Chapter 14: Rehearsals for Retirement

14: Rehearsals for Retirement

                                                                          (Updated 2-23-15)

A comrade is hard to find, Emerson thought. It's like a partner in crime; you almost have to be criminals together to be comrades, even if the only crime is going against the system. Each person has his own way of doing it. Emerson discovered that there was no correct way. A comrade was like a lover, never a friend. A friend didn't care what you thought; he would always be there with you; A lover could get AIDS or a baby from you. Funny as it is, by being a friend, you try to get closer and understand each other, certainly not make the other dislike you by using privileged information against him. Emerson never considered Mr. Jack Covert a friend, though he tried and tried to be one to him. 

      When Emerson was placed in an Inquiry Team with Jack, Mrs. Lasso, and Mrs. Italano, the assistant principal, Ms. Nachos, had no knowledge of the animosity between Jack Covert and Emerson; they had been good friends when she first took over the department. She knew Mr. Covert from her last school before it was closed; Jack was transferred to Emerson’s school while Nachos got an office job. She sympathized with Jack Covert’s stance on many issues, as she did with Emerson, but she didn't understand how rivalries form out of jealousy; she was above that. Emerson was above that, too; he accepted Mr. Covert despite quirks in his personality that kept others at distance from him. Mr. Covert was under the influence of a drug called ‘insecurity’; it could never be flushed from your system.

      The modus operandi of Jack Covert's was his proficiency on the internet, his computer skills. He allowed others to see him in that light. He was good at it because he had to be. There was too much at stake if one of his firewalls was let down. As an anarchist and possible pedophile, it was essential to have such skills. It was the only way he could carry on in the light of day and conservative haziness. He kept to himself, Emerson had thought, because he was doing something great, something secret for the revolution. Jack didn’t mind Emerson’s lack of social graces believing that. Jack didn’t know that wasn’t all Emerson suspected him of; Emerson tried to believe, never knowing the truth. Integrity and privacy were the most precious prerequisites of Jack’s creed. People mistook it for his exalting intelligence. Emerson knew him better. 

      After Mr. Covert sabotaged Emerson's standing with the Chinese students in the school, after he played the “traitor” card with the Chinese students’ brainwashed hatred for any support of Taiwan, Emerson knew Jack was incapable of being his friend, forever. "I have to stay away from that fool; he's closing every door on me."

      It was a number of years before Emerson dreamed of retirement, the year after Jack left the Bread & Roses Club, that he went to the Chinese Club for his 'professional assignment.' Every teacher had to have a ‘professional assignment;’ calling the homes of truant students, organizing a book room, or tutoring failing students. Every teacher, by contract, had to have one. Teachers were given a list of assignments they could apply for and, like tenure, they had retention rights if they had the assignment the year before. Mr. Covert joined Emerson in starting the Bread & Roses Club since, of all the professional assignments, it was one that didn't seem like clerical work or tutoring. Covert left the Bread & Roses Club after a disagreement with Emerson but he didn't want to have a ‘professional assignment’ doing clerical work. That's when he asked Mr. Lao if he could help him at the Chinese Club. 

 Lao Yo-Tiao was Emerson's friend and colleague from the beginning. They had things in common. Mr. Lao had lived in Taiwan most of his life and Emerson lived there for seven years, married from there, spoke Mandarin and understood Taiwanese people. In the beginning, he thought Mr. Lao was Taiwanese, too. He was, after all from Taiwan. 

      "I was a principal of a middle school. They gave me the position after I left the military. In the military, I was an officer. They made me an officer but I didn't want to be one. When they told me to bring my troop out for target practice, I had them fire their weapons into the ocean just to unload."

Emerson realized nothing about Mr. Lao at first because he had no index to understand how a man could become an officer and a principal unless he really wanted and worked hard to be one. Then, one day, Phoenix explained it to him:

      "Mr. Lao's father was an important officer in the Kuomintang. Then, they fled to Taiwan in 1947. He was very rich in his position of power. Lao was his oldest son; that meant he was the prime benefactor of the power and wealth his father could bestow upon him from his position of privilege. That's how he became an officer in the army. That's how he became a principal of a school," said Phoenix, a native Taiwanese, with resentment.

