The Truth About Gandhi
It's 80 degrees outside, but must be around 95 inside. It's the afternoon of the 23rd day of summer school, and Mr. Alderson, my American History teacher, is sweating through his polo shirt and constantly raising his forearm to his face to wipe the perspiration from his hairline. No one cares about American history. All we care about is that the air conditioning isn't working and the windows in our classroom are for looks alone, so they can't be opened. It's hot and stuffy and everyone in the room is cranky. The class is a mix of annoying, overly-ambitious kids taking the class for original credit and kids who are in here because they've failed the class at least once and have to work in the summer to compensate for screwing up so much during the school year. The two types of kids don't really sit together. We mostly just look at each other a lot, searching for reasons not to like each other.
One of the guys on the other side of the room tells Alderson it's cooler outside and suggests we take our stuff out onto the lawn and hold class in the shade out there. It's a good idea, but I can see Alderson's jaw muscles twitching away at the idea. He's a first-year teacher who probably thinks that once we get outside that door, all hell will break loose. I picture him standing on the lawn as we all dart off to other corners of the school to do whatever it is he's afraid teenagers do in their spare time. He says no right away, adding brightly that the air conditioning could come on at any minute. We all groan, then another kid�a guy with long, stringy hair and features like a rat�stands up and takes a step forward, asking again to go outside. I really don't think he means to be threatening, but maybe he does. Either way, Alderson shuts off the lights, wheels out the TV cart, and suggests that we watch a video of Gandhi for the rest of the afternoon.
By the time the bell rings at the end of the day, at least half the class is asleep (including, I'm pretty sure, Alderson himself). Our desks are arranged in these little clusters of four, and I'm the only one in my group who's even got my head up off the desk. My sort-of friend Nicole is in my cluster, practically snoring into her arm. In the movies, kids who fall asleep in class always sit up with a jolt when they're awakened, but Nicole does it in this very slow, measured way. It takes her about two minutes to lift up her head, blink a few times, and look at the clock. By the time she's fully awake, almost everyone else has already woken up, packed up their backpacks, and made it out the door. I'm still sitting there, watching her come out of this cocoon of sleep; she doesn't seem surprised that I've waited. "Go downtown?" she asks in a way that's half question, half statement. I nod.
Nicole is this girl I'd been friends with when I was a kid, but probably only because when you're in second grade, you're automatically friends with any kid who's in your class or lives in your neighborhood. She had been both, but then my family moved away, and when we came back just before 7th grade, Nicole was going to private school somewhere. I've never actually seen a private school, but I was always vaguely aware that they existed off in a haze somewhere, in places I'd never be, holding this mass of students whose names I'd hear every once in a while. Sort of like heaven. Anyway, halfway through 9th grade Nicole gave up on private school and transferred into my high school. We've got some of the same friends and go to some of the same parties, so we talk to each other and everything�especially now that we've been in summer school together for the past month�but she's the kind of person I've never called, even though her phone number is probably written in my yearbook with "Call me" jotted down next to it. Writing your phone number in someone's yearbook is the best way to make sure they'll never call you.
We take off out the classroom, down the creaky wooden staircase, and out the front door of the school. It's way cooler out here, and Nicole sighs happily. "Tell me something interesting," she commands, because she's the kind of girl who can get away with saying stuff like that.
"There is no 'dark side of the moon,'" I answer. "Both sides of the moon face the sun during the moon's rotation. What people call 'the dark side' is actually just the side that never faces Earth." It's the most interesting thing I can think of.
"Don�t get me wrong, that's fascinating and all, but I was hoping your 'something interesting' might be about Taylor."
I do not want to talk about Taylor. "What about him? I hardly know him." It's true, sort of.
"You're dating him."
"Not anymore."
"So I heard. What's the story?"
"No story." I really don't want to talk about Taylor.
Nicole's got this way of walking that makes a beat on the sidewalk. Tap-tap. Thump. Tap-tap. Thump. It's like she puts her left foot down twice or something. The sound stops.
"Are you OK?" she asks.
