Vex Ed

Jennifer McHenry couldn’t get the images out of her mind: her own burly step-father pushing into her as hard as he could every night for god knows how many nights. Then there was the judge who only gave him a ninety-day jail sentence because of his “service to the community”? Ninety days could only last so long, but the psychological trauma was forever. Jennifer’s eyes were lifeless, her frown was saggy, her posture was hunched, and her emotions were dulled. She might as well have walked through this life as a zombie.

She paid no mind to the other high school students around her nor did she immediately wake up from her robotic trance when Martin Hitch, the sex ed teacher, entered the room with a handful of books. Everything around Jennifer was a blurry haze in her numbed out mind. Not even Mr. Hitch’s booming voice saying, “Alright, class, listen up!” could startle her like it did the other students.

The tall, middle-aged, crew-cut having teacher placed his palms on his desk and drummed his fingertips while everyone in the class was slowly quieting down. The fire in his eyes made him look like a hellfire and brimstone preacher. Just one word could send electricity through the bodies of those who disobeyed him.

“Now that I have your attention,” said Mr. Hitch. “I’d like to begin by welcoming you all to sex education. You may think this is going to be a fun-filled ride with plenty of pornographic thrills. But trust me when I say this, there’s nothing fun about STD’s and pregnancies. Genital warts, gonorrhea, HIV, there are so many nasty things that can come from sexual contact. And don’t give me that unholy garbage about how condoms will save you. They won’t. There’s only one thing that will save you in the end: just saying no.”

Jennifer’s droning haze turned into a sniper sight of anger. Her breathing sounded like soft growling and her eyebrows were tightly furrowed. Oh, how many times she wished she could have said no to her disgusting step-father. Two letters, one word, one syllable: no. Who was this teacher to say that a simple word solves everything? Her fists clinched as she heard his offensive oratory.

“That’s right, children,” said Mr. Hitch as he stood up and started pacing sternly back and forth. “All you have to do is say no and it’ll all be over. For those of you who say no, you can spare yourself from green paste and a fishy discharge coming out of your genitals. Those who continually give in? You’re just a piece of chewed up gum. And the more you chew gum, the less flavor it has.”

The fist clinching became even tighter than before and Jennifer’s head felt like it was going to burst like a bomb. Her heartbeat sounded like someone smashing a bass drum. The fiery sensation running through her body could turn this whole school into a matchstick, which lost its color after one strike.

“You don’t want to be a chewed up piece of bubblegum, right? You don’t want to be one of these fools who think that condoms and contraceptives are the panacea of sexual diseases, right? All you have to do is say no! Keep your pants on and never remove them!”

As the images of her step-father assaulted her mind like kicks to the skull, Jennifer let out a thunderous scream before jumping on her desk, running across the other students’ desks, and landing a flying knee right against Martin Hitch’s temple. While the teacher fell to the ground and tried to gain his wits about him, other students flocked to restrain Jennifer’s arms and legs while she screamed every obscenity in the book. Those who dared get in her way were met with vampire bites, soccer kicks, and boxer punches.

The other students began to back away when Martin stood back up and yelled, “Quiet! Shut up!” The frightened pupils backed away even further while Jennifer McHenry’s breathing intensified. Martin pointed an accusatory finger at her and yelled, “You are out of control, young lady! Do you realize what you just did?! You assaulted a teacher and now you’re in huge trouble, my friend!”

“Trouble? Trouble?” said Jennifer in a trembling whisper.

“Yeah, that’s right! Trouble! Big trouble, at that! You’re going to the Principal’s Office right now! You’re lucky I’m not calling the cops on you!” shouted Mr. Hitch.

“Who’s going to call the cops on my rapist?!” screamed Jennifer, turning her teacher’s authoritative anger into a somber frown. “I never wanted that secret to get out. I know how the kids at this school treat rape victims. You like to call us sluts and whores. You like to say we deserved what we got. You blame us for the crime because of what we wore that day. Does saying no solve everything, Mr. Hitch? I don’t think so! So I guess that makes me a chewed up piece of gum!”

The suddenly defensive Mr. Hitch held his arms out to control the distance between him and Jennifer. “Take it easy, Miss McHenry. It’ll be okay. I seriously didn’t know you were the victim of sexual assault.”