       "In 1979, when Carter pulled out recognition of The Republic of China in Taiwan and gave it to The Peoples' Republic of China, Mr. Lao, as hundreds of wealthy privileged mainlanders in Taiwan did, panicked and escaped, with his money, to other countries, mostly America. That's why he left Taiwan; to protect his money. His sister was in Brooklyn from Hong Kong. He came here."

 Mr. Lao never talked about that with Emerson; he didn't want Emerson to know. He didn't want anyone to know. He wanted Emerson to think he was just a country bumpkin from Taiwan who got lucky, maybe had some land from sugarcane plantations or banana groves that were bought by some developer and made him rich overnight.

Emerson felt it was strange though that Mr. Lao knew Cantonese though he was ‘from Taiwan.’ Cantonese was the language of his father, and he was a little boy when he flew from China to Taiwan with his family on that clear-out date in 1947. “His first language was Cantonese. As a boy he learned Taiwanese by growing up in Taiwan, talking to kids and going to market, but he was a mainlander with all the privileges of being a mainlander; free housing, 50% off education,18% interest on bank account savings, land appropriated from Taiwanese peasant, etc.," Phoenix explained. “He probably used his credentials, money, and connections to get a job as a Chinese teacher in your school just as he did in Taiwan." 

      By his own admission, Mr. Lao was a very poor teacher, and, like everything else in his life, he didn't like doing it. His great pleasure, smoking, acting like a gentry, sex with prostitutes, and playing may jong needed a cover from nine to five; but he hated teaching, spending most of the class time schmoozing and laughing with students. The students loved him because he passed them without their having to do any work. They asked him to run the Chinese Club, an extracurricular affair, so they could run over him. Based on foreign nationality, not interest or skill, when Mr. Kao, the dedicated leader of the club, was foxed out of the school in a power play with the principal, Lao reluctantly took over the club and did exactly the same nothing he did with the students in his class. In fact, students would go to the club to exchange and copy homework with other Chinese students.

      One fateful day, Lao was given word that there would be a cutting of language classes at the school because of the budget; the Chinese classes would be cut and his position would be phased out. Lao was urged to become a guidance councilor if he wanted to stay at the school. "But I know nothing about counseling students," he pleaded to the Assistant Principal of Student Affairs who had a policy of keeping dirty water instead of finding clean water, so long as the dirty water was still wet. All Lao had to do was take a few in-service classes and, voila, he could become a guidance counselor for the Chinese immigrant students.

How much money was paid off and to whom it was given, Emerson didn't know, but it couldn't have been that Lao was needed; the AP student affairs was Eurocentric and had no feeling at all for anyone from the Far East, especially a schlep like Mr. Lao. "Just give the Chinese kids a Chinese person to get them out of the way," is what she thought. "I don't want to bother with those Chinese. I have better things to do."  And so Mr. Lao became their inept guidance counselor and well as an inept faculty advisor of the Chinese Club. At least he wasn't an inept Chinese teacher any more, Emerson thought, though he loved his friend for being on the stoop of the school, sharing cigarettes and jokes, but being a student in his class, a private in his army battalion, or to go to him for guidance was another story. Mr. Lao was nice to chat, with in-between classes, and he knew about Taiwan even if Emerson didn't know about Mr. Lao.

      Emerson introduced Mr. Covert to Mr. Lao on the stoop of the school, smoking cigarettes, acting aloof from the staff, separate, special, laughing at the ‘schmucks’ inside who ran the school and the union. Emerson was apologetic to Lao for Covert who never opened up to anyone and always acted like he had something up his sleeve, always like he knew something no one else did. Emerson put up with Mr. Covert because at least, he seemed to be a revolutionary, even a radical, and they were both Industrial Workers of the World. Emerson made excuses for Mr. Covert and Mr. Lao bought them; Jack didn't upset his apple cart and the two were the only friends he had at school who he could open up and talk with, frankly. That's why when Jack asked if he could sit in on the Chinese Club meetings with him, Mr. Lao said it was okay. Together, the two men did nothing that one of them couldn't do alone. The students went nowhere, did nothing except chat, eat snacks, and copy each others' homework. A faculty advisor, Emerson thought, could have been weaning them from Chinese ethnocentrism and brainwashed superiority, but why bother; too much work and planning to undo that. Mr. Jack Covert and Mr. Lao let the students keep all the baggage they'd brought with them from China, and little English did they learn.

