Study Hall

Special Guest

"Hello?" A voice on the other end of the phone said.
​"Hello, ma?" Ms. Rosewood answered.
​"No, this is her nurse. Who is this that is calling?" Asked the nurse in somewhat of an annoyed voice.
​"Her daughter... Where is my mother?"
​"In the shower, should I tell her you called?"
​"No, you should go tell her to get her wrinkled ass out of the shower and answer the damn phone."
​"Alright ma'am, I'll go fetch Ms. Clarence for you. Hold on one minute please."
​"Thank you." Ms. Rosewood sat there in her chair waiting for your mother to answer the phone. With the phone still attached to her ear, she could hear a faint voice from the background talking. It was her mother.
​"What do you mean it's my daughter?" Ms. Clarence asked the nurse getting her. "She only calls me two times per year! Christmas and my birthday. She doesn't call me on Mother's Day though. Apparently I wasn't "loving enough" to be put in the category of "mother"."
​"Oh my lord." Ms. Rosewood stated under her breathe. "MOTHER GET ON THE DAMN PHONE!" She then yelled into the phone.
​"Hello, darling." Ms. Clarence said to her daughter. "How have you been?" Ms. Clarence also asked, but didn't sound that interested.
​"The day has been tiring, but after getting on the phone with you, the day just decided the knock the shit out of me. Other than that, I've been moderately ok. How are you mother?"
​"Well I was in the shower with one of my gentlemen callers until you decided to call and interrupt us."
​"But mother, your showers aren't co-ed."
​"I know!" Her mother answered with a smile on her face.
​"Mother!"
​"What?"
​"I did not need that kind of answer."
​"You said it first honey."
​"Ok." Ms. Rosewood started off. "Now that I am emotionally and physically scarred for the rest of my life, I have a question for you."
​"What is it honey?"
​"Well, where do I start? Well, I just started teaching this class, Study Hall actually, and I told these students that I would teach them a new lesson every day. So..."
​"What, let me stop you there Merissa. You don't teach Study Hall, you just, how I should put this, be there. Reading a book or smoking a cigarette or something."
​"Mom, they don't let you smoke in classrooms."
​"Since when?" Ms. Clarence said with shock in her voice; leaning forward in her chair, while the words came out of her mouth.
​"Since they found it wasn't good for people smoking the thing and the people around them."
​"Damn rules. You know what rules did to me? They made me not meet the guy that I actually wanted to be your father."
​"Mother, please stop talking. I am getting headaches because of this! Can I continue if you are fine with that?"
​"Proceed."
​"Ok, so I need you to be a demonstration for my next lesson on the kids."
​"And what would that be?"
​"What smoking and other drugs will do to you... When you're older."
​"WHAT?"
​"Ma, when I was younger, I saw more cigarette boxes on the floor than the carpet. If you're not a good model for that lesson, I don't know who is."
​"I won't do it!"
​"What? Come on mom."
​"Nope, the last time you asked me to do something, I ended up in this retirement home! You told me we were going to the beach. Well guess what. This ain't a beach, this is a bitch!"
​"Trust me mom, at least this time."
"Why would I trust you this time?"
"Because it gives you an excuse to leave that building, and because we are actually going to do what I'm actually telling you we are going to do!"
​"True, but still no, there is nothing you can do to persuade me to do this!"
​"I'll pay you fifty-bucks." Ms. Clarence has to think for a minute before responding.
​"Alright, pick me up at eleven and don't be late."
​"Mom, the class starts at one."
​"That's fine, you could meet the man I was just in the shower with."
​"Ew! No! I already feel bad for the nurse that had to go in there and interrupt whatever was going on in there. We'll drive around the school a few times before the class starts, if there is no traffic. Goodbye mother."
​"Goodbye daughter. See you tomorrow. Remember, don't be late."
​"See you tomorrow." Ms. Rosewood hung up the phone and looked up at the ceiling. "Lord, please don't let this be as painful as it might be tomorrow!" She prayed.
