The Broken-Hearted Songbird

“She’s been around at school for ages, she’s really sweet,” said a friend of mine. “She likes to sing, but that isn’t as bad as it sounds because she doesn’t give the girls special treatment, like all the other teachers.” He sounded enthusiastic.1

I couldn’t believe I was the only one who didn’t know my mentor-to-be. Everyone was talking about her. Everyone seemed to like her. Except me. I had nothing to say in my friends’ praising conversations. I felt stupid, out of place, as if I had been left in the dark of some big secret.2

As I got to know my new fourth grade mentor, she turned out to be everything her first impression had told me. Her constantly singing, shrill voice gave me headaches when the days were long, she obviously favored the girls over us boys, and what she enjoyed the most was to smilingly watch me suffer as I attempted to sing the songs she assigned the class.3

I tried my best to make her life a living hell. The aggravation of seeing that my fellow students didn’t share my goals made me ever more callous. My hate towards her easily won over my bad conscience for incessantly turning lessons into verbal confrontations after a particularly hurtful insult or vulgar cuss. I even managed to suppress my feelings of guilt as I saw her walk home after an unusually rough week with an unseeing, tired stare and her head bent low, as if hiding from something… someone.4

The very last time she bade me to stay and talk after yet another class I’d had in my total control, there was a peculiar resignation to her shrill tone. After the usual questions if something was bothering me, if I wanted to get something off my chest, if everything was alright at home, I told her the things that would finally make her burst after having endured a whole year of wounding insults and sabotages.5

“I can’t do it any longer.” Her voice was trembling; she was on the verge of tears. “I’ve tried so hard all year but nothing has changed. I can’t take another year of this. You won’t like me. You won’t even stop hating me. You give me no chance of teaching my classes. And I’ve got no idea what I ever did wrong.”6

She looked genuinely sad, as if any of what she’d said really mattered to her. We were all alone in a big classroom, facing each other in front of the teacher’s desk; a boy and a woman.7

“You can’t fool me, stupid,” I said in the hard voice I’d gotten so familiar with over the past year. “You hate me even more than I hate you, and you don’t give a rat’s ass what I think of you.”8

I saw that my words had stung, but she’d received worse without crumbling.9

“I-I… I don’t know what to say.” Her words became more confident as she spoke. Maybe she really believed the nonsense “I don’t hate you at all, and if that’s what you think, I’d be happy to prove you wrong.” 10

Looking at my mentor’s contorted face made me shiver. Seeing an adult in such agony – even though I thought she was acting to make me behave in her classes – didn’t feel right. I was sick of her games, I knew she hated me.11

“Listen,” I looked deep into her large eyes, trying to bore my message into her with my gaze. “Having you become my mentor was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. You are nothing but a self-absorbed little bitch who thinks everyone should like her just because she’s a singer. Your voice is so high-pitched it makes me feel like my head is being chain sawed to pieces. When you sing, I want to kill myself. I never want to hear it again. And I I feel sick just being around you. But you, as the racist tormenter you are, always single me out after lessons and tell me how I’m ruining your teaching. And as if that isn’t enough, you have become the monster of my nightmares, too.”12

As I turned around furiously to stalk out of the classroom, the tears were already cascading down her cheeks. Before I slammed the door shut behind me, a penetrating, heart wrenching sob initiated the start of the last breakdown I would ever cause her. After everything she’d had to suffer during the past year, the scar from my ruthless words would never fade.13

The next day will always be clear in my memory, shining with the intense glow of a deeply wounded soul. My mentor had come to school as usual, but with a sadness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before our talk the previous day. At the start of the last hour, she said she wanted us to perform a song before the rest of the school. The song’s name was ‘In a Million Pieces’ and she was going to sing it for us before we started practicing.14

She took her place on the chair in front of the whiteboard with a guitar in her lap. She looked straight into my eyes and I saw that they were still red from the crying of our previous meet. I shifted uneasily in my seat at the far back.15

As she opened her mouth and tunefully sang the first note, I was completely caught off guard. Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper, but the emotions she put into it made it feel like she was standing right next to me, weeping in my anguished embrace. Everything I had said to her yesterday – the whole year – she threw right back at me, all at once. I felt like dying. I saw her in a completely different light. 16

A sad, lonely tear glinted in her eye before gently making its way down her cheek. Her sweet song grew in strength, leaving the kids in front of her staring dumbstruck. It was like hearing an angel cry.17

Her pureness made me realize what the cause for my ruthless rebellion had been. Not knowing my new mentor that everyone had talked about had left me feeling frustrated, left out, and had stirred unconscious prejudices against her. Every time I had looked at her, I had unconsciously channeled my frustration into my blinding prejudices, making me see an evil witch rather than the saint I was facing.18

After I had started my quest to make her life miserable, it had been hard to stop. After my devilry, I felt like I was undeserving of her constant kindness, not worthy of redemption. Ending the harassments would be to accept her kind words, to take the help I ought not to have. I couldn’t ignore my feelings and so couldn’t stop being horrible. This became an ever descending, destructive cycle, and it eventually made an innocent woman a martyr in her efforts to help.19

She’d been a lovely person, only wanting the very best for her pupils. She had kept trying to change my destructive attitude the whole year, hoping to make me see light in the surrounding darkness. Not once had she yelled at me, despite my best efforts to verbally torture her. 20

I will never forget the day she made me bleed inside for what I’d done. I will always carry in my heart the last time she had sat in front of her students, singing like a mourning bird, and playing the guitar like a fairy, with pure emotion. She told me what I had done to her through her sad, sagging shoulders, the gentle strokes over the guitar, her gleaming eyes, coated in a layer of sadness… and by her low, delicate singing, as she melodiously expressed the pain in her heart.21

The sentiments that radiated from my angelic mentor were so strong I could feel them where I sat frozen behind my desk. 22

They were the heart- wrenching sentiment of a brokenhearted songbird. 23

They changed me forever.24