      The time came when Mr. Lao reached his retirement age. At the time, Mr. Kao had been excessed from the new school he had been banished by the  principal years ago and, thanks to some ear-bending by an old colleague, was able to get back into his old school. Hard-working Mr. Kao, a qualified teacher, not shy about speculation on the reasons why he left China, directly, not via Taiwan asked Lao to return him to the Chinese Club. In the interim, Lao was friendlier with Mr. Covert and Covert would have nothing to do with Mr. Kao, a qualified person, much more qualified then himself. He didn’t want to lose the cushy non- administrative position as a faculty advisor for a club; there was no other club that he could hide out in and do nothing with, plus he liked the mystique of the orient. Though Kao was close to the students in his classes, taking them on day-trips, actually teaching them and giving them tests, he couldn't get near the Chinese Club; Covert was cold to him and Lao was ignoring it all, not liking Kao for being responsible, something Lao never was. 

      One day, Lao Yo-Tiao's father died. It was remarkable that the old Kuomintang General, who shared the spoils of his colleagues who pillaged China, then fled China to pillage Taiwan, then fled Taiwan to pillage America, lasted into his 90's. The hundred guests at his formal Christian funeral were a testament to something, probably nothing to do with the admiration, a quality he didn't care to cultivate, but the power, influence, and under-the-table corruption he had lived his life by, the Chinese way of networking through illegal means. 

      Emerson went to the funeral, not for the father, but for his friend's sake. Dropping in along with Emerson went the staff of the foreign language department, but most importantly, Emerson, Covert and Folly, Lao’s smoking buddies. They talked quietly as Mr. Lao sat in the first row, welcoming visitors who paid their respects. Emerson chatted with Mr. Covert and Ms. Folly, the inside story of who Mr. Lao's father really was and why he deserved no respect, in Emerson’s opinion, except fort Lao's sake. Emerson spoke of the graft, the insider-trading, the special privileges that made Chinese in Taiwan richer and Taiwanese in Taiwan poorer. "He was a real piece of shit, he was." Emerson wasn’t certain then about Mr. Covert; he found out later. It was Jack’s ammunition to destroy Emerson's place among his colleagues and Chinese students. Instead of educating the immigrant students about their misplaced patriotism towards the Chinese government, he encouraged discouraging words about Taiwan, and confirmed how Emerson thought Taiwan was independent and wasn’t a province of China.

Ms. Dottie Folly had nothing against Emerson, besides his not wanting to date her, but she liked to play both sides at work. It was no skin off her nose if colleagues disliked each other over what she said confidentially; it could only raise her status in the workplace. She was the ‘go-to’ person for rumors in Norman Thomas High School. It was what she told Lao Yo-Tiao about what Emerson said that Lao would not forgive Emerson; bad-mouthing his father at his father’s funeral. What a sacrilege! 

     Emerson was learning the truth had its price. The biggest cost was the loss of friends, friends who couldn't stand the truth, the loss of friends who never were friends, and the loss of radical friends who never were radical; only secretive for their own purposes.

      A few months after the funeral, it was time for the teachers’ in-service training. Everyone had to go somewhere; Emerson had a choice. He chose.

      The museum was newly opened but the exhibits had been collecting dust for almost a century. There they were, some colored yellowing paper, the evidence, relics of racism, there for any patron to see.

      Already the museum was a high tower, self-centered in a phrase worn so thin: ivory tower. Emerson flinched when he entered the shiny glass doors in a building reclaimed from tenements and warehouses that still surrounded it. The Lower Eastside Tenement Museum it was not; it didn’t bring out the past, it covered it over like cheap wallpaper.

      Emerson had known prejudice through years of schooling, ostracism; how the color of a skin can doom or bless you no matter what level of education you reached. If you frequented the places where skin color ruled, you’d be on top if it was your color, whether you earned it or not. In Asia, your doomed to hell if you’re not Asian skinned. In America and Europe and in place their imperialism superseded local skin color. Emerson was lucky to have a European shade of skin. He doubled over with laughter in the hilarity of the salad bowl city of New York, not only how all the vegetables would never blend but never become the holding bowl, however transparent.

