didn’t you try out today?”

  “I’m not a joiner.” The girl turned away.

  “Don’t you want to help your school win?” Bobby called after her, although with little hope. She’d seen this type of girl before. A loner. A rebel. No school spirit.

  But the girl turned back suddenly. “Against who?”

  “Why…why, the other teams in the Midwest Regional Secondary School Girls’ Field Hockey League,” said Bobby, bewildered.

  “Does that include St. Margaret Mary’s?”

  Bobby tried to remember the list of schools she’d glanced through. “I think so,” she said cautiously.

  “Okay. Count me in.”

  Bobby decided to wonder later what had motivated the girl’s abrupt change of heart. Right now, she wanted to see what else this Angela could do.

  A little murmur arose among the newly anointed Savages as Bobby returned to the playing field with Angela in tow. “What’s Angle doing here?” she heard Beryl Houck mutter. Beryl was a red-faced, boisterous sixth former with a sharp tongue for students outside her own circle of friends. Ignoring her, Bobby blew her whistle twice and shouted, “All right, Savages, let’s try a little scrimmage!” She began assigning positions, explaining, “I’ll rotate players on and off so everyone gets a fair shake.”

  The game, when she cried “Ball in play,” was chaotic, only roughly resembling field hockey as the Spitfires played it. Too many of the girls were unfamiliar with the rules. Kayo and Linda and their friends did what they could, shouting, “No obstruction, Annette! You can’t get between Beryl and the ball!” or “Offsides, Anna, offsides! Wait for Shirley to get ahead of you.”

  Still Bobby was pleased. Kayo was a really excellent player, feinting, dodging, and dribbling up the field with ease. And it was amazing how quickly the ignorant girls picked up the game. Her spirits rose. It was just possible the Savages would make a respectable showing, their first season out after so many years.

  She turned to Angela, who was watching the game with a bored air. “Sub in for Linda,” she told her. She saw the gangly girl tap Linda on the shoulder and take her stick, and then her attention shifted to Edie Gunther in goal, who was positioning herself nicely for a roll-in near the ten-yard line. So she didn’t see how Angela stole the ball from Kayo and left her sprawled on the ground while the rest of the squad howled “Foul!” But she did see Angela dribble the ball up the field in under five seconds and whack it into the goal so hard that Dodie Jessup, the other goalie, shrank to one side, not even trying to block. Bobby blew her whistle as Beryl and Penny helped Kayo pick herself up.

  “Go, Angle!” shouted Lotta shrilly into the startled silence.

  Chapter Seven

  The Problem Student

  Bobby burst into the faculty lounge at sherry hour in search of Mona. She was just itching to tell someone about her newly discovered athletic phenomenon. To think she had found a girl like Angle at Metamora! The coach of the newly re-formed Savages had discovered that for all her truculent air, the gangly girl was quick to grasp the tips Bobby offered on grip and dodges. And her drive, her passion! She had that elusive quality that turned a basic aptitude for athletics into something more. Bobby had played her discovery as center against Kayo, Beryl, and Linda in succession, and Angle could beat them all on the bully.

  True, she’d racked up fouls almost as fast as goals. Shirley, Helen, Anna, and Edie were all bruised and limping after attempts to tackle her. But Bobby felt sure she could tame her prodigy’s unbridled aggression. Properly channeled, it would be an asset to the team.

  “Mona, you ought to have stayed for the scrimmage…” she began, hurrying over to the housekeeper, who was sipping sherry in a corner by the fireplace. Too late, she noticed Miss Otis sitting next to her.

  The young gym teacher tended to avoid the humorless Latin Mistress, whose overriding concern for Metamora and its traditions made her an obstacle to any innovation. Faculty gossip said she’d expected Miss Craybill to make her Vice Mistress now that Miss Froelich was dead, and hoped to one day succeed Miss Craybill and become mistress of all Metamora. But Miss Craybill had as yet named no new Vice Mistress, and Miss Otis had to content herself with seniority in the faculty lounge.

