The Little Tramp

“And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.”

Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”

Chloe started her senior year of high school seven months pregnant, but it was difficult to tell. She wore her uniform shirt untucked over her plaid skirt and an oversized scratchy black cardigan with the St. Zita’s insignia at the breast to mask her stomach. She had arranged a conference with Jonathan after class today and they were sitting at his desk waiting for the other students to exit the room. He was the only teacher left who hadn’t given her the assignments she was going to miss next month after the baby was born. 
She watched him unpack his lunch from its brown paper bag: bruised red apple; peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread; a plain Dannon yogurt; and last, a fortune-sized piece of white paper with the words I’m loving you right now printed in blue ballpoint pen. 
She knew he saw her read the note from Val, but he didn’t act embarrassed. He was different than most of her teachers, more open about his personal life. Slipping in details about his world outside of St. Zita’s until Chloe had amassed enough of these tiny particulars to imbue him with a certain mystique. His Monday night basketball league. His collection of Charlie Chaplin films. The cross-country road trips he’d taken in his twenties. These things all added up to something, the way a person’s life tends to be a miscellanea of moments and others assign the meaning. 
There was also the way he’d dish with the class about last night’s episode of Beverly Hills 90210: “Steve is such a snake! I can-not bee-lieeeve Kelly forgave him!” he’d say without a touch of irony. But Chloe knew he was mocking them. His first week at the school, he made fun of the nasally way they all said “alright,” dropping the L sound, adding the errant R. He did it often. “Read Graham Greene’s review of Modern Times and be ready to discuss it tomorrow, arrright?” he ribbed. 
She imagined Jonathan snuggled up on a hip, thrift-store couch with his girlfriend Val, making fun of 90210, feeding her vegetarian Chinese takeout straight from the white cardboard container, cinching a piece of broccoli with chopsticks, placing it right into her wet mouth, then going down on her during commercial breaks.  It was easy to picture her history teacher this way. He was young and from Seattle.
He was new to the school this year. He followed Val here so she could finish her PhD at the University of Michigan. This fact endeared him to Chloe. The grown men she knew did not marry women with PhDs. And they certainly didn’t uproot their lives and follow girlfriends across the country to finish degrees. Chloe herself dreamed of earning a PhD at Brown. She wanted to be a psychologist. She hadn’t gone on any college visits yet. As a shaming tactic, her parents told her to just get her GED, to forget about university, she needed to adjust her expectations. Stop dreaming. 
Her parents’ words did the work that words like that are designed to do: worm their way into the psyche and strangle any self-worth that remained. “No one thinks pregnant girls are smart,” Chloe told Marie, the counselor from Catholic Social Services that her parents forced her to see, “and even if they do, they still think they’re doomed.” Marie nodded. 

She decided she was going to apply to local colleges anyway. She’d prove them wrong. She already had a plan to complete all her class work ahead of time before the baby came. Because what really troubled Chloe most about her future wasn’t finishing school; it was being alone. 
“Who’s going to want to marry you now?” her grandmother had said. Adults know what to say to make it hurt, to make you feel the truths you’re avoiding. Adults and kids are similar in that way, she thought. But Chloe’s insights into adults never made things any easier. She would feel unworthy for a long time, settling for things she didn’t want because it was all she thought she deserved. Like the hideous old lady outfit her mother made her wear for senior pictures. “I don’t want to be remembered looking this way,” Chloe told her. “Tough. You’re done making choices,” her mother said. She tried not to think about it too much, but sometimes when she caught sight of her stretchmarks in the mirror, she wondered if anyone would find her desirable again. 
Her parents had forbidden her to see Josh, which she thought was stupid, but also a relief. Had she not gotten pregnant, they would have broken up this summer anyway. He had gone off the deep end with his Catholicism. All fire and brimstone. Chloe started to hate him for it. He was the first to suggest she get an abortion. Fucking hypocrite, she thought. Since he graduated from St. Zita’s, it was as if this baby had been a spontaneous conception. A moral failing exclusive to Chloe. Nobody asked her about Josh. She found out from mutual friends who went to the same university as him that no one on campus knew he was going to be a dad, that he intentionally kept it a secret. He was majoring in religious studies.