      The Museum of Chinese-American History had collected enough artifacts to damn the European oppressors, Emerson could plainly see as he strolled around the exhibits of old newspapers and movie posters of Charlie Chan. No one in this neighborhood the city fathers called “Chinatown,” only a “Germantown” to compete, paralleled in audacity; no locals entered. It was up to the educators to bring their classes of children to the museum as Emerson’s Assistant Principal had brought her staff of pioneers on this crisp autumn day of in-service training, a day with the noble intention of making teachers better by opening their eyes to places they could take their students on day-trips from school. Some teachers chose to go to another place, or call in sick that day. Emerson was excited about going as he had lived seven years in Taiwan and minored in Asian-American history in San Francisco State University. Then there were the honorary Asia-loving teachers, filled with the mysticism of the Far East or appreciation of the art and culture, teachers like Mr. Trek Pony, Mr. Covert, and Lulu Brady, all a-love with traces of Asia.

      But for the ex-pat Chinese teachers, never moving back, it was the safety of sterility that these Western offenses were in the deep dark past; no one could get away with blatantly or even sub-consciously racism, though their own ideas of ‘deep dark’ translated to others’ skin anyway. They thought they were, blessedly, almost as white as the best. Emerson heard the crude comments of their allegiance to the lighter race.

      Perhaps they could chuckle, as Mr. “Thomas” Du De-Fai did, about how this inferior European race would get its comeuppance soon with the standing tallness of the new China. China, Thomas, inferred and implied, with every wink and chide, would have the last laugh and he was here in New York, teaching collateral of Snakeheads, nothing bad back home.

      “It is amazing to me what they did,” said Thomas to Emerson sitting next to him at the hands-on workshop table, the “they” a fossil that Emerson evolved from.

      “Yes, they did that to us, too,” Emerson replied nonchalantly. Thomas didn’t realize how much Emerson was exposing his Jewish heritage, only being marginally European white, allowed to get close enough to the gate to look inside before being turned away if he didn’t comply.

      “You? What do you mean?” Thomas’ face turned slowly, squinted a bit, and slid a disbelieving sneer at Emerson into his slightly-parted lips. “Of course you are white!”

      “You can’t imagine all the racial slurs and caricatures drawn about the Jewish people in American history!”

      “No; you’re a Jew?” Thomas said sincerely surprised. “Well but you are the richest and smartest Americans. You must be proud. You control the entertainment industry and Wall Street.”

      “Do you really believe that?” He really believed that.

      “I’ve heard that said before,” said Emerson without adding ‘…by racist people.’ But look at me; I’m not rich; I’m a poor teacher like you. Look at me. Look at my clothes. Look at my mannerisms. Do I look rich, and intelligent, and powerful to you?” Thomas sat chilled that he might have insulted one he was trying to compliment. He meant well, after all. This brought another Chi nese ex-pat teacher into the conversation somehow, sitting across from Mr. Emerson and Mr. Du De-Fai; she sensed that her compatriot needed support.

      You are a great people,” said Ms. Hu Fai-Hua, Chinese language instructor, gleefully, raising her arm to reveal a right thumb up. She went on to say how she had read books about how to become like the Jew, and most flatteringly to her own creed, how much the Jew resembled Chinese in their value of education. Jack Covert sat by pretending not to hear, chuckling to himself.

      “You see, even you admit how one is looked up to because his Western leaning; being white is admired in China, much more than being dark-skinned. Even your rice is bleached white.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Rice is naturally brown. All the nutrients are washed away with the brownness for the sake of having rice white.”

      “Mr. Du De-Fai and Ms. Hu Fai-Hua, looked at each other, shook their heads slowly, lips tightly closed, at the audacity of this outcast teacher, so out of line.

      “Are you sure about that?” But of course; Thomas knew Emerson was wrong, very wrong about that. The Chinese didn’t really admire Jews or White Europeans; they just said that to be polite. They knew which people were really the greatest. Thomas excused himself, stood to leave. Fei-Hua joined another innocuous conversation at the table. Emerson was left for damaged goods. He felt like a Jew again.

