The First Amendment

Anne Valente

Robin raised her hand in grade school, when everyone in the room was taught to be polite, when teachers wouldn’t call on her unless she held her palms high. She spoke in class, said nine times three is twenty-seven, told her peers that Monticello belonged to Thomas Jefferson, that a Punnett square determines genotypes. But now, a freshman, her voice recedes below clatter. Robin waits for a silence in class, the silence of raised hands, some space to say what she wants, a space that never comes. She holds her hands up, elbows propped against her desk, a sign unrecognized between shouts, between interjections.
…..I had my hand up, she tells Mr. Jacobs, after another class of being ignored. He is her American history teacher, a tall man with glasses, and he peers over them at every girl in the front row.
…..He looks up from his desk. This is high school, he says. We don’t baby you anymore. He turns back to his grade book. If you want to be heard, you’ll just have to speak up, he says. Robin watches him a moment, the dull sheen of his balding head bent low, away from her. She walks out of the classroom wondering why, why speak up, as if no other means ever existed to be heard.
…..At home, over dinner, her parents ask about school. Her father passes her peas and asks when her geometry test will be, and though this is what Robin has always known, the lobbied exchange of questions, answers, there is still shock, some strange unfamiliarity, of being asked instead of spoken over.
…..During class discussion of the Bill of Rights, Jason Stedman argues the necessity of trial by jury, and Dan Lorimer follows up immediately, a lengthy defense of the freedom of speech, the First Amendment, the most important. Robin knows every inch of their arguments, knows the Federalist Papers, James Madison, the ratification of three-fourths of the state. But there is no room, no word in edgewise, no space in the room to breathe, to speak. Mr. Jacobs leans against his desk, brow clenched in thought behind his glasses, and Robin notices his gaze shift, even as Dan continues to speak, she watches his eyes move to the curve of Becca Fulton’s cleavage. Becca is not Robin’s friend, but Robin has seen her shift regardless, there in the front row, her new low-cut shirts, skirt hems that hug her buttocks, the ways she’s heard freshman can date seniors, a matter only of being noticed. Becca crosses her legs, Mr. Jacobs moves his gaze even further down, and as Dan praises open speech, Robin feels a flicker in her chest, tiny pilot flame, some sputtering movement beneath this freedom of words that are not hers, not now, not without a loud voice, without the ease to interrupt, not without breasts to trap a man’s gaze like a prism, to refract all the light a room can hold.

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