It’s hard for me to explain the effect it has on the house when a child has been molested and the authorities have been called. I’m talking about the effect on the house, not the effect on the person who made the call, or the child who’s been hurt. It’s the rest of the house. What do you say at dinner? What’s disrespectful and not disrespectful? Can you talk about the Milwaukee Brewers? What about chores? If you’re the younger brother, how many of that kid’s chores are you supposed to take? When is it too much?
To get an idea of what it’s like, you’d have to go to a visitation the day before a funeral. You can talk. You can laugh, but you have to laugh quietly. And it has to be about certain things that you’re laughing, and your laugh has to be joyless.
When the authorities were called because Less had been molested by Char, the entire atmosphere of the house became different. It was like the climate had changed. It was more humid, more oppressive. The ground was softer here. You were being hunted by an anger. There were times when you could avoid it completely. Other times when you could feel that anger moving through the grasses around you, waiting to pounce on you.
Rose was always mad. Mumble decided the way he could solve the problem was work. So he was always gone. Grasp was tiny, maybe two years old, maybe one. And Less was hunting. She was just so filled with rage. Now she knew that she was free to express it, and there was nothing any of us could do about it.
People tried to pull close. Uncle Ball lived with us at the time. This was the arrangement. My grandma and grandpa had moved to Waynesville, Missouri. We were still living in Milwaukee. Uncle Ball was a teenager, still going to high school. He worked at a restaurant called Scanda House. It was a buffet place. He was sure to tell us how crazy him and his friends were. Now he’s living with us at Grandma and Grandpa’s old house for a cut in the rent.
He tried to get close to Less, tried to have talks with her and take her places, but Rose’s war with Less had done so much damage, the family had no idea how to heal her.
Mumble tried to get close to Less. Wasn’t possible. She lived in a new neighborhood. All her friends were gone. All that was left was me. She could try to get close to me. And at times, it seemed like it was working. But I had been in the house, in Char’s house, a lot of the time when she had been molested, and she blamed me. Char was very clear on that. He was very clear on whose fault it was. When he hurt her, he would tell her that I was supposed to be protecting her.
If Less is an apex predator in this climate zone we’re in, Rose is not the prey. Neither is Mumble. Uncle Ball, she could say a couple of mean things to him. But the prey was me. And I would walk right into her pounce. I was punishing myself. Sometimes it got really bad.
And then there’s Mr. Schwingle. Schwingle was the craziest teacher I ever knew. He… he would tell us to stand on top of our desks, snap our leg back at the knee so that our heel thumped against our rear. And he’d tell us we had to kick ourselves in the butt if we were gonna motivate ourselves. We’d stand on top of that desk and the whole class would chant, “Kick it!”
Computers were extremely important. He taught us how to write code on an Apple computer. I missed the bus home one day, and he decided to drive me. We’re in inner city Milwaukee. Crime is a lifestyle here. We walked out to his car and I got into the passenger seat. I looked at his radio. It was a mess. There were ripped wires everywhere. None of the things a radio needed were here. He reached over, pulled off this cardboard piece where he had glued some wires, and the radio was underneath it.
“They stole my radio so many times,” he said. “Now when they look in here, they only see ripped out wires. I guess I stole my own radio this time.” Then he put on rock and roll and we drove on.
Schwingle did a lot of things that were extremely weird. Topmost among them was urinate and defecate.
First day of his class, he sits us all down, and points to the top right corner of his board. There are two words: Urinate, and under that, Defecate. He pointed at it.
“This is what you say when you want to go to the bathroom. In my class, you will not say ‘I have to pee,’ you will say, ‘I must urinate.’ You will not say, ‘I must poop.’ You will say, ‘May I go defecate?’ No number ones. No number twos. In my class, you urinate and you defecate.”
Dang lifted his hand.
“Yes?”
“In your class?”
Everyone laughed.
“No, not in my class, young man. What’s your name?”
“Dang.”
“Those are the words you will be using. May I urinate. May I defecate.”
“May I masticate my defecate,” I said. It was a word that I had heard in a movie I was too young to watch, that I had looked up in the dictionary. As soon as I said masticate and defecate in the same sentence, Schwingle immediately turned around and looked at the board. Turned his back on the class. His hand to his mouth. He took a beat. Deep inhale. Deep exhale. Then he turned around and looked at me.
“And what’s your name?”
“Jesse Teller. I’m Less’s little brother.”
Schwingle had taught Less the year before. “I’m sorry, young man, but you are wrong,” Mr. Schwingle said. “You are not Less’s little brother. You are just Jesse Teller. And no, I will not make you masticate your defecate.”
And that’s how I met Schwingle.
He was one of the most important people I’ve ever met in my life. He’d been told about the climate of my house, and he knew about the thing that was hunting me. It wouldn’t take him long to guess that atrocities had been committed on me as well.
Now we’ve talked about this teacher before. The Man in the Mushroom Suit, who once saw Shush in a basement bathroom at the school. Schwingle had carried him while he wept, up three floors into Schwingle’s coat room. Schwingle had told Shush that he loved him. It was the first time anyone had done that.
Schwingle knew. And when he looked at me and locked eyes with me, there was some sort of promise in it. He couldn’t heal me. We’ll let Katt Williams describe it. If I’m not mistaken, Katt Williams is from Philadelphia. He’s a Black comedian. Over the top and brilliant. There was a shooting in Philadelphia a few years ago, and Katt the very next day, came down for a free show. He went to a radio station and they asked the question that was on everybody’s mind. They said, “Katt, is this a publicity stunt? Are you using the fact that Philly is in pain right now to further your career?”
And he said, “Nah, brother, nah. It ain’t like that. All I know is my city’s hurtin’ and I can’t heal them. But I can put a little bactine on it. I can just give my city a little bactine so they know I’m hurtin’ with them.”
