when the bell rings

by Natalie Hammonds

The final bell rang at 4 o’clock every afternoon. It was her dismissal for the day, her transition to normalcy and normal life again.

The young woman walked in the hallway alongside her co-workers, her head drawn down and her bag slung over her shoulder. The stitches were barely hanging on, showing years of wear and tear that were similar to how she felt inside. Still, she often used the same things as a sign of tradition, similar to everything she did in her life. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

She walked outside the front doors and to her car, her heeled shoes clacking on the concrete steps and the asphalt of the parking lot. There was a chorus of ‘goodbyes’ and ‘see you tomorrows' that greeted her, and she flashed a gentle smile in response. She’d never been a woman of many words, especially once the workday ended. All of her words had been used up, floating around in the air, left to be captured and listened to by wary students who would much rather sit and stare at their phones.

When she slid into her car and shut the door, the woman took her first deep breath since waking up that morning. A gulp of fresh air calms the nerves, clears the brain and resets her personality. She’s able to turn off the “teacher mode," either right away or after her half-hour drive home, sometimes accompanied by music and other times by silence. The mental fog clears slightly, but it’s better than nothing.

Her commute home often feels like the longest part of her day. At its longest, the drive can be up to forty-five minutes, but it always comes across as so much longer. Her eyes flickered out the window, watching the other commuters pass her by on the road. Do they feel the same loneliness she does? The same exhaustion? The same gradual decay of her mind, struggling to function even as she turns on her blinker and switches lanes for her exit?

The woman’s neighborhood is filled with children, often running around in groups to either the community playground or down the sidewalks, giggling and laughing together. There is a sense of innocence to them that she knows is short-lived, more of a mask than a reality now. Her heart ached for them, these people that she didn't even know. Maybe that’s why she feels so awful all of the time; her heart is too soft for this job. She needs to toughen up, pull back the line, tighten her grip.

She pulled into the driveway along with a chorus of squeaking from her brakes, a symphony she'd become indifferent to. Her car gave a soft jingle as she turned it off, alerting her of her arrival home like she wouldn’t be able to recognize it on her own.

When she unlocked and pushed open her door, she was greeted by her dog, his loyalty constant even in this part of her life. He was always happy to see her, reacting like she'd been at war for a decade. She often feels like that, so maybe he knows something that she doesn’t.

On most days, she’s tempted to ascend up the stairs to her room and fall into her bed, silently praying that she’ll disappear into the mattress. It never happens, no matter how much she pleads for it. No one listens; that’s the motto of her life.

Today is different. Today has been a particularly difficult day for the woman.

She dropped her things onto the hardwood floor downstairs and walked to her bathroom, where her large mirror was stained with the remnants of brushing her teeth and handprints from touching it after a steamy shower. She can still see herself, though: she stared at her reflection through glossy eyes, studying the lines in her face that seemed to age her ten years or more.

The woman can, and has, spent hours staring at her face. She can tell you everything that’s wrong with it: her chin is too small, her eyes are uneven, her head is too round. There are little scars on her face from years of picking at her skin, trying to eliminate the imperfections with her fingernails. If she scratched hard enough, maybe she could reveal a new layer of skin. One that was shiny and new, smooth and bright, one that commanded the attention that she so desperately craved.

It was from this habit that her new one began. One evening, she found that when she pushed her fingernail against her skin, it slipped right beneath the surface and into her face. Astounded, the woman had moved her finger around and felt the warmth of flesh and blood, slippery but stiff simultaneously. There was tension there; it took effort to push the meat around, and even so, she found that it didn’t hurt. When she pulled her finger back out again, there was no residue left over.

This discovery left her rattled. She couldn’t understand why there was nothing that came from this. What was the point of her being able to go inside of her skin but not able to change anything? The woman tried to push this from her memory entirely, avoiding mirrors for a week straight. Each day, when she would come to work, she received sideways glances from her colleagues and sneers from her students.

‘Why is your hair so messy today?’ ‘Did you even sleep last night?’ ‘Are those the same pants from yesterday?’ ‘Why are you always in such a bad mood?’ ‘You look like you’ve been crying. Have you?’

The woman ignored these questions, as she often did, and returned to her job duties. At this point, they weren’t even remotely similar to what she was supposed to be doing. The reality was that the real world made things much more difficult, something that she had always known would happen but was severely underprepared for.

They tell you never to blame the students, the school, or the administration. It is always YOUR fault and YOUR responsibility to fix things. You are the beating heart of the educational system, the quick-witted thinkers whose job is simple: teach all of the children who walk through those doors. If you look closely enough, there is an asterisk that is often forgotten at the end of that sentence.

* This includes children who: do not speak the same language as you, lie in the same bed as their nine other family members, fight against hunger and lose every evening, crave the attention of anyone who will look at them, do not sleep a wink at night in fear of what awaits them if they do, are glued to their phones because the real world is too much for them to handle, desperately need medication and are living without it, do not know how to speak without shouting to be heard, will be going home to their car tonight, have parents that are overseas, and those who do not know how to function in a classroom despite the constant effort by their teachers.