What do you know? I want to ask her. "He's just a guy, right? Of course I'm OK. What does that mean?"
"I know all about Taylor. We went to St. Vincent's together before I transferred here. I dated him for a month in 9th."
"Well that's a week longer than I went out with him, so there's probably nothing to say that you don't already know."
She looks at me like she's sizing me up. She's got these big, red lips that always seem to be cracked and peeling in the kind of way that makes other girls wish their lips were dry. She's touching her lower lip now, running her finger back and forth over a little piece of skin that's starting to peel back. She licks her lips then bites at the piece of skin, which rips off. We keep walking.
In class the next day, Alderson wants to discuss our impression of Gandhi, but we're silent and refuse to make eye contact with him. If we sit still now, it won't be as hot later on. Alderson stands at the front of the room, doing a slow turn, looking at all of us, searching for someone.
This kid Jake has been playing with his phone, and he makes the mistake of snickering out loud at whatever he's looking at. Alderson pounces, asking Jake what his impressions were. "The scene on the train was pretty good, I guess." I'm surprised he even knows that much.
"What was it about that scene that moved you?" Alderson asks. "What did we learn during that scene?" It's too late�he's already lost Jake to the cell phone again. I want to tell him he can take the phone away. He can force us to pay attention to him. He's the teacher for God's sake. He should be able to do something. I want to tell him all this; I halfway want to walk up to him and whisper in his ear, "You're in charge here, you know." But he's an adult. He should be able to figure that out himself, right? I mean, don't they learn that in college or something?
"What does everyone think about Gandhi? His goals?" He scans the room again. "Could any of us ever be that self-sacrificing?" And I can't help it, so I laugh out loud. Alderson spins back in my direction, ready to call on me, but I'm pretty sure he still hasn't learned my name, so I save him the trouble and just start talking.
"It's not really self-sacrificing if you're doing it to get the things that you want, is it? I mean, everyone always talks about him like he was some magical saint or something, but he was just a guy who wanted things his way. He's like Hitler without the killing." People look up for that. People look up when you tell a teacher they're wrong.
Alderson's frozen. "Did you just compare Gandhi to Hitler?"
"Well . . . yeah . . . I mean, I guess. It's just that both of them were guys who thought they knew what was best for everyone. It seems like sometimes the only difference between being a hero and being a villain is popular opinion. Who's to say we wouldn't all be speaking German right now if Hitler had good commercials?"
Nicole laughs. I don't think I'm trying to be funny, but I want her to think I'm someone who's funny. "It's just that everyone always thinks they're right, right? No one ever does something thinking, 'I shouldn't be doing this.' I mean, even when you know it's something you can get in trouble for, like cutting class or lying or something, you still feel like you're justified for doing it, or you'd stop yourself. So there's not a whole lot of difference between someone like Hitler and someone like Gandhi."
"Except that Hitler was a cruel, violent madman and Gandhi was a man of peace," Alderson says. "Isn't that a pretty big difference?"
I don't want to keep talking, and it wasn't really a question anyway. People are watching me like a car accident they're driving past. But I look at Nicole and she's touching the skin on her lips again, staring at me like I've turned out to be something better than she thought I was. Like she wants to know how I changed from plastic to gold when she wasn't looking.
"Sure," I say to Alderson. "They're totally different when you compare them with how you feel about things. But what if you were a Nazi? You'd feel the opposite way about both of them. All I'm saying is that we go along with just about anything a leader does as long as we agree with him."
"But what Hitler did was wrong and what Gandhi did was right," says this kid Isaac, who I know is Jewish, which means I can add one more person to the list of people who don't like me anymore.
"Absolutely. But opinions change. Everyone talks about what a great guy Jesus is, but they killed him. We love him now, but what if there were a second coming? What if some dude stood out in front of the White House tomorrow and said, 'I'm the son of God and I'm here to save you all.' He'd be institutionalized."
I'm pretty sure that one thing Alderson did learn in college is to never let your students discuss Jesus. He claps his hands together twice. "And on that note, let's do a collage."