“It’s not the kind of thing I go around advertising on a daily basis, you sick bastard!” shouted Jennifer.

“Hey, hey,” said Mr. Hitch in a calm voice. “You’re going to be alright. You obviously need to see a counselor. We can hook you up with one after class is over.”

“I’m already seeing one,” said Jennifer with tears cascading from her eyes. “No matter how many times I talk about it, no matter how many treatments we do, no matter how many pills I take, it’s not going to make it all go away! I still see his face every night! I’m going to see him a lot more once he gets out of prison!”

A depressing hush fell over the classroom with neither Jennifer nor Martin knowing what to do. The two of them just stared at each other with bloodshot eyes. And then one by one, students quietly shuffled toward the door and exited the classroom. In a matter of seconds, the only two left in the room were Jennifer and Martin, still staring each other down, still at a Mexican standoff.

The tension was cut when Martin inched closer to his pupil and said in his softest voice, “Truth be told, I didn’t choose this curriculum. You see those books over there? They were given to me by the board of education. They were the ones who thought teaching abstinence was a good idea. As far as what I said goes…” Martin drew a deep breath. “I, uh….I was told to do that. I’m following orders. If I don’t follow them, I could lose my job and then I’d have no way to feed my family.”

“Bullshit! You’re a liar!” sobbed Jennifer.

“Jennifer, you need to trust me on this one. I’m being honest with you. If you don’t believe me, you can look in the text book on the top of that pile.”

The shaken student dragged her feet to her teacher’s desk and picked up said book. It was a hardcover book. It was heavy. It felt natural in her hands. She turned around and smacked Martin over the head with it, knocking him unconscious. She then assaulted her teacher’s desk by slamming the text book against it.

Only then did campus security storm into the classroom and try to hold her still. No matter how big and strong they were, Jennifer still bit down hard, she still kicked like a warrior, and she still punched like her fists were made with granite. All of the rage and all of the pain was accompanied by images of her step-father pushing inside her over and over again. The wet ending made her feel like butcher’s meat. And then her vision blackened as the last of her violent energy surged out of her body.

She could have stayed asleep forever if she wanted to. A dreamless state of mind was better than the fucked up nightmare she lived every day, now made worse by Martin Hitch’s speech about chewed bubblegum. Jennifer purposely kept her eyes closed for as long as she could before slowly opening them to a world of whiteness.

She awakened to find herself in beige pajamas while laying on a comfy bed surrounded by white walls. “Excellent. You’re awake,” said an elderly Indian woman in a white lab coat.

“Where…where am I?” asked a weary Jennifer McHenry.

“You’re in a safe place, Miss McHenry. The Principal was adamant about taking you to juvenile hall, but your sex ed teacher waved him off. He told me everything that happened today. You caused a lot of injuries in your rage. But there’s something more to this than a simple attack. You have something on your mind that won’t let go of you.”

Tears welled in the teenager’s eyes as she said, “What the hell’s going on with my brain, Doctor? I can’t do my homework, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t pay attention in class…I can’t do anything!”

The doctor placed a sympathetic hand on her patient’s and said in the softest tone, “I know how hard it is for you. But unless you allow us to help you, we can’t find out what’s going on aside from the rape story. It may not be as simple as Post-Traumatic Stress. It could very well be schizophrenia you’re experiencing. If that’s the case, then managing your symptoms will be much harder than anticipated. But the most important thing you remember is…it’s not impossible. It’ll take time, but we have all the time in the world. Get some rest, dear. Treatment starts tomorrow morning.”

Once the doctor stood up and left, the door was closed behind her and Jennifer was alone with her thoughts. Actually, she wasn’t completely alone since there were nurses standing guard in case she had a mental health emergency. But for the first time in a long time, she welcomed her aloneness. She used this opportunity to have conversations with herself. They appeared to be quick whispers to the nurse’s outside, but in her world, every word meant building towards the big day tomorrow. And the big day after that, and the big day after that, and the big day after that. The road to recovery would be long an exhausting, but it would be traveled nonetheless, even if she had to walk her way to the light at the end of the tunnel with blisters on her feet.