The woman worked in education, and she felt everything very deeply. She couldn’t help this; she blamed it on the stars, on her childhood, on her brain. Parts of it could be traced back to her, but even if everything was perfect, she would still cry. She kept a tally of the times she cried in a year. Sometimes, there were long, dry spells that lasted weeks at a time, and sometimes, she would sob open-mouthed in her bed for hours. The majority of these tears were shed because of her job.

She wanted to help everyone. For most of her childhood, she had been called selfish. Once upon a time, she had believed emotions to be a weakness and prided herself in not showing them. This read as indifference to her friends and family, and she realized that she could not show anyone love without being vulnerable. What a terrifying thought. Even so, she built her life upon that vulnerability and, eventually, her career.

Of course, she was nervous about starting to teach. Would the kids like her? Would they listen? Did they see her as an equal or a leader? Would they understand what she tried to teach them? Did they share the same love of knowledge that she did? Those questions plagued her mind the summer before she began her career, not knowing that she would most certainly get her answers on the very first day of school: a loud and resounding ‘no'.

She was told, time and time again, ‘Things will get easier,’ ‘You just need a bit more experience,’ ‘You’ll find your own teaching style eventually', ‘Give it another year or two.’ ‘Or three.’ ‘Or four.’ ‘After five years is when you’ll REALLY start getting the hang of it.’

What many people fail to think about is how fast time feels when you’re young. In your mid-twenties, you feel like your life is over. You didn’t accomplish the things you set out to do in high school or in college, and life isn’t going the direction you wanted, so it means you failed, and now you’re old, and you have no time to start over because your other friends are getting married and having babies, and you drive home from your miserable job every day and fight the urge to cry the entire time.

Well, eventually, the woman had had enough.

Her avoidance of the mirror lasted a few days, but it was difficult not to look over as she passed. The fear that she would relive the same incident when she touched her face held steady until one evening, she'd finally had enough. What if her face had been left disfigured before, and no one had thought to tell her? What if the laughter that she’d felt had been following her around at school was truly for her?

After her shower one evening, she paused in front of the steamy mirror. Her towel was wrapped safely around her body, like a shield of armor. The woman turned to face the glass, barely able to make out the outline of her figure. Before she could stop herself, she took a deep breath and reached forward to wipe away the condensation with the palm of her hand.

Her face stared back at her, plain and normal as ever. The woman scanned her reflection for any differences, subtle or not, but found nothing of note. It was then that she had the idea to check her entire body.

The towel fell to the tile floor with a dull thud, and immediately, she began to search her skin for something, anything. She ran her fingertips along razor bumps, old scars, tattoos, cellulite, and calluses: nothing new. She began to feel defeated, thinking that the entire incident had been a bad trick of the imagination. Perhaps it was a new side effect from her medication or a stress symptom she’d yet to discover.

The woman stood up again, shoulders slumped as she raised her head and stared at her reflection again. This time, she saw a red bump on her forehead, about the size of a pimple or a bug bite. Either one wouldn’t have been a surprise to her; her skin was almost as sensitive as her. She leaned forward against her counter, using her two index fingers to squeeze the small blemish before she felt them suddenly slip beneath the surface of her skin, just as they had before.

She froze in horror, her eyes widening as the rest of her fingers followed suit until she realized what was happening and stopped them. Now, only her thumbs were visible, trembling above her forehead as she stared in shock at the mirror, frozen in fear.

Just like before, her fingers felt fine. There was no sensation of warmth or wetness to them despite the fact that they were inside of her face. The woman was still holding her breath, her heart pounding in her ears as she ever so slowly began to move them.

This time, there was a slight resistance: her left index finger bumped against something small and hard, like a pebble inside of her. At first, her mind raced and jumped to conclusions. Was this some sort of tumor? A parasite? None of these made any logical sense, and why should they? Her hands were inside of her face. That was something that was supposed to be impossible.

She tapped the object lightly with her fingernail and felt nothing in response. Whatever it was was benign, so that was a slight relief. The woman curved the underside of her finger beneath it as if to fish it out and found that as she did, it began to move. She slowly raised it to the surface of her skin, her eyes glued to her reflection in shock as she carefully lifted her hand up and out of her face, along with the small thing on her finger.

The object was perfectly round, a tiny sphere that resembled a pearl. The outside was matte and slightly dirty, and when she ran her thumb along the surface, she revealed a bit of shine beneath it. As she lowered her hand, she let the object roll onto her palm and brought it to her face for further inspection.

It was…extremely ordinary. Nothing special stuck out about it. The woman furrowed her brow and straightened up again, looking up in the mirror before she gasped, another red bump appearing on the left side of her face.

The object fell from her hand with a clatter as she touched her face again, her heart racing. Just like before, she carefully pressed her fingertip to the skin and watched it disappear beneath the surface, making contact with yet another small object. When she brought it back up, another pearl had been produced.

