The Family Group Chat

During third period, while my students are supposed to be doing the assignment on their own, a text comes in from my sister on the family group chat: a picture of herself on a carved, wooden balcony overlooking jagged, snow-covered mountains. The sky is bright blue behind her.

ME
where r u?

SIS
Zermatt
[ski emoji]

ME
since when do you ski?

SIS
Business trip
Got the business part out of the way,
now it’s all skiing and gluhwein

ME
wtf is glue wine?

SIS
Hot wine mulled with spices

MOM
Mmmm, sounds delicious!

I set my phone back on the table in disgust. I went to Tahoe for spring break with a couple of teacher friends, but we couldn’t afford a ski pass and our budget Airbnb was on the far side. We did build a few lopsided snowmen.

Madison comes up, dark ringlets bouncing on her shoulders, holding out her district-issued Chromebook. “I can’t get into the assignment – it says I don’t have permission to access it. Everyone else at my table is having the same problem.”

Madison thinks she runs my classroom.

“Oh yeah, I need to reset the permissions. Let me see.” My fingers run over the keys. “Here you go.”

She frowns skeptically but takes it back to her seat and starts showing another student. It’s possible that her tablemates actually listen to her more than to me.

Xavier comes up next to complain: “Ms. Antonelli, no one in my group is doing anything.”

“Just focus on your own work. It’s an individual assignment.”

“But they’re talking. I can’t concentrate.”

I walk over to the table and attempt a stern but neutral voice: “You have twenty more minutes to finish the assignment.” It comes out in a pleading tone. One girl looks away with her eyebrows raised. I go back to my desk in defeat.

This self-guided assignment technique sounded so straightforward when Gabby shared it with me. I figured I could adapt the strategy for my 10th-grade Geometry class.

Once I heard Ms. Williams, a veteran teacher, describe Gabby: “She’s a natural teacher. That girl was born to teach.” A wave of envy swept through me. No one would ever say that about me.

When I complained in the teachers’ lunch room about my students not listening, Ms. Williams nodded sagely: “That’s why I only teach juniors and seniors. Sophomores are at the most difficult age. They’re not young kids anymore but they don’t know how to be adults.”

“It’s only your first year, give it time,” put in Nate, my mentor teacher. “In their first year, everyone thinks they’re in one of those inspirational teacher movies. The kids won’t automatically hang on your every word just because you show up and stand in front of the room. You have to work on building relationships.”

I winced internally. It was true that when I started my teacher credential program, I pictured myself standing at the front of a classroom, calling on students whose faces turned up toward me with excitement as they waved their hands in the air. I hoped Nate – or, God forbid, Ms. Williams – didn’t think I had a white savior complex about being a teacher in Oakland.

“Also sexism,” added Gabby, waving her chopsticks vaguely toward the ceiling as if the patriarchy were upstairs. “A lot of kids have trouble accepting female teachers as authority figures because of sexism.”

Which might be true but explains exactly nothing about why Gabby is so successful.

Once I peeked into Gabby’s classroom when I was walking by during my prep period. Her students clustered in small groups around the lab tables, where they were building catapults, urging each other on and practically pushing each other out of the way with eagerness: “You’re doing it wrong. Let me try!” “She said to find the sine of the angle to calculate the marble’s landing spot.” “No, it’s the cosine!” “Did you even look at the board, bruh? It’s all up there.”

My students don’t come right out and defy me openly, but they’re never really doing what I asked them to do. When I’m lecturing, they whisper to each other. They stop when I come near, but start again when I turn away. At first I thought they were whispering about me. Now I’m pretty sure they’re not, which might be even worse.

The A/C in my classroom doesn’t really work, so the heat is either all the way on or all the way off. Today it’s all the way on, even though it’s April. My classroom isn’t fully square because of the janitor’s closet behind; it has a little cutout like the state of Utah. So I have to edge past Ava and Xavier’s desks to crack open the window. A line of cool air washes in.

Immediate protest from Ava: “Ms. Antonelli! I’m cold!”

“We need fresh air,” I tell her.

Whispers from the table behind her. I sidle back toward the front, wiping my damp hands on my long skirt. The clasp of my necklace catches on the tag at the back of my blouse. I tug at it until it comes free, the little cool shape of the cross tapping against my sternum. I’m not a lapsed Catholic, exactly. I just never have time to go to church.