      How did it feel seeing heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets south of Chinatown? Emerson knew how long the government had been waiting for this opportunity. Perhaps, he thought, they didn’t want it to come this hard and fast, but on that Thursday after September 11, 2001, they blamed Bin Laden and said his Muslim buddies would be coming back to inflict some more pain on New Yorkers. The pain, Emerson felt.

      Teacher training veterans let Emerson know that it was all over, for good. They had won. The diametrical opposite of a progressive group meeting in Alphabet City a few long years before had arrived.

      Between the light drizzle on the presidential motorcade coming down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., the line of helmeted S.W.A.T. team members moved in a line, alongside the limousines, quickly, up the street. The new president, non-elected Bush, pushed upon the American people, said boldly, “Go ahead. Make our day, damned demonstrators,” as they engaged the crowd in crowd control techniques they’d been perfecting. They used it on him, instead of the enemy, thought Emerson. Perhaps they were the real enemy to them.

All that Emerson and the other protesters could do was run away. They turned over a few newspaper machine to obligingly slow the S.W.A.T. team down, threw a few trash cans (before the D.C. fathers learned to bolt them down to the sidewalk) and one or two through Starbucks windows. All the demonstrators could do, protesting being violently prevented from protesting peaceably, including the Black Block, was top run away, try to head up another street back to the quick, black, parade of limousines, live to fight another day, but the message Emerson and many others got that day was this: There would be no other “other days.” The days for that had passed into American history. You could run away, not to fight another day, but to avoid the pain you would get that day feeling trapped and surrounded and then caught and abused.

      Now, in Chinatown, a mile from the site of the World Trade Center, on the Corner of Canal Street and Broadway, the first thing you saw coming out of the subway was not a fruit stand but armed soldiers, protecting the fruit? New blue wooden N.Y.P.D. barricades running east and west cut the city; “No, you cannot cross the street, sir. Move on!” Despite the visor, he gestured his machine gun cradled on his chest; his helmet must have been miked.  

      Emerson sat, a few years after the mini-Armageddon, in a classroom at school; the students had left for the day. He sat, stunned, holding the can of cola in his unmoving hand, thinking of that day, that week, that last hour of that last year of American history. He sat, with seven colleagues, daydreaming as someone had gone to bring the attendance sheet for the teachers to sign. He daydreamed.

 In his daydream he saw a bright blue sky of clear light on the top of a hill.   

The clear blue sky with a puffy cloud or two drifting by, like something an elementary student would draw, on the top of a hill, topping a broad four-lane boulevard clogged with traffic. There was traffic because the boulevard squeezed into four narrower lanes, and then a two-lane avenue, going gradually higher, pedestrians walking uphill, and then the thoroughfare became a one lane road, with shoulders, going ever higher straight up the hill to the sunny blue sky, then it became a simple pebbled road edged with some soil and tufts of grass. The art deco skyscrapers down the road had surrendered to modern high-risers which further up became tenements with store fronts, even six trees along the curbs. Two-story colonial homes as the grit and iron became bucolic.

Emerson kept on dreaming, elbows on the desk, cheeks in hands, ignoring an itchy nose. The hill he was looking up, like a view on a Google map, was climbed. Emerson’s eyes closed, almost squinted, dreaming. Street poles, obelisks, had changed from traffic lights into stop signs, and then into trees and greenery, candy-coated bushes, no asphalt, only soil and grass up the hill to the bluest of skies, up yonder, finally, where a country road, falling off the edge of the world as we knew it, into where the utopia, called retirement, began. That was what Emerson was daydreaming about; retirement, early retirement; not a resignation. His misery would end seven years shorter than he thought it would. Bliss! Thanks to that philandering Governor Spitzer, who signed the teacher buy-out few months after he had been sworn in and few months before he resigned in disgrace; perfect timing for Emerson!   

      If Emerson minded his own business and kept out of trouble, just as Principal Marone promised, he just shut up and stayed out of union business, and didn’t report what he saw, he could leave the damned school, damned city, damned country and go back to the place he wish he hadn’t left twenty years earlier, twenty years ago when there some hope left.

      Before he could leave, he had to make it through the last three years, three years of sitting with colleagues who wished they were him. He couldn’t even tell them he was leaving; they became hostile. If they could have torn it from him and taken it for themselves, they would have.