The woman found, as she kept going, the removal of each small sphere led to another bump appearing somewhere else on her body: face, arm, shoulders, chest, one by one as they traveled down the length of her body. Once she extracted one, another took its place elsewhere.

And with each one that she took out and let clatter into the sink beneath her, she felt lighter. It was as if each little pearl was a large weight upon her heart, and when they disappeared, she could breathe a little bit easier.

She spent hours upon hours removing these pearls from her body, her fingers working faster than her mind could keep up with. The process didn’t hurt; it felt good. The sink was close to overflowing by the time she finished, a collection of what looked like beads glistening in the dim lighting as she stepped back, surveying her body for any other marks.

There was none to be found. The woman felt better than she ever had in her life, like a candle had been lit within her and had burned into a beautiful flame, making her lighter than air. She smiled at her reflection, taking in her crooked dimples and rounded cheeks, and for the first time, she felt satisfied with what looked back at her.

Her dreams that night were not plagued with stress about work, or what she was supposed to teach the following day, or how the students would react to her newfound attitude. She slept peacefully, waking the next morning even before her alarm went off to get ready. The woman arrived early to set her classroom up, dressed in her best clothing and makeup, and her co-workers shot her quizzical glances as they passed.

‘Looking good!’ ‘You look really pretty today!’ ‘Ready to take on the day?’

And she was. From the moment her first student walked inside, she was grinning from ear to ear and ready to help them in any way she could. Her students, however, showed mixed reactions to their teacher’s newfound personality.

Most of them were confused, staring at her with raised eyebrows and an awkward smile. Others laughed in her face, telling her she was “trying too hard” and that she needed to relax. Some of the other opinionated ones rolled their eyes as they passed beneath the threshold, ignoring her fully as they fidgeted with their headphones in their ears.

As the day passed, they began to talk. Rumors floated about, traveling at light speed.

“I heard she finally got laid. About time, she was such a bitch!”

“Do you think someone finally got that stick out of her ass?”

“Maybe she’s having a mental breakdown. Soon enough, she’ll be gone, and we can get someone else instead.”

These comments, although she did not hear all of them, began to weigh her down. Slowly, throughout the day, she felt heavy again, her smile faltering and her mind hazy. The woman dismissed her last class and heard the familiar noise of the bell, and when she walked to her car, her feet dragged. She was disappointed; the happy feeling had been temporary, as she had suspected it would be. Sometimes, these highs would come to her, and while they were nice, they never stuck around, even with all of the medication she was on. She went home that day feeling utterly defeated.

However, after her shower, she looked in the mirror and once more saw an angry red bump on her forehead. When she went to retrieve it, the same small pearl-like object popped out and fell onto the counter.

This time, the process didn’t take nearly as long, and when she was finished, she had a handful of the little balls and felt a hundred times lighter. She kept these in a box beneath her sink, unsure of what to do but knowing that she didn’t want to get rid of them.

The next day at work, she felt the same happiness she had previously. At the end of it, she was almost begging to get home to repeat the process and feel better. Each afternoon felt almost like a purge, ridding herself of the day’s events by scraping around inside her body for pearls, like a pirate seeking treasure.

Slowly but surely, the box beneath her sink grew fuller and fuller. The process became easier, like second nature. No longer was she horrified of this ability but rather grateful for it. The instant relief she felt was immeasurable, something she’d been seeking for her entire life. The woman became familiar with her body in a way that she’d never thought possible before.

One evening, she sat on her bathroom floor and stared at her little pearls. Each one was a different color, some darker and some lighter, with pigments that she was sure she’d never seen before. She reached out and plucked one between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing it gently on her skin.

If there was one thing about being a teacher, it was that they had the ability to make something out of nothing.

The next morning at school, each student who walked through her door received a bracelet. These ranged in size and color but were all made of the same materials: elastic string and unique, rounded, and shiny beads. Most students took one earnestly and slid it upon their wrists, muttering soft ‘thank yous’ and even flinging hugs at their teacher. Others merely ignored her or walked past, which hurt her feelings, but it wasn’t anything new.

That night was the shortest time she’d spent in front of the mirror since this process had started. At the end of it, she began to cry. There wasn’t a word for the immense amount of relief the woman had found, for the feeling that now enveloped her like a warm hug she’d been searching for since childhood.

When she finally lifted her head from her hands, she blinked slowly at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were swollen and red, her face puffy and wet with tears. She held her gaze like a child locked in a staring contest, pressing her hands to the counter for stability.

“Someone has to stay strong for these kids,” she said softly. “I wish it could be me.”

Photo of Natalie Hammonds

BIO: Natalie Hammonds is an MFA graduate student currently working on her Master’s in Creative Writing from Concordia St. Paul University. She lives in Houston, Texas, and teaches theater arts to middle school students. She also holds a BFA in theater from Texas State University. Natalie has had poetry published by Grey Coven Publishing, Everscribe Magazine, and Stonecrop Magazine. She hopes to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a published author.