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Chapter 5
“Thou dankish, ghost-livered slug!” Treyvon Daniels shook his fist before stepping back into the circle of teenagers who stood around Grace’s classroom during Wednesday’s fourth period. The other students applauded.
“Nice.” Grace strummed her ukulele to signal the end of his turn. “Perfect pronoun, adjective, adjective, noun structure. Why did you create the phraseghost-livered?”
“You know, when we talked last week about how in Shakespeare’s time, they thought the liver was where people had all their courage, so if it didn’t have any blood, it didn’t have color or courage, right? Like lily-livered.” Treyvon scratched his head. “So, like, I was thinking of something real pale, like milk or a ghost.”
“Excellent.” Grace smiled at the teenager, who ducked his head and shifted his feet. Grace plucked out the intro music on the ukulele and indicated the girl at his side. “Emily?”
The girl stepped into the circle and shouted, “Thou toad-spotted, odiferous surfeiter.”
“Good modification of your noun.” Grace played the closing music as the applause died down. “Why did Shakespeare use the wordsurfeiteras an insult?”
“Because it implies excess and indulgence, like Falstaff.”
Setting her ukulele aside, Grace wrote the word on the whiteboard list, which included nouns likeotterandacorn. In their study of Shakespeare’s vocabulary, they’d been discussing why Shakespeare chose certain seemingly innocuous words as insults and how both the performance and word choice fit within the context of the specific play.
She retrieved her ukulele and looked at the big junior wearing a 49ers sweatshirt. Todd Oliver had refused to stand in the class circle and had been slouched in his desk all period, his head in his hand and his eyes heavy-lidded.
“Todd?” Grace injected a crisp note into her voice. “Do you have a line you can share with us?”
He shook his head and scratched his cheek with his middle finger. Gritting her teeth, Grace played the intro music again. “How about you, Dennis?”
The boy moved into the circle. “I have more brain in my knee than thou hast in thine head.”
“Ah.” Grace strummed the closing bars. “Nice change-up of the syntax, but it’s a little close to the line inTroilus and Cressida. Take a look again at our list of nouns Shakespeare uses as insults and see if you can find one that describes a person who doesn’t have much sense. Then we’ll talk about why Shakespeare might have used that word to insult a particular character.”
She glanced at the clock, which was a couple of ticks away from noon. “Okay, that’s it for today. Don’t forget your sonnet essays are due on Friday. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
Chatter rose as the students began collecting their backpacks and shuffling out for lunch break.
“Todd, can I talk to you for a second?” Grace approached the boy as he fumbled with his backpack.
“I don’t got a second.” He dragged himself to his full height, which meant he towered over her.
“You were supposed to hand in your paper rewrite today.” Though her year-long efforts with the boy hadn’t been successful, she held out hope. “We only have two months of class left, but that’s just enough time to improve your participation in class and your grade. Your mother came in to talk—”yell, actually“—with me last Friday, and the last thing I want is for your Literature grade to affect your participation in football next year.”
“Then I guess you’d better make sure it doesn’t.” Todd slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door.
“I’m giving you an extension on your assignments, and if we can work on extra credit—”
“I don’t have time, sorry.” He left the room and disappeared into the crowd of students in the corridor.
Grace sighed. Even though Todd’s grade was not her fault, she couldn’t help feeling a rustle of guilt underneath her anger. She’d always prided herself on being able to inspire kids to do the work—they didn’t always fall in love with Shakespeare, and some of them struggled badly—but she made it clear that she’d do whatever it took to help them succeed in her class. Or, at the very least, to earn a passing grade.
So when a boy like Todd not only refused to make an effort, but actively scorned both her and her offers to help, she couldn’t help wondering where she’d gone wrong in her guidance. Especially when he was getting As and Bs in all of his other classes.
But there was still time to reach him before the end of the year. Not a lot, but she’d use whatever she could get.
After retrieving her lunch from her desk drawer, she walked to the teacher’s lounge. She greeted the other teachers and sat on the dirt-brown sofa beside Dave, the upper-level math teacher.
“How areA Midsummer Night’s Dreamrehearsals going?” He shoveled a bite of lasagna into his mouth.
“The kids are doing great.” She opened her lunch bag and took out her bologna sandwich. “But with my reduced budget, we might end up performing the play on the boardwalk.”
“Are you asking for a professional director as your Real World Specialist next year?” Rebecca Mayer, social studies and world history teacher, drizzled dressing on her salad. “The kids would love that.”
“I haven’t thought about it yet.” Grace rose and poured herself a cup of mud-like coffee from the ancient coffeemaker. “I honestly don’t know if I’ll even get a Real World Specialist.”