“So, Mizzz Hillman, what can I do for you?” Jonathan asked as he unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite. Jonathan left the note from Val in full view on his desk. Chloe tried not to look at it. She sat facing him in a chair that he kept next to his desk for one-on-one student conferences. She caught a whiff of peanut butter, and her stomach growled. 
“I was wondering if you could give me all my assignments for this quarter so I can do them while I’m gone.”
He continued to chew. “What do you mean gone?” he said with a mouthful. She listened to the last of the lockers slam shut in the hallway as students made their way to the cafeteria for lunch.  It was silent now. 
Chloe saw the confused look on his face and realized she had miscalculated how much he knew. Maybe he was still too new here to get the student gossip. She dreaded having to say the words out loud, but cleared her throat. “Um, you know, next month.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware of your travels, Ms. Hillman. Where you headed? London? Paris?” He took another big bite of his sandwich and leaned back in his chair looking directly into her eyes. He was wearing a navy blue sweater vest over a partially untucked powder blue dress shirt. One of those Western ones with the snaps. His short brown hair had that slight windswept emo look. The sun beamed into the classroom and she noticed his transition lenses had turned the faintest shade of gray. A few students had recently started referring to him as “Tints.” “Wanna meet in the bathroom next hour?” “I can’t, I’ve got a presentation for Tints,” they’d say. 
Her face grew hot. “I thought you knew.” 
She felt her heart pumping inside her chest then up into her throat and, for a moment, she considered not telling him. But that would be ridiculous, her pregnancy was no secret, and he’d find out anyway. After she told her parents, they made her tell her siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, figure skating coach, principal, parish priest. Each phone call a little act of contrition. Her mom stood next to her as she worked up the courage to make another call. “You need to say sorry for being such a bad example to your cousins, such a bad role model,” she admonished as Chloe pecked the numbers on the receiver. Chloe hadn’t even considered herself a role model to her cousins. Is that how cousins work? It made her hate herself twice, once for not recognizing a responsibility she held and a second time for failing at it. 
Jean and Laura, her two best friends, had gone with her to the clinic to take the pregnancy test and get information about having an abortion. They swore they wouldn’t tell anyone. After Chloe decided she was having the baby and told her parents, the phone rarely rang. Jean and Laura and the rest of her friends slowly stopped inviting her to hang out. Chloe knew it wasn’t completely their fault. When you decline enough times in a row, people stop asking you to do things. She was ashamed to go out in public. And ashamed to put on a bathing suit. Especially after Splash City. 
On July 4th weekend, her parents had arranged for the whole family to stay overnight at a waterpark in Ohio. Her parents didn’t trust her to stay home alone anymore and forced her to go on the trip. But she enjoyed the anonymity of being there, enjoyed herself on the slides with such reckless abandon, that for a whole afternoon she forgot she was pregnant. Climbing the sandpaper steps all the way up to the highest slide in the park, rushing down the mustard yellow tube, arms crossed over her chest like a mummy encased in a thundering surge of water, relishing that brief moment of weightlessness when her body left the slide, soared in mid-air—as if shot out of a cannon—the thrill! But it all came crashing down when they stopped at George’s Family Restaurant for dinner on the way home. Two teenage waitresses took one look at her body with its thin legs and arms, narrow hips and protruding belly and knew. Chloe watched them at the salad station, plopping hard pink tomatoes on clear clamshell plates, gossiping, snickering, looking back at the table, then putting their hands over their mouths, shaking their heads and trying not to laugh. Summer came and went. She had spent most of it alone in her bedroom reading. 
