I looked straight at Gordon Lawrence.
I never thought he'd force a teacher under him to get an abortion just to shut up a parent throwing a tantrum.
I didn't give an inch.
"Director Lawrence, the Board of Education has never made a rule that a teacher needs the school's approval to be pregnant."
"You think threatening to fire me is going to scare me? I don't scare that easily."
Contradicted to his face, Gordon shot to his feet, shaking with anger.
Right then the office door was pushed open from outside.
The principal walked in.
"I could hear the shouting in here from all the way down the hall. Is this any way to behave?"
Howie's mother threw herself straight at him.
"Principal! You have to set this right for me!"
"Your school's teacher is bullying people!"
She squeezed out two tears and launched into a tearful, wailing accusation against me.
She made me out to be a terrible teacher, one who slacked off because she was pregnant, mistreated her students, and had a vicious attitude on top of it all.
Gordon jumped in beside her.
"That's right, Principal. This Rosalind Whitney has always thought she could look down on everyone just because her class scores well."
"Now she won't even give a parent the time of day."
"I was just trying to do the decent thing, telling her to apologize to the parent and settle this privately, and she talked back to me!"
In the hallway outside the office, a crowd of teachers had gathered at some point to watch the show.
A few of them, jealous that I'd won the Outstanding Teacher award, started needling me from the doorway.
"Oh my, Ms. Whitney's always so high and mighty. Of course she can't take a little grievance."
"Right, she's a celebrated teacher. Ordinary ones like us wouldn't dare compare."
"If she's pregnant, she should just go home and have the baby. Why hang around school taking up a spot she won't fill?"
"Poor Howie, such a bright kid, stuck with a homeroom teacher like her."
I looked at these colleagues piling on while I was down and felt nothing at all, only that it was laughable.
After hearing out Howie's mother and Gordon, the principal's face went dark.
"Rosalind Whitney! You have no discipline, no respect for the chain of command!"
"Do you even know what day it is?"
"The Director of the Board of Education is about to make a surprise inspection of our school!"
"And you pick this exact moment to blow up into a huge fight with a parent!"
"Are you doing this on purpose, to embarrass me and go against the school?"
I looked at him coldly.
"Principal, Director Lawrence hasn't looked into what actually happened at all."
"This parent is the one making an unreasonable scene. She demanded I be her free driver, and when I said no, she used her child's fall to shake me down."
"My pregnancy is perfectly normal. I haven't broken a single rule. On what grounds should I get an abortion?"
"Since the Director of the Board is coming, that's perfect."
I looked the principal straight in the eye and said each word clearly.
"Let him come and settle it, and see whose fault this really is!"
The moment he heard that, the principal flew into a rage.
"Who do you think you are? You're not fit to go in front of the director!"
"He has a thousand things to handle. He doesn't have time for your petty mess!"
He turned and shouted toward the door.
"Security! Where's security? Get in here, now!"
Two uniformed guards pushed through the crowd and ran in.
"Principal, you called for us?"
The principal pointed at me and gave the order, half choking on his own fury.
"Rosalind Whitney, as of now you're suspended. Go home this instant and think long and hard about what you've done!"
"You two, throw her out of here!"
"Without my permission, she doesn't set one foot inside this school!"
At his word, the guards came at me from both sides.
But Howie's mother suddenly cried out.
"No! You can't just let her walk away like that!"
She shoved a guard aside and planted herself between me and the principal, hands on her hips.
"Principal, you're covering for her!"
"She bullies me and my son like this, and all you do is suspend her and tell her to reflect? Since when does anyone get off that easy?"
"Let me tell you, today she's going to bow and apologize to me and my son in front of every teacher in this school!"
"And then transfer me sixty thousand in compensation right away! Not a cent less!"
"Otherwise, I'll go block the gate and stop the Board director this instant!"
"I'll file a complaint straight to him and have him fire Rosalind Whitney on the spot!"
"And I'll show the director exactly how your school lets its teachers bully students!"
I gave a cold laugh.
"Fine, go complain."
"I'd love to see whether the director, once he's here, backs a parent running an extortion racket, or backs a teacher who's just doing her job."