My phone buzzes. We’re not supposed to check our phones during class – it sets a bad example for the students – but today I can’t resist. My brain wants to be anywhere else but here.

MOM
How’s the hotel?

SIS
There’s a fondue restaurant
They’re treating us tonight so I can save my per diem

MOM
That’s great!

I send a screenshot of the conversation to my cousin, a nurse. He texts me right back:

COUSIN
can’t wait till the hospital sends me to Bali!!

ME
lol

ME
the district’s sending me to a literacy
conference in San Jose, that’s basically Bali

COUSIN
[beach emoji]

ME
I get mileage reimbursement

COUSIN
35 cents a mile, baby, yeah!!

At the sounds of a scuffle, I look up. Xavier has taken Ava’s phone and is holding it out of her reach.

“Hey, what is this, second grade?” I say. “Give it back.” Xavier glances at me and hands it back to Ava, still laughing.

“It’s not funny!” Ava peers into the screen with her eyebrows drawn, running her thumb down the screen.

“And phones away,” I add. Ava slides the phone under the desk, obviously still looking down at it on her lap.

The cluster of desks closest to the front of the room contains all the kids I can’t stand. I put them up front so I’d be able to develop relationships with them, like Nate suggested. So far all it’s done is annoy me and make it hard to focus on the rest of the class.

One boy: “Did you start the worksheet yet?” Another: “Ugh, it’s so long.” The third one: “That’s what she said.”

They all crack up, then look over at me to see if I’ll react.

I should give them a lecture about misogyny. That’s what Gabby would do. She’d make it funny. They’d be laughing at themselves.

But I’m too exhausted. “Get back to the assignment, please,” I say through my teeth. My phone whirrs at me again.

DAD
Is this for that big account you were
working on?

SIS
It’s a new client
I can’t say anything more
specific – it’s super hush hush

ME
I’ll be sure not to mention it next time
I’m out to lunch with the other CEOs

SIS
Don’t give me a hard time, just
following company policy

I text my dad:

ME
you don’t understand what she
actually does either, do you?

DAD
Not really, but your mom does!
[sunglasses emoji]

DAD
You could be more supportive of
your sister. She’s worked hard to
get where she is. It’s not easy being
a woman in finance. She works
80 hours a week and there’s a lot of
pressure on her.

Typical of my dad. He’s really big on how family has to support each other. When my parents paid for my credential program, my dad wouldn’t even let me thank him. “Family supports family,” he said. When I was a kid, he made me go to all my sister’s soccer games. I remember sitting sulkily in the stands in the hot October sun, tugging my shorts down so the metal seat wouldn’t burn my thighs. That was the time Emilia scored three goals in the second half and my dad got to his feet, yelling and waving his fist in the air, like he always did when she scored. I stood next to him in grudging pride as her teammates chanted her name over and over. After the game, my sister grabbed me in a sweaty hug and said, “You came!”

Come on, Chiara, I tell myself. Be supportive. Try to participate in the conversation.

SIS
Did you look at the article I sent about
the new retirement account regs?

ME
mine are all in CalSTRS/ the state system
so I don’t think any of it applies to me

SIS
Chiara, have you thought about
setting up a separate account?
Good to have a safety net with
the fiscal cliff looming

There’s a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Madison calls out.

I sigh and stand up.“No, I’ll get it.”

Madison is already opening the door when I’m still halfway there. Then someone explodes past her: an unfamiliar figure, black hood half-covering her face, legs muscling at a furious clip past me.

Ava jumps out of her chair.

“Call the office!” I yell at Madison. “Press 0 on the phone!” Some kids are chanting “Fight! Fight!” with their phones out to record.

The other girl has Ava on the ground now, crouching astride her. Ava hollers incoherently, angry tears streaking down the side of her face.

I’m not supposed to break up fights. But I can’t just let Ava get hurt. And the other girl is tiny. I move quickly into the circle of empty space around them, the kids’ shouts washing over me, and lean toward the interloper.

When my hand comes down on her shoulder her arms windmill furiously, and her elbow strikes my cheek. “Get the fuck off me, bitch!” she screams.

Ava seizes the girl’s shirt, bringing her face down close so she can punch her in the cheek. I grab at the girl’s shoulder again but she twists out of my grip and I can’t get any traction.