St. Zita started school in mid-August, three weeks before the public school students went back. The day before the first day of school, they had to report for orientation to pick up their class schedules, textbooks and locker assignments. Chloe and her friends always met up at Jean’s house then all walked over to the school together for orientation. 
This year Jean’s mother answered the door. When she saw Chloe standing there on the crumbling stoop she frowned. 
“Oh Chloe, hi, uh, the kids already left to head up there. They waited, I mean, were you supposed to meet them? It seems like they waited but had to go. I don’t know. I think Laura has to meet with the counselor about her schedule or something.” She patted her housecoat for her cigarettes. “Anyway you might be able to catch them if you hurry. I mean…” she trailed off. Chloe caught Mrs. Finch looking at her stomach. When she raised her eyes to meet Chloe’s, her face turned red. “They left like five minutes ago, so.”
Mrs. Finch had known Chloe since she was four years old. Chloe went with them to Torch Lake every summer. Had slept over their house almost every weekend. Was there the night Mr. Finch died and Mrs. Finch started smoking again. And here she was a nervous stranger, afraid to look Chloe in the eyes. “Thanks, I’ll try to catch up with them,” Chloe said and went down the porch steps. 
Jonathan continued to chew and wait for her response. 
“I’m a…having a baby,” she finally stammered. 
It took a minute for him to process what she said. He didn’t answer right away, as if waiting for a punchline, or a “Just kidding!” and then they’d have a good laugh together. He stopped chewing and put down his sandwich. “I had no idea,” he said with a blank expression. “Wow.”
“Yea, so I’m going to be out for a while? Til after Thanksgiving?” She started saying everything as a question. She felt like she was going to cry. 
“Okay, yea…I mean yes! Absolutely. We can get you those assignments. I’ll have them for you tomorrow.” He paused. “Are you okay, Chloe?”
She had never heard him say her first name before. He always teased her with fake formality, calling her “Ms. Hillman” when she raised her hand. She didn’t know why he addressed her that way but hoped it was because he thought she was more mature than the rest of them. And in many ways she was. Getting pregnant in high school alienated Chloe from her peers, put what now felt like the pettiness of teenage life into perspective, and thrust her into a new realm of important adult decisions. Childcare. Healthcare. Transportation. It was a lot for a seventeen year old. She appreciated being asked if she was alright. Appreciated that he dropped his typical schtick and called her Chloe. Finally, an adult she might be able to trust.
“Yes. I’m fine.” It felt like she swallowed her whole Adam’s apple to keep from crying. 
But even though he seemed genuine, she still feared he was going to become like the others. Like one of those adults who treated her like the jezebel who got what she deserved. Or one of those girls who kept an icy distance—polite, but worried about their own reputations, their parents’ scorn and judgment for having a pregnant friend in their social circle. Or worse, like one of those boys who called her a slut behind her back. The same boys who dreamed of fucking her just months ago. Who would probably still fuck her if she let them. 
“Good,” he said, and wrapped the rest of his uneaten sandwich in the plastic and threw it in the paper bag with Val’s love note. “I’ll work on those assignments for you.” She started to stand up but didn’t realize how much she had been sweating, causing the exposed backs of her legs to stick to the plastic chair. It was painful to peel them off.