​
Ms. Rosewood went to sleep until the next morning when her alarm clock woke her up. "Damn, got to go see and get the beast now." Ms. Rosewood got up from her bed to get ready for the day. As she went to go get her mother, leaving from the school, she prayed again. "Please don't let this be as bad as it looks or sounds."
​About twenty minutes later, she got to the retirement home that her mother attends. Waiting in front of the building for her mother, she finally saw a door open and her mother coming out in a wheelchair. "What the hell?" Ms. Rosewood thought to herself.
​Ms. Clarence got the car by the helping of the nurse pushing her out. "You're late." Ms. Clarence sternly told Ms. Rosewood. "I said eleven and it is now twelve-thirty."
"The class doesn't start till one I told you. I came later so we could get there on the right time!" Ms. Rosewood responded to her mother.
"Fine." Ms. Clarence stated with still a little anger and annoyance in her voice.
The nurse put the wheelchair in the trunk and then proceeded towards the door, until Ms. Clarence rolled down the window and called them towards her.
​"Excuse me, nurse." The nurse brought themselves back to the car.
​"Yes ma'am?"
​"Yes, I would like for you to know something. My name is Judy Clarence, and the last time I was taken out by daughter to go somewhere, I was brought here. If I'm not back in an hour or two, call the cops, because I might be either taken to a different and probably worse retirement home, or I might be dead. The first one's probably worse, but anyways, the name's Judy Clarence. Remember that!"
​"MOM, CLOSE THE DAMN WINDOW BEFORE I CLOSE IT ON YOUR HAND!"
​"See what I'm dealing with?" Ms. Rosewood's mother asked the nurse and then continues talking to them. "Thank you nurse, it was nice knowing you."
​Ms. Rosewood drove off to the school with her mother in the car. "I see you still have this shitty SUV that your ex-husband gave you." Ms. Clarence commented.
​"Yep." Ms. Rosewood replied.
​"Why?" Ms. Clarence responded.
​"Why what?"
​"Why do you have this SVU still?"
​"Because it has special memories attached to it."
​"What memories would that be exactly?"
​"Well, you know, the memory of when I hit Brice with this car."
​"Brice? Who's Brice?"
​"Mom, my ex-husband. That's his name. Wow, your memory must really be going."
​"No, it's really not. I just wouldn't know his name because you always referred to him as "Bastard Ass"."
​"Oh yeah, that's right." MS. Rosewood said with a smile.
​There was a few seconds of silence here and there during the car ride until Ms. Rosewood asked a question. "So when did you start using a wheelchair?"
​"The week after you forced me into that hell-like retirement home." Her mother replied.
​"What? What happened?"
​"Well, I fell in the shower one afternoon."
​"How?"
​"Well I went to go wash my legs and then it happened. One minute I was up, and then the next I was down."
​"How did I not know about this?"
​"Well let's see... YOU NEVER CALL?!?"
​"Fine, but next time something happens to you, can you please call me, or let one of the nurse's call me?"
​"I'll try."
​Ms. Rosewood finally arrived at the school. She got the wheelchair out from the back of the SUV and helped her mother out from her car.
​Entering the school, her mother started to pull out a cigarette while Ms. Rosewood pushed her down the hallway. "Mother! You can't smoke in here!"
​"Oh don't worry Merissa, there are probably kids smoking in the bathroom right now."
​"Put it away."
​"Fine, but don't be expecting one later."
​"What do you mean? I don't smoke anymore."
​"That's what you think, but after a week as a teacher, you are going to smoke twelve packs a day. You'll go insane!"
​"No I won't mother."
​"Whatever you say..."
​Going through the halls of the school, it seemed like each hall was crowded with students. No student would move out of the way for Ms. Clearance in her wheelchair, so Ms. Rosewood started yelling at them through her megaphone she brought to school again. "Can you move out of the way?!? This woman is in a wheelchair and you don't move? You should! Her legs aren't working, and if you don't move out of the way, yours's won't either!"
​"Merissa, will you stop yelling into that damn thing, I'm losing more hearing than I already lost!"
