She told me earlier in the year she would need someone to
cover the event because she would be taking par and could not cover herself.
She had somehow convinced our boss – who was filling in four
our real boss – to let me do it, a miracle in itself.
She was going to tell the students at the local high school
what it was like to do what she does, even though she’d only been doing it for
six months.
She was rarely shy about putting herself out there.
She had already performed as a singer at the local performing
arts center and had been honored by the local school board at a special luncheon.
So, this was just another feather in her cap.
Why she picked me to cover her I couldn’t figure.
I almost forgot my promise and had to scurry to get to the
high school on time. She texted me as to where she would be waiting.
I found her at the front door, impatient, maybe nervous, as if
this was her first day at school.
Perhaps she recalled too many details of those last days
when she’d taught regularly and the reasons why she had stopped.
“I need you here to give me confidence,” she told me as she
grabbed my arm and led me into the school and to a desk where she was to
receive a name tag, thus becoming a member of that unique sorority that allowed
her the title of teacher again – if only for one day.
I clumsily explained my role to the guard, then trailed behind
her as if I was her student to the library where she was to get her room assigned.
She looked magnificent, dressed even more formally than she
did for the office, filled with a dignified air I imagine she had mastered during
her own days at college and later as a rich kids’ teacher, looking less stern
than utterly professional, her nervousness showing only deep in her eyes, self-doubt
no doubt, going back in time, to try to pull the rabbit out of her hat in yet
one more of her many magical tricks.
Although professional, she carried another air with her as
well, a scent maybe, or perhaps just an attitude that drew the attention of all
the other men when she entered the room, even those men embroiled in some
unrelated conversation, honey could not have attracted bees better than she did
those men, and from her expression she was aware of it, acting as if she was
not.
As a participant, she was required to have her photo taken,
and like a chameleon, she changed again, from task master to beauty queen,
modeling herself without moving a muscle.
Jay at the office once claimed she had an odd beauty that
made her stand out from the other beautiful women also working in our office –
and seeing her in front of the camera in the library, I understood this better.
She would have stood out in a beauty pageant.
She played all this attention, as if something to be
endured, and yet it went a long way to relieve the nervousness I had first seen
in her eyes.
She was not the only guest. In one corner of the library sat
a clutch of cops, all of them hovering close to each other, like wall flowers
to a party in which they did not belong. We had also passed a number of
military men on our way in, particularly a U.S. Marine who seemed to glow
nearly as brightly as she did.
She introduced me to the superintendent of schools and
snapped a few pictures as I interviewed him and other guests.
I briefly panicked when I looked up and found her gone, off
doing something I’m still not clear about. When she returned, she found me
seated at one of the tables interviewing a local artist.
She didn’t like the man. He was more than a little arrogant
and bragged about his making his living off his art, which I think she resented
since to that point she had not managed that.
She sat down, saying nothing until students came to collect
the guests and lead them to classroom, at which point she looked like a movie
star again.
Although closer to the age of the students than most of the
other guests and many of the other teachers, she stood out, and somehow won the
respect of the students, who saw her as someone important. They approached her
with reverence as they led us out of the library and down the halls in the
direction of a classroom where she was destined to teach.
While I had passed the high school a number of times since
it had replaced the old football stadium, this was my first time inside, and I
had not fully realized how strange a set up it was until then, how it managed
to incorporate a stadium inside a high school. The class room we reached had
windows eye level with the playing field.
I settled into a desk near the window, once more feeling out
of time, out of place, the way I felt when I was young and had gone to school
in classes like this.
The ROTC instructor for the high school helped set up the
technology she needed for her lesson, a computer and access to our publication’s
website.
In her haste or nervousness, she had forgotten to bring
print copies of our publication and the ever-helpful ROTC man sent a student to
retrieve some from the library.
Then, as if the first act of a well-staged drama, she walked
up to the front of the class, once more exuding the stern task master, but with
a welcoming smile. Students drifted in,
not a lot, but enough, putting onto her Atlas-like shoulders the unnerving task
of inciting their interest, making them interest in a career she had only
recently embraced herself, drawing something from down deep inside her as to
explain why she had chosen that way of life – the next stepping stone towards
some greater goal, the poet, the songstress, the mysterious stranger hiding
behind her large eyes and slanted smile.
She didn’t tell them what she thought but asked them what they
though instead. She drew a cartoon cat on the chalk board and asked them about
the cat, interest grew, she had won them over. By the afternoon class she had
them eating out of the palm of her hand, getting back into the stride she had
once commanded in the classroom years ago.
She was that beautiful dark queen fairytales are made up of,
looking into the mirror of her students’ eyes, asking the immortal question:
who is the fairest of them all, and getting back from those adoring student
eyes: “You are! You are! And you always will be!”
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