*

The next morning she woke up anxious. Normally she would have prepared a few smart things to say about the readings so she could participate in the discussion. She wanted to impress Jonathan. Especially today since he might think less of her, think she wasn’t as smart as he did before she told him the news. But she hadn’t done the reading last night. Lately, after school, she was exhausted. She usually came home and took a nap. Woke up around five for dinner. Then watched a little TV and went back to bed by eight. She wasn’t sleeping through the night anymore. Between heartburn and having to constantly use the bathroom, she was lucky to get a few good hours in a row.
She slugged through her first three periods of the day. She had Jonathan’s class fourth hour, right before lunch. She managed to read the Greene review in chemistry class because they had a substitute. Everyone else messed around. A kid named Alex folded a piece of loose leaf paper into a tiny football and flicked it into a mock goalpost his friend Jesse created with his thumbs and index fingers. All the kids took turns flicking field goals, the mean ones aiming for Jesse’s face. 
She stood by the doorway so she could be the first to exit the chemistry room when the bell rang. She peered out into the hallway and caught a glimpse of Jonathan talking to her French teacher, Madame Gray, outside of her classroom. They were cracking up about something he said. She noticed her touch the sleeve of his flannel shirt as she tossed back her long brown curls that smelled like incense and laughed. Chloe wondered if Val had met Madame Gray. 
She thought about Val’s perfect love note with its perfect lettering. What a genius. Would he save that message forever? It was the kind of note that could go on forever, Chloe thought. Anytime he read it, Val’s love for him would be happening in that moment, always right now.  But did she really have to put it that way? Doesn’t love already work like that, across time and space? A reminder feels good anyway she decided. What she wouldn’t give for a note like that.
While she waited for the bell, Chloe read the computer printout of random facts about St. Zita that her teacher had hanging next to the door. 

Zita of Tuscany. Patron saint of domestic workers, housekeepers, waitresses, and household chores. Housewives invoke her when crossing rivers or bridges. In Basque, Zita means ‘saint.’ In Greek it means ‘the hunter.’

What a drag to be the patron saint of chores, she thought. 
Saint names had always been interesting to her. In 8th grade she spent days deliberating over her confirmation name. She used to check out the book Lives of the Saints from the school library and read about them for hours, narrowing her list down to the most unique ones like Euphrasia or Maud. She remembered going straight to the index to look for St. Zita’s feast day and was disappointed that she wasn’t listed. 

In 1580, St. Zita’s body was exhumed and found to be incorruptible. It is browned and wizened, most likely the result of a form of natural mummification. There is a St. Zita’s Home for Friendless Women in Manhattan that provides food, clothing, shelter and job training for destitute women. 