​"Oh I'm sorry mother." Ms. Rosewood started off without the megaphone. "IS THIS BETTER?!?" She then yelled through the megaphone.
​Ms. Rosewood and her mother just made it into the classroom before the bell rang. The students were already in the classroom when the two arrived. Ms. Rosewood rolled her mother to her desk and then turned towards the class. "Hello class."
​"Uhm, who's that?" Asked Chelsey.
​"Oh, that old bag of complaints and smells like cigarette and cheap gas station wine? That is my mother, Judy Clarence."
​"What is she doing here?" Asked Chelsey again.
​"Well, for today's plan, I thought we would talk about the "D" word, and no, not what Bratty Britney gets mostly all the time, but the other "D" word... Drugs."
​"But we learn about drugs in Health class. Why should we learn it again in here?" Mark then asked Ms. Rosewood.
​"Because in Health class, you learn what type of drugs there are and the side effects, but in here, you will actually learn from someone who has done them in their pass. Hey, she's kind of like a drug, something you bring and then regret taking."
​"Wait, I'm here to talk about my drug use?" Ms. Clarence asked, looking at her daughter. "I'm calling that nurse to tell them to call the cops!"
​"Mom, stop, I told what the lesson was going to be on, and don't be so surprised that that is why you are here. Drunk was your middle name when I was younger. You're not shy to talk about your past, you told my fifth boyfriend about it when you first met him. That's the reason why he never called me again."
​"Alright, I'll talk about it, but I won't be happy."
"Never cared if you were." Ms. Rosewood responded to her mother.
"What should I talk about first?"
​"What about how it started." Monica asked Ms. Clarence.
​"Well, it all started with how my husband left me for his co-worker. She was twenty years younger than him. He was forty and she was twenty. I really don't care now because she was a skank and had smaller tits, but back then I did. I got hooked to pain killers and then got deeper and deeper in throughout time. The addiction got really bad! I had a drug dealer, I hid drugs everywhere in my house, and I was mostly on drugs every minute to stop the pain given to me by heartbreak."
​"Were you always on good terms with your drug dealer?"
​"Was I? We actually started dating at one point. For my birthday one year, he got me a whole big ass bag of cocaine."
​"How romantic." Britney stated with sarcasm.
​"Hey, sweetheart, that's what your boyfriend probably takes every time he hangs out with you so he doesn't leave you for a less-bitchy girl! I would shut your mouth now before I go over and shut it for you." Again, Britney sat there defeated. "We were very much in love! He would get me the stuff for a good time and I gave him a good time! Wink, wink." She then chuckled after saying that. "We would go to bars together, we would smoke together, and we even got tattoos together! I got mine removed, but he might still have his. The tattoo read: 'My bitch is better than yours's'. At the time it seemed romantic, but after a while of thinking about it, it might have been a bad idea."
​"Is the relationship still happening?" Monica said asking another question.
​"Oh hell no, it ended after two months with him."
​"Why did it end?"
​"Well, I wanted to get clean. I saw a big sign that really got me into the direction to stop doing this stuff. It was the five DUI reports against me in one week that got my attention to stop. Officers really don't like it when you drive around drunk, topless, and almost shoving one of their faces in between your hooters when they pull you over. And..."
​"MOTHER GET TO THE POINT!" Ms. Rosewood yelled; leaning back on her desk with her arm crossed.
​"Alright, I'm getting there. When I told him I was getting clean, I also mentioned that that would have to mean we would have to part. He got so mad that he pulled out a knife out of nowhere, and I was like: 'Woah! Where did that come from?' He held it against my throat, but I took one of my sharp nails and stabbed it in him. Sharp nails, they can open any lock and any man... literally!"
​"What did you do afterwards?"
​"Well I ran away from where we were and moved. I moved in with my daughter, your teacher, and we haven't heard from him since. Well, that's actually a lie. We actually did hear about him a while back... He's dead."
​"What?" Chelsey shouted in surprise.
