Slugfest

Ten

“I tell my students high school is only four years—what’s happening now is just one brief chapter in their lives. Then I meet a woman like that and I’m beamed back to my own high school days. Mean girls. Even when they get old, they stay mean girls.”

“True,” I said. “Although I doubt if anyone has referred to Allegra Douglas as a girl in quite some time.” I introduced myself.

“Lauryn Peete. I’d shake but my hands are grubby.” She held them up as if it were a stickup. Other than that, she looked tidy in ironed overalls and a clean, long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up. Her hair was almost entirely covered by a wide headband; just a soft, lamblike fuzz escaped out the back.

Lauryn told me she taught at High School 240 and still loved the job now as much as she had that first day when one of her students brought in a plant and pretended not to know it was a marijuana seedling. “They must have thought I was going to run crying to the principal,” she said. Instead the pot plant inspired her to start a garden project with her homeroom class.

That year they grudgingly planted annuals in the front of the school, mostly bedraggled flats that Lauryn had wheedled out of a local supermarket. The following semester they started seeds on the windowsill. Easy stuff—basil, parsley, morning glories. Seeds almost guaranteed to germinate because Lauryn didn’t want her students’ early efforts not to bear fruit. “They’re good kids, despite what that Ms. Douglas thinks.”

Of course, some kids couldn’t be bothered. This was real life, not some touchy-feely after-school movie. But every year four or five students got into it, enough to convince the principal and the school board to front them the money to enter a borough-wide contest that they ended up winning. Jamal Harrington was among them.

At least one of her fellow teachers thought Jamal was too much of a favorite and secretly suggested Lauryn’s botanical teachings were helping Jamal cultivate a garden less likely to result in an appearance on Martha Stewart and more likely an appearance before a judge—charged with growing and intending to distribute a controlled substance—but Lauryn took the high road and ignored them, even though Jamal had been in trouble in the past.

Not all the Big Apple participants had appreciated the lifelike rubber rat Jamal had used to adorn his part of the school’s garden exhibit—a fire escape trellis. According to Lauryn, he had thrown himself into the project and had even confided his dreams of becoming an artist or set designer. But that wasn’t something he wanted spread around. In Jamal’s neighborhood that kind of talk could get the crap knocked out of you.

I thought the fake rat sounded clever, but apparently it had been responsible for a few rapid heartbeats during setup, so the students were personae non gratae with some attendees, including Allegra Douglas.

“To paraphrase Jamal, these other entrants think their manure smells better than ours does.” After my own encounter with Allegra, I tended to agree with Jamal. Forewarned about the rat, I promised to check on their exhibit the next day.

On the way out, we bumped into a woman who was dressed like an extra from the film A League of Their Own—baseball cap with the bill worn high like a 1950s gas pump jockey and a peach-colored romper that suggested gym bloomers from the same time period. Maybe her own. She gave us a tired smile and kept walking.

“What’s up with the retro baseball outfit?” Lauryn said, once the woman had passed.

“She’s selling something. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell us at great length. Want to go back?” Neither of us did.