“OOOO!” she squeals, “I KNEW IT. She’s soo hot,” she shrieks, dropping Teacher Voice into the Mischievous Older Sister tone I grew up with. If she were here, she would be dancing around me and poking me in the sides. “Ooo, so juicy! Ooo, I love this for you!”
I look around me, irrationally afraid that someone else could be in the room and hearing this conversation. “She’s not…”
“Hey, girls, guess what? Tito Oliver has a crush!” her voice over the phone becomes quieter as she presumably turns to her daughters to shout the horrible and absolutely untrue news.
“Oooooo Tito Oliver,” my ten-year-old niece Paloma’s voice now squeals over the phone. “Is she pretty? Is she nice?”
Her voice grows muffled as there is a struggle. “Tito Ollie! Will you bring her to Christmas this year?” my other niece Maya, eight-going-on-thirty-two, shrieks.
“Girls…”
“Give me the phone, Maya,” I hear the muffled tone of my sister. “Yeah, Ollie, will you bring her to?—”
“I’m going now, Tala. Good talk. See you out there,” I say, and promptly hang up the phone.
I put my head in my hands, a headache forming from the hard truths the women in my life are dropping. Ms. Baker is good. Indispensable, even. My attitude towards her does need to change. Lina is right, Tala is right, it is wildly unprofessional and inappropriate, and it is making both her and my staff uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean my goals are going to change. Focus on the goals.
TWELVE
Georgia
I havean appointment with my therapist the next day. I tell her about what happened during that meeting. I tell her what happened with my team on my first day at PS 2. Her face is blurry over the virtual meeting screen, but her voice is clear.
“Georgia, there are two things we need to unpack here. These are perfect examples of what we spoke about some time ago. You seem to be testing people, and you seem to be lashing out. Why do you think that is?”
I fidget with the corner of my laptop. “I’m… not sure. This is a new job, and I really need to keep it.”
She fills the space with silence, forcing me to talk it out.
“Regarding the lashing out towards my boss… Well, I’m trying to figure out when it first started, and I think it really started at the beginning. The first, or I guess technically the second time I met him, he was so antagonistic, in a way that no one else was. He was rude, and I thought I was just meeting him where he was at.” I pause, thinking. “He didn’t believe in me. He was the only one who didn’t see how awesome I was, and he didn’t get off mycase.”
She nods, her face jerking on the video screen. “Has he been that way the entire time?”
I think. “Yes.”
She is silent for a while, digesting. “It’s your natural ‘fight’ response, one part of the self-destructive tendencies you sometimes display,” she says.
“I agree.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Probably has to do with all my issues. Jake, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Jake was a terrible break up, but he isn’t ‘your issue.’ Remember that what he did had everything to do with him, and nothing to do with you.” She pushes the glasses up her nose. “Think about the link that connects these two things. Jake used to control you. Emotionally, financially. After you broke up?—”
“You mean after he dumped me,afterI confronted him for cheating on me for months,” I mutter.
She continues without missing a beat. “After all of that, after all the gaslighting and manipulation, after you broke up, you’ve strived for freedom.”
“Especially because after he dumped me, like right after my parents died, he got engaged to his parent’s family friend’s daughter a week later.”
“Yes. You want to get rid of all the control and heartache he held over you.” She nods morosely on the laptop screen.
“So you think I get pissy when I sense people are trying to control me. Or control my independence,” I tell her begrudgingly. Jake was a fucking douchebag. “The annoying part is that my boss warned me this would happen. Before he hired me. I knew he would be on my case. I guess I just didn’t realize how controlling he would be.”
She nods. “But he’s your boss, Georgia. He has the right tobe in your case. He has the right to control you. He didn’t even have to warn you about it, but he did. Generally, you have to earn people’s respect, especially in the workplace.”
I roll my eyes.