  Today she swiveled around in her chair to address Bobby. “Is this newfangled sport a proper activity for our Metamora girls?” she asked earnestly. “Cui bono?”

  Mona stepped in, earning Bobby’s silent gratitude. “Field hockey is no newfangled sport, Bunny! The Savages existed ab aeterno, or at any rate since 1932. Bobby is simply restoring a lost Metamora tradition.”

  Miss Otis considered. “That may be, but even a lost tradition must be restored cautiously, with good care.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Bobby was bewildered. “I got Miss Craybill’s go-ahead.”

  “I think what Bunny means is that the turnout for the field hockey tryouts rather drained the talent from the other clubs that had meetings scheduled this afternoon,” Alice Bjorklund interpreted.

  “Only four girls showed up for the Latin Club meeting,” Miss Otis elaborated. “Even last year’s president didn’t attend!”

  Mr. Burnham took his pipe out of his mouth. “You got me beat, Bunny,” he called from the other side of the room. “Only three came to the Diggers’ meeting—”

  “Metamora’s archaeology club,” Mona murmured to Bobby.

  “—and the girls seemed so genuinely interested when I announced it in class,” the History Master concluded wistfully.

  Bobby recalled now the notices of extracurricular activities sprinkled through The Metamora Musings, or posted on the bulletin board outside the dining room, or announced by Miss Craybill at lunch. In addition to the school newspaper, the literary magazine, and the Young Integrationists Club, there were the Daughters of the American Pioneers Society, the Non-Objectivist Society, study groups, the Prefecture, choruses, a drama troupe—Bobby couldn’t remember them all. Somehow the gym teacher hadn’t thought of the Savages as competing against the more established staff-sponsored activities, but there was a definite feeling of competition in the faculty room, with memberships the objective, instead of goals.

  Even Laura Burnham, who’d draped herself languidly on a window seat and was leafing through a fashion magazine, drawled, “I s’pose I’m lucky I scheduled the Young Abstract Expressionists for Friday afternoon instead of Thursday.”

  “The Young Integrationists and I joined the throng on the hockey field,” Hoppy Fiske told her, with a touch of complacency. “In a cooperative club like ours, one learns to move with the current, instead of fight against it.”

  “Come, come, none of this is Bobby’s fault!” Mona chided the miffed teachers. “Girls will be girls. Field hockey is a novelty to them—as is Bobby—and so they flock to her—I mean it.”

  “I myself do not see the point of all these cloobs,” said Madame Melville, the French Mistress. She sat a little apart from the other teachers, wreathed in blue smoke as she corrected French exercises. While the other teachers drank the sherry Mona provided, Madame Melville’s glass mysteriously held a pale green liquid.

  “We are paid to teach them, no?” Her cigarette described a question mark. “Let the girls entertain themselves, or give them more schoolwork if you are afraid of what they might do in their leisure.”

  Hoppy and Miss Otis rose to Madame’s bait, as they always did, and under cover of their argument over proper enrichment activities, Mona asked Bobby, “What was the big excit
ement at the scrimmage?”

  Bobby forgot about academic rivalries and her squashed enthusiasm rebounded. “That girl! She’s a natural! A real athletic whiz kid! She picks up plays like she’s picking up loose change! I bet she could play any position I put her in! And drive! She’s a tank! The other players give way or get mowed down! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Bobby’s voice had risen with her excitement and Hoppy broke off her defense of extracurricular activities to ask curiously, “Who is this prodigy?”

  “The other girls called her Angle,” Bobby looked down at her roster. “Her full name is—”

  “Angela Cohen O’Shea!” chorused the other teachers, the expressions on their faces ranging from amusement to sympathy.

  “You’ve got the tiger by the tail with that one, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Burnham, nodding his head and sucking his pipe with a trace of smugness.

  “Why, what’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s a troublemaker,” said Miss Otis succinctly. “She’s been late to chapel almost every Sunday, and when I gave her a demerit and a warning the last time, she had the audacity to tell me she’s an atheist and shouldn’t have to attend at all!”

