The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen one, but once she had read about them in
National Geographic
and felt a strong tug of kinship with the little fellows. Agoutis, the article had said, were “shy and nervous creatures.” As you would be, too, Ms. Finkleman felt, if you lived where they did: in a habitat teeming with much larger creatures who were always trying to eat you. An agouti’s only hope of survival,
National Geographic
explained, was to be at all times as small and still and plain and dull as possible.
    Which was exactly how Ms. Finkleman felt at school.
    To her, Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School was a jungle. Boorish, clumsy sixth graders rooted blindly from class to class, bumping into the walls. Tall eighth-grade girls pranced through the hallways like gazelles, preening for one another and letting out gales of twittery laughter at jokes only they could understand. Crass seventh-grade boys gathered in packs in the cafeteria, flinging Tater Tots and flicking bits of meatloaf like gorillas scuffling with their dung.
    When she was teaching, it was even worse. Ms. Finkleman, timid and skittish, stood meekly at her music stand, speaking in her mousy voice about Beethoven or Copland, struggling to be heard above the din. It was atough world for a little agouti, and Ms. Finkleman knew that she could be doing something else if she chose. Her parents in Sarasota told her so every time she called, handing the phone back and forth to each other.
    “So? You’re so miserable? So quit!”
    “So come down here, you’re so miserable!”
    “It’s beautiful down here!”
    “The trees!”
    “And the juice! Delicious!”
    “Come and work for your cousin Sherman!”
    “He runs a very successful funeral home!”
    “No, thank you,” Ida always told them. And they would always ask why, and she would always say …
because.
    Because as hard as it was to get through her days, at least they were days filled with music. Thinking music, talking music, and even, every once in a blue moon, managing to
teach
music. Just yesterday, for example, she had played her sixth-period seventh graders a selection from
Peter and the Wolf,
and Natasha Belinsky (of all people) had raised her hand suddenly and said, “Oh, wait! So it’s like the music is the characters talking! Except they’re not talking! They’re
being
music!”
    Ms. Finkleman was so surprised by Natasha’s flash ofinsight that she was momentarily struck dumb. Then, when she was finally able to stammer out the words, “Why, that’s exactly right,”
Natasha
was so surprised she choked on her gum and had to go to the nurse.
    These small, sporadic victories kept Ms. Finkleman going. On such meals did the little agouti keep from starving.
    And when she was at home, Ms. Finkleman could put on her slippers, fix a mug of Sleepytime tea, and leave the jungle behind. She turned on her stereo, closed her eyes, and lost herself in the bracing first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 in D Minor.
    How soothing they were, her familiar pleasures—how very
human.

8

TINNY BOYER
    All ((right,
people, settle down!” bellowed Mr. Melville, clapping his big hands together for quiet.
    It was first period Monday morning, time for the presentation of Special Projects. Mr. Melville, being Mr. Melville, decided the running order at random as they went along, so no one knew when they might be called upon to present. If it worked like it was
supposed
to, about half the class would present today, the rest tomorrow. But if it worked like it
usually
worked, there would be enough stragglers, incompletes, and presentations that went over time that Special Projects would drag on at least through Thursday.
    “Hmm,” Mr. Melville muttered darkly, stroking his beard. “Who shall be our first victim?”
    Bethesda leaned forward hopefully in her chair but did not cross her fingers. She had decided early in hermiddle school career that it was too dorky to cross your fingers in hopes of being called on. Instead she pictured a