Air rushes into the room. A burst of walkie-talkie static. Someone lifts the girl away from me. A security guard. The girl shrieks, “Get off me!”

I help Ava to her feet. She’s crying, combing her dyed-red hair away from her face with her fingers over and over.

Spence, the assistant principal, tells Xavier to put his phone away. Xavier lowers his arm but doesn’t stop recording.

Half the kids are rehashing the fight at top volume (“Did you see how she grabbed her ponytail?” “She went like this, fwoom fwoom fwoom”) while the other half shrink down into their chairs silently.

The security guard barks, “Get back!” at Xavier, as he hauls the girl to her feet. Her hood is off now and her hair sticks out from her head, pulled loose from her ponytail. The guard marches her out of the room, tracked by Xavier’s phone.

Spence says to Ava, “Can you please come with me now?”

Ava cries, “I didn’t even do anything! She just attacked me!”

The bell rings. The students rush out of the room, except Xavier, who’s on his phone doing something with the video, and Madison, who’s trying to finish her assignment before closing up her Chromebook.

Spence will probably want me to give a statement later. I try to reconstruct it in my mind. Madison opened the door; the girl ran in; wait, was Ava already getting up from her desk? Did she know someone might be coming? Is that why she was looking at her phone earlier?

I glance at the clock. Five minutes until the next period starts. Five minutes of reprieve.

“She almost knocked me over,” Madison says to me, like she’s the victim here.

“You shouldn’t have opened the door.”

Madison’s eyebrows draw down, looking hurt. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t know who that was. I don’t think she even goes here.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t have opened the door.” I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling, blowing out a breath. “The bell rang already.”

“I know,” she huffs.

As she follows Xavier out the door, Nate comes in and leans against one of my desks. “I heard,” he says.

Grateful for his lack of preamble, I give him the details.

“Who was the other kid?” he asks.

“About this tall, Asian. I didn’t recognize her. Madison said she doesn’t go here.”

Nate rolls his eyes with a smile. “Madison always knows.”

I picture how the girl’s features were pinched with rage as she bent over Ava. The practiced motion of her punches. How her shoulder felt in my hand – slender and sinewy, whipcord muscle.

I realize Nate said something. “What?”

“Your face. Do you have a first aid kit?”

I point toward the cabinet. He pulls out an ice pack from the first aid kit and smacks it hard against the desk to activate it.

“Let me go see if Gabby can cover your class,” he says. “It’s her prep period.”

“I’m fine,” I snap. But he’s already out the door. I hear the sound of the students milling around in the hallway. The ice pack feels sharp against my cheek, like it has a pointed corner that digs in.

My phone hums. The family group chat.

SIS
The public systems are not
as secure as they might seem

Holding the ice pack in place with my shoulder, I send a screenshot of her comment to my cousin, who texts back:

COUSIN
true in many senses!!!

I’m still looking at the screenshot, my chest filling up with rage, like clouds of steam scalding my lungs with every breath. My thumbs work furiously:

ME
I just can’t with her fucking
condescension, while she’s over
there profiting off inequality,
earning 3x what I make

Nate comes back in. “Gabby’ll be here in a sec,” he says. “Then you can go to the teachers’ lounge. You should write down a statement for the union. Since you got injured on the job.”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to get in the middle,” I say.

He nods. “That’s another reason for the statement, to protect yourself. Whenever you put hands on a student, there’s a risk. It’s important to document what happened. Plus there might be some media attention, if the kids put up videos of the fight.”

My phone keeps vibrating. I drop it on the table but it whines even more loudly against the polished laminate surface. Nate keeps talking, union this, work duties that. I nod, only half hearing him.

Protect yourself. They could fire me without cause as a first-year teacher. If I lose this job before I even have the chance to prove I can do it… I can just hear the condescending career advice my sister would bestow on me.

When Nate goes out, I retwist my loose hair into a bun and pick up my phone again: eleven notifications. There’s a missed call from my dad and a text showing on the lock screen:

DAD
I’m disappointed in you.

What is he talking about? I was trying to be conciliatory. I open up my messages. Shit. There it is in Family Group Chat: her fucking condescension.

The bottom drops out of my stomach. My face burns against the ice pack. I imagine the stunned expression I’ve only seen on my sister’s face a few times before. Like the time I was six and pulled her hair. When she shrieked “Ow!” and tears came into her eyes, I was shocked to realize I actually had the power to hurt her.