​"Yep, died from one of his girlfriends."
​"Well how did he die?" Asked Chelsey waiting for an answer.
​"Well, apparently, he was doing the dirty work with her, and accidently, she suffocated him to death... with her boobs. Yep, death by big knockers. A shame isn't it?"
​"What happened to the woman that, you know, killed him with her, well, you know...?" Monica asked shyly.
​"I don't think they charged her, because, in retrospect, she "accidently" killed him, and it wasn't intentional, but they did interview her! When asked what she thought when she found out he was dead, her response was, 'Damn, not again.'"
​The whole class was just in shock. "Any other questions?" Asked Ms. Clarence.
​"Where are you now?" Asked Mark.
​"I'm in a retirement home, because my daughter put me in there. Damn her. We were supposed to go to the beach the day she decided to throw me into the place I call "hell". Well let me tell you kids something about that day when I thought I was going to be relaxing and having fun in the sun... It wasn't fun there, and she can kiss my 'where the sun don't shine'!"
​"Why do you hate the nursing home so much?"
​"Because you got nurses there that either check up on you every ten minutes or one's that don't give a crap. You have men in there that are always horny and will do anything for sex. Mostly all the men in there want me and my nine inch tits."
​"But you don't measure those by inches." Chelsey started with confusion. "You measure them by cup size."
​"Well, it's kind of weird actually. Instead of them getting bigger, you see, they get longer. They stretch out to be a mile sometimes, and if I'm not careful, I might accidently step on them."
​"Ok mother, I think that's enough about you. Do you have anything to tell the student before you leave?"
​"Yes, in all seriousness, drugs can leave you to ugly things. Bad relationships, ugly choices, unemployment, being killed too even! Make good decisions and try not to do drugs unless necessary, and if you do decide to do them, make sure you don't get caught doing it." She then laughed a little after saying that last sentenced.
​"Ok, that's enough of our "special guest" for today. Hope you enjoyed hearing from my mother. Now she has to go back to the retirement home, or "hell" as she calls it."
​The bell rang and everyone left. Some people said thank you to Ms. Clarence before they left the room, but some didn't.
​Ms. Rosewood sat in a nearby desk so she could be eye level with her mother who was in a wheelchair. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you mom. This didn't go as bad as I thought it would, but it also didn't go as well I was wishing for it to go. But in the end, I am happy that you came. I could tell by the faces each student was making that you made somewhat of a difference in their life, and for that, I am happy."
​"You're welcome darling. Sharing some of my story felt a little good, but not very much. Now can you get me out of here? I didn't think there was anywhere worse than the retirement home, but I was proven wrong by being in this building. Hopefully, by doing this, you will actually call me more often! Now let me have my fifty dollars you owe me for being here!"
​"Fine!" Ms. Rosewood pulled out five ten dollar bills from her purse and gave them to her mother.
​"Yes! This will now let me buy that lingerie I have always wanted!"
​"Ok, I need to bring you back to that retirement home now before I vomit from being disgusted!"
​Ms. Rosewood brought her mother back to the retirement home. While arriving, a nurse came out to help Ms. Clarence. It was the same nurse that helped before. "Hey, guess what." Ms. Clarence asked the nurse.
​"What?" The nurse responded.
​"I didn't die today!" Ms. Clarence responded.
​"That's... uhm... good... I guess...?" The nurse stated. "Now let's get you back inside ma'am."
​"Thank you Merissa for today. I had more fun than I thought I would. Well, correction, I didn't think I would have any fun today. I was scared actually. Call me soon darling."
​"Will do mother." Ms. Rosewood responded.
​Ms. Rosewood drove home and thought about the day she had during the whole drive. A day with her mother didn't kill her, but it also didn't give her life. She arrived home with minimum traffic and went to have a glass of wine. "Tomorrow is another day and another lesson." She stated out loud. "What is another important feature of life to teach these kids?" She also thought to herself. "Think, think; think! I got it!" Ms. Rosewood grabbed her phone and started looking people up. "Perfect!"
​She then smiled.