      Emerson knew some colleagues wondered why he had become so quiet; he used to be a big-mouth trouble-maker. Some wondered why he wasn’t stuffing position papers into their mailboxes any longer or sparing with local union chapter rivals.

      The Pakistani students hiding out in the Bread & Roses Club may have wondered why Mr. Davinsky wasn’t busting their halal chops about no coming to meetings and participating anymore. When Mohammed Shrek showed up late to do his guilty Bally-wood routine about showing up late because he was busy in the computer room helping his classmate who was also not coming that day;  Emerson let him go, absolved, with a happy “okay.” He just couldn’t care anymore; the students came only for snacks and to be social, not to protest child labor of which they’d become.

      The last danger zone, the last hot-spot in school, where meek animals called sheep, acting like teachers, could be made to agree to anything curriculum developers from smart board computer consultants said, with a smile, could be made to “baa-baa-baa” in fear of alarms ringing in their heads at “Inquiry Team” meetings. Not a punishment, mind you, but a development for this failing school. Emerson had to endure the weekly Friday Inquiry Team meeting, what he referred to as the “Inquisition Team” meeting where the local loyalty got to see how loyal their other local collaborators were. It was at those meetings that penned-in, not evil teachers, could pretend to be ram, bully each other, show off their know-how, and their Natural Selection survival skills. Emerson knew those docile monsters, unable, as he was, to retire as soon as possible, as he was, to get their pension, too. They would use this pretentious time of student-inquiry and assistance planning. Emerson begged secretly. The ‘blue sky’ of early retirement lie just over the hill in his daydream. Those long sixty minutes of endurance he fought off protecting his head from the debris the food fight he was caught in the crosshairs of, tossed his way.

      The last class Emerson taught was during summer school. He had spent the past twenty summers in this extra assignment, not because he liked giving up his summer free time but because, by teaching every summer, he kept retention rights to the extra pay the summer classes would bring him in his pension. The administration was aware of this. They changed his assignment location, sometimes making him teach hours away from his home in hopes he would accept a non-union job locally and lose his retention rights. They did all that they could to shake Emerson and other teachers from their union right and thus reduce the amount the average salary would garnish them in pension.

      For the past twenty years, he had hesitated in classes to teach all he knew for if he had seriously pushed toward his desire he would have been led astray from his stated purpose of living his life like it was the only one he had; to the fullest of possibilities. It couldn’t be done until he was through with the obstruction of New York public school forever. The outcome of possibly leading and entertaining the students could have led to his dismissal or even worse; a purgatory in the rubber room with unwanted teaching staff. Somehow, by his own approval he had to live his life right.

      Noting that the folly of purpose would lead him dangerously through the longest period of his life, he vowed to have the fortitude to emerge on the other side of his career as a poor man making a living with some resources to enjoy his retirement, Emerson slugged on through wasted policy, inept administrators, obstructionist union caucuses, and disinterested students. He would linger no further with the sentence of standing in front of a room filled with the scent of an odious flower that had gone beyond rot. Not by his own action or lack thereof did he leave his profession but by contract and honorable discharge.

      Emerson took a long deep breath and entered the classroom on the last day of summer school. Like a bloated cadaver ready to burst, he tolerated the last ninety minutes when the last of his classes to the end came with the last two clueless teenagers assured by their guidance counselors that merely being there was enough to pass the class at hand. The Chinese immigrants, adapted to their American cohorts, one a female, sat with smart phone, slyly hidden, placed strategically placed on the desk before her in a handbag opened facing her, or the male student at her side with earphones plugged only on the side he thought out of Emerson’s sight not caring too much for the repercussions on this the last day. They faced each other, Emerson and them, across a teachers’ desk, one forever never to be in the building again and two waiting the few weeks between the end of summer school and Labor Day when the fall term would commence to return to an unremarkable classroom on another floor to serve another year in the sentence called New York City Department of Education public school. Before the bell rang, class was over.

      “Go away!” Emerson blurted out, the last bell in his life moments away and no further reason to hold his tongue. He bounded to his feet, erased the last chalky words scratched across a modern green imitation slate and, before his two charges could turn off their electrical devices, like a pole-vaulter over the top, walked the long hallway to the time clock, got to the line first before his colleagues, and punched his card out not a minute too late. His career was mercifully over.