Cat's eye by Margaret Atwood Page A

and black shoes with Cuban heels, and a tiny lipless smile. She does not send children to the principal for the strap, but does it herself, in front of the class, holding the hand out flat, bringing the black rubber strap down in sharp quick efficient strokes, her face white and quivering, while we watch, wincing, our eyes filling with involuntary tears. Some girls snivel audibly while she does this, even though she isn’t doing it to them, but this isn’t wise: Miss Lumley hates sniveling, and is likely to say, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” We learn to sit up straight, eyes front, faces blank, both feet on the floor, listening to the whack of rubber on cringing flesh. Mostly it’s boys who get the strap. They are thought to need it more. Also they fidget, especially during sewing. We are supposed to sew pot holders, for our mothers. The boys cannot seem to do this right; their stitches are large and clumsy, and they stick one another with the needles. Miss Lumley stalks the aisles, whacking their knuckles with a ruler.
    The schoolroom is high-ceilinged, yellowy-brown, with blackboards at the front and along one side and tall many-paned windows above the radiators on the other side. Over the door to the cloakroom, so that you feel you’re being watched from behind, there’s a large photograph of the King and Queen, the King with medals, the Queen in a white ballgown and diamond tiara. High wooden desks that sit two, with slanted tops and holes for inkwells, are arranged in rows. It’s like all the other schoolrooms at Queen Mary, but it seems darker, possibly because there’s less decoration. Our old teacher brought paper doilies to school in her many efforts at appeasement, and her windows were always crawling with paper vegetation. But although Miss Lumley observes the seasons in this way too, the plants we bring forth under her glittering steel-rimmed eyes are smaller, shriveled-looking, so that there are never enough of them to cover the bare spaces of wall and glass. Also, if your fall foliage leaf or your pumpkin is not symmetrical, Miss Lumley won’t put it up. She has standards.
    Things are more British than they were last year. We learn to draw the Union Jack, using a ruler and memorizing the various crosses, for St. George of England, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Andrew of, Scotland, St. David of Wales. Our own flag is red and has a Union Jack in one corner, although there’s no saint for Canada. We learn to name all the pink parts of the map.
    “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” says Miss Lumley, tapping the roll-down map with her long wooden pointer. In countries that are not the British Empire, they cut out children’s tongues, especially those of boys. Before the British Empire there were no railroads or postal services in India, and Africa was full of tribal warfare, with spears, and had no proper clothing. The Indians in Canada did not have the wheel or telephones, and ate the hearts of their enemies in the heathenish belief that it would give them courage. The British Empire changed all that. It brought in electric lights. Every morning, after Miss Lumley blows a thin metallic note on her pitch pipe, we stand up to sing “God Save the King.” We also sing,
    Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves;
    Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!
    Because we’re Britons, we will never be slaves. But we aren’t real Britons, because we are also Canadians. This isn’t quite as good, although it has its own song:
    In days of yore, from Britain‘s shore,
    Wolfe, the dauntless hero, came
    And planted firm Britannia’s flag
    On Canada’s fair domain.
    Here may it wave, our boast, our pride
    And join in love together
    The thistle, shamrock, rose entwine
    The Maple Leaf forever.
    Miss Lumley’s jaw quivers in a frightening way when we sing this. Wolfe’s name sounds like something you’d call a dog, but he conquered the French. This is puzzling, because I’ve seen French