She felt a little stab of shame when she read the last part. Her parents had wanted to send her to a place like that so they could keep the baby a secret. Her dad wanted to find a convent where she could have the baby, put it up for adoption, then come back like nothing had happened. She imagined what her life would be like if she had decided to put her baby up for adoption and imagined a life with a hole in it. How she might tuck a note inside her baby’s diaper bag before they whisked him off to live with his new family: I’m loving you right now it would say.
The bell rang and Chloe headed straight into Jonathan’s classroom, avoiding any hallway traffic. She had been doing that this year. She didn’t want anyone to bump into her. Or to look at her more than they already did. Jonathan slipped into the classroom just after the last student filed in and the second bell rang to start class. He closed the door behind him with one hand, holding a sloshing cup of coffee with the other. She made a mental note to ask him for the assignments he promised her after class.
“Arrright ladies and gents. Let’s talk some Greene,” he said, then took a loud slurp.
Chloe slid into the chair of her one arm desk, thankful she could still fit. She pulled her history notebook out of her backpack and opened to the notes she had scribbled in chemistry class.
“So what was Graham Greene’s main point about Modern Times? What was he arguing?” 
Jonathan paused amongst the post-bell scramble. Students zipped metal notebook spines out of sour-smelling backpacks; girls unfurled crinkled homework handouts from glossy folders; boys at the sharpener sawed down their chewed pencils into three-inch nubs. The ruckus slowly subsided and the room fell quiet. 
“Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s try this again. Did Greene think that Chaplin was making some kind of political statement?”
No one raised their hands. Chloe looked around and caught Alex’s eye. He made a blow job gesture at her, his tongue bulging the side of his left cheek. She turned her head quickly and pretended not to notice. 
“Mr. Jordan?” David raised his hand and spoke at the same time. Chloe noticed a lot of the boys did that in school. She always waited her turn to get called on. But sometimes the teacher would get into a discussion with just one or two boys for a solid twenty minutes until the bell rang and she never got to make her point. “Who was Karno? That part in there about cream pies or somethin?” David asked. 
This was the classic David set-up. He would pick out an insignificant detail in the reading and act curious about it, try to derail the discussion so the class wouldn’t have time to talk about anything serious. He scooted back into his seat so his backside protruded through the opening of his chair. The boys on his varsity football team called him Bubble Butt because of how he looked in his compression tights. 
“Karno was a slapstick comedian. He made the pie-in-the-face schtick famous.”
Alex stood up and made a pie-throwing gesture, swinging his whole arm from the socket like a major league pitcher. “We Karno-d Sr. Dorothy so hard during spirit week!” he blurted. 
The kids in the class roared and then broke into conversations, retelling their eye-witness accounts of Sr. Dorothy taking it in the face. 
Chloe had missed the pep rally where they pied the principal. She was too depressed to participate in spirit week this year. Jean and Laura had both made homecoming court. She knew if she wasn’t pregnant she would have made court, too. She just couldn’t bear to show up at the gym and see her best friends in their white sashes with gold-foil letters that said “Homecoming Court,” the whole school cheering for them.  She had always wanted that moment, that sash. The bouquet of red roses. The special Court blessing from Father Leo at homecoming mass. 
She looked over and saw Jean and Laura laughing together. They both had on knee socks but in different colors. The three of them started the sock trend last year and now all the underclassmen wore them too. Today Chloe wore tights so she wouldn’t stick to the chair.
“Arrright, arright,” Jonathan said as he walked over and stood next to David’s desk and tapped on his paper. “Back to the review. What was Greene saying?”
Chloe looked down at what she had written. Chaplin was an artist not a propagandist. The rest of the class stayed quiet, squirming in their seats, avoiding eye contact with him so they wouldn’t get called on. She started to feel bad for him. He stood there waiting, sipping his coffee. She raised her hand. He looked relieved and pointed at her immediately.
“Yes. Chloe.” She noticed he didn’t say Ms. Hillman.
“He’s saying that Chaplin wasn’t trying to make a film with like a specific political message or anything, but like, trying to just make people think about the conditions of factories and the impact of industrialization.” In the periphery she saw Alex roll his eyes at her and she got nervous. She cut her comment short, “Using humor, I guess.”
“Do we agree with Chloe?” He never affirmed students’ comments during class discussions. Instead he stoked the room, pitting one student comment against another. 
Ryan Murphy’s hand shot up. He was likely going to be the valedictorian. Chloe was bracing herself for salutatorian, knowing her grade point might take a hit after the baby was born. 
“Yeah, I mean I agree that’s what Greene said in the review, but I don’t agree with Greene. The whole point of Modern Times was to make fun of modern technology. Like the scene where he’s being fed by the machines. It was supposed to be satirical. So I guess that means it’s political.”
Alex did the impression of Chaplin eating corn on the cob off the automatic feeder. The whole class laughed. It was their favorite part of the film. Jonathan laughed too.
“So Mr. Murphy, is all art political?” Jonathan pointed to the Chaplin poster he had hanging behind his desk. “Is Chaplin’s Little Tramp character political?”
“What did you say, Mr. Jordan?!”  David exclaimed, smiling, eyes wide.
“I said, is the Little Tramp political?”
“Tramp?!” David said even louder. Alex and a few other boys laughed. Jesse, who sat behind Chloe, whispered “tramp” then coughed.
Chloe’s stomach started to sink. She kept her head down, doodling in her notebook, drawing swirling vines in the corners of the page. 
“Okay, okay.” Jonathan rolled his eyes. “That was the name of Chaplin’s character. A tramp is another word for… like a homeless person...or a vagrant.” He walked over to the chalkboard and grabbed a yardstick from the ledge. “Chaplin created the character himself, made him into a wandering, mischievous, but affable kinda guy.” He waddled forward, impersonating Chaplin’s signature out-toeing using the yardstick as a cane. 
“Tramp,” Jesse whispered a little louder behind her back. This time Alex caught onto what he was doing. 
Alex looked right at Chloe. He didn’t know how to properly tie his necktie, so the narrow part of the tie was longer than the wide part. It was also too long for his torso, so the tail nearly grazed his crotch.  “Tra-a-mp,” he said and coughed at the same time.