  “Smoking in her bedroom, never observes lights-out. We had to move her to a single after she worked poor Shirley Sarvis into a state of hysterics with her lurid description of the miseries of the migrant farm workers,” put in Mr. Burnham.

  “Her accent is ’orreeble,” observed Madame Melville impartially.

  “She’s very bright,” put in Miss Bjorklund timidly. “But she won’t do the work. I’m afraid she’ll fail English.”

  Ken Burnham took the pipe out of his mouth. “Oh, she’s bright enough, but she only puts her mind to work making trouble. She told my American history class that it was the pioneers that massacred the Indians at Mesquakie Point, not the reverse. Completely disrupted my lesson plan. A couple of the DAP girls were in tears! I thought Beryl Houck might hit her.”

  “Why is she such a problem?” Bobby wondered.

  “Well, she’s a transfer student, and most of our girls have been here since third form,” Mona explained. “She came to Metamora last semester, after her enrollment at St. Margaret Mary’s, er, didn’t work out. She’s a high-spirited girl, with very definite opinions. Girls will be girls, after all.”

  “And there are problems at home,” added Ken Burnham solemnly.

  “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” Miss Otis spelled it out. “These mixed marriages often run into trouble. Young couples think that love will conquer all, but what happens when they’re attending different churches every Sunday? Or in this case,” she lowered her voice, “a temple?”

  “Those of the Jewish faith worship on Saturday,” instructed Hoppy.

  “I don’t think either of the O’Sheas worships at all,” Mona said practically. “Mr. O’Shea is a labor organizer and Mrs. O’Shea is active in the theater. Perhaps we shouldn’t speculate about Angela’s home life.”

  “Miss Rasphigi thinks well of her.” Enid spoke up for the first time. She was sitting in the armchair opposite Madame Melville, correcting homework papers with mechanical efficiency, her glass of sherry untouched on the table beside her. “She’s very quick to learn when the subject interests her, as our Games Mistress observed.”

  Bobby sat up. Here was an unexpected ally. Perhaps Angle would be the bridge between her and the attractive, yet distant algebra teacher. Perhaps after dinner she would suggest to young Miss Butler that the two of them could put their heads together over the unhappy adolescent. With her teaching knowledge, Enid Butler would surely have some ideas—she probably knew Adolescent Development Patterns by heart, a textbook Bobby had only skimmed.

  “However, to return to Miss Otis’s earlier point, I do think we ought to consider the disruptive potential of this addition to Metamora’s sports program. We must be certain it doesn’t threaten Metamora’s academic priorities.”

  Bobby’s nascent hopes died a sudden death. She wasn’t positive, but it sounded like the Math Mistress was against field hockey!

  “Group processes can be a valuable way of teaching life skills, when properly done. However, it’s essential to be up to date on methodology.” Enid rounded on the young coach suddenly. “You’ve seen ‘Effective Grouping and the Lone Teacher’ in the last issue of Secondary Pedagogy, haven’t you?”

  Bobby gulped and lied. “Of course!”

  “‘Group processes are not without danger, and only the naïve teacher will fail to carefully consider class dynamics and antisocial currents, which have the potential to turn the group into a mob.’ Quite a provocative statement, isn’t it?”

  Bobby looked around the room. Many of the teachers had a thoughtful air, as if they were considering their group processes in a new, critical light. Bobby wished desperately that Bryce and Ole were there—Bryce had a joking way that lightened serious discussions, and although Ole never said much, Bobby felt sure of his silent support for Metamora’s increased activity in sports. However, the two friends seldom came to sherry hour, preferring to take long nature walks together.

  “I think we should guard against the fundamental imbalance at the extracurricular level, not to mention the academic curricula, that occurs in so many schools where team sports are high-status activities.” Enid continued remorselessly.

  Bobby’s head had fogged up again. “She means…?” she whispered to Alice.

  “Most schools are too sports crazy,” Alice whispered back.