In that first exchange between me and Schwingle, he locked eyes with me and he nodded. He was saying the same thing. “I can’t heal you, but I can put a little bactine on it.”
It’s winter in Milwaukee and Wisconsin has vomited snow everywhere. It’s at least two feet thick, and they’ve canceled school for the day. A social worker had come out to the house and talked to Less. I know the social worker wanted to speak to Less in private. Rose hadn’t allowed it. They’d talked in the kitchen and I had been in the next room, in the bathroom, sitting against the wall, listening as best I could.
Less didn’t say much. Rose answered most of the questions asked to her. And when the social worker left, we were told to go shovel the snow. Well, the shovels were terrible, really bad quality, and the anger was hunting. Less was frustrated from the visit. I know she had wanted to say something to that social worker that she had not gotten to say. And Less was bubbling. I don’t remember what it was that I said, or if I said anything at all. I know that I had been laughing, and she exploded on me. That was one of those times I guess that there was not supposed to be laughing in the house.
And she said, “You were right there in the house when he did it. You knew that Char was raping me, and you let it happen. You two probably laughed about it.” Then she just threw down the shovel and went into the house. It is still one of the most devastating things that has ever been said to me. It was a nightmare. I couldn’t explain myself, she was too mad. Couldn’t forgive myself, because I was the one that was supposed to protect her. I just sobbed and shoveled snow.
Silence all that day. I didn’t say a word for the rest of the day. Silence that weekend. And then, school.
I walked into Mr. Schwingle’s class. We walked in, he saw my face, and he pulled me out of line as the rest of the kids clamored to their desks.
He said, “Are you okay?”
I just glared at him. I needed to hate something.
“Is there anything I can do?” he said.
My eyes burned holes in his face. I looked at him and said, “I hate you.”
He looked at my clenched fists and my burning rage, and he said, “Okay, Jesse. That’s okay. You can hate me today. I can take it. Just don’t hurt anybody in class. And if you need to talk to me, just walk into the coat room. But you can hate me today if you want to.”
I went to my chair and cried. It was not weird for the other kids to see me crying at my desk. So nobody said anything. I guess we were about two hours into our morning when I threw my pencil at him. It was during math. He was at the board teaching long division. My pencil bounced off his back. And he froze.
His head hung on his shoulders for a moment, then he turned around. The room was dead silent. Nobody knew what to do. No one knew what to say. He reached down, grabbed my pencil, and walked to my desk. He looked down at me with the love of a thousand fathers, set my pencil back on my desk, and he mussed my hair.
It’s probably a half an hour before lunch. I’m still steaming. For the last hour I’ve been tearing pages out of my notebook, ripping them up into little pieces and making a pile on my desk. It was disruptive for a couple of minutes, but then the kids in my fourth grade class just ignored it. It was that kind of school year. I was that kid.
I think he was teaching us English, or he was reading to us, and my hand shot up in the air. I needed to pick a fight.
“Jesse, what it is?”
“Can I urinate?”
Schwingle closed his eyes for a moment. He looked at me and said, “Jesse in this class we say ‘may’. What I would like for you to say is, ‘May I urinate?’”
“Can I defecate?”
“Jesse, ‘can’ is poor grammar. What you mean to say is may.”
My hand was still in the air. Still, the love of a thousand fathers. Kids are whispering now. He’s ignoring them, his eyes locked on me. Warm, brown. His face, this is a teacher in pain. A teacher who knows he has to take it, because nobody else will.
“Mr. Schwingle?”
“Yes, Jesse?”
“May…” I paused, staring him in the eye, and he smiled. He nodded. “…I piss and take a shit?”
And the entire room exploded. Schwingle stood up, turned around and faced the board.
I put my hand down. It dropped into a pile of ripped shreds of paper that puffed up in all directions like a pile of down feathers. My hand came down hard, slammed on the table, curled to a fist.
Schwingle slowly turned around. He smiled a kind smile. Put his hands out to hush the class, and looked at me. “Jesse. I am two men. I am a man, and I am a teacher. Now the teacher in me has to make rules for his class. And one of my rules is that you must use ‘may’ instead of ‘can’ whenever asking to perform any kind of duty. You must use the words urinate and defecate, and another more important rule, is there must be no foul language in my class. For lunch, you are going to eat your meal here in this classroom. You’ll wait in class, I’ll go get your lunch tray, and you’ll eat here in class. You’ll stay with me all through recess. That is what the teacher in me demands of you. The man,” he rubbed his face, poorly shorn, and looked up at me. “The man thought that was pretty damn funny.” And the class erupted into giggles. I laid my face down in a pile of shredded paper and cried.
He brought my lunch to me and turned the desk around in front of me. And he ate his lunch. A peanut butter and jelly, cucumber sandwich, a tomato that he ate like an apple, and a small bowl full of mushrooms, is what Schwingle had for lunch. He drank something from a thermos—God knows what was in that thermos—and I ate quietly and cried. When I was done, I put my tray on the table next to me, and put my face down on my pile of failing down.
He laid his hand on my wrist, and I murmured, “I hate you. I hate you.”
He patted my wrist. He said, “That’s okay, Jesse. If you need something to hate today, you can hate me. But I love you. And I always will.”
Schwingle. I could write a couple more chapters about Schwingle. But I’m not going to. I’ve written two chapters now, “Cloaked in a Mushroom Suit,” and “Urinate and Defecate.” “Cloaked in a Mushroom Suit” was in volume one of Reality of the Unreal Mind, Teardrop Road. And this is just a nub. An unwanted nub of a project about 20th Street School and a man who saved my life. And for you out there, Mr. Schwingle, wherever you are, my love for you is pure.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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