Chloe’s doodles grew more elaborate. The vines now extended down into her notes, obscuring some of the letters. She added daisies. 
David looked over at Chloe and joined in, “Oh, I thought only girls could be tramps.”
More boys and a couple girls laughed. 
She kept her head down, trying to make herself smaller. Little vagrant. Little slut. Little whore. Unsashed. Unblessed. Unflowered. Deflowered. Friendless woman. Destitute woman. Bad role model. Bad example. Jezebel. Damned to hell. Her heart thumped in her chest and she added more flourishes to the page. She made the “Cs” in all the “Chaplins” into circles, then colored them in like the centers of daisies, little dark ovaries inside a spray of petals. 
“That’s enough, guys,” Jonathan said, his words just above a whisper. But it wasn’t enough. Alex still had the paper football he made from chemistry. A miniature sail without its boat. He wrote “tramp” on it in all lowercase letters and flicked it so it hit the silver leg of Chloe’s chair and landed on the floor face up, the word visible to everyone sitting near her, visible to Jonathan who still stood there paralyzed.
Jonathan and Chloe made eye contact. She watched him size up the note then move on with the lesson. At that moment she realized he was just like the rest of them. Mom with her penitent phone calls. Dad and his plans to send her to a convent. All her nervous friends with their nervous moms. No one knew what to do with a little tramp. 
She bent down and picked up the note, unfolded it so “tramp” was in the bottom corner of the page, and started drawing on it. She extended the top of the lowercase “t” way up the paper, then drew a hook at the end of it so it resembled a cane. Next she drew a large circle. Gave it a bowler hat. Two eyes with heavy eyebrows. A pug nose. A thick mustache and weak mouth. Then she drew the body. A neck with a clownish tie. She made the tie the same pattern as Alex’s, alternating diagonal stripes and dots. Then she added a vest with buttons down the front. A suit coat with a big daisy on the lapel. Big dumpy trousers with an exaggerated rear. Alex peered over trying to see what she was drawing.
Jonathan started lecturing again. “So what about the fact that this is the first time we hear Chaplin’s voice on screen? Why is that significant? And for that matter, why didn’t he talk more?”  It was clear he wasn’t opening up a discussion. He kept going, weaving up and down the rows of the desks with his yardstick cane, trying to distract the class from any further antics. He answered his own questions. “It’s important to recognize that Chaplin was the master of pantomime. The silent screen was the perfect medium for his genius. He knows if he were to add any more dialogue, any more of his own audible speech, his character would lose its sense of immortality.”
His words droned on in the background. She started to feel an odd sensation like she was floating above the room, completely numb. The last seven months had hardened her. All the stares and snickers, the names, the loneliness—the disappointment she caused—it had crusted over her like an impenetrable shell. There wasn’t anything left for them to say or do that could hurt. She may be friendless, she thought, but she could be incorruptible too. 
Chloe scratched over the rest of Alex’s tramp, turning it into a patch of grass beneath the Little Tramp’s foot. Next she made large rounded block letters at the top of the drawing, right above the hat. A huge bulbous T R A M P. She outlined the letters over and over again in black ink so they stood out. 
The bell rang. “Okay, we’ll pick this up tomorrow,” Jonathan said. Alex stood up to get a closer look at the drawing. Chloe rose from her seat and quickly packed her things. She left the Little Tramp on her desk and walked up to Jonathan who was fumbling with some student papers at his desk.
“I need those assignments,” Chloe surprised both of them with her directness. But before he could even answer, she saw the way he looked at her and knew he wasn’t prepared, that he didn’t have the assignments, that she may not finish the lessons before the baby came. That maybe this would be the kind of thing that wouldn’t get done and wouldn’t be missed.