Decisions

by Ann Yu-Kyung Choi

On the day of Cindy’s funeral, I arrive early to secure a parking spot, but there is only one other car in the lot. My anxiety ebbs and flows. A wind from the north sends pollen and dust through the open car windows. This isn’t my first student funeral. After teaching for close to thirty years, student deaths are inevitable. I have attended parent deaths, sibling deaths, and the deaths of colleagues. But student deaths are the worst. Teaching high school locks you into a time warp. The students age a mere four years before disappearing into the unknown. I, on the other hand, have aged almost three decades.

It’s two weeks into July. Most teachers would have ignored the email that was sent by one of the secretaries on behalf of the principal. The subject line was: Important news, please read. I spent the following days debating whether or not to read it.

When I opened the email, I was stunned to read that one of our students, Cindy Lee, had passed away. Funeral details were included. Who would attend the funeral? Few teachers would have taught this student. Cindy was enrolled in a community program. In my school board, students with developmental and cognitive disabilities are grouped together in what we call Community Classes. Despite everyone’s best intentions, these students often existed in their own bubble and rarely interacted with the larger school community. I doubted any students, even if they knew that we had lost a student, would attend.

I had been surprised by how many people attended my mother’s funeral three months earlier. At ninety-two years old, she had outlived all of her close friends. It was different with my dad who died in a car crash when I was in my early teens; all of his family and friends were around to pay their respects.

It had been my mother’s fear that no one would attend her funeral. The closer we got to her inevitable passing, the more anxious I became. My thoughts often turned to The Great Gatsby and the scene with Nick, who on the morning of Gatsby’s funeral, tried to convince people to attend. It was the epitome of futility. In the end, I had worried about nothing. People came, mostly from Mom’s Buddhist temple and her apartment building. As an only child without an immediate family of my own, I was forced to welcome them alone. Thankfully, the temple elders had religious protocols to follow so I just kept in step with them.

When you don’t have kids of your own to pick up from daycare after school, there’s always an unspoken pressure to supervise more extracurricular activities. I made myself available to students, helping them during lunch and after school. I even coached the girls’ volleyball team for a few years. For a long time, I was genuinely interested in students’ passions and hobbies. But this job does something to you over the years. At first I did my best to ignore the classic signs of burnout, but they came at me, relentless and constant. Buried in student work, new school initiatives, government demands, and talks of a strike every four years, I found myself fantasizing about car crashes and serious illnesses that would take me out of work for a month or even a semester.

“Try to see the glass as half full,” a therapist had once advised when I told her how I was feeling. But what if there was no glass to look at? I left before I could tell her that my glass had shattered long ago. Luckily, summer holidays usually rolled around by the time I hit my lowest, and the escape from school for a couple of months, was enough to snap me out, if only temporarily.

Cindy’s casket is alarmingly small. Surrounding it is a wall of flowers, formidable as mountains. On the casket is an elegant mix of white flowers: orchids, roses, and carnations. The arrangement is almost as big as Cindy. Seeing her crushes me. Squeezes the air from my chest. A panic, somewhere deep inside, threatens to seize me. I force myself to breathe.

Cindy’s father recognizes me and comes over. He reaches for my hand and misses because I pull away by pretending to reach for a tissue in my purse. As much as possible, I avoid being touched. It’s always been that way. But I’m not so lucky with Cindy’s mother. Mary squeezes me in a tight hug and thanks me profusely for coming.

A pendant swings in my mind—tugging me to pull away as I struggle to breathe, and at the same time, trying to stay put and play the role of a nice teacher.

“Mom, Mom … this is one of Cindy’s teachers,” Mary says. Cindy’s grandmother starts to get up from her seat. I wish she wouldn’t, but she comes toward me, slowly, gripping her cane all the way. She smells strongly of fried fish and ginger. She, too, thanks me with a long hug. Every muscle in me tenses in an effort to get away.

“Her death was a deliverance,” she whispers and releases me.

Cindy’s younger sister saves me by popping her bubble gum loud enough for her granny to turn to reprimand her. The sister’s nails sparkle with gel polish, the same shade of pink as her Hello Kitty cross-body purse.