  Bobby opened and shut her mouth, trying to think of a way to fight back against this determined attack on her new team. Fortunately, the German Mistress came to her rescue. “Sans mensa in corpus santus,” she argued. “And let us remember the Amazons!”

  “’, * Gussie Gunderson said suddenly.

  There was a knock on the door. A sub-prefect poked her head into the room. “Miss Butler, Mr. Rackham’s waiting for you in Manchester.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Enid shuffled her corrected papers neatly together and put them in her briefcase. With a “Good night, all,” she was gone.

  “Gallivanting again!” snorted the German Mistress.

  Rod Rackham drove out from Bay City one or two nights a week to take the young algebra instructor out on dates. Bobby had seen him once as he helped Enid into his sedan, a tall, muscular young man, with a handsome, if strong-featured face—all jutting jaw, chiseled cheekbones, and brooding brow. Bobby had noted enviously the perfect fit of his gray flannel suit.

  Bobby was grateful for the timely interruption. Another ten minutes of Enid’s fluent argument, and the anti-sport teacher might have reduced the Savages to an intramural club! It was time to mend fences in the faculty lounge, and she could do that best in the Math Mistress’s absence.

  “Let’s think about what Gussie said before we decide anything,” she said, in the certainty that no one else understood Greek either. “After all, she’s got the most experience here at Metamora!” She stole a glance at Gussie, who had dozed off again, then turned to the French Mistress. “Madame Melville, did Annette tell you she’s playing left wing?”

  “Oh? She is becoming such an American girl.” The French Mistress attempted her usual blasé tone but could not conceal her pride in her daughter’s accomplishment.

  If only the rest of the staff had daughters on the team! It was time for drastic measures.

  “How about if I cut a practice, or even two?” Bobby suggested. “Would that be less disruptive to the other clubs?” Privately she decided she would study the bulletin board and squeeze in extra practices when she could.

  The atmosphere in the faculty lounge lightened considerably. “After all, school spirit is important too,” reflected Miss Otis. “Some of the other schools with winning sports teams have done very well when it comes to alumnae donations from former team members.”

  The conversation turned to the ever-present Old Girls fund-raising efforts, and Bobby decided to make her escape while staff sentiment
was still on her side. Besides, now she needed to redo her practice schedules.

  Mona pulled her aside before she left, under pretense of taking her sherry glass. “Don’t let Enid get you down,” the housekeeper whispered. “She’s just a little miffed because no one showed up for the first meeting of the Problem Solvers.”

  Is that all there was behind the Math Mistress’s hockey hostility? Bobby wondered as she closed the faculty lounge door behind her. If so, Bobby prayed a boatload of Metamorians would attend the next math club meeting. The brainy young Math Mistress often expounded on adolescent psychology, and Bobby would need her advice if she was going to mold Metamora’s problem student into the Savages’ star player!

  Bobby had stopped on the steps of Kent, deep in thought, observing without really seeing a figure bent over the flower bed that surrounded the sundial. Suddenly she realized that it wasn’t Ole, as she’d automatically assumed. Ole didn’t wear tweed suits, with the skirts slightly longer than was fashionable. It was Miss Craybill—Miss Craybill digging with a hand trowel, tossing uprooted flowers behind her with feverish energy. Something about her posture, the determination with which she dug, made Bobby hesitate, the polite greeting dying on her lips. It was as if the Headmistress was on the track of something far more sinister than weeds. Bobby turned quietly down the narrow path that led away from the quadrangle, to the gymnasium.

  Chapter Eight

  A Talk with Angle

  Bobby stood studying the sundial the next morning as students streamed past her on their way to breakfast. The purple pansies bobbed in the breeze as if they had never been uprooted.

  “You know it’s haunted, don’t you?” said a conversational voice at her elbow. Bobby turned to find Linda Kerwin next to her, staring respectfully at the sundial.

  “Haunted? By whom?” Bobby waited with a half-smile for the stories about pioneer victims for which Linda was famous.