Selected Excerpts

Yurt

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
The New Yorker

A year ago Ms. Duffy, the fifth-grade English and history teacher, had come very close to losing it, what with her homeroom being right next to the construction site for the new computer lab, and her attempts to excise the Aztecs from the curriculum being thwarted, and her ill-advised affair with Mr. Polidori coming to an end. She had come very close—or at least that was the general opinion among both the middle- and upper-school faculty, and who was Ms. Hempel to disagree? But now, upon her return, Ms. Duffy looked unrecognizably happy. It was the first week of May, and she was holding court in the teacher's lounge, her hair nearly down to her waist and her big belly protruding over her lap. Above the belly, Ms. Duffy laughed and swayed and gestured freely with her hands, as if to say, "What—this old thing?"