I take a seat at the back of the room and off to one side, closest to the window. Outside, a woman walks past adorned stylishly in leather heels, a black suit, and hat that exposes only part of her face. Who wears funeral hats nowadays, I wonder.

Dusty light filters through the window. More people arrive. One older woman has a dry, deep-chested cough that makes me cringe. She stands by the casket a long time, as if to make certain that the girl is dead. Another appears to be examining the flowers in depth, smelling and touching them. No one seems to notice the small brown mouse dash across the floor a few seats ahead of me. I might have screamed seeing it, but not today.

Fifteen minutes before the service begins, the room is about a quarter full. I’m beginning to feel bad for the family when the woman with the funeral hat sits down next to me.

Why would she do that when there is so much space? Annoyed, I don’t acknowledge her. The scent of her perfume, spicy and floral, will soon give me a headache. Perhaps, I could explain that to her as a means to sit somewhere else. She hasn’t gone up to see Cindy yet, perhaps then I could move.

“How do you know Cindy?” the woman asks.

“I’m a teacher at her high school,” I reply. With her hat angled the way it is, I can’t see her eyes, which rattles me.

“What do you teach?”

“I teach Family Studies now, but I used to be a guidance counsellor. I registered Cindy when she arrived at our school.”

“I see. Did you know her well?”

I shake my head. Most people don’t know that teachers, the pawns that make up a school, are moved from class to class based on a master school timetable. After gaining my additional qualifications in Guidance, landing a job there and learning that role, I was moved out to English and Family Studies the following year. Seniority doesn’t mean much when a school has a shrinking student population; teachers get assigned to whatever classes need teaching. In September I’ll be teaching Family Studies and History, a course I haven’t taught in twenty-one years. But of course, the woman doesn’t know any of this. Trying to be kind, I add, “No, unfortunately. I wish I had known her better.” Then because I find it odd that she is sitting so far back, I ask, “Are you a family friend?”

“No,” she says. “I’m actually Cindy’s mother. Or, I used to be. My name is Linda.”

Her voice is remarkably even. Baffled by her disclosure, I can’t help but wonder if she’s lying. But what possible reason could there be for her to deceive me? Was Cindy adopted? I try to recall Cindy’s registration details. It was three years ago. The file had been thick, which is the case for all students with special needs.

What is Linda doing here? Did she have a right to be here? I feel caught in a sudden wind, the gap between being home and here widening.

In silence, we watch as a few more guests wander in. My eyes are fixed ahead, daring only the occasional glimpse out the window, the possibility of escape. So far, the grandmother hasn’t gotten up for anyone else, so I am feeling somewhat honoured. Everyone takes turns consoling Mary, the grieving mother.

“I was hoping to see some young people here. Perhaps some of Cindy’s friends or classmates,” says Linda.

How can I tell her that I barely knew Cindy? It was the same with her schoolmates. Should I even be talking about Cindy? I thought about students’ privacy rights. But what did it matter now? Linda’s body stiffens ever so slightly, probably sensing my hesitation.

The service should have begun by now. Were they waiting for more people to arrive? A dull pain starts on one side of my head. I should excuse myself and sit somewhere else. Leaving isn’t an option only because Mary and the rest of the family would notice.

A pinging sound draws our attention. A man is tapping his smartwatch, but it keeps pinging. The woman next to him, perhaps his wife, shushes him loudly.

“I forgot my reading glasses in the car,” he says loud enough for us to hear. “I can’t read a damn thing on this stupid screen.” He gets up abruptly, digs in his pockets and fishes out his keys. As he leaves, my principal enters. I turn to look outside; I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone. My headache worsens.

In the distance, Mary scans the room and sees me sitting with Linda. What if Mary thinks I know the woman sitting next to me?

“Does her—does Ms. Lee know who you are? That you’re here?” I ask.

Linda shakes her head. “She seems to be a good mother …” Her tone raises like she’s asking me a question.

I recall meeting Mary for the first time. She wanted to know if her daughter could be integrated into any regular classes. We settled on visual arts, and with the help of a talented teacher who designed her entire lesson plans around Cindy’s strengths, we had a good first semester. But that teacher left the next year and we lost yet another educational assistant who supported students with complex needs like Cindy. I was upset, but Mary said she was used to setbacks parenting a child with special needs.

