thank you.”
When I leave, I drive across town to the high school where my husband works. I am a good driver. I obey all the traffic signs. I am always respectful to pedestrians, with their breakable bodies.
I do not use the school parking lot when I arrive. Instead I park around the corner and walk to the side of the main building, where Jack’s office has a window that looks out on a large grassy expanse with trees and benches and fiberglass picnic tables. I sit at one of the benches, where I can see into his window. His back is facing me, and I can see that he is hunched over his desk, scribbling away industriously. The hair on the back of his neck is closely cropped. Sometimes he has me do touch-ups with a pair of clippers after he comes home from the barbershop. The skin of his neck is burned slightly from standing in the hot weekend sun, watering the front lawn.
I sit on the bench cross-legged. The advantage of my spot is that it is behind the large trunk of an oak tree, so if he should ever turn to look out the window, I can simply lean back and be completely hidden.
When people enter his office, Jack stands and greets them. Then he waits for them to sit before he does. His adult colleagues smile a lot when they are in his office—he must be a charming man. When his At-Risk students come in, they sometimes fidget, and their heads swivel twitchily. Jack leans back in his chair in these situations.
I pick at the bark of the oak tree while I watch. Underneath is smooth, supple pulp.
When the students begin to talk, I notice that he nods a lot and listens with his head a little sideways—as though his brain were weighed down with the careful consideration of their words. The students seem to respond well to it.
I try it, there on my bench. I angle my head on the pivot of my neck as though carrying the weight of big thought.
A sparrow whistles overhead.
A little later the tough girl, Nat, comes into his office. She sits with her arms crossed and glares at him. Once I think she sees me watching, but she doesn’t say anything about it. I know the look on her face. She wants to rip away at things. I know the tips of her fingers tremble like eager claws.
I pick at the bark of my tree.
At home that evening, I listen to Jack speak of his day. I nod and hold my head at an angle while I’m listening, but I must not be doing it right, because he says, “What are you doing?”
I tell him that I’m just listening.
“You feeling all right?” he asks. “You’re acting funny again.”
I tell him nothing is the least bit wrong. I ask him if he would like more potatoes.
After dinner I wash the dishes in water so hot it scalds the skin of my hands. I think about Peter Meechum and the quarry. I think about the body of that little girl who was me, lying there in the tall grass. Someone knotted up in confusion, always.
* * *
The week after Peter Meechum took me to the quarry, the snow came, and I began to wonder if maybe I was a saint—one of those people whom badness slips right off of. People like to talk about ducks and water, about how the two repel each other. Really, it’s that ducks have oily feathers. So maybe my pores leaked holy oil. My father also told me that some places have competitions in which young men try to capture greased pigs. That’s me, a holy greased pig, slickering away out of the fumbling hands of evil.
Peter stopped coming to my house, and he didn’t look at me in school. He was angry at me for being too good to rape. Saints are nobody’s favorite people.
The first snow of the year came on a night when there was no moon at all. It was dark as anything, and so quiet all you could hear was the hum of your own thoughts. The snow came six minutes after two o’clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets of fairies through the cold sky. I was awake—the only one in town, I was sure—and I was sure that those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my
When I leave, I drive across town to the high school where my husband works. I am a good driver. I obey all the traffic signs. I am always respectful to pedestrians, with their breakable bodies.
I do not use the school parking lot when I arrive. Instead I park around the corner and walk to the side of the main building, where Jack’s office has a window that looks out on a large grassy expanse with trees and benches and fiberglass picnic tables. I sit at one of the benches, where I can see into his window. His back is facing me, and I can see that he is hunched over his desk, scribbling away industriously. The hair on the back of his neck is closely cropped. Sometimes he has me do touch-ups with a pair of clippers after he comes home from the barbershop. The skin of his neck is burned slightly from standing in the hot weekend sun, watering the front lawn.
I sit on the bench cross-legged. The advantage of my spot is that it is behind the large trunk of an oak tree, so if he should ever turn to look out the window, I can simply lean back and be completely hidden.
When people enter his office, Jack stands and greets them. Then he waits for them to sit before he does. His adult colleagues smile a lot when they are in his office—he must be a charming man. When his At-Risk students come in, they sometimes fidget, and their heads swivel twitchily. Jack leans back in his chair in these situations.
I pick at the bark of the oak tree while I watch. Underneath is smooth, supple pulp.
When the students begin to talk, I notice that he nods a lot and listens with his head a little sideways—as though his brain were weighed down with the careful consideration of their words. The students seem to respond well to it.
I try it, there on my bench. I angle my head on the pivot of my neck as though carrying the weight of big thought.
A sparrow whistles overhead.
A little later the tough girl, Nat, comes into his office. She sits with her arms crossed and glares at him. Once I think she sees me watching, but she doesn’t say anything about it. I know the look on her face. She wants to rip away at things. I know the tips of her fingers tremble like eager claws.
I pick at the bark of my tree.
At home that evening, I listen to Jack speak of his day. I nod and hold my head at an angle while I’m listening, but I must not be doing it right, because he says, “What are you doing?”
I tell him that I’m just listening.
“You feeling all right?” he asks. “You’re acting funny again.”
I tell him nothing is the least bit wrong. I ask him if he would like more potatoes.
After dinner I wash the dishes in water so hot it scalds the skin of my hands. I think about Peter Meechum and the quarry. I think about the body of that little girl who was me, lying there in the tall grass. Someone knotted up in confusion, always.
* * *
The week after Peter Meechum took me to the quarry, the snow came, and I began to wonder if maybe I was a saint—one of those people whom badness slips right off of. People like to talk about ducks and water, about how the two repel each other. Really, it’s that ducks have oily feathers. So maybe my pores leaked holy oil. My father also told me that some places have competitions in which young men try to capture greased pigs. That’s me, a holy greased pig, slickering away out of the fumbling hands of evil.
Peter stopped coming to my house, and he didn’t look at me in school. He was angry at me for being too good to rape. Saints are nobody’s favorite people.
The first snow of the year came on a night when there was no moon at all. It was dark as anything, and so quiet all you could hear was the hum of your own thoughts. The snow came six minutes after two o’clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets of fairies through the cold sky. I was awake—the only one in town, I was sure—and I was sure that those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my
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