We've been doing collages all summer. I have a hard time believing they're on his official lesson plan: "10:00 a.m. � Lunch: Cut pictures out of magazines and glue them to big pieces of butcher paper." Doesn't the principal or someone have to sign off on these things at the beginning of the summer?
"The theme for this collage will be Peace. What represents peace for you?" He grabs the same two laundry baskets filled with old magazines we've been using all summer and hefts them up onto the table at the front of the room. Everyone's already up out of their seats, rummaging around for magazines, glue sticks, butcher paper. The key is to get all your materials together right away so you look productive, then just sit at your desk talking when you're supposed to be working. Then, when it's time to present our collages, we say we need a little bit more time and spend that extra time hustling to glue whatever we can to our paper, then pretend that it all makes sense. There's no way Alderson hasn't caught on to this, but for whatever reason, he hasn't said anything.
I'm standing at the art table digging through a tub of markers when this kid Abbot comes up to me. He's a second-timer in this class, but he's sort of strung-out good-looking, with these big, wild eyes and hair that might have never been brushed. "You were right," he says. "What you said about Gandhi. You were right. Or at least, you would be right if what I believed were popular opinion." The thing about Abbot is that he keeps eye contact longer than anyone else I know. People our age look at each other, look away, look, look away. Like they're trying to look directly at the sun or something. And the adults all seem to look past me. I realize that Abbot is looking directly at me for longer than anyone has in I don't know how long. He must be waiting for me to say something, but nothing comes out. He shrugs. "See you around, Pumpkin."
Back at my desk, Nicole has an ancient Time magazine spread out in front of her. She's reading about some weapons scandal from the 80s. "What did he want?" she asks, flicking her eyes toward Abbot's corner of the room.
"He called me Pumpkin."
"Pumpkin? What the fuck does that mean?"
"I have no idea."
On Monday Alderson announces that the theme for the day is "The 50 States." Conveniently, there are 25 kids in the class, so we're each assigned two states and have to spend the morning researching them. After lunch we'll present what we've learned�along with hand-drawn maps of the states�to the rest of the class. Everyone gets two states that are next to each other so they can present them together with common themes, like they both do logging, or they both grow cotton. I get Alaska and Hawaii, the two leftovers.
Nicole's in this pissy mood where she wants to argue with everything everyone says, so I grab two big pieces of butcher paper and go out to the hall where I can spread out on the hardwood floor to draw my maps. Abbot's already out there, leaning against the wall with a book about New Mexico propped up in his lap. He looks up at me. "50% of the precipitation in New Mexico falls in two months--July and August."
I sit down on the floor directly across from him, spreading my stuff out in front of me. "What's your other state?"
"Arizona. Arizona's got the Grand Canyon. That's all anyone cares about it." He's looking at me like he wants me to disagree. My family drove to the Grand Canyon five or six years ago, and that's truthfully the only thing I remember about Arizona, so I just shrug and start sketching the outline of Alaska. Abbot goes back to reading his book, stopping every minute or so to scribble something down onto a notebook he's got next to him.
We work this way for ten minutes or so. "Why'd you call me Pumpkin?" I blurt out.
He looks up and grins like it's the question he's been waiting all day to answer. "Because it fits you." Maybe I want to know the answer and maybe I don't. Maybe it's an insult. I go back to my map. "You're dating Taylor Norton," he announces, and I drop my pencil.
"That's why you call me Pumpkin?"
"Nah, it's just something I heard about you. You're dating an asshole." No one ever calls Taylor an asshole, even though everyone probably thinks he is one.
"Was. I was dating an asshole."
He leans toward me, looking into my face for something. "Have you ever been kissed?" he asks. I look down at my map of Alaska, at the spot where I've started drawing in the little line of islands on the side by the ocean.
"I'm not even a virgin," I answer, still focusing on those islands. Abbot goes quiet. I look up from my map and he's staring at me. Behind him, Nicole stands in the doorway to the classroom, watching us both, her head cocked to one side.
"Taylor did that, didn't he?" Abbot says, not seeing Nicole. She turns and goes back into the class. I don't know why, but I nod. The truth feels awful to admit.