I feel sick. I scroll down:

SIS
I don’t profit off inequality

SIS
In fact I’m doing my best to
make things more fair in the financial sector

SIS
You’re the one who chose downward mobility

SIS
You could be earning as much as I am

SIS
You don’t even care about inequality,
you just enjoy being miserable so
you can be self righteous about it

SIS
You’d rather stay a kid forever and
let other people deal with the serious stuff

MOM
Girls, stop this!

SIS
I’m not a girl, I’m 29!
And Chiara’s 26!
She’s an adult who doesn’t want
to take responsibility for her own choices!

SIS
Someone has to pay the bills

SIS
You’ll be coming to me for $$$ later,
just like you rely on mom and dad now

The bell rings. The noise cuts across the anger roiling in my gut. How can she say all of that? And underneath, a swirl of shame. What if she’s right? About everything? About me?

Gabby opens the door. “Wait a minute,” she says to the students outside. Of course, they obey the natural authority in her voice as she closes the door behind her. Her dark hair is in a pixie cut, and she’s wearing a Frida Kahlo t-shirt with a blazer, which somehow makes her look both hip and grown-up at the same time. “You okay?” Her brown eyes are lit up with intrigue. “Nate said you broke it up before security got there. That’s so badass of you. I would’ve just been waiting for someone else to show up.”

I don’t believe that for a minute. Gabby is one of those people who rises to the occasion; the more adrenaline, the better. She would have told the other kids to stop filming and they would have listened. She would have broken it up without getting hit. Security wouldn’t have had to touch the girl. Madison and Xavier would be looking at her like a hero.

My phone rings, a rippling chime sound. The screen says “Dad.” I hit “Ignore.” I grab my jacket. “The assignment is on the board, they’re working on it on their Chromebooks in table groups. Thanks for covering for me.”

I’m going to look like an even worse teacher after they’ve had Gabby for a period.

Then I remember: I don’t even have a lesson plan for tomorrow yet. I spent hours the last few nights putting this one together.

I put the ice pack in my jacket pocket so the students won’t see it. I go out the door, pushing my way through the mass of students staring at me. I hear my name but I keep on going; I barely recognize their individual faces amid the unified pulsing blob of teenage energy. I slip around the corner, out the side exit into the warm April sunshine.

I stand, uncertain, the light over me, the noise from inside the building ebbing as students make their way into classrooms.

Nate said media attention. What will I look and sound like in the videos? Like an ineffectual teacher who can’t control her class? A white girl who has no business trying to teach in Oakland? A weakling who couldn’t even pull one tiny girl off another?

Just more ammunition for my sister. Evidence that I’m acting like a child, an idealistic child, depending on someone else. Refusing to take responsibility. Refusing to see the world as it really is.

How is the world, really? What is it I’m supposed to see?

I text my cousin.

ME
wanna go to Bali? like right now?

COUSIN
why, you inherit some money??

COUSIN
…or did you murder someone
and you need to go on the run?

ME
more like the latter

COUSIN
sorry I have a nursing license
to think about, lol

COUSIN
you’re just gonna have to face the music

I close my messages and wrap my fingers around my phone. A seagull is standing on the asphalt nearby. It’s alarmingly large, its big orange beak and glossy white feathers, a sharp intelligence in its eye. I take a step back.

My phone vibrates. Dad calling again. He participates in the group chat out of respect for generational differences, but he’s a big believer in the old-fashioned phone call.

I hit ignore again. I know what he’s calling to say.

I tap my nails on the phone case, wondering what to do, watching the seagull watching me. I turn the phone face up.

The call picks up after a couple of rings, but there’s silence on the other end.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Now you’re sorry?” she says.

“Yeah.”

A long pause. “Me too.”

In front of me, the seagull takes a few steps with its wide, ungainly webbed feet, then takes off, startling and powerful, opening into a totally different silhouette, its wings long and slender, streamlined, cutting across the open blue sky overhead.

My sister sighs. “Look, I can’t talk right now. Call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

My cheek burns, and the ice pack is cold inside my pocket. I should get to the teachers’ lounge to fill out the incident report. And start planning for tomorrow’s lesson. I head across the parking lot toward C Building, the sun so bright my eyes begin to water.