“They’re going to cremate her,” Linda says.

I nod; it had said so in the funeral notice.

“I wish they weren’t going to do that. It’s terrible for the environment.” Her hands are trembling, so I suspect that there’s a lot more than just the environment on her mind.

I close my eyes, trying to climb out of the darkness that threatens to swallow me. I try to erase the image of my mother’s casket engulfed in flames. I watched through a window that shielded me from the heat of the actual flames, but winced, feeling a burning sensation in my arms and neck. No one had prepared me for how traumatic it would be to witness a cremation. When I asked how long the process would take, I was stunned that it could take up to five hours.

“But we only invite you to witness the beginning,” the person said.

At least my father was buried and I was spared.

I close my eyes and scramble for something to focus my mind on. It lands on flowers: lilies that symbolize sympathy, roses symbolize sorrow, carnations symbolize remembrance, and gladioli, the tall-stemmed flowers that look like soldiers, symbolize honour. I’d learned all of this while planning my mother’s funeral.

When the ceremony ends, guests are told that refreshments are served in an adjoining room. My throat feels dry. If the woman weren’t sitting next to me, I could easily slip away now. What if she wants to talk some more?

Looking back outside, the air is still, and I imagine it to be hot and sticky. It’s already close to thirty degrees and will feel closer to forty soon. Maybe when I get home, I’ll take a bath. I have no other plans for the day. I close my eyes and picture myself turning on the taps and listening to the water running into the tub. Just thinking about the scent of pink grapefruit and orange bath oils and feeling the silky cloud of bubbles lifts my mood.

“I was forced to give her up,” Linda says. “I didn’t give her up because she was born disabled. There’s other reasons for giving up a child.” She tilts her head so that her gaze swings into mine, her eyes are the same pale grey and shape as Cindy’s. She smiles, perhaps to break the discomfort she senses from me.

Mary and the rest of the family are walking out.

Linda watches Mary and the rest of Cindy’s family, now all standing at the entrance of the hall, thanking people yet again for coming.

Linda says, “I suppose this just proves one thing: our intuition is never wrong.” If she wasn’t chewing her lower lip, I might believe her.

Then she adds, “Thank you for being here—for Cindy.” Her voice cracks ever so slightly.

“She liked to read,” I say. “Her favourite books were mystery stories. She liked to swim. She liked to draw. She drew a lot of rainbows, but always included the colour pink in them because that was her favourite colour.” Truthfully, I don’t know why Cindy included pink, but the detail, I hope, makes it real for Linda.

Linda’s hand settles on mine. I don’t pull away.

“Thank you,” she says.

I drop my eyes, feeling a blush spread across my face. Someone is calling my name. I look up. My principal is waving at me. He cuts across an empty aisle and heads toward us. Soon, he’ll be standing by the window, blocking my light. How should I introduce Linda to him? Should I tell him who she really is? Such questions send prickles down my spine.

But Linda saves me by walking away. Quickly, she blends into the exiting crowd, all dressed in black. I sigh with relief.

“Thank you for coming,” my principal says. “I’m so glad we had at least one teacher show up today. I called Becky, but she’s in Ireland, and Yash is away too. But you came. Thank you. Hopefully you’ve also made plans for the summer?”

Summer. A teacher’s deliverance.

Outside, I sit in my car until all of the cars have gone. I’m relieved that I have no other duties or expectations. The afternoon sun blazes. I scan the empty parking lot. Several spots are shaded by the large maple trees that surround the area, but I’m content sitting in my own sweat with the windows rolled down. I marvel at how still things suddenly become, and ease into a welcome moment of silence.

Ann Yu-kyung Choi

is a Toronto-based author and educator. Her novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, was a Toronto Book Awards finalist and one of CBC Books 12 Best Canadian Debut Novels of 2016. In 2017, the Korean Canadian Heritage Awards committee recognized Ann for outstanding contributions to Korean culture within Canada. Ann currently serves on the program advisory committee for gritLIT, Hamilton’s literary festival, and manages The Authors Book Club, an online initiative she co-founded to connect authors with readers in Canada.